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

[daddykong]

"But you know who did it, right?" Obvious question, right there. Garrot's pretty sure he won't get much of an answer on that front, but it's not worth it to keep running away, so he digs his metaphorical heels in. "No thanks, we're asleep, coffee sounds like a bad idea." On the bright side, he acknowledged the coffee in a non-rude way. This is progress!

"You'll talk about the Protector and his motivations, so who threw us through time? Spill." Nope, he's back to being pushy and rude.

[wizardseason]

"I do know, and you'll meet them tomorrow, too." She answers both questions together. As much as he's looking for some kind of reaction, she's as neutral as ever.

Except that there's a soft 'pop' beside his head as the coffee becomes hot chocolate. How about that?

[daddykong]

There's the slightest of twitches in Garrot's ears as the 'pop' gives him hot chocolate instead. His eyes don't even shift towards the poor mug, and his chest puffs out a bit. Sure, she answered his questions, but would it kill her to take the initiative on the details?

"Are they a threat?" A beat, and he's furrowed his brow. "Are they going to want to kill us as much as the Protector does?" Another beat, and he's back to glaring daggers at the Wizard. "What do you think about them?"

Maybe he'll get something useful out of those.

[wizardseason]

Garrot's asking good questions, but he's also just slamming his car into the wall over and over again expecting to break through. In reality, his engine's going to give out and the whole thing's going to go up in smoke and the wall won't even break a sweat.

"That's for you to decide tomorrow." She answers, watching him. "I've never met them."

[daddykong]

"It's been forty years, how have you never met them if they can send us through time?!" Garrot throws his hands in the air, clearly a little exasperated. Poor guy needs to strap some giga drills to his metaphorical car. But then he brings a hand to his chin, raising an eyebrow in overblown suspicion.

"So are you avoiding them, or are they avoiding you?" Avoidance is the only explanation he can come up with, and thinking on it harder would risk empathizing with literally the worst being ever.

[wizardseason]

"Neither." She answers, simply. "A certain someone is keeping us apart. He's succeeded for thirty nine years."

She raises her mug to her lips, taking a slow sip before she delivers the juicy bit.

"But they're changing that, this year, and he won't be able to stop them."

[daddykong]

"Sounds like you like them." The declaration is deadpan, because he's not sure how to process that The Protector has been keeping them apart. He knows dramatic tension, so Harrot is pretty sure the Wizard is excited to meet her pen pal.

"How's the Protector kept you two apart?" He squiiiints. "You have all that magic, and they controlled time."

Just how strong is the Protector, if he can lockdown a time traveller?

[wizardseason]

"Every year, all he has to do is make all of you kill me." She answers, watching the way Garrot closes himself up in his thoughts. His lack of outbursting here is a dead giveaway that he's listening to her.

"He hasn't had to face them because he never let them out."

[daddykong]

Garrot takes in her words for a moment, because that's really all he needs. The death of the Wizard prevents this other being from being released. And on the first night, Gyre drew that little... wolf-thingie in the middle of the planet. So.

"We get to meet the thing that'll destroy the world if we don't kill you." There's a bit of shock in his voice, because putting the thoughts to words is... a lot. But his hands tighten into fists, because Garrot's sure getting a little angry.

"How do you know we'll meet them tomorrow, if you've never met them?" Smells like bullshit to him! Unless they're magic fucking pen pals or something?

[wizardseason]

Congratulations on putting a number of the pieces together, Garrot. Care to make more guesses here in the bonus round?

"It doesn't matter if I'm killed or not." She corrects him, watching the way he reacts as he takes it in. It's happening no matter what comes next, the world is on track to end.

"You can't feel it like I can, but you'll understand why in the morning." She answers, alluding to some shit that's going to go down in the morning.

[daddykong]

He just grumbles at all the new information. The Wizard hasn't seemed deceptive before, but he doesn't trust this. What better way to make her words carry weight than to say there aren't any other alternatives? So he just sighs.

