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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"Childermass told you that?" Lambert asks, quizzical -- because he is. Not that it isn't a huge secret or anything, but because he hadn't even really thought Childermass and Peridot ever spoke ... but now that he thinks about it, it's probable it was part of whatever he reported to the other supervisors. He makes a face, in any case, remembering that evening in retrospect all too well.

"I couldn't shake off the enchantment," he offers by way of explanation. Probably, he doesn't need to go into any great detail on that; Peridot, who was there the same of the rest of them, can probably appreciate just how hard it was to get a clear head, instead of just ... going back to dancing, feasting, ignoring everything.

"And I didn't know where you were." They danced, and then he lost track of her -- and almost everything else -- after that.

The frustrating part of his explanation is that it actually makes logical sense. Which she hates. It makes her feel like she has no good reason for being angry with him. Like, she can't just stop being angry at him, but staying angry means that her feelings are illogical, which in turn just makes her angrier.

"Yeah, Childermass told me," she repeats, still looking sour. Her tail flops and thumps back and forth on the mattress, like an agitated cat's. "The Ringmaster lost two more of her supervisors in the course of one night, did you think we wouldn't consult with one another after that? After we lost the Nightrider? I-- We were all worried sick about you!"

It sounds sensible in retrospect, but it's really mostly dumb luck. A lot of things could have gone wrong with that plan, and from a purely objective perspective, they most certainly did. A situation where the supervisor tasked with rescuing people ends up needing the rescue himself is pretty dire no matter how you slice it. Peridot's own obvious anger would normally rouse him to a fight, make him want to snipe back just to see her get riled up further, but right now he just doesn't have the energy for it.

He genuinely doesn't know what to say to the assertion that everyone was worried about him, though, staring at her blankly. The first instinctive response is a flat denial -- that objectively can't be true, and the idea that anyone gives that much of a shit about him is sort of laughable, unless you're Strange or Steven, who care too much about everything -- but even addled as he is, he knows that's probably not going to help his case. There's a disconcerting familiarity to the way Peridot's holding herself, speaking with an agitation that makes Lambert instinctively want to reach out and calm her down.

Portland's Lambert would have known the right thing to do that, probably, or at least known what to say to take her mind off her worries. This Lambert, though, the real one, is woefully underequipped for handling emotion directed at him, and settles on a confused scowl, glancing away. His ears droop a little, still too sensitive and responsive to his mood for him to hide. Shame isn't a common emotion for Lambert to feel, and it's annoying when it does. It makes him feel like he's done something wrong -- but he was just doing the best he could with the information he had at the time, right?

"It's not like I was planning on getting stuck," he grumbles. He also has the sense not to mention 'I was kind of expecting the Prince to possibly kill me, so I didn't think worrying about me would be much of a problem. "But being the Nightrider was never supposed to be safe."

"He said something to the same effect," Peridot says, referring to Childermass again, leveling a thoughtful glance at Lambert. That conversation between Engineer and the Acquisitioner is rather unpleasant to look back upon; she had let herself get so emotional...

Kind of like she's doing right now. Ugh.

Her gaze narrows into a suspicious stare. "If you weren't 'planning' on 'getting stuck', I do have to wonder what exactly you expected to happen, because that seems like the only possible outcome, by my calculations," Peridot muses. And yeah, she's actually giving some serious thought to trying to figure out what Lambert's plan actually was. "Unless... You intended to be captured, in order to infiltrate the Prince's work force...?" She looks up at him expectantly.

Lambert makes the mistake of looking back at her while she says that. It's the hopeful look Peridot gives him, more than anything, that throws Lambert off. Of course, that's not going to change his answer, which is still probably exactly as idiotic as Peridot already accused him of being.

"The Ringmaster said she could only match the Prince if she had the right resources," Lambert shrugs. So, it was a gamble. Counting on the Blue Rose being enough of the 'right resource,' as it had certainly seemed at the time Childermass had told him about it.

"Obviously, that didn't work out. Still probably better than--" he coughs, voice going a bit hoarse from all the talking he's been doing. "--marrying that guy."

Peridot winces when he starts coughing; she can't help but feel a little guilty for the lingering damage from the hunt, even though she'd gone in with every intention of ending things as quickly as possible.

But, ah. Yes. "That's right... the Prince had wanted to 'marry' the Ringmaster," she repeats thoughtfully. That's a human concept that the gem still can't really wrap her head around properly. She understands love, and the desire to be with a specific person, but apparently 'marriage' isn't always about love...?

