thearena | dance, magic, dance~~

Entry tags:

dance, magic, dance~~

Who: Neffa and OPEN
What: Neffa is trying to call up spirits - feel free to run into him either mid-attempt or on the paranoid sprints between them!
Where: Around
When: Week three
Warnings/Notes: None yet! Would be more than up for confrontation, though, so that could well change.

It was a continuing shock to Neffa that he was still alive. When he'd made his desperate bargain from the pedestal (please, Lady, let me buy my life) he'd not expected to have the deal snapped up with quite so much enthusiasm - if the gods really had been listening, he'd obviously caught them at a particularly generous moment.

Alive was really all that could be said for his physical state, though. The last of his five cans was gone, and he hadn't quite got up the guts to cook the only rat he'd caught yet. He'd wrapped it up in the tattered remains of his light green cape - for when he got really hungry, he told himself, as though the decision were a pragmatic one and not just the fact that the idea still made his stomach lurch.

He had little else, except a can lid bent to have one good, sharp edge, the gnawing terror that would not sleep, and the persistent sense that his luck was moments from running out. Luck had always been something he'd made for himself, or bought at excellent premiums from the kinds of spirits willing to dispense it - the kind the gods supposedly handed out, while he didn't mean to seem ungrateful, was altogether too unpredictable for his taste. And, well-- so long as he had a food supply, however small, and so long as his luck from the gods was still following him-- what better time than to try to buy some of his own?

And so, in a lull between panicked encounters, he found a corner with a good outward view, put his bundled-up rat behind him, smoothed out his stained shirt (he usually dressed better for business meetings than this, but the otherworld would just have to understand) and made himself a bargaining circle.

The preparations were, by necessity, simple - he'd made a loop out of a knotted strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt, and this he placed on the bare earth before him, the hacked-off can lid in the center as invitation. He put his back to the wall, exhaled hard, shut his eyes, and began to mutter, almost stumbling over the speech in his haste to get the words out quickly. The spell was the simplest one he knew - the exact words were ones he'd never had cause to use in his professional life, no more specific than Appear and I will bargain, less a spell than a plea. He didn't care. To know he could bargain, that was the most important thing, and he didn't give a damn what showed up in the circle so long as it was willing to sell him that reassurance.

He didn't take long at any one attempt. Every hour or so he'd stagger to his feet, stuff the string circle back into his pocket, and run to the next hiding place, the next landmark, the next tangle of trees-- anywhere that might have had a spirit hovering around it, waiting to be called into service.

They have to be here. Run, summon, run, summon, swallow growing desperation, summon, run. A city without spirits, that was possible, sure, but a world without them could not exist. They are here. Somewhere. The next place. The next.

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Eventually Neffa hit paydirt; for once something arrived, stumbling out of the dark, so maybe "paydirt" was the wrong word.

R wasn't worried he got turned around. It happened. You'd be a crappy corpse if you panicked every single time you got lost or stuck shuffling into a wall every now and then. Either he got plain lost or he just hazed out, drifted in his mind and hey, uh, suddenly he was lost and it was up to him to stumble back home. Or not. There was always staggering around until he bumped into another zombie pack but he couldn't cheat with that plan now. Not enough zombies here, for starters.

Not unless Air or Karis were busy infecting people. Air didn't seem like that kinda corpse, but Karis. All bets were off with someone like Karis.

R tried not to think about it too much. What he wanted to do was get un-turned around and work from there.

The muttering was quiet. He paused, head tilted to the side. It sounded like one voice, a guy's, and it was dark enough that R couldn't see that far ahead but he could make a guess that the guy was alone. Alone and talking to himself. Great signs there. R was already shuffling toward the sound before he had any ideas about what he wanted to do: did he want to ask for directions or sneak in a bite behind Howard's back?

"Guugghh," R grunted as he burst in on the guy, one arm raised. "...Help me...with...?"

He told himself he was trying to wave, not make any passes at the Tribute. Kinda hard to get directions back to Thunder Mountain if he killed the guy, right?

