"I have ideas." She grinned just a bit. "Which may become a plan, depending."
Xavin looked out at the sky for a few moments. Things were starting to click for her, but she wasn't quite sure if they were in the correct ways. Still, they had to do something. The solution, if things were as she thought, was obvious. She wasn't going to be a pawn in some madman's game. If this was a game, then she was going to be the opposing player. And she was going to win.
"That monster...I did not see it follow us too far before. Yet it knew exactly where we were. A flyer does not fly that fast and that hard unless it is sure of its destination. Otherwise, it risks crashing and dying. It knew the world, and it knew where we were. The only thing it did not know was what I had done to alter the environment."
Xavin was quiet a few moments. That had been thinking aloud as much as it had been explaining his ideas to Eliza. Gradually, the meaning of his words set in, at least to him. He wasn't terribly familiar with magic, but if it was related to logic at all, then perhaps he might be onto something.
"He created this world with his magic. This world is a part of him, isn't it?"
Cyrus shifted again, going from wolfman form to naked human. Neither he nor Eliza seemed particularly perturbed by his nudity or his close contact with his cousin while naked.
"I wouldn't say that this place is a part of him so much as a world created by him." he said in a quiet voice. "But everyone in our family has some empathy. It's part of the family curse, the part that was passed down. We can always locate family within a certain range. This place probably amplifies his power, since he created it. I don't doubt that he knows exactly where and what we are."
She rested her chin in her hand as she thought. There were eight of them here, and she could only presume there were more out there -- more than enough to share the responsibility of getting out of this mess -- and yet she felt the majority of that responsibility on her own shoulders. Or, perhaps to put it more accurately, she assumed it. She couldn't help it, though. It was in her training, and she had to get the others out of here alive...especially Karolina. Even if their romance was no longer prescribed, she was still very much in love with her. She would see her to safety if it was the last thing she ever did. It wouldn't be, though, because she refused to be beaten by some madman's twisted version of reality.
It would appear that she didn't quite yet get the nature of this magic just yet, though. As the werewolf changed and spoke, the world seemed to become more akin to a craft. Xavin didn't even flinch as the wolf became a nude human; nudity didn't even register to the Skrull as unusual. Instead, he paid more attention to the boy's words because that was what was important right now. Even though the wolf-boy spoke of the world as a craft, though, some of what he said alluded to what Xavin was trying to get at so maybe his line of thought wasn't fruitless, after all.
"If he feels things, like you, does he feel this world? Does he feel what happens to it?" She leaned forward, her eyes going hard. "Would he feel if we destroyed it? What would that do to him?"
Now things were beginning to come together in Xavin's mind. Their grandmother may or may not come for them, or be successful in the attempt. But if they were eating at the world from the inside out even as she was going at it from the outside in... If this psychotic madman was connected to this world at all, perhaps the destruction of it would weaken him. And if he was weakened, perhaps they could defeat him. Eliza had mentioned taking the fight to him, and she had been partially right. Xavin wanted to take the fight to the enemy, but in a roundabout fashion after taking the fight to the enemy's flank and taking that down first. This world was a game, a 'Reality TV'. What happened if they won the game, indeed?
"I wouldn't know where to start to try and destroy this place." Cyrus said, ducking his head. The shape-shifting alien felt rather like an alpha through his empathy, and being under the eye of an alpha-type always made Cyrus feel nervous. "And even if we could, I don't think he'd be that closely connected. It's..." the werewolf cast around for some sort of explanation. "It's like a marionette or something. He's manipulating it at a distance. Attacking the marionette wouldn't damage him."
The werewolf bit his knuckles nervously. "A weighted marionette on rubber bands." he amended. "Cut the bands and they'll snap his fingers, but I don't think even Grandmother could do that on her own. If we find where the spell is anchored, though..."
"What happens if we cut the spell loose?" Karolina asked. She straightened up, pushing her back against the wall for support. She'd been dozing for a while, but the combination of angry noises and a growing crick in her neck pulled her back to wakefullness.
