2022-01-03: What Hell Is Inscribed Upon A Witch?
- Log: What Hell Is Inscribed Upon A Witch?
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Magilou
- Where: Lastonbell - Market District
- Date: 2022-01-03
- Summary: Lan and Magilou share a common experience, and after an arbitrary amount of talking past each other, they realise what they're really looking at.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lastonbell! Lan doesn't come here often, but not because she dislikes the place. It's because she doesn't spend as much time on the moon as she probably ought to. It's an intensely magical place; if there's a method to rejuvenate Filgaia out there somewhere, it might be here!
Although, they do have that weird goddess religion that's all uptight about drinking and heresy and junk. That's a pretty important thing to watch out for.
Hence, she's hanging out in Lastonbell for a couple of days to ask around about any local magical specialties, not drinking, not dancing where anybody can see her, and engaging in only the most discreet of heresy.
For example, she's being a total law-abiding citizen and filling her water bottle at the local well. She hasn't made a lot of progress, but the day is young!!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou, who is a walking heresy crime, is also here. It's far more natural for her to be here, even if she's probably technically wanted on account of all those heresies; she still doesn't look like she belongs, in her bifurcated jester-witch hat and book skirt, but she is at least Lunar's idea of strange.
She is prancing (not dancing! Technically allowed!) down the way, hands out to her sides, and she goes right past Lan, humming a chipper tune.
UNTIL--
Record scratch--
Magilou stops, and starts prancing backwards, which is apparently a thing you can do, until she gets back to the well, again. And she points, and declares: "Hey, it's the crybaby!" EXTREMELY RUDE--
Except then she pulls her hat off, and digs around inside it, only to pull out... no, not a rabbit, Lan. It is a bag, though, which might look familiar to her, because it's still got all her knitting gear inside.
Her hair looks kind of messed up without the hat, which might raise a couple of questions about her hat storage.
Anyway, Magilou unceremoniously grabs that bag and drops it in front of Lan, insisting: "If you're going to leave your stuff lying around, would you mind leaving a forwarding address next time?!"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lunar's idea of strange is the weirdest thing of all.
Lan finishes filling her water bottle and screws the cap back on top. The tasty, tasty liquid refreshment will at some point become her magical mystical ultra-special hippie water (good for what ails you). When does this miracle take place? Nobody knows except for Lan, because she's the one who enchanted the bottle in the first place.
There, that ought to be plenty to tide her over. Besides, water's easy to find on the moon. It's not like Filgaia, where rationing it is second nature. She can get started on asking around--
She sees Magilou just before she hears her. And somehow that's even worse! Lan has just enough time to tense up before being insulted. Is this how Magilou just... lives her life?? Wandering around insulting people?! (Yes and yes.)
"If you're just going to--" She's interrupted by the appearance of HER STUFF, which Lan had thought lost forever in the Great Flounce of Pao, and thankfully it kinda derails the entire 'being really angry at Magilou for being mean' thing. For now.
"...Thanks?" she ventures after squinting at the sorceress for a brief moment. "You carried that stuff around this whole time? I guess, if it's magicked away inside your hat it's probably not a huge deal or anything but it was still thoughtful of you." Which is weird, because it doesn't jive with Lan's most recent opinion of Magilou which is that she's a horrible monster made of malice.
Lan picks up the bag and looks inside ("Oh hey, I wondered where I lost my tatting shuttle!") before slinging it over her shoulder. "...So why didn't you just tell me to go check on Gwen last time, anyway?" she asks instead. She's still a little upset about it, you know!!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Obviously it's magic," says Magilou, whose head is messed up in precisely the way one would expect her hair to be messed up if she were carrying a bag of textiles on it all day.
She'd clearly agree that she's a horrible monster made of malice, but as she's just demonstrated, Magilou will lie to someone's face with an entirely straight face.
Magilou settles back, resting a hand on her hip, as her other hand affixes her hat back where it belongs. (And tilts it down a bit, in the precise cowboy gesture she definitely stole from Ragnell.) "Oh, the way I did it was much funnier," she says, with a mysterious smile which is far too enthused about what happened.
