⇨ CONFLAGRATION

[ringleaders]

Who: The Ringmaster, Peridot, Amethyst, Shima, Tyki, Childermass and Ignatius.
When: Day 68
Where: THE CENTER OF THE (OTHER) MOON.
What: The Ringmaster has recruited the help of a not-so-elite group of carnival members to help her deal with the imprisoned Ignatius.
Warnings: Weird egg stuff.

THE FIERY ONE↴ When you meet up with the Ringmaster at the portal she's in her humanoid form, but that doesn't last long. After a brief period of waiting, she will take you back to the carnival grounds, still fresh and partially undefined from her rebuilding. It's familiar, but as if details have been left out - like a painting that's not finished yet. The sky isn't right, and and the forests are oddly barren. She'll assure you she simply isn't finished with it yet, but that this has taken precedence. Soon, she'll be turning into her dragon form and whisking you all away, up into the second moon. The flight happens almost instantaneously - first you see the carnival grounds, then the sandy oceans of the moon - then, you see nothing. It doesn't last for long, though. A ring of glowing stones light up the new space you're filling - a cavern carved out of the center of the moon itself. Unlike the moon with the Blue Rose, however, it isn't perfectly spherical, and gravity goes straight down. There is a rough, uneven floor you can walk on steadily, with boulders and rocks scattered about. The Ringmaster's current dragon form fills about half of it. In the center of the room there are two man-sized eggs. One glows brightly with an inner light, radiating heat. The other does as well, but less so. There's an impromptu nest of rocks around them, preventing them from falling over. The Ringmaster seems unsure of how to start. "So," she begins, uncertainly. She is till hunched over in dragon form. "This... is a bit complicated."

Comments

[drrdrrdrr]

"... Huh," says Amethyst, who is approximately 50% of man-sized, craning her neck a little to look up at the eggs, and then craning her neck a little more to look up at the Ringmaster. "So uh... Is he like... still in there? Did you get all human shaped just now with this dude all up in there still...?" She has personal experience of shapeshifting into something smaller after swallowing something large whole and generally speaking it doesn't go great...?

[atouts]

Whereas Childermass, while similarly looking between the Ringmaster and the eggs, comes to a somewhat different conclusion now that they're here and seeing this.

"No. Those eggs..." There's honestly no other conclusion to jump to here, so he just looks back towards the two eggs. "Are you going to hatch Ignatius?"

[lordofthering]

"Yes," the Ringmaster says quickly, because it technically answers both of their questions, "but."

She's been dreading and avoiding trying to explain this all week.

"It made more sense and was less mutually painful to trap him in an egg than in my stomach," she says, embarrassed but trying to hide it. "And, for the record, there is a lot of complicated magic going on here! This isn't just some nonsense I'm pulling..."

But yet she seems reluctant to explain what nonsense she is pulling.

[worldlyafflictions]

Waggles his hand, "Um, I kinda feel like it's all the same ta us at this level? Why're there two of 'em?"

[periphrasing]

Took the words right out of her mouth, Shima. Peridot looks at him, and then blinks up at the Ringmaster. Well?

[lordofthering]

The Ringmaster exhales hotly. Then, she reaches forward with a massive paw to take the more brightly glowing of the eggs, lifting it into her palm.

"I suppose this one doesn't need to be so large," she says. "Look. Ignatius is a predominantly Fire fae, and his Domain of Conflagration is stored inside of his chest as a fire core... a thing essentially like his heart. It's where he draws his strength from, and from where he can unleash such devastating destruction."

"I swallowed both him and his fire heart... and... essentially reorganized his energy to separate his heart from the rest of his soul. Then... I sealed both parts into eggs."

The subtext being that she absolute ate him and then laid him in an egg.

"This," she says, indicating the egg in her hand, "Contains his Heart of Conflagration. The other contains his body and mind and all that other stuff."

[worldlyafflictions]

"Ahaha, so the parts we're actually here for." He wanders over to the dimmer egg, leaning toward it a little to see if there's anything to hear, but not touching it...

He can't entirely go without saying something though.

"You're pretty embarrassed about this, huh."

[atouts]

"Shima..."

Careful there. More importantly, though—

"He's not going to like that," Childermass points out what is already pretty obvious to everyone, he would assume, mostly eyeing the egg the Ringmaster is holding now. His Domain. He didn't even know one could part that from a faerie. Not that it matters much to him, personally, in the long run, and so his gaze drifts back to the egg holding the actual faerie himself.

"When he hatches, what exactly are you hoping for?"

[lordofthering]

"I simply understand the associations mortals have with this kind of thing... believe it or not, I used to provide resurrections by simply swallowing the bodies and souls of the fallen myself and laying their egg afterwards."

