[IC] TotMV:G2: Servant's Quarters (Travel Phase)

[DragonRage]

"You think you can undo Kozilek's curse?  A lot of people have said that," Lexiel says, "Well, I won't stop you, though only because being able to see again would greatly increase my ability to dispense justice.  However, I am obliged to warn you that the last three people to try this failed, and were not happy about the backlash.  Kozilek might be dead now, but his magic is as persistent as ever."

[StormLord]

Morgan smiles slightly, "Good, that means it'll be a challenge.  And don't worry, I'll take the proper precautions.  Now I'm going to have to ask you to stand over here." He gestured to a fairly clear and clean area in the center of the room.  Morgan then reached into his bag a pulled out three pieces of chalk, a pure white chalk, a grey chalk with black speckles, and a yellowish brown chalk.  He painstakingly drew five circles on the ground around Lexiel, the outer two in grey and the second from the inside brown.  He draws a series of repeating, arching glyphs in white in the innermost ring.  In the next ring he uses brown and draw a series of glyphs that seem to depict something being cut or broken.  On the third ring he uses grey chalk, drawing shields and fracture lines leading to them, he draws similar glyphs in the fourth ring albeit offset from the last ring.

Next he draws four smaller circles connected to the larger group, one in white, one in brown, and two in grey.  More glyphs in these circles, a spiral in the small white circle, a seemingly random pattern in the small brown circle, and a regular pattern made of strait lines in the two small grey circles.  He finally puts the chalk away and removes several other things from his bag, a carved white marble statue of a tower or rook, a small knife, and two small fragmented pieces of some sort of opalescent crystal.  The marble rook goes in the small white circle, the two crystals go in the grey circles and with the knife he cuts the back of his forearm, dripping blood into the brown circle.

With that done he cleans and returns the knife to his bag, and then pulls out his wand.  With it he scratches glyphs into the air around the many circles, and slowly knits them together to form a single large net or web around the ritual.

Morgan steps back and looks at his work, "Not bad if I say so myself." He reaches into his bag again and pulls out yet another(and larger) piece of that strange crystal, he holds it in one hand and his wand in the other.  He raises his wand and with it starts the ritual, all three crystals begin glowing and the blood seems to evaporate into a fine red mist, the rook simply stands there seemingly unchanged.  "I forgot to mention" Morgan shouts through the defensive wards "This is going to hurt more than that banishing spell.".  As the ritual progressed slowly the blood mist would be consumed and Lexiel would feel as if someone was running a scalpel around her head where her halo now rests, though no wounds would seem to come of it.

Should the ritual backfire three layers of defensive wards help protect Morgan and Marisa, while a single inner ward of reflection protects Lexiel.

[Hal Henderics]

The Heart Doctor faces two very dangerous foes, each one more viscious than the last.

 

The first Knot defeated within Marisa's heart, the pain of discrimination from her own town, this knot took the form of an Aged Horned Demon, wearing the clothing of a simple villager, and using deceptive clothes, hurtful remarks, and it's Flaming Torch and Pitchfork to accost Laver, It held the power to duplicate itself, and the power to steal away the power of healing, but neither of them were a match for Laver's Lightning quick Blade, aided by Metal Sonic's Accord, Laver struck down the demon, using his own brand of trickery to mock it in it's final moments.

 

The second Knot, however, was nothing to laugh at.  A hulking Demon King, Wearing a crown of gold, it bore atop this crown four twisted dolls, which mocked and belittled our hero,  It's Twisted sword crying out accusations of it's own damnation, This monster took to Laver's own strategy, Healing itself and Weakening him as he did the same, the fight lasted seemingly for hours, as each side refused to give up so much as an inch of ground in the healing war, The Demon fired blasts of black magic, blowing away Laver and deflecting his attacks, while the Vibes that Laver sent towards the monster seemed to do nothing but prolong the inevitable,  The beast even used poisons, sapping Laver's strength further with every passing moment.  It was only when Laver came upon the silly idea to use his blade's healing properties on his own head that the tide began to turn, Laver would restore all of his wounds, while the demon's dark font of power began to wane, perhaps it was divine providence, stealing away it's twisted mockery of the Cleric's Arts, or maybe it was it's own weakness.  Maybe still it was Marisa's own willpower that saved the day, as her help allowed Laver to infuse his weapon with her magic, and strike down the demon.