Such a vexing concept is enough to at least temporarily distract her from her continued interrogation of Lambert and his motivations. "I got married once," Peridot says in an offhanded way. "I still don't get what the big deal is, to be honest with you."

That announcement is met with a bit of a blank stare for a moment. Had he the energy, Lambert would no doubt be investing it into some seriously merciless mocking right now, but as it is, all he can do is croak a weak laugh and settle back on his pillow.

"Now this I gotta hear about." And he looks at her, expectantly. Give him a chance to rest his throat for at least a good few minutes, his expectations of this story are high!

Don't get your expectations too high, buddy. The story is more or less just 'gems are idiots who don't understand human customs.' Or to go more in-depth...

"It really wasn't that exciting, like I said," Peridot snorts. "Far more interesting things happened that day. Actually..." She lifts a clawed hand to her chin, tapping thoughtfully. "That was the same day that Pumpkin came into our lives, come to think of it. She had just jumped into Lapis's arms in sheer terror, after Steven murdered and gutted one of her vegetable kin in front of her... That's when Steven's 'uncle' showed up in this super archaic Earth aircraft, and he started shouting at the three of us."

Buckle up Lambert, you're in for a ride.

Right, Pumpkin the gourd dog that apparently Steven brought to life. Peridot's story is missing some important context, like what Steven was doing animating produce in the first place, but Lambert just wants to listen to Peridot talk, so he'll just wave for her to go on with the story, a bit impatiently.

"What does this have to do with getting married??"

"I'm getting to that part," she huffs at him, a little indignant. "Haven't you ever heard of setting the narrative?" SHEESH.

"Anyway. As I was saying... Steven's uncle shows up. Except that we didn't know it was his uncle at the time, so we just thought he was just some crazy human swooping in to shout at us about how we'd ruined 'his barn' by turning it into an awesome gem cave for me and Lapis to live in. We only found out that he was related to Steven after Greg arrived and identified him as 'Cousin Andy'-- of course, at that point we had already assaulted him with an impressive water/attack drone combo..."

She is just straight up prattling this all off like a teenage girl passing on some juicy gossip, making sure to get in all the most useless details, because it makes her feel extra smart and knowledgeable to include them. And she's not even close to done yet.

"...Anyway, it turned out that Greg hadn't seen this Andy in quite some time? And then all this weird drama started happening about human familial relations that I still to this day don't really understand, even after-- uh--" Erk. Almost mentioning Portland makes her stammer awkwardly for half a moment. EMERGENCY COURSE CHANGE. She coughs awkwardly, and continues: "B-Basically 'Andy' got upset about a whole number of things, including the fact that Greg had gone and spawned offspring with an 'illegal alien' without getting married first? So at that point, us gems, we're all getting real annoyed with listening to this clod saying this stuff that was upsetting Steven... But my friend Garnet is like, 'no, we can't attack Andy. It's important for Steven to know his human family. We have to make friends with him.' So that's when we decided to hatch an INGENIOUS PLOT that would make EVERYTHING RIGHT!"

Lambert thinks he can guess exactly what this ingenious plot is, but for once, he's not going to ruin things by stealing Peridot's thunder. Instead of spoiling the retelling for her, her grins.

"Go on," he prompts, indulgently. "What did you come up with?"

She is absolutely soaking up that indulgence like an awful little praise sponge. If only her audiences for these stories were always this good!

"The only logical solution available, given our understanding of the situation: We decided that if he was upset about the absence of marriage, the best thing to do would be for ALL of us to marry each other, to make up for the deficit!" Peridot says proudly. "So we did! And we threw in a bunch of other human ceremonies in to sweeten the deal!" She starts to tick them off on her claws: "Birthdays, funerals..."

Pause.

"Well. Mostly just those three things, but, you get the idea. We even brought him the most massive, glorious cake that we could afford on such short notice!"

That answer is even more ridiculous than Lambert was expecting. Before he can stop himself, he laughs -- and regrets it instantly after, for how it tears at his aching throat, but it's still worth it -- and tips his head back against his pillows, sharp teeth bared as he cackles at Peridot's expense and the gems.

"And?" he gasps, when he gets his breath back, grinning at the gem. "Did it work?"

"Actually, he reacted pretty much exactly as you did just now," Peridot snorts. "But it did get him to calm down and concede to participating in a traditional human family dinner, so, in a way, you could say it was actually a total success!"

Yeah, she knows better now, that it was a dumb plan from the get-go. But they did their best at the time!

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⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

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