text / un: starkov

[peasant]

the good news first: rhys and i found the princess of kilnan in the castle and woke her. she's with us right now. the castle was designed to protect her against her mother's soldiers trying to force her back home, which is why it's been so tricky. it's meant to alert remi — her uncle, and the wizard we came looking for — to any unwanted guests, which would be us.

the reason he hasn't come to greet us is that he's asleep. aureliah — the princess — should be able to talk her uncle down before he throws us all out into the mud. he's trapped behind an entrance sam's group found, but aureliah should be able to unseal its magic.

i think more of us should be there when it's opened, just in case something goes wrong with the orb.

the bad news: the orb's name is phyllie. remi made a deal with her and fed his own arcane energy to her in exchange for curing a curse that was placed on aureliah and her mother, but something went wrong during remi's bargain and that energy was transferred from the orb to aureliah instead. that's the reason she has her uncle's magic, and why her mother is so eager to use her daughter as a weapon against kilnan's neighboring countries.

the queen thinks kilnan will be better protected if she can force her daughter to learn war magic. it sounds like remi has been searching through dimensions to find the "right world" (for him and aureliah to hide? we don't know what he meant) but the orb has been draining him of his energy.

from what aureliah said, he feeds "phyllie" monthly. the princess and i think that's the price he's chosen to pay for keeping the curse at bay.

the worst news: i don't know what will happen if we break the bargain remi has made, but i'm sure it can't possibly be anything good. aureliah's life force was given to her by the orb, and the wizard who cast the curse in the first place was killed in the war. so that's a dead end, but maybe someone has a better solution we can offer remi once he's awake.

[ as per this npc thread! feel free to threadjack and hop around threads here to your hearts' content. ♥ ]

Comments

[cruelyethuman]

I'm sure it comforts you to think that.

[peasant]

oh, i don't think it. i know it.
looks like you're the one in the dark about secrets this time.

[cruelyethuman]

[Left on READ]

[kovach]

Might get you a better meal.

[peasant]

so, you're saying there's a chance you'll take me for gourmet cereal instead of just regular cereal. lucky me.
how nicely i ask depends on how nice the meal is.

[kovach]

Don't insult my high class taste in cereals. You're the one missing out.

[peasant]

oh, i'm sure. pigeons everywhere are envious of your tastes.
please, takeshi, take me out to a romantic dinner and feed me your bird food in the candlelight.

[kovach]

I'm gonna remember this. If I ever find you agonizingly starving, you're on your own.

[peasant]

oh, that's rude. 🥺 you wanted me to ask you sweetly, so i did.
a simple "no" would have sufficed.

[whitestonelives]

Not yet. I just recently woke up after getting caught by the sleeping sickness, I'm still trying to catch back up to what I missed. Which was quite a bit, apparently.

Quick note, though: to charge it, someone would have to attack me with a spell. The more powerful the better. I can take the hit well enough.

[peasant]

we all came here to gather the orbs in exchange for fixing our mistakes. you could say we're all already bound to every orb we've collected.

[ if nothing else, this mission has forced her to uncomfortably examine the deals they've made — to finally soak in the consequences of what her desperation has done. despite the stubborn, hopeful flicker that refuses to be snuffed out — she can't cast aside her doubts, now, over the contract they've trapped themselves in. ]

i'm sorry about what was done to you. [ and its uneasy familiarity. a stab of guilt prickles at her, for her failure to warn that kirigan is no better than those who have betrayed peter in the past — but why would he even choose to believe her? ] i won't ask you to do this. i won't ask it of anyone who isn't willing to try. but i'm not going to change my mind, if we discover there's no other way.

[spacedisaster]

Ehhh, yes and no. The Braccia orb we collected a couple of months ago wasn't using someone's magic and life force to sustain itself, and we didn't have to do this. It's just that this seems like a recipe for disaster to me and a worrisome precedent. What if the orbs in the future keep asking more and more?

I already brought up my concerns to Viveca, but she couldn't really give me an answer. She asked for a chance, that we trust her and the Commander because she said they had the best intentions in mind.

[ But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Peter has grown to be more skeptical with the years. His expression softens at her sympathy, and he looks more tired than anything. ]

Thanks. It was some time ago, but some lessons are learned the hard way. I know you wouldn't ask that from me, but what I am trying to say is that you don't have to sacrifice yourself either. Is your life not worth the same as mine? As anybody else's? We don't know yet if there's no other way, it's too soon.

