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

[wizardseason]

She hides herself well both under a hat, and in her life. She's had over forty years of practice on this issue, and with her life experiences added on top... Well, she's likely around Gyre's age, if not older, there's no telling what she's learned in that time. Whether she's being honest or lying here, she's at least talking.

But she's telling the truth, so hopefully he's listening.

"Ask the Princess."

[daddykong]

If Garrot was a magical, planet-destroying monster, he would want to die after getting his ass kicked thirty-nine times, too. For someone who threatens to destroy the world, she doesn't seem to want to be here. It makes him very uncomfortable, but that's hiding beneath the grumbly frustration.

"So what happened in the first year?" He just stares at her. "What should have ended?" Garrot hopes she hates this time of year as much as he does, even though they'd have common ground. Gross.

[sustainer]

"Mm." Okay, he absolutely will do that. Then there's another familiar silence as he tries to find his threads again, though this time he's also breathing deeply. He needs to calm down. Being angry at a guy he can't talk to yet is worthless.

"Why do you keep coming back if you want all this to stop?"

[wizardseason]

Strange, isn't it? The Wizard doesn't get any glimpses into what Garrot's thinking, though, instead she's left with her assumptions about what he must be assuming. It'd be an endless assumption circle at this rate.

"Everything." She gives her mug a swirl, looking down into it for a moment.

"We should have left when we failed to save it."

[wizardseason]

Gyre will feel a weight in his hand as the Wizard summons forth a stick of jerky into it, she'd spied enough to get a feeling for what he might eat. She can't tempt him with the coffee she's taking a sip of, here.

"I don't get a choice not to."

[daddykong]

"You're telling me you two screwed up a plan forty years ago..." He pauses, raising an eyebrow and assuming that towering, menacing posture again. "...And you still can't get it right." It sounds like the plan was doomed to fail, just like the planet.

"It's been forty years and you couldn't just tell us how to make space travel work? Then the planet can blow up and you both can die and we don't have to." He sounds unimpressed. He has the ability to make clones of himself, crazy magic can definitely help them get into space. Or it could've. Forty years ago.

[wizardseason]

Unfortunately for Garrot, his thoughts are about thirty-five years ago. But she wasn't going to rob all hope from him, not yet. She'd had decades to come to terms with the end, there wasn't much more despair she could inflict on herself at this point.

"I can bend reality for a few, a fraction of the lives on the planet." She answers, she can save some. She's saved some, but she wasn't going to say that just yet. Not yet.

"But the world is closed off, sealed from the rest." She glances up towards the sky, looking at the stars.

"And it has been, this whole time."

[sustainer]

He looks at his hand the second he feels it, eyes widening a little at the jerky. He really prefers it fresh to cured. Jerky is usually too salty, but in this moment he doesn't care. He sighs deeply, and slides down the tree to sit beside her, picking the jerky apart, taking tiny bites of it.

This is a long silence as he tries to process the pure rage in him at the idea that she, or anyone, is forced to do a thing like this. Or well... she said she was forced to come back, not that...

"Is it your choice to play this game? In this way?"

[wizardseason]

Whatever face she might, or might not, be making in response to his question is obscured by her hat as she answers him. Her voice doesn't betray any emotions, though, so it's just a single muffled word.

"No."

[daddykong]

"You've had forty years!" The word comes out one iota shy of a shout, and Garrot starts doing a good fifteen seconds worth of deep breathing. But then his gaze snaps to the Wizard.

"You can destroy this world like it's nothing, and you're saying you can't bend a little harder." He's glowering. "You and the Protector can't just unseal our world?"

[sustainer]

He nods, and again he's quiet. Processing her words. Processing the world view that she's laid in his lap. It seems miserable, and everything in him is screaming for him to help her. To make this stop. He knows better then most that forcing something to live past its death is never good.

"You said you tried to save this world, right? How?" he murmurs, touching the grass beside her so she can hopefully see despite her hat in the way. He means this place rather then his world. He wants to know that story.

[wizardseason]

Garrot was like a fire, easily provoked into blazing up and unpredictable in his reactions to the things being added to him. Every piece of information was a new thing to burn up about. It was fun to watch.

