wizardseason | Wizard's House

Wizard's House

"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

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"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?"

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."

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?"

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."

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.

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."

"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.

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."

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?"

"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."

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?

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.

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?"

Cute. She would elaborate if he asked her to, but he doesn't know that.

"No." They aren't the same at all. "This world is filled with something much worse, something alive."

"Something...? What is it?"

Is the world an egg?? He has no context for what could live inside a planet and he actually sounds awed as he asks.

"You could call it magic." She answers, back to vague answers. Or is her answer vague because she doesn't know? Or does she know but not have a word for what it is? Or is she sparing Gyre the details he doesn't need? Either way, her now-empty mug makes the straw-sucking-at-nothing sound and disappears a moment later, followed by the straw.

"It might be sentient."

He has no patience for cryptic bullshit, and she's officially pushed him past his limit. He sighs, clearly sounding a little frustrated.

"What does that mean? You're so vague."

Of course she's vague. She can't just sit him down like a child and give him a history lesson about all that was, all that is, and all that will be.

Also she's tired.

"The thing filling the planet has a will of its own." There's your clarification, Gyre.

It's bad clarification! He actually turns where he's sitting, trying to stare down the side of her hat as if that'll help him convince her to answer in more then single sentences.

"And that makes it magic? Is that what you asked to pick us? Why would it listen if all this," a gesture around at the four knights, "is just a means to keep it trapped?"

From the angle he's at, he'll probably catch sight of her giving him this little smirk as her one visible eye meets his from under the hat. Her hair looks a mess, like she hasn't taken the hat off in decades.

"It isn't listening." She wonders what he's expecting out of this line of questioning.

"It doesn't like us. But it likes me more than him."

"Then how are you asking it for knight allies, or whatever! It has to be listening!" he nearly shouts, throwing his hands up. There's something so annoying about her smirk, and he feels like he's going to explode the second he lays his eyes on it. Just answer questions like a normal person, god dammit!

"Why do you only half-answer half the things I ask! Do you want me to understand, or not?"

"I never asked for them." She idly answers as her hat flops off the front of her face, landing in her lap. As it does, she leans back into the tree as she brings a hand up to stifle a yawn. One moment, Gyre.

"Did I miss something?" She doesn't react to his frustration, locking her eyes on him after her yawn has passed.

"Ask again."

"You just said--" he snarls at her, feeling his patience running steadily dry. He catches himself before he can get too far, taking a few deep breaths while she yawns and her hat falls off. It's... the first time he's seen her without the hat, and so he pauses here, looking at her face in this new fresh light. She's cute, even if right now, he's supremely annoyed with her.

He holds his fist up after a second, poking a finger up for each question as he asks it, "You said you asked 'magic' for four knights and the thing in the world is magic, so how did it give you what you want without listening? Can you make it listen? How did you try to save the previous world you were at? How did you try to save this one? Can you try whatever you did again?

Then he touches each finger he's held up, as if indicating travel between places. "Why are you going from world to world before they're meant to die?" This is a new question, but he does want to know the answer while she seems to be promising to answer him fully.

If he went too far, she could mute him liked she muted Garrot.

She copies him, holding up six fingers. Where the sixth finger came from is anyone's guess, but she touches a finger to each as she answers the questions he'd posed to her. She can keep up with this game.

"Different magic, the world magic didn't give me the knights. It doesn't like to listen. We tried changing its inside. We tried sealing this one. We can't try it again." And, with a little sigh as she slides down the bark of the tree, she answers his last question while letting her hands flop into the grass. She looks incredibly tired as she says it.

"Everyone wants to be a hero."

The sixth finger definitely startles him, making him recoil just slightly from her hand. What the fuck. It takes him a second to realize she is actually answering his questions. Sort of. She seems allergic to detail, but at least it's the beginnings of answers.

He's already plotting out what he wants to pick at next, when she says that last bit. Slumps in the grass like that, and he just falls silent. Watching her. The statement makes his nonexistent heart hurt, and he hates it. He hates that he feels so awful for her so quickly, but all he can think to do is reach out and set a hand on the top of her head, rubbing slightly.

"When's the last time you got some sleep...?"

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