 

It is then that Laver returns again, Hunched over and breathing.

 

"That stupid Sulfur, I hate that smell."

 

"Does anyone have a bottle of water?"

 

He asks, wiping soot off his face and trying to shake the numbness of poison out of his veins. It seems he never actually managed to cure whatever poison seems to be in him while he was in that fight.

[Chevaleresse]

"Ah, hell, Laver, are you alright? Here, uh, gimme a second." It was a good thing that Marisa had mastered the art of survival spells; she took an empty vial from one of her pockets and quickly spoke a small incantation in some indecipherable language over it; the beaker quickly filled with clear water. "People always tell me it tastes like soot, but this should help a little." She held the bottle out toward Laver. "By Avandra, it looks like someone rolled you through a bonfire. Made of swords." 

[Hal Henderics]

"Yeah, funny how that works. I kinda had to go into your special hell to fight your demons.  Your Heart should be clear for now."

 

He drinks the water, sighing refreshedly.  Before his grin is wiped away by a more serious matter.

 

"Ultimately, I tell all of my patients this, but I do not want you to feel pressured. It is unlikely that those Knots will return, so long as you face the emotions that brought them to be, and understand them with a clear mind, either that, or you simply take care to keep your head clear when encountering things that would cause you to backslide into your old habits.  However, I always offer a Checkup after the fact, just to make absolutely sure the emotions involved are able to be resolved in time."

 

He takes out what looks like a soup can. It has a glowing blue string hanging off of it which seems to fade into nothing.

 

"This is an arcane device capable of communicating verbally along and listening into the strings of the heart.  Much like the one used by children, it can allow you to communicate with anyone on the other end of the line.  If you like, I can help you attach them, and make some calls in private, if you feel that would help.  There are 4 Primary Strings that made up your largest and most terrible knot.  I can also listen to them, or allow you to listen to them, to hear the memories that made those strings up.  Whether it be to cut ties or to remember the bonds that made up those heartstrings, the choice is yours."

 

 

[Chevaleresse]

"Well, I can think about those four without wanting to cry or break something, so that's a start." She sighed. "They were the first group I traveled with. I met them almost right away after I left home." She glanced at the soup can, the slight flickering of the magical torch that consisted of the room's lighting glinting off her brass-colored eyes. "I'll have to think about that. Those conversations are going to be hard. Really hard. I. . . don't think I want to cut ties with them, though. We had a lot of good times and I'd like to at least find out what they're doing now. I'll have to explain what happened there at some point, huh?" She directed the question at Laver. "Or now, I guess. Looks like those two are, uh, occupied."

[Hal Henderics]

"I'm all ears mam."

 

Laver smiles, suprisingly ruefully for his age.  He seems to have done this before, but with no less respect for the person in his metaphorical therapy chair.

[Chevaleresse]

"Well, let me think so I don't screw up the details. I was, what, seventeen at the time? Eighteen? Honestly I should remember that better, that was before I started jumping between places running off different calendar systems and all that. . . Anyway. Long time ago. I was with this group of four other adventurers; they'd picked me up a couple years back after I got out of my hometown." She still winced slightly at that mention. "I'd gained a lot of skill in a pretty short amount of time during that, and I helped them fight off this evil overlord type. Said his goal was saving the world, but pretty sure that was just to sway you over to his side; I know someone who's full of shit when I see them."

 

"Anyway, to the actual story. We're storming this guy's underground lair. Felt too easy going in, and it was; half his army and all of his elites were with him when we got to the bottom of that place. We were pressed into a corner and the corner was filled with sharpened stakes, with some broken glass on the ground for good measure. There was no way we were making it out of there alive; Tiberius had taken a shot to the shoulder that screwed up his sword arm, Martha was pretty much just praying and hoping at that point, you get the picture. So I did something desperate. Called up an imp messenger and told him to bring an archdemon a deal: he gets us out of there alive, and then he gets my soul."