Karolina listened as Xavin grilled the cousins for information, still impressed by her skills of interrogation. Karolina had watched Xavin question Skrull and Majesdanian rebel groups alike during her time away, and she was always a little surprised by her fiance's grasp of subtle insinuation. Somehow she'd always felt that soldiers should be as straight-forward and blunt as a kick to the head. She'd quickly learned that a general could not afford to be so obvious.
She blushed under the sudden focus of three pairs of eyes, but continued her train of thought anyway. "I mean, is this world connected to our own at all? If it disappears, will we just go back to wherever he took us from, or..."
The memory of Cloak's cloak sprang up, all dark and frigid and inhabited by rustling, sharp-edged wings. Would they be tossed into some in-between dimension, lost forever?
"I'm all for snapping this guy's fingers," she amended, "But let's not cut off our nose to spite our face."
"He can't create something from nothing." Cyrus murmured, ducking his head and shoulders in an effort to look small. He wasn't used to being in a position of authority, even if it was just an authority on some information. "If we could snap the threads, this-" he patted the dirt next to him, "-would probably go right back to where it came from and take us with it. Somewhere in Europe, probably, since that's where that side of the family is from."
"It's not something that needs worrying about." he added. "We don't have the power to snap the threads. It's easier to build bonds than to break them. It would take half a dozen powerful magi to snap the threads, and we don't have that." he licked his lips. "But we can hurt him if we find where the spell is rooted. But he knows that, so he's probably guarding it closely. The closer we get to the root of the spell, the more he'll take notice of us."
He felt the prickle of hairs growing along his back and willed them away. He needed to be able to communicate more than he needed to be able to defend himself right now.
"Great, a catch twenty two," Karolian turned to look at the tall, pale man as he spoke. Somehow, despite his size, her eyes seemed to slip right over and away from him. She hadn't really noticed him before, except to register his presence, but now-
"Why are you NAKED?!" she shrieked, hands flying up to cover her face. She'd been exposed to a great many radical cultures these past few months, but all of them wore clothing!
Eliza looked at Karolina and finally chuckled. "Ever tried to keep a werewolf clothed?" she asked, shoulders shaking with mirth.
She was the first to admit that it wasn't particularly nice to be laughing at her discomfort, but you had to take your jollies where you could find them, and her reaction was absolutely priceless. "I'm more worried about the fact that Cyrus has lost his glasses."
The albino teenager had jumped when Karolina had shouted, then cringed back against the wall, hunching down to make himself look small and non-threatening, something he did surprisingly well for six feet of pure muscle.
Xavin steepled his fingers in front of his nose as Cyrus spoke. He was refuting everything that Xavin could come up with. That was okay, though. He was used to that from others. Often, the process of gathering information and coming up with a plan was a process of elimination. Eliminate what is wrong and what won't work until you get to what will. The epiphanies that occurred in such instances no longer surprised him. They were simply part of the process.
And, as if on cue with her thoughts, Cyrus randomly gave Xavin exactly what she wanted in an offhand comment. If they could find where the spell was rooted, they could attack it! They could destroy the base of this world, and at the very least distract their enemy enough to escape from him. Oh, how Xavin wanted to do so much more to the evil maniac, though. Perhaps he was immortal, but if they could shut him down...
His train of thought was interrupted by the voice of her beloved. Karolina was perhaps the only person that could interrupt such an important line of thought, and Xavin's eyes immediately fastened on her. She had awakened and had been paying attention! And as usual, she thought about consequences where Xavin thought about action. She truly was her counterpart, even in strategy. Now it was Xavin's turn to listen as the wolf-boy spoke with his beloved...no longer his betrothed...and more information came out.
"Excellent. Now we are getting somewhere!" She brightened. "We will find where this spell is rooted, and along the way we will destroy everything that could stop us."
She looked between the others, expecting their dismay at wantonly attracting the mage's attention. "I want to attract his attention. Perhaps then we can fight him as opposed to his toys. But more importantly...Eliza!" Her eyes shifted to the girl. "If we draw his attention, will that make it easier for your grandmother to crack this world open from the outside?"
