2021-06-16: Suddenly Magilou

• Log: Suddenly Magilou
• Cast: Riley Arwell, Xander Lovell, Magilou
• Where: Shrine of the Light Trial
• Date: June 16, 2021
• Summary: The Fangs flee to recover from failed attempted murder, sharing a vulnerable moment before SUDDENLY MAGILOU!!

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========================<* Shrine of the Light Trial *>=========================

Hoel, the Shrine of the Light Trial, is a buried ruin underneath the sands of Bikanel. Descending into it requires entering through the roof, for the front door has long been completely buried by sand. The main room of Hoel is a circular one, with a higher balcony, which circles it. No access is immediately obvious. A large mural, divided into thirty-six sections, depicts Althenan dogma, while gemstones of many colors hover above.

The first floor has numerous hallways as 'spokes,' which lead to smaller chambers and various dangers. There is one door on the central north axis, on the second floor. This leads into an area where Elw teleporters can be found.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTIwbusbN1g

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

After escaping the fight, Riley sought shelter in what had been the Fangs' original destination -- the shrine of light that serves as a bridge between worlds. He's found a room that isn't overtly dangerous, but is, however, a crypt -- a fact which doesn't do his nerves any favors as he raids Xander's medical supplies to try to patch him up.

The damage isn't as bad as he feared -- Xander doesn't look like someone who's been riddled with bullets, which raises his its own questions. But it looks serious enough to Riley -- there are wounds to bandage and bleeding to staunch -- some of it accomplished by Xander's own hand.

One of those vials Xander carries is an injectable version of his healing medicine, probably... but Riley doesn't remember which one, and doesn't want to accidentally put poison into his bloodstream or something.

Once he's done all he can with the makeshift medical knowledge he's picked up from observation and osmosis, he leans back against what is probably a sarcophagus, while letting Xander rest against him and brushing a hand over his hair.

"...Xander, I'm so sorry. It wasn't really your fault, it was my fault. Please wake up." He's been murmuring things like that all along, but now that his attempts at doctoring are done, there's nothing left to do but worry.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

No one wound was severe, but Xander still willed his body to act beyond the limits of the flesh. It demanded increasing force from their opponents before exhaustion had finally claimed him. With his strength drained away, his breathing is soft, his heartbeat slow, his body unmoving.

He does not so much as flinch or murmur during treatment, and is equally unresponsive in Riley's arms. Xander rarely sleeps so deeply, always restless, often startled awake. Today, Riley's left to worry a while longer yet before Xander finally lifts the lid of his eye open.

Reality trickles back in a drop at a time. His fingers twitch before he drags his hand over his face, unfazed when a thorn accidentally drags across his skin. He looks to the cut, watching pale flesh turn to a thin line of red.

You'll live, Rebecca told him, and he still doesn't know why she would try to guarantee that. Dean's shots did not aim to kill while he pleaded with them to try again. To find the hidden third option that had escaped Xander for so long. And Avril -- with that intensity, and her desire much like his own in protecting who mattered to her most -- steadfastly supporting their foolish optimism.

Xander stares ahead into nothing, tears streaming down his right cheek in silence.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Xander awakens. But he seems... distant, in a way that brings Riley back to when he retreated into himself for so long.

For all that this is a sign that he's stable, the edge of worry in his voice grows sharper.

"...Xander? Are you here with me?" A wince. "Careful of your thorns..."

One of Riley's own hands is a bit torn up from lowering them into the ruin on thorny vines. He reaches out and then thinks better of it, withdrawing that hand as the other still rests in Xander's hair.

There's a sinking feeling of helplessness when Xander starts to cry. "...I'm sorry," he says again, lowering his head. "It's just what you said would happen. I guess we really can't have friends."

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

He shouldn't have listed off all those names. They're fresh on his tongue. Fresh in his mind. And what would it have meant to add the likes of Avril, or Rebecca, or Dean to that list, after everything said and done? Would Riley still be able to look at him then? Could he be at peace with Xander taking everything away again and again?

They failed. Is it regret or relief that's spilling out of him right now? He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't know what to do or what to feel.

Riley's voice reaches him a few moments late, and for the first time, he notices the warmth against him and sucks in a sharp, stuttered breath. He's afraid to look back.

"We can't," Xander says, soft and quiet because anything louder will break -- assuming he had the strength for it. "... But it wasn't stupid to want them."

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

The feeling of shame is still powerful and lingering. It's all jumbled together, the betrayal, the way Avril put who and how many at the forefront of everything, where it probably should have been all along, if he was still trying to be a good person. Rebecca and Dean's empathy. That terrifying thread of hope Dean dangled in the end.

The message seemed to be we understand, but we can't let you exist like this.

But they did let them go. And now what's do be done except try never to cross their paths again?

Except for that offer...

"...he said he might be able to purify us. Do you remember that?" Riley asks quietly.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Xander can't afford to be relieved. If they meet again, he has to be able to go that far. Because... for all their words, for all their hope, he knows how it ends.

