OFUDisc Chapter 15

After a lunch consisting solely of their own cooking – Albert being an avid proponent of Learning Through Pain – the students of OFUDisc took a quick stroll from Ankh over to Ephebe. Now that she was aware of it, Phoebe found the absurdity of this almost too much to handle, but sadly her disapproval had little to no effect on the placid landscape. Cabbages gave way to sand, and they soon found themselves filing into a massive stone-built stadium.

"I don't recall any canonical mentions of stadia in Ephebe," Raen expounded as they assembled on the dusty track, "but this is clearly in the classical Greek mode, so it's a reasonable supposition."

"Didn't the Greeks do their athletics naked?" Nenya asked in a dreamy voice. At Raen's dubious nod, she pointed at the approaching figure in his moth-eaten red robe. "Do you think we could persuade him to keep the tradition?"

Rincewind came to a reluctant halt in front of the girls. Studying him – as all her classmates were – Phoebe decided the rodent-based descriptions of him were accurate: a weasel-faced man with a ratty beard and mouse-nibbled wardrobe who held himself like a rabbit on the verge of flight. She felt kind of sorry for him.

OFUDisc Chapter 14

The mood was unsettled as Class Two made their way to their first lesson the following day. The two surviving vampires, Iplis and Lucy2, travelled under what was essentially armed guard – Raen with her knife and the alarmingly stern Lindyellwen with her sharpened hoof. The conversation in the rest of the diminished group was superficially normal, but tension lurked like a shark below the surface, its ripples touching the minds of all.

All, that is, except Phoebe and Penny, who chatted away as if they hadn't a care in the world. Eventually, Liliac – who had been checking up on Tisea, making sure she'd recovered from Kai's attempt to drain her dry – joined them. 

"Doing okay, then, Penny?" Liliac asked with forced cheer. 

Penny nodded. "Pretty much all healed now," she said. "Kaitlyn thinks the vamps had some sort of coagulant on their fangs – which makes no sense, by the way, and I don't think it's canon, so it's on the list – but that's why we've healed so fast." 

Liliac frowned at her. "You're really okay?" she pressed. "No lingering psychological trauma or anything? I mean, if you're going to go Bursar on us I need to know." 

Penny glanced across at the subdued figure of Iplis and sighed softly. "It still hurts to think about, if that's what you mean," she said, one hand rising to rub her throat absently. "But Phoebe's done a good job of taking my mind off it." 

Phoebe giggled, an incongruous sound in the general gloom. "You're welcome," she said, and Penny smiled back at her.