tushanshu_logs | [Semi-Open] And With All Your Magic, I Disappear From View

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[Semi-Open] And With All Your Magic, I Disappear From View

Characters: Everybody who wanted in on the magic plot, particularly those who responded here.
Date: Mid-July
Location: Turtle's Head
Situation: Zatanna has a theory. With a little help from some new friends and some not-so-new friends, she's about to test that theory out...

Warnings/Rating: UNPREDICTABLE MAGIC

Note: This Log with be separated into three parts. First will be the Pre-Spell Mingle, which is exactly what it sounds like. Characters will be given the opportunity to meet and greet with one another, discuss their respective magics, theories as to what might happen, etc. The second will be the Spell Casting, where each character involved will be given the opportunity to show off his/her/their stuff.

The third part of the Log will be the Results/Aftermath. Basically, once I have word from the mods how the Spell Casting will go, the subheader will be edited to include every last detail. From there, characters will be given the chance to react accordingly.

For questions/comments/uncertainties, feel free to contact me over on plurk (

hina_mun) or pop over to the OOC post.

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There were many different types of magic in Keeliai, some similar to what Skulduggery knew and others about the farthest possible from what he knew. More often than not, however, they were somewhere in between, and watching Zatanna cast her spell was a little like watching a watered-down version of one of China Sorrows's enchantments. The difference was that he knew this spell wouldn't lack for power, particularly with China Sorrows herself involved.

After watching for another few moments, Skulduggery turned and began a slow walk around the outside of the chalked circle. He wouldn't put it past the cultists to be aware they were going to try this, and concentrating on a spell became a mite bit difficult when you had to fend off attackers at the same time. Skulduggery was confident he could handle whatever happened until things finished.

An extra pair of hands and eyes--that's what Erskine had finally offered to be for this spellcasting endeavor. Not that he lacked for magic, but he lacked the sort of magic that would be directly helpful for this kind of undertaking (short of one of the Sanctuary's magical hubcaps; as skeptical as he'd been at the time, one of those stupid things would be pretty handy right about now). Which was probably why Skulduggery was also hanging around the outside of the circle.

For several minutes Ravel debated whether to approach Skulduggery or not. They hadn't really spoken much since Anton had unchained them... which was about par for the course, really. They'd barely spoken two words to each other since Ravel's arrival in Keeliai up until the fight in the market. Playing water elevator during landfall had changed some of that, for a time, but it didn't seem destined to last.

Well. Anton could be wrong from time to time. Especially about anything to do with Erskine.

Eventually Ravel stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered over to Skulduggery. "Here for the fireworks?"

"Trying to avoid the fireworks," Skulduggery answered. He didn't turn to face Ravel, but he didn't really need to. One of the benefits of not having eyes was everyone else's inability to tell what he was looking at during any given moment; beyond that, Skulduggery only turned his skull for the benefit of others.

He wasn't planning on saying anything else. After a few moments, however, his curiosity got the better of him. Curiosity he'd been putting off for the better part of two months, if only because thinking about it was enough to rekindle his fury.

"What were you planning to do?" he asked, glancing over. "If I hadn't stopped you during the yard sale, what would you have done?"

Wow, straight out of the gate, Skulduggery. Ravel really should have known better than to try to strike up a friendly conversation. They never ended well, anymore.

Apparently this one wasn't even going to start well.

"Honestly? I'd have probably socked the thief a good one, just on principle," he said with a shrug. "Taken the crystal back to the Hotel and tucked it in Hopeless's hat. Maybe waffled a bit on whether or not to have some lunch. Finished my chores. Another rousing, well-rounded day for me, that would have been."

During the lull in the conversation he had turned to watch the proceedings inside the circle; he glanced over at Skulduggery now out of the corner of his eye, without turning his head. "Although I have a feeling that's not what you're asking."

Hopeless's hat? Skulduggery tilted his head. A second yard sale keepsake, or another of Ravel's jokes? He wouldn't have believed the latter, but they didn't discuss Hopeless very often. They never had. Some things were too precious to share.

"It's not," he agreed, but then he went silent again. Not threatening; not intimidating. Not the apathy of barely restrained, volatile emotion. The words were just an agreement, an acknowledgement of fact. If they didn't seem cheerful, it was only because Skulduggery was sick of pretending.

