⇨ SAY UNCLE

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone who isn't in jail!
When: Day 175, 11:30PM onward.
Where: The Realm that used to contain Heartstone Manor.
What: Team carnival has gotten what they came for, but in the meantime they have lost what they came with. With his ace in the hole gone, the Prince is tearing apart the Heartstone Manor and reshaping it into an impregnable fortress to lock away his new most precious commodities - the Ringmaster's captured followers. Welcome to a hostage situation, this could take a while.
Warnings: Violence, and etc.

AFTER THE BALL↴ Around 11:30PM is when everything starts changing - and for most in Heartstone Manor, the triggers will have remained unseen. In the ongoing thunderstorm it was easy to miss, and the Prince losing control over his realm only occured before a small group of workers intent on saving the carnival from a terrible fate. An ancient High Fae artifact called the Blue Rose was stolen from the Prince, and in reaction he is being forced to abandon his plans of controlling the Ringmaster, instead trying to hide away in his realm for the purposes of saving his own skin. His main bartering chip? The workers that he's been capturing up to this point. He knows that, unlike himself, the Ringmaster cares about mortals, and especially about the ones who follow her. He's willing to bet that she won't allow them to die for the sake of her own convenience, and he's right. Now that the Blue Rose is the carnival's, she's intent to take back what was stolen from her, as well as the lives of all the servants that the Prince has been stealing away for eons. By whatever means necessary. ► SPLIT THE EARTH: Characters all across the Manor will be treated with initial tremours that will soon escalate into a full-fledged earthquake, capable of collapsing buildings and rending the earth. The cause of this is simple: the Prince is using his powers of elemental earth to reshape his realm into something more suited to protect him. Specifically, he is changing what was a manor house into a fortress meant to defend, and allowing the rest to collapse into ruin. The Manor is still nothing but a castle floating in a void - as the earth breaks apart, it will be nothing but an endless freefall between the floating chunks of debris. Over the next twelve house that earthen debris will be reshaping and solidifying into a new layout, but having to be there while it happens is one hell of a ride! ► BREAK THE ILLUSION: It's as the world starts shaking that the last of the Prince's spell over the minds of his guests will begin to fade away. However, it may wear off more slowly than is helpful in an emergency earthquake situation. The ballroom trance may linger even as lives are threatened, and it will take a pointed effort to make sure that everyone gets out of the Manor's collapse safely. At the same time, the illusionary guests will begin to fade and disappear. The ones that remain are the ones that are real, but it may be a bit painful to realize which ones were simply a lie to begin with. ► SAVE WHO YOU CAN: Despite being knocked out by a surprisingly massive blast from the Prince's magic crystal, the Ringmaster will manage to gather herself up eventually. When she does, the last of the storm will finally come to an end. She'll be doing what she can to try to gather up both servants of the Prince and all of her workers, but it'll be impossible to get to all of them first. A large portion of the servants have undoubtedly been stolen away by the Prince into his newly built fortress, but with the effort of carnival members new and old, they can still save as many as possible. Of course, those held in the Prince's most secure prisons will remain out of reach... for now. ► WAKE THE SUN: As the worst of the earthquakes stop and the new islands of floating land begin to settle, the clouds from the thunderstorm will finally pass, as the Ringmaster seems to summon up a sun to light the realm for the first time since the carnival's arrival. In reality it's sometime in the early, early morning by the Manor's schedule, but whatever! It's easier to not die when the sun is out, don't you think? The Prince's security and gargoyle soldiers are still out and about, and they're clearly interested in capturing as many hostages as possible. ► SIGN A CONTRACT: This is when the Ringmaster will be taking those that were summoned to the Prince's ball aside to offer them contracts in order to free them from the Prince's influence. She'll do her best to explain that the only way to wipe out his control is to take on a new 'master', but they can take some time to think about it if necessary. The truth is, of course, that until they officially sign onto the Ringmaster's camp, there will still be the chance that the Prince will be able to control them. ► WALK THE RUINS: One Day 176 things will have settled completely, with the land now forming a massive fortress on the far side of several large floating islands. The ruins of the old buildings will scatter those islands, forming towers that will swiftly gain small colonies of gargoyles, ready to swoop down and attack carnival members. Further complicating matters is the fact that the rending of the landscape has resulted in bursting open the underground prisons that the Prince had been keeping his most bestial servants, which mean all kinds of mortals long since twisted into the forms of giant spiders, scorpions, monstrous beasts, and other terrifying creatures will now be running amock on the islands, desperate for food. Try not to hold it against them - they didn't ask to be this way. ► REGROUP: While the Ringmaster doesn't want everyone to just run back home (if they do that, the Prince will undoubtedly make them unable to enter again, or at least take over the landscape more fully) she will manage to open a portal back to the carnival in the afternoon of Day 176, formed between two freshly grown trees. This means that carnival members will be able to fetch new clothing, supplies, weapons, and whatever they need to prepare for the battle ahead. Right now, the chaos is still unfolding, but the battle to save the Prince's captives is still ahead. [OOC: Gargoyles and transformed servants from the underbelly can be NPC'd from this point onward. Gargoyles are the Prince's most deadly servants made of extremely durable rock and bearing scorpion tails with venom that can turn bodies into stone. They want to grab anyone they can, trap them, and then fly them off to the Prince's dungeons as collateral. Don't let them! Transformed servants are the beasts who were freed from the underground prison they were left in to rot. They are servants that were transformed into monsters by the Prince, and most of them have been driven insane with bestial hunger from months and years of starvation and atmospheric poison. The Ringmaster is interested in helping them, to see if there is way they can be changed back, so if you have the heart nonlethal methods are most appreciated.]

