Day 7: Morning

[wizardseason]

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

[ IRL Timeframe: December 18th, 2019 - January 1st 8th, 2020 ]

After the events of Day 6, every single one of the heroes will know that five of their fellow heroes are no longer with them. Six of the monsters have been dealt with(?). The world is halfway to being saved(?). The unknown child, Sxicq, walks the island now. The Protector and the Wizard are--

The Wizard is missing. Courtesy of the #WheresTheWizard hashtag, it's clear that even social media can't get tabs on her. They've located Sxicq, Ten, Five, Six, and even the Protector. But the Wizard's location is a mystery. Maybe the Wizard-aligned knights were able to meet with her overnight? But no one knows who they are (well, clever heroes may have identified one), so it's anyone's guess.

It's a remarkably quiet morning, though, serving as an opportunity for the heroes to collect themselves.

Seventh Morning Event: Craydon: The Funeral.

---

The Weather

• Solemn.
• 64°F / 18°C
• The air is still.

---

Prompts:

• 6:00am The Funeral, Craydon: Five and Ten are the easiest to find this morning. They're in Craydon's small cemetary, holding a quiet conversation over an urn surrounded by flowers. Six is nearby, seated beneath a willow tree, hat and sunglasses obscuring his eyes. Locals are, for the most part, keeping their distance. But every so often, someone approaches to add a flower to the pile around the urn. Monster or not, no one is cruel enough to disrupt anyone in mourning.


• 8:30am Hospital, Far Haven: Sxicq is easy to find, not that they could be anything but easy to spot, in the hospital lobby. Social media is abuzz as doctors, nurses, and patients all start complaining that the hospital has seen enough this year. They don't need the lobby detonated again. But Sxicq is just sitting, cross-legged, in the center of the hospital lobby. Their eyes are closed and they're glowing softly. To anyone who stays for more than a few moments, they'll see the damage from previous days starting to glow as it mends itself. It's not fast, but it's progress.


• 9:00am International Cabin of Crepes, Bamborough: The Protector is slightly harder to find, but he's made it known that he's meeting with Luka, Olivia, and the knight they've chosen to invite. He has a private room in the breakfast establishment, a table in a room where the doors can be closed. Others can find him and talk to him here, but he's here on business. Anyone who spots him, though, won't be able to miss that he looks rough. He has a black eye, a busted lip, numerous cuts and burns over the visible parts of his skin, and it looks like some of his hair was ripped out. But it looks like he's done his best to clean up a little, it just looks like he's recovering from some kind of an accident. How did that happen?


• 10:00am Everywhere, All Cities: The welcome van from the first night is back, and this time it's received a fresh coat of paint on the sides: It's now the funnel cake van. Throughout the morning, the drivers are speeding around all three towns and pulling up beside any and every hero they can. If they see two heroes together? Free funnel cakes for both! Does your hero get caught funnel-handed with another hero this morning? Hope you both have a sweet tooth!

---

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.

---

Activity Check: December 2019

[ IRL Timeframe: December 1st - December 31st, 2019 ]

Comments

[daddykong]

As one of Sxicq's eyes open, showing a swirling, fiery blue vortex of energy, Garrot feels fear. His body recoils about a centimeter, his eyes go wide, his ears perk up. For all his posturing and strength and ingenuity, Garrot is seeing something he feels he should not have seen, and all he wants to do is apologize like a small child and run away and cry and oh shit the other eye's open too.

Fuck. After a tense moment of grit teeth and full-body apprehension, Garrot raises his hands in a pacifying gesture. Sxicq is scary, and clearly not to be trifled with.

"I need some unbiased magic advice. I don't know magic." He takes a deep, tension-releasing breath and suddenly, on either side of him, there are two more Garrots forming a makeshift huddle, all taking the same pacifying gesture. The main Garrot, the one with the cane, veers away from normal Garrot behavior as he starts whispering, barely audible.

"I've been offered magical power by someone on this island." He's serious, almost surgical, a far departure from that diner. "I've heard there could be drawbacks, dangers." His conversation with Luka on the mountain, with all that Protector-imposed obfuscation, comes to mind. "I've also been told they might want to kill me." Though Six doesn't seem to be the most reliable or coherent storyteller.