"When we do, it ends." She answers like she's talking about the weather. She's tried finding cracks in the process, trying other ways to get around the predicament they'd put themselves in.

"I have limits."

[wizardseason]

She can see him anyway, her hat doesn't obscure her own view. She's never in a position where she could just be killed freely by those around her and this is no exception. Though she'd already ranked Gyre closer to the top of the favorable knights list than towards the bottom.

"Magic." She answers, tempted to leave it at that but no, she's proud of what it was supposed to be.

"Twenty-six seals placed on the world, and activated." She pauses. "They didn't work like we thought they would."

[tropicalstorm]

The Wizard is a little close for comfort, but Haizea won't be the first one to back down.

"Then why didn't you? What's it to you if the planet explodes, why get involved and make us fight in this game for the last 40 years?"

[sustainer]

"Could you try it again? What went wrong?"

There's this tiny flicker of hope in his voice. If the world is meant to die, then it should, but if he can give his grandchildren a world to live in without the wizard, then he'd like that very much. Or well. Without the Protector, he supposes, based on what she said.

More importantly, he wants to help if there's a chance of that.

[wizardseason]

Unfortunately for Gyre and his family, that's not an option. There's a lot to it, but she's only going to give him the information that's important.

"The world didn't stabilize, it changed the seals into something else. They can't do what we made them to do anymore." She lets a hand drift to the side, manifesting a mug with hot chocolate and a long, bendy straw that makes it up beneath her hat and to her mouth.

"We had to adapt to what we were given."

[wizardseason]

There's the question, the big mystery. The Wizard doesn't really care about who gives first, she's just entertaining all of this. She starts a slow walk around Haizea, her gaze staying up towards her the whole while.

"Everyone wants to be a hero." She answers, vaguely, leaving it open as to who she might be talking about.

"It wasn't supposed to last this long. It was supposed to be over."

[sustainer]

Well that information isn't enough for him. His thoughts spin for a moment, considering her words. She sounds like this world is still alive? But she said it was destroyed right? Or maybe she's talking about his world? He's so confused, shaking his head.

"What were you given? What happened to the seals?"

[wizardseason]

"A mess" She doesn't give him much more in the way of details than she had previously. But she can at least give him more of the truth.

"We get a year at a time. The world spins on in single year chunks."

[sustainer]

He grumbles at her refusal to answer, squinting in her direction. If she just answered questions, she'd make things easier for herself honestly. He at least takes in her words, chewing his lip for a moment.

"Here? Yeah, I know. What happened to the other worlds though?" He taps this foreign tree she'd called her friend earlier. "Like this one. What'd you do to save this one?

[daddykong]

He just groans. This is bullshit, why does he have to deal with this?! Garrot should be with the Protector, just like his father, getting ready to crush the Wizard like an empty can of soda. But nope!

"What about the Protector? What are his limits?" There's no reason why a pair of deific magical beings can't save the planet if they work together, right?

[wizardseason]

If he keeps up his curiosity, he'll likely get all the answers he could ever want. He just has to ask.

"Fractured. The center wanted out, the outside wasn't strong enough to stop it." She gives a little more detail into how she'd described it before. That world had been incredible to watch perish.

[wizardseason]

He could rage against the cage he was placed in all he wanted, that wouldn't make it any less real. Unfortunately for Garrot, this is just how the chips had fallen.

"You'd have to ask him." She answers, leaving it vague, but she knows that she doesn't want to detonate Garrot again so she adds:

"Less limits than I have."

[sustainer]

He does not know how to process her words honestly. It doesn't match up to anything he knows about any world, but he just tucks it away for now.

"How did you try to save it?" he repeats. "Is it the same here? The inside wants to... escape?"

[daddykong]

Garrot wants to ask how to get in touch with the Protector, but he knows that's playing right into her hands. More allies, more chances and all that. And fuck that, disrespectfully. So he goes in another direction altogether.

"Why are you and the Protector's lives connected like this?" He furrows his brow and the glare softens a bit. Their connection is weird enough that it defies all medical knowledge, but that doesn't mean it can't be used to the planet's advantage. Hopefully.