Shared Story: Character Campfire

Razugual seemed to be pleased with this new revelation. His odd smile widened, and he spoke about the morbid subject with with greater enthusiasm. "You mean you've flat-out died too? And here I thought it would be a little more rare of an experience than that." He rested his chin on his hands—a position of habit rather than comfort—and considered something. He said questioningly, "But before you seemed... alive in a way. Maybe augmented by machinery, but I'd be hard pressed to call you dead."

The magician's companion turned his head sideways in curiosity. "So... was your death only temporary? I'm not over-assuming, am I?"

After Mud had answered her question, Morgan realized she should had been a little more specific. The man pretty much stated the obvious; the sort of thing she probably could have figured out on her own - he turned Damien into a griffin, and everything that implied.

She was about to elaborate on her question, when Sano got up, handed her a box made out of a strange white material, and then walked off without explaining what it was for. With an odd look on her face, she glanced at the box, then at Sano as he vanished into the gas station, then back at the box. She shrugged before setting the box down on the ground next to her without opening it. She'd take a look at what was inside it after she was done talking to Mud.

"It does, but that doesn't exactly cover all the bases," she responded as she faced the magician again. "What I'm curious about was how you were unable to comply with Damien's request. Was it because that...whatever the heck he was before you turned him into a griffin, wasn't magical in nature, or was it due to a completely different restriction altogether?"

"Oh," said Damien, "I was only mostly dead. No heartbeat or respiration. I had a friend with a lot of patience keeping some circulation going, but there was still plenty of brain damage. I wondered after that... you know... what dying was." His feathers stood an end.

"She fixed my brain, obviously..." he smiled self-depreciatingly. "Well, maybe not so obviously. But even after she brought back what she could, there were thousands of cells she had to regrow fresh... I started thinking maybe there are things you can't put back in a person, once they've gone. I couldn't find my friend anywhere, and I started walking, and the sky got all bright..." he looked up in silence, and then chuckled. "Lemme tell you, I started believing in some dumb things."

Razugual was about to share his own experience with death, but what Damien said intrigued him. He wasn't sure if he had quite understood everything the gryphon had said— his narrative seemed to be disconnected, but... perhaps, Razugual considered, that was simply the condition of his memory of what had happened.

"Dumb things." He repeated amusedly. Razugual thought he probably knew only too well what kind of dumb things a skirt— or a head on collision—with death could cause people to start believing in, or at least wondering about. "Go on." he said politely, hoping that Damien wouldn't become suddenly aggravated by something from the past. Something from his Before.





The magician spoke without turning away from the fire. "The only image of Damien I have is that terrible sorry rusty old clinking tin man that he was at the time of our great water-fetching journey's commencing. I have never met—nor have I known—the man he so delicately described himself wanting to be. I do not even have an image of this man." Mud sounded less bitter and more informative when he spoke now.

He tapped his fire-poking stick against the ground, biting his lip and shaking his head, before finally turning to the girl with a look of sad confusion. He said, "If I do not know what this man looks like, and I do not know who he is, how am I to turn anything into him, even the same man?" He shook his head again, looking onward to the gas station. "It is as simple as it is impossible, which is a sharp 'very' on both counts. Such a trick... I fear I cannot perform."

"If I died," he attempted to explain, "What would the difference be? If Valerie just kept re-growing and wiring things together... I don't think she'd have the presence of mind to stop even if there wasn't anything left of me. Whatever she built though, it would still be intelligent and self-aware, and if it thought it used to be some guy named Damien, I don't think she'd want to upset it by saying it was two-thirds a clone and one-third computer and that the person it remembers being has been dead for years. Out here though, is when I started thinking about souls." he gestured towards the desert in general. "I'm far pro-robot, never gave a soul a second thought..." he glanced around. "Sorry if that... offends someone."

He apologized before it occurred to him that "pro-robot" and "true-human" might not even exist to the people around him. He just knew that bringing up that particular issue in a crowd was a great way to start a fight.