"I bet you know more about magic than the Protector and Wizard combined," a statement Garrot's pretty serious about after seeing flaming blue sun eyes and this repair job, "so what can you tell me?"

[wizardseason]

The swirling vortex behind Sxicq's eyes dims the longer they stare at Garrot. But then he duplicates himself and their eyes narrow at him. What kind of nonsense?

But then he asks and they roll their eyes.

"Iv Ixal Vu." They declare, holding up their hands in an "X" gesture in front of their body.

Absolutely nothing. Wrong question, Garrot.

[daddykong]

The eye-rolling is, frankly, the last thing Garrot needs right now! Take him and his worries seriously, Sxicq! All three Garrots start to scowl, somewhat emboldened by the dimming of those terrifying, magic eyes. A fucking X?! Seriously?!

"You won't tell me anything. Big surprise." The peripheral Garrots roll their eyes, but the main one continues, taking a new approach. "Do you trust the Wizard or the Protector more?" The Wizard is, by nature of being, untrustworthy. The Protector, by all accounts prior to one unnerving day in the last forty years, is trustworthy. It should be clear-cut. But Sxicq is so magical, and they know the animal companions, so...

Maybe it is all in his head.

[wizardseason]

"Giq iv fiu aq." They follow up, countering Garrot's assumption. But he asks them to give him an answer without any way of denoting which one was which.

So they make a point of showing what they think.

Two little figures, made of glowing blue energy, pop up on the floor. One is clearly the Wizard, the other is clearly the Protector.

They reach over to the Wizard's figure and give her a flick, sending her holographic form flying away until it flickers and vanishes. Then they turn to the Protector's little glowing form and aim a finger...

...and the little holographic Protector just explodes into a holographic blue cloud of crackling smoke. A moment later it's all gone, the little illusion over.

How's that for an answer, Garrot?

[daddykong]

Garrot just fuckin stares. The holographic display is really cool, but it's also a lot to take in. He just can't catch a break with Sxicq. He takes a moment to process the entire little show, but the single quirked eyebrow makes it clear it didn't really stick.

"So... you trust the Protector? Since you chose him." He takes a moment, scratching his head. He sounds unconvinced. "But the Wizard let you flick her away, and the Protector blew up, so you trust her?" Garrot pauses, squinting intensely. "But you still didn't pick one. Did... you trust the Wizard and she ditched you, then you trusted the Protector and he... blew up?"

[wizardseason]

Sxicq stares back for several moments as Garrot goes through his assumptions about what he saw. And then he follows it with multiple different assumptions and--

"Aq iv ixsal isq." They state, emphasizing whatever that last word meant.

And they motion down to the ground again when another Protector holographic appears and--

A large holographic boot comes down and stomps him. When it pulls away, there's a little skeleton left over in the bootprint on the ground. They look at him and wait for the inevitable next barrage of theories.

[daddykong]

"Okay. You don't like him. Good to know." Garrot actually chuckles a bit at the display, his screaming anxiety about magic bullshit on a downswing. "But you just flicked the Wizard away." That's a bit harder to interpret, but he's not overly invested in figuring it out. The Wizard comes back like a cockroach every year anyway.

"Is that just what you want to do to him, or can you?" Intent and capacity are two separate things, of course, and the Protector is kind of a big deal.

[wizardseason]

Once again, Garrot's openly theorized about things without really giving Sxicq a clear path to answer in a way that he'd understand. They dismiss the Wizard question and focus on his Protector question. There's no real way to tell what they're saying, but they motion at the skeleton on the ground as they speak.

"Aq ivs xaliv isq giq aq iv."

And as they say it, the holographic bones of the protector evaporate. How's that for an answer, Garrot?

It probably made no sense.

[daddykong]

Garrot just. Fuckin stares again. The skeleton evaporated, and Sxicq said something, but it naturally made zero sense. Ugh. Ugh! But he sits there for a moment, thinking about what he saw.

"You can do more than just kill him." He squints, staring Sxicq straight in the face. "So why haven't you? Are you... waiting for something?"

[wizardseason]

They want to detonate Garrot out a window when he throws out another theory.

"Aq sefiv fi iv qi" They state, holding both their hands up in an "X" shape in front of them again.