Whether or not Ravel wanted to answer the implied question was up to him. Skulduggery couldn't really consider it relevant anymore, now that the stone was in Anton's hands.

He left the unspoken question hanging for a while, watching the people milling around the spell circle. It felt odd to know that they were all going to be working magic except for Skulduggery and himself--presumably, since Skulduggery had been skirting the fringes of the circle without participating--when one of them had been nominated as an Elder mage and the other had wound up Grand Mage.

Different times, different magic.

"I was going to ask someone to use it on me," he said eventually, without preamble, without looking back over at Skulduggery. "It can't be used on oneself, doesn't work like that. I hadn't quite decided who to ask. Maybe Raine. Someone with magical experience, of course, although that wouldn't necessarily help them operate the thing any better. It's incredibly fiddly. Without practice you're more likely to wipe a person's entire memory than not. Not my intention, but I had almost convinced myself it was worth the risk.

"...in retrospect, probably not one of my better plans."

Not quite what Skulduggery was expecting, if he was choosing to be honest with himself - and he was. He'd attacked Ravel during the yard sale because the first thought to come to mind was that Ravel would try to recreate in Keeliai what he'd so nearly succeeded in doing back in their own world. It hadn't occurred to Skulduggery Ravel might want to use it on himself.

That was how it started, wasn't it? Somewhere during the war, Hopeless got his hands on a memory stone, and used it to give Ravel an easy way out. Then Hopeless was killed, and Ravel was left with nothing.

Could Skulduggery condemn that? He never had Hopeless to help him, and he'd ended up doing much worse.

"Do you think you'll do better here without your memory?" Skulduggery asked. The words didn't come out hard, or flat. Just mildly perplexed. "Why?"

"Not all of it," Ravel corrected. "Just Darquesse."

He ducked his head, finally looking away from the spell workers but not looking at Skulduggery either. The ground. His shoes. His hands. He wasn't really seeing any of it, anyway. He looked... uncertain. Almost shameful.

"I don't deserve to forget, but I can't... I can't." Ravel finally closed his eyes, shutting out the blur of images he couldn't focus on anyway. "I can't do this. I can barely function. I don't sleep. I forget to eat. Anton tells me what to eat and whether my socks match and makes me write my chores down because I can't remember them otherwise."

Erskine opened his eyes and pressed his lips together in a thin line, almost as if he was trying to keep anything more from spilling out. He needed to stop talking. Talking about this never helped. Talking about himself had nearly caused Anton to punch him in the Hotel, breaking his own rules. This was only going to make things worse... and yet. "I don't remember who I'm supposed to be. I don't remember how to be normal. I thought maybe forgetting about Darquesse would stop some of that, at least let me function like a person again.

"And yeah, I probably deserve it. I'm sure you're itching to say it. So here's me, trying to cheat my way out of it."

A part of Skulduggery was aware that this was precisely what Anton meant, back when he took Skulduggery out by the canal and punched him twice. The torture Darquesse put Ravel through was on a level no one deserved. Any chance Ravel had of voluntarily agreeing to step into the Accelerator had effectively vanished the moment Darquesse raised her hand towards him.

The rest of Skulduggery couldn't seem to stop replaying that Global Link footage in his mind, over and over again.

"Ravel," he said. Then stopped. Then sighed. "If moving past mistakes was as easy as forgetting the mistakes ever happened, I'm sure science would have come up with a miracle pill by now."

What was he doing? Sympathising? No, not completely. But whatever little ground Skulduggery had to stand on back in Ireland was completely gone here in Keeliai, and he couldn't separate himself from Ravel as easily as he would have liked. God knew things would have been easier if Skulduggery couldn't remember Vile at all, but they wouldn't have been easy for long. And chances were, he'd have just fallen into the same hole all over again.

Erskine had found himself tensing as Skulduggery spoke, expecting the worst. He couldn't quite believe it when the skeleton stopped talking and he realized... there had been no harsh laughter. No sniping. No punching and no gunshots. Was this somehow a civilized conversation they were having?

"I didn't want to forget... that part," he said, shaking his head. "I can't cheapen it like that. I can't afford to forget what I did.

"I wanted to forget the part that makes me less than a person, even if the whole person isn't a good one. I'm a burden, like this, and I feel useless and I'm so tired of pretending. I'm not even pretending well. I don't remember how to pretend to be myself anymore."