Edited 2013-04-08 07:53 (UTC)

Spirits, Neffa knew from long experience, came most willingly to the relaxed, the confident, and the patient. As he was from the outset none of those things, simply finding a mindset from which to cast out his net had taken the better part of the morning. He had a system now, though - in the end, he'd decided to prioritize speed over paranoia. It was, he reasoned, more productive to spend fifteen minutes at a time buried in a near-trance than to spend an hour startling at every rustling leaf outside.

He'd holed up with his back against a stone that didn't quite have the texture of real rock, hoping that the nearby clanking of the canal might drown him out, at least from a distance. He'd ducked his head, put his rat between his feet, and begun muttering furiously, and this had worked out well enough until R walked in on him.

I hear... The shuffling sound, not quite footsteps, which world was it coming from? There were earth spirits that walked like that, and hope rose in Neffa's chest as he reached with every sense for it, whispered more fiercely the words that would snare it, called to it with every sense and finally opened his eyes to--

The sound Neffa made was almost "No--!", but garbled by the end of the word before it and more than half an involuntary shout of terror. He lurched to his feet, snatching at the can lid on his way up, planting his back flat against the rock and slashing at the air between himself and the-- person?-- the-- what--

"Stay back!" he managed to blurt, in a proper human language this time. Gods, was that a-- he looked almost dead, or plagued, or something. Not carrying a weapon, at least, but that didn't mean his intentions were benign. "I-- What do you want?" Please, what can I give you, what can I sell you in exchange for my life?

...Not the most eloquent beginning to a potentially lifesaving transaction he could have picked, perhaps, but to the point, at least.

At least he hasn’t started screaming. R takes that as a plus, although this probably could’ve gotten off on a better foot. The guy looks like he’s about to start knocking his knees together, wide-eyed, staring. R tries to review what he did wrong, doesn’t see anything, and decides maybe the safest thing to do is do what he says and stop. Don’t go past Go. Look like he’s not an undead man-eater.

R slouches where he’s stopped in his tracks, listing to the side like a boat about to overturn in slow mo, his working eye fixed on the other Tribute. The other one points off in a different direction, dusty and scratched.

“…Dirrrrr….” R trails off, frustrated. Multi-syllable words totally aren’t his thing, but he keeps trucking anyway because he’s stubborn like that. He’ll get it out one way or another. “Dirre…ctions. I’m…lost.”

There he goes. It’s not all in one chunk but it’s there. R eyeballs the other Tribute, takes in the shock of hair, the darker skin like Howard. He doesn’t recognize him but when you’re a corpse, that doesn’t mean much, so R mentally shrugs. Does he want to ask what the muttering was about?

That-- that is not the interruption Neffa was expecting. The raised weapon wavers, but he doesn't lower it.

He isn't entirely sure what lost means in this context. So far as he knows, there's absolutely nowhere it's possible to go except the arena, which, being only large enough to contain eighty people and all their fear and anger, doesn't seem to him terribly easy to get lost in. And he can't think of a reason that someone would ask a stranger for directions back to their own hiding place. He casts a glance around, in case this is some cockeyed attempt at distraction, but they're clearly alone.

Stop staring and say something. He doesn't know how dangerous this person is or isn't, but he hasn't been attacked yet, and that's... if not a cause for hope, at least a moment to regroup he hadn't been expecting. He plants his feet a little more firmly, takes the plea out of his voice.

"What are you trying to find?" He speaks a little louder than his nerves wish he would, a little more slowly. Longer observation makes him wonder what this guy could possibly have run afoul of - a particularly nasty blow to the head might have put that slur in his speech, Neffa supposes, and put him that off-balance, but there's something unnerving about that off-focus stare all the same. "Are-- are you injured?"

R paused, turned over the question slowly, and then shot him the undead version of the are you kidding me? look.

"Who...isn't?" R blurted. He realized that wasn't the best foot to start on, wracking his shriveled brain for something else to say. "Sorry," he added with a rasp. "Trying...to find...way back to...red..."

He trailed off, searching for the word. It comes to him almost grudgingly.

"Red...moun-tain," R finished.

