voicetesting, potentially throne of shadows

[flying_free]

But I'm supposed to be dead, remember? If I show up again, it will ruin everything we've worked for.

And the Nysgods sound just as bad as the Wizard. But instead of abducting animals, they're abducting people.

Comments

[aelphaba]

You...too, I see.

[flying_free]

Yeah.

Who in their right mind voluntarily goes to a place like that?

[itwasrhetorical]

[Quite so many Miss Elphabas. Glinda's getting rather jaded with the whole matter.]

[She's settling to just stare at Elphaba. Might as well make her feel a little guilt to begin with.]

[flying_free]

[ Elphaba stares back. Well this is awkward. ]

Glinda.

[ But she can't hold it back, and she's speaking so quickly her words start running together. ]

I'm so sorry Glinda, I wished so much that I could tell you that I was still alive, but ...

[itwasrhetorical]

[She sucks in a hard breath.]

But what?

You made me promise, Elphaba. Made me promise I would never do anything to help your cause. Why?

[flying_free]

Because I didn't want them to turn on you Glinda!

[ She takes a few steps closer, and reluctantly stops. ]

It took only one minute of one speech for them to me into someone all of Oz hated. I didn't want the same for you.

[itwasrhetorical]

[Glinda stands resolute, not running to her friend like she so wants to.]

Did it ever occur to you that you and I aren't cut of the same cloth? Some of us aren't as openly defiant as others.

[flying_free]

[ Elphaba is doing the same. Though her own desire to run to Glinda is being stopped by her fear of being pushed away. ]

But if you tried to clear my name -- how would the Wizard react? Madame Morrible would have you denounced in minutes!

Please Glinda...

I just...

I just wanted it all to be over.

[itwasrhetorical]

They're long gone now Elphaba.

You could come back. Come back with me. I'm the Ozma now. I could make them forgive you. I could tell them the truth.

[flying_free]

Wha-

You mean-

[ She walked a bit closer. Her voice was a lot quieter now. ]

How? What happened?

[swiftdawn]

Oh, I don't know, it's pretty hard to ruin everything with just one action. You really have to work at it. What's the issue?

[flying_free]

Well. I faked my own death so that the Wizard would stop persecuting me. So that he would stop killing those I cared about just to prompt me to reveal myself.

And no one, no one other than Fiyero, knows I'm alive.

If I go to this game she wants me to, everyone will know that I never died. And I'm kinda hard to miss.

[swiftdawn]

Well, that is a spot of difficulty, but not one that's insurmountable. Believe me, it's... not a position I'm unfamiliar with. And you're right, the hat is a little hard to miss, but you could lose it pretty easily.

[flying_free]

The hat—

[ Okay the hat was a little hideous but Glinda gave it to her. ]

It's my skin that's hard to miss.

[swiftdawn]

Oh. Well, it is a little unusual paired with human features, I suppose. Not many half-orc half-humans around, are there, and fel taint's nigh impossible to get out once it's in the blood. [ She points to her own eyes, which glow a similar bright green. ] I suppose you could always find a friendly arcanist to spell you some kind of disguise? There has to be someone who doesn't care who you are.

[flying_free]

[ There were so many words she just said that Elphaba has never heard of. Orcs? Fel taint? ]

I'm not sure what an orc is, but I'm certainly not half of it. I'm a human, just ... born green.

I thought my entire life that the Wizard could make my skin normal, and he turned out just to be a fraud. I haven't found a spell yet that would work.

[ Hmmm... ]

But someone in Niflheim might be powerful enough.

[swiftdawn]

Hey, maybe! You never know who you'll run into in a new place. Or you might be able to find someone there who can at least do you a temporary illusion. I'd offer to help, but I'm no longer a practicing arcanist, and I'm pretty sure I'm kind of rusty.

[flying_free]

I hear that magic behaves differently in different worlds. What was it like for you?

[swiftdawn]

Doesn't magic work more or less the same everywhere? After all, the Twisting Nether connects all worlds in the universe. Although I suppose depending on the culture, the means and uses of magic are pretty diverse. What we call mages on Azeroth are people who've been trained in drawing on energies from the Nether to "circumvent the normal," as the great human mage Medivh was said to have put it. Regardless of the method used to do so—simple force of will is most common in the tradition I studied under these days, but some people use ritual for particularly complex conceptualizations, or focusing tools to increase power—that's the thing that mages all around the world have in common.

Most civilizations use at least some of it in everyday life, although it varies. For example, the kaldorei use next to none in favor of druidic practices, the gnomes blend magic and mundane technology, and my people, the sin'dorei, use it in nearly every aspect of life... for better or for worse.

[ She seems to become suddenly less enthusiastic about the subject when it comes to mentioning her own people. Her smile only fades for the barest moment, though. ]

But oh, I do go on and on, don't I? Is it much different where you come from?

[flying_free]

[ She was a bit too proud to admit that she barely understood most of what the girl just said. ]

In Oz, witches can cast spells by reading old scripts out of a book. Some people use wands, but I don't need one.

[swiftdawn]

So your homeland is called Oz, then? And reading old scripts out of a book... I suppose we do a fair bit of that ourselves, reading dusty old tomes of spells. But do you mean that you learn the spells out of books, or that the act of reading the script from the book is the spell itself? Can you do it without a book?

[ Ah, even though it's been nearly a decade, she still kind of misses academia. Nostalgia! ]

[flying_free]

Ever since I was little, I could do magic without the book ... but I can't control it. It's more like ... I feel the need to change something, and magic will happen.

I can only understand half of what's written in the spell book, but it works in a similar way. The spells I read fix the problem I seek to fix, but sometimes in unexpected ways.

Maybe I'm just not very good at magic.

[swiftdawn]

How unusual! I've never heard of that happening before. It seems to imply that magic almost has a will of its own, doesn't it?

[ Or that there's some other external force at work... ]

I wouldn't say you're necessarily bad at magic. Being able to force your will on reality isn't an easy feat, after all. I've known people who could only ever barely cast a spell even trying their hardest...

[ She smiles slightly. Maegwin did at least find her own path, in a... strange, tragic sort of way. ]

Might just be capital-D Destiny; that kind of weird stuff always seems to happen to cosmically important people, so maybe it's just leading up to something. 'Course, my dad always said no matter how powerful you are, it's no substitute for learning control, so six of one, half-dozen of the other, I guess.

[ ...too bad it couldn't save him. ]

[flying_free]

I'd like to practice, and to just find someone who could teach me.

[ She looks uncomfortable. ]

It's just so hard to practice spells without accidentally hurting someone.

[swiftdawn]

Well, if you want practice, I have a pretty long list of people who could do with some hurting!

[ She's mostly joking. Mostly. Probably. ]

But there's no way you could, say, practice on something like... I don't know, a target dummy? A boulder? Something where it wouldn't matter what happened to it.