"But this desert... it would make a perfect Purgatory, you know? You and the nothingness and only your thoughts and your memories for company." He again grew self-conscious and shifted to warm the other side of his body. "Had to drop that thought, though. Thinking I couldn't even die was too depressing. Anyway... you never got to your Before. I take it you've died as well?"

Morgan nodded, glancing over to look at Damien herself. Her facial expression looked relatively neutral, but there seemed to be a slight disappointment to it. The reason was quite simple, and rather obvious now that she thought of it. At first, she really was disappointed, under the assumption that Mud was indeed incapable of undoing her curse since he had no idea what the person she was before she got cursed looked like.

She then realized that she wasn't exactly looking to turn from a vampire to a human straight out; she was looking to have a curse broken. She was asking the wrong questions; she asked Mud how he turned a man into a beast, when she should have been asking if he had any familiarity with curses. A straight transformation and a curse-induced transformation were two different things, or at least how it looked to her. Perhaps there was a chance of going back to being a normal human, at least for the duration of her time in this place.

Or perhaps she was just being extremely naive. She had known Mud for...what, ten minutes?...and she was already chatting him up about transformations and curses and whatnot. As amiable as he seemed on the surface, he most definitely had hidden depths, and those depths could have well been not very pleasant. For all she knew, she could have been setting herself up to make a deal with a devil, and she knew all too well what happened the last time she got into one of those.

On the other hand, Mud seemed legitimately displeased that he couldn't comply with Damien's request. Perhaps, if the nature of her curse was such that he could actually do something with it, it might have made up for the fact that he wasn't able to help Damien much apart from giving him a new body that sounded a little better than the one he had before (though Morgan wasn't quite sure what that might have been). She then looked at Razugual, who was apparently Mud's companion. Razugual seemed to be the dominant one in their relationship; if Mud tried anything unjustified, Razugual could well put a stop to it before it became an issue.

Do you really dislike being a vampire that much? she mentally asked herself. That was the question that she really needed to answer before continuing on with this discussion. It was true that she hated the blood requirement, and true that she disliked all the bile the common folk thought about vampires. On top of all the usual issues, she didn't have a chance to drive the conquerer away from her kingdom as a vampire; trying to hold a rally for a revolution would just have the crowd calling for someone to plunge a stake through her heart.

However, she wasn't in her world anymore. This was a completely different place, with a completely different population (if a group of five qualified as a "population"). None of the beings here had an outright negative reaction to her appearance; the only one who came close was Sano, and his behavior seemed to stem more from curiosity than fear. Besides, there had to be some benefits to being a vampire; she heard that they were capable of quite a lot. Was there anything here that made her curse an outright hindrance?

After some thought, she couldn't come up with an answer. Her abilities as a vampire could well have come in handy here, but at the same time she doubted Mud and Sano would be willing to have their blood sucked when she needed to feed. She decided that yes, she was going to push the subject of curses, but withhold on actually following through with it for now.

"I've a different question," she started, then hesitated slightly as she tried to think of the best way to word it. "Suppose the reason Damien was a 'tin man' to begin with was because an enchantment of magical nature was keeping him that way. Would you, as a presumable user of magic, be able to actually do anything about that enchantment?"

Razugual shook his head at Damien's remark about 'pro robots' and 'souls', "Don't worry, you won't hurt my or soul's feelings." He paused a moment, then added hesitantly, "if of course, you know... souls are things." Despite all he'd been through Razugual wasn't sure himself.

He scratched his chin in a contemplative manner when Damien had finished, and before he started in on himself, Razugual said, "I don't think I quite understood everything about your story, Damien, but there is one thing I do understand— living without the possibility to die. Well- not living really, so much as existing. Existing in a state without a good life, and without peace of death." I feel for you. He wanted to say, to emote somehow, but... what if he didn't? He'd seem like a bit of an arrogant ass if he jumped to that conclusion so soon.

"Let me get straight to it then..." Razugual said. He looked away from Damien, and in several directions, each seemingly not yielding the thoughts he wanted, until he stared simply down into the dirt, picturing his life Before. "In living, I used to be an English teacher at a middle school in this nice little suburban town called Graysfield; way out on the outskirts of what you'd consider the Chicago area. Do you have a Chicago?" He took a moment to glance at the Gryphon before shrugging an especially bodily shrug, and continuing.

