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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Garrot's missing out, then, the little treats aren't ready to eat yet but when they were... well, perhaps he'd have changed his mind. They're growing here specifically because they're delicious and like nothing else in the world.

She lets him have his little victory moment, his chance to be brave in the face of something he's afraid of. She won't steal that from him, not yet.

"If you kill me." She gives her mug a little swirl, the liquid within forming back into a little sphere for a moment.

"He'll keep it spinning for another year." She raises the mug to her lips, the steam fogging up her glasses.

"And I'll be speaking to a different set of knights."

Garrot wants to bellow about how she better get ready for that, how she's going down and how she'll die as many times as it takes ti keep the world safe. But then she drops that little carrot in front of him, and so all he's doing is standing defiantly. Looking down on her like shes an animal.

"Who'll keep it spinning?" His tone is stern. "They gotta be pretty strong. Stronger than you."

Edited 2019-03-18 13:27 (UTC)

He can be as defiant, confident, and standoffish as he wants here. She's just going to tell him the truth and see how much it makes him think. Some knights took it without question, others had many questions. Which would he be?

"The Protector, of course."

"So he's protecting the world, big surprise." He raises an eyebrow, trying to keep his posture and movements as controlled and confident as possible. Just like the boardroom.

"You never said how the world is supposed to end this year." He huffs, glaring daggers. "Elaborate on that." If she wanted to end the world, why wait forty years? Why keep coming back? "Unless your sign is just lying?"

If Garrot wants the truth, she'll give him the truth. It's not up to her if he believes it or not, it's up to him what he does with the information she's about to give him. Most likely, though, he'd think it was a lie.

"Either with him in the center being crushed by its collapse, or without him, popping like a balloon."

Garrot doesn't flinch at the information. It sounds like a threat at her enemy, the Protector. He doesn't like it.

"And what are you going to be doing when that happens, laughing maniacally as you bring about the apocalypse?" He exhales, loud and deep. Garrot's fists clench, too. He mad again, and he has pegged the Wizard as the villain she is.

She observes his anger, the way he's holding himself back, the way he's keeping a straight face despite the storm he's brewed in his own head.

"Dying." She answers, as emotionless as ever.

"Is that gonna be because of us," he sports a sadistic little smile, betraying his intentions a bit. He knows this dreamspace doesn't stop him from being on the winning side. And he's gonna win.

"Or do you just die without a world to torment?" He is, surprisingly, taking the end of the world seriously despite it being spoken of by the devil herself. But then he catches himself, because he's quickly adjusting to how to deal with her cagey responses.

"Unless you die from some other thing. Like guilt." He sure had to be petty there. Couldn't stop himself.

His behavior was fairly standard for a knight, fairly standard for a hero. She's not surprised by it, and she shows no signs of being impressed, unimpressed, amused, or unamused by what she's seeing in his reactions.

Though she's pretty amused by his theories.

"His death breaks the cycle. I die when he dies."

"Wait." Garrot furrows his brow and brings a hand to his chin. Something's off here.

"If you die and the Protector doesn't, then life keeps going. But if the Protector dies and you don't, the world ends and you die. If you die when he dies, does he die when you do?"

Inquisitive monkey knight asking the important questions. She hadn't lied yet, but she does deflate a little as he asks that. Her shoulders sag slightly and she looks up at the sky.

"He does not." She answers, leaving it at that before she turns away and starts walking towards another patch of vegetables. Following after her, Garrot?

He's absolutely in pursuit, she just reacted to something! It's not quite what he wants, her beaten and bloody begging him for mercy as he absolutely murders her. But it's a start!

"So why's your stupid sign say the world's ending, if we can just kill you and stop it? What makes this year different?"

If there was a window into the thoughts Garrot was having, the Wizard would be grabbing some popcorn to see the show. It's practically a movie itself, the way he's vividly imagining things.

"Four of you." She starts before she looks back towards him, meeting his eyes to see how he might react to the next big bombshell. She knows he won't get it, but she's saying it anyway.

"No dead knights, this year."

He just smiles at the bombshell, honestly. Garrot always wanted everyone to survive, because that's nice and good and warm and. Honestly. Probably a load of shit coming from her. So he goes back to mildly annoyed neutrality. She'll get what's coming to her.