 

"I haven't seen destruction on a scale like that for a long time. Overlord guy ended up as a burning club that the bastard crushed his lieutenants with. I had demons rushing to my fingertips wherever I pointed, tearing anyone who even thought about threatening me or my friends to pieces. I almost enjoyed it." Marisa closed her eyes for a moment. "Of course, I knew what was coming, even if they didn't. Once we were out in the sunlight, it was time for me to pay my end of the deal. I faded in midair right there. I didn't even get a chance to finish saying goodbye." She shakes her head.

 

"I waited for so long for them to come and get me. I don't know why; there was no way of them knowing it was even possible, let alone how to get there. It's just. . . there's still some part of me that says they should have tried harder. The knowledge was out there. It was buried, hidden and under lock and key, but it was out there." She sighed again. "That's why I never went to see them after I escaped. I figured that there wasn't a point; they didn't bother to come and get me, so why should I care what happened to them? You helped me get past that, finally, but. . ."

[Hal Henderics]

"Can I let you in on a big secret?  I've seen this sort of thing happen so many times, and cause more pain than you might think."

 

"Sometimes there just isn't anyone at fault.  Or there isn't anyone left alive to take the blame."

 

Laver shakes his head.

 

"I don't think anyone there did a single thing wrong.  I just think that everyone there hit their limit, somewhere along the line."

 

"I've always wished that I could live to see a world where things like this don't happen. Not that bad things should not happen to good people.  That's Naive.  I just wish there was a world where everyone had the strength to weather life when it goes wrong, and the wisdom to be able to force themselves to accept that it was just a bad situation."

 

"I'm lucky, I get to punch a lot of problems until they go away. A lot more than most."

 

"I'm sure if they knew which problem to punch, they would have fought with their lives to get you back, but for a lot of people, it's easy to become lost.  Both in here and in here."

 

He points at his head and his heart.

 

"Just try to be strong in the real way.  Sometimes all we can do is understand that a lot of terrible things don't have a face we can hit, or a cause we can lay blame to properly. It's hard to even me to accept that."

 

"When I think about that problem, I try to remember that I want to get better, instead of bitter."

 

He pauses.

 

"That's all I've got."  He finishes.

 

(beat)

 

"Also, I think your Knot poisoned me."  He jokes, before heaving over in pain.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2017 by Hal Henderics

[Chevaleresse]

"Uh, shit, I suck at curative spells, um . . ." She glances at Lexiel, and at the massive magical ritual currently drawn up around her. "Just, uh, scream if this lights your insides on fire or something. It should stop if I just cut it off. Probably. Um." She places one hand on Laver's head and makes a couple odd gestures with the other, and speaks two words in what seemed to be the same language from earlier. Laver would feel a faint burning sensation followed quickly by the poison fading out of him. 

[DragonRage]

With a rush of magic and a loud 'pop', Lexiel's halo snaps upward to hover just above her forehead, glowing warmly.  Unfortunately, that isn't the end of it.  Kozilek may be dead, but his magic endures, and it's in no mood to be cooperative or respect the usual rules about what it can or cannot do.  It bounces off Lexiel's reflective ward with a cartoonish 'poing!', rushes out of the circle, barely slows at the defensive wards, and...

 

It sticks Morgan's wand to his forehead.  [OOC:  If you don't think Kozilek's magic should backfire in this particular way, PM me and I'll edit my post accordingly.]

 

As Morgan goes cross-eyed to examine his new hood ornament, Lexiel opens her now-uncovered eyes.  Her whites are pure and uniform, with no visible blood vessels, and her irises a deep, cool blue.  Lexiel's eyes snap to Morgan's face, and she starts laughing.  Quietly at first, but quickly picking up steam until she's on her knees, pounding the floor as tears stream from her eyes.  It's an incredibly beautiful sound, like listening to an entire church choir singing, and almost makes up for having his wand stuck to his forehead.  If Laver were to be looking at the angel, he'd see one of her largest, foulest, and most twisted knots detatch from her and fall into the aether before unravelling and vanishing.

Edited June 7, 2017 by DragonRage

[Hal Henderics]

"Ahh, Much better." 

 

"Probably would not have felt good with that junk in my blood pipes."

 

"Oh what the heck, looks like the lady over there is getting her problems solved. We better get to work, or there won't be any mental instability left to fix!"

 

Laver takes her hand and walks her over to Lexiel, who seems to be really having a good time right about now.

