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]

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."

[sustainer]

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...?"

[wizardseason]

Quality or quantity, one or the other. But she doesn't stop him from putting his hand on her head. She doesn't react, either, almost like he wasn't doing it at all. He asks a question that she's been asked before but the answer never seems to be taken seriously or even acknowledged as anything more than a joke.

"Forty years ago."

[sustainer]

Well. She is an all-powerful wizard who's been talking about jumping planets like it's nothing. Talking about trying to stop the entire world from ending. He's seen her blow up a mountain and one of the moons. He can believe she hasn't slept in forty years.

He can even sort of relate! While he has slept a little in forty years, he hasn't slept well or without hideous nightmares since he returned to life, so there is this terrible bubble of empathy in his chest. God. God dammit wizard, why did it have to be this?

"Can you... Can I help...?" The question sounds stupid even to him. If this body in front of him sleeps, it probably wouldn't be refreshing when she still has to attend to the other three. And that's assuming this body even can sleep. Ugh, he hates feeling useless!

[wizardseason]

Reality sucked, and that was that. Things never went according to plan and that meant that revelations like this were just the norm. Gyre's definitely impressed her with his reactions so far, but he wasn't the first. One out of thirteen, at least.

"Don't die." She answers, simply, her head tilting a little to lock eyes with him. There's an odd firmness in her voice, almost commanding.

"Can I help you?" She follows it up, back to her detached slightly-smirking self.

[sustainer]

"Too late," he says, shrugging slightly. He's sure she means don't die again, but he feels like he has to deflect that kind of firmness from the wizard of all people. Same impulse that made him refuse to get her food earlier.

He can't help but run his fingers thoughtfully through her hair when she smirks at him like that, returning to this sort of deflated posture as he considers her face. He shifts closer after another beat, knuckles running along her cheek. This is weird. He shouldn't do this with the wizard, but he wants to comfort her somehow?? It feels useless, just like the thing he requests after another second.

"Let me help you stop the world from dying? Permanently, I mean, not a year at a time." He tilts his head. "If not, then let it die. Peacefully." Whatever he has to do to achieve that. He's good with it.

[wizardseason]

Don't die permanently, more like. She wasn't fully versed in his tricks, but she knew a little. Eavesdropping and limited world knowledge had their benefits. She lets him have his attempts at comfort, still reactionless. To get a knight on day one was unusual, but she wasn't going to complain. She's still slowly sliding down the tree, the tiniest inch by tiniest inch at a time. She'll be flopped all the way on the ground before long but she's not quite there yet.

"I'll have to kill the Protector." She answers, searching his face for a reaction. "Are you okay with that?"

[sustainer]

He looks. Pensive mostly. Thoughtful. This feels like a big step and one that even he, in his isolation, knows the world hates and disapproves of. She has spoken so frankly he can't help but believe her though. He chews his lip for a few moments, pulling his hand away from her finally. She doesn't seem effected by it and he feels weirder and weirder the longer he touches her. Instead he folds his hands neatly in his lap, nodding just the once.

"If what you've told me about him is true," he murmurs, taking a short, affirming breath.
"Yes."

[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.

[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."

[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.

[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.