Wizard's House

[wizardseason]

"Hey"

The Wizard greets the evil-allured knights the same way every night, with the same word, while casually sitting on the steps of the porch outside of her little home. The building looks handmade, like it was built by people who cared about the place they were going to live. Surrounding it on all sides are fields as far as the eye can see. Vegetables of all kinds, with fruit trees and bushes placed throughout the landscape. Closer to the home are bigger trees, willows and others, providing shade from the strange three suns above. Wherever this is, it isn't the world that the knights know.

Plunged into the ground a mere few feet away from the steps leading up to the home is a handwritten sign that states the following:

Knight Rules:
- Tell others if you want
- You can't reveal others
- The world ends this year

Comments

[tropicalstorm]

"And if he's dead, then the world ends," Haizea says, a slight question at the end of that statement. She's pretty sure, but who fuckin' knows.

She seems uncomfortable. The Wizard isn't anything like she had thought before all this, and she's angry at herself for feeling literally any sympathy towards her.

"Maybe we can figure out a way for us to both get what we want," she mumbles, not really thinking this is possible.

[wizardseason]

"Exactly." She answers. If he's dead, the world ends, and then she can rest. It's that simple.

"I hope you find a way." She offers, emotionless. If Haizea and the other knights could find a solution that'd be particularly incredible, honestly. It'd been too long and she'd tried so many things.

Maybe this year would be different.

[daddykong]

Garrot hears the hiss, sees the fists, and- Again? That just has to be a weird translation error from his native language. Then there's the distance that Gyre puts between himself and anyone else, and it hurts. Not because Garrot thinks he's in the wrong, but because they're a team and they need to work together, which Gyre doesn't sound too excited to do. So he ditches the whiteboard and walks right over to his grumpy elf friend.

"Look..." His tone is surprisingly conciliatory. Is he... learning? "When someone is sick, I don't just dive in. I gather information, maybe run some tests, and rule out what's risky or harmful for the patient. Our patient is an entire planet. With a little wolf inside." Holy shit, a medical analogy. "We need to do some..." His eyes light up. "Reconnaissance! That's the word." And hey look, a military term, and Gyre was a soldier. Then he looks up to the sky and gets quite loud for the others to hear.

"Does anyone know who the Princess' Knights are, 'cause I don't!" But then his attention goes back to Gyre. "Once we know more, I'll even go with you if you want!" Have a reassuring pat on the back, Gyre. "I've fixed gunshot wounds before, and I can even tag in if you hate the guy and need to walk away. Again." The word isn't delivered rudely, but more with... a feeling of knowing. Garrot won't openly call him out on a linguistic stumble like that, but he'll do it subtly! "O-okay?"

He is trying so hard.

[tropicalstorm]

Haizea raises an eyebrow at all of this. It is incredible how Garrot keeps managing to piss Gyre off more and more with every damn thing he says. She can tell he's not Trying To this time though? Either way, she won't be left at the whiteboard, she never asked for a pseudo school experience. She also goes out to the porch, and half addresses Gyre, half addresses everyone else.

"Look. We're all adults here, and as long as no one outs each other as Wizard knights, we can do what we want. I think talkin' to Luka right now is a bad idea, especially if the Protector wants to kill us, but Gyre if you wanna do that we can't stop you? But I wanna try and keep everyone alive, so just. Don't die," she shrugs. She's learned over the years that sometimes you just gotta let people do what they gotta do.

"Personally, I'm just gonna keep on like normal. Gonna kill monsters, stay alive, and get my ass home. I hope the rest of y'all are down for that."

[wizardseason]

"The Dragon Knight has a good plan." The Wizard offers, her gentle smirk giving nothing away as she looks around between Gyre, Garrot, Matilda, and finally back to Haizea.

"And you can't out each other; only yourselves." She offers a clarification, she could prevent at least that much. If any of them tried to reveal another knight's wizard status they'd just get muted on the spot until they stopped trying to reveal it. If they tried to write it or charade it out, they'd get teleported to the beach like the knights in years 19, 24, and 37 had.

"Say hello to Fen for me." She turns to Gyre, finishing with a slightly wider smirk at him.

[sustainer]

He reaches up and takes Garrot's face in his hands, squishing his cheeks very slightly as he pulls him a little closer. He keeps his voice low for now, speaking to Garrot specifically, "You're talking at me again." He gives him a significant eyebrow raise, hoping beyond hope that this fucking guy will maybe back off now.

Then he raises his voice, still talking to Garrot but letting everyone else in on it now. "I understand that we need to gather information. If we're doing," sigh, "reconnaissance, we should go to our clearest sources of information. The wizard," he nods back over his shoulder at her, "seems willing to answer our questions for the most part. The only other person we know knows what's going on is the Protector. He should be the next point of contact."