"Ah well, anyways, when I was alive normally I was not nearly so... how to put this..." He glanced down at himself and, a strange look on his face that might have been a smile or might have been sadness, said with a little humor and a little chagrin, "I wasn't really so... white. But I'll get to that later. I had a beautiful girl, my fiancé... at long last." Razugual smiled strangely, though now there was some definite sadness in his squinched eyes. "Things were just great for me. You know. I was struck by a bus and died immediately."

He fell silent, but his gaze never moved from the spot of nothing he was looking at in the dirt. "Damien... do you believe in ghosts? 'Lingering spirits of the dead'?"





"Oh, well that depends." said the magician, his bitter tone from before all but gone. "It depends on things that depend on other things and yes, even those things have to depend on something else." He turned towards the girl and leaned on his fire-poking stick, using it like a cane. "But—and this is perhaps most significantly of all: it depends on where I am."

Mud leaned further on his stick placing his elbow upon it, and then resting his chin atop that arm. "And as for enchantments, well, let-me-tell-you. Enchantments unravel another large set of depends, I'm afraid."

"Well..." Damien answered slowly. "I didn't. And then you said that. And you're a massive white glowing undead dragon thing, so I feel like I should take your word for it..." He glanced at the magician, "Was it Mud who brought you back? After the bus, I mean."

Razugual smiled again, to himself, though outwardly this was hard to tell. He shook his head, "Oh no, Mud is a much more recent development in my time since then. And allow me to clarify; when I died, I was not as you see me today. I wasn't anything. I existed, but I was no longer... attached."

Razugual's smile had since left his face. "I remember being able to see. The sun was brighter than usual; incredibly bright really. It's light covered the streets like a fog whenever it was out. I was lying on the ground, because I didn't think I could move. I watched the ambulance come. And I watched them take my body away." He shut his eyes entirely and held his head back in a slight cringe. "It- it was... a mess. But by that point it was also just an empty husk. In death, I had slipped out."

He sighed a large and rumbling sigh, louder than the rest of his talk. Razugual's death had not been a pleasant part of his existence. "But I didn't go shooting off to heaven or hell or anything like that. I didn't pass on; I was left to linger." Razugual shifted his gaze back to Damien and asked tiredly, "Do you want me to tell you what it's like... to linger?"

"Depends on things," Morgan repeated, looking a little confused. "Okay. Could you give an example?"

She looked briefly at Damien and Razugual, noting the rather somber expression the latter seemed to be wearing. Whatever it was that those two were talking about, it must not have been pleasant. It was quite possible they were talking about their pasts, and in that case she rather regretted not listening in. Admittedly, she was never the best at empathy, but it would have been interesting to know the exact basics of their situations, or elaboration on a few things that weren't all that clear when she first met them. Yet, here she was, having a conversation with a person she assumed was a sorcerer that looked like it was about to go nowhere.

Well, she wasn't about to abandon this talk to go barge into another. Besides, even after this conversation was over, she still had the box that Sano gave to her to check out. By the time she was done with everything, she would have likely missed the bulk of it. She sighed, and then looked back at Mud, waiting for his reply.

"An example? Humhumphurdum-an example?" Mud made a face, puckering his lips slightly, as though he were peeved by something unexpected. "Very well: the very nature of the enchantment, the enchanter of the enchantment, your definition of enchantment, my definition of enchantment. All of these things happen to be factors, funneling together to determine whether I can do anything about... anything." He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I fear that unless I happen to attain a very comprehensive list of all the factors involved in any sort of speculative or proverbial scenarios, I can not determine precisely to what effect my own talents would be of use."

As he spoke, the magician stuck his fire-poking stick into the ground quite firmly, so that it stood upright. He removed his hat from upon his head and balanced it on the end of the stick. By the time he was done speaking, Mud was twirling his fancy hat upon the stick with a touch of amusement. Seeming to remember that he had not quite finished, Mud glanced back down at Morgan with a slightly bewildered look in his eyes and let go of his hat, leaving it spinning perpetually on the long stick.

