lostcarnival | ⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

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⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 178 - B1: Day 6
Where: The Carnival and sometimes on top of the Heart of Stone.
What: Now that the Prince is dead and gone, there's a lot left to sort out. As the remaining servants are liberated and those captured by the Prince are tended to, it's time for recovery and goodbyes.
Warnings: Nothing in particular.

HOME GROUND↴

At long last, it is over. The Prince is dead, and all of his stolen Names have been restored - all that's left to do is treat the wounds and move on. For the first day or two, the Ringmaster will be arranging passage for the servants that are left, all of which have remembered their names for the first time in years. The earth elemental that had been trapped and forced to serve as the Prince's manor, the Heart of Stone, is happy to help for the moment. It appreciates the Ringmaster's mercy, and is free after untold eons of imprisonment.

Yet, there are plenty of aspects that are far from simple. There are still servants left mad and transformed into beasts, with no easy way to change them back. The Prince's spells outlive him, and those bearing his poison and his curses will have a difficult road ahead of them. Though most of the bestial servants have been rounded up, and a large number that had been reduced to unmoving statues returned, even the Ringmaster can't return them to normal so simply.

The next week is for rest and for settling remaining affairs. If you want to bid farewell to any particular NPCs, or assure care is given where it's needed, now is the time to do it.

► A CURE: The Ringmaster will tell everyone simply - there is no simple way to undo another fae's magic. The Prince's powers were essentially on par with hers, which means that those who have been transformed to stone and those that were cursed into beasts and driven insane are not something she can trivially fix. It will take the work of the carnival and a couple weeks of treatment to shed the curse of stone, and the maddened servants are an entirely separate matter. She will do what she can, but for the most part she is arranging for the Prince's servants to be cared for elsewhere. At least for now, the Ringmaster will be animating the stone portions of people's bodies with magic, though those portions will still be a bit clumsy and numb feeling.

► THE NEW HEARTSTONE: In the absence of the prince, the Heart of Stone will be taking over the remains of the Prince's realm and preventing it from collapsing into void. As it turns out, the manor had been an earth elemental all along - a form of Wyld Fae almost on par to the Prince and Ringmaster themselves. How the Heart of Stone was enslaved is a long story presumably, but the Ringmaster considers it to be a sign of the Prince's own depravity. The Heart will be allowing visitors for the first couple days of this period through the portal, but keep in mind you are essentially just walking around on its body. At least the realm has a floor, now, instead an endless abyss surrounding it.

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Tamaki's making the rounds around the medical tent, and he knows Lambert is conscious now thanks to radio chatter, so he comes looking. It doesn't take long - Lambert is hard to spot even when he isn't stuffed in a garish hospital gown and burdened by rock feet.

He looks pretty awful, but everyone does right now.

When he comes over, he raises an eyebrow, looking over at the table in question. Asking him for a scalpel is a pretty weird way to start this conversation.

"What do you need it for?"

"To test something," Lambert answers, simply and hoarsely. Which isn't much of an answer and he knows it, but it's the best Tamaki will get for the moment.

The witcher is very obviously sizing Tamaki up for any sign of damage -- he certainly lost the plot for a while, and even without the whole turning into an animal and getting hunted down bit, his last memories of Tamaki are from before the ball and before everything went completely to shit.

At this point, Tamaki has healed most of the damage on his own body; there's a good bruise on his hip he couldn't completely get rid of, but it's not an issue as far as he's concerned. It will heal on its own, eventually.

He got lucky, probably, even if he doesn't really feel that way.

"Okay." His answer is enough of an explanation for Tamaki, who carefully grabs the scalpel and offers it to Lambert. Though he can't for the life of him imagine what he needs it to test.

"Thanks," Lambert says, with all apparent genuine gratitude, right before he reverses his grip on the handle and slams the scalpel right down into one petrified leg with as much force as he can manage.

Or tries to, anyway. His own current lack of strength coupled with the hardness of the material means the scalpel doesn't really get far before the force bends the blade out of shape. The impact does make a rather terrible sound, though, that echoes through the tent, though Lambert doesn't even flinch, just stares down at his leg in disappointment.

"Damn."

"GAAAH!"

Tamaki nearly jumps out of his skin when Lambert suddenly turns the scalpel and tries to stab his own leg; it all happens so suddenly that Tamaki forgets that Lambert is petrified at all. He slams his hands over his eyes, then peeks from between his fingers, expecting to see gushing blood from the artery Lambert must have severed.

Except, there is no blood, because his leg is stone, and Tamaki drops his hands again, one going to grasp at his shirt over his heart.

"Ah... that scared me."

At least Lambert is unharmed (or at least not any more harmed than a moment ago), but now he has to explain why he gave the crazy man medical equipment to wreck.

"You scare too easy," Lambert snorts, but he's smirking at Tamaki. The new, dark-furred ears now growing out of his head twitch with barely suppressed amusement, because there's a good chance Lambert at least guessed Tamaki would be caught off guard by that and didn't care to warn him first. Still, the scalpel's useless now, so Lambert sighs and lets the blade drop to the side-table. That answers one question, anyway.

Still, between this and the radio conversation from earlier, Lambert's voice is already running a little thin. With a frown, he concentrates, holding his hands apart from each other above his lap. It doesn't happen with any sort of noise or fanfare -- between one blink and the next, there's empty air and then there's a marbled polecat, stretching her lithe body and flicking her tail in annoyance.

"Again?" Celandine complains, before she turns he golden-eyed gaze to Tamaki. Like Lambert, she looks like she's seen better days, but she's bright-eyed and alert despite her scruffy, worn-down appearance. "Hello, Tamaki. I don't think we ever properly met."