"Other than cheating, what's having four of us in your summer home supposed to do?" He looks askance, grumbling for a moment. "How does that end the world?" Of course, he's maybe gotten through half of his first page of a dissertation worth of questions, so. This pace is killing him. Probably literally.

"More allies, more chances." She answers, leaving it vague as to what exactly that means. But there was that one little thing he said... She gives yet another vague answer, leaving it wide open for interpretation.

"If I could cheat it, you wouldn't be here."

"More chances for what?" He raises an eyebrow and looks at her like she's stupid. Mostly because he thinks she is. In the childish kind of way, she's probably not like unintelligent though. Magic seems like a smart people thing.

"I mean, if you wanted to destroy the world then that could've been the first thing you did, so what are you actually trying to do?" It's probably something worse, like harvest the immortal souls of the entire planet to fuel an unending reign of cosmic terror. Or something else on that comic-book tier of evil. Because. It's the Wizard. Duh. So Garrot's emotionally bracing himself to stop his punch reflexes.

Ah, yes. Their conversation has come full circle, now. They're getting back to the core idea here, and that meant that she could give him a little more since he was digging for it.

"I'm trying to kill the Protector."

He doesn't flinch. At all. "Shocking." It's deadpan, almost like he's imitating her. "He's the Protector who rallies us to defeat you every single year, of course you want to kill him." But then Garrot scowls, and that scowl turns into a growl.

"Why are any of us here?" His voice begins to escalate- not to a scream, but with more emotion. "Why do any of us- why did my father have to die for your grudge?!" And he's breathing loud and deep, hands balled into tight fists as he just angrily hyperventilates.

Garrot knows that no matter what she says, it won't be good enough for him.

"You're all here because it's never worked." She answers, completely emotionless as she says it. She won't get wrapped up in his anger, but she won't try to quell it either.

"We knew after the second--" A pause, the first time she's reconsidered something she's said. She doesn't really give any visible tell about why she's reconsidering it, but she corrects herself nonetheless.

"No, the first year was enough. It should have ended then."

"Of course it never worked, I'm not stupid." The words are downright venomous, and Garrot's snarling face is showing more and more teeth. "If it worked, the Protector would be dead, you would die, and the world would end." He's listening, even if he's not happy about it.

Garrot pauses for a moment to restrain his emotions, to keep himself from wasting time asking questions he didn't care to know the answers to. His breathing comes under control surprisingly fast for someone so angry so often. "Why can't you and the Protector just fight it out in the stars somewhere? Just leave us all alone?"

He had to stop himself from asking about what happened in the first year, about why there was a first year to begin with, about who she meant when she said we. But he'll wait. For now.

She's pleased that he's followed it all this far, but unfortunately he's still angry. He still wants answers to questions that there aren't good answers to. The only answers he'll get are ones that make him angrier, and unfortunately she has to give him them.

"Because the world would have ended in the first place without us."

Garrot looks absolutely disgusted. There's the word again. Us. He'll push his luck, but only because it's better than his claws pushing on her windpipe in frustration.

"Us like you and the monsters or you and the Protector?" He breathes out through his nose, sounding like a wild animal backed into a corner, about to charge. Garrot's trying to keep his cool, but this is a lot. He's glad some of the other Knights didn't have to deal with this shit. "What would've ended the world before all of you showed up?"

She's tempted to drop him in a lake to cool off. She's going to answer some of his questions, but not others. She'll give him some information, but not all of it. Baby steps for a baby monkey.

"This one was flawed, unstable from within." She answers, calmly. "Destined for stardust."

Garrot doesn't know shit about the planet or rocks. They don't have a pulse, and they hurt if you punch them. But he raises an eyebrow.

"You threatened to destroy the world for years, so why not just save it instead?" A huff. He's so very skeptical. "If you can keep coming back from the dead every year, why can't you just fix the flaws and leave?"

There's a sinking feeling that the Protector is involved, and not in a good way. The world could end with him being crushed, after all.

She knows he won't believe her answer, but she's going to tell him anyway.

"I've tried." She stays calm, raising her mug to her mouth to take a sip. The scent wafting off of it now is hot chocolate, rather than coffee.

But he'd made an assumption she wants to shoot down. "I don't choose to come back, either."

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