She tosses her hand back, through her hair; her bangs, as ever, land squarely right in her eyes again. Perhaps the universe has a small sense of justice. "... besides," she adds, after just enough beats to let Lan get good and mad about it, "I'm currently having to work around a minor inconvenience, and that just happened to be the best way to ensure someone saw to her. I know, I know," she lifts her hands, in mock modesty, "but do hold your applause over my genius."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan shakes her head. "It wasn't funny to me." Which is probably kind of the entire point, duh! At least she doesn't have the gall to reach out and try to smoothe Magilou's hair back down or anything. Even Lan's kindness only goes so far - and just like being laughed at didn't feel funny to Lan, a gesture like that probably wouldn't feel very kind to Magilou.
"What kind of inconvenience?" Lan... really can't think of an inconvenience that would specifically make someone be cruel to someone else. And imagination's supposed to be her forte, too! "...Is it one of those curses that makes you unable to talk about something?" the other blonde ventures after a moment. "Aren't those usually centered on something besides checking on people? It's just weird," Lan frowns, putting a hand to her chin in thought.
is she for real
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Yup!" Magilou smiles, far too brightly, as Lan says it wasn't funny to her, which may well confirm that it is indeed the whole point.
That smile fades into something more interrogative, though, as Lan follows the breadcrumbs; her arms fold, and a hand rises, to curl at her chin. "Oh...?" Magilou asks, all rising tone and lowered eyelids, with all the inscrutable prompting of a village elder.
This is pretty amusing, too. The crybaby's sharp, Magilou thinks.
"Curses are typically additive," Magilou says, finally. Her hand rests on her cheek; her head cocks to the side, with a cheerful grin. "But what would happen if there were such a thing as a subtractive curse? Of course, something like that wouldn't be a curse at all! It would be something else, don't you think?"
... is it really an academic question?
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Curses, it should be mentioned, are not a thing Lan has a lot of personal experience with. Not the normal kind, the storybook kind, the schools of magic kind; the Stranger may have cursed her, but it wasn't with any kind of sorcery. So when Magilou says they're normally additive, she doesn't quite get it. This is normal.
"Additive... like adding a burden, or adding a restriction?" she guesses after a bit of thought, eyebrows furrowing. "So if it was subtractive, that means what it takes away is the ability to do something?" She may be wandering off after something else entirely.
"...Unless the burden was what it took away... ugh, this is complicated!" the shaman complains, raking a hand through her hair. "So if it's not a curse when it takes something away, what is it?"
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou lets Lan work through the riddle, though she's not still as she listens, weight shifting from one leg to the other all in the sway of her hips. Finally her fingers tap to her temple, head canting cheerfully. "It's a reaaal toughie, isn't it?"
Here her hand lowers, to her stomach; her midriff is bare and unblemished, pale as the rest of her. "I'll tell you," Magilou says, still with that smile, grotesque as the mummer's farce, "lest that little brain of yours overheat." All a sudden the telling is recontextualised; she is not reaching out to Lan, but talking down to her.
"It's loss."
The words fall like a brick into a well, not unlike the one Lan just drew from, dark and drowning deep. Magilou streetches her arms up, and turns, perpendicular to Lan's facing. "If you lose a limb in war, you learn to sail one handed," Magilou says, too casually, as her hands lace behind her head. "If your eyes are burned away, you learn to hear. Of course, you don't thank the soldier... nor the inquisitor." She looks up, to the sky, lifting a foot to tap her toes against the ground behind her. "Even you can understand something like that, can't you? Now..."
Magilou looks, sidelong, to Lan, past her extended elbows. Perhaps it's the angle which makes her eyes dimmer, duller than they were. "What would happen if someone slow to trust were to lose that sense of social reliability? It would scarcely register as an issue, don't you think? Thorns have always been cruel; there is little to question in that. And if someone like that were to get more personally involved, why, it would just be to agonise the protagonists, wouldn't it..?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Heat flushes across Lan's tawny face as Magilou just rubs it in, again. How much cleverer she is, how slow and clumsy Lan is. She has to take a deep breath, eyes closing briefly. It's just noise. It's just spite. Lan doesn't need to be clever, as long as she is kind.
...It feels so hollow to even think that. A consolation prize.
In contrast to Magilou, Lan's middle is far from perfect. A scar is there, twisted and old now - the deep kind of scar left by a wound that somehow managed to not quite be mortal. It still catches occasionally if she bends in an unexpected way.
