Day 4: Evening

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?

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.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Snake and Pig." His response comes immediately and utterly without emotion as he looks at Terrence from over the edge of his mug. He allows it to lower just slightly as he watches for a response.

"We will see if my theory is correct. I believe one has already begun to give himself away, his sympathy towards our enemy is either misplaced empathy or outright foolishness."

Terrence releases his drink to give a single, loudly audible clap at the Protector's response.

"Hah!" he exclaims, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "One of two isn't too bad when we're picking from a pool of twelve. Or, well, eleven, really... And we don't know for certain yet, so I could still be correct!" The speed of the rabbit knight's speech betrays just how invested he in unraveling this mystery.

"Although... Hm... How often do neutral knights show some 'sympathy for the devil', as it were..?"

Edited 2019-09-16 06:44 (UTC)

Terrence is certainly not one to hide his emotions, the positive ones at least. It was an experience to be an outside observer in this moment.

"There is no consistency, unless they've had a Wizard knight whispering in their ear. If he's been close with others, he may be gullible and vulnerable to their manipulation." He pauses, looking thoughtful, before clarifying:

"Though I have not observed him in any such interactions."

"Fair enough," Terrence replies, taking a moment to fold one leg over the other knee again like before, regaining his composure.

Well, for the most part at least. The Protector's stonewall made him entirely too tempting a target to try getting a rise out of! In fact, there was one matter Terrence is surprised hadn't been brought up yet, especially considering the nature of the conversation.

"Has Sucecq told you about our... Incident with the Wizard?"

If the Protector is surprised by Terrence's words, he doesn't show it. Even so, he shakes his head calmly while watching the bunny knight in front of him.

"I have not been informed." He answers calmly, "And I have not spoken with the companions in some time."

And then, while setting his mug down, he leans forward. His chin ends up settled on his fingertips as he intertwines them.

"What is she planning." He commands it more than he asks it, his voice calm.

"I wish I knew," Terrence chuckles, masking his surprise at the Protector's directness. He's also covering up slight surprise at the idea that the companions aren't reporting in to him regularly. If he's really trying to help the knights win, shouldn't he want as much information as possible? They're all weird magical interdimensional beings on the same side and kinda' linked just like he is with the Princess, right..?

Well. Probably won't get an answer to any of that even if he does bother to ask.

"I attacked her between monster fights," he elaborates. "Alone." Terrence's tone is surprisingly matter-of-fact about it - he's not bragging nor particularly sheepish to admit it. "I was testing her reaction."

Unknown to Terrence, he has more reliable means of getting his information. Unfortunately, it appears that there are holes in it that he hadn't been aware of. How frustrating.

"And you were unable to harm her." He answers a question that he doesn't even need to ask.

"You risked your life for a test. She could have erased you."

"She certainly could have," he agrees, sounding a bit more serious now to emphasize that he didn't make such a dangerous move lightly. "...But I felt she wouldn't. Acting on suppositions when it comes to the Wizard is reckless, I understand, but the sheer imbalance of power means we have to take risks. She could just as easily erase me for no reason whatsoever right as we speak. Unexpected initiative could teach us something new."

Terrence pauses to take another drink, giving time for his explanation to sit. He's not expecting the Protector to approve, but at least to understand.

Lightly or not, it was a poor decision and the Protector isn't going to just let that be ignored. He narrows his eyes as Terrence continues his dangerous assumptions, taking a sip of the tea in front of him before he speaks again. He doesn't approve, but he understands Terrence is more of a liability than some.

"You will not put the lives of your allies at risk on any of your foolish gambles." He says it like he's scolding Terrence.

"If you have questions regarding her actions and behaviors, ask. If you seek answers from her, you will receive only lies."

"Of course I'm not going to endanger anyone else," he scoffs. Honestly, he was expecting worse so it's a bit easy to brush off the Protector's words. Terrence certainly isn't going to lie and pretend he wants to risk anyone else's life, but the temptation is certainly there just to try and get a more dramatic reaction from their stoic ally.

Ah, but he's probably had multiple years of other knights trying to push his buttons, hasn't he..? The realization both annoys the rabbit knight and reaffirms his thoughts, which he elaborates on, "Granted I'm one of the less predictable knights in general this year, but I'm certainly no fighter. On top of that I practically owe my entire fortune and fame to the Wizard, so I'm one of the last anyone would suspect of holding a personal vendetta against her or trying to assault our foe alone."

