Open | You think you're safe without a care...

[rollstoseduce]

Who: Jaskier rollstoseduce
What: New arrival tries to understand the city and tries to rescue a kitty
When: Last week of June
Where: Central city
Notes: Using this log to move Jaskier's arrival TDM prompts and organize closed threads. If you want to plot anything more specific, feel free to hit my intro comment!

Comments

[choicely]

[ Yennefer's embarked on some greater explorations — mostly to ascertain a better sense of what lies beyond the city and where she might be able to develop an understanding of how to apply her power — but the smaller town of Sunset Falls draws her interest almost immediately, as soon as she crosses through its borders. There's enough magical energy here to awaken the senses of anyone who possesses a level of ability, and the thought of potentially using that energy, of channeling it differently, is one that persists even long after she's returned to the city in favor of her temporary lodgings at the hotel.

Of course, when the strange phenomenon begins, and there's tell of places that are specifically in need of aid, Yennefer's first instinct is to decline — until she hears of where these occurrences are happening, and what seems to be the direct cause of it, this uncontained power that is now running rampant thanks to thoughts becoming new and more dangerous realities. She foregoes a teleportation device; it's hardly needed when she can simply portal to a town she's visited before, stepping through to the sound of distant screams — and what she can faintly hear as a single, entirely identifiable singing voice.

It would be just her luck to arrive on the scene right at the exact moment when this creature — whatever it is — is in the process of charging directly at someone, and she only has just enough time to recognize who it's set its sights on before he goes flying. There's no further opportunity for her to interrogate the sudden clutching feeling in her chest; she can only react, using chaos to draw pieces of the earth up from either side of the path she cuts through the grass as she strides forward so that she can toss it in the monster's direction, hitting it with enough force to distract it from the figure crumpled on the ground, certainly not moving or making enough sounds of pain for her liking at the moment. ]

Jaskier? [ She calls out loud enough to be heard before a deafening roar makes it impossible to hear much of anything; all she needs is some proof of life, she thinks, so she knows that the bloody bard hasn't gotten himself killed right when things were starting to be less irritating.

There's less time afforded to thoughts along even worse lines now that she's the product of the beast's fixation, and she stretches out a hand, reaching for the vines now exposed from the broken pieces of ground she'd taken and driving them up, aiming to make them twine around its legs and hold it in place while it rages and strains to get free. ]

[rollstoseduce]

[It takes him a second to come through, and when he does, the first thing he does is groan in pain. His whole body hurts, he can taste blood in his mouth, and Jaskier wonders if this is truly the time to finally test his healing spell on a person--

He knows that voice.

Knows it in a painful context, too. And last time he was hurting this badly, the voice made it stop. With trembling limbs, Jaskier raises to his fours before finally turning around to find Yennefer attacking the beast. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It's not his intention to come off as ungrateful like it happened last time but this is an emergency.]

DON'T! PLEASE, DON'T HURT IT! [Raising a hand turns out to be a bad idea considering his limbs are still trembling, so while all his muscles and bones scream in pain, Jaskier moves to sit on his heels.] It's a child, Yennefer. You have to help him, to- to bring him back. [There's a begging tone to his voice he doesn't use often and hasn't used on her since the day she tried to cut his balls. Bleobheris had been enough death to last him a lifetime, thank you very much.] Is it power that you need? I can boost you. Or-

[The beast roars the loudest yet and Jaskier wonders for how long the vines will hold up if Yennefer listens to him and goes for a less damaging treatment not to hurt the child. Whatever she needs to do to fix things probably needs concentration, so first they need to calm the beast down.

Jaskier does one of the many things he's always scolded Geralt for: he rubs his mouth on his sleeve to get rid of the blood, and then casts Lo-Fi, blue eyes full of determination as he sends his song to the monster.]

♫ Remember you are all people and all people are you / Remember you are this universe and this universe is you / Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you / Remember language comes from this / Remember the dance language is, that life is / Remember ♫

[It seems the beast tries to fight the magic, judging by the way he keeps shaking his head, but soon that very same head is hanging as the monstrous body swings from side to side. Jaskier has to keep on singing to keep the spell up, but he turns to look at Yennefer again, blue eyes giving her a serious look that silently beg do it now.]