R decided to take a step closer, one foot sliding closer into the light, the zombie trying to look friendly and failing miserably because all he could manage was a dead idiot’s gape. He made the extra effort to snap his mouth shut, his teeth clicking. R could feel the Tribute sizing him up. It was a natural reaction because hi, corpse here who’d barged right in the middle of…whatever the guy was doing. R’s eye drifted down to the collection of stuff, passing over the can lid, the looped piece of shirt, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was for.

The slowness with which the answer came made Neffa fidgety. He'd been living at five times normal speed since he came here - the seconds between red and mountain were downright agonizing to his frayed nerves.

He saw where the stranger's gaze was going and broke the circle with a nudge of his foot, almost defensively. (What gives you the right to find anything about me strange?) The problem, he thought, was that he couldn't read this one - the slack-jawed expression didn't communicate hostility, but it didn't communicate much else either, and that was almost more unsettling to Neffa than the fact that he looked more dead than alive.

He needs something. That's a start. What better start could you have asked for? It was time bought, anyway, now that he'd spent almost as long answering as the stranger had. "You're not far out of your way," he said finally. Unless there was more than one hulking, man-made wreck of a mountain in this place, he was sure he'd spent time crouched near it not more than a a few hours ago. "What do you hope to find there? Shelter?" If there was something worth following him for...

R peered at the Tribute and he could practically see the "c'mon, hurry up" written there. R wanted to sigh. He would if he could, buddy.

Honestly, it sounded a lot better in his head most of the time.

He wasn't sure if this human would help him. R could tell he was making him nervous and the longer he stood here, half-falling apart in the dim light, the more he was convinced that maybe this was a lost cause. He watched as the guy toed at the collection of Stuff, as if maybe he was afraid R would lurch in and help himself and maybe that was closer to the truth if they weren't in the Arena.

He realized with relief he'd judged the guy wrong. Despite the way he was looking at him, he was still giving a dead boy directions.

"I have...friends there. I'm...hhh...helping them," R said. "Being a...better friend, do you...under...stand?"

Maybe he better ask if he could lead the way. That'd save R a lot of wandering time if all he had to do was follow the Living man, provided he didn't spook on him. R sniffed despite himself, his nostrils flaring, his lips parting. Christ, he smelled good: the fact he probably hadn't bathed since entering the Arena didn't stop R from picking up that Living scent peeking through.

"Friends?" That caught Neffa's interest. If this person was a construct of the Arena (a possibility he hadn't totally ruled out - the sniffing was disconcerting, to say the least), then friends could well mean death. If friends meant people, though, then that could indicate an alliance - bring one lost back among their number and find himself with more than one person in his debt.

That seemed to him a risk worth taking.

"...I understand," he said. "Tell me-- would your friends be glad of it, if I helped you help them?"

R nodded. Friends. More than one, because Wyatt might be a friend-in-the-making. So yeah, friends, plural.

"I...think so. But How...ward...wants his...space," R had to go and blurt out the truth because he was that kind of corpse. Lying takes too long and he doesn't have the words to keep it up. "Trying to be...friend to...them. Help...them. It's a...work in prog...ghhh..."

R shrugged and gave up groaning on that note. Maybe not the answer this Tribute wanted.

"Can't hurt...to try," R cranked out an encouraging smile, baring his teeth.

Brendan has been watching him. Following him, stalking from the shadows--he's very good at that, has always been very good at it. The woods isn't a highschool, but Brendan adjusts accordingly.

What he doesn't understand is what the other was doing. Why he'd just sit there. But he had rope and from the looks of it, that green cloak held meat. Cans, he wants to say--because there's a bent lid in the middle like some sort of target. Where one can is, there's probably another.

Brendan waits until the other is sitting down, trying to do whatever it is, that he makes a run for it, aiming to forcefully take the cloak and run as far as he could until he looses any tails.

Standing for hours at a time becomes exhausting fast. By midday, Neffa's sitting when he works the spell, putting the wrapped-up rat behind him and simply trusting that no one would be stupid enough to come close enough to take it.

As it turns out, underestimating people's willingness to steal from him is a terrible idea. He comes to his senses when Brendan is already practically on him, and takes too many precious seconds to blink himself back to reality-- he only registers what's happening when the rat is gone and whoever-the-hell's back is already turned and pelting away.