"You see," he continued, his brow exaggeratedly furrowed and his mouth pressed, "An incident such as you've described has the potential to be very different, and have in most, if not all, cases, proved that potential beyond a measure of some doubt—six specifically unspecific points of doubt, to be precise. In short, and to perhaps shine a better light on what I told you before; If I do not know the specifics of a problem, I do not know if I can fix it. In Damien's case, I unfortunately could not. It is sad, but many things are sad, and I'm certain that a good number of things are sadder. Perhaps I can not help him in the way the poor fellow would like me to, but..." He stroked his pointed goatee and made a small head-tilt of a shrug. "I think I've granted him a magnanimous favor. Perhaps someday he will find it in his blood beating heart to thank ol' ...Mud."

The magician looked over at Damien and Razugual, his eyes sharply narrowed. He picked his spinning hat off of his fire-poking stick and placed it back on his head, then turned back to Morgan. "Now, dear girl, was there something you wanted to arrive at in asking me these questions?"

edited 27th Nov '12 8:50:20 PM by Ryuhza

Did I kill the story? Should I change anything?

A newly shaved short haired blond man in a black suit steps out of the gas station. It's obviously must be Sano as he was the only one that was in there and he is carrying Sanos old change of clothes and some other of his stuff under his arm.

But he doesn't look like sano. Telling how Sano previously had looked was difficult, but he definitely didn't look like he do now. His hat and the collar of his coat had previously shaded and hidden most of his head and hair, and a short but thick brown beard had previously covered much of the rest of his face.

Now he just looks like an average slightly overweight young blond man wearing a black suit. But there is something odd about his body, he has oddly long legs for a man that's six feet tall. He has oddly long arms and fingers too. He had previously managed to hide it with his longcoat and by carefully thinking about how he moves his arms. Never keeping them straight against his body or straight at all, pulling his shoulders up when people looked at him and never extend his arms to much when shaking hands, the roomy sleeves of his coat helped a lot too.

Now he doesn't care to hide it as it's impossible anyway without that coat. If standing straight with his arms down against his body his finger tips would reach down to his knees.

He goes to the gas pumps and put the stuff down between two of them. Then he takes a good look at the two pump. After inspecting them for a while he goes back into the building and fetches the mop handle he saw in a corner in the gas stations lavatory. Back outside he uses it to draw lines in the dirt around the pump. Once in a while he glances towards Morgan and the box next to her.

edited 3rd Dec '12 5:17:05 AM by m8e

Not your fault m8e, from what I gather, Yomegami is sick or otherwise occupied, and Dae Brayk hasn't got much to add at the moment.

Damien didn't answer, so Razugual continued anyways, turning his head upwards to stare at the stars, and perhaps, to separate himself from the memory.

"Well..." he said, his voice still rumbling, though uncertainty was present as he struggled to describe his existence as a ghost. "It's like living as a distant echo. Everything that makes you you is there... it exists, but it's not attached to anything, so no one can see it. No one knows that it's there." He tilted his head in reconsideration, "Well, that's not exactly true. Blah- I'm sorry, I'm doing a terribly abstract job of explaining this. There's got to be a better way..."

Razugual thought for a moment, his clawed finger tapping silently against the side of his large maw. "I could move from place to place, but very, very slowly. And only forward. A snails pace forward. I could turn, but it was very difficult, and I would often be drawn back to the same directions. Like an invisible hand, guiding me on a single track. Fortunately, and perhaps fatally— if you'll excuse my odd use of the word— after several days, maybe an entire week of moving forward, that track guided me back to my house. It was there that I found out... I... I'd..."

Razugual's voice stuttered, then halted. His eyes were shut, and his mouth was slightly agape. The bright glow of his body was visibly fading.

"Never mind." he finally said, his eyes open, but avoiding any sort of contact with Damien's. "I don't want to go into it. It's... never mind." Razugual turned around and stared at the fire.

