35. Mission Update

Together, Alejandro, Julius, and Kit tell her about their old partymate, Isaac Harper. That he knew he was doomed but refused to be bothered about it, wouldn't fight it, wouldn't let anyone else do so either. That it changed him, sapped his wellbeing, haunted his dreams and eventually took his sleep altogether. That Alejandro Silva argued with him about it. That Kit had his heart and hand, but even she couldn't move him to any goal but making the most of what time he had. They were united by their refusal to dwell on negatives, constantly pointing out the small joys and beauties around them, but all their little laughters fell apart the night he disappeared.

Isaac left his pack and everything in it. Silva tracked him for about a half mile and then 'he learned to fly or something because the trail just stops'

"Towards the coast," Julius notes.

"Silva and Rogue were were out all night, but couldn't find any further trace of him," Alejandro continues, sober.

"You almost tore your throat shouting," Julius adds.

Alejandro nods, swallows like it's still raw. "Search radius. Kit and I walked a tight spiral while your dad worked some scrying."

Julius looks down at the memory. He drained his metaphorical spell slots. But he wasn't a diviner then any more than he is now. His grasp on the spell was tenuous, unpracticed. The weave kept slipping. He coudln't focus. Alejandro's words echo in his memory but bring no comfort. "You can't be expert in everything, amor, it's not your fault"

Marwa is sitting down with her hand over her mouth, looking off to the side. "...You brought her here to tell me that Mika's on the clock. That he might not want a way out."

Julius half-rises from his chair. "No, baby, no."

"It's futile, we're just following your footsteps." she angrily wipes a tear away. "What am I supposed to do then, give up?"

"Of course not," Baba says, and it's almost a scoff.

But Marwa's not hearing them. "Look, I get it," she says, straightening with a flash in her eye, "You all think I'm young and foolish, or whatever. Don't know what I'm getting into. Of course I fucking don't! But let me tell you, I REGULARLY get into shit I don't know anything about, so that's not a new experience for me. That doesn't mean I run, or leave someone on their own."

The adults wait, listening. Kit's got a look like 'I like this one.'

"That's not who I am, and that's not who you raised me to be. So...if you were thinking of asking me to let this go. Save it.

"I knew when Mika said his only shot at freedom was a memory wipe or a Wish, things were dire but. So fucking what? So what. Would any of you feel better if you'd written Isaac off sooner? If you'd made different choices along the way? Somehow I doubt it."

"We're not trying to talk you out of anything, Marwa," Alejandro says, gently. "We just thought you should go into this with your eyes open."

"You're our brave girl, you always have been," Julius agrees, stepping softly around the corner of the table to lay a hand on her shoulder. She's crying, sniffling, tears spilling over. He drops to a knee to look her in the eye.

"There's nothing, nothing you can't take on. But baby I am so, so scared for you." He pulls her into a hug, and her shoulders shudder, burying her face in his robes.

"If it makes you feel any better," she sniffles, "I'm scared for me too. I just... can't not do things, just because I'm scared."

"I know, baby," he says, "I know."

"Damnit, Marwa" Alejandro grumbles through a rueful smile, "You got my foolhardiness, it seems. Hey," He's crouched nearby them, and when Marwa lifts her tearstained face, he's got a strained smile for her. "We may not have all the knowledge, but we sure as hell go down swinging, right?"

This gets a watery laugh from Marwa. She reaches out and Alejandro joins the hug.

"Kit you're a part of family group hugs, get over here."

Kit's more than a little misty herself, she happily wriggles into the tangle of arms.

"I wouldn't expect you to give it up," Alejandro says, when the hugging ends. She keeps his eye contact, wiping tears away without dropping her gaze. "So if you're going to fight, then give it your all. know your enemy. Not just whatever thing has its hooks in him but the hurts it can cause, the bad end it's dragging him toward. These are the enemy as much as the entity is. Understand?"

Marwa nods, decisive, certain. She takes a breath, then looks at the cleric.

"Kit...I don't know how to ask this. Can you help?"

"I don't know." Kit admits without compunction, "But I can try! We can always have hope. Hope is free."