"No," Karolina muttered ruefully behind her hands, "I can safely say that I haven't."
She had even LESS experience with male anatomy. She'd break the jaw of anyone ignorant enough to suggest that she preferred women because she had a fear of, y'know, penis (penii? Oh god, what was the plural?), but that didn't change the fact that they were weird. She'd never needed proof for evolution, but what sort of deity would intelligently design such bizarre genitalia?
"Augh, no, it's okay, you just surprised me," she waved a hand in Cyrus' general direction and rolled her eyes up to fix firmly on the ceiling. Thankfully, Xavin was too caught up in strategizing to notice her embarassment.
Cyrus turned from Karolina to stare at Xavin in horror. He couldn't fathom wanting to draw the Beast's attention.
"Ifwedrawhisattentionhe'llkillus." he blurted all at once, as if by doing so he could travel back those few seconds and keep those words from behind spoken. "He'llkillusanduseustopowerhisspells!"
Xavin finally noticed just how uncomfortable Karolina was with the wolf-boy's nudity as she turned to look at him as he spoke. She looked between Karolina staring up at the ceiling of the cave and Cyrus. Honestly, she didn't get it.
"Is nudity offensive to you, bel--Karolina?"
It pained Xavin to censor herself, but the Karolina's love could no longer be assumed. The promised truce was dead, along with their worlds. But there was no time for allowing herself to feel anything about that. The situation at hand was far more pressing, so Xavin had to be strong.
Her eyes rested on Cyrus. "He may certainly try. We are not six powerful magi, but we are a far greater number of angry superpowered teenagers, most with some kind of battle experience."
She looked back to Eliza. "But supposing he can kill us as easily as that...how long would we have to last to give your grandmother enough time to break his spell while he is preoccupied with trying to kill us? Could we count on her to know when to strike?"
Xavin definitely did not like relying on a 'maybe'. Their grandmother was an uncertain element, and he had only their word that she was as good as they said. Still, if it was their only chance, she would give it all she had.
Eliza chewed on a fingernail, putting a hand on Cyrus’ arm in attempt to calm him down. “We’d need to find a way to contact Grandma for that to actually work,” she said. “If he can put us in here, there HAS to be a way to get things out, and something as small as a message would be a hell of a lot easier to sneak out than a person.” She turned her head to look at Cyrus.
“Do you think you could pull off a message spell, Cy? Something like a ‘we’re going to be making a suicidal charge to give you time, so please get us out of here before the madman turns us into chutney?’”
She shrugged, looking to Xavin again. “We’ve got no way of knowing if she knows what our exact conditions are, but it’s worth trying.”
"No, not exactly," Karolina said, her voice tight with embarassment, "It's just a little awkward, when it's someone you don't know...or know well. REALLY well."
She was babbling, she realized, so she bit her lip and tuned in on what Eliza had to say.
Honestly, her knowledge of magic consisted entirely of Nico's abilities, and those was fairly straightforward: One Shot Per Spell. Her admittedly limited experience with other magic users suggested that they weren't bombarded by pelicans if they tried for a repeat, but that hardly mattered now.
"One of our friends is a witch," she offered, though she knew Nico wasn't fond of the term. "She can only use a spell once, but it's pretty much foolproof for that oneshot. If we want to try a message, we'd better find her first."
"It is worth trying." She looked between Cyrus and Eliza. It appeared that she was going to get more cooperation out of Eliza since Eliza didn't seem to fear death at all. There was something...detached about the girl. Cyrus was just too wrapped up in his fear to go along with it, but he followed Eliza's lead so if she had Eliza, she had Cyrus.
"Because I see that we have two options here. We can do nothing and try to survive in this world until we get eaten or starve to death and power this magic user's spells anyway, or we can fight him and his spell and risk death but have a chance at getting out of here. A good chance, if we play it correctly." She paused. "And I don't know about you, but if we do go with the first option, I haven't seen much of anything that I would trust eating here. We would have several days at most before we starve. Every second we waste here brings us a second closer to starvation and death."
