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raajSo I wrote this part last night and was like "HOW DID 1K WORDS END UP TRAUMATIZING A KIDLET" "but it makes sense given the setup I mean that WOULD be a thing" and then right before I went to bed I realized an obvious solution--don't have Ringabel say anything, maybe imply the bodies are in the room but no one finds them (except perhaps Ringabel, who is sort of better at handling that for... reasons).
So since this is likely to entirely change at the 2/3s point I'm just shoving the opening here anyway.
"Agnès!! Agnèeeees! Wake up!!"
The shrill call made Agnès clap her hands over her ears as she quickly sat up, panicking. If someone was yelling at her with THAT high a pitch, she must have overslept so badly. The mother vestal would be upset...!
But then she blinked in confusion and slowly looked around, still covering her ears. This... this wasn't the temple. The air itself was wrong, more humid like in Florem but with a chill. There was a very strange contraption in the middle of the room, slowly pumping water, that looked too much like a heart to be right. It was creepy! And there were... three other children near her, dressed in red, black and white, with fox tails. Those were fake, weren't they? One of the children was another girl, but the other two were boys, and they were all asleep--
"AGNÈS!"
Her hands had been gradually sliding down from her ears, but at the return of that piercing voice they slammed up over her ears again--and knocked something aside at her right. As Agnès turned her head, her eyes widened to see a pale fairy with long silver hair straightening herself in the air, humphing. Had she hit her by accident? The girl cringed at the thought. She was such a small, delicate-looking creature. "I--I'm sorry."
Having righted herself, the creature turned to her and sniffed, pouting. "Would you calm down for a moment, Agnès? I know that must have been a doozy, but you're being spazzier than usual."
Agnès' hands clenched in her lap as she ducked her head in both shame and apology. "I'm sorry, really!" she insisted. "But I don't know... where am I? And how do you know my name?"
"Whaaaaat? You don't know who I am?" The smallness of the fairy's expression made it a bit hard to read, but Agnès could tell at least that her lips were pressing into a frown. "How old are you?"
"S-seven. Should I know you?"
"Of course you should! I'm a cryst-fairy, and you're--argh!" The fairy curled into a ball mid-air, clutching her head in frustration before she turned back to Agnès and put her hands on her hips. "Listen! I'm a cryst-fairy, and if you know anything about cryst-fairies, you know you need to listen to me! You're in trouble if you stay here. Open up that satchel and find me a clear stone."
The satchel wasn't far from her. Neither was a staff cut from coarse diamond, which made Agnès pause for a moment before she grabbed the bag. Because she had been taught about cryst-fairies; the mother vestal herself had told her that cryst-fairies held the knowledge of generations of vestals. If the cryst-fairy was telling her she was in danger, she must be. With a sense of urgency (and a sense of alarm), she turned the satchel over and dumped out its contents, wondering at the number of potion vials before she found two clear stones. "Here!"
The fairy fluttered down to the ground and lit on one of the stones, causing it to glow in response to the slight weight of her feet. "Now, you'd better wake the others up. Not that I'm looking forward to the babysitting," the fairy grumbled. "Maybe you could leave Ringabel behind..."
Agnès looked over the other children, still wondering at their strange garb. "Are they in danger, too?"
"Yes, so hurry up! They'd probably kill you all if they caught you here."
Kill? She didn't need to be told twice. She shot to her feet and rushed to the other girl first, nearly tripping over the tail she hadn't realized was attached to her own dress until that very moment. She had a fox tail too! ...So then, all the tails were fake. She knew she was still human. Mostly knew. Everything was so strange right now that she felt a little dizzy. Maybe she was dreaming... but it felt too real, and too dangerous, for her to believe that.
The girl had a very cute black and red bow in her pretty blonde hair, and a very scary growl in her throat after being shaken; the angry sound made Agnès fall back over her own feet. What kind of person growled at other people like that?! Maybe she truly was part-fox. "Who are you?" the crabby girl asked, blinking at her blearily. Then she looked around. "Wait... who took me out of my bedroom?! I'm not sick, I don't want Victor's icky--mmph!"
"Shhh! Shhh!" Agnès was frantic enough to forget politeness, alarmed by just how loud the girl had gotten in a matter of seconds. She didn't just growl, she bellowed! "We have to be quiet! We're not supposed to be here."
The blonde pushed her hands away. "I know that!"
"Shut up. One kid's already dead."
