blonde billy #2 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wythersake) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2024-05-03 03:43 pm
wythersake) wrote in faderift2024-05-03 03:43 pm
[ may catchall ]
WHO: Isaac, Cedric, Lazar + Clarisse, others, you??
WHAT: Open & closed prompts for a bit
WHEN: Vaguely post-attacks, like enough that it isn't silly
WHERE: Here n' there
NOTES: Adding these as I go. Wildcards welcome. HMU on plurk or Discord if you want anything bespoke.
WHAT: Open & closed prompts for a bit
WHEN: Vaguely post-attacks, like enough that it isn't silly
WHERE: Here n' there
NOTES: Adding these as I go. Wildcards welcome. HMU on plurk or Discord if you want anything bespoke.
no subject
A shrug. Loneliness might strike the better comfort for its singularity, and unkind of him to write, to imply. Joselyn stretched for connections, but they wound ever about a missing space; what little Isaac can say of Miriam, she must resemble the tangle.
"But it’s good of you to try." Vlast is trying. Call it kindness, or perhaps he only cares to prove progress - balm in it, still. Words are rarely adequate, but Maker, has he starved for them of late. "Have you siblings?"
no subject
He does not ask why Isaac is bothering to write at all if it gives Enchanter Smythe no comfort and him only frustration and ink stains.
It's probably polite, or something similarly inexplicable that humans twist themselves into knots trying to explain, and Isaac looks twisted up enough without Vlast pressing him for explanations on how he grieves.
When he asks about siblings, Vlast goes very still.
"Yes," he answers, but doesn't elaborate further. "...Have you?"
no subject
Vlast freezes. Isaac examines his stillness. Some piece of him, never very distant, registers: Ammunition.
Dead, then. Else something altogether thornier, and there a faulty tense again bears examination; present needn't signal alive. Is there any point at which one's brother, sister, escapes that definition?
(Forty years might do it.)
"Fortunately for our stores of ink," Paper, rather. Mostly the paper. "I can't imagine they read. What are you hunting for, there?"
no subject
Alas, puns are still beyond him, and he instead scowls under Isaac's sharp-eyed scrutiny.
"Histories, mostly. I have much to learn, and little else but time for now."
Speaking of which...
"Forty years is not very long, is it? Have you any, surely there's a chance they live."
no subject
A question with no good answer.
no subject
Still, Isaac has given him a hint.
"Older than forty," he says with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. "Younger than sixty. Perhaps close to fifty."
no subject
He doesn't sound like it is - Isaac is, at this very moment, calculating whether he can work moisturizer into the Infirmary budget -
(Strange could use it. He's getting up there, himself.)
"Forty years is a span for all you'll encounter."
no subject
"You dislike your age?"
In fairness, he's only been around five measly decades. Vlast is five times that and the Exalted would chastise him for the impatience of youth.
"...Do people dismiss your thoughts because you are so young?"
no subject
no subject
"Buffoons that would try to cage the ocean for fear of its waves, had they the power," he grouses. "Fear not. I have no tolerance for such idiocy."
no subject
He draws it out, painfully-languid:
"Would be much too fast."
no subject
"Of course they lose their minds. Humans are ill-suited to consuming magic."
He sounds almost indignant at the prospect.
"One may as well drink poison and be done with it."
no subject
"Humans?"
Mild. They’ve established, by now, this body is foreign to Vlast. But he’s now implied a more particular exception.
no subject
Vlast sounds almost absent-minded; his attention is partially occupied by a promising looking tome.
"I cannot speak for Elves or Qunari - they do not exist in Tyria, and too many sources about their physiology are biased to the point it beggars belief. And Dwarves of my world are so very different from the Dwarves of Thedas, they may as well be entirely different entities."
He flips through the first pages, scowling down at the forward, before snapping the book shut and grudgingly adding it to the growing stack in his arms.
"Humans, however, remain unchanged. ...As far as I can tell."
no subject
no subject
A sidelong glance at the mage, before his gaze returns hastily to the rows of books. Whatever Vlast's malcontent, he is hungry for knowledge.
...Hungry, perhaps, for magic as well, with the way he watches the spell as it tugs at the ambient magic in the orbit of his own passive consumption.
"There are the Chak; enormous insects that dwell close to exposed lines of ley energy from which they feed. There are also the lesser dragons; saltsprays, wyverns and the like. Though I suppose I have never witnessed a hydra consume magic. The little pests can certainly wield it though."
A dismissive cross between a huff and a snort escapes him. The desert always yielded such an interesting array of life.
"...Then there are the six Elder Dragons and whatever scions they have sired. For the most part, they are... troublesome."
no subject
(Perhaps that’s a good thing. No one enjoyed him keeping track of what he did, before -)
"Elder dragons?"
The old gods an obvious comparison.
no subject
Something his mother set him on the path to become.
(Though he wonders now if that was ever truly his intended purpose, or if she had looked upon the death of her first son and thought it only a stepping stone for her daughter...)
Laying bare all their secrets to some stranger chafes at him.
"Old dragons. Very old."
He huffs. It's all there in the name, isn't it?
"I can hazard a guess at what you are thinking, and yes, there are a concerning number of similarities. But you have killed five of the seven, and your world remains scarred but intact. I do not think they are pillars of your reality."
A dark frown thins his mouth as his eyes settle on an accounting of the fifth blight.
"Though I wonder if they champion beings that are."
no subject
"The accepted theology is that the Old Gods, as with other spirits, once served the Maker."
So much as the matter is ever accepted, settled; only clerics bicker more than mages.
no subject
"I care little for what gods and their sycophants accept."
On the rare occasions it's the truth, reverence twists it to some agenda. Even his own mother had become alien to him in the hymns the Exalted sang of her.
"What do you think?"
no subject
Dull. Distracted: He's thinking of Joselyn, of her stubborn faith; he's wondering whether she reached for a spell in those final moments.
(Had she even the time? He doesn’t know how she died.)
"But I’ve seen enough of the Fade to not put my faith in the Maker’s children." First or second, thanks. "You might do to inquire with our Wardens. We've lost our firsthand witnesses to the Blight, but they ever hoard information."
no subject
"Hoarding. The implication being they are loathe to part with it."
...And the vast array of contradicting opinions on the Blight scattered throughout the library further implies they are very, very good at hanging on to it.
Vlast doubts he has the silver tongue that will wrest secrets from the cagey organization. He'll have to seek his answers elsewhere.
Or find a particularly stupid and chatty Warden.
"What do you put your faith in, then? ...If you have any left."
no subject
His brows skate in answer. Reflex, really; not half so animated as they might pull, were his mind circling some other pit.
(Did she know it was coming? What did any of them think, when they found themselves overtaken?)
"I suppose," Too distant now to find any sort of joke. Scraping the wounded edge of something real: "That life goes on."
no subject
He pauses in his search for books, gaze lingering for an uncomfortably long time on Isaac.
"For some, at least," he says finally. "It is strange how fate and chance conspire to choose for whom."