...And even if they win... it won't be without its own scars. What does anyone have to gain from this?

An unexpected offer of purification, evidently.

Xander's every muscle tenses, those words coiling him like a spring. He does, vaguely, remember Dean trying to claim purification in the midst of the battle, before everything was lost in panic and hurried decisions.

"Do you remember what happened last time we thought someone could purify you?"

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Do you remember what happened last time we thought someone could purify you?

"He probably would have mentioned if he meant he was going to kill us first."

Riley interrupts himself with a sickened laugh. "...I guess that's what I thought last time, too. But I think he was fighting us with rubber bullets..." Does it even matter if Dean wouldn't kill them? Avril would. And if purification failed, that might be the next step. It wouldn't be done with malice. It wouldn't be anything personal. It would just be... common sense. Their lives aren't worth more than the ones they take.

Only to one another. Not even to people who understand. They really... can't have anyone in their lives who isn't also making these kinds of crazy, horrible choices.

He doesn't even think he believes Dean's purification could work, but a crazy part of him still wants to try, maybe just to prove that he hasn't completely given up his humanity and gotten comfortable with using other people for food...

There's a long sigh as all these thoughts swirl around.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

"He can want to save us and still be wrong." Like Xander was wrong. He tenses further, but grimaces with it. The strength to do it bleeds out of him, leaving him feeling heavy against Riley. It's too soon.

The offer hurts. How often does Xander chase after thoughts of hope, and now here's one to take...? Isn't it too much to expect something without risk? But the risk isn't ever supposed to be Riley's life.

"...Is this one of those things you've already decided you want to try?" he asks, quieter, lacking the strength to argue only to give in later.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

...Is this one of those things you've already decided you want to try?

"I don't know," says Riley. "They're soft but I don't know if they're soft enough to let us walk away twice once the hope of fixing us is gone. I just almost got us killed, I'm not ready to turn around and do it all over again."

His tone softens, his hand brushing over Xander's cheek. "...You scared me. How do you feel? I don't know if I patched you up right. You should have some medicine..."

He goes ahead and gets it out on his own, feeding a piece to Xander and then, reflexively, treating himself to one as well.

It takes him a moment to realize that he did that, and then he looks uncharacteristically guilty about it. The gesture was more... playful than he's feeling, or feels like he should be after his refusal to take the dangers of Drifter Friendships more seriously led to so much pain. Xander being made to recite the names of his first victims...

Riley is so caught up in being weirdly embarrassed at eating a medicinal candy for fun that he's forgotten that he's hurt too, and probably needed it.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

"Is that what happened?" he asks, tentative. "They... let you go?" The thorns are proof Riley didn't kill them, and they kept speaking like they wouldn't kill, either. At least not yet. But it's still not easy for Xander to picture.

Tears still cling to Xander's skin. He's too weak to wipe them away. You scared me. Xander wonders on how many levels that may be true.

"I -- I'm fine," he says, but for once even he doesn't sound convinced while everything that could have been -- everything that still could be -- fights for space in his thoughts. But with Riley's sudden quiet, he finally shifts to look at him.

"...It's not that bad, is it?" he asks, looking to his own share. "Did the taste deprecate?" Xander takes his share, cracking it in his teeth. Taste seems... far away in moments like these. He sighs. "... I can't tell."

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

They... let you go?

"Yeah. Not formally, like 'go live your lives and be free.' But I gambled that people like that wouldn't stike us down if we seemed vulnerable..." Meaning he did the opposite of what Xander likely would have wanted him to do in that situation and laid down any pretense of self defense. It did work. But Riley also feels like he may have found the limits of appealing to good people's sympathies, today.

"I told them I wanted to know more about the purification if we meet again. But we don't have to meet them again. ...unless they find us again..." If it happened once...

The 'I'm fine' gets a doubtful murmur, more stroking of Xander's hair. Hopefully the medicine will help tip him towards mending, at least physically.

...It's not that bad, is it?

"No, it's great, I just... ..." Riley looks off again, uncertain. Xander has always lived and breathed the gravity of their situation. Riley made it into almost his personal mission to do otherwise, to look for things to enjoy and laugh about. And he could tell himself it was for Xander, to keep him from falling completely into the darkness. But in that moment of being seen by people outside of this life they've created, in a situation that wouldn't have even been happening if he hadn't laughed off the risks, it felt hollow and self serving.

"...does it just hurt you more, the way I am? That I don't take things seriously?"

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Xander jerks his attention to Riley in full. "You exposed your back to them?!" He lacks the energy for anger to seep into his voice, his eye wide and terrified. Xander tries to sit up, ignoring his body's complaints as he searches Riley for injuries that he should already know weren't inflicted for both of them to be alive now.

When he spots Riley's thorn bitten hand, he makes a frustrated growl, gently taking Riley's hand in his to hold to his chest. ...He left Riley on his own again. And Riley had to leave himself prone to get Xander's dead weight out of there.