Totally wrong, Garrot.

[daddykong]

"So you can't kill him? There was an explosion when you touched him." He sighs, because holy crap, this is really hard to make sense of! "Is something stopping you from killing him, even if you want to?"

Take some more staring, Sxicq.

[wizardseason]

Dear god Garrot, just ask some yes or no questions. They have a half-answer for him but he's not going to like it. The only way to explain even a fraction of the answer to his incredibly complex question is to show him.

All at once, the air around Garrot starts to crackle. Little lightning sparks flicker in the air, flicker towards him, and--

He'll feel like he's been electrocuted, his muscles going tense as his body has magic pulsing through him. All that just to show him the flickering image of the place inside of the mountain. The area with the dead monster bodies and the near-dead knights. The area everyone kept referring to. The area that seemed to tie everything together.

Garrot will see an image of that place for just long enough to acknowledge it...

...and then he'll wake up on his back on the hospital lobby floor. When did he fall over? Why is his hair standing on-end? At least he isn't hurt.

Just shocked. Both literally and figuratively.

[daddykong]

Wow, holy shit, Sxicq. In all likelihood, Garrot has probably been electrocuted multiple times in his ridiculous life of science and nonsense. But this is different, because it's fucking magic. His brain does register the room, the monsters and knights, but all of a sudden he's on his back, his clones are gone, his hair is frizzed the fuck out. But he doesn't hurt. Getting electrocuted hurts. Fuckin magic.

"Ow... why the hell?!" He's clearly unhappy as he pulls his upper body into a sitting position. He might need another check-up after that! But he saw something, and it's connecting some dots. "You... need to wait. Until more monsters and... more knights are in there. Did... Did I get it?" ...He might still be a little winded by the whole experience.

[wizardseason]

Sxicq, meanwhile, stays put while Garrot goes on his magical roller coaster. They watch him, waiting for him to get up, and then he gives his theory and--

They hold up a hand, flat, wobbling it a little. Sort of right. Sort of wrong. Answer unclear.

"Ixsal." They answer.

[daddykong]

Garrot can work with gestures! Even a wibbly-wobbly one like that. So he takes a second to ponder what it could mean. It could mean a lot, honestly.

"Okay, maybe... you don't need to wait but it helps?" He sounds utterly unsure. Sxicq had to resort to magicking an image into his brain, so he's not exactly the most confident in his language-crossing problem-solving abilities.

[wizardseason]

Sxicq stares at Garrot for several moments before they just...

Nod.

Sure. Fine.

"Aq iv." That'll do. Good job, Garrot, please bring a ouija board to communicate with next time though.

[daddykong]

Garrot is thrilled, like a child playing some sort of trivia or observation game. Any progress is good progress when he's dealing with an immensely powerful planet(?) being with crazy magic who does not (mostly?) speak his language.

"So you don't really trust either of them, and you really don't like the Protector. But you haven't done anything yet." Probably for the best, all things considered. Garrot would really rather not have to deal with a two-against-one situation where the Protector, who protects the planet, is at a disadvantage. Even though he's magically censoring the companions, which is super sketchy. But given the little skeleton, he may not get a ton of unbiased context. So he shifts gears.

"Is your magic the same as the Wizard's and Protector's?" Three magic beings, two of which have knights and can give boosts to said knights. Plus... maybe it's apples and hand grenades and Sxicq doesn't know much about their abilities.

[wizardseason]

Garrot will notice, unfortunately, that the air around him is starting to crackle. Like Sxicq is winding up their magic once again.

Okay it's not "like" they are, they literally are.

Because he asks that question and Sxicq's eyes glow with that same fiery intensity as they look at him and respond with a single:

"Qu."

Three things immediately happen when they answer Garrot. First is that a wave of blue energy pours off of them and washes over the floor outwards from where they are like a wave. Everything it touches starts sliding back together, being repaired immediately, fixing the entire hospital lobby. Second is that Garrot will feel the uncomfortable tingles as he begins to teleport out of this place--

Third is that he knows, without any doubt, that Sxicq said "No". Their magic is not the same.

...

And then Garrot lands on his back, in the grass, on a hill about three miles away from the Hospital.