light_mischief | [come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

I’ll be there! 🤸

[ oh shit he didn’t mean to imply… that it was an either or thing… whoopsie. anyway he’ll be around shortly after the text, knocking on skulduggery’s door. ]

[NAAAAAH its fine he doesn't care remember

Skulduggery opens the door after checking that it is, indeed, Venti stopping by. he doesn't make a show of it, but he does check to see that there's nobody else with him before opening the door all the way and letting him in.

it's, you know, a room, pretty much the same as any other one. the couch is still a couch and the bed looks lived-in, but Lucius is out for the moment and Skulduggery is in!!]

Hope it wasn't too much of a fuss with Jinx. I suppose that we really are just borrowing it, and she hasn't given it up entirely? [he doesn't expect so, but he might as well ask! he'd probably just give it to Pal, anyway...]

[ he helps himself inside; he appears to be carrying a tote bag from tommy bahama (strangely enough he seems to be kind of fond of the store, in a kind-of-fan-of-kitsch way and a medieval-bard-fascinated-by-modern-fashion way. ]

I said 'borrow', I assume she might want to keep it. Especially because... [ and it's from the tote bag that he withdraws the star chart, first flipping to the back of it.

which is pretty generously decorated with her artwork. ]

She's so talented, isn't she! [ ....... he sounds pretty sincere in saying this. ]

[. . .]

Ah. Yes, I see. [...he seems sincere and that makes this so much worse...] All the better that I take some photos and try to copy it now, before she... takes it back.

[Skulduggery's just gonna snap a picture of the back so he can prove it's real and not just some hallucination of his. Then he clears off the desk so there's space for the map.]

It'll just take a moment for the photos, but the tracing will take a little longer. You're welcome to stay if you'd like, or else I can return the map to Jinx myself. [he actually likes Venti for some fucking reason so the invitation is a genuine one, if he wants to vibe and talk about this weird-ass map!!]

[ what can he say, his bias is kind of questionable too. whoops. ]

Like I said, I did mean to also give that to Mr Palamedes, but I was a little... it was a little rough back then. And then the Battle Royale happened, and I rather forgot about this chart at all. You could bring it to him if you'd like, he apparently can "read" the history of an item somehow.

Won't tracing be less accurate than a picture? [ but, he's definitely not a detective. and in the first place even cameras and cell phones are pretty high-tech for his knowledge already. ]

Edited 2022-08-05 04:13 (UTC)

That's the best idea out of the bunch. [he just didn't know if he could get away with stealing it for a little while.] I trust him to figure out the finer details of the thing. For now...

[this will have to do! he's got his phone out so he'll start with the photos, as well as a slow-panning video. this isn't his first rodeo.]

The pictures will be accurate, but the screen's a bit small. Besides, I'd like a properly-sized reproduction to look over. It'll look nice on my wall, at any rate. [JOKING JOKING he's taking this seriously, promise.]

I think I could return it to her in a few days. [ actually she might get rather distracted for various reasons when she gets canon-updated. ] I really did mean to give it to him to examine, but if you'd like to and talk to him about it and return it to me later, that works just as well. But yes, it was quite a wall decoration in Miss Jenny's bedroom. [ and that place was... ]

Have you been told about sigils yet?

I can do that for you. [not that he doesn't think Venti will pull through, it's just... he doesn't want to risk Jinx taking it back before Pal has a chance to look at it.]

I was told a bit about them, yes. Mmm... [yyyyeah not gonna mention Clarke, actually???] I've gotten photos of the one the Captain used, as well as the ones Jenny used trying to get the jewelry. I know that they run on blood, too. Other than that, however, I haven't heard much. I assume Jenny's bedroom was absolutely saturated with them?

[alright baby time to artificially reproduce this star chart! look at him with his pencils and bits of paper taped together that make this whole thing look as insane as possible]

[ why not mention clarke (: he and clarke are ((: hm....... ..... anyway. ]

We found this chart pinned to the wall of her bedroom. And... well, all of her walls were covered in a particular sigil, written in what I assume was blood. Though I'm not sure if it was hers or not.

It was a sigil that represents herself, but Friday says that it's... 'wrong' somehow, as if she's forgetting how exactly it's supposed to be. I could draw it. To my knowledge I don't think any of us have activated a sigil before, it apparently needs a specific kind of 'intent'.

[as if this old man knows anything about your trifling teenage affairs, he just doesn't want it getting out that he was assisting her with FUCKING BLOOD SIGILS. real responsible man, super great work]

If you wouldn't mind drawing it, yes. [here's a piece of paper from a memo pad and what looks like a counterfeit-bill pen. it's just a regular pen but it has red ink.] Natsuno sent me some sigils, but it won't hurt to cross-reference and make sure I know which ones are which.

[the thing about Jenny forgetting herself??? yeah, not reassuring.]

The process that the Captain and Jenny go through in order to travel to various realities is prone to causing... memory loss. Madness, mostly, from what I've heard. She's likely slowly losing her own self in pursuit of defeating the Captain.

[...hm. a sigil that represents herself.] I wonder if the Captain has a sigil like that. If we've seen it, maybe, and just don't realize it.

