Establishing herself in the Magic Academy of Arwintar proved a surprisingly simple task. She had quarters established for herself among the other professors within the hour, furnishings were delivered from Lord Ainz with his compliments along with well wishes on her new endeavor, and thanks to years of unspent salary that Lord Ainz insisted upon paying them, she had a servant of her own to attend to her needs. A young dignified looking orc named Manaly.
So she stood in her residence and held out her arms to breathe in a deeply contented sigh. Manaly approached her and bowed deeply. He wore a black and white uniform of a proper butler, with a thin black coat, black pants, and a white shirt visible only as a V shape above where the black coat buttoned at the sternum. "Ma'am, shall I go to market and acquire food for the week?"
"Meat. That is all, except for your supply." She said at once.
She removed her mask and set it in a tray it couldn't crawl out of, spending the remainder of her day in quiet enjoyment of a place of her own. Hours came and went like old friends, welcoming one and all, undisturbing, pleasant, and always looked forward to. She read a book by the window where the sun shone through and caught the sound of someone playing music outside. 'What do they call that one… a guitar, that's right!' An import from the east, its use spread widely and a revolution in music was underway spreading outward from Arwintar.
It could be played loudly or quietly strummed, and went well with singers of various types. Today it was a student who played it with his back against the tree outside her building, she had to admit, he was quite good. It made for pleasant company to read by.
Manaly returned without a word of greeting and went straight to his tasks, stowing the meat in the cold box she was given from Nazarick that kept food fresh and ready for preparation. And before Entoma knew it… the sun was gone and the world grew darker.
The music was gone, the hour grew late, and Entoma went to her room. It had no bed, rather she coated part of the room with webbing on which to sleep. Though she could use beds comfortably, and had, it was somehow 'satisfying' to make her own nest. The webbing wouldn't stick to her, the long white strands were soft as silk and strong as steel, it was trivially easy to make, and she could refashion it as she saw fit. Today it was fashioned as a hammock, dangling from the top corners of her cherry wood colored walls. She climbed on it, swayed back and forth and quickly fell asleep.
Entoma rocked back and forth in her webbing, her maskless face was exposed to the empty room alone and no other. Though Manaly had seen it the hour she'd hired him, it was only once or twice thus far. 'I'm still not comfortable showing my face… I should have asked Keeno how long it took to stop feeling naked when she didn't have her mask on.'
The maid was ready for her day before the sun rose in the east, and the thought on her mind that came up before she'd even polished off a haunch of raw meat was, 'I'll be seeing Inta today. Marvelous.' The vampire had a charming demeanor about him, though part of her wondered, 'Is he seeing that dark elf professor? Or not?' Uncertainty touched her in a way she had not quite expected.
It was enough to make her stop when she reached the exit for her building, her arm went out and touched the frame of the door, 'Don't be stupid, Entoma. You're just going to have lunch with a colleague, a fellow teacher, he's going to show you around and that's all.'
She rolled all her eyes at once and walked the rest of the way out into the predawn world making her way to her office. Even the birds weren't chirping yet, so she affixed her mask to her face and suppressed a little bit of disappointment. 'That bird yesterday was delicious, I should put some webbing outside my window, I'll bet I can get a few more that way.' Had she the ability to do it, she would have licked her lips.
When she reached her office, the first thing she did was to slide open her window and lean out. She then turned to face the corner, and webbing shot from her mouth which she then guided to the other side. This was exceptionally thin, it went back and forth, back and forth from one outthrust part of the wall and overhanging ceiling to the other, until she crisscrossed the area in front of her window with a lattice of invisible webbing. As an added measure, she set a bowl on the sill and then stared down at the empty thing with annoyance. 'Right, I need bird feed. I can pick up some bread or something later. This is one of the most convenient parts about being me, my food comes right to me, all I have to do is wait for it to deliver itself.'
With that done, Entoma sat at the dark wooden desk and began to set herself in order, there were no textbooks published just on Entomancy, and so she set about writing one, her quill moved over the papers, pausing along the way as she wrote the basics, while turning to separate sheets of paper to write her lesson plan for her students.
The sun rose at her back and the hustle and bustle of Academy life began again in earnest. Though other than the slow creeping forward of the sunlight and the slow growth of her shadow in front of her, she noticed nothing of the passage of time until there was a knock at the door.
The soft thud of flesh and bone to wood on repeat caught her attention, and Entoma put her mask back on again. "Yes?" She asked, and the door opened.
"Hungry?" Inta said, resting on the doorframe with one hand, he leaned into her office and winked a red eye.
"Famished." Entoma realized as soon as he asked the question, and rose to her feet. "I've been so busy working on both a textbook and a lesson plan that I didn't even notice the time."
"Entomancy is even less understood than Wild Magic I would assume." Inta said and led her down the hall and out of the building.
"I've never met another Entomancer, though I've seen all kinds of magic casters out there." Entoma admitted, "I don't really know who will be interested in what is basically…" She closed her mouth behind her mask, then said it, "bug magic."
Inta glanced down at her from her side, "You denigrate your own skill?"
Entoma shook her head in rapid denial, "No, no that isn't it. It's just… that is what it is. It's powerful in the right hands, like mine. I can combine short and ranged combat as well as confine my enemies or use poison or…" She huffed, "there's a bug for everything. But, look around you." Entoma said and stopped.
Inta stopped with her and she waved her hand around campus. "How many bugs do you suppose are here? How many insects and arachnids?" She asked him.
He scratched his dark hair, "I don't know, a thousand?"
Entoma actually laughed, "Maybe within a child's toss of a stone… underhand. There are at least a hundred thousand insects around us just within sight. For every one you see, there are ten thousand you don't. But look." She pointed her long arm toward someone who brushed a black and red ladybug off of his arm. It flew away and the one who brushed it off gave it no notice.
"See?" Entoma asked, "No curiosity, no interest, nothing. The power of insects, their virtues, their strengths, what makes them 'them' is utterly uninteresting to anyone. If they bother to look closely at all, watch their faces twist in disgust, they'd sooner squash them than understand them, and sooner brush them aside than acknowledge that they even exist. What they can do, what they can be, what they can mean for life or death… All that potential just goes to waste as a result."
"Then all you have to do… is show it off." Inta suggested with a twinkle in his blood red eye.
"Show it off?" Entoma asked.
"Yes, show. It. Off. We put on a little demonstration, I'll be your partner, I won't be able to use wild magic without the sacrifice of life, however I am a vampire, and a veteran of the war. I promise you I can put on a good show. In a few weeks the next round of course sign ups will take place, but before that happens, we put on an exhibition showing what 'bug magic' can really do. I'll bet you lunch that you'll have a full class. That's the truth of potential, don't you know that?" His smile was broad enough to show off his fangs, and it was enough to make Entoma step back to take him all in.
"What?" She asked, looking up at him from behind her mask.
"The truth of potential is that you only have to display it, then it isn't just potential, it's reality, quick as that, it's how we got this world as it is, potential unleashed." He snapped his fingers beside his head, and held his hand back out to her.
"Now, how about lunch?" He asked, "We don't want to wait too long or the place will fill up."
"Yes, I'd like that, I'd like that very much." Entoma replied, quietly summoning a mimic bug to take a place at the end of her arm so that when he reached out, he found a hand, not just the pointed end of the limb.
"See. Potential, now reality." He said, and winked when the legs that imitated fingers closed around his own.
"Yes, I see, now… about that lunch, we need to get going, or it will be dinner." Entoma said, and they walked off campus to eat, not even noticing that neither he, nor she, made to let go when they'd begun to walk again.