[PRP] tampered path (chester & jeremiah)

[Smerdle]

Chester continued slowly forward, looking down at the ground ahead. He might not have thought himself the sort to wander into situations he couldn't predict the outcome of, but he still had, more than once over the past year, in ways that felt like he hadn't had any choice at all. But yes. In that instance, he'd had one.

"Was it worth it, if it cost so much?" He huffed out another small laugh. "I'm sure there will come a time when choosing to stand aside will turn out badly for me too."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Standing aside, not pushing as I should have, lead to Adoelle's death." Jeremiah spoke plainly. "Which then lead to my tithing. It was, quite frankly, costly and costly. Who I was? Gone. Who I am? All that remains."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

Okay, maybe not that badly. He had watched Adoelle's slaughter play out from across the room, but he had never once considered it anyone's fault except Renard's. In fact, in his mind, Algernon had saved them all by refusing. He wondered what had happened while he had fled, what opportunity Jeremiah'd had to keep her alive. He didn't ask.

"I don't even know how I would anticipate something like that," he said. "I guess I wouldn't. I can only do what I would do and hope that I would push when needed." He paused.

"Is being a Noble so horrible?"

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"It's an oversimplification of the situation but the statement is true all the same." That he had not moved fast enough to do something that would had lead to his ability to bring not just Adoelle but all three of the teens home.

"A trial by fire," said Jeremiah after Chester stated he could only hope he would push when needed, "is often the only way to find out if you can or not." He paused for a moment, quiet as he thought of the way to phrase things.

"Being a Noble? No, it's not so horrible at all." His hand was held up, fingers flexing briefly, and coldfire appeared above the tips of his fingers that he easily manipulated. "I am more in tune with the magic and have a better understanding of it that enables me to work with it easier, something I did not necessarily have before." There were, after all, meant to guide and mentor in a certain capacity.

"Becoming a Noble, however? That is a different story altogether."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

So the things he had seen and heard about weren't one time occurrences. People suffered through abduction and torture to earn greater power or they turned into those weird, bacony monsters.

"That's... well, I'm sorry for what you went through." Even though he coveted the sort of power and control that Jeremiah so easily displayed, he didn't think he would do very well with murder and its trappings. "Magic is not all wands and Hogwarts, at least not where we came from." He considered his words for a moment, thought about the mental anguish and sacrifice that marked that series, and hummed thoughtfully. "Or maybe it's a lot like Hogwarts after all. I tend to think of the jolly poltergeists and dragons more than the betrayal and piles of corpses."

Chester dismissed his children's novel tangent, the corners of his mouth rising slightly. "I'm not nobility, I'm not an animal, and I don't have an animal. I wonder if there are any people back home with any other sorts of qualifications. A fourth faction, perhaps?"

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah merely inclined his head, taking the sympathy for what it was worth. "It is not but for the Court, at least, it is something we are working on changing. The nature of it cannot remain what it is. Though I would say that magic is a little bit like what a student experiences coming out of Hogwarts: that not everything fits into the neat box of what they teach and it is, quite often, far from what you expected and not at all what you were taught."

He turned his gaze back to the fountain, leaning over to it and looking at his reflection as if he expected it to suddenly change. When Chester asked again about factions, he turned back. "You're already part of the factions, if you want to break it down that way. Those who have not differentiated; the ones who are normal visitors to this place and have not been greatly changed by the magic.

"At the ball there were the three deer triplets: the Peaceful One, the Prideful One, and the Sorrowful One. Those who are of the Nobility fall under the Sorrowful One, those who are moonwalker or warg fall under the Prideful One, and those who remain unchanged with the Peaceful One."

5merdle

 

[Smerdle]

Hm. So he was a member of the Peaceful Nothing Brigade. As bitter as he thought he should have been about that, the bile just wouldn't rise.

"It's all so... structured," he said, low and contemplative. "And if you fail to change things just so, I don't suppose I'll even know. I hope you'll take pity and explain all of this again when I'm somebody else." Chester looked as though something had hurt him, but it was very faint and very brief, almost as if he had noticed a sharp rock in his shoe. From the way he sighed, he clearly wished he hadn't reacted even that much.