Purification. Whether or not Riley and Xander take that offer, Riley's interest may have bought them time. "I doubt they're going to ignore us. They'll find us again." Xander closes his eye. "I need more information. I need to know it isn't going to kill you. Us. Anything else -- we can fight if it fails." ...What if it didn't? But like parched earth with a long awaited rainfall, Xander has trouble absorbing this new hope as a real idea. The last couple of times left him empty.

Xander eases further with Riley's touch. The medicine works to stitch the flesh of minor wounds and alleviating the tenderness of his bruises. He's tired. He's weak. But at least he's healing.

...does it just hurt you more, the way I am?

Xander flinches. "What? Riley --"

He sets his hand to Riley's cheek to make their eyes meet. "No -- the way you are is -- I --" Even though he was the one who demanded eye contact, Xander's face reddens with the sudden realization of his own intensity as he fumbles over his words. He pulls Riley's head against his shoulder, and doesn't let the thorns of Riley's scalp prickling into his skin stop him.

"...This was dangerous. But you take it seriously when it counts," he says, quiet. Maybe too seriously, Xander thinks, when it comes to love confessions, last requests, and birthdays. "We're still alive. We can handle this. I don't want -- you don't need to change."

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

You exposed your back to them?!

Riley reddens with the accusation, and as Xander starts checking him like maybe he did get stabbed in the back and failed to notice. "I know. I'm sorry. But it worked. It might have even been safer than trying to keep fighting them, under the circumstances..." If he'd brought down just one of them... Avril already made it known she wouldn't hold back when it came to protecting the others.

There's a shy smile at Xander's growling.

"I told you it was my turn to do the vine rope trick," he explains. That was weeks ago, but he doesn't see why it shouldn't still count.

Riley asks Xander if his lack of seriousness is just hurting him, and Xander reassures him, pulling him into an embrace that stings them both.

It all suddenly feels too raw. What happened to the people they were supposed to be, the lives they were supposed to have? How did he actually make these choices?

"I can't believe I really did this to you," Riley says, his voice breaking a bit on the words as he grips onto Xander. "...and I've just been pretending it away or, or trying to live the days we didn't get to have then and have them now because we didn't get to have them when we deserved them... but none of that logic really makes any sense and it's not okay. This isn't okay."

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Xander doesn't like conceding that Riley is probably right. Befriending them at all may have saved them versus having to face them as strangers, if that had happened instead. But the look of betrayal on Avril's face, the way Rebecca seemed to think he was worth risking something for, the way Dean speaks like there's options... It just... hurts.

He breathes out, defeated by all of it. Riley's surviving surrender, the vine ropes, all of it. "...And that was the first curative you took?!" he accuses instead.

Riley's words make him tense all over again. Xander holds him tighter, as if that could keep Riley from slipping away into the same despair that night after the purification. His cheek, still chilled by drying tears from moments ago, is warmed by new ones. "I know," he says. "I know, but -- but it's what happened. It's what we have."

It's all they have.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

                            Press /\ to view skits!

    "Miss Magilou, doesn't it seem like someone's been here already..?"

    "Oh, please. Just because the ancient wards are half-down doesn't mean someone's coming through. They might have just died in the middle!"

    "W-what..?"

    "And we'll find their rotting corpses on the way!"

    "Don't smile like that when you say something that creepy!"

    "Be happy, Bienfu! It's less work for us!"

    "Biennn..."

    ~*~*~*~

    Anyway, getting from Filgaia to Lunar is a drag which everyone's done before. Right, guys? Everyone's done this. Everyone's talked to the absolute buzzkill at the bottom. There are no surprises here.

    This surely means Magilou knows how dangerous it is to do it alone, and yet here she is, cheerfully prancing into the crypt. "Ah, yes!" She declares, brightly, to the Seraph trailing behind her. "Pendrago wants to fight again! You'd think they'd be more grateful, but --"

    "Miss Magilou!"

    "Oh, all right," one hand gesturing high as her gaze and her opinion toss up, "so MAYBE our performance in Loegres left a LITTLE to be desired, but I can't be blamed for my reputation being shredded by that horrible little Majelu, can I?! Besides, new name, new them, I should be applauded in the streets!"

    "MISS MAGILOU!" Bienfu tries again, yoinking on one of her cheerful jester tights and pointing at the heap of murderers currently occupied in the room.

    "Ehhh?" Magilou frowns, quizzically, leaning forward to observe the two of them all huddled up. "Oh!" She brightens up, even as Bienfu stays very FIRMLY behind Magilou, hiding behind one of those festively-coloured legs. Magilou grins, a hand to her hip. "Great! The corpses haven't even started stinking the place up yet!"

    WHY WOULD THIS HAPPEN

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

It's what we have.

It is, and it has to be enough. They're not getting anything else, and they don't even know how much of this life they're going to get. Riley knows how to convince himself it's enough, how to make the most of it and find the good in it, but right now it's just so hard, he just wishes he could go back to how it was, and--

Holy shit they're not alone.