He releases Garrot after that, taking a step back to put some space between them again. "I'll talk to my animal and report back tomorrow night, but," he looks towards Haizea for a moment, "mine is flighty and stupid. Yours is vague. I don't think we'll get much from them." He shrugs. "But I'll try. And I won't die."

He takes a breath, holds it, forcing himself to relax, before he offers a smile and nod to the wizard. "I will."

The smile drops off his face as he returns his attention to Garrot, finally answering his question. "Olivia is one of the princess' knights. I not sure about the other one." He pauses a moment in thought. "I don't think they stayed behind when the first monster showed up." Or they just don't like Luka and weren't hanging around him, he supposes.

[daddykong]

Garrot goes a little pale when he's told he's talking at Gyre again. Whoops. Big whoops, in fact! But he can't sit there and apologize forever, because it'll be awkward and in public and they have a world to save. So he just nods, listening as Gyre uses an outside voice while still smooshing his face. Is this what the guy means when he says Garrot's talking at him? Because it's weird, and the doctor is not a fan.

"That means the other one's, uh..." A beat. "Rory, Web, or Terrence." Can't be him, for obvious reasons. He wasn't sure what Gail was doing, but since he got the kill on the first one, he'd probably stayed behind? There was a lot going on. "And Xaljim's pretty straightforward!" He pouts. "A little grouchy sometimes, but he's never difficult."

[tropicalstorm]

This tension would be fun to watch if she wasn’t depending on these two doofuses to help her fight 11 more goddamn monsters and who knows what else. She half wants to tell them to just either fight or make out already, but since Garrot seems to be shutting up she’ll let it go for now.

“Bein’ a Protector Knight ain’t a secret like we are, so we could probably just ask around to figure out who the other one is without bein' suspicious. That plus talkin’ to the animals is I think a good place to start and plenty for tomorrow. Sooner or later we will wanna talk to Luka, but not until we know as much as we can so we don’t tip off the Protector. We already got monsters after us, last thing we need is him after us too.”

[scandeled]

Matilda just sits politely, listening to them talk, straightening her pajamas. Occasionally, she gives the wizard looks that might say 'Can you believe those two?' or 'RIGHT?' or just an eye roll. ...It doesn't matter if the wizard responds to her looks, it's just nice to pretend she's more a part of this than she actually is. At the mention of Luka though, she seems to perk up a little. Maybe she can be helpful?

"I can ask him! He seems really cool. I still can't believe he's the Princess." She pipes up from the step, smiling. "And I'll ask my companion too. See? We're already off to a great start, and it's only night one!"

[wizardseason]

It seems as if all the evil allured knights have their plans set for the coming day, and the Wizard has her fun giving a slightly wider smirk in acknowledgement to Matilda's faces. A moment later she turns back and looks each of her knights in the eye once before she speaks.

"Good night, knights."

And the moment each of the knights blinks, they'll wake up in their bed (or rest location) as if they'd woken up normally.

Day 2: Evening

[wizardseason]

For the second night, the four new arrivals don't show up laying around in the grass below the trees. Tonight, they wake up in bed. They'll find that they're in incredibly comfortable beds, wearing pajamas, with pillows so squishy that it absorbs their heads where they're laying in them. Haizea, Garrot, Gyre, and Matilda will all wake to the gentle sound of water tapping against the windows. It's dark and rainy outside, rain pitter-pattering against the window in every room.

When they emerge from their rooms, they'll find themselves in a long hallway that connects to the room the Wizard's currently in. She's wearing a "Kiss the cook" apron as she's magicking up a breakfast spread. There's a countertop with a big cooktop in it that she has bacon, french toast, pancakes, sausage, eggs, and all kinds of other foods going on. She isn't wielding a spatula, though, instead she's just standing over it and sipping coffee while the foods cook and flip themselves. It's like she's watching her handiwork, and she doesn't look up until the knights move closer. Hey kids.

[sustainer]

Oh! A nightmare! Gyre's eyes snap open the second the sense of his body goes from forest grass to fluffy bed, and he leaps off the mattress like it's a hot stove, his feet thumping on the hardwood floor. He takes a second to steady himself, to check his surroundings, his body, the weather outside, and it's only once he knows that he has everything with him, that he finally lets himself breathe. His hand wraps around his soul gem, squeezing it before he tucks it into the shirt of his pajamas.

This is to say, Gyre is walking out into the kitchen almost the second the dream starts, pausing in the hallway so he can look over this very cozy breakfast scene. Or well. It'd be more cozy if it was taking place outside, but he knows that not how they do it here. For now, he lets the smell of the meats draw him more fully into the room, glancing around at the walls, taking in the details.

"Is that a demand?" he asks after a moment, gesturing at the phrase on her apron as he settles into a chair that's pulled up to the counter. He settles his elbows on the counter, setting his chin in his hands so he can watch her work. Watch her magic work? Good (fake) morning, Wizard.