 

"I think we need that floor mam" Laver jokes

[DragonRage]

Lexiel stares at Laver for just long enough to be awkward, and then starts giggling quietly to herself.  "You have blue eyes," She informs the boy between fits of laughter.

[Hal Henderics]

"Your eyes are pretty cool too lady!"

 

Laver says, after getting a good look at her face.

[Strider]

Edmond watched the proceedings. He listened to the Heart Doctor, as he diagnosed the problems. Lexiel couldn't even consider something that seemed to her unheroic. That made sense. When Marisa brought up the consideration of good not being a choice, Edmond had to stop himself from diving into the conversation with his own take on the philosophical quandary. When the two groups split up, Edmond found himself unconciously paying more attention to the Heart Doctor and Marisa. How old is this boy? Fourteen? The Heart Doctor seemed to be able to pull up these people's worst memories. It was obvious that he could see these "knots", but convincing people to talk about them? Were Lexiel and Marisa simply cooperating, or was this another of the adolescent's talents? When it was mentioned that the mage had sold her soul, Edmond gave a small inaudible gasp. He wasn't sure whether he should listen as the two went over Marisa's past, but he had been invited into the room...

But then, when, Lexiel's halo was removed, Edmond turned, and laughed along with them.

[StormLord]

Morgan simply sighed as he still held the handle of his wand near his forehead.  "Well, I'm glad it worked, and I can't even say this is the worst back-fire I've gotten from a ritual." Morgan smiled and turned around to look at the other three "You all should get in a good laugh while you can as well." Morgan then walks over towards Lexiel and runs his foot through each of the four large rings breaking the circles and releasing Lexiel.  "I'll be returning shortly." Morgan says as he fade from view.  Once in the void and sufficiently far from the castle Morgan uses the near infinite mana in the void combined with his own knowledge to rip the wand off his forehead and rebind the curse tricking it into simply holding together his wand, making it near indestructible.  When he returned to the castle you would see a red stripe of still slightly irritated skin where the wand had been stuck, but none the less his wands was in his hand and with it he cleaned up the remaining ritual and then picked up the marble rook returning it to his bag.  "I believe I managed to rebind the curse, it should now be holding together my wand making it near unbreakable.  So it seems we both got something out of the deal."

[Chevaleresse]

"Okay, yeah, that's pretty funny." Marisa got her giggles in while she could. "Who knew magic from eldritch horrors beyond our understanding could provide so much comedy?" Eventually, her expression of mirth faded to a more neutral one. "Alright, we've still got some work to do before we relax. I figure I can try to readjust that binding while Laver takes a break." She looked over the boy for a moment. "You feeling all right, by the way? I didn't cook anything I wasn't supposed to, right? Healing's not really a specialty of mine." Turning back to Lexiel, she asks another question. "So. I'll let you give me the word to start. My plan is to basically just try and snag the part of the spell that actually targets it, and redirect it somewhere meaningless. Like your elbow or something. Or the space three feet to the right of your head. That work?"

[Hal Henderics]

"Nah, my heartstrung sword is fire-element too, so I've got experience getting cooked, heh."

 

Laver comments off offhandedly.

 

He picks a wall and lounges against it, sitting down.

[DragonRage]

"I can't think of any reason not to try that," Lexiel replies, after considering the problem a few minutes, "Even if it's not the kind of spell that has a set target, that would just mean nothing changes.  Give it your best shot.  Please."

[Chevaleresse]

"Alright. I'm gonna need you to drop any defensive wards or enchantments. If you've got any up, of course. I'd rather not get set on fire or electrocuted for this." She waits a moment, taking the time to do another set of incantations; to those in the room that could see magic, it'd look like she was building some sort of set of. . . magical chopsticks? Something needle-like but capable of grasping at the same time. "I'm not gonna lie, this is making me really nervous. Usually, if I run across something with this much power behind it, I look for a way around or just drop the issue entirely. . ." Marisa prodded at the magic suffusing Lexiel lightly, mostly testing for a response and trying to get a better idea of the structure of the thing.

