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]

The Wizard's body finishes its slow slide down the tree and now she's laying flat on the ground. She'd wondered how long he was going to play comfort with her, but he ends it and answers her question immediately.

"Pig Knight." She says with a smirk.

"What's your name?"

[sustainer]

He definitely wasn't playing! He wanted to comfort her! He just stopped because she wasn't responding gosh!

Either way, he literally flinches when she calls him a Pig Knight. He hates that that's the animal he got stuck with. Fen isn't even a pig this year, but he won't argue with her about it.

"Gyre... is fine. You don't know it already?"

[wizardseason]

Guess he'll have to figure out if she can be comforted, then. All he's learned is that form of it had no effect. And she catches when he flinches at the word, taking note of it for the future. Interesting response.

"No." She answers plainly, watching him. Why would she know his name? In reality, she knew his name. She'd eavesdropped on others, she'd heard the conversations, she knew every knight's name.

"I'm not omniscient." But she was polite.

[sustainer]

"Huh. I guess I assumed you at least knew the knights' names."

He glances upward as she watches him, staring at this foreign sky. He's clearly curious about it, but instead of asking more about that, he murmurs, "What's yours?"

[wizardseason]

"If it all goes well." She resumes her little smirk as she looks up at him.

"I'll tell you after the knights defeat twelve." She's given her name only to a select handful of knights, and every single one of those knights was dead. Perhaps Gyre wouldn't be an exception to that if he learned her name, because it would likely mean they'd succeeded.

Maybe.

[sustainer]

He looks a little surprised at that, bring his gaze back down to her.

"You still want all the monsters to be defeated? I won't let them hurt anyone, okay...?" They're going to have problems if she expects him to. He'll take aim at the Protector and that's it.

[daddykong]

Garrot does not look pleased with that response. They can do anything, almost except not be connected? Stupid. Magic is stupid.

"Was the connection always a mistake?" To be honest, he doesn't see the point in two deific beings being enemies. Why not be friends? Why not do good things? Why do they have to pit people against monsters like some sick game?

[wizardseason]

Her smirk stays put and she shows no signs of being disappointed by what he said. If she's thinking anything at all, she doesn't show it.

"They still have to be defeated. That's step one."

[wizardseason]

While the Wizard would mostly disagree and say that magic was, in fact, not stupid. A small part of her thought that, occasionally, it was more trouble than it was worth.

Not always, but sometimes.

"Yes." She has her little smirk still, but she looks so tired that it's impossible to think what she's thinking here.

"We weren't always linked."

[daddykong]

Garrot strokes his beard, believing that he's starting to piece together a bigger, grayer, more frustrating picture. He could ask why they were linked to begin with, but it sounds like it'd have something to do with their roles in the continuation and destruction of the world. And he doesn't really want to go back to thinking about that with the majority of his brain. So instead...

"What about the Knights' companions, who are they linked to?" He thinks it's a good question. They're the same from year to year, and their Knights can support either magical being. But they're part of this same yearly chess match, so they have to be connected somehow... right?

[wizardseason]

Garrot was asking some interesting questions. It'd be interesting to see if he could put the pieces together with what he'd find out.

"They're linked with each other." Her smirk widens a little as she watches him.

"And the world itself."

[sustainer]

"Okay."

He nods, watching her face for a few beats. He wants to know what comes after that? But he also knows that's two weeks away basically, and he shouldn't rush it. Especially if they're going to be seeing each other often.

Instead, he points out at the fields of vegetables.

"What's out there?"

[wizardseason]

He'll be dragged out of his next night's sleep to come here, that much was certain. Evil allured knights in the past had reported on the fact that they never got to sleep through the night the entire time.

"Vegetables. Fruit trees." She answers simply, bringing a hand up to slip her hat back over her face.

"A lake."

[sustainer]

"I'm gonna go for a walk," he answers immediately, watching her push her hat back on and then pushing to his feet.

Unless she's got stuff to say to him, he's gonna head off away from her. He wants to see what a lake looks like in this world.

[daddykong]

"So they're... a third party." He blinks a few times. This is weird, not what he expected?

"Where did they come from, then?" He looks to the ground. The animals couldn't have just been around the entire time, right?

[wizardseason]

Bye Gyre. He'll find that the lake is filled with this unusual purple water that, in the light of the suns, shimmers red. There are numerous unique plants growing out of it or floating on it.

It's like nothing in the world he knows.

Day 1: Four become one

[wizardseason]

After the Wizard had split herself off into four, eventually they must all come together into one again. The four wizards all come back together to the one on the porch, stepping into the shadows and vanishing until there's only one Wizard left.

The results of their discussions were varied and unique, but that meant that it was time for all of them to come together and share with each other.

No sense in hiding information from each other, after all.

Also the Wizard prepared chips, veggies, little meats and dips on a little table by the sign. There's a good variety!

[tropicalstorm]

She hates this, feels like a quiz. Not that she ever had much experience with quizzes, she never went to proper school.

"Is... the game what's gonna make the world end?"

[wizardseason]

"They were a byproduct of the mistake we made, and now they're a key part of ending it all." She answers, watching his confusion. What would he make of all that he was learning?

[wizardseason]

"Our actions in this game will, yes." She gives a slight smirk, curious what the best way to answer this would be.

"It was not always a game, but it is easier to comprehend as one."

[tropicalstorm]

"What do we need to do in this, uh, not-game then to make the world end?" She specifically asks for the negative outcome since she's pretty sure that's what the wizard wants, so maybe she'll be straight with her?

And then Haizea can just. Do the opposite of whatever she says.

[daddykong]

"So... what exactly was this mistake?" Because the way he sees it, things going sour between her and the Protector came during or after whatever went wrong in the first year. Something had to trigger all this.

"I mean, you two used to be working together. Something went wrong. The companions happened. And now you two want to kill each other." He grumbles. "So what happened?"

[sustainer]

Gyre returns through the fields actually, instead of from a conversation with a wizard. He looks peaceful, thoughtful, and he's soaking wet. Someone definitely wet skinny dipping in an alien lake, and while he had the forethought to put his pants back on, his shirt is definitely still slung over his shoulder. He's covered in tattoos! And he's wearing a big, gaudy purple jewel! Weird!

He ignores the food for now, going to the wizard on her porch instead. "Do you have a towel?"

[wizardseason]

"We failed to save the world." She shifts a little, raising her hands above her head so she can stretch out where she's standing.

"Everything we'd planned and created changed." She twists a little, her back cracking particularly horribly. Unnaturally, even, like there's more popping there than there should be.

"A new plan was made on the fly. The current plan."

[wizardseason]

Clever thinking, Haizea. The wizard would have some interesting opinions if she knew that was the line of thinking she was going with here. Always the clever one, dragon knights.

"Kill the Protector."