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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Lambert opens his mouth to repeat the question, pauses, and rephrases it in his mind. It's not like Foster was paying attention, he can probably get away with it.

"What are you doing here?" he leads with, instead, slowly and deliberately. "Did you decide not to bet on the Prince after all? It is a little hard to sign up to work for someone who's dead."

It's been however many days, and Foster's still at the Carnival, with no tangible repercussions for ... whatever it was he confessed to, down there. To be fair, Lambert's not sure even Foster understood what he was confessing to, so it probably makes no sense to beat the guy up over what is, more than likely, a tragic miscommunication between brain and mouth, but it never hurts to check.

"Oh, that." Foster's face splits into a brilliant smile.

Lambert could have asked an entirely different question and Foster wouldn't have noticed, let alone called him on it. Instead he's put himself on the receiving end of a tone that's either amused or disdainful, depending on your angle.

Both are pretty applicable.

"I was lying."

Edited 2017-11-15 12:37 (UTC)

"All right," Lambert agrees, with a surprising lack of violent reaction or obvious irritation, except for the usual low-level annoyance that just comes with Foster being Foster, mostly. Flick. Another piece of fried potato goes sailing off into the air, aimed squarely for the middle of Foster's forehead this time (it's a big, easy target, and it's not like Foster's dodging).

"What for?"

This time Lambert just misses, and the fry clips Foster's big furry ear before sailing into space.

Foster doesn't actually... react. Well, not to the fry.

He actually drops his gaze for a second, glancing aside. To be frank, honesty has never been Foster's best policy. His instincts are counter--the only times he is honest, he's inevitably accused of dishonesty, so being dishonest or at least evasive is his better choice. His ears stiffen and rotate now--bovine ears don't move the way canine ears do, but they do move.

"I'd already convinced the Prince of it." There's a mild undertone of frustration, or irritation. "Wouldn't it have been stupid to recant that? Anyway, it doesn't matter, because he was still smart enough to find me useless. I still failed!"

He brightens up at the chance to declare himself a massive failure, ears drooping back into relaxation.

"Just seems pretty pointless. It's not like we knew why you were jammed down there in the first place," Lambert points out. "You could've lied and just said you got caught like the rest of us."

There's an expression on his face he doesn't usually wear when he's talking to Foster. Usually, it's boredom or casual malice. For once, he's actually looking at Foster like he's paying attention instead of dismissing him out of hand, even if there's still something strangely aggressive about it. Then again, that's just about true for everything.

"And you weren't lying about what happened with the Rose," he adds, idly. By now, he's confirmed as much with reports from other nightrunners. "What were you gonna do if he hadn't dumped you with us, anyway?"

Lambert has a point. A point Foster can't actually dispute. The fact is that he was, at that point, more consumed with self-loathing and self-affliction than he was sense. Which is something that he does not have nearly enough insight to dispense, so instead he just frowns deeply. His gaze becomes evasive again--this time as much out of reflection as resistance.

"I had ideas," he says, vaguely--which is about all he can say. The infinite branches of possibility are... present, in his mind, still. He can feel what could have been in them even now. However, each one had been dependent entirely on circumstance, a multifractal tree of potentials and contingencies that never bore fruit.

Or, put a less delusional way, his idea might have had potential, but he was effectively making it up as he went along.

"But I had no opportunity. So it doesn't matter." He waves a paw quickly, dismissing that topic. "Nothing I do on my own will produce anything but garbage!"

No matter how much potential, he is only a tool, an object for its use. Without the hand to wield him, the mechanism to incorporate his purpose, he's worthless. He is, at his most, meant only to empower, to catalyse, to arm. The best he can do alone is look for his place.

His tail swishes at his hocks, and he smiles at Lambert--as though this is what he intended all along.

"But I can be used."

Lambert studies Foster a moment or two longer, the cat eyes and sharp teeth only lending to the predatory air as he taps his claws against the table.

Tok. Tok. Tok.