She clasps the egg in her claws, smothering its light.

"The reactions were... strange to me. So, I simply made the experience less visceral by combining the souls and genetic material outside of my body, laying the necessary eggs in advance."

Then, she looks to Childermass.

"I know he'll be upset. I can only imagine the humiliation of having something so vital to his being stolen... but I couldn't think of any way to trap him that wouldn't be physically and mentally torturous in some other way. None that would allow him any kind of personal freedom beyond a cell or chains..."

She hated the idea.

"It isn't gone. It's still part of him. Just... separated. Temporarily. I just need time, for him to see that there's more to this, but without him unleashing his power against us. I just need him to understand why."

IGGY AND PERI Day 70

[periphrasing]

Peridot has been curious about Ignatius ever since that day she had spoken to the Ringmaster at the lake, and that fascination had only been piqued further by the brief conversation they'd all had with him on the moon. Simple curiosity had hardly been justification enough to bother asking for another audience though, so she hasn't seen or spoken to him since.

Heading up to the moon now, in order to interrogate him about his apparent interest in Lapis? The Engineer is finding herself wishing that curiosity really was the only reason for being here.

She's tense when she enters; because she's worried about Lapis, because she's unsure what she's going to find or what Ignatius's reaction to having a visitor will be... Even with the Ringmaster on call, the idea of being stuck alone with even a de-powered enemy fae is nervewracking one.

[npcarnival]

Peridot arrives into the familiar cavern without a sound. So much, in fact, that her entering seems to have little effect on what Ignatius is doing - which is, apparently, standing around buck naked, forging some kind of weapon out of metal he's torn straight from the trailer left in there with him.

The trailer is completely in pieces, with all the metal in it torn off and separated into piles based on the material. As it stands, he has apparently flattered the top of one of the boulders, and is using it to hammer a piece of glowing hot metal into shapes. He's got a blacksmithing hammer somehow, but based on the improvisational nature of the handle, he probably made that too.

For a forge? He doesn't need one, of course. He can heat the metal with his fingers, which has been doing for the last two days. In fact, there are several swords and other metal tools laying around in the grass, finished at some earlier point. The craftsmanship is pretty damn good, even if the base materials are lacking.

He doesn't look up from his work, his expression impassive.

[periphrasing]

Well that's a hell of a thing to walk in on. Especially considering she's already feeling kind of jumpy about the whole situation.

Peridot stops and watches him work for a moment, equal parts because she's not sure how to break the silence, and because watching him forge is downright fascinating. She's not exactly an expert smith herself, but she did pick up a few tricks from her lessons with Brauni over solstice break.

And another thing she's wondering... should she take those away from him? He's making weapons. That doesn't seem like a good thing for someone who's basically prisoner to have? But she also doesn't want to risk provoking him?

After a few moments of internal debate, she decides to just wing it and awkwardly clears her throat to get his attention.

[npcarnival]

"Yes?"

It's asked simply, and without much emotion behind it, besides perhaps very mild impatience. How quickly he responds, and with how little upstart there is, it seems that he probably knew she was here already.

He doesn't stop working, either.

[periphrasing]

This is becoming more and more unbearably awkward for her by the moment. She should have asked the Ringmaster for some tips before coming in here, like how the heck she's supposed to address this guy when he's a high fae, but also he's at their mercy.

Ugh.

What's worse, each time he bangs that hammer down, she flinches ever so slightly and her ears twitch back at the noise. It's making it even harder for her to focus, and try as she might, she can't get the words out:

"Umm... I need to--" Flinch. "I was just--" Flinch. "I wanted to ask--" Flinch. Peridot pauses and grits her teeth, continuing to suffer through the sounds of hammer against metal until...

"COULD YOU PUT THAT STUPID HAMMER DOWN FOR A CLODDING MINUTE PLEASE, I AM TRYING TO TALK TO YOU!" she yowls suddenly, her patience and the conversational ice broken at the same time.

[npcarnival]

Very slowly and leisurely, the hammering stops. Then, just as slowly, he sets down the hammer and the piece of metal he was working on.

He turns to her, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Then speak," he says, his voice just as flat.

[periphrasing]

"Thank you," Peridot grumbles, though she would have appreciated if he'd done that with a bit more speed.

"...Wwwwhy are you making a bunch of weapons, anyway?" she asks, eyeballing the items in question warily. She should probably just cut to the chase and ask what she came here to ask, but her curiosity has the better of her.

[npcarnival]

He looks around the cavern serving as his prison, and then spreads his arms, looking back at her. It seems to indicate the complete lack of material he has to work with.