Marwa smiles. "Do you know anything about Wishes?"

"Oh, the spell?"

"Yes!"

"I can't say I've ever met someone who could cast it, but it's supposed to be very powerful - anything you want, but only if you're very, very careful with it. There are lots of stories of Wishes going wrong - Wishing their enemy was dead only to be sent into the future in the aftermath of them having lived a long life and passed to old age, things like that. Finnicky."

Marwa considers. "Sounds almost...fey. Kind of tricksy."

"It's chaos magic, certainly," Julius agrees, "There's an argument to be made that it's not completely arcane, either. It's hard to tell whether it's real or a byproduct of the tales, but they say no one can Wish more than three times in a life. I've never heard of a spell making itself inaccessible like that. It's odd."

"So we'd need to find someone willing to cast Wish on our behalf, as opposed to being able to cast it ourselves. Someone who was willing to have it maybe be the only time they ever cast the spell." Marwa frowns. Just finding a way to access the spell has been stymieing so far. This adds a new, unwelcome wrinkle.

Julius nods, "It's powerful magic. I've told you before about pacing oneself with the weave- a novice should light a candle, not a bonfire, lest he burn himself. A spell that rewrites reality, across the entirety of the realms, shaped by the force of the caster's will alone... The slightest slip could be devastating, even for an accomplished mage. I wouldn't want to see anyone untrained trying to use it."

Marwa's face is compressed. She's wondering who the fuck is going to take a chance on them with this level of risk, and remembering that, untrained or not, Mika is both stubborn and self-dismissing enough to try it. She'll have to make sure he doesn't get the chance to try. But is that fair?

"And then there's the trouble of learning the spell in the first place," Julius muses, "Although, there are tales of enchanted items which streamline the process. Narrative devices for efficiency, or actual artifacts, who can say. Rings of wishes, luck blades, and so forth."

"I don't know if it's Wish, exactly, but isn't there a similar effect in the Deck of Many Things?" Kit asks, and Julius' face darkens as if she'd said she found a dead rat under his desk.

"What's that?" Marwa prompts, intrigued.

"A game, or, well, a magical item, I suppose. It's supposed to be a fey creation, a deck of cards that each do fabulous, terrifying, and impossible things for and-or to the person who draws them. Getting to make a Wish is supposed to be one of those things."

"It makes for a good story, but only an idiot would draw from it," Julius says, decisive. This gets an eyebrow raise from Alejandro, who knows the pejorative is not one Julius uses lightly.

"Cool." Marwa says, sardonic, "So our options are: convince a high level wizard to cast it for us, find this magic deck of cards with a small possibility of drawing the card that could grant a wish, or stumble upon an enchanted magic item that grants us access to the spell. Anything I'm missing?"

"The boon of a deity would probably also work," Kit pipes up, "but they're not easy to come by." And the way her tone deflates indicates she's definitely petitioned her own and been denied.

"Who's a deity of justice?" Marwa wonders, "Because this is some fucking injustice, let me tell you.

'I mean this doesn't... this isn't just chaos these patrons are spreading. It's fear, manipulation, violence, oppression." She's getting worked up again. "Isaac, Mika, who the fuck else do these entities have under their thumbs? Whole groups of people? Just because they can, because they need some pet to sing them a song or fetch something for them? I mean what the FUCK?!"

"Tyr is the reining authority on matters of justice," Alejandro says, with the annoyed face of someone who has had run-ins with his black-and-white-morality paladins before and doesn't care to repeat them.

"Great. Where's the closest temple to Tyr?"

"There's a courthouse in Arcadia," Julius offers with a teasing smile, watching the colour drain from Marwa's face as she imagines marching up to a court of law to make demands.

"Never mind. Who else? Akadi's not big on intervention. Does Bahamut take visitors, do you think?"

Both Julius and Alejandro defer to the cleric, who's thinking.

"You'd probably have better luck with a human god," she ventures, "I mean a god who's concerned with humans and the other peoples of Prime, rather than dragons or outer-Realm business."

