( wrath has never forgotten the fountain of magical-energy that he met upon first arriving, but other aspects of serthica have taken precedence. now that they are all clustered in the mouse house, he is in constant awareness of the wolf that is also like a beacon- all that magic to tap into and no idea of it. )
I understand your preference may be to never learn what I was intending to tell you on the day we met. While I would ordinarily leave you to your choice of ignorance, this aspect of yourself which you are unaware of does leave the group far more vulnerable than it needs to be, and in the Mouse House, I am constantly aware of your presence because of it. Would you prefer to have this conversation over written word or in person?
In person, love, because none of what you're writing is making any meaningful sense.
( also, then at least he gets eye candy while wrath is delivering apparently shitty news. for a guy who only has had his skin start crawling less in the wholesale present exile into the mouse house, this does not remotely sound promising. )
he simply follows the magical battery to its source, arriving wherever licyn currently finds himself within the mouse house. ) It may make equally little sense to you in person. ( it is half warning. this is the type of information that will change someone's entire view of their existence, but it is also information that is necessary for him to know, and it is not like wrath can answer most of the questions he will likely have. he has no idea why licyn is what he is. )
( he's getting more used to people just showing up when it shouldn't be as easy, and who knows? five pops in and out, wrathion has a better nose than most, abilities are all over the place. meaning he glances over from where he's lounging by the window, on 'watch' for children messing with five's notes.
hey, he's getting paid for this. )
Why do I get the feeling you're not here to congratulate me on my continued sanity, love?
( a wry smile, and slightly narrowed eyes; trying to get a sense of body language from wrath. )
( wrath's expression is unreadable as it always is even more so than when they initially spoke. he has had centuries to learn to school every reaction in hell, because anything revealed might be later used against him. it all comes with a cost there. when emilia stood before him with the horn of hades around his neck (his stolen wings), he did not react as he had no reaction when she said his true name in the monastery without realizing she had.
he takes a moment to clock the individuals near them - any who might be near enough to hear, but they are all engaged in other tasks: )
Perhaps after this conversation. ( he'll get his congratulations. and then without preamble or beating around the bush, keeping his voice low and even: ) You are an incredibly powerful source of magical energy.
( Wrath does not know how to bring any further clarity to what he's said beyond repeating it again. He has no idea how it is possible, and he has certainly never met a werewolf who also functioned as a font of magical power before. )
You are brimming with magic, which any one who is able to harness magic could dip into and utilize for their own gain at any time. I have no idea how you could be unaware of this fact up to this point nor do I know how you've become what you are. ( He only knows that this is true. )
That would depend very much on how magic works in your world and how you came to be like this. ( There is a possibility it cannot be reversed at all, but Wrath certainly cannot say that with any certainty without having enough information. This is apparently not magic he can use himself, or he would have by now by accident from the strength of it. Wrath is not unsympathetic to the idea of carrying around a great deal of power that one cannot use for themselves but leaves them open to being used. ) At the very least, it would be wise to look into ways to mask what you are from other magic users.
You dislike magic? ( He raises an eyebrow. A magical battery who is fearful of magic - the irony of it all does seem to edge into curse territory. Wrath remains calm, grateful his voice remains low for the time being. He imagines anyone who would want to use his magic could sense it. It's so bright, but not all magic works the same. Best to keep it quiet. )
This world may have the answers you need, but it would require using other types of magic whether from someone within the group or some item or spell from this world or both.
( those are the worst cataclysmic events of their world, and the massacres and horrors that crop up: not magic as a whole, but the abuse of those who find it in droughts deep enough to drink and drown in. )
What I know of magic in my world has nothing to do with anything like this! Protective amulets, tracking spells fooled by blood dolls, deflecting lobs of fire or light or ice thrown at you by battle magickers.
Those with hubris can make a destructive mess of nearly anything given the chance, but considering the potential danger of magic, that is a fair assessment.
( pride is, perhaps, his least favorite brother for very many reasons, including how his pride negatively affected them all and led to the curse which currently plagues them every single one of them and all of hell. wrath's gaze narrows then, because yes. none of that is helpful for understanding how he is the way that he is now. )
And you've had no notable interactions with those who can use magic before that you can remember?