Terrence pauses for a sip before continuing, "As far as we're concerned, she's omnipotent, or nearly. But is she omnipresent..? If so, then it doesn't really matter what we do because the game was rigged from the start, so the only other option that makes sense is to work off of the assumption that she isn't. On top of that, our world functioned just fine for millions of years before her arrival only forty ago, meaning she is not fundamental in some way to our reality as a whole."

"Something changed forty years ago, and she has an objective. We've avoided being destroyed this entire time, but considering how fundamentally binary the failstate is, it's entirely possible that she's never wanted us to fail at all, and in fact, will not allow us to fail. There's something we - not she - are supposed to do, and in 40 years we haven't done it yet. It's not enough to just survive and win, we have to try things no one ever has before, push boundaries until we can understand..."

"That's science. Just, y'know... With a lot of bullshit magic no one can understand or predict getting in the way, but still. Magiscience."

Terrence's assumption is correct: He's had forty years to navigate the world of questions the knights tended to ask him. He narrows his eyes as Terrence monologues his thoughts, his defense. He places his cup down hard when Terrence insists there's something they should do that hasn't been done yet. He's had enough of it by the end. There've been a small handful of types to think the way he has, and they'd all ended the same way.

"You are making a mountain out of an ant. Not even an ant hill, rabbit knight. A mere ant." His voice is stone cold. His voice gives nothing away, just a steeled tone that demands no pushing on what he's about to say:

"When she dies, she is removed from the picture. She must die, or she will choose to end this world." He folds his hands in front of him, deciding that there is a bit of concrete evidence that will convince this science-oriented knight in front of him. It worked on knights in the past.

"The death of the twelfth monster triggers the mechanism that holds this world's fate in purgatory. A mechanism holding this world between life and death. So long as I am the only one standing before it when the choice is to be made, there is no one to disagree with saving the world for another year." He shakes his head.

"If she is present for the choice, she will choose to end the world. Our decision will create a tie, and the mechanism will not reset. The world will end. If I am killed, there is no one to decide to save this world. The world will end."

"Of course she will," Terrence once again agrees, shrugging in an infuriatingly nonchalant way to match his tone. Even with the Protector's renewed vigor he still didn't seem quite mad yet. Whatever he was getting at, it's clearly not working on this year's rabbit knight.

"That's her role, isn't it..? To end us? Seems a bit easy if all she wants is to kill or get a rise out of us... What I still don't understand is the point of all these theatrics..?"

For all of Terrence's memeing and pressing, the look in his eyes makes his own resolve entirely clear: you can threaten the end of reality all you want, but when multiple generations of people have already faced that very same threat for literally their entire lives multiple times over, there's nothing left you can do to scare us. Bring it.

"Who do you think brought and activated the very thing that now holds the fate of the world in the balance?" He counters Terrence's thoughts.

"How else does one cover up a decision but to make it seem like she is making the choice to end this world? Rather than succumbing to an inevitability? Without a hand to stop it, the world would end without her lifting a finger. She is making a show of it to mask the truth from all of you. She is a liar, a deceiver, and a fool." He reaches over to his cup, flipping it upside down onto the plate. A moment later, he lifts it to reveal a small Wizard doll standing on it and... then he flicks it, making it fall upon the table limply.

"She fools you with power to make you fear, because fear makes you easier to trick."

The Protector's initial outurst is... Frightening, to say the least. He's not particularly stern, nor is he attacking anyone, but just the sheer volume of information he's making available all at once when so little had ever become public before..?

Terrence lets it sit for a bit, dropping his cup back to his saucer in thought for several moments before simply asking, "If she came out of nowhere to us as fear, then what are you..?"

Almost all of what he's saying had been shared before. Almost all of it laid with dead knights, six feet under. The rest was kept silent, kept secret, and left to fade to history. He keeps his gaze level, unwavering as he answers the easiest question he's ever been asked.

"Hope." He's the good guy, after all, what else would he be?

"I should have killed her before this all began. She has always been wrong."

"Could you have..?" Terrence questions, in only two sentences turning the Protector's offensive against himself, seeming to rise in his chair above what his own usual stance would suggest.