Both girls froze at the same time, turning frightened eyes to the boy who'd just spoken. He looked very odd, his styled white-blond hair and crisp clothes conflicting with his sickly-pale skin and too-thin face, but his expression was serious, making it clear that he would silence them himself if they didn't listen. "Wh-what?" Agnès gasped.
He nodded towards the last child, the brown-haired boy who was lying face-down, his hand clutched around a stone that was a soft orange almost like honey. But she'd seen him breathing, hadn't she? Agnès crossed the distance to him, desperate to prove the other boy wrong, not sure what she would do if he was right. She'd never seen a dead body before.
Then she saw two. He hadn't meant the sleeping boy; he'd meant the third girl in the room lying farther away, about the same age as them and with black hair and skin just a bit darker than Agnès' own, dressed in the same manner of clothing, whom Agnès hadn't spotted before because of how the room curved around that strange metal heart. The girl was covered in blood and lay utterly still in the embrace of a grown man whose long white coat was also spattered in red. The pair was so motionless that she was immediately sure, from how wrong it felt, that they were both dead.
Agnès staggered backwards and then screamed, praying that the mother vestal would hear and come for her. She screamed so loudly that the sleeping boy instantly snapped awake, his brown eyes fastening on her in a confused panic. The other boy hissed, and just above the girl's cry of dismay she could hear the cryst-fairy: "Come here, Agnès! We need to go now!"
She was frozen until the other girl grabbed her hand, startling her out of the daze. "Come on, come on!" the blonde urged. "You too!" As they both rushed to the fairy, who was chanting something (a prayer?) Agnès looked over her shoulder at the boy she'd startled awake. He was scrambling to his feet and she held out her hand to him, desperate for him to follow and be saved by whatever the fairy's plan was. It was her fault for screaming, she didn't want him killed too!
He moved by pure reaction, grabbing her hand and stumbling after her. "Everyone put your hand on the stone!" the fairy called; the stone was starting to pulse with light beneath her. "We leave, now!"
The grim boy's hand was on the stone before she was even done speaking. Agnès shoved both her hands, and with them the two other children's, to make sure they were all touching it as the light flared. Then the stone dulled and crumbled beneath their hands, and they were in a world of black and white.
***
BASICALLY AS SOON AS KID!RINGABEL TALKS, THINGS GO TO HELL I'm not even sure if I do want Ringabel to talk--part of me says it makes sense for him to have a few lines just when he sees it necessary (and he's perfectly okay with threatening other people from his upbringing), and that he only completely clams up when he actually grows to be okay with the others and then starts to like them; he still wants to talk at times, but he's not used to saying kind things and is afraid the more he talks the more obvious it'll be that he's "no good", so he chokes up. (Pretty much how I interpreted him saying in the drama cd that he had TRIED to talk to the Lee family, but nothing would come out. He has a fear of being abandoned again and can't manage to make himself talk until the gift from Braev reassures him that they're planning on him staying.) Other part of me says he should be silent until the very, very end of the fic, first out of practicality (they're waking up in a strange place, he doesn't know any of the others) and because he defaults to being silent anyway, and then pretty much the same reason as he grows to like the others: he wants to talk, but he's scared of saying something to make them turn cold. Either way he'll speak briefly at the end, right before he's turned back into his normal self. (As normal as Ringabel gets.)
At any rate, his line here is where things definitively go south, so that at least is going to be taken out and I'll just change it to the kids being a bit startled to suddenly be in a weird place, but not. not stumbling on corpses. I was being awful last night.
So since this is likely to entirely change at the 2/3s point I'm just shoving the opening here anyway.
"Agnès!! Agnèeeees! Wake up!!"
The shrill call made Agnès clap her hands over her ears as she quickly sat up, panicking. If someone was yelling at her with THAT high a pitch, she must have overslept so badly. The mother vestal would be upset...!
But then she blinked in confusion and slowly looked around, still covering her ears. This... this wasn't the temple. The air itself was wrong, more humid like in Florem but with a chill. There was a very strange contraption in the middle of the room, slowly pumping water, that looked too much like a heart to be right. It was creepy! And there were... three other children near her, dressed in red, black and white, with fox tails. Those were fake, weren't they? One of the children was another girl, but the other two were boys, and they were all asleep--
"AGNÈS!"
