2023-03-05: Magilou's Quest, Fulfilled
- Log: Magilou's Quest, Fulfilled
- Cast: Magilou, Ghaleon
- Where: Pentagulia Harbour
- Date: 2023-03-05
- Summary: Magilou brought the Vile Fiends to Pentagulia, just as Ghaleon asked. Now, she considers leaving them there. Ghaleon goads her into taking another option... and tells her something she doesn't know, for once.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZywr4nD4aU Tales of Berseria - Stolen Will
The city is calm. The harbour proceeds in an orderly fashion. The sailors know better than to swear; each transfer of crate is done safely, and each with the same consideration. The ropes do not slip and fail, because they are all checked on a regular schedule.
Even here, everything is so... neat... and tidy.
A Guard patrols along his path. He holds a spear of truth and justice, and he looks left and right just as he's been trained. He looks over the trade of greens from a merchant-ship. (All food, no fun.) He turns, and keeps walking.
He didn't have a shadow, when he started his route.
He doesn't have a shadow, when he turns to continue his route.
Somewhere in the middle a woman who looks entirely too LOUD to be so silent slipped in behind him; and by the time he has any chance of detecting her, she's gone. Magilou, as it happens, can be frightfully quiet when she tries to be...
... and right now, getting the lay of Pentagulia's current state, she's not causing any fuss at all.
And on that merchant ship, suddenly, there's a woman slinking in with a skirt all made of books and a hat all split down the middle, sidling around the back of the berth to hop aboard. The crew are all on the docks unloading their cargo... what's she up to?
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
Ghaleon knew he had to come looking for Magilou.
It's not a task he relishes. Oh, he likes to talk to Magilou. It is a friendship that has defined him; a banter that he values, a warmth in a life that is so cold that it is no more, and a shared determination to honor the memory of certain fallen friends. But he doesn't relish this task...
...because he is not the one coming to talk to her.
He appears on the ship, armored arms crossed over his chest. Funny, how he class changed since his death; he didn't wear armor and carry a sword before. But, the Dragonmaster has to have a certain look.
"Hm, hm, hm. It seems you're already intending to leave," he says. "Odd. You just got here."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Sucks, doesn't it?
Maybe that's why Magilou's poking around the harbour, and not the Tower.
... oh, well. It can't be helped.
That's the sort of thought which runs through her mind, as she straightens up from flicking through the ship's manifest in the empty Captain's quarters. (How did she get in here? Because she is Magilou.) She's not surprised to see that Ghaleon could get in here, either.
She turns; she leans on the fine wood table which is a requisite of these rooms, hopping up just so, to fold one leg over the other. "Nice costume," she grins, eyebrows lifting lazily. "Love the steel look. And look at you! Wearing it without even falling over! You'll make everyone else performing grand sorceries look bad, you know."
Magilou can lift, like, five books. She's jacked. Shut up.
... unfortunately, as much as she can offer him a little banter...
Shrugging her shoulders, Magilou sinks her weight back against her wrists, with a deep sigh. "The thought did cross my mind," she admits, a little more sour. "I held up my end of the bargain -- they're all collected here, safe and sound. But this place totally gives me the creeps!" She lifts her hands, palms to the sky, in a hapless shrug. "And maybe I'm feeling a beensy-bit tired after one of my best friends was revealed to be feeling a little too purple. Maybe I just don't feel up to a big huggy reunion with all our bestester friends! Maybe I just... don't... care."
And if there's a little resentment creeping into her trivial tone at the end there, surely it's just part of the act.
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"Well. The last time I wore armor, it had a different effect."
The Magic Emperor, of course, was something else entirely; that armor was less to protect and more to obscure his identity. Of course, this armor obscures his identity too, in its own way. Then, he looks at her, for a moment longer.
"So you'd leave them," he says. "I suppose I can't blame you. Because given everything, I think we both know the truth."
Please, part of him thinks. Please know what I'm really saying.
"The person who the world really needs is a thousand years gone," he says. "And now, they have... us. And them. I suppose the Goddess will make do. Hm, hm, hmm."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
There's an art to saying something without saying anything at all.
(Complimenting someone's armour when it's been such an obsfucation act, for instance.)
"Will she?" Magilou wonders, lacing her hands, loosely, behind her head. She rocks back, on the Captain's table, and the only thing stopping her from going ass-over-end is her legs hooking in around the edge. "Seems she's woken up on the wrong side of the bed... frankly, I'm surprised she woke up at all. You'd think in her situation, she wouldn't hear all that raucous knocking!" She wouldn't be able to hear her wake-up call, because...