Riley freezes in Xander's grasp, his mind racing to process this new turn of events. That voice.

Is that... Magilou?

She thinks they're dead?? Should they just pretend to be dead and maybe she'll move along!?

N-no, that is... unsafe.

He springs up, standing between her and Xander and brandishing his dagger. And wiping at his eyes a little. "We're friends now, right?!" he demands aggressively. There are a lot of mixed messages in this reaction but it's been a rough day and he's very spooked.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Xander always carries the gloom, and Riley chases it off. What is he supposed to do once the rules are reversed? Riley always knows what to say, but Xander's left reaching into the broken pieces of what he was -- and even that Xander wasn't enough before.

Before he can open his mouth and vocalize something in a rare raw and tender moment, there's Magilou.

Riley's up and Xander tries to follow, but his leg gives out, healing, but not healed. He grimaces, catching himself on his hands and realizing with panic that Riley intends to defend him with a dagger and probably use himself as a shield.

Again.

"Riley!"

In what was surely the result of totally innocent non-murder related activities, Xander's right sleeve is torn and stained almost entirely in blood, though at least that's obscured under his mantle. What isn't obscured is that his eyepatch is missing, and from his eye -- or whatever was left of it -- grows several blooming, red flowers with thorny vines sprawling from the socket to burrow into his cheek.

He looks tensely to Magilou, not believing that they are any kind of friends. There's got to be something he can do --

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou looks at Riley, staggering upwards and holding a dagger like it will erase the tearstreaks on his face. Magilou looks past him to Xander, who can't even manage to get that far, perhaps on account of his creative application of eyesight. Back to Riley, who is really very dangerous with that knife, really.

    Magilou... bursts out laughing.

    "Ahahaha..!" Hand to her knee, ker-slap, the merry witch seems entirely amused. "Slunk in here to lick your wounds, huh? You idiots don't even realise there are, there's Hellions sleeping right next to you, do you?!"

    Still laughing, Magilou manages to point to the undisturbed crypts.

    "You're really too much..!!"

    Bienfu, at least, doesn't seem nearly as off guard, watching Riley and Xander carefully and carefully making sure he's behind Magilou at all times.

    "Hahaha... oh, put the knife down, you incontrovertible dweeb," Magilou may well seem to read Riley's very thoughts as her laughter finally dies down a little, and she waves a hand loosely in his direction. "Did I tell you I'm not in the business of murdering people yet? Sure, I'll make exceptions, but not for you two, you're adorable. Juuust don't move those graves around, okay, cuties?" Finger-guns and a wink, "after this long, all those lizards are a touch ornery."

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Is... laughing at him a ... good sign? His pride does sting regardless. Maybe it ought to feel good after horrifying the trio with how awful they actually are to have someone else who knows their deal not taking them seriously.

Riley is in better shape than Xander, but still looks a mess, with dried blood and bruises on his face and several insults to his arm, including a puncture wound in the shoulder and torn flesh on his hand and forearm from a combination of bloodletting and vines bursting free.

"It's fine, Xander, she just serves a different evil master. ...I think." He doesn't sound sure about either of those points.

Magilou warns them that they took shelter among Hellions and calls him an 'incontrovertible dweeb' as she tells him to put down the knife.

"Uhhhh..." he looks at the quiet sarcophagus beside them with new distrust. And then he does stash the knife, but only so he can grab up Xander into his arms and back a good distance away from the sarcophagus, eyeing it and Magilou dubiously in turn.

"What do you mean you're not a murderer?? You set us on fire twice! I was telling Xander my final goodbyes!" To be fair, he tells Xander his final goodbyes a lot.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Is the laughing good or bad?! Xander's holds his breath as he stares at Magilou. One half of his thoughts takes an inventory of where he's hidden each one of his own daggers. The other half is ????!??

"You think?!" he asks Riley in a harsh whisper. But for Magilou: "He digs graves, he doesn't go opening them up!" As if this defense is even the slightest bit useful or that Xander was not somehow included in this warning.

Look, she's keyed him up and that energy's got to go somewhere.

But then Riley goes to lift him up and Xander tries to squirm free with exactly zero of the strength necessary to do that. "Riley!" His face turns bright red. "What are you -- I'm fine -- Put me down -- !"

Not in front of the cackling witch and the ghost cat bat thing Riley can't even see!

(They are a disaster.)

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    "He sure does!" Magilou affirms to Xander, brightly.

    She doesn't seem to be holding a grudge, though. "Oh, my dark mistress has her hands much too full to do anything to the world these days," Magilou says, lightly, which may well confirm Riley's suspicions.

    It's the sort of devastatingly honest Magilou could only approach in a place as full as old ghosts as this, a shade of something untouchable to her knife-split smile, that lid over her eyes which almost obscures the purple there. She doesn't stop Riley from backing away; she doesn't bother getting closer to him, either.

    She claps her hands together to see such a heartwarming sight, but at least stops short of saying 'awww.' "Better put him down," she says, instead. "If he wriggles out and falls, he's liable to break something else."