"What do we do if the wolf-thing in the planet wants revenge?" He looks sad, maybe even a little worried. "I mean, you and the Protector have been keeping it locked up for forty years, I know I wouldn't be happy."

Garrot never thought he'd be asking the Wizard of all people for a threat assessment, but... here he is.

[wizardseason]

Of course she hasn't seemed deceptive, she's just telling the truth. It's not her responsibility to enforce belief. She knows Garrot's a grown-ass man who can make his own decisions.

"I've wondered that." She answers, looking him over. But she had to correct something he said.

"Just the protector." She says it, before deciding to be absolutely clear. "I haven't seen them in forty years."

[daddykong]

Of course, the threat assessment is about as useless as most responses from the Wizard. She doesn't know or she redirects or she gives half answers. It's clear that if he wants to learn specifics about this, he'll have to find the Protector or the wolf-thing themselves. So he doubles back for now, on the way to his real topic...

"How'd you know the wolf-thing was going to do something today if you haven't been in contact for forty years?"

[wizardseason]

If Garrot wants answers, he has to ask questions that she knows the answer to. She's answered the ones she knows, and speculated on the ones she can speculate on.

"I can feel it." She answers, before once again alluding to the future events to come.

"You'll see what I mean, when you wake up tomorrow."

[daddykong]

"Fine." Garrot sighs gently, clearly displeased with the answer he got. Of course, there's been one thing on his mind ever since the morning, and there's no better time to ask about it.

"Why did I find a kid in a floating rock right around when you showed up for the first time?"

[wizardseason]

What a fun question. She gives a thoughtful "Hmm" in response at first, starting to walk slowly around him. How much could she tell him?

"Because the cycle was about to start. The world was fractured when we arrived, who's to say if that chaos had a reason at all?"

[daddykong]

"Oh fuck off with the cagey bullshit!" Garrot's shouting, clearly getting worn down by the half-answers. Sure, the encounter may have been random, but it doesn't explain anything!

"One of them talked to me. Like they knew I was a Knight!" He growls, glaring daggers as the Wizard strolls, but he doesn't turn to follow her. But since she blamed the cycle...

"What the fuck did you need kids for?!" It means that at the very least, she knows more than she's letting on. And even if she doesn't, it feels safe to blame her.

[wizardseason]

Garrot was easier to rile up than Gyre was. She watches him as he works his way through the logic of it and, when he reaches that last question it's that one that she's going to answer. That one has a clear answer, even if it was one he wouldn't want to hear.

"He decided it was easier to contain them if they were in pieces, rather than as a whole." She explains, waiting to see if he'll explode again.

"If they were smaller, it would all settle and the world would be saved." She continues, clearly referencing the Protector's actions.

"Each child is a piece, one fractured part of a whole. And you'll meet what they've made of themselves tomorrow."

[daddykong]

It helps that "already riled up" is Garrot's default state as far as the Wizard is concerned! But this? It prompts a head-shaking double-take from Garrot, and the growl from his throat almost sounds like the gears turning in his head. "They" isn't a plural here, it's an entity, the one that's sealed. Looking at what's in this room...

"So you're telling me the Protector broke the wolf-thing into a bunch of pieces to make it weaker." He furrows his brow. "They're kids so they can fit in the floating rocks, which... must be the seal thing Gyre mentioned." Garrot pauses, running a hand through his beard as he sighs, his ears drooping and shoulders slumping. He thinks he's putting things together, and he doesn't like it!

"Two questions. First, how many kids are there? Second, why'd they have to be kids and not plants or just blobs?" And then he gestures to the dormant monsters.

That said, he's going to bodily ignore the Wizard and start blatantly counting those platforms now. It's dumb magic, it's probably not a coincidence.

[wizardseason]

Garrot's spot-on with his realization that the 'they' she's been speaking of is, in fact, one entity. She listens to him work through it, deciding what she's going to correct and what she's going to explain. Fortunately he asks one of the most important things she needs to clarify. Way to go with that gut instinct, Garrot! As he makes his way around the room to count, he'll be able to verify that there are twenty-seven platforms in total.