"What else would you propose I do?" he asks, as if he's soliciting an order.

sometime around d76

[kingsroads]

To his credit, Strange had waited a few days before bringing up the Ignatius matter with the Ringmaster again (be proud of him, he's patient!). But with Eden on the horizon and the carnival leaving in a matter of days, he wanted to get as much of this sorted out as he could before they went after the mirror. Because he has absolutely no idea how this thing is going to work. How much claim did Ignatius have over him to begin with? What did he expect Strange to do? And how could Strange find a way to nullify or slip out of this agreement?

After all, he doubts this would be as easy as asking Ignatius 'hey, please forget about the fact that I agreed to serve you, I'd really like to see my wife when I leave the carnival.' But it wouldn't hurt to at least explain about the situation and further explain to Ignatius the matter of the curse Strange was under back home. And, though Strange knows he shouldn't admit it, there's a tiny part of him that simply wants to talk to Ignatius again.

So, he makes his way to the island in the middle of the lake, hopping over via his magic (thanks travel via reflection!). Strange is wearing a simple pair of slacks and a light cotton shirt, rolled up past the elbows. The shirt's made of thin enough material that his mirrors are slightly visible through it, especially the mirror coated stab wound courtesy of Zangetsu. Once he arrives on the beach, he looks around for any sign of where Ignatius might actually be. And Strange, true to form, also starts yelling.

"Hello? Ignatius, can you hear me?"

[npcarnival]

Strange probably locates Ignatius from the gentle sound of leaves rustling rythmically, because when he finds him, Ignatius is doing pull ups on a tree branch. Thankfully, he is now wearing clothes, though it's only a chiton, so don't stand beneath him unless you like butt.

He's way less buff than he was when Strange met him, but still buffer than most people you see. He's also got a tail and some scales, so that's cool. What he hasn't got is much interest in is stuff that isn't doing pull ups, because he apparently didn't notice or pay attention to Strange's first shout out.

[kingsroads]

Considering that he's next to Jonathan 'what muscle mass' Strange, he looks pretty buff. As he follows the sound of leaves rustling, Strange also activates his third eye. Since now his hair, his forehead, his hand, and his forearm are on fire, Strange is moving veeery cautiously around some of the trees.

Eventually, he finds Ignatius doing pull-ups. Okay then? Strange is obviously out of his element and obviously a bit awkward, not just because he could not do a pull-up himself if his life depended on it. But that tail and those scales...those are new. And, considering that Strange just knows Ignatius was swallowed and doesn't know he was egged, he's honestly not entirely sure how he got those to begin with. He walks into the area where Ignatius is exercising and...just awkwardly watches.

"Erm, Ignatius?" he tries again, looking at the fae with an expression of confusion. Because again, the tail is unexpected. When the hell did he get that? "Can we talk?"

[npcarnival]

Ignatius does a few more pull ups before letting himself hang, exhaling once, and then dropping down to the ground. He dusts off his hands, turning around slowly. Fire people don't really get sweaty, but his skin is more luminescent than average.

"What would you like?" he asks, blandly. There are notably some magic looking cuffs around his wrists, but no chains, ostensibly.

[kingsroads]

...right, Strange knows that Ignatius is probably still pissed about being trapped here and probably still annoyed at the fact that he was stuck on the moon for who knows how long, but even a 'oh good, I'm glad you're alive, wizard' would have been nice. Even just an 'oh hey there' would suffice. Going straight to 'what would you like' isn't expected in the slightest and Strange can't help but frown a little.

There's a little kernel of doubt in Strange's mind now that Ignatius isn't as into him as Strange thought. Which really, rude.

Those handcuffs draw Strange's attention. Some big speech about how he'd like to get out of this and like to see Arabella again falls right out of his head as his distracted self asks, "What are those things around your wrists? And, if this is rude then simply tell me, but why do you have a tail now?"

[npcarnival]

Ignatius straight up hasn't the foggiest that Strange has invested any worth in his opinion what so ever, because that idea seems absolutely absurd. It is, isn't it? He's also surprised that Strange doesn't already know what his situation is, somehow.

"These are called shackles," he explains, flatly. "And the tail is the disgusting aftermath of your leader deciding to unbirth me."

[kingsroads]

"I was dead for a week," Strange grumbles, as he slips into a bit of needless defensiveness. "Forgive me if I'm a little hazy on some of the details." Because what the hell is an unbirth. Is that a fancy way of saying 'when the Ringmaster puked him up?'

An awkward pause before. "I am sorry that this all happened to you, by the way. What those three did in the Athenaeum was barbaric."

He's 100% serious in saying that.

[npcarnival]

Ignatius stares at him. His expression is hard to read, but it leans towards... confused?

"It wasn't, really," he says. He almost sound awkward.