"If she was always wrong, then you definitely should have," he offers, doing his best to mimic the Proctector's own usual neutral tone. He's not accusatory, but he's not not accusatory, either..? If the Protector is going to be so judgemental without revealing all the facts, then he's going to have to understand all of the judgement the mortals face, too, even if it happens this way every year.

Mortals aren't known for our empathy.

If the Protector is impressed with Terrence shifting his demeanor, he doesn't show it. If he's phased by Terrence turning the table around, he doesn't show it. If anything he's going to turn it back.

"I disagreed with her much in the way that a colleague does. Our work was separate and should not have ever overlapped." He answers, narrowing his eyes.

"I did not have the moral ground to order or carry out an execution. My ability to have, or not to, are no longer relevant to consider." He flips his cup back on the table just as a waiter comes by to refill it. At the same time, the protector picks up a knife and lifts up the Wizard doll on the tip of it. The doll gets speared and starts sliding down it.

"Dispose of this." He commands to the waiter more than he asks it, then he turns back to Terrence to pose a counter-theoretical.

"If I told you that one of your allies would kill you before this was all over, what would you do?"

"I'd say you're full of shit," Terrence states, almost as stonefaced as the Protector as he grips the Wizard doll and yanks it off of the Protector's knife before anyone else can take it. The islander looks, frankly, lost as fuck and like they have no idea who to obey between the two.

With absolutely no fanfare whatsoever, though, Terrence squishes the effigy between his fingers just like any other clay while staring the Protector in the eyes. For someone just completely winging it, the CEO is pretty much nailing the 'creepy anime badguy' look.

"If you were better than us you'd have won already."

He's sorely tempted to make the Wizard doll crumble to dust in Terrence's grasp but he thinks better of it. Watching it between Terrence's fingers is enough for him for now. He waves off the poor waiter before the situation can get any more confused.

"If I were not locked in by the rules she laid out, I would have." He counters, narrowing his eyes again.

"I cannot win a marathon with my limbs shackled."

"So just like us, you're beholden to her in some way," Terrence extrapolates. Considering how things had played out over the past 40 years it's not exactly a new accusation, but it still felt good to direct it completely at him.

The Protector sighs, leaning back in his seat.

"The word you seek is imprisoned." He clarifies, before adding. "And she chose these awful articles of clothing, too."

Candid as possible!

Now theyre getting somewhere!

"And we're imprisoned because we're amusing, yes..? Or, well, in general, not necessarily every group she imprisons." He muses a bit before continuing, "I assumed it was too boring to kill off any one knight 'offsceen' as it were. That's why I assumed I was safe - attacking her then didn't resolve any storyline and would be a waste to leave so early, especially with a 'character' as popular as myself..."

He's getting a little too meta.

"She will, and has, killed knights away from the public eye." He immediately counters, narrowing his eyes at Terrence's assumption that this is that much of a game. Unreal, Terrence.

"You are imprisoned because the mechanism demands it." He answers, watching Terrence. If he wanted a bombshell, he's about to get it:

"She does not call anyone to this place. So I call heroes to save this world." He says, coldly, watching Terrence for him to freak out or lash out in anger like many others have. He's well aware of the blood on his hands, but it has to be on someone's.

"And the world is grateful for it."

If the Protector is expecting Terrence to freak out, he'll be disappointed. The rabbit knight is surprised, certainly, and his face absolutely shows it... But he's also not particularly upset.

If anything, he's even more curious, since as the Protector himself put it - he'll receive only lies from the Wizard. If he wants answers, he should ask the Protector.

"...We are," he emphasizes in return, staring into his drink idly. "But you have to admit, the very fact I've come up with the scenario I just presented is because of the lack of information you've given us, regardless of why."

He wants answers and he's getting answers. Terrence is in answer city, the city filled with answers. The Protector would much rather answer than have any knight go to the Wizard. She was wrong, she would always be wrong, and he had said as much. And when she was dead and the world spun on, that was all the proof needed that she was wrong. He takes a sip of his tea, shaking his head at Terrence.

"It is not my duty to give a detailed history of this world and our enemy to every hero. She wishes us destroyed. It is your duty to come prepared to save the world. If you need further motivation than the destruction of this planet, it will be given but questioned." He shakes his head.

"And I will not encourage skepticism in the face of Armageddon. Our duty is sound and we must not waver."

The Weather

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