"So you're saying you want to work. For me," he says. Curiously, like it's a concept that's a bit foreign to him, the idea that Foster could be anything but an obstacle to actually getting things done at best. Still, the fact that he volunteered information and assistance unasked for, didn't get caught until the end at the Manor and actually managed to contribute (in whatever way) to retrieving the Blue Rose are a few points that off-set his track record, but ... the Manor might just have been a worse version of the Carnival in Foster's eyes.

Tok.

"Tell me what you can do," Lambert orders. "I already know you're a necromancer. What else?"

Somehow, Lambert's scrutiny seems to bring something more alive out of Foster; more than the glassy eyes and flattened affect of his starved, poisoned state, he leans in and steps forward--crushing that lost fry underhoof.

"Whatever you want me to do--no, to be?" Foster returns, "I will be." Lambert's ominous claws have set a tempo, and he is unable not to follow it--he advances further, his tail lashing, his eyes alight--

"Make me what you want. What you need. Grind me, beat me down! Carve me, break me to your mould!" His prehistoric teeth, sharp behind his once-lazy looks. He gestures ever more emphatically with his claws, shoulders bent, head raised.

"Magic? I can learn. A mechanism? I can create. Let me be your weapon, your tool, your dog. Anything. Anything. Whatever you desire, I will become!"

Right, Lambert remembers. This is why dealing with Foster is such a pain in the ass. Having someone willing to do everything at your beck and call sounds like a great idea in theory, but actually having it -- or at least, having it in a Foster-shaped package -- isn't actually all that appealing.

Nonetheless, it's an opportunity. Foster is a mage, of a sort, and if he can raise the dead, that means he's got access to a whole host of skills Lambert couldn't hope to learn ... if he can keep them in his head long enough.

"Let's try that again," he enunciates, slowly. "I can't tell you what I want you to be if I don't know what you are." He crosses his arms, arches a brow. "You know what your sales pitch sounds like? It sounds like hey, I'm a lot of work." He waves a hand, impatient. "I'm not interested in waiting for you to get mediocre at something when you already know how to do something else. It's a waste of my time. I already know you're not a total dipshit, so quit acting like one."

Foster blinks, slowly.

Then he starts to laugh--shoulders shaking, ears dropping immediately; it blooms into compulsive, repulsive laughter, loud and shameless.

He stops abruptly.

"Do you know what red magic is?" He doesn't actually wait for Lambert to answer. He has been forced to explain it a couple of times already--one of those times to Papyrus.

"Bodies. Minds. The magic of--the magic of depths, of dragons." He gestures broadly, holding eye contact even as he turns his face away.

Edited 2017-11-18 00:39 (UTC)

"No," Lambert answers, bluntly. "Magic doesn't have color where I'm from."

Though that was probably a rhetorical question anyway. He keeps his gaze focused on Foster, elbows resting on the table, and doesn't prompt him further, other than to raise a brow and cock his head slightly to the side. If there's a point to be made here, he already knows Foster is going to take his time about getting to it -- might as well get in what quips he can.

"What about it?"

"Mmmm." That pensive sound. Slightly judgmental.

"It's--" Foster starts. Then stops again, thinking; annoyed.

"It's just a name." He begins to walk--circling, looking into its centre, like he's looking for something.

"There are four. Four--four names, four colours, four planes. red is... not souls, no, but the bleeding flesh, the will, what is bound by the unquiet soul. Oceans. Deep waters. I understand it, I... am too much blood to forget blood. So, I can shape the physical part of... what is called 'reality.'"

It would be easier just to ask the Ringmaster for a fifth-grade textbook from Foster's world, frankly, but instead--

He stops, abruptly.

"Not directly." He looks at Lambert again, smiles significantly. "I can perform, but I do not contain."

Edited (Mobile tags and icons..........) 2017-11-18 02:20 (UTC)

What the fuck does that last part even mean, Lambert wonders. He may be too tired to deal with this after all, and he props the side of his face on one hand, sorting out what parts of that are even relevant to him right now.

"So you can change reality, physically," Lambert parrots back. Fair enough, he thinks he grasps that much. "But the power to do that doesn't come from you."

For someone who's so clear and concise about the desire to be used, Lambert thinks dismally, Foster sure is obscure as shit about almost everything else.