Ravel glanced at Skulduggery finally, then looked away just as quickly. "I don't know how you do it. How you keep functioning after... after all of it. I can't do it."

I can't cheapen it like that. The anger flared. Skulduggery ignored it.

"After what?" he asked instead. "After Vile, or after the Faceless Ones? I don't. I don't need to eat, or sleep, and I've never cared whether my socks matched. That might have something to do with it."

The circle where Zatanna was casting her spell had gone utterly quiet around them. A lull in the casting, or maybe it was working - Skulduggery didn't know. All he did know was that today, his socks matched.

"...right."

It took Ravel a moment to notice the change in the circle, which roughly coincided with the amount of time it took to absorb Skulduggery's answer... or lack thereof. It was as good a way as any to end the conversation, he supposed. No sense in continuing with the confessions. Erskine took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Nodded.

"I should move to the other side, perhaps. Cover more ground." He looked down at the ground for one last moment, then nodded again and started moving. "I'll see you around."

"Ravel."

Leaving did it. Skulduggery leaving the Dead Men. The Dead Men splitting up to take Roarhaven back, even after Saracen told them it was a terrible idea. Valkyrie sealing her true name in secret. Ravel keeping an entire world a secret. Leaving to shoulder burdens alone.

Skulduggery had tried that, and thousands of people had suffered for it. Hopeless had told him, time and again, that you didn't need to talk to someone in order to take advantage of their support. Skulduggery had heard it, gone through the motions of it, but hadn't listened. Hadn't particularly cared.

Not until he met Valkyrie.

For a time, he was quiet, looking up at the sky. Skulduggery was probably the last person in the world - in either world - Ravel should be looking to for support. But by the same token, if Ravel couldn't find solace in Lord Vile's defeat, then what on earth had been the point of the defeat in the first place?

"I met someone," he said. "Not, I should clarify, in the way that phrase has been taken to mean these days. I met someone who knew, and didn't care." He put his hands in his pockets. "If you want help, you'll be amazed how many different places offer it. If you don't, either because it's safer to be miserable or you don't feel you deserve it, then nothing changes. It's as simple as that."

His steps slowed at the sound of his name, until Ravel came to a stop perhaps half a dozen paces in front of Skulduggery.

Only... Skulduggery didn't say anything else, not right away, and for a moment Ravel started to wonder if maybe he'd imagined it. Imagined that maybe Skulduggery still gave even half a shit about him, after the terrible things he'd done. But that was ridiculous. Skulduggery probably would have shot him dead back in that alley in the market if he hadn't had Anton to worry about.

Erskine probably wouldn't even have blamed him.

Help.

What kind of help could there possibly be for him? For being so broken that he'd done what he'd done? The only kind of help he knew of was taken from him a century ago, and that had become part of the problem in and of itself. Anton and Ghastly were dead. Hopeless was dead. Darquesse had torn him apart and Erskine wasn't sure all the pieces were left, even if he knew the right order to put them back in.

Besides, being broken didn't excuse what he'd done. Putting himself back together wouldn't bring any of them back, and they all deserved it so much more.

He didn't turn, didn't face Skulduggery. Couldn't bring himself to anymore.

Help.

"It doesn't feel simple... but I don't deserve it, so maybe it is."

"It doesn't have anything to do with what you deserve," Skulduggery said. "What you deserve is relative. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. No one gets what they deserve. You can't help that. But you wouldn't have told me you were barely functioning if you didn't want to become more than that."

You couldn't fix what you didn't realise was broken. But even then, fixing what was wrong usually involved accepting that fixing it wasn't possible. Human beings weren't tools. They were layers upon layers of conflicting emotion, experience, and regret. It was a miracle Hopeless hadn't gone insane before he died.

"Solutions are simple," Skulduggery added quietly. "It's the distance before them which isn't. You can ignore that, and complain that things never change. I won't hold it against you. I've done it often enough."

Simple. Skulduggery kept using that word, but Ravel couldn't see where it even began to apply in this situation. What could possibly be simple about trying to overcome so much? It had taken a mind-reader and a magic stone the first time, and even that hadn't been a perfect solution. Certainly not after Hopeless had been taken from him. Whatever progress he'd made by that point was washed away, paving the way for so much worse in the future.