( he does twitch, fingers digging into the fabric covering his arms. licyn's three heartbeats away from pacing like a caged animal. it takes a long drag of a moment before he considers anything else to say, frown present and turning into a scowl. )
... Only once with a construct as a child. But a construct destroys, it doesn't create.
( and he can't see, being without knowledge of these things, how him surviving his encounter could possibly have left him with what, magic traces? (it isn't, but that he also doesn't know for sure.) )
This is storming nonsense, how are you meant to keep yourself from making what you can't sense in the first place? Like telling the nose deaf how things smell.
( even if wrath could not sense emotions, he would be able to tell licyn's clear distress at the moment, which may affect the ability to even come up with a plan. a construct. he is not certain what that is. for all the creatures of hell, all the lesser demons, he has not heard of that particular one. )
There are ways to ward. I have done so for locations and objects.
( emilia herself is spell-locked at the moment though he does not think that is exactly what would need to happen here. he steps closer, summons a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from the place he shares with five. he sets the bottle between them and pours a glass full for himself before he turns away from licyn to look out at the rest of the crowd. it's only after he has had half his own glass that he speaks again. )
( neatly sidestepping calling himself either a location or an object. he does not, really does not want magic laid on him. there's the deep feeling something horrible will happen, even if the magics which have been cast over his shoulders by those such as Hermione so far have elicited no such catastrophic response. )
Magic. Destructive. Never truly alive, never soulled. Things like that haven't been made since the fall, millennia ago, far as I've ever heard. They don't get destroyed, they get contained.
( that is what they are looking at after all. wrath does not know that there is an object he can carry which would mask the level and power of magic he holds inside of himself. and he does not know how to ward him, living, breathing being against detection. he fills his glass again. )
...and what if that construct was now... contained within you?
( it's asked as he raises an eyebrow in his direction. )
( still low voiced, but much closer to a hiss, as his restrained urges from pacing manifest as a physical twitch and grimace. then he does move his arm, a fierce, cutting motion. )
No. If you feel this magic, then taste it, take it in. If anything in it feels corrosive, then maybe. But I burned for weeks until it dripped its last dregs out of my system, and I bear those scars—I carry no construct.
( wrath has not allowed himself to dip into the magic source in front of him - for many reasons. even without that source, he could destroy this entire city, world. he lifts his gaze to him and finishes off his glass.
( licyn stays where he is, not flinching away, not leaning forward. that same fierceness remains in his eyes, less so his features, until his lips pull back from his teeth and he says: )
Beyond every shadow of doubt.
( take your taste, and know him no creature of destruction.
unbeknownst to licyn, instead learn him to be a creature of life, of regeneration, of creation. different sources, generations on generations ago, and self-sustaining in a way no construct was. )
I will be brief. ( wrath's own magic is vast enough to destroy a great deal on its own - the whole city if not more though it is tempered a great deal in this world. if it were powered further at all, it would have dangerous implications for the world as a whole, but he should be able to dip into the well of this magical source, understand it, and leave it behind before anything can happen.
his eyes close. he rests a hand on licyn's shoulder, careful to set up barriers ahead of time so it won't all flood into him. the very dip into this well of magical source has his own magic rising up wanting to draw in more and more of it - shadows rise up behind him in response, the air chills around them until their breath can be seen - his touch is ice cold. ice spreads at his feet. his shoulders roll back and tense as he shuts the door once more and drops his hands.
and wrath opens his eyes a moment later. the shadows are gone along with the chill as wrath restrains his own magic once more, and it is still and quiet. )
It is no construct. It is not new, not made in your lifetime. The magic is creation, life, regeneration. It's also... many generations old, many sources. Self-sustaining.
( he's prepared for the ice, having been in its periphery before, at the house of their rot. to which he still calls out the rot as being on the people of the citadel, not on the ones so temporarily, magically tattooed.
it doesn't make it nice. his breathing stays steady out of outrage, not at wrath, but at this possibility of being something so tied into magic that he overflows with it. even when the chill fades, he doesn't move, wound too tight. )
The seven lighting-struck skies does that mean?