Tamaki watches Celandine appear with some interest - he's never actually seen this spell in action before. He recognizes Celandine's voice, even if he's never seen her before, and he nods at her.

He would like to argue that he was only scared because Lambert tried to stab himself, but leaves it be to talk to Celandine instead.

"Hey. Nice to meet you..." Now he can't remember if Lambert ever actually named her. "...I don't remember your name. Sorry."

He rubs the back of his head. "You're smaller than I thought you'd be."

"That's what Lambert thought the first time he saw me." Celandine sniggers a little bit at the latter comment while Lambert makes a face. Having essentially a pretty weasel for a soul is something he's come to accept, but people don't generally point that out as much as he thought they would.

"But after he saw Strange's daemon, I think he felt a bit better about having me easier to carry around. I'm Celandine." She scooches closer to the edge of the bed, nose wiggling at Tamaki curiously.

Tamaki holds out a hand toward Celandine, as though she is a normal animal who might want to sniff and rub his hand like a dog.

"Mm. Niko-nee was small too." She could ride around in his hoodie, which was honestly pretty adorable. He smiles at the memory.

"I didn't know we could keep them. I guess it's like Portland..."

Celandine leans in to sniff curiously, but not too close, and she doesn't press against Tamaki's fingers. She is, after all, still Lambert's soul, and they've come to discover his relationships with the people she touches informs how he feels it. Things with Tamaki are a little too uncertain for her to quite trust him with touching her and not causing Lambert discomfort yet, so after a last flick of her ear, she retreats back onto the witcher's lap.

"It's a little different from Greysol. He had to learn a spell to see me," Celandine explains. It's too bad she didn't get to see Tamaki's daemon in the flesh. She thinks she would have quite liked that, which is why she suggests:

"You could learn it too, if you wanted to see her again."

A spell, huh? So that's how they did it. Tamaki watches Celandine return to Lambert's lap, letting his hand drop back to his side with only a twinge of disappointment.

"That would be nice..." He does miss having her around, and it would be nice to see her again. But he has more priorities than learning a spell that will allow his soul to waltz around as a lemur.

"But I want to learn more healing magic first."

After the events of the last several days, it should be obvious why.

"You're learning healing magic?" Celandine asks, curiously. It was a while ago, now -- or it feels like it -- but they vaguely remember Tamaki asking about something like that on the radio. Still, it wasn't something that he'd seemed particularly serious about at the time.

"Yeah." He nods. "I learned a little, before. But it didn't seem as important while Zeco-san was here."

And now that Zecora is gone, there's not as many people equipped to quickly heal injuries. There's Steven, but he can't take it all on by himself. So, if he can't be useful in a fight, he might as well make himself useful after it.

"No," Lambert agrees with that much. Though one could argue a carnival shouldn't be getting into so many life or death situations in the first place, anyway.

"Who are you learning from? The Ringmaster?" Celandine's more openly nosy than Lambert is, but it does seem like that would be a good thing to know... after all, knowing who the magicians in the Carnival are (some of them, at least) it's all too easy to imagine Tamaki's lessons going a bit sideways.

"She gave me the power to do it. Taught me how. But I have to practice myself."

It's sort of difficult to practice, since he doesn't want anyone getting hurt on purpose, but his own miscellaneous bumps and scrapes from acrobat practice are usually good targets for his magic. Of course, now he wants to heal worse things.

"Merlin helped me a lot."

Strange has never had a penchant for healing as far as Lambert's aware, but he supposes that hardly precludes him from being helpful to Tamaki. Lambert can't say he can fathom it at all; healing magic's about the best he can do right now.

Celandine cocks her head at Tamaki inquisitively.

"Could you help Lambert?" she asks. Of course, Lambert is currently fucked up on a level even Zecora would have had trouble with, so she's quick to provide clarification. "Just with his voice. It hurts to talk."

Lambert shoots his daemon an annoyed look, but he doesn't bother denying it. It's true enough, and if Tamaki can help and he can get a demonstration out of it, so much the better.

"Ah-" He looks surprised that he was even asked, looking between Celandine and Lambert quickly. Lambert looks pretty banged up, and even if he does just try to heal Lambert's voice, he's not sure how much he'll be able to repair with his paltry skills.

But he does want to make himself useful, so he might as well try.

"I'll give it a shot." He doesn't sound very confident in himself, but he steps up to the bed anyway, holding out a hand over Lambert's throat. "Hmm..."

After a moment, his hand starts to glow with a light blue light, washing over Lambert's throat. It won't be able to heal him all the way, but it might help take the edge off.

Lambert wasn't expecting anything in particular -- at the very least, he was expecting no kissing or spit, unlike Steven's magic -- but he holds carefully still as Tamaki puts his hand over his throat.

Tamaki's right, in a way. It's no easy feat to heal what Lambert's been through, but the wash of healing magic brings a touch of relief, something that draws a sigh out of Lambert and Celandine's throats both.

When the light fades, Lambert clears his throat experimentally, then smirks.

"Not bad." His voice sounds less rough around the edges, though his brow is still taut with pain -- but that's just going to have to be something that recovers with time.

Tamaki smiles a little, glad that Lambert at least sounds a little better, even if he's far from fully healed.

"I hope it helped."

He takes a step back, taking a glance around and taking in everything, before looking back at Lambert.

"Do you need anything else? Water? Food?"

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⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

medical tent d2!

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sorry, i lost this tag @@

no worries, I've been slow lately anyway