Now there was Darquesse to contend with. Darquesse, and Anton and Ghastly and Corrival.

And yet Skulduggery wasn't outright rejecting the idea of Erskine getting help. Wasn't, by all appearances at least, insisting that Erskine's current mental state was punishment for what he'd done, as Erskine tended to suspect. More than any of it, that was the part that floored him.

It almost felt like permission to try to get help.

Now if only Ravel could figure out how to do that--Skulduggery's vague assertions aside.

"If the solution is so simple, where's that miracle pill you were talking about? I think I'd like one of those. Otherwise I'm afraid I just don't see it."

"See?" said Skulduggery. "You're still complaining, and I'm not holding it against you."

It was a joke, or at least an attempt at some lightheartedness. Reflexive, but no less for it. Skulduggery tilted his head to the side and watched the spellcasting, silent for a moment or two longer; then he spoke again. "Wanting help is simple, Ravel. Going through with it isn't. Fortunately for you, there's more than one person here who thinks you're worth it, so I'd start by listening to them. Anton, specifically."

Anton could very well count as a miracle pill. God knew the Dead Men had unknowingly done the same for Skulduggery, countless times.

Fortunately for you, there's more than one person here who thinks you're worth it.

Erskine wasn't sure he believed that, and he really didn't believe that Skulduggery believed it. They'd barely spoken two words to each other aside from that short stretch of time when they'd been shackled together. How the hell would Skulduggery know what anyone thought of Ravel, anyway? Did he know that Raine still didn't trust him, even if she tried not to let it show? That aside from Anton, Valdis might be the only other person on the turtle that gave a damn about him, more than just to simply chatter with on the network?

Still, he nodded. He couldn't see how fighting this particular point would do him any good, not right now... and having Anton on his side was important. That, at least, he was willing to concede.

"I should get over to the other side," he said finally, this time with a good deal less rejection evident in his voice, in his posture. He paused, decided against thanking Skulduggery. It remained to be seen whether any of this was going to do any good. "I'll see you later."

Unfortunately.

Being willing to give someone a chance did not immediately equate enjoying that person's company. With time, that would change, and an awareness of that fact was the only reason Skulduggery didn't say unfortunately out loud.

So he simply nodded, and got back to what he was doing. The more time passed, the more he was sure Zatanna's spell was safe, but convincing himself otherwise was at least a productive distraction.

She no longer had anything to contribute to this endeavor, the Void was silent and Revelations had lost its glow. The lack of either magic left her feeling almost empty inside, so she simply watched. Keeping what senses she had retained on alert for any scents, sounds or emotions that seemed out of place. Just because she couldn't access her dark powers, didn't mean that she was defenseless, she still had her teeth and even without drawing on the Void, she could still outpace and outfight any kedan foolish enough to challenge her.

She almost didn't notice when Skulduggery drew near as he made his rounds. He must be on alert as well, knowing, as she did, that this might be an excellent opportunity for the cultists to attack. She lifted her head, concerned that his consciousness felt muted to her, just one more symptom of her lack of power.

Anticipating trouble?

"I always anticipate trouble," Skulduggery murmured when he drew level with Valdis. "That way I'm not surprised when the trouble happens, and pleasantly surprised otherwise."

Having a telepathic voice inject itself directly into Skulduggery's consciousness wouldn't ever stop being unsettling, he suspected. Argeddion had essentially confirmed that Skulduggery's mind was inscrutable even to the most powerful magic. But he was capable of hiding that reaction, or at least of moving on and pretending it hadn't happened. Which, to be fair, was how he handled most of his negative reactions.

"How's the spell going?" he asked quietly.

She looked at him, eyes narrowed and head tipped. Of course the skeleton always anticipated trouble, he probably started quite a bit of it.

It seems to be doing something, She replied, her gaze drifting over the involved parties. Pretty lights at the very least.

Her tone was dry, sarcastic and annoyed. She should have been helping, should have been adding power, but she couldn't.

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[Semi-Open] And With All Your Magic, I Disappear From View

The Guard / Uninvolved Contingent | OPEN

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SP BOOK 8 SPOILERS ABOUND. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

NO REALLY, MASSIVE SPOILERS YO.

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Before talking with Erskine. For Reasons.

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