    Magilou here clicks one of her books open, and it turns out it's /hollow,/ and inside it are... apple gels! Of which she flips one over to the Xander/Riley writhing pile.

    "As for setting you on fire, don't forget that you tried to kill me first, bucko. If you can't take it, you really shouldn't be dishing it out." Magilou sounds entirely casual over the whole almost dying experience. (Bienfu still does not look any shred of casual.) With a sceptical look at Xander's face, she adds: "Looks like you didn't learn much from last time, either. You know your entire shtick isn't going to hold up to the amount of heroes kicking around looking for problems to solve these days, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Oh, my dark mistress has her hands much too full to do anything to the world these days.

"Dark mistress, huh..?" Riley is surprised and yet not surprised to have guessed 'right.' "Who is it?"

What are you -- I'm fine -- Put me down -- !

"You were next to monsters!" Riley explains in a harsh whisper. Apparently he is trying to make up for the oversight of putting an injured and defenseless Xander next to monsters by symbolically carrying him away from the monsters (and destroying his dignity while he's at it).

Against all pleas and good advice, Riley continues to have his hands full with Xander, so when Magilou flips over an Apple Gel, it's up to Xander to either catch it or watch it fall on the ground next to them.

As for setting you on fire, don't forget that you tried to kill me first, bucko.

"Well, yes. I didn't say I didn't earn it, just that it is definitely a thing that happened."

You know your entire shtick isn't going to hold up to the amount of heroes kicking around looking for problems to solve these days, right?

A shadow passes over Riley's face before he covers it with a wincing smile. "It seems that way. But our 'entire schtick' isn't really optional so I guess we fight heroes, now."

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Alas, Riley refuses to release him, and Magilou's right enough that Xander, at least, stops wriggling uselessly. He's resigned enough that he does catch the apple gel reflexively, staring at what he can only recognize to be... a... fruit... snack?

"...What."

With Magilou's criticisms -- and his embarrassment at being carried -- he looks fiercely away from her. "Have you got any better ideas?"

Xander immediately regrets asking her that.

He sighs at Bienfu. "And you don't have to hide. Seraphim are exempt from the bloodlust... You wouldn't satiate the curse. Besides, Riley can't even see you."

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou sighs, a shade of something falling over those hooded eyes. It's a little like fondness, and a little like loss. "A woman I lost a bet to... long ago," she says, a lighthouse on a far shore, glimmers from the distance.

    She offers no further explanation, but luckily, she seems to pull out of that fey mood just as quickly as it came.

    "Shove it in your yap, it's good for you," she explains to Xander, waving a hand at him. "Anyone will tell you Althena's Blessing is one or the other, so don't expect me to heal you." That's an interesting way to phrase that limitation. Bienfu, behind Magilou, adjusts his hat.

    But their shtick isn't optional, they say; does she have any better ideas? Magilou settles back, hand on her hip. "I'm guessing you've tried animal sacrifice by now," she rules it out, immediately. "So from where I'm standing, you've got two options. Keep on getting your derrieres delivered to you, or take one of them up when they inevitably say, hey, let's go punch God until he stops snacking on you."

    There's a brief breath of a pause, as her arms fold across her chest. "Or..."

    Bienfu frowns, looking up at her. "Miss Magilou..."

    "When you dug me a hole," Magilou points out, a hand coming up to curl at her chin as the other grasps her elbow, "those vines were having a merry old time bleeding me out. Are you one-hundred percent sure you need to kill people?"

    "Miss Magilou--!!" Bienfu knows when his best friendcruel mistressvessel is about to do something astoundingly ill-advised; that's just the consequence of the bond they share. He's able to tell before she steps forward and approaches them, palm outstretched.

    "Give me that knife," she says, and it's not a question.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

"...It sounds like you like your evil mistress more than we like ours," Riley says, though he can see there's some sadness there, too, and his tone is delicate.

Then, Xander successfully catches an apple gel. "Apple goop?" Riley queries, based on the scent, with a mixture of doubt and hopeful interest. But Magilou indicates that it's a curative, and he reddens. "Y-you can have it, Xander. Go ahead." He wants to eat the apple goop...! But Xander's wellbeing comes first...

Riley blinks as Xander addresses Bienfu.

"Oh, is my rival here?" he asks, calling back to the time he thought Bienfu might be some handsome invisible (humanoid) stranger who had caught Xander's eye. He has since been corrected on that point, but apparently just thinks it's funny, now. Which means he's cheering up a bit, at least.

Magilou has some suggestions for them and their non-optional situation. Punch god... he flinches. She's not serious about that, right? Or... Are you one-hundred percent sure you need to kill people?

Something angry and defensive flickers in Riley, even though the question wouldn't have been asked if she weren't trying to help them.

"It's got to be lives. But if you need to see it for yourself..." He shrugs at Xander, leaving it to him whether to give over a knife or not. Riley still hasn't put him down, and Riley knows Xander has tons of daggers hidden away on his person.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

That tone in Magilou's voice tugs at Xander with an uncomfortable sympathy.