Apologies about the extremely late reply; I was half waiting for Dae Brayk and half stuck trying to figure out what to say.

Morgan frowned. Mud was ready to jump straight to the point, but even though it was inevitable it would have come to this point anyway, she was still rather hesitant to flat-out say that she was the one with the enchantment that needed undone. Somehow, having to draw attention to her condition just made having it worse, and she wasn't sure how Mud was going to react; she wasn't even sure if he had noticed her differences at all.

She really couldn't see the point of staving it off any longer, however. Mud wanted to get it over with, so she might as well play along.

"Well...." she started, then stopped and gazed into the fire. "I just happen to know...um...someone who is affected by an enchantment of the sort I just asked about, and wanted to see if you could do anything about it. Then again, I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to meet said person until we figure out a way to get back to...wherever we originally came from...so, I guess it's just simple curiosity?"

She shrugged, then glanced back at Mud and grinned sheepishly, exposing her fangs again. This time, it was intentional. She figured Mud wasn't likely to believe that she was just curious, and was in fact trying to say that the person who was enchanted was herself in a decidedly roundabout way.

Apologies, I've been sleepy/distracted/procrastinating. And Dae Brayk, care to post... anything?

Somewhere around half-way through Morgan's reply, Mud's face broke into a big smile, which remained long after she had finished. "Well well! Thinking of someone else's problems; how very considerate of you." He gave a short inward laugh and shook his head, "Why, I had thought you would want to discuss your own dear condition..." There was a hint of sly amusement in his last words, but before Morgan had a chance to respond, the magician continued forthright.

"...But if it's simply an answer you want to sate your curious conscience, then I have several. I'll give you the one I deem the fairest, and that is that while there may be changes I can make to the enchanted's person, I don't believe that in the situation you have described, taking into consideration my involvement and knowledge of this person—which is to say: very little to nil—that I could guide them to a direct and preferable solution." He held up his hands in a shrug, adding, "Of course, there are side paths. Out of the frying pan, and into the strawberry gelatin dessert, though one largely would have preferred simple, unobstructed ground— or a cheesecake at least. But alas, I cannot offer either of these things, but I can offer strawberry gelatin dessert and an assortment of other sideways solutions."

Mud ran his fingers along his curly mustache and seemed to be in thought for a moment. "In short, it is very much likely that I would not be able to restore them to the person they were before their enchantment. Of course, there are plenty of other dazzling and hipskip things to be, but even then, if the enchantment is persistent, I cannot guarantee that it would not resurface, like a perpetual cut, caught in the cycle of bleeding, scabbing over, and then bleeding again... and my! Wouldn't that be a lot of blood?"

The magician then appeared distracted, sniffing the air and pulling out his indecipherable pocket watch to check something measured with it's numerous circling hands. "Is there anything else you would like to know? Any more entrancing questions for me Signora Morgan?" Mud turned his head and gave her a deep, daring stare.

edited 9th Dec '12 2:32:51 AM by Ryuhza

Meanwhile, Sano had finished drawing his seemingly random lines in the dirt around the pumps. Sano then started to leap, jump, roll and swing his arm around, doing his "magical dance".

He suddenly stop moving just like when the music stops in a game of musical statues, but in this case there was no music to be stopped, at least none that wasn't in Sanos head. Instead there was a small almost blinding flash of light and a small puff of smoke right after Sano had stopped moving.

He returns to the campfire and gets seated next to the cooler and grabs another beer. Looking around the camp fire he sees that nobody have really done anything about the balloon or even touched any of the other stuff, including that box.

Have they just been sitting here talking? Have Mud told the others anything? No, they have probably just talked about Muds magic, Damien and Morgan.

"Ok, I'm done with my preparations, what have I missed?" Sano told everybody but the first part was just directed to Mud.

This is about as far as I can stretch it Dae Brayk. Without things getting weird, that is. It's been over two weeks since your last post, heading onto three.

Razugual spent quite a while looking at the fire in silence, going over his thoughts, his words, but not really thinking about them. Not examining them, or considering them, simply just confirming them.