Xavin didn't like to be the bearer of doom and gloom, but sometimes a time limit was what it took to motivate people. Unfortunately, the only ones that were awake to hear her were Karolina, Eliza, and Cyrus. Anole and Teddy were outside on watch, and though she couldn't see Anole, Xavin guessed that he was just as bored senseless as Dorrek IV looked. They talked occasionally, but that was about it. Behind them further back in the cave, Chase and Kate were dead to the world. Xavin wished them very good rest, as they would need it for the marathon run to the exit she was planning.
Karolina had her full attention as she spoke, as she normally did. She couldn't help but wonder which category of people she fell into. They had been together continuously since leaving Earth. Karolina had made an invaluable aid in her military ventures even despite her lack of experience, and Xavin felt they had gotten as close as they could get in such a short period of time, but the doubt still gnawed at her: did Karolina love her? They had never consummated their marriage as the marriage had never happened, and they hadn't known one another long enough to feel comfortable doing more than kiss. Did Karolina feel that she knew Xavin REALLY well? Did she want to, now? Never had Xavin known such self-doubt, but it would appear that love did funny things to a person. She was used to being in absolute control of herself, and these feelings really bothered her.
"I see." It was the only response that she could come up with. She didn't see, not really, but it would have to do.
"Nico..." Xavin hadn't seen the girl since their first meeting, but that was genius. It was foolproof for the one shot. Had she used a 'disenchant' spell, yet? It was something to bear in mind for when they reached the spell's anchor. "Do we even know for sure that she is here?"
Xavin looked out at the sky for a few moments. Things were starting to click for her, but she wasn't quite sure if they were in the correct ways. Still, they had to do something. The solution, if things were as she thought, was obvious. She wasn't going to be a pawn in some madman's game. If this was a game, then she was going to be the opposing player. And she was going to win.
"That monster...I did not see it follow us too far before. Yet it knew exactly where we were. A flyer does not fly that fast and that hard unless it is sure of its destination. Otherwise, it risks crashing and dying. It knew the world, and it knew where we were. The only thing it did not know was what I had done to alter the environment."
Xavin was quiet a few moments. That had been thinking aloud as much as it had been explaining his ideas to Eliza. Gradually, the meaning of his words set in, at least to him. He wasn't terribly familiar with magic, but if it was related to logic at all, then perhaps he might be onto something.
"He created this world with his magic. This world is a part of him, isn't it?"
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"I wouldn't say that this place is a part of him so much as a world created by him." he said in a quiet voice. "But everyone in our family has some empathy. It's part of the family curse, the part that was passed down. We can always locate family within a certain range. This place probably amplifies his power, since he created it. I don't doubt that he knows exactly where and what we are."
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She rested her chin in her hand as she thought. There were eight of them here, and she could only presume there were more out there -- more than enough to share the responsibility of getting out of this mess -- and yet she felt the majority of that responsibility on her own shoulders. Or, perhaps to put it more accurately, she assumed it. She couldn't help it, though. It was in her training, and she had to get the others out of here alive...especially Karolina. Even if their romance was no longer prescribed, she was still very much in love with her. She would see her to safety if it was the last thing she ever did. It wouldn't be, though, because she refused to be beaten by some madman's twisted version of reality.
It would appear that she didn't quite yet get the nature of this magic just yet, though. As the werewolf changed and spoke, the world seemed to become more akin to a craft. Xavin didn't even flinch as the wolf became a nude human; nudity didn't even register to the Skrull as unusual. Instead, he paid more attention to the boy's words because that was what was important right now. Even though the wolf-boy spoke of the world as a craft, though, some of what he said alluded to what Xavin was trying to get at so maybe his line of thought wasn't fruitless, after all.
"If he feels things, like you, does he feel this world? Does he feel what happens to it?" She leaned forward, her eyes going hard. "Would he feel if we destroyed it? What would that do to him?"