Anyway. "I'm sure the kids all have plenty of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed questions for that Goddess you've got up there, but don't you think old-timers like us should leave the tales to the youth, sooner or later? They'll figure it out... as much as it'd make my jokes sooo much easier to make, they're not entirely stupid." Magilou's tone remains quite light, as she points it out, wagging her elbows with another loose shrug.
"So tell me, you-da-mask, why should I care? Why not just let them at it, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"And who are we to question the Goddess?" Ghaleon says, with a sneer. It's cold; it's dismissive.
He has to be that way, at the moment.
"You should abandon them, Magilou," he says, matter-of-factly. He stares at her for a moment. "All you are -- all we are -- is the pain of the old world. We are Artorius."
He lets that hang there.
"We failed Laphicet. We failed Velvet. And these children?" he says, with a dismissive shrug. "They're going to get themselves killed. They're simply not up to the task. And we're not up to the task to help them."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Hmm...? I thought you'd never ask," Magilou purrs, a smirk crossing over her face. She throws her arms out, grandly. "I am the wicked witch, Magilou, who crushes arrogance and scourges self-righteousness from the earth! Mistress of the elements, I claim volcanos as my cauldrons and oceans as my brew! I am that unseen annalist who has watched a dozen holy men rise and fall..!"
She laughs, as she overbalances, and falls onto her back on the desk. Pushing herself up, with a sly grin, she adds: "... but you knew all that, you sly dog. You got me monologuing!" As if she's the supervillain, here.
(Maybe there's really not that much difference between them.)
"And all that, you're just going to call the pain of the old world, huh..." Magilou sighs, with a magnificent pout. "Oh, you're no fun. Sweet of you, though. Do you think Velvet would fiiiinally get around to eating me if I were really Artorius?" With a grin like that --
Magilou cannot be stopped. Well, not now Eleanor's dead, anyway.
But she's being outrageous, and he's being dismissive, and... well, are you sure that's how the descriptors should be organised?
Are you really, REALLY sure that's the right order?
"I mean," Magilou shrugs, slipping to the edge of the table and hopping back onto her feet again, "to really fail someone, they've got to be dead dead, wouldn't you agree?" She doesn't quite explain the connection she draws between the two of them, as she streeetches up onto her tippy-toes. Biiiig stretch, arms all up above her head, one hand grasping her opposite elbow. "Just the same, those kids aren't dead yet."
Magilou yaaa--aaaaa--aaaaawns. "Sure, sure... muhh... maybe we're not up to it. I'm sure struggling to care. You know I spent a whole two hundred years' worth of give-a-damn on that whole business in Artorius's Throne? I totally get where the Seraph are coming from having hundred-year naps, now! And my favourite thing is abandoning people... I do it allll the time!"
Allegedly.
Magilou taps her finger to her temple, finally. "But you know what? If you're going to tell me to do it, suddenly I don't feel like it! Sorry, buddy! I'm terminally contrary!"
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
Ghaleon cracks a smirk, then.
But he keeps the act up. "Perhaps. Or perhaps... she is as good as dead. Who are we fooling? We don't have a way to make her free."
He dare not risk releasing Innominat -- or the idea of Innominat -- back into the world. Not now; not with who is watching.
Then, he crosses his arms.
"So I see. Well... you should know this," he says. "If you 'Vile Fiends' insist on this course of action -- then you'll face the wrath of the Goddess. And I sincerely doubt that any of you have what it takes."
He smirks, then. "So be contrary at your own peril, Magilou."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Guess we'd better give up on her, then!" Magilou supposes, cheerfully, as if saying her deepest fears in a stupid voice doesn't kind of hurt.
She's not going to press him on it, though. ... not in this sort of get-up, anyway.
"Sure, sure," she agrees, loosely, as she clasps her hand to her heart and thrusts her other arm to the heavens. "The Goddess has unthinkable power! We have no shred of hope at all! Surely we shall tremble and break upon her! Oh, the humanity...!" Her hand comes back to her forehead, before she smirks, cracking an eyelid and glancing back to the Dragonmaster. "... something like that?" She asks, at a normal tone, again.
"Hahaha. This wouldn't be the first time I didn't have what it takes... you know, I'm a real spectacular failure." And he does. Know, that is.