Even Lan can understand something like that, indeed.
"...I know that I'm not as smart as you," Lan admits in carefully-measured bites, with the reticence of a rusted-over valve turning. "So what, you were cursed to be awful to everybody? Even if they haven't done anything to you. Even if they want to help you?"
It shouldn't sting like this anymore. Not something so simple, so inconsequential. So what if Lan isn't witty, or clever, or smart? She can still learn things, it just takes her a little longer. She can still understand difficult concepts, it just means she has to work harder.
It's just, she hates this. This feeling.
This bitter taste, like ink.
And there it is, stirring in her veins again, in the pit of her stomach, behind the scar the Stranger gave her. Magilou is still talking, about thorns and trust and the things she's lost. ...That she's lost?
Her hands squeeze into fists. "...Yes, you were cursed," Lan murmurs, maybe to Magilou.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou laughs.
It is not a kind thing. There is nothing of the joy of merriment in it, except perhaps the vain reflection of what it might have looked like, before it walked into her funhouse of mirrors. A mean little cackle, sharp as teeth, hers flashing in the sun.
"Hahaha... oh, honey! Sure, sure, you can think that," her arms swing loosely around her, as she sways back and forth on her heels. "But the curse you're talking about is much older than this little annoyance! You see, once upon a time, a wicked little witch was rescued by a shining white sage," all a sudden her heel plants, and Magilou wheels to face Lan again, grinning ear to ear, wide and sharp as an investigating shark. "... and oh BOY, she got HELPED!" It stabs like a punchline, arms thrown out to either side of herself.
"And you want to know the funny thing? You want to know the funniest thing?" She takes a step forward -- she advances -- and it may well only be Lan's poor luck there are no guards passing by to hear Magilou, in this moment. In front of her, it is clear there are two shades to her eyes; not just green, but purple, a vertical gradient across each of them. "Now it's that precise ancient history which has some wretched little fledgeling pecking at my heels! Why, a neophyte of my very own! Shall I continue this tradition, then?! After a thousand years of spite?!"
She wheels; she turns away. It doesn't quite hide the way her arms fold over her chest, fingers clutching at her arms.
"Honestly," Magilou grumbles, all the heat and volume bled from her voice in an instant, "you people. You... you stupid little... genuine people. Even if I thought it was a little much... what's the point of this?" This sickness roiling in her belly ought to feel bad, she supposes. Perhaps that's why she speaks so sharply.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The sudden sharpness shakes Lan out of her half-fugue; she breaches the surface of her little pity puddle to the sight of Magilou's teeth bared. An emotion other than droll amusement or lofty laughter or... or...
((we are all of us wretched creatures, that Magilou had said))
The shaman doesn't back away when the sorceress turns that brittle rage towards her, sharp and shining as knives. It gleams like pain, older and still rawer than Lan's scars.
"..." She stands there as Magilou gesticulates and rants, as she spills poison from her throat because she can no longer spit it into the eyes of her tormentors and it builds, it builds. The corners of her eyes crease, and once again she feels ashamed of herself... but for a different reason.
"A thousand years is a long time to hurt," Lan says eventually, once Magilou has quieted down a bit. "It... must have been terrible."
Because of course it is. Because she should have realized.
What would Magilou look like, if Lan saw her at the bottom of the Dreaming? Maybe cruelty is what she clings to, to dull the ache... and here she is again, with nothing to slip into the dreamer's fingers. The old ache of frustration is there.
"...Do you think it'd do either of you good, to teach them?" Lan has no context for any of this. She's stupid and she knows it. "Do you think you'd do a better job than the person who taught you?" Normally, she'd say something reassuring, right? Something like 'if you try hard and come from a good place, it'll be all right!' But even she can see how very badly this could go. Magilou's probably never even seen a 'good place'.
Somehow, she's got a bad feeling...
And even now, Magilou is hurting. It's plain as pain. And even now, Lan wants to reach out, even past her stung pride and swirling feelings. Because kindness should cost nothing. She settles for silence, instead.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Oh, it doesn't hurt," Magilou assures Lan, without looking back, and the worst part is how flat the words land. They are without peak or valley, bereft of joy or despair; like a boring lecture, she speaks without engagement or energy. "Why, it doesn't feel like anything at all." He was a thorough man, and she, the prototype. And that means...