Now things were beginning to come together in Xavin's mind. Their grandmother may or may not come for them, or be successful in the attempt. But if they were eating at the world from the inside out even as she was going at it from the outside in... If this psychotic madman was connected to this world at all, perhaps the destruction of it would weaken him. And if he was weakened, perhaps they could defeat him. Eliza had mentioned taking the fight to him, and she had been partially right. Xavin wanted to take the fight to the enemy, but in a roundabout fashion after taking the fight to the enemy's flank and taking that down first. This world was a game, a 'Reality TV'. What happened if they won the game, indeed?
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The werewolf bit his knuckles nervously. "A weighted marionette on rubber bands." he amended. "Cut the bands and they'll snap his fingers, but I don't think even Grandmother could do that on her own. If we find where the spell is anchored, though..."
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Karolina listened as Xavin grilled the cousins for information, still impressed by her skills of interrogation. Karolina had watched Xavin question Skrull and Majesdanian rebel groups alike during her time away, and she was always a little surprised by her fiance's grasp of subtle insinuation. Somehow she'd always felt that soldiers should be as straight-forward and blunt as a kick to the head. She'd quickly learned that a general could not afford to be so obvious.
She blushed under the sudden focus of three pairs of eyes, but continued her train of thought anyway. "I mean, is this world connected to our own at all? If it disappears, will we just go back to wherever he took us from, or..."
The memory of Cloak's cloak sprang up, all dark and frigid and inhabited by rustling, sharp-edged wings. Would they be tossed into some in-between dimension, lost forever?
"I'm all for snapping this guy's fingers," she amended, "But let's not cut off our nose to spite our face."
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"It's not something that needs worrying about." he added. "We don't have the power to snap the threads. It's easier to build bonds than to break them. It would take half a dozen powerful magi to snap the threads, and we don't have that." he licked his lips. "But we can hurt him if we find where the spell is rooted. But he knows that, so he's probably guarding it closely. The closer we get to the root of the spell, the more he'll take notice of us."
He felt the prickle of hairs growing along his back and willed them away. He needed to be able to communicate more than he needed to be able to defend himself right now.
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"Why are you NAKED?!" she shrieked, hands flying up to cover her face. She'd been exposed to a great many radical cultures these past few months, but all of them wore clothing!
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She was the first to admit that it wasn't particularly nice to be laughing at her discomfort, but you had to take your jollies where you could find them, and her reaction was absolutely priceless. "I'm more worried about the fact that Cyrus has lost his glasses."
The albino teenager had jumped when Karolina had shouted, then cringed back against the wall, hunching down to make himself look small and non-threatening, something he did surprisingly well for six feet of pure muscle.
Sorry... he murmured.
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And, as if on cue with her thoughts, Cyrus randomly gave Xavin exactly what she wanted in an offhand comment. If they could find where the spell was rooted, they could attack it! They could destroy the base of this world, and at the very least distract their enemy enough to escape from him. Oh, how Xavin wanted to do so much more to the evil maniac, though. Perhaps he was immortal, but if they could shut him down...
His train of thought was interrupted by the voice of her beloved. Karolina was perhaps the only person that could interrupt such an important line of thought, and Xavin's eyes immediately fastened on her. She had awakened and had been paying attention! And as usual, she thought about consequences where Xavin thought about action. She truly was her counterpart, even in strategy. Now it was Xavin's turn to listen as the wolf-boy spoke with his beloved...no longer his betrothed...and more information came out.
"Excellent. Now we are getting somewhere!" She brightened. "We will find where this spell is rooted, and along the way we will destroy everything that could stop us."
She looked between the others, expecting their dismay at wantonly attracting the mage's attention. "I want to attract his attention. Perhaps then we can fight him as opposed to his toys. But more importantly...Eliza!" Her eyes shifted to the girl. "If we draw his attention, will that make it easier for your grandmother to crack this world open from the outside?"
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She had even LESS experience with male anatomy. She'd break the jaw of anyone ignorant enough to suggest that she preferred women because she had a fear of, y'know, penis (penii? Oh god, what was the plural?), but that didn't change the fact that they were weird. She'd never needed proof for evolution, but what sort of deity would intelligently design such bizarre genitalia?
