RP:Will They Ever Stop Fighting?

Part of the Dissonance Theory Arc

This is a Warrior's Guild RP.

Summary: Krice delivers the thrall and various thrall parts to Tessa and Khitti and... things go about as well as you'd think with those three in a room together.

Vigilanti Semper, Venturil

Quintessa was in the newly refurbished Warrior's Guild laboratory, giving a few last minute tuneups on all the magical equipment she had imported from Vailkrin. The tables along the walls were outfitted with a plethora of these tools, some simple, like mithril knives, scalpels, and bonesaws- others more complex, like her arcane drill with a runic tip that could reach high enough temperatures to penetrate all but the most durable of materials. The warlock went all out. No expenses were spared. In the center of the room was Quintessa’s newly designed runic autopsy table that could be fixed with supernatural restraints. Her pale fingers gently trace over the cool black stone, mismatched eyes exploring the intricate inscriptions for the hundredth time as if she was expecting some sort of flaw to develop on the unused artifact. Everything was in order. Lastly the changeling approached a massive cage in the southern corner, made of reinforced ghroundium as Khitti had suggested to her before, the polished bars emitting a low hum. To those that were sensitive to magic they could feel the hex radiating from it, able to sap the strength and speed of whatever touched the bars in an attempt to escape. With a quick tap to make certain it still worked, Quintessa rubbed the numbing effect from her fingers and moved to her standing desk, grabbing her quill and marking off the checklist. Everything was ready.

Khitti had made sure to grab a few extra supplies before heading out of Cenril and onto Venturil. Jars rattled away in her satchel, filled with choice specimens from her garden: some to paralyze, some to poison, some that would typically create hives on normal people with allergies. If they were experimenting with magic, well they might as well go a step further to find weaknesses, on the off chance they -could- be affected by something else. She’d also made sure to grab her swords and her silverlight planisphere, the strange object she’d found in Fog Forest some months ago. Typical planispheres were used in astronomy matters, but this one? This one even enhanced her light magic. This too was tucked away in the satchel, in its case with the tarot cards that had also been found with the contraption. She’d still done nothing with those yet, but hmm. Her tikifhlee dropped her off at Vigilanti Semper’s front door before bounding off into the darkness of the Dead Forest behind the castle. Eventually she’d reach the laboratory and wander in, offering a nod to Quintessa. “Got a place for me to put these for now?” She didn’t want to mess up the changeling’s organization by just placing the jars ally willy-nilly somewhere.

Krice could detect that magical implementation before he even got to the doorway of the lab. Freckled with dust (only a little; the flight back to Frostmaw had cleansed him of excess thrall) and wearing a shirt not in tatters but torn where scratches marked his skin, the warrior clearly had come straight from the battlefield. It had taken him several days to visit all the towns listed, to track down the thralls and find himself some samples. He passed Khitti's tikifhlee in flight, arriving a few moments after the shadowmancer. Sporting two katanas on his back, one white and a little thinner and longer than the other, Krice dismounted from his wyvern, released the tie securing two sacks to the saddle, and lugged them over his shoulder for the short trek to the lab entrance. There he would halt and drop the sacks to the floor; one filled with a variety of body parts, and some clumps of ash; the other left exclusively to a live creature who seemed oddly calm, writhing slowly in its canvas prison. The occasional hiss or gurgle announced its state, and within inquiring minds would find a limbless thrall with his jaw belted shut, under chin over head, to prevent bites. Krice looked upon the lab with judgmental eyes, though his overall expression was one of indifference when he unironically addressed whoever was interested enough to listen. " Thrall toys for your playtime. Have fun."

Quintessa looks up from the paperwork on her just as Khitti enters, giving her a smile before pointing to the empty desk opposite of hers. “I set this workspace up for you but if you need more room I can shift the stuff from that table over.” Her long, pale finger pointed back and forth, her glossy black nails shimmering in the dim light of the lab. The warlock was about to get back to her paperwork when she sensed something near, the hairs tingling on the back of her neck. Mismatched eyes flickered up just in time to watch Krice enter and provide them with what Kasyr had tasked him with, the tiniest of smiles creep on Quintessa’s face, her quill falling to her desk as she moves to examine them closer. “I knew my faith was not misplaced in you…” The strange woman mutters as close to a complement as she knew how, stopping just in front of the living thrall with the belted mouth. “Should we bother putting this one in the cage?” Quintessa raises her voice loud enough for Khitti to hear, “Or shall we restrain it on the table?” Already there was a sinister look in the warlock’s eyes.