( he doesn't know. wrath can't really know, he suspects, their worlds are different enough. because this sounds awfully similar to an inversion of a construct, and that can't be, won't be, because he knows, he is, a product of natural birth and all his village was, his parents were, the packmates he'd had and lost were, and yes, they have trouble having children with humans, with other shifters, but all shifters had that trouble. children were precious.
it's why he's never forgiven himself for being the one who survived. the only child who had, when that construct ghoul had been activated in the ruins half a day's hike from home.
what it means, however, is something he can guess.
( that is a great deal of outrage, which wrath can also sense in its strength, which feeds into his magic on top of the source that he is attempting to extricate himself from. his shoulders tighten further as he works the tension through his muscles, forcing the beast of his magic and demonic power back within its cage where it remains.
his eyes flash a bit brighter gold helplessly though at all of that anger inside of the shifter beside him. the question hangs between them. )
I do not know. ( he doubts that will come as a surprise, but wrath does not want to even hazard a guess without evidence to support what he might say. ) I imagine some of the answers you seek are in your own world.
( and wrath does not come from a world with constructs nor has he felt magic like the kind inside of licyn before. heaven was not about healing. it was about responsibility and duty. the underworld has been the same, but he has more control over what he can do there. )
( his lips pull back from his teeth, exposing them, and the sharpness of his canines that are a little too much so, were he strictly human. licyn lets that anger flow through him, breathes through it, the disgust and terror dampening in the face of how and why being impossible to answer. his fingers press firm and hard into the material over his arms, into his muscle, and he relaxes them again.
forces his arms to drop to his sides, and breathes. anger has never served him well but as a force for ongoing survival, and the causes behind it, the focal points, ones he's let go.
all but the anger aimed at himself. that, however, is an old scar, ignored today as it must always be. his own eyes lighten, the desire to shift having come close to the surface, but he can't outrun what he feels: he would if it worked. he's old enough to know it wont. amber bleeds back to brown, and he heartbeat steadies, his pulse calms. )
I suspect even there, no one will truly know.
( magic that stretches for many generations, magic that is an inversion of what the constructs are, what they were, does not seem to be something that could have come from the kingdoms and empires and councils and mercantile nations that came after the Fall. if there are answers, they lay in the obliterated realms of the last magician empire, the wreckage of which still ravages his world now, over two millennia later. )
The ones who practiced magics powerful enough to persist like that were written out of acknowledged existence two thousand years ago. By their own hands, or their enemies. Even that, no one knows. Well, anyway. Thanks for that.
( he's not thankful, but he's not angry at this point, just... bitter. bitter, and scared. more bitter. he brings his hands up to run them both through his hair, nails raking against his scalp. )
Time to get drunk and fuck.
( .................... so he you know, starts walking away alskjdfljasdf SOME PEOPLE HAVE CERTAIN COPING MECHANISMS )
( wrath does appreciate that deep level of anger which he experiences. it is not only anger though. of course it isn't. his entire view of himself has been flipped on its head. rarely when anger becomes so strong is it ever only anger, but so much else: pain, disgust, fear, grief.
there is a pause before wrath nods his agreement. )
Then you may be correct.
( strange to think there would be no records at all anywhere, but wrath can speak to the dead so he is not accustomed to not being able to find general information he needs on magic. it's his own curse that has been difficult, but no other curse has ever been like it before. )
Do not let me get in your way then. ( he makes no move to stop him, remaining with his back pressed against the wall. he reaches for his glass again to drink from it. wrath did clock him as someone who would fit in well within house lust, and it is the coping mechanism of anyone within that house. in fact, he's certain he has heard lust say that exact phrase at many different points throughout their existence.
and it's not like they'll figure out how to ward him anytime soon so coping is the only other alternative for the moment. they can talk further later. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
text. >_>
I understand your preference may be to never learn what I was intending to tell you on the day we met. While I would ordinarily leave you to your choice of ignorance, this aspect of yourself which you are unaware of does leave the group far more vulnerable than it needs to be, and in the Mouse House, I am constantly aware of your presence because of it. Would you prefer to have this conversation over written word or in person?
licyn's like what this is a lame booty call
( also, then at least he gets eye candy while wrath is delivering apparently shitty news. for a guy who only has had his skin start crawling less in the wholesale present exile into the mouse house, this does not remotely sound promising. )
lmaooo poor licyn
he simply follows the magical battery to its source, arriving wherever licyn currently finds himself within the mouse house. ) It may make equally little sense to you in person. ( it is half warning. this is the type of information that will change someone's entire view of their existence, but it is also information that is necessary for him to know, and it is not like wrath can answer most of the questions he will likely have. he has no idea why licyn is what he is. )
a guy can't get a break, dramatic sigh
hey, he's getting paid for this. )
Why do I get the feeling you're not here to congratulate me on my continued sanity, love?