Her hands had been gradually sliding down from her ears, but at the return of that piercing voice they slammed up over her ears again--and knocked something aside at her right. As Agnès turned her head, her eyes widened to see a pale fairy with long silver hair straightening herself in the air, humphing. Had she hit her by accident? The girl cringed at the thought. She was such a small, delicate-looking creature. "I--I'm sorry."
Having righted herself, the creature turned to her and sniffed, pouting. "Would you calm down for a moment, Agnès? I know that must have been a doozy, but you're being spazzier than usual."
Agnès' hands clenched in her lap as she ducked her head in both shame and apology. "I'm sorry, really!" she insisted. "But I don't know... where am I? And how do you know my name?"
"Whaaaaat? You don't know who I am?" The smallness of the fairy's expression made it a bit hard to read, but Agnès could tell at least that her lips were pressing into a frown. "How old are you?"
"S-seven. Should I know you?"
"Of course you should! I'm a cryst-fairy, and you're--argh!" The fairy curled into a ball mid-air, clutching her head in frustration before she turned back to Agnès and put her hands on her hips. "Listen! I'm a cryst-fairy, and if you know anything about cryst-fairies, you know you need to listen to me! You're in trouble if you stay here. Open up that satchel and find me a clear stone."
The satchel wasn't far from her. Neither was a staff cut from coarse diamond, which made Agnès pause for a moment before she grabbed the bag. Because she had been taught about cryst-fairies; the mother vestal herself had told her that cryst-fairies held the knowledge of generations of vestals. If the cryst-fairy was telling her she was in danger, she must be. With a sense of urgency (and a sense of alarm), she turned the satchel over and dumped out its contents, wondering at the number of potion vials before she found two clear stones. "Here!"
The fairy fluttered down to the ground and lit on one of the stones, causing it to glow in response to the slight weight of her feet. "Now, you'd better wake the others up. Not that I'm looking forward to the babysitting," the fairy grumbled. "Maybe you could leave Ringabel behind..."
Agnès looked over the other children, still wondering at their strange garb. "Are they in danger, too?"
"Yes, so hurry up! They'd probably kill you all if they caught you here."
Kill? She didn't need to be told twice. She shot to her feet and rushed to the other girl first, nearly tripping over the tail she hadn't realized was attached to her own dress until that very moment. She had a fox tail too! ...So then, all the tails were fake. She knew she was still human. Mostly knew. Everything was so strange right now that she felt a little dizzy. Maybe she was dreaming... but it felt too real, and too dangerous, for her to believe that.
The girl had a very cute black and red bow in her pretty blonde hair, and a very scary growl in her throat after being shaken; the angry sound made Agnès fall back over her own feet. What kind of person growled at other people like that?! Maybe she truly was part-fox. "Who are you?" the crabby girl asked, blinking at her blearily. Then she looked around. "Wait... who took me out of my bedroom?! I'm not sick, I don't want Victor's icky--mmph!"
"Shhh! Shhh!" Agnès was frantic enough to forget politeness, alarmed by just how loud the girl had gotten in a matter of seconds. She didn't just growl, she bellowed! "We have to be quiet! We're not supposed to be here."
The blonde pushed her hands away. "I know that!"
"Shut up. One kid's already dead."
Both girls froze at the same time, turning frightened eyes to the boy who'd just spoken. He looked very odd, his styled white-blond hair and crisp clothes conflicting with his sickly-pale skin and too-thin face, but his expression was serious, making it clear that he would silence them himself if they didn't listen. "Wh-what?" Agnès gasped.
He nodded towards the last child, the brown-haired boy who was lying face-down, his hand clutched around a stone that was a soft orange almost like honey. But she'd seen him breathing, hadn't she? Agnès crossed the distance to him, desperate to prove the other boy wrong, not sure what she would do if he was right. She'd never seen a dead body before.
Then she saw two. He hadn't meant the sleeping boy; he'd meant the third girl in the room lying farther away, about the same age as them and with black hair and skin just a bit darker than Agnès' own, dressed in the same manner of clothing, whom Agnès hadn't spotted before because of how the room curved around that strange metal heart. The girl was covered in blood and lay utterly still in the embrace of a grown man whose long white coat was also spattered in red. The pair was so motionless that she was immediately sure, from how wrong it felt, that they were both dead.
Agnès staggered backwards and then screamed, praying that the mother vestal would hear and come for her. She screamed so loudly that the sleeping boy instantly snapped awake, his brown eyes fastening on her in a confused panic. The other boy hissed, and just above the girl's cry of dismay she could hear the cryst-fairy: "Come here, Agnès! We need to go now!"
