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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"Hello yourself," Strange responds, trying to give Five a small smile of his own. Though there's something undoubtedly stressed and undoubtedly annoyed on his face, Strange is trying to power through that anyway.

Now that he has an audience, Strange doesn't mind showing off a bit more—especially considering said audience is Five. She's new and she got dragged into this nonsense at the worst possible time. He can try to push past his utter sulkiness right now, just to keep her out of all of this nonsense. After all, she's new.

"There's a particularly murderous tree that lives in the forest," Strange explains, seemingly out of nowhere, as he gestures towards a non-murderous tree, one closer to Five. It starts to bloom slightly, a few flowers appearing near the edge of one of the branches. "I'd like that murderous tree to not realize I'm here in the first place. Of course, the magic I'm working on involves living beings and I've a sneaky suspicion there won't be any volunteers."

He nods at the tree. There's a creaking sound like a wooden door opening as the blossoming branch lowers, stopping right at about Five's height. Those blossoms are at a perfect level to be picked—which is definitely Strange's intention. "The tree won't mind," Strange explains, as he gestures towards the blossoms.

Five follows his lead, to focus on other things beside whatever he's been sulking about. She thinks herself a pretty good listener, and likes to be there for people when they need someone to talk to, but... Maybe what Strange needs here is a distraction, a reprieve, before he has to discuss the unpleasant mess with the other people who are actually involved? And the truth is he's right: Five isn't involved, really. She knows in a way that it's not any of her business. But at the same time... These are all people she has to be around, to work with, for maybe an entire year. If there's anything she can do to help ease tensions, well, that would be good. Not that she'd even know where to begin, when everyone at the moment is a virtual stranger to her.

She puts that thought process on hold, and startles for a moment when he gestures to a tree close to her while talking about a murderous tree, thinking for a second there that it's the one he means and maybe she should get out of the way before she's attacked by the malevolent plant. The temporary almost-panicked expression on her face makes her misunderstanding obvious. When instead of attacking her, it begins to blossom, though, she relaxes again and smiles, impressed and pleased, her eyes brightening.

"Oh..." She takes a flower from the branch, feels the petals gently in her fingertips. "It's beautiful," she observes, before tucking some of her green curls behind her ear and placing the flower there. She doesn't have a mirror here to look in to see the full effect, but at least it makes her feel pretty.

"This is like with the rain, right? Because the flowers want to grow, so you're encouraging them?"

"It is," Strange responds, with a little nod. Is this being a braggart? Maybe! But is it the truth? Definitely. "Magic is so often used to destroy or change things that it's easy to forget the beauty involved." As he gestures back to the tree, the limb moves over towards Strange. There's a pause before he decides to take a flower for himself, putting it in the buttonhole of his coat instead of behind his ear. Another gesture (plus more of that creaking sound) and the tree limb returns back to it's normal place.

It's still flowered, though. That addition can stay on.

"But you're correct," Strange responds with a nod, as he looks up at Five. And then he just starts yammering about magic, partly because this is Strange and half the time he's talking he's yammering about magic and partly because talking about magic helps keep his mind off of other things.

"Natural magic is all about asking, a give and take, relying on the connections between the magician and the aspects of nature. This is only a theory, but I believe the reason I can perform magic so effortlessly in the carnival compared to other locations is that both the trees and I serve the Ringmaster. They're willing to help a fellow subject."

Sometimes the need to brag about things comes from wanting other people's approval, and Five's done it a little in regards to her tech and hacking skills. Once in a while. It just feels nice to have people be impressed with you, okay, she understands this.

Five watches him take one of the flowers as well and add it to his coat, and she smiles and gives a nod of approval.

It's a good thing that Five's super interested in magic, then, so his talking about it just stokes the fascination there. She gives thought to what all he's saying too, particularly the part about it so often being used to destroy -- she wouldn't know, since it's not really a thing in her universe, but it both saddens and makes sense to her that that would be the case. Still, a thought drifts across her mind that good things can come from destruction too, that breaking things down sometimes creates new things, new reactions. And there's a certain kind of beauty in destruction...

This silent train of thought is interrupted when he brings up his theory, and she looks curiously at the trees around them, their surroundings, head slightly tilted as her gaze climbs a tree trunk as far up as it goes.

"Maybe! But, I sort of doubt they signed a contract like we did..." A pause. "Unless they were people once?" And now she's looking at the rock she's sitting on with some trepidation. Please don't be a person.

"Some might have been people." As he continues talking, Strange's little shithead grin spreads across his face. He's obviously teasing Five and is getting a grand time out of doing so. Think of it as hazing the newbies!

"After all, the Ringmaster is quite adept at transformation magic. She turned one particularly irritating coworker of ours into a lizard. The poor chap had to eat bugs and flies until she deigned to turn him back!"

Despite the fact that eating bugs and flies is ostensibly a terrible fate, Strange still has this 'better you than me' tone in his voice. Because said coworker was rather irritating. And it's one of those things that you look back on later with amusement. Plus, it's simply damn good gossip.

Five's expression is at first a little shocked at his initial response, but then morphs into something more incredulous. Doubtful.

Shifting on the rock, she leans back on her hands. "My room mate is kind of a lizard..." She says, thoughtful. Though she suspects that Alphys has always been what she is.

"A lot of people here are sort of... Transforming into other things anyway, aren't they? Is she the one doing that too?" Surprisingly, there's not a whole lot of fear in her voice, more just curiosity? There are worse fates than being stuck with, say, some rabbit ears.