"Yes! More or less, anyway," Foster confirms, as much as he confirms anything. "The physical construct of reality, what is both real and seen." As opposed to the real and unseen, or the seen and unreal, both of which exist in equal measure--but which are both more or less beyond him, for the same reasons that a coherent explanation is beyond him.

There is also what is both unseen and unreal... but that's an entirely different issue. "When I said I will become whatever you wish me to be, I meant it. Undeath--necromancy--is all that ever mattered, for my original purpose. But in theory, anything is possible." Almost anything, anyway.

After all, his own diseased mind and rotted soul were beyond salvage.

But most things.

"All right." Lambert pauses. He can't believe the words he's about to say are about to come out of his mouth.

"That sounds ... useful." More useful than Foster is, generally, which isn't saying much. However, he'll continue without dwelling too much on that point.

"What do you need to learn new spells?"

Wow, Lambert. Has anyone checked in with Mari? Hell might have frozen over.

Foster almost glows when Lambert concedes his potential use, but the question catches him off guard.

"T... time?" He looks openly bewildered. "I have to craft a frame of reference, and then a... the process. Magic... I need to find the signs."

What he's trying to say, however poorly, is that making new magic requires constructing a platform of symbols to anchor the spell. Unfortunately, while magic is halfway a science, it's still halfway an art. Picky, subjective, and rarely linear. He had books as a necromancer, bodies of previous work to build on. With a few exceptions (known as hard limits, one of which Foster destroyed just before his contract), there's nothing stopping a mage from doing whatever the hell they want except the challenge of figuring out how to do it. Most people aren't especially interested in eschewing centuries of human magical art-science to make something that isn't some degree of related to an existing spell. The extant symbology works for a reason.

Foster doesn't care about the extant symbology unless it's convenient. What he does care about--

He cares about answers. He needs them. And this last question is almost one, but stops just shy of clarifying anything--least of all his intended purpose in Lambert's eyes. Which is what makes that question so frustrating for him--he's growing increasingly desperate, but he's continued to hold it together, just barely. Only to be asked something he can't even answer.

What does he--what does he need? He needs clear instruction, he needs a goal,, a purpose--!

"But what am I doing?" He enunciates the question with excruciating clarity, for an effect somewhere between pleading and condescending.

Edited (The edits will continue until morale improves.) 2017-11-27 21:46 (UTC)

So this isn't going to be like Jonathan 'wave his hands and wish hard enough and maybe he'll shit out something useful' Strange, but Lambert wasn't expecting that, anyway.

"You know your way around bodies. Dead ones, anyway. How much do you know about the living?" Lambert raises his brows, pauses as he actually takes a moment to consider what that sounds like, then course-corrects.

"Keeping them alive, obviously." Though from Foster's current state, he'd guess the answer is 'probably not much.' Regardless, he'll explain his reasoning as much for his own benefit -- feeling the idea out -- as Foster's. Okay, it's basically not at all for Foster and all for him.

"There are only so many times I need a corpse raised. I don't need more creative ways of making them. But I do need something to keep the idiots around here from turning into them, considering this carnival attracts trouble like shit draws flies." Meaning he's not even going to bother attempting to keep them out of trouble, that's impossible. The best he can do is mitigation.

"So. That's what I need. Magic that'll actually protect people, that they can actually use." His gaze focuses on Foster, eyes sharp, lips twisting in sardonic amusement. "Think you can do that?"

Edited 2017-11-27 22:07 (UTC)

When Lambert starts to lead into his idea--knowing about the living, keeping bodies alive, etc--the assumption on Foster's end is that he's about to made a healer.

And his reaction to that is... strong. Repulsion, resistance, the corners of his mouth pulling down so steeply and sharply that it's almost unpleasant to look at (almost?), but he doesn't break eye contact, or lose that look of fixed determination in his eyes.

Even if Lambert had ended it right there, had left Foster with no room but to understand that he was meant to do that which he was never given, Foster would not have refused, nor even argued.

Thankfully, Lambert isn't done, and by the time he's actually finished, Foster looks much more pensive. No, not even pensive. He's simply thoughtful. The dramatic frown is gone, but the eye contact persists.

"Something to protect people...?"

To protect others, specifically. That... should be permitted. Somehow, it can be done. That much can be allowed.