"Hey--!" He hesitates for half a second, already halfway to his feet. There is a part of him urging him to leave it. You're alive. Make another snare later and let him go. But his mind is still half in the spell, his stomach is empty, and a shriller part of him cries Take it back, he didn't pay for it, it's yours, it isn't fair--!

And so Neffa lunges forward on instinct, sweeps up the can lid from the circle and throws himself at the retreating figure in the same movement, snatching at whatever part of him he can reach-- an ankle, if he can get it, but just the hem of his shirt would be enough, just enough to knock him off-balance--!

Brendan is too busy focusing on food--he's a city kid, he doesn't know how to set a trap, let alone cook something--but his specialty is speed and he knows how to take advantage of people being caught off guard.

Neffa grabs his ankle and he twists it just so to get it out of reach--but he stumbles in the process, and the other manages to grab onto his shirt and he falls onto the ground, winded but refusing to give up. He hasn't eaten for what feels like days.

Brendan's trying to get onto his feet, holding the bundle like it's some sort of child instead of a mutated rat, and uses his feet to try to kick the other in his face. It's his glasses, though. They fly off and Brendan can't see a damn thing, sees only vague shapes where he's supposed to know exactly where Neffa is.

Edited 2013-04-16 22:13 (UTC)

"Agh--!" A flailing foot catches Neffa just under the eye, and he flinches back-- but nothing's broken, and he's not letting go. You'll bargain like a civilized person or you'll get nothing--!

There's no grabbing for the rat from here. With a growl he hardly recognizes as coming from him, he scrambles forward, throwing as much of his weight as he can over the other's legs, a unpracticed attempt at a pin. (He has absolutely no idea what he plans to do once he's got him pinned, never having found himself wrestling over a dead rat before, but-- one step at a time.)

Brendan's preoccupied with reaching for his glasses (he fails, of course), and as Neffa charges at him his hand winds up pushing the glasses further away from him. He doesn't curse--mainly because he can't. Neffa's landed squarely on top of him, and Brendan is left with the wind knocked out of him, flat on his stomach, face on the ground.

No luck. He's struggling, but he can't move, not yet. The other has him. For now.

For a brief, startled moment, Neffa has no idea what to do. He'd not thought any farther than preventing the thief escaping - what happens now?

No time to hesitate. He settles himself more firmly, keeping most of his weight on the other's legs to keep him from kicking. "Give me the rat," he says, still breathing hard, "and I'll give you your life."

He's still got the can lid in his hand, and he swallows hard and makes himself put the sharp end against the back of the Brendan's neck. If he can keep his hand from trembling, maybe he'll believe Neffa actually has the guts to use it.

Aunamee was a social butterfly. Between arenas, he would mingle with Capitol folk during the day and offer friendly smiles to the other tributes at night. He spent time in his District suite in the mornings, casually poised over his breakfast as though he lived in Panem his entire life. He kept his buzzing, maddening fear deep down under the surface in the same way that he kept the details of his old life under the surface. For all his friendliness, his intrinsic want for company, Aunamee always directed conversations away from himself. He had, however, given this other tribute his name. A polite conversation, here and there.

Now it was time to give him his company.

"Neffa," he said, hushed and careful. He was armed with a spear, but he held it behind him, non-threatening, as he approached from behind a dilapidated storefront. Without Fantasyland to protect him, Aunamee could no longer afford to dwell in solitude. Without telepathy, the world was too silent. Too lonely.

It was the name that brought him up. Spirits spoke, in voices low and flowing or high and chittering, but when they addressed him it was always with their word for magician. Only humans spoke human names, and the sound of his name from outside pulled Neffa from the spell like he'd been shaken. He hauled in a startled breath, heart hammering, and groped instinctively for the metal lid before him, his eyes flicking from shadow to shadow.

...There.

He rose carefully to his feet, the lid in his hand with the sharp end out, watching Aunamee approach. He remembered him - they had made brittle, friendly, evasive conversation before, over meals and in front of cameras. He'd been polite, charming, and friendly in a way that had made Neffa think he was playing the same game he was, though he wasn't sure whether or not that made him an ally.