Khitti would nod to Quintessa once more, this time in appreciation and acknowledgement for the desk. “Oh I’m sure this will suit just fine.” And then Krice waltzed in and Khitti could only roll her eyes at the judgemental stare, despite his otherwise apparent indifference. His attitude since their confrontation a few guild meetings ago had only grated on her nerves more and more as it continued. And yet, Quintessa had such faith in him. How? How could she? It was so hard for Khitti to comprehend sometimes. “You literally make no godsdamned sense, you know that?” Her words, of course, were directed at Krice. “You walk in here with that judgemental look in your eyes, continue with the grudge-holding, and then saunter off like everything’s fine and I’m tired of it,” she said, while setting her jars of poisonous plants on the desk in one of the upper corners. Her swords were then laid out and a medium-sized rusted metal box as well before she finally turned towards him. “You got in someone’s way and you got hurt for it. What were you even expecting? You’re fine now. You always end up fine. You should be more concerned with why the trees were attacked rather than who was doing it. You should be concerned that the trees are still suffering. Not standing there judging us for trying to do -our- part in this whole Xicotl mess. Something that should’ve been done a long time ago. We’re doing the job no one else wants to do. We’re doing the things that are necessary, even if they’re questionable. What makes no sense is the fact that you were the first one to volunteer to help with this. I’ve told you before: things aren’t black and white. There’s a hell of a lot between true good and true evil and that’s where we live, in that grey. So… please try to accept the fact that some things happen for a reason. Like you getting attacked. Fate is not always a bad thing. Because if you hadn’t gotten attacked… we wouldn’t know that it’s almost certainly possible that the trees can be helped too -because- you survived. Those trees are going to have to come first if we want any hope of stopping Xicotl and you surviving that poison tells us that there -is- hope.” For the most part, her words had been stern. She was tired of this whole mess and the fact that people couldn’t look at the bigger picture sometimes. But towards the end, her tone edged slightly more into pleading. Please stop hurting Quintessa with your actions and words and attitude when she’s trying to do the right thing now. She is trying to atone and you’re not helping things. Khitti tried to push these thoughts away and sighed, slipping into the chair in front of her desk. “We’re gonna have to put a liquor cabinet in here, Tessa. I can feel it,” she said with a faint smirk, trying to bring a little levity into the room.

Krice didn't look like he considered Quintessa's words a compliment, but maybe that was his regular deadpan expression. Whatever the case, as she began conversing with Khitti about how to begin their experiments, he turned to leave. Literally his only reason for being there was to deliver the thrall samples for them to work on. Khitti's voice sounded obviously directed at him so he stopped after the first step, turning to accept her barrage again with little change in his overall demeanour. Khitti spoke of things being more nuanced than black and white but there she was, judging him as if he didn't consider any of that. He was tired and sore from a lengthy, complex mission; thus was the last thing he had patience for. " Have I done anything to jeopardise your role? No. I just put myself at risk fighting hundreds of these bastards so you and your brat can figure out how to stop Xicotl, and you bitch at me for it. -Nothing- is fine. It's -because- of the greater good that I haven't lopped off her head, that I volunteered for this mission. I'm working to fix things, to keep the world safe, and I'm not in your way so do your work and back off."

Quintessa looks almost mortified at what Khitti was saying. Where was this coming from? The changeling didn’t realize just how clueless she was at reading the room sometimes, but she was at least glad that Khitti seemed to be on her side on this issue. Quintessa understood that the tree thing had caused a lot of bad blood but that was all in the past, right? With a subdued sigh Quintessa reaches into her black robes and produces a small flask of Frostmawian rum, passing it to Khitti before nodding her head. “Aye, I’ll get the boys on it later tonight.” Turning back to the thrall Quinessa decides it was best to place the living specimen inside the cage for now so they could sort out the other samples first. With a snap of her fingers the cage swung open to receive the prisoner before the second snap of her fingers closed the pin, hopefully keeping the thrall contained until a more detailed inspection could take place. “Relax, the both of you. I have accepted the guilt for my role in what I did to the Holy Trees- and what I personally did to you, Krice, but this bickering gets us nowhere. Once we kill Xicotl and restore the arcane and divine balance, you and I can chop each other's heads off all we want, but for now let’s focus. Yeah?” Her gaze fixated upon Krice, her fingers fidgeting together. “Oh… by the way, how’d you do it? The thralls I mean. These bastards gave me all sorts of trouble when I encountered them- any information you can impart will further our research here. How did you manage to subdue them?”