[Strider]

The time had arrived, it seemed. And Edmond found himself incredibly anxious. They were taking a chance with Lexiel's life. A failure could mean Lexiel's life, or, based on what he had heard, perhaps everyone in the room's life. A success, though, could prevent future calamities. Edmond's nerves were made manifest when, in anticipation of the coming demonstration of magic, he both attempted to retreat from the possible danger, and lean forward to get a better view. He stumbled, but immediately righted himself, and leaned in properly.

[DragonRage]

Lexiel doesn't actually have any wards, but her aura does provide a measure of passive defense, and she does her best to shut it down before standing very still in front of Marisa.  Marisa's exploration of the enchantment reveals that there's a lot of mana in it, of the white, blue, and green variety, heavy on the white.  The enchantment itself is very robust, with redundancies for a lot of things.  However, on the positive side, it's also very straightforward and easy to understand; whatever laid it seems to have substituted brute force and sheer quantity of mana for skill.  Furthermore, red mana seems to have bled into it from Lexiel, eroding the magical matrix somewhat, and the enchantment appears to have been designed to be connected to an external power source.  Presumably, that source is the plane of Bant, as it isn't currently hooked up, which means that while the enchantment has a lot of power left, its structure is a bit brittle and its ability to resist outside intervention finite.

[Chevaleresse]

"Alright, well, good news is that it's not actually that complicated. Hell, I could probably reverse-engineer it if you gave me some time. . ." She trailed off as she refocused herself. She was leery of the amount of energy still present in the enchantment, but it shouldn't be too hard to deal with. She mentally separated out the part of the enchantment responsible for the behavioral restrictions, and then followed that about until she found the part of it responsible for targeting. "And a plane's worth of mana, too." Assuming she found what she sought, she applied her tweezers in such a way to "bend" the enchantment so it either fed back on itself, or tried to correct the behavior of something meaningless, like the aforementioned elbow. If she didn't, she'd try to insert one herself that replicated the effect, trying to do so with mostly her own blue mana if at all possible so that it wouldn't shock or compromise the matrix at all. 

[DragonRage]

Marisa is able to grab the enchantment in a few tries with her arcane tweezers, bend its targeting parameters until it feeds back into itself instead of Lexiel with relative ease, as the targeting seems particularly damaged, and fix it into place with a hefty blue-mana patch.  It seems like it's working perfectly at first, but then it starts glowing brighter and brighter, becoming visible even to the untrained eye as the targeting runes feed back into themselves, rapidly burning the enchantment's power supply up even as they build to critical mass.  Everyone in the room has just enough time to dive for cover before the whole thing, and Lexiel, detonate with a sound like a giant stepping on a glass-blower's shop, sending waves of raw mana blasting outward!

 

The magical explosion washes over the entire room, bathing it in raw power, while a single glowing mote hovers in the center of the room, shifting through colors both recognizable and sanity-pinching.  Slowly, the immense amounts of ambient mana are drawn toward this point alongside what looks like wisps of the void itself, covering it in energy that shapes itself into a vaguely humanoid form.  The energy seems to condense, slowly, from a person-shaped blob into someone who looks a lot like Lexiel herself.  The facial features and body type are the same, but her skin is a healthy tan instead of the unearthly pale tones she had before.  Her hair stays platinum blonde, but dipped with red at the ends, and her four wings take the same colors on.  Her eyes look more human, but retain their piercing, almost-neon tone.  And her halo of light seems to have been replaced with a circular, lazily-shifting lightning bolt, though it has not returned to over her eyes.  Most of her clothes have remained the same, though the fabrics are colored white instead of what they were before, and a distinctive insignia of a Boros signet nested inside Overwatch's sigil has been stamped over her heart, and on each shoulder.  The same aura of speed and inspiration washes over the room, just as strong, but somehow cleaner.

 

"Holy shit.  Did I just explode?," Lexiel exclaims, "Holy shit!  I can say 'Holy shit'!"

[rustytengo]

22 hours ago, Cronos5010 said:

Mot idly waved at the Shy woman named Bridgett's pendant, it was hardly the most unusual thing he has seen, and she didn't seem to be in the mood for questions, although...."If I may ask, what were the two of you doing inside?".

"Umm....nothing really i was just refilling cartridges up.  I used up a lot of them on the last....mission i guess you could call it that." Bridgett replied.  "And what is your name." Mornings Arrow chimed in again as Bridgett finished.