"Fuck, there's a lot of those."

"Liira is a lady of joy and revelry," Kit muses, "But the problem isn't that he's unhappy. I don't think excising unknowable horrors from someone's brain is in her portfolio." Kit's thinking still.

Marwa picks up her train of thought. "He mentioned a memory reset as a possible 'out,' but-" she shakes her head, "That's way too destructive, right? I mean is it really a fix if you're not you after?"

Kit snaps her fingers - an idea!

"What about Lathander?"

Julius looks at her, a contemplative expression that everyone present can read as checking a potential solution for faults.

"Who's that?" Marwa asks, hopeful.

"He's the god of the dawn, of new beginnings and rebirths, renewal. Also inspiration and creativity. Isaac mentioned him once; he and Milil, Lord of Song and troubadours, are friendly. They're both known for their investment in mortal affairs, but I think the Morninglord's portfolio applies more closely than Milil's."

"New beginnings, that's exactly what we need." Marwa's eyes are shining. She's remembering times she's heard Lathander's name before; weddings, naming-days, new journeys. If Mika is going to move past this dark chapter of his life, who better to help him open a new one?

"Where are his temples? What do they look like?"

"All over Prime, mostly." The dads and kit go over a few temples they've heard of, discuss the various forms they can take from art galleries to childcare services and community centres.

They finish the snacks and go through a couple refills of their drinks as they discuss specifics. When Lydia comes in to remind them that the lunch hour is upon them, Marwa jumps into her arms for a big hug.

When Marwa turns in for the day, there are a couple of letters for her that have been left on her nightstand. Both from Mika.

Marwa gives into the urge to let herself fall backward into her bed where she’s sitting to read them, and when he gets to the part about imagining stuff - she says out loud, "GOOD!"

Marwa is touched. She vows to start sticking things in his bag and pockets when he’s not looking. Just to see how much she can get away with.

A little over a week after that mail, she gets another letter from Mika. But this one is more like a note.

Hey Marwa,

Wanna do a haunted house?

#6 Main st., 'Brass Horn Inn,' Lantern Hill, W. Callist.

--Mika

“Bitch do I.” she grins. She can hear the line in his voice. The smugness, the shit-eating smirk.

She’s itching to go. The address is unfamiliar, but Pops probably knows where it is.

When Marwa goes to tell her parents she’s leaving, it’s not a surprise at all. I don’t think it took long for Lydia to see that her baby is okay. But needed to be home in a safe place for a while until she felt ready to fly away again

I think Lydia smiles and her chin wobbles as she hugs her.

“Go do wonderful things, habibi. Just don’t forget your family or your home here.”

And Marwa of course gets emotional. The hug is misty, but warm.

The family shares a lovely dinner send off, and then the next morning, Erik meets her at the door, says to walk with him.

He leads her to the garage, where her new airship is docked and has been kept covered until this moment. Partly because it's a surprise, but also because holy man did Erik have to get some safeties installed before he was letting her anywhere near it.

Also it's painted a lovely and shiny shade of sky blue

“Oh my god…Pops! Marwa's open-mouthed smile is wide. "It’s here!?”

"It's here, kiddo; go on, have a look around."

“It’s so beautiful.”

She floats directly onto the ship, exploring, looking in the aft cabin, which makes a decent sort of sitting/general living area with a floor access to the hold, which is neatly divided between curtain-divided living areas that can be dissembled for extra space, a modest galley, and a small cargo area.

It's a smallish craft, but big enough for a party of five. Steerage is done by sails and wheel, and the propulsion on the hull can be retracted into sealed ports to make it a seafaring vessel, which, Erik points out, is not the same to operate as an airship, so she should get someone who has actually sailed before to navigate if she uses this function.

“Would you look at that, Nimbus. No prisoner efreeti or elementals here! This is how an airship should be.”

Nimbus is flying circles around her, spiralling up and down the masts, exuberant.

Erik shows her how the navigation works, and makes her take it for a test drive around the property's perimeter before she can drop him off, give a big hug and kiss on the cheek, and wave as she flies off into the blue.