W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

[strangerpeople]

W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

[The national council just announced the blight to the country.

There was no sugarcoating it anymore. This was a critical time. Saving all of the vines is paramount, but what does one do when the blight hits? It keeps encroaching on the grapes, day by day. Entire clusters, entire bunches, dead and rotting, while allowing the blight to spread, and the leading botanists and viticulturists cannot identify the origin or the cause. They can't even successfully isolate the culprit in their labs; it seems to disappear like air no matter the precautions taken.

It is a catastrophe that seems to be beyond science, and it will result in the complete collapse of the entire country's wine industry. Already, embargoes on this year's crop have forced other grape-growers to close shop for the year after they'd sold their previous stock; it is all too possible that no grapes might ever be grown here again if a cure cannot be found. The tourists have stopped coming. The towns have grown silent.

You, meanwhile, are devastated. With the way your business is going, it will be on the brink of bankruptcy within the year. You will soon have no choice but to close shop and let every grapevine die, let the land go fallow. There must be a cure for this, there must be. Yet everything that can go wrong is.

Then, as you watch the news, it happens. Breaking news. The blight has been found in another country.

It is a pandemic-and it is only getting worse.


-

Well. This is...what else can can anyone say? You all know the deal. You all know what situation you're in. All that is left is to figure out what you can do about it. If there's anything that can be done.

You still feel that compulsion to distrust. To know you cannot win. To know that only the hosts have your best interests in mind. It would be easy to just do all that. But would it be the right thing to do? You can't be completely sure. Indeed, nothing is certain here, except for that damned ticking sound. If only you could stop it.

But you can't stop it. It is inevitable.


There are 15 strangers in this place.]

Comments

[katzenpfote]

Ah, there will always be those kids who do that. It just shows you're clever and have initiative. Not always the best way to go about things in a civilized society, but some would say I don't really stick to civilized society these days, anyway.

... How many brothers do you have?

[relieable]

[HEH]

I have five brothers. We're sextuplets, and it's pretty difficult to tell us apart. Made the scams easy.

[katzenpfote]

Aha, I see. Very smart thinking, especially if your mark doesn't know that. Your house must have been very loud and busy while growing up.

[relieable]

Oh, man! You have no idea. It was like a wild animal den.

[he laughs... and then has a thought. those aren't his memories, of course. but it's better than saying the alternative]

It was a lot of fun.

[katzenpfote]

It sounds like it. I have no siblings, I only had a cat. And ja, I named and shaped my familiar after him. It was one of the first proper spells I mastered.

[relieable]

You were able to create the familiar to look like your cat?

[that's adorable]

Man, I'd really like to have my own familiar! I dunno what animal I'd pick, though.

[probably a red panda]

[katzenpfote]

Of course. You can make it look like any small creature. Cat, sparrow, octopus, falcon, spider... all are some of the things he has been. You simply have to redo the ritual every time you want to change your familiar's shape, which takes about an hour and a comparatively low cost of materials. ... Though not so low that it is easy to do all of the time, nor is it easy to consistently make that kind of money for most people.

Not to mention the high quality parchment and ink that is needed for copying sells, and materials that are not as easy to find as guano or cocoons. Being a wizard can get very expensive very quickly.

[relieable]

[NO NO SPIDERS]

Yeah, well, that's still pretty neat. Magic, and stuff. I don't know too much about it, but it seems to be different from world to world. I like learning about it!

[katzenpfote]

Ah, it's fascinating. There were a number of magic-users on the train with me, or at least some who used things that look like magic from my perspective. It's a shame that we didn't have a library on the train but I suppose it would not have fit...

[relieable]

Speaking of the library... have you been in this one?

[katzenpfote]

I have. There are a lot of books, and they seem to be from a lot of different worlds... there is much to research.

[He actually looks... happy at the idea. The lines on his face seem to lessen somewhat as he smiles a little.]

[relieable]

[well, that's nice. Osomatsu is glad he's happy]

I went to check it out, myself, but it looked so weird, so I gave up. Maybe I should try again.

[katzenpfote]

I can help you find things about what you are interested in, if you'd like. If I had to guess I think the shelves were taken from different places, given the differing styles and the differing types of book binding I have seen.

[relieable]

Oh, yeah. It's not that I don't know how a library works. It's more that it freaked me out. But, now that I know what to expect, I could probably go back inside. Probably.

[katzenpfote]

Oh, er... I meant that I have an extremely good memory and could find you the right section quickly.

[relieable]

Oh! Right.

[haha]

Well, thanks! If I think of anything I wanna check out, I'll let you know.

[katzenpfote]

Not a problem. I didn't have access to a library growing up, so I took advantage of the one at school once I was accepted. Most of us read quite a bit there, though... being a school for arcane magic.

[relieable]

[aww. he nods]

See, I wasn't much of a reader... like, at all. Even when books were assigned to me in school, I didn't--

[a pause as he trails off. not his memories! not his memories!]

...I just don't read a lot. Haha...

[katzenpfote]

Ah... well, those of us who got in on merits other than money tended to be... well. Nerds. So the selection of people was skewed.

[He grins a bit.]

We had a lot of assigned reading, but even the dry stuff was enjoyable for me and some of my classmates.

... At one point I thought I might be a teacher, but things didn't turn out that way.

[relieable]

[at least Osomatsu can admire that. a teacher sounds like it could be a fun job... also hard, but fun!]

What would you have taught?

[katzenpfote]

Oh, there were many things... at the time, my specialty was Evocation magic.

[He makes a blue flame appear in his hand, and frost gathers a bit on his glove.]

Something like that, though this is a spell I'm unfamiliar with.

[relieable]

[whoa! cool! is that icy fire? Osomatsu's eyes are lit up like it's Christmas]

I bet you would've been a good teacher! Maybe, someday, you'll get the chance.

[katzenpfote]

[He snuffs the flame out by closing his hand, and shakes his head.]

No. Unfortunately, the group that runs that academy is rotten to the core. They are extremely dangerous and powerful archmages who use others as their playthings and have as much if not more power as the King.

[relieable]

[ah. his smile fades. that's... too bad]

I see...

[those poor kids, though]

[katzenpfote]

... Still, I do teach Nott a bit. She caught on very quickly... I was very proud of her when she cast her first spell.