"That was bleak. Sorry. I will be rooting for you and trying not to think about it." He smiled again, and it wasn't sarcastic or grudging or anything this time.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"It isn't that kind of magic, Chester," Jeremiah shook his head. "This affects how the magic interacts with us, not our reality. We are not looking at something that will lead to us all finding ourselves in another reality but instead finding that we will likely change other ashdown."

He understood the reaction but he was, of course, going to make sure that Chester understood that what he was saying was not likely at all.

"It isn't as if I don't understand why it's a bleak statement. Finding myself in the new reality? All the changes? Memories I don't have, people who no longer no me? It's disconcerting but this is not where we are heading again." There was a pause. "Unless, of course, you mean if there's another cycle. In which case, you will still be Chester Poole. Just the circumstances of your life may be different. That too, we are trying to stop. No one wants to be bound anymore, not by these cycles or this cage."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

He thought of changes that had already occurred—single classmates becoming twins, his parents knowing about his magic—and couldn't help his doubt. There were clearly things he couldn't know about what they had planned, but a second sweeping change in reality, or another cycle entirely, didn't seem all that unlikely.

But he would wait and try to trust anyway.

"I hope you can. I just want to be left alone." He reached back into his bag for what he hadn't shared earlier, pulling out a piecemeal figure a bit smaller than his hand. It was a Nokia 6310i, a couple of staple removers, miniature whisks, slinkies, wind up teeth. It was a secondhand man. Chester held it up a little, like he was embarrassed of it. "With magic, preferably. It would have taken forever to learn how to do this on my own."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah looked at what Chester showed him, smiling a little bit before he nodded. "That's reasonable for most to want: to be left alone."

Then, of course, he was quiet. His expression went thoughtful before he let out a breath and spoke once more. "Do you know anything about the world before the cage? Before we were all locked into this?"

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"No." And to be honest, he probably hadn't worried it over like he should have, too busy being consumed by his own discoveries. Sunny was magic itself, he had picked that much up somewhere, but the origin of the cage, why it had been created, wasn't something he had researched.

"All I know is that prior to the change everyone made late last year, the only magic that existed was in Ashdown. And even that was short lived." From what he had seen, the otherworldly power that was causing them so much trouble now had only existed for about a year. "But that couldn't be so, not if there have been cycles before this. And the beginning... I suppose everything has to start somewhere."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Magic was common in the world before the cage," Jeremiah supplied. "Magitech was common, everyone knew about it- It was, I believe, available for most. Unlike this world where ... a place like Ashdown is unheard of."

Magic was not so common within this world of theirs. Someone in the police force in New York could go their entire life without running into a person with magic but in Ashdown? You would meet them at the local coffee shop. "The cage is responsible for it being the way it is now and ... the resets. Likewise, it is responsible in a way why the Court exists."

5merdle

 

[Smerdle]

Well, now he was just annoyed. Chester busied himself by straightening his bag, putting away what he had shown Jeremiah and making sure everything was snapped and buckled while his potential outburst faded and died.

"Why, then? Why did anyone think to lock it away? Were people using magic to harm each other? More than people would normally, I mean."

It felt like a tragedy, like hearing about the aftermath of a war that might have been prevented had people not been so stupid.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"... because someone was preparing to do magic that would potentially see a virus wiped off the face of the planet. To stop it from existing." Chester would at least know that magic and medicine were not things that went hand and hand. It was something most wanted to avoid.

"AIDS to be more specific." Jeremiah ran his fingers through his hair, letting out a breath. "A group caught wind of what Renard Leroux was planning and worked against him: decided to cage him and his magic to stop him from carrying it out."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Oh." Suppressed anger became equally suppressed shock, and Chester could do nothing but stand silent for a second or two as he gathered his thoughts. None of his usual, cautious, socially acceptable responses were adequate here. It was so strange to think that one man had so drastically changed the lives of so many.

"Renard," he said, weighing the image of the confident, sinister man who had bled all over the sigil in the void with one who had endeavored to cure AIDS. "He was either very brave or very full of himself. I'm assuming the others stopped him because they were afraid the result would be worse than the disease?"

azuredreams