Day 2: Evening, Animal Companions

[wizardseason]

Is your knight going to pester their animal companion? Do that here.

[sustainer]

Sometime after the festivities of the evening, after he's started a fire for the night, Gyre sighs. He has to do this. He's about to sleep and he knows he promised to have animal information for his fellow knights tonight.

Much as he doesn't want to deal with Fen... he calls out, "Fen! Can we talk?" and then returns to sullenly poke at the fire. Please be low energy tonight, Fen?

[wizardseason]

The Wizard is unsurprised to see Gyre awake so quickly. She'd seen him sleeping in the wild and a bed was a foreign entity to where she'd pulled him from. But she wasn't going to dump him in the wet grass outside in pajamas, that'd be crazy. As he approaches, she motions to the chair before he settles into it and gives her usual emotionless smirk in response to his comment before she answers.

"If you need it to be." She offers, casually, as she floats a piece of bacon over to where two eggs are sizzling away. The bacon flops in an arc beneath them, forming a :) face out of the bacon-2-eggs combination.

"Do you have a preference?" She leaves it open-ended if she means the food or the apron.

[sustainer]

"I prefer a more direct approach," he answers idly. He'd rather words one way or the other over a silly apron, watching the meat fly through the air. He can't help smiling slightly when he notices the smile on her pan, trying to fight how utterly charming he finds her sometimes.

"But I can't say I'd say no, if it was," he adds, and he reaches for... a raw slice of bacon, beginning to fold it into a little square in his hand.

[wizardseason]

As if they were there all along, Fen steps out of the darkness and practically beams high energy right towards Gyre.

"Hello, my knight, how can I help! Do you have questions I can answer?" If there could be excited bubbles around them right now, they would have them.

[wizardseason]

She watches him take the raw bacon and says nothing, utterly unsurprised by what he's doing. He was taking all of this in stride so why wouldn't she? She's motioning her finger towards the sausage patties, making them flip as she gives her response.

"Then why are you waiting, pig knight?" She asks, wondering how far she can push him along. What limits did he have? But she can't help a tease, she can't help seeing what buttons she could push. Perhaps he was the princess type, and...

"Unless you'd rather be swept off your feet?"

[sustainer]

He scoffs at the title, pig knight, and his nose wrinkles as he throws the folded up bacon into his mouth. What a tremendous turn off being called a pig is. It takes him out of the moment with her, so that when she offers to sweep him off his feet, he laughs, only barely flirting at this point.

"Are you offering?" He tilts his head, swallowing and licking his lips curiously. "You're so small this year."

[sustainer]

Ugh, he's already squinting against the implied light of their energy. This is going to be a nightmare, he's certain.

"I dunno. How much are you able to tell me about the wizard and the protector?"

[wizardseason]

It's only going to get more bright, they're incredibly excited that Gyre's asking them for answers! They give an immediate hop up and down when he asks and they have to decide where to start!!

"Oh! One of them is bad, and one of them is good! What do you want to know? They don't like each other, not at all! But they've never been mean to me, you know? It's the others that say those things, I hear it from them!

[wizardseason]

What an easy way to get under his skin. If he asked her not to call him by that and, perhaps, offered a name she'd be inclined to do that. But as it stands, he didn't ask her not to call him by his knight status so she'll likely do it again. But she's in the business of catching knights off guard, so as she stands at the cooktop another one of her appears behind Gyre.

And she sweeps him off of his feet. If Gyre tries to resist, he'll find that his muscles don't react while she's holding him in her arms. She's looming over him, face mere inches from his with her wizard hat blocking out everything above them. Her hand is surprisingly strong against his back, holding him in place. It's only once she whispers "Why would I offer?" that Gyre can get back control of his body.

Have fun, Gyre, how much is she really messing with him here?

[scandeled]

Matilda had woken up a little bit ago— but after muttering Five more minutes and rolling over and placing a pillow over her head, she just kind of chills in bed for a bit. It’s so comfy and cozy, but she can very distantly hear voices from somewhere, so she reluctantly rolls out of bed. She doesn’t seem to notice the fact that she’s in a strange place, or that her pajamas are significantly more pants-like than usual, just kind of shuffled out of the room, and down the long hall and—.

She jolts awake at the scene before her, cheeks glaring red and her hand moving to try and shield her dramatic gasp. “So very scandalous!”

[sustainer]

"What things do they say...?" he asks, latching on to anything weird in the way they talk about these two. He feels like he's going to have to pry information from them about this so he's pouncing as quickly as possible on this bit.

"Do you know what happened the first year they got here?"

[tropicalstorm]

That night, just before she passes out, she remembers the plan to get information from the companions. Fumicq has been vague before, but maybe it's worth a shot to ask them anyway?

"Fumicq? You there?"