[aurable]

[ Ordinarily, Drift tried to make himself appear as harmless as a creature of his size could but here, he didn't want to give Alina doubts. Neither was he bothered by the staring because, well, now it was his turn to gawk. ]

I swear, each time I think you humans can't get any more surprising, I'm proven wrong yet again.

[peasant]

[ a number of emotions flit across her expression as quickly as a flicker of light — bemusement, uncertainty over whether she should take offense, then amusement, before it settles into something sarcastically wry. there are worse reasons someone might gawk at her, alina knows, a life lesson forced upon her from the moment she took her first baby steps on ravkan soil. ]

Says the giant, [ she blurts out, entirely incapable of remembering polite etiquette. then, as a ruefully deprecating jab toward herself: ] I'm full of surprises lately.

[ in ways that have proven to be a curse more often than they're a blessing, but — she's quick to brush past her own comment. ] So? Will it work?

[aurable]

Alright, fair enough. [ The pointed white finials of Drift's helm flick. Not exactly embarrassed so much as he was sorry to be caught by his own ignorance of humanity. They were turning out to be quite a bit more...diverse than he previously assumed. ]

What, that's new for you? [ She didn't sound too happy about it, as if that kind of ability was anything less than beneficial. ]

I think it's worth a try.

[peasant]

[ embarrassment — his and hers both — does nothing to stem her curiosity. for a moment, her head tilts, studying the flittering of his finials the way her eyes had wandered across new maps as a child. something unexplored, something intriguing, that wasn't the dusty walls of keramzin's lonely orphanage. ]

Was new for me, [ she corrects, without offense. if he's expecting any helpful elaboration, none follows aside from alina's (perhaps less than) reassurance of: ] I'm not going to melt you, if that's what you're worried about. I know how to harness it well enough.

[ well ... maybe that's not true. maybe there is a chance she'll harm him in the process. her brows crease with dawning concern. "worth a try" isn't exactly a comforting answer, after all, and if she's capable of melting down metal — ]

I'm not going to melt you. Right?

[aurable]

[ The open-faced curiosity was mutual expression mirrored in them both. For his limited time on Earth, he still only possessed an outsider's perspective had admittedly had done little to remedy this. Still, he was positive last he checked. None of them could do that. ]

Not at all. It's just surprising. Remi mentioned that tremendous amounts of magic was needed, and that certainly fits the bill. [ Drift wasn't going to make his argument that 'magic' is likely science they didn't fully understand. It was just splitting hairs at this point. ]

What I'm 'made' of is pretty resilient to heat. Living metal isn't run-of-the-mill steel.

[peasant]

you're alright, though?

[ when those nightmares have become living dreams, leaving wounds that bleed into reality, it feels necessary to take a brief detour and pose that question. ]

oh. well. that's one way to do it.
not the most comforting way to do it, but it is a way.
how many times have you done this? besides "enough to figure out how to take that hit."

[whitestonelives]

I’m all right. Shaken, but all right.

It’s likely a terrible idea, but you do have to admit it’s not the worst one.

Enough times. Usually in the heat of battle, though, against people who would very much like to see me dead. So this will be a change of pace from the usual.

[peasant]

Oh.

[ oh, spoken with all of the airiness of someone who doesn't entirely grasp what's being explained to them — but will clumsily try to pretend otherwise. a fabrikator would know the mechanics of living metal better than she ever would (or could).

on the subject of splitting hairs: ]

We call it the Small Science. So long as there's a light source nearby, I can summon light for as long as you need.

[ — in theory, at least. ]

[aurable]

It's not 'small' because you are, right? [ Drift maybe millions of years old and a forged soul housed inside a technological marvel unsurpassed by anything most could dream of - but he was just as susceptible of putting his foot in his mouth as anyone else. ]

I mean—

I would love to see that even under better circumstances.

[kovach]

No.

[ ♥ ]

[peasant]

what's that? yes?
alright, i accept. no need to be shy about it.

[peasant]

no, but we did sign a contract to undo our regret. what else do you think they'll ask for, once we've collected them all?

[ true monsters always believe they have the best intentions, after all. that's another lesson learned the hard way. ]

what makes you so certain i'm sacrificing myself? we don't know what the orb would ask for. it demands different things from different people.

it's just an option to consider if we run out of other choices. everyone is asking like i'm going to throw myself at the orb right this second.

[peasant]

oh, all of our ideas are terrible ideas that might get us brutally slaughtered. this might rank among least terrible, just by comparison.

normally i would say "that's reassuring" without meaning it, but ...
that's reassuring to know. anything we do to charge it can't possibly be worse than that.
we have a lot of magic-users wandering around our number. they're a better choice than i am.