( a wry smile, and slightly narrowed eyes; trying to get a sense of body language from wrath. )
no subject
he takes a moment to clock the individuals near them - any who might be near enough to hear, but they are all engaged in other tasks: )
Perhaps after this conversation. ( he'll get his congratulations. and then without preamble or beating around the bush, keeping his voice low and even: ) You are an incredibly powerful source of magical energy.
no subject
What stormstruck nonsense are you on about?
( how is that even remotely possible? )
no subject
You are brimming with magic, which any one who is able to harness magic could dip into and utilize for their own gain at any time. I have no idea how you could be unaware of this fact up to this point nor do I know how you've become what you are. ( He only knows that this is true. )
no subject
( this, murmured emphatically, Licyn rubbing his hands over his forearms. )
How can a person make that stop?
no subject
no subject
( at least he's keeping his voice down, though more of his teeth are visible right now than usual. )
If anything, it's feeling other magics that makes my skin crawl, not whatever's spilling out of me!
no subject
This world may have the answers you need, but it would require using other types of magic whether from someone within the group or some item or spell from this world or both.
Do you know anything about magic in your own?
no subject
( those are the worst cataclysmic events of their world, and the massacres and horrors that crop up: not magic as a whole, but the abuse of those who find it in droughts deep enough to drink and drown in. )
What I know of magic in my world has nothing to do with anything like this! Protective amulets, tracking spells fooled by blood dolls, deflecting lobs of fire or light or ice thrown at you by battle magickers.
no subject
( pride is, perhaps, his least favorite brother for very many reasons, including how his pride negatively affected them all and led to the curse which currently plagues them every single one of them and all of hell. wrath's gaze narrows then, because yes. none of that is helpful for understanding how he is the way that he is now. )
And you've had no notable interactions with those who can use magic before that you can remember?
no subject
( he does twitch, fingers digging into the fabric covering his arms. licyn's three heartbeats away from pacing like a caged animal. it takes a long drag of a moment before he considers anything else to say, frown present and turning into a scowl. )
... Only once with a construct as a child. But a construct destroys, it doesn't create.
( and he can't see, being without knowledge of these things, how him surviving his encounter could possibly have left him with what, magic traces? (it isn't, but that he also doesn't know for sure.) )
This is storming nonsense, how are you meant to keep yourself from making what you can't sense in the first place? Like telling the nose deaf how things smell.
no subject
There are ways to ward. I have done so for locations and objects.
( emilia herself is spell-locked at the moment though he does not think that is exactly what would need to happen here. he steps closer, summons a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from the place he shares with five. he sets the bottle between them and pours a glass full for himself before he turns away from licyn to look out at the rest of the crowd. it's only after he has had half his own glass that he speaks again. )
...a construct?
no subject
( neatly sidestepping calling himself either a location or an object. he does not, really does not want magic laid on him. there's the deep feeling something horrible will happen, even if the magics which have been cast over his shoulders by those such as Hermione so far have elicited no such catastrophic response. )
Magic. Destructive. Never truly alive, never soulled. Things like that haven't been made since the fall, millennia ago, far as I've ever heard. They don't get destroyed, they get contained.
no subject
( that is what they are looking at after all. wrath does not know that there is an object he can carry which would mask the level and power of magic he holds inside of himself. and he does not know how to ward him, living, breathing being against detection. he fills his glass again. )
...and what if that construct was now... contained within you?
( it's asked as he raises an eyebrow in his direction. )
no subject
( still low voiced, but much closer to a hiss, as his restrained urges from pacing manifest as a physical twitch and grimace. then he does move his arm, a fierce, cutting motion. )
No. If you feel this magic, then taste it, take it in. If anything in it feels corrosive, then maybe. But I burned for weeks until it dripped its last dregs out of my system, and I bear those scars—I carry no construct.