He was alone, Neffa noted. Alone, and he'd chosen to call his name. You didn't whisper from a distance the names of unarmed people you were about to kill, he was fairly certain (as though he would know anything about the protocols of murder), and so he swallowed hard and pulled his breathing back under control. If he's playing your game, he's not here to kill you.

"Aunamee," he replied, equally hushed, and his voice was heavy with relief. It was both a greeting and an invitation to approach. "You're not a spirit."

Diana ducked out of sight when she spotted the man in the distance. His back was turned to her so once she was sure she hadn't been spotted she crept forward until she could see what he was doing, crouched on the ground, without being seen herself.

She frowned, watching him work. It looked like a ritual of some kind, but whether it was spiritual or magical, she couldn't tell. Either was quite reasonable to find someone trying in this place. Finally, she stepped forward, revealing herself and holding up her hands to show that she was unarmed.

"I mean you no harm," she called out first, because it was always good to get that out of the way in such a situation. "I was just curious--are you attempting magic?"

He'd been deep in it this time, longer than he intended. Despite the peaceful greeting, Neffa startled hard at the sound of her voice - he was immediately glad he'd thought to put a broken tree trunk six inches behind him, as his legs were half-asleep and less than inclined to support him. The jolt as he fell back hauled him fully out of the half-trance, and he blinked at her, wide-eyed, for a too-long second - but no, she wasn't a spirit.

He gave his head a hard shake to clear it and climbed to his feet, nudging the circle back into a shapeless tangle of rope with his foot and bracing one hand against the tree behind him while his legs tingled their way back into wakefulness. His thoughts were still a tangle, though - the calm that came with the magic was giving way to the familiar anxiety and the increasing disappointment of another hour with no sign of a spirit anywhere, and--

--Listen to her, you fool. She knows it was magic.

It took everything in him to keep the hope suddenly swelling in his chest from showing on his face. "Yes," he said, and at least the hoarseness brought by lack of use covered up the tremor in his voice. "'Attempting' being the operative word. Are you a magician?"

...No, the desperation in the question was impossible to conceal. Gods, let her know where the spirits have gone. Let me not be alone in... being alone.

"No," Diana said, her voice becoming soft and sympathetic at his clear desperation and confusion. "I'm afraid not. I do occasionally...utilize magic, however. Have you had any luck?"

Ah. Well-- not everyone with magical leanings worked as a magician. Neffa really couldn't complain, not when just hearing someone else speak of magic was the sweetest thing he'd heard since coming here - not when he had, against all odds, been hauled out of his trance by something other than the threat of painful death he'd been expecting.

"None," he replied. He glanced down at the ruined circle with a frustrated twist to his mouth. "Forget striking a bargain, I've not even got a reply to a summons yet."

Talking of magic doesn't make her any less likely to murder you. Perhaps she'll do it with magic. But-- if there was even a chance-- He looked back up at the stranger, hardly daring to hope. "And you? Have you made an attempt?"

"I'm not sure what that means," Diana said cautiously. "That doesn't sound like a type of magic I know well." In fact it sounds perilously close to something like striking a deal with a demon of some kind, but she shouldn't jump to conclusions and anyway, it seems to be a moot point here.

"I'd heard that access to our powers was a rare event, I haven't yet had success with mine. Not that I've tried very many times, I admit." Just the occasional twirl while out scouting, just in case. She hesitated, then shrugged. She didn't feel this man was a threat and she certainly didn't care about looking silly. "I can try again, see if anything's changed."

She stepped back, held out her hands, and started to turn in a slow circle, a spin that quickly sped up until she was a blur, and then a light blared and faded and there she stood--Wonder Woman.

"Oh," she said faintly, staring at her hands, her bracers. "I hadn't actually expected that to work."

When the light flared, Neffa flattened himself against the tree trunk behind him, flinging a hand up to shield his eyes. Fear was back, and heightened by frantic confusion-- There was no spell in the world that looked like that! And even more importantly, she was going to alert everyone within a mile that they were there, what was she thinking--?

He didn't unpeel himself from the tree when it was over. Summoning armor from the air, for all the woman didn't seem much inclined to attack him, didn't strike him as a particularly peaceful spell to cast, of all the ones available.

