Day 4: Evening

[wizardseason]

Evening: 5:00pm - Midnight

[ IRL Timeframe: August 14th - August 28th, 2019 ]

As the sun sets on Harsen Island and the curtains close on Four's games that abducted all the heroes up into hours of entertainment, things absolutely refuse to wind down.

When the knights return, they'll be placed right where they were when they were added into the game show. The Princess, unfortunately, is the one that doesn't wind up where he was taken from. For everyone else, whether they were climbing up the mountain or existing elsewhere, it looks like all they lost is time.

And maybe a bit of patience.

Every hero that participated in Four's game show reeived a personalized 'Thank you!' card at the end of it, apparently the monster was excited about everyone participating! (Disclaimer: One knight did not receive a thank you card because he refused to participate like a big ole' jerk).

The bright, glowing blue fissures are still open throughout the ground, they haven't gone anywhere while the game show happened. All the cracks originate from the mountain up the slope from Craydon! Social media has finally confirmed that all the cracks converge on one location up the mountain: At a big glowing stone door. It's absolutely not a manmade door and it's definitely magic in some way, but why is it there now?

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The Weather

• Insects chirping all over.
• 66°F / 19°C
• A surprisingly cool sea breeze.

---

Prompts:

• ??:00pm Mountain Door, Craydon: Any heroes still climbing the mountain, or who choose to climb the mountain, can reach the glowing door. As they ascend, they'll have to endure unrelenting wind blowing right in their face the whole way. When they reach the top, send a ping saying "they've reached the door" to receive a description.


• 6:00pm Rock Sugar Tea Cafe, Bamborough: Not wanting to spend the entire evening in Craydon, the Protector has made his way via train out to Bamborough to find a cafe that serves tea. Three Princesses had come here during previous years and the experiences had been good enough that he sought to try it for himself. He'll be found sitting under an umbrella-covered table outside the cafe, sipping carefully at a nuclear-hot cup of spiced apple tea.


• 6:30pm Sushi, Far Haven: Of all the places for Ten to end up in all this, he's arrived at the conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Far Haven. Situated off to the side from the lobby of the Crossroads Hotel, the restaurant is simply named 'Sushi' and is filled with numerous tables wedged up against a slowly-progressing conveyor belt filled with plates of sushi. The entire path is in a refrigerated tube to keep the sushi safe to eat, and when a hero arrives they'll see Ten reaching in to obtain a new set of rolls. There are already ten empty plates in front of him: How many more will he eat? Social media is already taking bets on the final count!


• 7:00pm Door Crater, Craydon: It's the end. Any heroes still lingering at the door on the mountain will be treated to the biggest nightmare of all time: The door starts to emit a high-pitched tone moments before it explodes outwards. Pieces of solid stone go flying outward from the blast, and when the dust clears from the event there's still smoke billowing out from inside of the cave entrance and rising up off of the small crater that the explosion made.
  
  Just inside of the cave entrance is the figure of a child, laying slumped facedown on the ground. They're wearing nothing but tatters over their translucent cyan skin. They look as if they're made of colored glass, their hair looking very much like solid, shiny obsidian but moving as if it wasn't stone at all. Their eyes are closed where they're laying, but there's an unmistakable glow even through their closed eyelids.

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Procedure:

Reply to the appropriate toplevel comments for events below. Indicate if a post is a private conversation with "Private" in the subject otherwise all threads should be open to interaction with others. Plan OOCly how you'd like to toss everyone around.

Comments

[wizardseason]

"They will hunt you like you hunt them." Ten clarifies when Luka says he thinks they can take them on.

He hopes they can.

"I do." He answers. Of course he fights, but he doesn't elaborate. Instead he leaves the question unanswered in the air as he waves the waiter over to point at a bowl of udon on the side menu. Looks like this place does have a few non-sushi items, that's convenient! The waiter briefly glances to Luka and asks him if he'd like anything before he heads away.

[eutychia]

Luka turns down the waiter's offer, instead keeping his attention on Ten. "Well, it will be nice to have a challenger that's actually up for a fight then?"

"To be honest though... I can't imagine fighting you."

[wizardseason]

Ten types up his next response pretty swiftly. Easy answers for easy questions.

"Five, Seven, and Twelve will always fight, I don't always fight. Might skip."

[eutychia]

"I didn't know you could just opt-out." Luka says with genuine surprise in his voice. "If you do that, won't there be less than twelve monsters though?"

[wizardseason]

Ten shrugs. He's still a monster so he's still one of the twelve. He's not entirely sure how that rule goes, he just knows where he has to be at the end of it all. He types up a response, though, with a voiced action:

"Shrug. I've done it before."

[eutychia]

"How strange. Maybe I should have paid closer attention to previous years, huh?" He pauses to savor some food and collect his thoughts.

"Well... I hope you don't bear any grudges against us, whatever happens this year."

After the words leave Luka's mouth, he isn't quite sure why he said them. Why should he care what a monster thinks about him? But he can't help it, the little guy was just so... personable.

[wizardseason]

Of course Ten's personable, he's had forty years to figure out who he was in this great big world. There's a gentle slurp sound as he demolishes another set of sushi before he's back to typing up a response.

"Too much to know. Just do your best. Do the ring thing."

[eutychia]

"That's the plan. I mean, I'm not going to try to do the wrong thing. We're both just doing what we have to, right?"

[wizardseason]

"The right thing right now is eating sushi." He answers, clearly focused on one thing.

And then there's a soft clatter as another plate of sushi is placed in front of Luka. This one is fatty tuna, how did he manage to swipe some?

[eutychia]

"Oh, good to know I'm on the right track." He laughs. "If only the whole event were so easy as this."

He picks up another roll. Luka doesn't question the source, by now he's somewhat used to being served unquestioningly.

[wizardseason]

All things considered, Ten's doing an incredible job at feeding Luka.

And not, you know, poisoning the princess in broad daylight.

"It's easy sometimes. Food helps. Do you like ramen." He considered just asking if Luka liked noodles but that seemed a little too broad and the risk of getting a 'yeah i love spaghetti' answer was too high.

Was Luka a spaghetti man? Ten didn't know.

[eutychia]

"Oh, ramen's pretty good. But pho is better!" He says, excitedly. "There was a great little pho place by my old apartment. I was a regular there!"

He assumed that, much like the Wizard, the monsters must all be fans of ramen. Hopefully they didn't see this as some kind of betrayal.

[wizardseason]

Ten fiddles with his phone, typing a few times and sending it to try to get it to make the sound that Luka just make with his mouth twice.

"Foo. Fow. Pee ho. Puh ho. Vow." He tries until he types "Fuh" and that makes a pronounciation close enough to what Luka said. Then he types his response.

"What is pho."

[eutychia]

Luka's patient as Ten perfects his message.

"Oh, it's a lot like ramen, but different. It's a bit lighter, and the noodles are usually made with rice instead of egg. You should try it sometime."

[wizardseason]

There are quite a few words that Ten has never written, but he makes it a point to learn to at least passably communicate them. He watches Luka curiously as he explains it, half understanding but half not understanding. There's a bit of a delay before his next comment comes:

"Maybe. There are too many kinds of noodles to try."

[eutychia]

"I like to see that as more of a feature than a bug. Variety is the spice of life, no?"

[wizardseason]

[Ten will remember that]

He types up a response pretty quickly, waving over the waiter a moment later to get the check.

"Let's go get Pho now, I'm still hungry."