Comments

closed to peridot;

[atouts]

If Childermass isn't the first to arrive once the remaining supervisors have been called, then he will, at the very least, be the second. He's spent the past few hours either collecting up what's left of what is, supposedly, his own crew, small as it may be, or taking stock of who else remained, along with what around them might be useful. Overall, it's looking a bit grim, but there was one absence he couldn't confirm... or maybe just one he didn't want to confirm, not on his own.

There's any number of people he could corner and question, that's true, but by the time he's even considering that, he has somewhere to be. When Childermass does actually arrive, it's through even more shadows, the space he appears in empty one second and then occupied the next, no sound or warning to mark it.

He lingers in the shadow a moment, feeling out how much the constant moving from place to place has been dragging on him. He can tell how tired he is, though he'll make a point not to show it on his face when he finally does step out into the light, very obviously still wearing what he's been wearing all night so far — all that fancy clothing from the ball — and looking around for anyone else nearby.

[periphrasing]

He's not the only one who's exhausted. Peridot has beaten him to the meeting point... or maybe she was just there to begin with. Perhaps more importantly is the point that she looks like a mess, too; scuffed, soaked, dried out again. Her hair is frazzled out of it's normally perfect triangular shape. Altering her shape to fix her appearance just seemed like a waste of energy on top of all of the shapeshifting she's already done today.

She's just sitting on the ground with her knees pulled up to her chest and her tail curled around her feet, frowning intensely at... something that's laying on the ground in front of her, a long object obscured by a bundled up tablecloth from the Prince's ballroom. It's only when Childermass approaches that she looks away from it at last.

"...What happened to you?" the gem asks unkindly, looking the acquisitioner over.

[atouts]

That she was there at all drew Childermass's attention to her before the question ever does. Gems are hard to miss, he's found, almost offensively bright in how they're colored — matching their namesakes, he supposes, which has always made him wonder if there are more subdued alien stones out there, somewhere. He'll likely never ask, though. He doubts he would ever meet any such gems, in any case.

But that's a weird tangent to let his thoughts wander down and her severe words refocus him. Unsurprisingly, he frowns at her, gaze flickering from Peridot to what's on the ground in front of her, and then back again. He doesn't move any closer, holding his ground a mere step or two out from where he had arrived from.

"What do you mean...?"

Because 'what happened' can apply to a whole lot of things right now. Where did he go? What was he doing? Why does he look tired? Why is he still all dressed up?

[periphrasing]

Apparently she's referring to his appearance, because she extracts an arm and kind of gestures vaguely at uh... all of him.

"You look like a mess," she clarifies, and then jerks her shoulders slightly in an indifferent shrug. "Not that anyone else I've seen so far has looked much better, mind you..."

It's idle chatter. Trying to fill the gaps between tasks to keep her mind from lingering to long on all the people she's worried about.

[atouts]

"Seeing as we're all dealing with the same problem right now, that isn't a surprise," Childermass replies simply enough. He didn't think he looked that much of a mess, but he isn't going to argue. He hasn't exactly stopped to look at himself in any mirrors or anything.

Though his attention does shift back to what's on the ground by Peridot after saying that much. He nods slightly towards it.

"What do you have there?"

[periphrasing]

"Eh?" It's weird, but she's been staring at the stupid thing so intently, it's almost like she has momentarily forgotten that there's something out of the ordinary sitting next to her, and it takes her a second to realize what Childermass is asking about. She looks back down at the bundle, and her expression briefly twists into something complex and miserable.

