audience: ashlyn

[mygod]

Comments

[killies]

Hey. I didn't get a chance to talk to you the other day.

[ mostly because she was overwhelmed and didn't want to, but whatever. (she still doesn't want to) (but i want cr anyway) ]

Uh... How are you? [ nailed it. ]

[mygod]

[ Nailed it!! ]

Oh, I'm fine. Just, you know, going about my day... Getting to know my new neighbors.

[ New, sacrificial neighbors. ]

[killies]

So you guys are staying somewhere just past the fog or something?

[mygod]

Mmhm, pretty close to that garden area! We have to be close enough to be able to come by if anything happens.

[killies]

How far are the rest of the cultists? A lot farther? A little?

[mygod]

Far enough that if they suddenly showed up here, we'd likely know that they're on their way well before they arrive.

[killies]

Good to know.

[ well. since she's asking a lot of people what they think about this... ] What would you do? About the partners thing, if you were in our situation.

[mygod]

Huh...

[ They have to think about it. ]

Personally? I'd put feelers out to try to figure out if my match would even want to find me, too.

[killies]

But without knowing who our partner is in advance, that basically means conducting a public poll and seeing where most people are at.

[ as if she isn't kind of informally doing that anyway? ]

[mygod]

[ They nod. ]

Like... this?

[killies]

I guess. I'm not really tracking people's answers though.

Just trying to make up my own mind.

[mygod]

You don't have to make up your mind right away, at least. Maybe getting to know the others more will help.

[ Finding out more about who you might get tied with! ]

[killies]

True. There are some people I already doubt I'd want to be tied to. But I'm not sure the reverse is true—no one stands out as perfect for it.

[mygod]

Right, especially since it's not really like you know what people are good at or not... I guess the one plus is that you would have a guaranteed ally, especially we don't really know what might happen here.

[ They gesture at some ink on their own hand. It says extinction. ]

If the magic here can be annoying like this, who knows what else might happen?

[killies]

It's easier to get along with one person than forty. But that doesn't mean we're sure to see eye-to-eye. We might end up disagreeing about everything.

[ huh. she looks at that. ]

... It affects you guys, too?

[mygod]

Mm, kind of annoying! But this has more to do with the like... place we're in, instead of the whole sacrifice nonsense.

[killies]

Oh. For us too? This isn't just... Step one of us getting sacrificed?

[mygod]

Oh. No.

[ Hm... ]

Think of it this way. All the stuff they're using for this whole thing is based on really old documentation from who knows long ago. So, let's say the ritual is like a recipe. Maybe something that was needed for the recipe is no longer a thing after hundreds or thousands of years, so the cooks are forced to use a replacement ingredient. So the recipe still gets the job done, but it's not the exact same as it should have been, and thus there's a weird side effect has popped up here and there.

[killies]

Are we the replacement ingredient?

[mygod]

No, no, you're the main one.

But for example-- the whole monster thing. That's likely because they had to change something up from the original spell, and now you're stuck dealing with it. The way that this fog isn't stable and revealed our garden the other day also shouldn't have happened, but here we are. It's just the price the cult is willing to pay by cutting corners.

[killies]

This seems like a crazy thing to cut corners with!

[ i mean that sounds like something that might be to their benefit in some way, actually, but still! ]

So it is because of the ritual, but it's not a... key component of it, or a first step down the road. Just a side effect.

[mygod]

Pretty much. A lot of the way stuff has been done was mostly them trying to get things over with as quickly as possible-- even just using you guys as sacrifices is one of them. They didn't want to deal with finding a harder method to summon their deity.

[killies]

So we got dragged into this because they were in hurry when there might have been another way.

[mygod]

Pretty much...

People's impatience and greed can know no bounds.

[killies]

I could forgive both if they'd stop before hitting the human sacrifice stages of not caring.