He blinked the remaining sparks from the edges of his vision, trying to force his thoughts to form an intelligent question. "What--" he tried first, but no, it was magic, she'd said it herself, that was pointless. "How--" Was a technical explanation really going to help? "Why," he finally decided, and yes, that was the most useful thing to ask, that was a line of questioning worth pursuing, because he'd been sitting on the ground with his neck exposed since morning and had heard nothing, nothing, and she had put out her hands and worn magic like a garment, as though she'd not even been trying-- "Why did it come to you?"

"I don't know," said Diana, as confused as he was, though there was a note of genuine happiness in her voice. She'd managed to push away the feeling of helplessness, of loss, for the past weeks while she was unable to access her powers, but now she felt like herself again. She couldn't resist lifting of the ground briefly, just a few inches, remembering the joy of flight.

She smiled, softly, before remembering and touching back down again, returning her attention to Neffa. "I don't know, I really don't. I've tried it before and it didn't work then. I'm not sure what's different now, or why it wouldn't work for you."

She flexed a hand experimentally, feeling the strength returned. "Everything feels right, except--" She looked down, at her hip, cursing herself a fool for not checking this first. The lasso is gone. "No, not quite everything."

He couldn't stop the brief moment of jealousy that flooded him. It wasn't even her, so much, it was-- it was the weeks of fear, the long hours spent calling into the silent and unhearing air, the crescendo of desperation when nothing worked and nothing worked and again, nothing worked. Even more than cruel, it seemed, this world was unfair. Why did she deserve her power, and not him?

"What's missing?" he asked, and it took conscious effort to keep it from coming out too short. "There seems little pattern behind what they choose to return, and what to withhold."

"My lasso," she said, frowning. "A magical object, a gift from the gods that they haven't seen fit to return to me."

Finally she seemed to realize that this must be even more frustrating for the man and his failing magic and she turned to him. "I'm sorry, I really don't know why it's returned to me and not too you. I think the pattern is what they think would entertain the masses."

It was little reassurance. All that told him was that he wasn't entertaining. From what he understood, that could be deadly.

Something else caught his attention, though-- enough to make him shake off the petty irritation, to make him wonder if he'd heard correctly--

"--Wait. From the gods?"

He didn't bother to hide his incredulity. People didn't just-- you couldn't just throw that kind of statement around. The gods, if they existed, simply weren't the type to drop weaponry out of the sky into people's hands. Ideas, maybe; magic, some said; inspiration, and hope, and all the other nebulous concepts people liked to ascribe to outside forces, but to claim outright that the gods had just-- handed you a magic lasso--! Neffa couldn't rightly tell if it was madness or arrogance speaking.

Edited 2013-04-27 06:40 (UTC)

"Yes," said Diana patiently, used to this sort of doubt. "Forged by the god Hephaestus from the Golden Girdle--my mother was it's keeper for a time and she passed it on to me when I left home." Her frown deepened. "It's a very powerful artifact and now I don't even know where it is."

Ah. Different gods, then. The name wasn't familiar to him. What must that be like - having gods from whom you could expect things that concrete? What did prayers sound like in a place like that? O Great One, I find myself in a tight spot; bestow upon me a spear, that I may skewer the problem directly...

It didn't seem right, though, questioning the consistency of someone else's religion when he'd spent so much of today begging the sky for his survival. An artifact with power: there was knowledge they had in common. A starting place.

"They're not fond of magic here," he said. "My conduit was taken from me when I arrived. I imagine they find god-given weapons more threatening than entertaining."

Edited 2013-04-27 19:47 (UTC)

"Yes, although I'd like to think I'm something of a threat even without my powers," she said, thinking but not speaking of the horrors that could be wrought with the lasso. She didn't want to give the Capitol any ideas. Then she winced slightly, remembering this man's despair at his lack of magic. "I suppose you can't simply make another conduit?"

"A conduit's easy enough to find." The cedar rod they'd taken he'd had made specially, as he'd intended from the beginning for it to last him a long time, but the twisted scrap of metal still lying in the dirt at his feet should have done just as well, in the short-term. "The problem is more that-- well." He shrugged helplessly, gave half of a mirthless laugh-- "So far as I can tell, there are no spirits here."