[choicely]

[ The groan is so slight, at first, that Yennefer isn't even certain she's heard it right — it could very well be wishful thinking, her wanting to project some evidence for her own peace of mind, but she doesn't have much time to consider the alternative either, not when this creature is advancing on her now and she doesn't know what could happen if she simply stood aside long enough to let it continue on its rampage.

That cry from behind her, though, is enough to still her, even if she doesn't release it from the bonds she's using to keep it in place; holding that steady is proving to be something of a challenge, anyway, given how strong it is, and she keeps having to pull more roots up from the ground solely for the purpose of holding it as it rips free from what's wrapped around it so far. ]

What? [ Turning back to face it puts the situation into new perspective; she hasn't made any outright move to do much other than subdue it, or attempt to, as it rages, but now that she has the knowledge of its true origins she can feel the magic around its presence, the places where something has been wrongly shoved into a different shape.

Not only is this creature not even supposed to exist, but it's not meant to exist in this form, and she can sense the corruption in the magic that has been used to transform the child, taking what might have been an initial, innocent intention and twisted it into a greater manipulation.

What Jaskier does, with the song in question, begins to lull it enough for her to start to release some of her bonds; she'll have to, in order to focus some of her chaos elsewhere into attempting to reverse what's been done. Undoing something is difficult enough, but countering a magic that doesn't originate from the same source can prove much harder. ]

Whatever happens... [ She fights the words out through gritted teeth, one hand leveraged in front of her, trying to take the magic and draw it away, remove it from the form it isn't meant to be clinging to, as she chases one more look back over her shoulder in Jaskier's direction, violet gaze insistent. ] ... keep singing.

[rollstoseduce]

[Whatever happens, Yennefer says with insistent eyes, and oh boy, Jaskier glares at her as his mind is already filling the rest of that sentence because it sounds and looks like something Geralt has asked dozens of times through the years. It doesn't matter what happens, if he gets hurt or captured or almost killed, Jaskier is supposed to leave. Not to make it worse. Not to care. Such a huge pile of crap--

...keep singing.

...well. That sure is new, at least in this context. It's still not great, though. Jaskier can't help squinting at her and he would be gritting his teeth too if he wasn't in the middle of a song. She's telling him to help instead of asking him to leave if things get nasty, but the spirit behind it is the same, he thinks: don't worry about me.

Not surprising after how she rescued Cirilla, but still... That can't be. They'll need to have a conversation about dumb self-sacrificing tendencies later.

For now, though, he must do be best to help and minimize the risk. Obviously Lo-Fi isn't enough, that only calms down the creature, and who knows what can make it angry again. So Jaskier changes into the aptly named Lullaby, choosing an old lullaby from the Continent that his grandmother used to sing to him with her harp.

His eyes don't stay on the creature, though, at least not for long. After he's sure the magic is taking effect, he stares at Yennefer with hard eyes that don't match the softness of his voice, cornflower blues silently telling her not to do anything stupid.]

[choicely]

[ She still doesn't understand the entirety of his power, or the scope of it, but whatever he's doing seems to be working, lulling the creature-that-isn't into at least a false sense of complacency. At the very least, it isn't raging anymore, which means she can repurpose some of the chaos responsible for keeping it bound by the earth and start carefully unwinding the magic snarled around its form, trapping the real child within.

The process becomes even simpler once Jaskier changes his tune, and the magic results in the creature swaying, its eyes drooping as the power of the spell begins to take effect. It's different, using chaos to try and pry something apart, to delve into what's become warped and twisted and revert it to what it's intended to be.

She hasn't missed the looks Jaskier keeps aiming in her direction in the meantime, her own violet gaze narrowing subtly even if she can't spare the attention away from what she's meant to be doing. It might take the entirety of a song, by her estimation, but eventually, there is nothing other than a sleeping child curled up into a tiny ball, thumb pressed into its mouth as it dozes with no knowledge of anything that's just happened.

Yennefer finally eases back, relinquishing her hold as her hand falls at her side, glancing over at Jaskier while maintaining a low tone of voice so as not to wake the unassuming third party. ]

It would behoove you to place a little more belief in my ability, you know. [ She looks a little more disordered now than when she'd first begun, strands of hair escaping the confines of her braid, a sheen of perspiration on her brow. ] I assume this child belongs to someone.