[open] Distant light, memory, Dark Shadow that swallowed me

[penumbrals]

🧙 WHO: Gaia and you?
⚔️️ WHAT: catch-all for February!
🕒 WHEN: during February
🗺️ WHERE: various
⚠️ WARNINGS: the crystal quest is in comments here, so npc death!


crystal quest (for caster) | aftermath | magic practice | valentione's day (for ryne)

Comments

[penumbrals]

[ From Caster's words, Gaia understands quickly that her own have been misunderstood. And surely it should be easy, with so much gold at stake, to just accept what the other is saying as true and move on. They can do this. But...

But wouldn't that go against everything?

She takes a deep breath, shakes her head. The look with which she fixes the blue-haired woman is something a little more serious, this time. ]

I apologize for the misunderstanding. What I mean to say is that we should not. [ Gaia wraps her fingers a little more tightly around the vial in her hand, her eyes dropping back to the one the other holds. Anxiety is beginning to pool in her gut, something thick and ugly.

If she has to, surely she can... ]

It would be wrong to do so. We have no knowledge of what is contained in these vials. I know we have been offered a large sum to complete this task, but...

[ An even tighter press of her grip around the glass serves to shatter the object. The sound is thankfully muffled in the circle of her fingers, although Caster will see the liquid clearly as it pools between her fingers, stained with flecks of her blood from the shards of glass pressing into her skin. ]

He has shown us no harm.

[colchismagecraft]

[Caster tapped her fingers lightly on the table, listening to what Gaia had to say. She was firm in her convictions, certainly, but naive as well.

Surely she had to have seen how suspicious it sounded when Morgana had made the offer!]

...what were you expecting, when you accepted her offer?

[Oh- and then she saw the glass shatter, and the blood. That was going to raise suspicions when the old man came back from the kitchen! She quickly slid some napkins over to Gaia to clear herself up.]

True, he's done us no harm, but what of it?

[Unlike Gaia's anxiousness, Caster didn't seem at all phased by this idea, keeping her grip on the bottle delicate despite her gloved hand.]

[penumbrals]

[ Her brows narrow. The truth is that she was just naïve more than anything else. She convinced herself somehow that whatever the woman Morganna was doing couldn't be that bad when the whole point of everything they were doing and learning was to save not only this world, but their own. What then, is the point of having the people under your care do bad things? It was those thoughts that allowed her to squash the misgivings she had, but... ]

It matters not what I expected. What matters is what we choose to do in this moment.

[ She takes the napkin to clean herself up; she has no reason to want to raise his suspicions either, despite the fact that now she has no intention whatsoever of causing him any harm. ]

We will not harm this man.

[ Her voice is firm, and where before there was anxiety in her expression, it is replaced now by a calm arrogance. She has made up her mind. ]

[colchismagecraft]

...Speak for yourself. We made a deal.

[It almost felt like she wanted to do this out of spite. To prove she was as awful as Morganna presumably thought she was by asking her to do this quest to begin with.

She kept the bottle close, ready. But she'd not had the chance to pour it, yet.]

Leave if you wish...I intend to finish what I came for, with or without your help.