The admission made him feel sick. It was not one he'd yet had the courage to make. "I can't perform magic without them," he added as an afterthought, as this perhaps wasn't clear to the kinds of people who got their magic from god-forged weaponry. "A conduit's only useful insofar as it contains a spirit willing to work out of it, and where there are no spirits--!" He finished with a helpless hand gesture, a What can you do? that he hoped looked less desperate than he felt.

"I see," she said, her voice soft and sympathetic. "I've prayed to the gods in my time here even without knowing if they can hear me with the barriers between us. Travel between worlds is often discomfiting, I've found. Perhaps there are spirits here and they cannot be summoned in the same manner? Speaking a different language, you could say?"

She was reaching, grasping at straws she didn't even fully understand, but it was clear he didn't enjoy feeling powerless any more than she did.

"It's possible." His voice made clear how little hope he held out for that. There were different languages among spirits, it was true - but it didn't make him any more able to summon spirits who only made contracts in a tongue he didn't know. The world felt emptier without them, larger and not crowded enough; like a nightmare of falling, where the ground always fell away.

He wanted to appreciate her kindness, especially in this place. (He was intensely grateful already that, five minutes into a first meeting, she showed no intention of murdering him.) But something about it still grated, still tasted just a little too much like pity - What does it matter to you? he wanted to snap. They gave you back your magic.

He wasn't stupid enough to start an argument unarmed, though. "How do you plan to entertain them with yours, then?" he asked, leaning down to gather up the remains of his circle. "If it's as you say-- if they return power for their own entertainment-- perhaps they'll be expecting you to earn the privilege."

"I don't plan on entertaining them at all," she said, her voice suddenly cold. "And I'm hardly going to perform for the privilege of my birthright." Her annoyance wasn't directed at Neffa, but towards the Gamemakers themselves. She had realized the return of her powers, however temporary, would come with expectations and she had no intention of living up to them.

"Then you have no intention of killing anyone?" That was said more carefully, a little more casually, in a way that he hoped would not inspire any ideas. He supposed her intentions must be peaceful, as performance and brutal murder were synonyms in this place, but he saw no reason not to approach potential hostility with caution.

The question was not only cautious, but cautionary - so far as he could tell, they weren't impressed with rule-breaking here, and he was fairly certain pacifism counted as rule-breaking.

"No, I don't," she said firmly, then sighed, very slightly. "Although what I intend is not always what I feel necessary in the moment." She gave him a brief smile. "If you're asking if I'm about to attack you for the sake of a show or a preemptive strike, then no, I have no such plans."

"A great relief to me, I can assure you." His smile was weary, but he gave it his best.

He glanced down to untangle the pile of broken string-circle in his hands, folded it twice together, and stuffed it into his pocket (Oh, just leave it, something bitter muttered into his ear, and he turned his focus back to Diana, away from it).

"Well," he said decisively, taking his hand off the tree behind him (his legs seemed far more willing to support him now, which was good). "May your returned power be of benefit to you." It was a magician's parting blessing, the more general of the ones he knew. "I find I've been crouching in one hole long enough. Perhaps there's a spirit on the other side of the river with family in Ristopa." His tone made clear how much he expected that, but staying in one place was beginning to make him feel anxious.

"Perhaps," Diana said, attempting to sound optimistic. She was tempted to offer her services as an escort, he was nervous enough that she doubted his fighting abilities, but she needed to get back to her own camp soon. And he had no reason to trust her, not yet. Instead she offered what little she could spare. "I'll ask my gods to watch over you, at least until you've contacted a spirit with success." One more person to pray for in here.

He laughed-- it was kindly meant, that was clear enough, but he'd spent so many years more or less ignoring the gods that there was something funny in calling down the attention of so many of them at once now. "And I'll do the same. Maybe between the both of us, we'll find one willing to listen, eh?"

He gathered up his rat, bowed, turned a quick circle, chose a direction, and ran. Maybe the next place.

Come on, gods. The next place.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

dance, magic, dance~~

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Hope you don't mind a late tag!

not at all!! :D anywhere in particular you want this to take place?

Frontierland!

eeeexcellent

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toon town

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Fantasyland

sorry for the late tag!!

no worries!

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