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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Connie is also looking for something. Everything, really. She's brand new, and the carnival is rather large. A map would be nice? GPS would be even better. She does see someone over there though, maybe someone who knows the place better? She should try to ask for directions.

"Uuuum..." Connie says with pretty poor vocals. It's rather likely Reira doesn't hear her at all, unless she manages to look Connie's way and see her extremely earnest and moderately desperate expression.

Reira doesn't Need to hear, thankfully. Though she...probably isn't the one Connie was trying to grab the attention of either. Unless Connie thought the tiny 3'8'' kid in a hoodie was her best bet. Reira turns all the same, and after a brief bit of staring-

".............Ummmmm..."

This conversation is starting marvelously.

Would Reira believe she seemed less intimidating about being cold approached?

Anyway, Connie seems to have spooked the child. Oh no!

"Wait! Sorry, it's okay! I was just-" She kind of floundered a little bit, over-gesticulating. "I was hoping- do you know where Gongenzaka lives?" Because she has no clue.

".........Gongenzaka?" Ah. ...She knows where Yuuya went for him, largely because she might have stalked him a little bit out of concern, but... "...I think....he's in a tent?" It's a good thing she knows who Gongenzaka even IS, honestly.

But that aside.

"................Who're you?" ...Also. "...............why're you nervous..?"

"A tent? Like that one?" She pointed at the large tent that seemed to dominate the center of the trailer park.

Nervous? Whose nervous?? Not this gal, haha N_N;

"I'm uh-" Right! "Connie! Maheswaran. And. I'm not sure what makes you think I'm nervous."

Besides having eyes.

"...........Because you're nervous. .....You're feeling that, so I can feel it." ~Empathy.~

"Ummm...that's probably it though. ...I haven't gone there..." AND SHE NEVER WILL...

Ooooh. Okay, so this was pretty much the scary psychic child from every horror movie. Got it.

"I seeeee..." Can you... not? "What's your name?"

"Reira!" Also.

She really can't. "....are you ok..?" At all. Ever. It's sort of constantly on and she has to deal with it. Please don't get nervous about her.

"Noooot... especially." Probably not a lot of sense hiding it, if Reira can 'feel' how she feels, anyway. It's actually kind of a relief? On top of even more nervousness. Theoretical non-relief.

"I'm. I'm worried about my friend, who got captured by the Prince and then got turned into a monster for the Hunt, and I didn't really help during any of it."

"....Oh." Well. She looks down. ".................I just....made a lot of it happen, so... ....I don't think you did the worst, at least. ...And....everyone he caught is back now, and they're getting medicine, so..."

Come to think, this kid is sort of covered in various areas with rocks. Ah.

"You...made it happen?" That sounded hard to believe. And... actually, given those rocks-

"You were one of the, uh-" What had Yuya and Carly called them? "Servants? You were under the Prince's thrall, like me." But like, worse.

"...I left my room, before bad things started happening. ....it meant others got caught. ....And hurt, before everyone else was hurt more," she mutters.

"...I worked here first. ...I had to be a servant after he caught me though."

"There's no way you could have known such an innocuous action would have such tragic consequences! You can't blame yourself for stuff like that."

Not when there were people like the Prince that you could so much more easily blame.

She reached over to pat Reira on the head.

"It's not your fault, okay?"

"....But I could tell that people were scared already," she protests quietly. "....And when people are scared, it's for a reason.... ...And...."

Reira stiffens, when Connie's hand comes in contact with her head, but not because of anything negative. It's a motion that not many have given-but more importantly it's a motion strongly associated with, until her time at the Carnival, one of the only people who...saw her as a person, really.

It makes this feel worse, somehow. "...If everyone who made mistakes that ended bad couldn't be blamed, wouldn't that mean no one ever learns, though..?"

Connie shakes her head.

"I'm not saying not to learn anything from it-" although Connie honestly doesn't know what there is to learn from this. Never leave your room? "-I'm just saying there's no sense in beating yourself up about it!

"If you're that serious about it, you should make amends. Apologize to everyone you think you hurt. I bet they don't blame you, either."

"I did." Also. "..............but even the people who said I did do a wrong thing keep saying that kind of thing.... ...and I can't do anything about what happened." Not much way to make amends if no one gives the window. There were perhaps two people who DID give some kind of punishment, but even those were relatively 'hands off' in that it was a matter of dismissal and refusal. 'Just do what you're supposed to do for now' doesn't seem right to Reira at all!

If people were actually blaming this tiny child for things, it sounded like maybe she didn't know enough about what was going on.

That, or people were jerks here.

"Can you tell me more about it, then?" She needed to practice what she preached! She made an assumption which turned out to be wrong, so now she had to learn from it.

"....About people who keep saying I shouldn't try to do anything to fix things..?" She was talking about that, Connie. Not that she realizes Connie is misinterpreting, but given she was talking about That, she's going to ask if she really wants the kid's opinion on....People who Refuse to Blame Properly, in her eyes.

"No, about how it all started." She needed more context.

"....Oh." Right.

"....When we were there, we were just supposed to follow all of the rules. Eat the meals, and try to do what you were supposed to do with each part of the schedule, and then not break curfew. ....but.... ....Everyone was scared. ....and.... ....Some were feeling hate. ...The kind of hate meant for really bad things.

"........Those feelings hurt. ....but when people noticed that... ....they got worried," she adds, frowning at the ground. "....Worry doesn't hurt, but.... ....The one in my room was worried-so they said 'I have another me in the stables; I can make a portal from me, and you can sleep there, and get rest, and feel better, and I can keep watch'.

"...........I could have said no though," she whispers, chewing her lip. "..................Lots... ...Lots of feelings have felt worse, but..........."

".......I wanted him to stop being worried..." And. Well. ".......but we got caught....and then Sans tried to help, and he got caught........and everything kept getting worse...!"

Hmm. That sounded complicated.

"I think... that I would have done the same thing, probably. And I probably would still do it, even knowing the results."

She hadn't put a lot of thought into that, she just knew it. She knew what was right and wrong and when the practical thing wasn't always the right thing.

"...........I definitely wouldn't." Welp.

".........it might have been hurting, but even when people were worried, they were still able to follow the rules. Which means the people that were doing the secret stuff would have still been doing that too. Even if people would be worried, they'd still be safe. And even if it hurt then, I wouldn't have been hurting after."

So.

"...................So I definitely wouldn't do that, if I could make the choice again. .................and I definitely won't do it if I have to choose later."

It's hard to follow Reira's train of thought, the way she primarily speaks about how people feel. It's a pretty alien language to Connie, and it's hard to argue with how someone feels about something. There's no wrong answer to how someone feels.

"Then... I guess you did learn something?" Maybe she's grasping at straws.

A little bit.

At least Connie's own confusion can back her up here, however, since it does mean that Reira takes a bit more than half a second to answer. "...It's not supposed to be about me," she says after a moment, shaking her head. "....What we're talking about, I guess. ...I did something wrong-and a lot of people were hurt. ...So it's important to help the people that were hurt, no matter what. ...That's what's important."

...

"...'m sorry I made it worse for you, though. ...I just..." She chews her lip, frowning. "...........I know what I learned. .......I just want to be able to help again."

"Okay, so you need help figuring out how to help?" Reira may notice that Connie definitely has a problem->solution mindset.

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