#ooc: it wouldn't lead to Quelare bravely venturing back into the cursed city and pledging to guard the new bed of chaos and keep others awa

[moonlight-eternal]

⏳

"You are all fools," Quelana says. "Gwyneth, Quelathi, you two have always been fools, though for different reasons. Quelaag, Gwyndolin, you're usually smarter than this. Come on, think it through!"

"I have thought as much as I need to," Gwyneth retorts, brash as ever. So little respect he has for anything but strength of arms, for which so little thought is ever needed. "If we succeed in this, then Father will have no need to sacrifice himself as he plans, for the First Flame will burn again without his kindling. That is reason enough."

"And if you fail?"

Quelaag opens her mouth to respond, but is cut off before she can speak by Gwyneth once more. "We shall not!"

On the other side of the room, Quelare puts her face in her hands and shakes her head. She turns away, but cannot bring herself to leave the room and stop listening.

"It is a wonderful and noble goal," Quelavere cuts in, trying to placate her older brother. "But I cannot feel confident in something so unprecedented. Tampering with a Lord Soul..."

Finally, Gwyndolin musters the courage to speak up. "Lord Souls are the closest thing known to the First Flame, born from it in those very first moments. I agree that the risk is significant, but the situation is becoming desperate. At the very least, we must do something. We must try."

"Everyone is depending on us, whether they know it or not," Quelathi adds.

Quelana sighs. "I understand that," she says carefully. "But there is a difference between controlled experimentation and wanton tinkering. Quelaag, I know it was not your idea, but you were the first to voice support and unlike Gwyneth you actually live here in Izalith, so... Could you not have asked Mother at any point before now, for permission to study the Lord Soul? Could you not have invited her to the discussion alongside us all?"

Quelaag shuffles her feet, and hesitates. "I– yes. I could have." She glances to her brother, then back. "He said it would be better not to involve her."

"Mother might put a stop to the plan," Gwyneth asserts. "She has no love for Father, this has been plainly known for centuries. Ever since she built this wretched place so far away, so deep beneath the earth as if to hide from the sunlight itself!"

Immediately, flames appear in the hands of several of the witch-sisters. Quelare stalks over to rejoin the group at last, tilting her head upward to meet Gwyneth's eyes. "Need we remind you that you are guests here, dear brothers? If you desire sunlight, then run along and bask in the rays above, and let those of us with more sense devise a plan."

She strikes her palm toward Gwyneth's chest, and in a display of great control, extinguishes the ball of flame just a fraction of a second before contact.

Gwyndolin looks down and pulls her traveling cloak tighter around her shoulders.

"Ah! Right, my apologies," Quelare says as her gaze passes over the youngest sibling. "You, singular brother and yet another sister, are guests in Izalith." To Gwyndolin alone, quieter: "If you want to fit in with the girls, we really must get you a proper black dress."

"If we could return to the topic at hand," Quelana emphasizes, glaring at each gathered sibling in turn. "That side of the room want to do something very rash, without any prior testing to learn the limits and the capabilities of what they would tamper with, and it could save the world or it could... well, we don't know what could happen if they fail, because they've done no testing. Meanwhile, on this side of the room, we have the level-headed people."

"You mean the people too scared to try to help," Quelaag tells her at once.

Quelavere inserts herself physically between the two, addressing the younger sister. "She means the people who favor caution, but not abandonment of the goal. I for one would love for Gwyneth's idea to succeed! But I cannot bring myself to participate, not if you go ahead with it right now."

"I will observe," the previously silent Quelaca finally speaks up. "But at the first sign of trouble, I will seek out Mother and inform her of the proceedings with her stolen Lord Soul."

"I too will watch from a safe distance," Quelavere says. "But I know such science is beyond my skill."

"I suspect it may be beyond any of us," Gwyndolin says quietly, but not quite soft enough to be unheard. "But I stand by my brother in this, even if in so little else. I cannot watch the world fade and do nothing. For all I wish to escape Father's watchful, controlling eye, I cannot allow his death to be without purpose."

Quelana looks around the group, and finds that the opposition is solidly outnumbered by those in favor and those abstaining. She sighs again, exasperated, and relents as much as she is able. "I'm not going near whatever you idiots cook up," she declares. "And when you fail to produce another First Flame, come back to me then and I can try, once again, to teach you the importance of using science in your magic."

"Quelana, please," her sister Quelathi begs. The youngest of those in Izalith, senior only to Gwyndolin, she has long since mastered the art of wide puppy eyes. "Mother's Lord Soul is the soul of Life. What better catalyst could there be, to create a Flame that rekindles our world's existence? How could it possibly lead to anything else?"

Quelana, ever the pragmatist, only frowns. "I would like to think you all are correct. I would like to have that hope, that something other than a direct linking of soul energy to the First Flame could suffice. I want you to know I am not opposed to the goal, or even the method! What is anathema to me is the recklessness. The risk. It is the fact that you are doing this without knowing that it will work."

"Then tell us," Gwyndolin asks her. "You are the closest thing we have to an expert on the mechanics of flame sorcery. Mother may have more raw power, Quelare may have more precise control, but you know how it works. Tell us, if we do this... what is the worst that could happen?"

#pokeblog rp #pokeblogging #pokemon irl #rotomblr #ask game #glimpse of the past #ooc: oops I accidentally a thousand words #ooc: what's the worst that could happen? certainly not chaos and lava and demons and mass exodus and death #ooc: certainly not Quelaag; Quelathi; and Gwyndolin all getting transformed below the waist into giant spiders or a collection of snakes #ooc: and Gwyneth getting a full body mutation because he was even closer to the chaos than they were; ending up as a lava-oozing giant #ooc: the worst that could happen definitely wouldn't include Mother's death and the abandonment of all of Izalith as uninhabitable #ooc: it wouldn't lead to Quelaca not making it out of the city in time; and Quelana becoming a hermit in the Great Swamp #ooc: it wouldn't lead to Gwyndolin and Quelavere returning to Anor Londo in disgrace; and Quelavere replacing Gwyneth as heir of sunlight #ooc: it wouldn't lead to Quelare bravely venturing back into the cursed city and pledging to guard the new bed of chaos and keep others awa #ooc: it certainly wouldn't lead to Father sacrificing his life to save the world anyway; exactly the thing this experiment was meant to sto #ooc: no of course not; none of that; clearly Quelana is just being overly cautious and should let the others go ahead