He wasted time like this for a while longer, before his attention was suddenly drawn away by the appearance of an unfamiliar man. Razugual tilted his head as he stared at the man, not sure for quite a few moments, who it was he was looking at. It wasn't until he noticed the clothes underneath the man's arms, recognizing the color and appearance of the fabric as that of the coat that the other man, Sano, had worn. Then it clicked, and Razugual was stunned by how remarkably well the man cleaned up, though he couldn't help but feel as though something was off about his appearance. Sano seemed occupied with Mud and Morgan, though, and Razugual returned his attention to what he himself was doing.

Then he remembered what he was supposed to have been doing. Somewhere in talking about himself, Razugual must've forgotten why he'd decided to go to Damien in the first place. It wasn't to swap sad stories— not really. That was a part of it, but his real purpose had been to offer some empathy, as a person who'd been in- who was in a similar situation.

He turned his head back to Damien and opened his mouth to speak. "I'm sorry, I've neglected the whole point of coming over here. Got sidetracked in my own little personal misery." He shook his head at his own foolishness, then moved closer to Damien and drew himself back into an upright position. "The point is, Damien, you an I have been through a lot of similar shit. Certainly not identical, but I'd wager it's more similar than anyone else you'll ever meet. I literally lost the life I had before. I died. And even in coming back to life, I'm not the person I was before." a small smile formed at the edges of his mouth. "If you hadn't guessed. But I've survived through all of it. I continued on through numerous events that I think one could describe as being 'drastically life-altering changes'. And guess what? Things got better. Even from the bottom of the darkest hole I've ever fallen into, things got better."

Razugual's glow had returned during his talk. He folded his arms and shrugged. "And I think I turned out okay. I've found contentment; or something so similar that I don't need the other one. And most importantly, the things that make me me are still there. The black, seventh-grade English teacher nestled in nowhere, suburbia and the massive white glowing undead dragon thing are one and the same person. That's what really matters.

"What I'm saying is that... there's peace to be found, Damien. But it's going to be pretty damn hard to find if you're too busy focusing on the path behind you that you can't see the path ahead. No matter what, that's where the future lies." Razugual paused for a moment, before looking sincerely at Damien (as sincerely as one with glowing white eyes can manage to look), and said simply, "Words from a road long traveled, friend."

He stopped then, content with what he had said.





Mud turned his head slightly and answered, "Chit, chat, and a little wishful thinking aloud." He glanced at his watch again, which was still in his hand, then pocketed it finally and looked at Sano directly. As soon as he saw the man's drastic change of appearance, he broke into a wide, toothy grin.

"Well! That is quite the trick Sano! Quite the trick indeed. And here I thought I was the only one pulling them." He laughed lightly and continued, "If you're ready, then I suppose I'm just as ready—my readiness being both reliant and in tandem with your own, you see. Are we still to be waiting on your dear... friends?"

edited 15th Dec '12 3:42:13 AM by Ryuhza

Morgan was rather surprised to learn that Mud had, in fact, noticed her differences. Granted, she really wasn't trying to hide it; it was that Mud was just that nonchalant about it. Then again, when one's traveling partner was a being like Razugual, she supposed that there were stranger things than cursed vampires.

"Well, here's the thing," she responded. "I actually was talking about myself there. I guess I'm okay if you can't reverse the entire transformation, but what I'm really worried about is the dietary requirement that came along with it." She frowned again. "I happen to be a vampire, and I hope you know what that means in terms of eating."

Upon finally spitting it out, she glanced at the spot were Sano was, with an expression that strongly seemed to be asking him if he was happy now. As it was, he rejoined the group a few seconds later, apparently having cleaned himself up. There was something else that looked different about the guy apart from the change in outfit; but Morgan couldn't quite put her finger on it. As it was, Sano's personality didn't seem to have changed, so she wasn't at all worried.

"Nothing much. We just sat around and talked," she replied, and then looked back at Mud with yet another confused expression. "Wait a minute...friends? Are we expecting another group of people or something?"

"Morgan, take a look in that box."

"Yes, we are waiting for my friends."