Xander's familiar enough with curatives that he's reasonably sure Magilou isn't lying about this particular item -- especially not that she had a collection for her own use. But he still cautiously inspects it before giving an experimental nibble.

......

He offers the rest to Riley by placing it directly in his mouth. "...Apple goop."

Did Xander just give away most of a healing item because he thought Riley would enjoy it more? Yes, and he is not accepting questions. But also, Riley did fail to tend much to his own wounds earlier, and if Magilou decides impulsively to set them both ablaze here, at least one of them should have enjoyed something about the encounter.

Riley, as usual, pays him back with suffering. "He's not your rival!"

Xander sighs. "No animals. No Seraphim. No monsters." He looks back at Magilou, slowly accepting his position being carried. "We can't punch the god because we're a part of it. It's the same as punching ourselves at this point."

They're something to eradicate on the way to destroying Valmar, if anyone ever got it in their head to do so, he thinks.

"...Otherwise, I guess I'd take them up on that."

Maybe it's a joke. (It's not a joke.)

Magilou asks for a knife and Xander bristles. "What? No. What --" He looks up at Riley, looking more panicked given that the implication here isn't that she's going to use it on them. "Are you serious?!" He looks to Magilou, then Beinfu, then Riley, then to himself.

Her tone is... worrying. And Xander doesn't want Magilou to make it an altercation to prove a point. He produces a dagger of his own (from where?!) and tosses it at the ground in front of Magilou. "...Fine."

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    "Maybe so," Magilou supposes.

    Xander and Riley proceed to be adorable with the apple goop, and Magilou grins. "See, Bienfu? They're way too adorable to be a problem."

    "Miss Magilou, you almost died!" Bienfu protests, though he does, at least, step out a little.

    "I'm still here, aren't I? So who cares! You have a rivalry to live up to!" No matter what Xander might protest.

    It's strange, though, why Magilou would be so companionable with them, given what Bienfu said is absolutely true. She offers reasonable solutions, and shrugs her shoulder lightly when they're shot down. "Thought not," she says, of alternative sacrifices. "Though hey, maybe cutting off your right hand if it causes you to sin isn't the worst thing you could do."

    She doesn't insist they go punch God, though. She has another idea.

    Bienfu isn't very happy about it. Xander isn't, either, and Riley doesn't sound convinced, but Magilou wouldn't expect he would. Eventually Xander tosses a knife down, and Magilou crouches down to pick it up.

    When she straightens up...

    ... it's like all the light and energy dropped off her expression when she leant down. Her voice is recitation, calling back to the purity of something deeper and darker than the saviour of humanity.

    "We are the instruments of change, hated for our sacrifice..."

    Even a failure is on another level to the hearts which would be consumed by Malevolence. Even a failure can drive that dagger into her palm without the flicker of a flinch, twist the knife with no change on the void of that expression.

    Dripping red down the tracks and trails which tell the tale of her life, Magilou takes her bloody palm and slaps it right on that bloom which is Xander's eye, where the roses have taken root.

    Do they have to die? She asked, as she gives him the blood of someone pure enough to dirty her hands. Maybe they do have to kill normal people. Magilou, on the other hand, was born under a lucky star.

    Grasping his skull, with no shred of inflection: "All she could taste is blood."

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Xander stuffs most of the apple gel into Riley's mouth, allowing him to experience the delicious(?) apple goop. ... this... this is love... Xander really should be the one eating it though! He... will just have to rationalize that it will give him more strength to protect Xander. He could use some more strength. His head is throbbing and his shoulder has been killing him.

He's not your rival!

"He is, though! Show yourself, mysterious seraph that tempted Xander's heart..."

But Magilou has... what seems like something between a point to make and an experiment to try. Something changes in her demeanor, and she speaks words that sound like a ritual... ... she has her own strange powers, and from the strange, blank gravity of her manner, he starts to wonder if maybe she can do something.

He watches with horrified curiosity as she seems to bleed herself without pain, and he fights an impulse to pull Xander away from her as she extends her hand to offer him that blood.

"Is it... doing anything?" he whispers. But he'd feel it too if it were, wouldn't he?

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

"You probably should listen to him, regardless," Xander says to Magilou of Bienfu's protests. Befriending murderers is, no matter how you look at it, a bad idea.

Just ask Avril.

Now Magilou and Riley are both in on the rivalry joke and Xander buries his face in his hands. Well, the good half of his face. "Why."

But dagger given, Xander watches Magilou uneasily. He winces when she cuts into herself. He can't mend that, not without the bloodlust forcing his hand. But then... a... ritual? A spell? And she approaches him.

Xander hadn't expected her to do that. His one good eye widens, but he's paralyzed by hope -- again, that stupid, deadly hope -- as Magilou's bloodied hand is set upon the cursed, floral infection upon it. The flowers thirst for blood, drinking in what there is to offer. Yet they are not sated. They only grow more wild for it.