Magilou's toe lifts, tapping on the wooden floor. "Anyway, don't you think a proper herald should be occasionally imperiled?" She lilts, with a lazy grin.
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
Ghaleon couldn't answer her, even if she did. Not here and not now, for certain.
"Mock her at your own peril," Ghaleon says, his eyes narrowing. "After all. Sooner or later, you will bite off more than you can chew. Again." She has before, and he knows that. His armored shoulders shrug, once.
"If you insist," he says. "I don't doubt that there will be peril. For you -- and for them, if they're so foolish as to persist. Once Lucia is firmly in her grasp, at any rate."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
That's fine. A conversation at this scale is comfortable enough.
"Oh, yes," Magilou agrees, her grin growing a shade more treacherous. "So much peril. I bet you'll tell me that everyone stuck here is living under the shadow of that perilous imperilment!" Everyone, she says, as if she's not asking about someone in particular.
She knows better than to look behind Ghaleon so blatantly.
"Oh, they're massive fools," Magilou agrees. "Especially that Lucia -- just marching up and telling you to take her to your leader like that!" 'Once' she's in her grasp, though... "I guess she's taking the long route up the Tower, huh?" Magilou wonders, curling her hand at her chin. "Nice of you to come visit little ol' me instead of taking her right up there. But you really had to tie up this loose end, huh?"
Magilou's grin goes from ear to ear. "Since I could bring this whole parade down on its ears if I really wanted to."
As if it's Magilou's personal threat level which is distracting him.
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"Quite. Of course... I suspect you'll all discover that soon enough," Ghaleon says, with a dry chuckle.
And then he tilts his head to the side. "I was quite surprised. But... since she asked," he says, with a laugh. "But yes. Due to several... other matters, I had to take action. There's loose ends that I could not ignore."
Such as, yes, Magilou. Who could bring things down around their ears.
He hesitates a moment. "Magilou. You should take care," he says. "More is happening than we can see. Have you ever heard of... the Ten Wise Men?"
A beat.
"Because I have not."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Is that so..? Yes, I'm sure they'll figure it out," Magilou assures him, grinning in turn, as if everyone knowing the truth is something she wants here.
She has a bad feeling, which is terrible, because it means she has a feeling, which sucks just fundamentally speaking.
She'll consider it confirmation of just who's at his back, but...
... well, there's nothing either of them can do about it, here.
"Since she asked," Magilou agrees, in a particular fashion. She keeps talking, entirely too jaunty, as she starts strolling forward. "She's a strange one, isn't she? Not the fell Lord I would have picked, buuut... she'll do!"
Her hand rests, delicately, at the threshold. This is the domain of witches, did you know? Crossroads of all variations are strong in witching power. It rests there, and pauses --
Magilou looks over her shoulder, and the surprise in her expression isn't an act. "Huh..?" She asks, tilting her head. (Her bangs fall over her eyes. She's never been able to figure out how to solve that problem.)
"No," she frowns, and tilts her head the other way. "Bienfu? You're a good hundred and fifty years older than me... have you ever heard of that?"
"N-n-not ever in my life, Miss Magilou!" Comes a pipsqueakish voice, somewhere to the left of her heart. "But if Mister Ghaleon's never heard of it neither...?!"
"Then it hasn't come up for a thousand years," Magilou completes his thought for him, without thinking. "But now, you're asking... yeah," she agrees, frowning, and her veneer of joviality fades for a moment.
"I'll be careful. Thanks, Ghaleon. Watch your back, all right?" And not just for what she's worried about, apparently.
After lingering a moment longer at the threshold, if Ghaleon doesn't stop her, Magilou will, promptly, commit one of her famed Magilou Exits --
-- which is to say, there's a lot of noise up on the deck as the sailors immediately realise someone's here and the plan goes completely sideways and Benny Hill starts playing as Magilou gracefully fails her way to freedom.
Maybe it's even on purpose.
You know, give him something to smile about.
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"The most dangerous ones are often the most mysterious," Ghaleon says. "I wouldn't take Lucia... lightly."
He lets that sit there, for a moment.
He is quiet, otherwise. They both know what will happen -- for this, they'll be on opposite sides. For now, as they must be. It won't be the first time; it likely won't be the last, either.
The surprise, though, is a little gratifying. It means Ghaleon isn't losing his touch.
"I'll do so. You do the same," he says. He watches as she falls off the side -- sighs, once -- and then he teleports away. But he does smile, when he does.