"Oh, and this is just the way they know me, nothing special." Sano glances at his left hand and his normal blank expression turns into a smirk. "or actually, they know me with tattoos and without my left hand, but I think this is close enough." Sano take a look at his watch and his smirk grows into a big smile. "They will probably be here by noon. They now know where I am, I know where his car is, but they don't know that I know. It looks like he have decided to come here in person." Sano goes silent for a moment and his face turns back to normal. "Anyway, Mud, you don't have to be ready yet."

Sano felt that it no longer was useful to keep some of these things about himself and his plan secret. The others now know that his friends will come and he has a way out of here. People don't trust people they don't know anything about or people they know is lying, and thrust can be useful. Normaly he would just tell some well thoughtout and planed lies, but knowing that there is no real normal humans here and not knowing the extent of Muds and the dragons powers he decided to not risk it. Real people in the sense of being normal non-magical Homo sapiens, not real in the sense of being members of one of those organizations or not.

Sano stands up, open his beer, and takes a sip. "These friends of mine will come here in one, maybe two cars, their plan is to kill me. At least I think it is, they might want to torture me or something instead." He takes another sip and continues to talk. "These people hired me to kill some people like them. When I where done they found that I had been useful enough and that I knew too much."

Sano turns to the dragon "This will hopefully end here and I would like you and Damien to stay out of this and not scare them away." Sano assumed that Morgan and Mud would be hiding inside anyway, no humanoids likes the desert sun. He would be the only one they would see outside when they come.

Damien was not sure that he liked this plan.

"I..." he rose slowly. "Am not sure that I like this plan."

He paced around the fire, glancing at Sano every once in a while, his expression flickering with his own internal debate.

"These friends of yours that you want the magician to hurt... how does the story go when they tell it?"

edited 21st Dec '12 6:24:03 AM by DaeBrayk

"Their side of the story? Some crazy bastard went berserk when he was supposed to die. When they had managed to stop him and later chained him to a wall, to torture him I might add, he managed to get one of their own to betray them, that guy got the key to one of the locks and the other hand was... liberated with an axe. Then both of them just disappeared. I guess it goes something like that."

"Anyway, Mud's not going to hurt anybody, he's going to... unhurt them or something. But now when we have other things to consider I guess it would be a terrible waste."

"Mud, I guess there will be no talking doves."

Sent a pm the first time the box was mentioned.[smile]

edited 25th Dec '12 1:22:55 AM by m8e

M8e, you're probably going to have to tell Yomegami what's in the box through P Ms or spoilers or something before he can write about what is in the box. Unless you have already, in which case, I'm just mistaken. EDIT: Gotcha.

"What a song!" Declared Mud, just after Sano had shared his friends' perceived perspective, "You ought to pen it out for me someday, that I might enjoy pondering and repondering over the potential meanings in such words, amorphous and... vague as they were."

The magician flashed a goofy grin at Sano, then suddenly pursed his lips, turning his head to regard Morgan—whom he had yet to answer—through narrowed eyes. After a few moments of silent observation and what one might believe to be deep thought, Mud reached into his sleeve and pulled out yet another deck of cards. It was impossible to tell if this deck was either deck he'd drawn before, for they all had the same design. Without speaking to Morgan, he very quickly flipped through the cards, a set look of appraisal on his face as he briefly examined each.

When he had finished, he tucked the cards into the pocket of his waistcoat while shaking his head at Morgan, saying, "Well my dear, I do not possess the tools for a trick to transplace your hapless condition, nor do I have the current means to bring such tools into my possession, I imagine that would require at least a partial chronological reverse and goodness knows where you can find one of those... -but!" Mud held up a finger and stared at Morgan, "There may or may not exist a possibility to reimagine you without the need to quench yourself on that terribly special wine, I should think."

The magician retracted his finger, then clasped his hands together close to his face. He smiled devilishly at Morgan, "Appealing?"





Razugual waited for a response from Damien, but none came. He wondered if perhaps he'd been too imposing, as was... well... as was typical of him. Perhaps they had less in common than Razugual had assumed? Perhaps Razugual had offended the man. Maybe Damien just wasn't ready to feel any better. Razugual's glow dimmed.