He doesn't know it yet--doesn't know the idea, the form--but he knows... he knows, intimately, the feeling.

"Yes, yes--" he's saying, because even if he doesn't know it, he can feel it, he can feel it--he can feel it undefined, inimicable, steady and real within him. The presence, the possibility, the potential--

"Give me time," he repeats, this time with all the conviction of a vow, breathless and sincere--a passion that only shows when least convenient, generally. Lambert's smirk is just... so delightfully belittling. "Give me time. I'll give you--whatever, whatever you want."

Edited 2017-11-29 17:31 (UTC)

"Good." Lambert's expression remains skeptical, but at the very least, he's willing to see how it goes. "Obviously, you still have to do it within the Ringmaster's rules. And the rest of the carnival is..." More moral than Lambert is, for one. "...squeamish, so don't come up with something no one's going to try because they think it's too creepy or gross."

A pause.

"You actually going to remember all of this, or do I need to write it down?" Maybe he'll write it down anyway, just to make sure he remembers what the hell he even asked Foster to do in the first place.

Foster had no intention of breaking the Ringmaster's rules, but he's patently unoffended by the suggestion that he would. Nor is he insulted by the ininuations of his incompetence--they're true, after all. He's not useful because he's reliable or intelligent, he's a dangerous, disgusting dreck whose loyalties and competence--no, even his basic understandings--can't be mistrusted enough....!

"Too creepy or gross," he echoes, nonplussed. "How do I--how do I know what's too creepy or gross?"

Isn't the fact that he's involved automatically repulsive? Too creepy or gross--should he hide his involvement, then?

Lambert stares back. He's absolutely the worst arbiter for judging 'creepy and gross' that Foster could have asked for, so it takes a bit of a struggle to come up with a list of guidelines that would probably fit what the rest of the carnival would think of.

"Try not to come up with something that requires anyone getting naked or their body fluids." That's probably a good one to start with, right? Lambert scowls. How much of this does he need to spell out? "That's usually what people have the most problems with."

"...I was planning to keep others out of the process as much as possible," he deadpans, although he turns his head to eye Lambert out of the corner of his eye. Half apprehension, half evasion. This may come as a shock, but Foster is not the kind of person--or person shaped object--who trusts others, and he has no plans to involve others in his magic process as much as he can avoid it.

So far, this doesn't seem... impossible. Nudity was not... he can't even imagine how nudity would get mixed up in a spell ritual. He's not a new age pentacles and crystals mage, he's not one of those 'dancing naked in the moonlight' mages.

That said, he doesn't think to ask whether his own blood counts as a 'bodily fluid' in this situation. So there's. That.

"You're going to have to eventually. I want to make sure it works properly." Lambert shrugs.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now..." He looks Foster over again, critically, then snorts. "You don't look like you're in much shape to do anything."

"Hahaha!"

Foster's laughter is loud and slightly mocking. "This? It's fine! It's fine." His tone, meant on some level to be reassuring, is also decidedly threatening. Miraculously, he drops it there.

Well, it's not much of a miracle--maybe just a mystery no one wants an answer to. It's possible he's just in a good mood because Lambert gave him something--a service, a project, a purpose--then again, maybe he's just fucking tired. This is not actually the first time Foster's just starved himself, but 'poisoned and partially petrified' isn't doing much for his stamina. Breathing hurts pretty much constantly. He'll have to do something about that.

"Don't worry! I'll have something for you."

He smiles.

"Can't be useful if you're about to fall over," Lambert points out, complacently. There isn't any real concern in his voice there, it's just a statement of fact. Though reminded of the cause of that, he frowns slightly. They're going to have to fix that, sooner or later, and not for Foster's sake.

He pushes his bench away from the table, rising to his feet.

"I'll be counting on it," he says simply. Maybe it's an implied threat, maybe Lambert just doesn't know how to talk outside sounding vaguely threatening all the time, who knows. "You know how to find me when you do."

And maybe he really will write this down, just in case, because he doesn't trust Foster not to weasel out of it.

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⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

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Phone tag with worst icon, a winning combo

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CW: self-deprivation, disordered eating

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