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

[peasant]

if we combine drift's sword and your cloak, maybe the energy will be enough to return what was given to aureliah. did you have anyone in mind for charging it?

[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]

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, 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.

[whitestonelives]

To be fair to us, somehow we keep managing to make it out alive. We’re either very clever at improvisation or else incredibly lucky.

I know. I’ll ask Sabriel if she’s willing.