Khitti || As her pleas went unheard by the grey-haired warrior, that mama bear rage bristled somewhat within her, and she offered him nothing more than a brief, cold glare. Khitti took the flask from Quintessa with a sigh and set to taking a swig of it, shivering a little at the coldness of it. It’ll be hard to keep Khitti from drawing crude stick figures of herself setting Krice on fire or dismembering him or whatever else she could think of in her notebooks to get her aggression out somehow, but thankfully, she had the foresight to bring extra! For the time being however, as Quintessa tried her best to politely question Krice, Khitti gave a slight wave of her hand to summon up her shadow-ink pen and set to writing the letters to several members of the guild, to let them know that the lab and its “specimen” was ready to be experimented on. And also there was a P.S. at the bottom reminding folks that these were no longer people, and haven’t been for centuries, and to try to keep it in mind as they went about their work. Just a minor disclaimer is all. During all this, however, all ears were on the conversation. She wanted to know too. She just didn’t want to ask.

Krice shook his head, a small gesture conveying his bemusement at Khitti’s apparent inability to realize what he was saying. They were at a stalemate. He snarled - only a tiny bit, maybe even imperceptibly to the other two, but it was a show of his irritation as exacerbated by exhaustion from the mission and the unwarranted blowback from Khitti. And - Quintessa was asking questions so now he really did have to act like everything was fine, at least enough to give them a bit more information. Greater good, ‘living in the grey area’. After a moment to clear his thoughts, which didn’t involve any sort of vengeful pictography, Krice said to Tessa, “ I killed a lot of them.” It seemed obvious. He gestured to the one that she had magically locked away in a cage, lethargic and disconnected from its own reality. “ That one was thrashing as I left the battlefield, but it got quiet halfway back to Frostmaw.”

Quintessa allowed Khitti to her devices for now, her curious gaze only leaving Krice’s to glance back at the thrall prisoner. The changeling nods her head, mismatched eyes drifting as she begins to reconstruct the fight in her head. “Yes, yes, you are certainly fast and strong enough- but why did this one become so sluggish?” It wasn’t really a question that was posed to Krice but rather the girl thinking out loud. She turns to face the cage once more, a hand placed upon her hip. “A hive mind perhaps? The greater the number in proximity to one another, the greater the power and cognitive abilities of the thralls... Bah, empty speculation…” Mismatched eyes flicker back to meet the silver haired enigma, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Thank you, Krice, your contribution has furthered our mission tremendously. I have no further questions for you.”

Khitti made a face at the parchment she’d been staring at upon hearing Krice’s answer. Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious. How enlightening. With a slow eyeroll-blink combination, she shook her head and went back to work, finishing up the letters. Wax was sought out, as well as the iron seal she’d bought herself months ago, and the letters soon were sealed and tidied into a stack on another corner of her desk. “Let’s get to work, shall we? Which do you want to examine: the parts or the whole one?” She wouldn’t acknowledge Krice any further. There was important work to be done and they’d already wasted months of time getting to this point.

Krice lifted a shoulder in a small shrug of noncommittal agreement. " S'what I thought." If the thralls operated under a hive mind system, it made sense that - theoretically - they'd descend into a semi-hibernating state the further away they went - or in this case, were taken - from their horde. The warrior stood still but relaxed, awaiting further questions. When none came, he accepted Quintessa's conclusion of their sort-of conversation by simply turning to depart. Khitti could draw her angry stick figures and Quintessa could study for atonement uninterrupted. The call of a wyvern announced the warrior's ascent into the clouds, signaling his absence from the headquarters.