( and that, that is a fierce, dark eyed denial. )
no subject
then takes a step forward. )
Are you certain?
no subject
Beyond every shadow of doubt.
( take your taste, and know him no creature of destruction.
unbeknownst to licyn, instead learn him to be a creature of life, of regeneration, of creation. different sources, generations on generations ago, and self-sustaining in a way no construct was. )
no subject
his eyes close. he rests a hand on licyn's shoulder, careful to set up barriers ahead of time so it won't all flood into him. the very dip into this well of magical source has his own magic rising up wanting to draw in more and more of it - shadows rise up behind him in response, the air chills around them until their breath can be seen - his touch is ice cold. ice spreads at his feet. his shoulders roll back and tense as he shuts the door once more and drops his hands.
and wrath opens his eyes a moment later. the shadows are gone along with the chill as wrath restrains his own magic once more, and it is still and quiet. )
It is no construct. It is not new, not made in your lifetime. The magic is creation, life, regeneration. It's also... many generations old, many sources. Self-sustaining.
no subject
it doesn't make it nice. his breathing stays steady out of outrage, not at wrath, but at this possibility of being something so tied into magic that he overflows with it. even when the chill fades, he doesn't move, wound too tight. )
The seven lighting-struck skies does that mean?
( he doesn't know. wrath can't really know, he suspects, their worlds are different enough. because this sounds awfully similar to an inversion of a construct, and that can't be, won't be, because he knows, he is, a product of natural birth and all his village was, his parents were, the packmates he'd had and lost were, and yes, they have trouble having children with humans, with other shifters, but all shifters had that trouble. children were precious.
it's why he's never forgiven himself for being the one who survived. the only child who had, when that construct ghoul had been activated in the ruins half a day's hike from home.
what it means, however, is something he can guess.
his magic regenerates... because he does. )
no subject
his eyes flash a bit brighter gold helplessly though at all of that anger inside of the shifter beside him. the question hangs between them. )
I do not know. ( he doubts that will come as a surprise, but wrath does not want to even hazard a guess without evidence to support what he might say. ) I imagine some of the answers you seek are in your own world.
( and wrath does not come from a world with constructs nor has he felt magic like the kind inside of licyn before. heaven was not about healing. it was about responsibility and duty. the underworld has been the same, but he has more control over what he can do there. )
no subject
forces his arms to drop to his sides, and breathes. anger has never served him well but as a force for ongoing survival, and the causes behind it, the focal points, ones he's let go.
all but the anger aimed at himself. that, however, is an old scar, ignored today as it must always be. his own eyes lighten, the desire to shift having come close to the surface, but he can't outrun what he feels: he would if it worked. he's old enough to know it wont. amber bleeds back to brown, and he heartbeat steadies, his pulse calms. )
I suspect even there, no one will truly know.
( magic that stretches for many generations, magic that is an inversion of what the constructs are, what they were, does not seem to be something that could have come from the kingdoms and empires and councils and mercantile nations that came after the Fall. if there are answers, they lay in the obliterated realms of the last magician empire, the wreckage of which still ravages his world now, over two millennia later. )
The ones who practiced magics powerful enough to persist like that were written out of acknowledged existence two thousand years ago. By their own hands, or their enemies. Even that, no one knows. Well, anyway. Thanks for that.
( he's not thankful, but he's not angry at this point, just... bitter. bitter, and scared. more bitter. he brings his hands up to run them both through his hair, nails raking against his scalp. )
Time to get drunk and fuck.
( .................... so he you know, starts walking away alskjdfljasdf SOME PEOPLE HAVE CERTAIN COPING MECHANISMS )
no subject
there is a pause before wrath nods his agreement. )
Then you may be correct.
( strange to think there would be no records at all anywhere, but wrath can speak to the dead so he is not accustomed to not being able to find general information he needs on magic. it's his own curse that has been difficult, but no other curse has ever been like it before. )
Do not let me get in your way then. ( he makes no move to stop him, remaining with his back pressed against the wall. he reaches for his glass again to drink from it. wrath did clock him as someone who would fit in well within house lust, and it is the coping mechanism of anyone within that house. in fact, he's certain he has heard lust say that exact phrase at many different points throughout their existence.
and it's not like they'll figure out how to ward him anytime soon so coping is the only other alternative for the moment. they can talk further later. )