"Of a sort," Strange explains. It's complicated. Still, Five's going to get the best explanation he can manage.

"Think of it as prolonged exposure. Being around a fae for a long period of time inherently makes one more fae-like. It isn't something she tries to do, it's simply something that happens."

And there's no fear or judgement in Strange's tone as well. After all, he didn't know that these were the effects of being around a fae. This was something that dealt with faeries, ergo it was something he needed to know. It's as simple as that.

"Another world called us changelings. I don't like the term, however, so any suggestions on what's a better thing to call us would be appreciated."

Prolonged exposure causes changes, huh? Sort of like... Radiation? Well, technically that makes you sick, so not the most perfect metaphor, but Five thinks she understands.

"I wonder in what ways I'll change while I'm here," she speaks aloud, thoughtfully.

Changelings, though. It's not a word that Five's ever even heard before, so she's not really sure why Strange has such a problem with it. She gives a little shrug though and offers, "Mutants?" with a rather unsure but amused hint of a smile, nose slightly wrinkled.

Strange, who doesn't really have any pop culture references to make the word 'mutants' more palatable, wrinkles his nose slightly. Hmm. It turns out there really aren't any good words to describe people who've had their bodies unintentionally changed due to fae influence.

"Truth be told, I think I prefer changelings. That does lend more of a mystical air to the whole thing." Because that's what matters in Strange's mind, the semantics of the thing. But, Five had a question, so he'll answer.

"Some of the changes seem to be lingering effects from where the carnival has been." At this comment, Strange idly taps the orange and white fish scales on his neck, turning his hand so Five can better see the scales on his hand as well. "While others that we take on reflect personal aspects of ourselves." And he moves his hand up to point at his mirrored eyes.

It was more of a joke than a real suggestion, because it's true: there's not a lot out there to choose from that don't have some negative connotations involved, probably. Five plans on giving it some more thought anyway, though.

Look, he's not going to get any argument from her on the 'mystical air' front, okay? Five thinks magic and all things to do with it are pretty damn cool.

She slips forward on the rock to peer a little more closely at the scales on his hand, the ones that he apparently got as a result from a place the carnival has been, clearly before Five got here. She nods knowingly at the mention of... 'reflecting personal aspects,' and gives him a brief, pointed smirky look that says "I see what you did there," whether the pun was intentional or not.

"Yeah, I think I made that connection back at the ball. Between the eyes and your mirror magic thing. But the scales...? Where did you go that resulted in that?"

"We went to Atlantis and we all turned into mermaids." Just said in the most nonchalant tone possible...but Strange can't hide the little grin on his face. Because mermaids! That's absolutely amazing! At least in his mind, turning into mermaids and breathing underwater is just the sort of wonderful, amazing thing that only could accomplished through magic.

The more he talks, the more that nonchalant grin fades and Strange expresses just how friggen cool it all is.

"The scales match what my fins and tail looked like when we were there. The Ringmaster turned us all into mermaids so we could breathe and get around underwater and then turned us back when the carnival left."

It's probably exactly the kind of reaction that Strange is expecting, but Five's eyes widen and brighten at the mention of mermaids. Because uh, hell yeah that's cool!

There's sort of an odd mixture of feelings swirling in her though between excitement, gratitude, and guilt. She feels at first lucky that she wound up here, to get to be a part of such cool, amazing things, but... Then guilty, because she should be back in her own universe or world or whatever, finding out if her friends are still alive and everything else is okay. Like always, her emotions are easy to read, flickering across her face before she bites her lip and shakes her head to get back to the pleasant part of this conversation.

"So... Was it like super easy to swim or did it take a while getting used to having a tail like that?"

"At least for me, it took a while. I can barely swim in the first place, waking up underwater with a tail only made it harder." Strange's admission that he's an awful swimmer is said in a matter-of-fact tone. There's no use denying it. He just is. But, one at least learns how to move around when they're literally and metaphorically thrown into the deep end.

"I had gotten good enough at it by the end of our stay. Of course, the problem here is that swimming with a tail is radically different from swimming with two legs. Different muscles, and all that."

Being thrown into the deep end in order to learn something is definitely a method that Five is familiar with. Even if swimming she only really knows from having done it in another person's memories. She doesn't find it strange at all that he doesn't much know how to swim, and she nods in understanding about the different muscles. That makes sense.

"Mermaids. That's so cool." She's still not over it. "What did you all do there? What was Atlantis like?"

"It was amazing. Under water is full of so much vibrant life, both plant and animal, that I didn't know existed in the first place!" Strange's tone is just full of wonder as he continues talking. To nobody's surprise, the 1810s weren't exactly all that good with things like 'scuba technology' and 'discovering fish that lived in the depths of the oceans.' Add in the fact that Strange hasn't ever been to the tropics and there was just a whole new world of fish and plants for him to discover.

"While we were there, I performed for the merfolk, of course, but some other members of the carnival and I fought a giant crab and met the king of Atlantis."

He also bought a super cursed item but well, that's neither here nor there. What Five doesn't know won't hurt her.

"And... why'd you have to fight a giant crab?" She looks more amused by that bit than anything, though all of it in general is still just... Way too cool. She misses home and her friends like crazy of course, but hearing about all the cool places she might be able to go while she's here... Well, that helps a bit.

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⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

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