"It's... you know," Peridot says, knowing full well that no, he doesn't know, otherwise he wouldn't be asking. Rather than explain, she flushes an uncomfortable teal and leans forward to pull back some of the tablecloth, revealing the hilt of Lambert's fae-wrought sword.

"I'm just... holding onto it for him. Until he gets back," the gem says in an awkwardly stilted way, and stars she feels foolish saying it out loud. She used to abhor this kind of sentimental drivel, and sometimes it still doesn't feel quite right on her. But not keeping track of the sword, and talking about Lambert like he isn't going to come back, don't feel right to her either.

Of course, she has no way of knowing that Childermass isn't aware of exactly what happened yet... She assumes everyone knows. The fight was kind of a big spectacle.

[atouts]

He knows that sword almost immediately. The hilt itself is unmistakable, something from a Summerlands artisan rather than anything that could have been picked up around the Prince's manor, and there's only one person who it could belong to. Childermass turns, taking a few steps closer to Peridot and the sword.

"That's..." Why does she have it? A witcher wouldn't be running around unarmed. "Until he gets back from where? Where is he?"

He still affects a grave tone of voice, so severe as to hide anything else he might be feeling, even though the sight of the sword without its wielder brings on a dread he just isn't willing to show. He already knows the answer. He's asking anyway. It'll make it real, what it is that he missed in the ballroom.

[periphrasing]

"Wh-- Where were you during the ball, in a hole or something?" Peridot snaps automatically, turning on him. It's all too easy for her to let her anxiety and grief become anger; that's how she coped with basically every emotion, for thousands of years. At least now, she knows to check herself, and she looks immediately remorseful.

"...Sorry," she grumbles more quietly, turning back away, pushing clawed fingers through her hair. "It's just... if I knew exactly where he was, I wouldn't be sitting here like a lumpy, useless clod." She sighs, and casts a venomous glare towards the newly formed fortress. "I can only assume he's somewhere in there, wherever it is that stupid jerk PRINCE keeps all of his prisoners..."

[atouts]

Where the Prince keeps all his prisoners. If there was some level of tiredness Childermass had yet to reach, well, he's reaching that right now. His shoulders slump slightly, though he still frowns, in particular at the sword like it's somehow personally offended him.

"That idiot," he mutters, "He wasn't supposed to get caught."

[periphrasing]

The gem stills and goes rigid, save for one pointed ear that twitches at that comment. It feels like someone just put her non-existent guts in a vise.

"...What," she growls ominously.

[atouts]

"Capturing the Blue Rose should have ended this," Childermass says, looking up from the sword to Peridot again. Oh, there are warning bells in his head towards how wound up Peridot is, how she growls, but she's owed some explanation regardless.

"I asked Lambert to distract the Prince while I went after it. Apparently, he did that too well. What did he do? What happened in the ballroom?"

[periphrasing]

Peridot lets that information wash over her, lets it seep into her consciousness where she can piece it together with what she already knows. It... sure answers more than a few of her lingering questions.

It also makes her fucking furious. For a second, it looks like she's on the verge of exploding at Childermass; her jaw clenches, smoke trickles out of the corners of her mouth. But... She doesn't. Not yet. She's still trying to process all the implications... And to be honest, she's not really sure if she's actually angry at Childermass, or if she's more angry at Lambert. Somehow, she doesn't think it was the Acquisitioner's idea to make the kind of gigantic scene that the Nightrider ultimately wound up causing.

And that you helped contribute to, some small voice mutters in the back of her head.

"...Well that certainly explains a few things," she says stiffly after a moment, when she finally feels like she can keep a reasonably level tone. Her jaw is stiff with the effort, as she lets out a hissing sigh through her teeth. "He was fighting with Sans. He... Why didn't he warn me that he was going to do something that stupid!?"

[atouts]

Childermass waits patiently for her to work through whatever it is she's working through, idly shifting his weight back onto one heel and folding his arms in front of him as he does. She isn't alone in being frustrated, for how little the man is capable of showing that even a little. The Ringmaster should have taken care of this, she should have stopped the Prince. Instead, she wasted time cheering and jeering over their supposed victory and now--

"Ha. Fighting with Sans," he echoes, his laugh not a kind one. Well, that would do the trick and it had, admirably. They made it to the rose without the turned Warden chasing them down or the Prince realizing they'd slipped away. "He would choose to do it that way..."

He should have known.

Unlike Peridot, he wasn't afflicted, so he has no excuse save how much he had to do in a small span of time. He gives his head a shake at her question, though, about why he didn't warn her.