All that laughter...
But what Magilou says is not always as uncomplicated as the truth. For all her anhedonia, her fingers grasp at her sleeves, and she does not look to Lan.
"As for that..." Magilou looks up, to the blue, blue sky. "... I thought I'd do better, once. I was a foolish child, of course, but the anger kept me focused. Heh... but even at the top, it's not like anyone was about to respect the youth." The noise which hefts from her chest is the mockery of merriment; more a chuff from her throat than a proper chuckle.
She and Velvet weren't that different, she told her, once.
But Velvet isn't here, and Magilou is.
... and he isn't, and he isn't, either.
"But I won." It's a statement which follows both her thought and her speech, and she doesn't bother to explain the difference in contexts. "I won through a fundamental rejection of his misconstrued Reason. I won so thoroughly that I fully reversed the renown of his name. The spymasters became storytellers, dedicated not to lies, but truth. And Lunar forgot." There is a pause, as she takes a breath in. "All the better."
She opens her eyes, gaze lowering, glancing aside to the well. "Now a child comes to me, and in so many ways, he wears the same methods. Crude, unrefined, over-reliant on violence... but the methods, nonetheless. And this time, I am not the first." Her eyes shut, again; her lips form a thin line. "There is the agony, of course. But that hardly matters. I cannot suffer another man like that in this world. I will not see another witch crawl from the crucible of torture."
Another..?
Magilou shakes her head, and unfolds her arms. "... I wonder why it struck me to tell you this," she sighs, and there is, at least, a little more life to her voice now. "Perhaps it's because people like you are the witches of the next era... you are quite talented, you know. Do be careful of strangers on the road." She doesn't quite realise how apt the description is; after all, she asked his name.
Magilou lifts a hand, loosely, in a wave, and begins to step away. "... if anyone asks, I just came here to return your things." She's leaving, just like that..?
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The lack of anything... Lan remembers it well. It had been the first time she'd wondered if there were something broken about Magilou. She'd tried to sweep it away, brush it off as just a weird moment in a weirder night. Because surely everybody has things they hide. Even bombastic performers like Magilou must turn it down a notch now and then.
She was tired, that's all.
There's too much to follow. But apparently Magilou won, even though it cost her. She suffered.
"...I was going to thank you," she begins again, voice rising to follow Magilou as the witch turns away. "Not just for bringing back my stuff. But because you inspired me. And it took a lot of work, but I found what I was looking for in the library, in Shevat. You were right, it was the simplest thing. I was making it too complicated."
And it might have ended there, with two magic-users walking away from each other, if two concepts hadn't slid alongside each other inside of Lan's brain and clicked into place at long last.
"Stranger..." Crucible. Witches. And someone who might as well speak in a foreign language, the only other person Lan knows of who explains and explains and only leaves her more confused than before.
"Magilou... have you met him-- we call him the Blue-Eyed Stranger."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"There you go," Magilou says to the inspiration she gave Lan, so casual it might not even be encouragement. She's soon to leave, after all.
Except...
Lan asks a question to her back, and Magilou pauses. She looks back, eyes all screened behind those curled overlong bangs, green and purple escaping through vertical strands.
"Do you?" She asks, deliberately mild.
"That isn't his name."
The rest she leaves to implication, as she turns back to Lan, a platinum fan at her back before her hair falls by that black ruff at her neck again. "So, you're the one," she says, instead. Her lips curve up, a smile to carve stone. "And not just you... I don't suppose you'd enlighten me as to who else is 'we', in that statement?"
There are certain assumptions in her mind, but she'd rather hear them from the rabbit's mouth, so to speak.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Azazel, Loren had called him. 'That is not my name,' the Stranger had replied, before killing them both again. In the depths of the 'black site' Leah had called Gethsemane, they had been utterly defeated. And yet somehow, here she is. Alive.
"...Well, Gwen's the one who always mentions his eyes. I've always just called him the Stranger." Because no matter how finely, how intimately he wraps Lan like thread around his fingers, she still knows so little about the man that must lie beyond the madness.