He turned his attention to Sano as the hard to recognize man suddenly addressed him, ...about something the magician's companion had clearly not been following. Sano kept talking about what seemed to be some sort of event, and Razugual, along with Damien, was supposed to keep out of it. Damien seemed to know what the man was talking about, but they had been traveling together. Even after Sano had explained 'their' (Razugual was dying to know who 'they' were), side of the 'story' that Razugual must have missed entirely, he did not feel particularly enlightened.

Unsure of what to do, he remained quiet for several long moments as the others continued to speak. He did not like the darkness that often seemed to loom upon Sano's face as he spoke. It gave Razugual the distinct feeling that somehow- in some way- he and perhaps the others were being had by the man. Razugual tilted his head to the side and stepped towards the man, moving from a standing position to staring intently at Sano from all-fours. Hoping to glean a little clarification without looking ignorant, he spoke in a serious tone that connoted force, and demanded a solid answer.

"Sano. What are you doing?"

edited 25th Dec '12 2:44:45 PM by Ryuhza

Sano had pretty much done nothing to alleviate the constant state of confusion Morgan had been in since she got here. So the event that was to go down involved a bunch of people showing up to kill Sano because he knew too much, and apparently he had made a deal with Mud to do...something to them once they got here. This deal must have been made before Morgan arrived, or maybe before they returned to the area after she got here. Either way, it wasn't something she wanted to be a part of.

Since Mud was taking his time in responding, she figured she might as well look in that box Sano had given her. It had been sitting around for long enough anyway, and it seemed Sano really wanted her to look at it. She picked it up and sat it in her lap, tucked her claws in underneath the lid, and removed it with a generous amount of uncomfortable-sounding squeaking (she definitely did not like the way this material felt).

When she looked inside, she promptly realized why Sano had given it to her, even before she stated that she was a vampire - the box contained a bag filled with a suspicious-looking red fluid that was more than likely blood. At first, she was surprised, then slightly relieved that she wouldn't have to ask Sano or Mud, given that they were the only two humans here, for a drink. Then she considered what Sano had just stated about the upcoming arrival, and then scowled.

She was still thinking when Mud spoke up, speaking about a possible way to "re-imagine" her without her current diet specification. It was tempting to take him up on it, but the whole thing just reeked of a deal with the devil, especially with the look on the sorcerer's face. She looked up at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Depends on what you mean by 're-imagine,'" she responded, before casting a suspicious glare in Sano's direction. "Can you wait a minute, please? I need to ask Sano here a question."

Sano was stunned by Razuguals serious tone and the bluntness of his question, the question was both straightforeward and broad. Both of them just looked at each other. To Sano it looked like Razugual was waiting for a straight answer, but it wasn't possible give a straight answer. The silence didn't help and now anything could sound like a lie, but he had to say something.

"I stirred up a hornet's nest, and now I'm waiting for some hornets."

Razugual had figured he'd get a disappointingly thin answer, but the fact that Sano was clearly trying to avoid giving out any real details gave him reason to press further. "Waiting for the hornets." he repeated, his demeanor unaltered and forbidding. "In coming here, you are bringing the hornets to us. Appropriating our presence here as an asset in your own affairs."

While he spoke, Razugual walked his hind legs up to his forelimbs, then rose to a standing position, looming a good few feet over Sano. He arched his neck so that he was staring down at the man with his blank, glowing eyes, and demanded, "Who is coming here? How many are coming? How do they know you are here? I need to hear the truth, and I need to hear details. Merely calling these people your 'friends' is not about to cut it. You've made it clear that this planned engagement is anything but friendly. And furthermore..." Razugual's eyes narrowed, and looked Sano up and down. "Just who exactly are you?"





Mud made an exaggerated sigh, "Oh very well... but there's nothing to be nervous about. But- just as true- there's nothing to get your hopes up for either." He winked at Morgan, then took a seat, crossing one leg over the other, and watched the discourse between Sano and the others with a mixture of amusement and transcendence.