"I'm surprised he even remembered what I asked him to do in the first place, considering he was under the same enchantment as the rest of you. The Prince had you all drugged to play along with his grand ball, so warning you would not have helped terribly much."

[periphrasing]

"But I was fighting it!" Peridot insists. "I--" At least... she THOUGHT she'd been fighting it? Lapis had told her early on about what had happened, and that had helped to keep her a bit more self-aware. She hadn't even considered that maybe she wasn't fighting it off as effectively as she'd hoped? And this all could have been avoided so easily, she never HAD to eat the food, and maybe things would have turned out differently if... If...

Peridot clunks her forehead down on her knees, both hands pulling at the back of her head. She is never eating food again.

"What did you actually expect him to do when you gave him this task?" she asks after a moment, turning her ire back on Childermass

[atouts]

"Hm. Maybe something a bit more creative, but I suppose I really should have expected violence of some kind from him," Childermass answers, but only after a pause, a moment where he actually considers the question. He just left it up to Lambert to decide. There probably wasn't another way, anything less than an all-out brawl easily ignored.

He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, still waiting out in the open as he is, nowhere to sit or lean again. His attention drifts away from Peridot like he doesn't think there's anything else to be said to her, keeping an eye out for the others who should have been here by now instead.

He looks pensive, at least, though that isn't much of a change from how he normally looks, is it?

[periphrasing]

She actually probably would have accepted that answer, if it weren't for Childermass's troubling follow up, which is to... do and say absolutely nothing.

Peridot watches him for a few long moments, anger steadily building with each passing second of silence. She's not really sure what she's expecting to hear from him, what she wants to hear from him. She just knows that silence isn't it. Childermass and Lambert are friends, aren't they? Shouldn't he want more information, shouldn't he be more upset? Is she being irrational for being upset about this...?

"...Is that seriously all you have to say?" she growls, a dangerous edge to her tone.

[atouts]

He wasn't aware there was more to say, though Peridot obviously disagrees. Childermass looks to her again, eyebrows raised ever so slightly as if to question her own question. The inevitable problem here is a different approach to being upset, which he isn't entirely unaware of. The gem had been upset even over Tyki going missing and she had hardly known that man, to begin with.

With Lambert, however—

"I do not know what else you would have me say," he admits outright. "I could ask what happened, but I already know how it ends, with the Prince taking him away."

Because he isn't here, so it must be that.

[periphrasing]

Tyki's case had been more of a canary in the coal mine thing. A signal that things could start going horribly wrong, like they did at the Celebration. Lo and behold, they did!

Lambert, and Sans, are both much more personal. And she's never had to cope with anything quite like this before. Maybe more than anything what Peridot wants is for someone to be as upset about this as she is... even if, from all her interactions with Childermass, she knows she's barking up the wrong tree for that.

"Some kind of acknowledgement of how much this stinks would be a good start!" she snaps. "This is at least a little bit your fault for encouraging him, you know!"

[atouts]

She is barking the absolutely worse tree possible, even. Childermass just stares at her for her outburst for a moment, a brief one, and then shifts his weight from one foot to the other again. A little bit his fault? Really?

"It is," he won't argue against that, although his voice has dropped into an icy tone, as if she's finally testing his patience here. "That this stinks, as you say, that's implied. The rest... We needed that rose. I needed to make sure the Prince wasn't paying attention to me. Should I have asked someone else, Ms. Peridot?"

How do gems even address one another? Who knows. He just goes with what he knows.

"Who would you have put in danger in place of the Nightrider? Steven, perhaps? I'm sure he would have tried his hardest, had I asked him instead."

[periphrasing]

"Steven wouldn't have turned into a gigantic dragon and crashed an ENTIRE BALCONY into the courtyard!" Peridot immediately counters, finally jumping to her feet, too agitated to keep resting on her laurels. Of course, Sans had been the one behind the balcony destruction, but clarifying that detail hardly seems important for the moment.

"You could have easily asked any of the nightrunners!" she continues, and she starts to pace fretfully, tugging at her own ears. "Why did you have to go after someone who actually matters?"

[atouts]

So there's the crux of it, why Peridot is so upset. Chidermass grits his teeth against snapping back about how she isn't the only one who thinks that way about Lambert, because that only opens the argument up to a path he's far less comfortable with. Which means he's left frowning at the gem for her outburst, pausing a few seconds in his own counter to that, rearranging what he does want to say.

Overall, that part isn't too hard. If Peridot thinks kicking someone else into danger's path for Lambert's sake would ever be seen favorably by the witcher, well... He won't even question the dragon part, though that's definitely new. Since when could that asshole turn into a dragon? But he can't even ask about it, it would only highlight how unaware of what happened during that fight he is.