"--Wait, I'm the one? The one what?!" Without thinking, Lan takes a step back, as if she were preparing for an attack. She doesn't expect it from Magilou. But as the moment passes, she forces herself to lower her arms. A hand flutters halfway to the scar at her midriff before Lan shoves both hands into her pockets.
A crucible. Magilou said she wasn't the first. The thoughts swirl inside of Lan's head; she's not going to be sick, she's not.
And still she's only ever 'told' Loren. Even Gwen... because Lan didn't want her to know. For so many reasons, but mostly because Gwen is kind too. "Magilou. That boy you mentioned--" No. No way.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"I knew it," Magilou says -- because she didn't, not really, not until this moment. She knew the seeming of him, the way he spoke with such confidence, the way he knew what he was doing. And she knew the way he wished to collect her for his holy war. She knows wars are not fought with one soldier.
There are many things Magilou knows, and that's what makes her so dangerous to victimise.
She speaks without care for assuaging Lan's nervousness, though she doesn't advance on her, doesn't tell her what she's destined for.
"Yes," she says, instead, at length, as Lan starts a sentence she can't quite manage to finish. "It does seem they're the same person." She'll hedge her bets this much; there's still a lot Magilou doesn't know, either, and Lan is a foreigner to Lastonbell and the green country around it. There could be many fey boys who torment the powerful, on Filgaia.
But for now, it's a working assumption.
"... I'm not your enemy," she says, perhaps a few beats too late to be a proper assurance. Her hand rests at her hip; her fingers curl in a loose gesture. "But I don't expect you to help me, either. Run, if you like."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
That's the one good thing about immortality, isn't it? The opportunity to learn.
When Magilou confirms what Lan barely managed to ask, she slumps a bit. "Ugh. I wanted to be wrong..." Because she wanted it to stay small. Because the more people the Stranger sinks his hooks into, the closer he gets to his goal. The harder it will be to scrub him away, to make things right again. If that's even a thing that can be done.
She was just a stupid, foolish girl who wanted to become strong enough to save her planet!
But Lan shakes her head. "Of course you're not my enemy. Even if..." Even if she's hard to understand and obtuse on purpose, Lan doesn't hate Magilou. And she isn't afraid of her.
Lan doesn't enjoy having enemies. It's better not to go around choosing new ones all the time just because someone's obnoxious!
"If you're going to try to stop him, I'll help you. Because I can't run anymore." It comes too easily now, the black ink in her veins and soul. Lan calls it forth, lets the strips and stripes of the Stranger's madness criss-cross her skin where Magilou can see. "He got under my skin a long time ago. Even here on a whole new planet, I can't get away."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"If you are," Magilou offers, still far too mild, on the topic of being wrong, "we have much bigger problems."
That isn't actually reassuring, Magilou.
Her eyes narrow, slightly, as Lan decides they're not enemies -- offers her help. It's a pressing of her eyelids to match her lips, a thin line marred only by the teeth pressing in at the bottom. Of course, she thinks, as she looks in on that darkness. Why didn't she see it before? Ah -- or maybe, on some level, she did.
She did wonder why she would say something like that to Lan. Why she would speak to her, and not any of the other witches...
Magilou watches Lan weave darkness, and thinks of absorption Artes. Take in energy, release power. Nullify resistance.
"One day," Magilou says, or perhaps promises, "he'll be dead, and you'll own it."
There's something a little stiff to the words, more blunt punches than sleek knives. The sickness in her stomach has little to do with that boy; he was just un-fortunate enough to inherit the pain.
But -- there's something in that offer which stands out, to Magilou.
'Try'.
"You're afraid, aren't you?" Magilou presses, head canting, fingers pressing to her cheek. "Illusory power feels insurmountable, doesn't it?"
It's not that she's trying to be cruel, ripping into the heart of Lan's outreached hand. Rather, it's...
Magilou turns, again. Her shoulders lift and fall, in a heavy breath. "I feel nothing for him," she slams the door, and slams her tone, closed-off, distant. "That's why I don't need help. I won't ask you to hold the line. I'll tell you when I've won."
She offered to let Lan run, but it's Magilou whose steps quicken, as she strides away from this tucked-away well, back into the thick of the marketplace.
She said it was loss, this thing which wasn't a curse.
What, then, did Magilou lose?