[ he takes the paper and pen to start drawing from memory, quite accurately, jenny's sigil, as marginally incorrect as it may be. a pause, then he starts to repeat it over and over to try to mimic the frenzied pattern of it all over her walls. ] It looked like this, scrawled over and over again on the wall, as if maybe she were trying to write it over and over to remember it. I gave a copy of it to Yuuki so yes, he or other people have seen or collected more of them than me. He and Clarke, probably. [ who, well... yes, she'd be pretty reckless with trying to experiment with blood magic. on the other hand, someone should??... but yes admittedly, probably someone with more self-preservation than her?!? ]

I've also speculated that the Captain should have a sigil and perhaps if we could 'restore' it or something, it would help him. Or if we could restore Jenny's. I don't imagine just trying to play with or draw random additions or modifications to the sigil would work, though.

There's a certain erosion to the self that occurs with long, long life. But I imagine traveling realities so much would do the same... it's not as if we could simply ask the Captain to stop, though.

Edited 2022-08-09 02:53 (UTC)

[Skulduggery takes a pause in his own work to look at the sigil and accompanying pattern. it.... isn't very reassuring at all, is it? there's no way to tell what it was meant to look like originally, or how far it's degraded.]

No, I don't think it would be wise to add to the sigil blindly. You risk setting off some more catastrophic magic, experimenting wildly like that... [ C L A R K E ] ...But restoring the sigil for Jenny would likely help her maintain her sanity. I'm not so sure there's anything like that left to save in the Captain...

[but that hasn't stopped him from looking for hints of something buried deep, nor has it stopped him from thinking, sometimes, that he might have glimpsed something behind the void.]

...Still, until we know for sure, it's best to keep all options open. That's including asking him to stop -- although so far, that hasn't panned out.

Mm, I suppose... magic I know isn't exactly defined or activated with sigils, though there is symbology associated with various magic. However magic works in this realm uses a different system than what anyone knows, or else someone should be able to use whatever 'intent' it is to activate a sigil.

However did you use magic to create that invisible wall, anyway? [ come to think of it, skully is a very magical skeleton himself. ]

Symbol magic is one field of magic in my reality. Not one that I spent much time with, though, unfortunately for us all. I keep hoping we'll conveniently wake up to find a sigil expert has come aboard, but so far, no dice.

[man, there are a lot of little fiddly bits to this star map. Skulduggery's copy is going to be accurate in scope, but the details will likely be slightly off. hopefully not so much that it affects anything...]

I can manipulate the elements; the walls are a matter of restructuring air particles into a solid shape. I learned to do those more recently.

The elements... you mean to say you could manipulate more than one? [ a veritable avatar of a skeleton. ] I've only known one person to be able to do that, where I come from. But it seems there are those from different realities who really are a lot more capable... for instance, to even hold power over celestial bodies! I wouldn't know if the 'moon' counts as an element!

[ does he have moon PTSD.

m a y be? ]

[it's a funny coincidence, right? ~~surely not a formative influence of any book canon~~]

Elementals are relatively common in my reality, but most tend to favor one or two over trying to master all four. [three, technically, because earth doesn't count...]

I think the moon counts as a very big rock more than anything. Impressive, certainly, but really... he's just changing the trajectory of a boulder.

[ the moon... a big rock... actually the sheer unimpressedness of skulduggery in the face of that moon spiking almost has him stunned, but maybe he's biased for being the victim of said moon spiking. ] A boulder--

Is that truly what you think of the moon, a boulder now! [ ... ] Though, I can't say whether the moon in this realm is even real, as real as those false stars might as well be, such inconsistency they hold in the sky. It felt more painful than a big rock, I've had those thrown at me a-plenty!

[ thanks no thank you zhongli. ]

[he said it was impressive!]

A moon is a celestial object that controls the tides and has a direct effect on gravity. When Ebalon hurls heavenly objects, they do not result in natural disaster. Therefore, [and here he lifts his pen to point, even if he's not looking directly at Venti,] he chucks boulders at people.

[a brief pause]

Rock, boulder, or moon -- when it's coming for you, it doesn't really matter what it is. Hopefully, there won't be a repeat experience.

[ the moon in genshin is... questionable. that being said, the very sky itself and the heavens are questionable so, kind of much of this goes over a silly spoony bard's head. ] It resulted in a natural disaster for at least one person! [ he taps a hand to his chest. him! it was a disaster for him!!... kinda?! ] But if I think of it as a boulder... hm! So I should simply try to avoid or dodge next time.

[ which, funnily enough, is the captain's advice as well. so.

... ] I don't suppose your invisible wall could block something like that, could it?

Or blow it up, I suppose. [shrugging like that's totally a thing you can do] I would recommend avoiding getting into the position to begin with, although that was obviously not a choice at the time...

[hmm] I wonder if there's a way to redirect it back towards him, the next time he decides to fling asteroids about... Spike the moon, so to speak. [oh, right, Venti's specific question was about his own power...]

I haven't learned how to manipulate a large space as of yet, so creating a barrier large enough to stop the moon would be... tricky. And that isn't something to easily test...

Looking back on it, it could have been a choice. I should have kept my head, I... [ but he'd seen mizuki die, his mind reeled back two thousand years to maybe the most pivotal and defining moment of his life, the silhouette of a boy falling to arrows. the pierce through. he falls quieter, a hand going up subconsciously to his chest, the memory that hit harder than bullets, fatal shots.

a blink. he drags himself from the mire of the past. the scritch of skulduggery's pencil or pen tracing the map. the present, which deserves focus. ]

We've quite a collection of magic users on this ship, and yet we can barely understand the Captain's...

Perhaps we could practice? I could throw things using wind, if you'd like to test your walls more.

[come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

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