⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

[ringleaders]

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.

Comments

CW: self injury with shitty ceramic dog

[criticallyfucked]

Bro--

He can't stop laughing, and he repeats the word, breathlessly, incredulous with joy(?)

But he's already rising--up off his tail, which sends a shudder of something, pain or relief or some unspeakable combination thereof through him, and then he's searching, clumsy with the awful high and his own deplorable state--

His claws land on something solid, something he can feel the potential of.

It's a shitty ceramic shar pei dog, the kind of poorly-painted kitsch piece with slightly-misaligned eyes and cheap production that belongs in a dollar store.

Or it was a shitty ceramic shar-pei dog, anyway, because the instant he seizes it in his heavy, hairy paw, he raises it above his head and brings it smashing down, shattering it on the edge of a pipe attached to her sock-filled sink.

His eyes are shining, his prehistoric teeth bared wide in a smile that might still be real, and he snatches back the biggest piece (somewhat awkwardly, the piece that retains the dog's head) to take another swing. This time, though, he diverts its trajectory, abruptly changing its course before he strikes the ground and instead burying the point of it in his own stomach, producing a short, choked-off gasp of pain.

But his eyes are bright with emotion, with passion, overflowing like his blood, his sharp-toothed smile more clearly defined than ever.

He rips it back out, and begins bleeding all over his paw.

[drrdrrdrr]

"What the fuck, man!" Amethyst explodes, grabbing the dog piece out of his hand with one paw and swatting him about the head with the other. "What are you doing?? Gimme that, that was my favourite ceramic dog!"

[criticallyfucked]

Foster surrenders the bloody knick-knack without a fight; the smack upside the head is pretty effective, and while he easily falls into submission, he's visibly startled and confused by her reaction. The force of it is more or less exactly how he expects people to behave--it's just that he totally fails to understand what she's upset about at first. Then he realises, yes, of course, he destroyed and defiled her ceramic dog. Garbage or not, it's her garbage. And by its value to her, vastly more valuable than him--!