"Augh, no, it's okay, you just surprised me," she waved a hand in Cyrus' general direction and rolled her eyes up to fix firmly on the ceiling. Thankfully, Xavin was too caught up in strategizing to notice her embarassment.
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"Ifwedrawhisattentionhe'llkillus." he blurted all at once, as if by doing so he could travel back those few seconds and keep those words from behind spoken. "He'llkillusanduseustopowerhisspells!"
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"Is nudity offensive to you, bel--Karolina?"
It pained Xavin to censor herself, but the Karolina's love could no longer be assumed. The promised truce was dead, along with their worlds. But there was no time for allowing herself to feel anything about that. The situation at hand was far more pressing, so Xavin had to be strong.
Her eyes rested on Cyrus. "He may certainly try. We are not six powerful magi, but we are a far greater number of angry superpowered teenagers, most with some kind of battle experience."
She looked back to Eliza. "But supposing he can kill us as easily as that...how long would we have to last to give your grandmother enough time to break his spell while he is preoccupied with trying to kill us? Could we count on her to know when to strike?"
Xavin definitely did not like relying on a 'maybe'. Their grandmother was an uncertain element, and he had only their word that she was as good as they said. Still, if it was their only chance, she would give it all she had.
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“Do you think you could pull off a message spell, Cy? Something like a ‘we’re going to be making a suicidal charge to give you time, so please get us out of here before the madman turns us into chutney?’”
She shrugged, looking to Xavin again. “We’ve got no way of knowing if she knows what our exact conditions are, but it’s worth trying.”
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She was babbling, she realized, so she bit her lip and tuned in on what Eliza had to say.
Honestly, her knowledge of magic consisted entirely of Nico's abilities, and those was fairly straightforward: One Shot Per Spell. Her admittedly limited experience with other magic users suggested that they weren't bombarded by pelicans if they tried for a repeat, but that hardly mattered now.
"One of our friends is a witch," she offered, though she knew Nico wasn't fond of the term. "She can only use a spell once, but it's pretty much foolproof for that oneshot. If we want to try a message, we'd better find her first."
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"Because I see that we have two options here. We can do nothing and try to survive in this world until we get eaten or starve to death and power this magic user's spells anyway, or we can fight him and his spell and risk death but have a chance at getting out of here. A good chance, if we play it correctly." She paused. "And I don't know about you, but if we do go with the first option, I haven't seen much of anything that I would trust eating here. We would have several days at most before we starve. Every second we waste here brings us a second closer to starvation and death."
Xavin didn't like to be the bearer of doom and gloom, but sometimes a time limit was what it took to motivate people. Unfortunately, the only ones that were awake to hear her were Karolina, Eliza, and Cyrus. Anole and Teddy were outside on watch, and though she couldn't see Anole, Xavin guessed that he was just as bored senseless as Dorrek IV looked. They talked occasionally, but that was about it. Behind them further back in the cave, Chase and Kate were dead to the world. Xavin wished them very good rest, as they would need it for the marathon run to the exit she was planning.
Karolina had her full attention as she spoke, as she normally did. She couldn't help but wonder which category of people she fell into. They had been together continuously since leaving Earth. Karolina had made an invaluable aid in her military ventures even despite her lack of experience, and Xavin felt they had gotten as close as they could get in such a short period of time, but the doubt still gnawed at her: did Karolina love her? They had never consummated their marriage as the marriage had never happened, and they hadn't known one another long enough to feel comfortable doing more than kiss. Did Karolina feel that she knew Xavin REALLY well? Did she want to, now? Never had Xavin known such self-doubt, but it would appear that love did funny things to a person. She was used to being in absolute control of herself, and these feelings really bothered her.
"I see." It was the only response that she could come up with. She didn't see, not really, but it would have to do.
"Nico..." Xavin hadn't seen the girl since their first meeting, but that was genius. It was foolproof for the one shot. Had she used a 'disenchant' spell, yet? It was something to bear in mind for when they reached the spell's anchor. "Do we even know for sure that she is here?"
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Chase paused looking around.
"So we are using this thing as some sort of homing beacon to see where the others are?"
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