She was frozen until the other girl grabbed her hand, startling her out of the daze. "Come on, come on!" the blonde urged. "You too!" As they both rushed to the fairy, who was chanting something (a prayer?) Agnès looked over her shoulder at the boy she'd startled awake. He was scrambling to his feet and she held out her hand to him, desperate for him to follow and be saved by whatever the fairy's plan was. It was her fault for screaming, she didn't want him killed too!
He moved by pure reaction, grabbing her hand and stumbling after her. "Everyone put your hand on the stone!" the fairy called; the stone was starting to pulse with light beneath her. "We leave, now!"
The grim boy's hand was on the stone before she was even done speaking. Agnès shoved both her hands, and with them the two other children's, to make sure they were all touching it as the light flared. Then the stone dulled and crumbled beneath their hands, and they were in a world of black and white.
***
BASICALLY AS SOON AS KID!RINGABEL TALKS, THINGS GO TO HELL I'm not even sure if I do want Ringabel to talk--part of me says it makes sense for him to have a few lines just when he sees it necessary (and he's perfectly okay with threatening other people from his upbringing), and that he only completely clams up when he actually grows to be okay with the others and then starts to like them; he still wants to talk at times, but he's not used to saying kind things and is afraid the more he talks the more obvious it'll be that he's "no good", so he chokes up. (Pretty much how I interpreted him saying in the drama cd that he had TRIED to talk to the Lee family, but nothing would come out. He has a fear of being abandoned again and can't manage to make himself talk until the gift from Braev reassures him that they're planning on him staying.) Other part of me says he should be silent until the very, very end of the fic, first out of practicality (they're waking up in a strange place, he doesn't know any of the others) and because he defaults to being silent anyway, and then pretty much the same reason as he grows to like the others: he wants to talk, but he's scared of saying something to make them turn cold. Either way he'll speak briefly at the end, right before he's turned back into his normal self. (As normal as Ringabel gets.)
At any rate, his line here is where things definitively go south, so that at least is going to be taken out and I'll just change it to the kids being a bit startled to suddenly be in a weird place, but not. not stumbling on corpses. I was being awful last night.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-14 11:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-15 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-15 08:26 pm (UTC)Hmm - really not sure on Ringabel's talking - both sound appropriate, Though I think maybe not saying anything to the very end would work better as that'll really throw Airy since she's bracing herself for babysitting regardless and is probably expecting Kid!Ringabel to be even more of a handful then his older-self. And he just isn't. She's not sure who this kid is (and it feels even less likely she'd make then connection to Alternis either since his behaviour wouldn't remotely resemble his).
Intrigued as to where this will go...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-15 08:56 pm (UTC)To be honest when I first saw it I was like "why so specific???" but hey, it's the prompt, so I figure I'll write it how they ask--and if it's one of the Victor & Victoria fights, there ARE corpses in that room. It's only a question of what the kids see. And then, yes, I put them all in the arcanist outfit and Tiz's hand being over an asterisk to allude to it having to do with the arcanist asterisk (that's a good theory about why the asterisk did it! not the one I actually came up with, but I might keep that in mind if the current idea doesn't pan for some reason).
But yeah, kids stumbling on the corpses might have been a bit overboard, even if the prompt was pretty near guaranteeing it (then again, the prompt only required one kidlet; in which case the others would probably be like "AHAHAHA /SHIELDS KIDDIE'S EYES, STEERS THEM OUT OF THE ROOM). Revision so far is going more:
...Iiii need to write more today. (Though I also keep getting tempted to either write other things, or possibly start again and just change one of them for 'teenagers taking care of kidlet'.)
It was intentional for Agnès to not really be able to make sense of the stasis chamber, and since it's from her POV the description is a bit vague, yep; though I could probably add more details she DOES understand about the room to give the readers a few more hints (the layout of the room, possibly smells).
It's true that if Ringabel doesn't speak AT ALL then Airy will have even less reason to make the connection between him and Alternis. Which is a good reason to do it that way.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-15 10:21 pm (UTC)The new part is a less distressing continuation! And Tiz is going to cope much better being awakened this way rather then the shouting to get them teleported out (and he's woken by Agnes. Ah~).
Do you know how they're going to revert? Time-based or do they need to seek something out/do something (get hold of the Spiritmaster asterisk if they for some reason don't have it)?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-01 03:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-01 09:48 am (UTC)