The dark aura of Valmar descends like a heavy fog over the group -- a chilling aura of death and destruction.

Xander chokes on an utterance, and shoves suddenly off of Riley to stumble away. His leg can't hold him, and he hits the ground in a kneel. Thick, thorney vines rip out of the ground around him, lurching out toward Magilou to lash out like flexible, serrated blades.

He's a weak enough vessel that their attacks are lethargic and any attempts to grasp won't hold long. But even if Xander manages to draw blood, it won't feed them. It's not enough. It's never enough. The flowers in Xander's eye bloom more vividly, more brightly, taking on a haunting mist of a glow in the darkness of the crypt.

The other eye gazes on, blank and empty, while Xander slumps like a broken doll.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    "I'm not hiding!" Bienfu huffs, to Riley, despite the fact that he was definitely hiding behind Magilou not a few moments prior.

    Looking up at Magilou as she makes her efforts, though, the Seraph doesn't put on nearly as many airs. He recognises the words -- the expression -- and the worry is plain on his face. "Just because we're here, you don't have to..." But the protest he launches doesn't land, on her ears or on his lips; he wrings his hand-paws together, and watches her do something plainly ill-advised.

    He's the one who reacts first, around the vacuous expanse of her gaze. "Let her go!" He cries, running to the crouched Xander and banging on his arms with all the efficacy of a breeze against a brick house.

    He has to speak up for her, because for long moments Magilou does nothing; tossed through the vines like a puppet, strings cut, they turn her about, they dig in, and there is no energy to her to even lift her head or remark upon it.

    It's that SILENCE, in lieu of her cutting tongue, which might be the greatest signifier of her own malaise.

    But, "Miss Magilou!" Bienfu cries, and Magilou closes her eyes, and sighs.

    "... better watch your step," she warns, except it isn't a warning so much as an invocation of a spell: "Flood Wall." A water spell, gushing up around her to disentangle the vines from her person. Around her she splits the sea; once she's free, she slumps down to the ground, too.

    At least the water washed the blood from her hand. It's still bleeding, but not quite so smeared everywhere, any more.

    "Too bad," Magilou says, and her vim and vigour is still gutted but she at least doesn't seem so much like a dead woman walking any more. "It turns out ghosts aren't good for anything! Or maybe I still don't measure up." She may as well have dragged that dagger across her face, ear to ear, for all the warmth in that grin. "But they're dead, and I'm not... well, biting bugs, seems there's no way I can help you." Not without becoming more dead than she is now, at least.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Despite Riley addressing Bienfu directly, he can't actually... hear the responses, so the denial falls on deaf ears.

Magilou makes her grim offering, but the flowers are not sated. Instead, the bloodlust in Xander sparks to violent life.

"Shit--shit--shit!" Riley grasps after Xander as he escapes his grip, but Xander sends his sharpened vines on ahead of himself.

A wall of water washes Magilou free, and Xander slumps, the fit seemingly over.

"S-sorry, we don't always have great self control around blood..."

Riley kneels down beside Xander, trying to catch his eye and get some confirmation of his consciousness. "Xander? ...don't leave, come on..." He casts a distracted glance back at Magilou, his attention split with worry even as she says perplexing things. "...what's that about... ghosts?" Is she a ghost? Would ghosts even trigger their bloodlust?

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

The walls crack open, flowers blooming from them. Sprawling vines burst out of the ground like nests of snakes. The whole area is slowly overcome with a growing infestation on a level that, even in this state, Xander doesn't call -- can't call to? -- in battle.

Bienfu's pleading goes unanswered, but true to his words before, not a single vine nor flower dives to strike or attack the Normin.

It takes Magilou's water to flood the area, drowning them. Without blood, everything Xander's grown withers and dies away, petals washed about the crypt around Xander's slumped form. Even the flowers in Xander's eye lessen back to their usual -- if still grotesque -- state, pulsing and writhing as if in struggle and thirst.

"Ri...ley...?" Slowly, his vacant stare finds some semblance of focus. He curls in on himself, taking in a deep, sick breath. "I -- I'm fine. I'm... still here. ...Is Magilou?"

He brings his hand to his infested eye. She must be.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Imagine flowers which wilt when they're watered.

    "Yeah," Magilou affirms, to Xander, "can't get rid of me that easy. Don't worry about it," she shrugs to Riley's apology, a shred of bleariness to the dismissal. "That time, I was asking for it... heh."

    It's a chuckle which shakes at her shoulders, once and once again. "Heh, heh... you really haven't been down here yet, huh? Guess you wouldn't have... you're not exactly in the network." Magilou scoots back to lean against the wall, while Bienfu hurries over to fuss at her in what may very well be a mirror to Riley's own efforts.

    "This is the Light Shrine," she explains, a sense of distance still to the words. "Drifters use it to travel between Lunar and Filgaia, with some clever little gadget or another. The Al Bhed mocked them up from ancient technology... I don't really care how it works," she waves a hand, waving the specifics off. "Maybe stop killing them for five minutes and you'll get one too, who knows."