Instead, what he says is, "Really? Is that what you would have done in my place?"

He changes how he stands a little here, folding his hands behind his back rather than leaving his arms crossed over his chest, and he tilts his head at Peridot while asking that. It's a curious gesture, more akin to him asking what her preference in decor might be or what she would like for breakfast, only he's asking—

"Which of his people would you have thrown away to protect him, Ms. Peridot? Who do you believe to be expendable?"

[periphrasing]

"I'm not... trying to say that anyone is expendable," Peridot growls, backpedaling a little. "I'm just saying some losses are more tolerable than others! Having the Nightrider fall into that crummy Prince's paws is just..."

She stands there and opens and closes her hands, trying to think of the right word. Much as she wants to convince herself otherwise, she knows this isn't just about strategy, or what's best for the carnival as a whole. Even if, OBJECTIVELY, it would have been much easier to cope with having a non-supervising member taken away.

"That clod has already ruined Sans and the others. And now, if he hasn't already turned him into some kind of pointless statue, he's probably going to do the same thing to Lambert, and NOBODY ELSE SEEMS TO CARE!"

[atouts]

"I do care," Childermass doesn't even need more than a moment's pause to give Peridot's outburst some space to say that much, at least, and he says it softly, a polar opposite to her yelling.

It wasn't meant to go like this. The Ringmaster should have ended it when she had the chance. It shouldn't have mattered that they momentarily lost Lambert and the rest. The rest, just how many are 'the rest'? How many did something unbearably stupid while he was out of the ballroom? If he had known this would be dragged out, would he have changed his decision?

No. He doubts it.

"And I want them all back as much as you do," he adds, this time with a tired sigh. The magician's shoulders sag with that admission — as obvious as it should have been, anyway — and, while it irks him to show it, he can only hold himself totally aloof for so long after a night like this. He's tired. There's no time to rest.

"What we need to do is focus on how to do that, not what might be happening, not what we should have or shouldn't have done. Doing that will only exhaust you and then what help will you be?"

[periphrasing]

Hearing him admit it takes the wind right out of her sails. Maybe that's all she actually needed, was to hear any kind of hint that she's not the only one who's upset about this. Everything between the start of the ball and now had just happened so quickly, she's barely even had time to process it. A lot of people will only just be finding out what happened in the courtyard, but Peridot has known for hours now, and her panic over it has been lurking at the back of her mind for the whole time.

She almost appears to deflate, and then drops heavily back onto the ground next to the sword. She wraps it back up and pulls it close to her chest, huddling with it sullenly. "I'm already exhausted," she grumbles quietly, refusing to admit to Childermass that he has a valid point, even though he definitely does. "And I already know I'm no use to them anyway. I was right there when that jerk took both of them. I couldn't do anything about it..."

[whattaprick]

For better or worse, they won't have a chance to dwell on that thought long before a sharp yapping fills the air, and what resembles nothing more than a gourd on nubby legs comes dashing up to Peridot. Who cares what she's holding on to or what the mood in the air is? Pumpkin sure doesn't. That's all the warning Peridot gets before launches herself at the sitting gem to lick at her face with her awful, slimy, produce tongue, probably babbling in whatever mystical gourd-dog language she speaks about all the adventure she's had since the castle began crashing down!

Not far behind, though much easier to miss for one not looking for it, is a grey-and-purple body scuttling over the ground, antennae twitching in agitation and relief. Yeah, Stumpy's here for the party too, though in considerably more high-strung spirits than Pumpkin is. This whole world-falling-apart thing hasn't exactly been easy to deal with, and the terror isn't so easily lifted, so Stumpy's probably going to attempt to hide under Peridot if she'll let it happen. Just please, please let this be over.

Peridot isn't the only one being reunited with familiar faces, though. In the tremors that still shake the ground as the Prince's world reshapes itself, it might have been easy to dismiss a distant rumble or two as nothing more than background noise. It's less easy to ignore a bright flash of orange and blue as it darts forward, Butcher nickering in excitement as he runs in circles around the magician, demanding his attention.

Pig, far more sedate than her other companions, brings up the rear, having shed the other Pokemon once they were in view of the carnival's other workers. She's covered in dust from crumbling mortar and disturbed earth, the plaits Lambert normally keeps her mane and tail in coming loose, but she doesn't appear winded or distressed.

Some habits, though, still die hard. Despite the lack of any obvious pockets, she's going to head right over to Childermass and nose at his coat, looking for food. Come on, now, she knows you keep treats for Baker around somewhere, and doesn't she deserve one after all this?