"Twenty four." She answers his kids question without saying kids, because she has to correct him now at last.

"They looked like children in the beginning, but every year afterward they've taken a new form." She answers, motioning towards the first, second, and third monsters' bodies. As she waves her hand in the air in their general direction, each one of them shifts and turns into a child much like the one Garrot had seen in the past.

"Each and every one of them." She adds, her hand making it to where Web and Aqrisqi are and... Aqrisqi's rooster form does the same, momentarily shifting to look like a child before changing back. When she drops her little spell, all that's left is the three monsters and the rooster again and she turns to face Garrot.

"They picked blobs this year."

[daddykong]

This is kind of a lot to take in, so Garrot just stares, dumbfounded, at Aqrisqi. He hears The Wizard, but deconstructing his understanding of the world is intense when he's so stubborn. It's quite a few moments until Garrot actually says anything.

"They killed kids the first year." Or at least beings that looked like kids, and technically didn't exist long enough to be more than an infant. Maybe? It explains why so many people died. And the shapeshifting explains why the Companions always look different. But still...

"There's three more platforms." He's stern, gruff, sounding like he expects more bullshit. They're tied to the cycle, and while it's easy enough to figure out two of the remaining platforms are tied to the Wizard and Protector...

"The kid had dark skin, red hair, and looked creepily perfect." He crosses his arms, exhaling from his nose as he glowers at the Wizard. "Who was that?"

Garrot is a bit more concerned about the one who tried to get in his head, the one who asked if he'd save them all.

[wizardseason]

It did indeed explain why so many of the first year's heroes died, and it also explained why many of them didn't want to talk about their experiences. The ones who had spoken did so as quietly and as vaguely as possible. Way to dig up that set of skeletons, Garrot, and that's now something he knows about the first year's heroes and the weight they're carrying.

"You know who that was." She answers, intrigued but unsurprised that he'd bring up that specific child.

"He's been with you this whole time." She says, popping a mug into existence in her hand that has Xaljim's face and name on it, facing Garrot.

"His platform is over there." She adds, motioning to the side Web and Aqrisqi are on.

[daddykong]

OW.

Garrot's eyes go wide at that revelation, and all his attempts at composure can't stop him from sharply inhaling because it hits him like a punch in the gut. Xaljim is cool and helpful and exhausted and asked him forty years ago if he'd end the world. They need to have a talk as soon as possible because haha, what the fuck?

"So..." Garrot takes a deep breath in, trying and failing to keep his stressed emotions from becoming Blatant. "...why did the Protector make them into kids the first year, especially when people had to fight them?!" He's yelling again, clearly confused and hurt by the revelations and their implications. This is a bit fucked!

Depending on the answer, the Wizard might have competition on Garrot's shitlist.

[wizardseason]

The truth sucked, didn't it Garrot? She's got a perfect read on him in this moment, he's like an open book of raw emotions.

"Because that wasn't the original plan." She answers, simply. "They took our magic, merged it with theirs, and by the time all the dust had settled that's where we were."

She looks thoughtful for a moment before adding a comment as her mug art changes to "Protector" with his face on it.

"The fighting part was a certain someone's hasty improvisation."

[daddykong]

Garrot just grunts at that information, going silent and even closing his eyes as he adds the information to his growing bank of mind-boggling, fucked-up, world-shattering nonsense. They weren't supposed to make people fight, and both the Wizard and Protector used to be stronger. At least it wasn't supposed to be a kid-killing mission? But something about this room has been setting off a Garrot Tingle in the back of his mind, something that didn't quite add up.

"Twelve monsters, and you. Twelve companions, and him. That's the cycle." Garrot gestures to one of the pedestals, roughly in the middle between the monsters and Web. "Is number twenty-seven our incubating little friend, or did I miss something?"