    She shakes her head, patting Bienfu on the head. "... it's haunted by some old mistakes we made... a long time ago. Lunar's long since moved on... changed its names, changed its mountains. The kids these days don't remember how it was... ah," she sighs, "I don't tend to come through here with other people. Unlike you, I'm not one for digging up graves."

    Magilou's head rocks back against the ancient stone, eyes half-closed. "It's really too bad," she murmurs, and doesn't quite get to saying what.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Riley puts an arm around Xander as he comes back to himself. "...It's all right. Everyone's still here."

Maybe he shouldn't speak on behalf of Magilou that it's all right, but he's rattled, himself. This is the second time that it's felt like Xander almost retreated into himself again in a short period of time. And that calling of so many plants... that's a lot like what happened back then.

He gives a sigh.

"We... we actually came through here before to cross worlds, just not the same path." He squints at her a little as she talks about the distant past like she was a part of it. Then, she murmurs her regrets. His shoulders slump. "So yeah, no... no blood offerings, no substitutions. Just murder."

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Xander flinches at the touch, but in a small mercy to the two of them, he's too weak to reflexively shove Riley away right now. After a moment, he glances Bienfu. Xander's memories of moments like that are hazy at best, but that little voice is still ringing in his ears along with so many other screams. Let her go, let her go, lethergolethergolethergo. He pinches his eye shut and tries to focus on breathing.

"As you so kindly pointed out earlier," Xander says, still closing out most of the world as he lets Riley support him. "We're here licking our wounds, not grave robbing. Us and our evil came from Filgaia, not Lunar."

He cracks his eye open at Magilou. "Exactly how long ago? How old are you?"

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Everyone... aww! It's nice to be included.

    Somehow, Magilou can't muster up much energy to tease Riley about that right now, though.

    ... there's something about her efforts here which seem like they drew from a deep well.

    "Seems that way," she sighs, again, to Riley. "I thought... oh, never mind what I thought." Absently, she scoops Bienfu up, not unlike a stuffed animal, and hugs him to her chest. For a moment, it's like that venom she so casually tosses around to everyone else is aimed squarely at herself.

    The air in her chest releases in a short puff which might have been a laugh, once upon a time, before the vultures set in. "Better not to rob these graves, anyway. This place," she smirks, "is not a place of honour."

    No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, is that it?

    Why, then, are those glass mosaics so glittery?

    "I'm as old as my teeth and my bones," she goes on to explain to Xander, entirely unhelpfully, but at least with a shred more humour. "Besides! Since your evil came from Filgaia, we wouldn't know each other, so don't worry about it!" This, once more, implicates Magilou and evil, and Magilou once more doesn't bother to explain the nuances.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

"Thank you for trying," Riley offers. It's genuine, though tired -- his own energy is running a little low too after all of the...excitement. But she really didn't have to take any interest in helping them at all, especially since they did absolutely try to kill her the first time they met.

"I guess we don't need to know," he says, when she rebuffs Xander's attempt to ask after her age. "We can wait until we've built up a stronger relationship before pestering you about your mysteries." It's joking, but there's a little more weight to it than he means to come out.

We can't have friends, was what they had to face earlier. But evil friends... those might still be allowed. ...As long as she can survive and forgive the occasional bloodthirsty berserker frenzy.

The Fangs make great friends, really!

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Right, yes, Xander forgot. There are no forthright answers with Magilou. And if they aren't cryptic truths obscured by her theatrical flare, it's possible they're outright fabrications.

But there's something else in there too. Something real and raw and... injured? He still can't find the right word for that haunting quality of Magilou that she's experienced something -- or several somethings -- that was too much.

"Fine," he says. "I won't ask again. ... Sorry for... whatever memory this place brings up."

Xander sighs and closes his eye again. They can't have friends, he thinks, but as long as Magilou's going to brush off attempted murder, he's not going to harp the issue.

... But she shouldn't be brushing off attempted murder! Twice!

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou grins, all lopsided, to Riley and Xander. "You're real sweethearts, you know that? Still might kill me in my sleep... but real sweethearts." Both those things can be true! Look at them, thanking her and apologising.

    Still, at least they might not MEAN to kill her in her sleep. These things just happen, sometimes. Like watching a friend get so consumed by their despair that...

    Maybe there's a reason why Magilou isn't dismissing the Fangs, despite the entire litany of excellent reasons she has to chase them off on sight. For all her fabrications, there is something real about Magilou.

    There's something real, and she made it bleed, today.

    For them.

    And, of course, she's not explaining why.

    "Heh, heh... so I'm not about to tempt fate," she says, eyes still closed despite the words she says. "I'm just passing through, anyway... I'll be out of your hair soon. Just give me a minute..."

    Bienfu informs them, sternly: "I've got my eyes on you!!" This is not nearly as intimidating as it sounds, because he is still being hugged like a teddy bear. But he tries. He tries so hard.

    Maybe they're all trying their best, in their own ways.