sorrowandsorrow | Open Post: Welters

Entry tags:

Open Post: Welters

It's probably been noted before, but Janet's not actually dumb. The people of this mansion are varied and mercurial. They're not like Fillorians, some of whom are little bitches but who were largely cow-eyed and willing to accept her authority just because she was a pretty girl from another world.

So. She has to win people over. Maybe everyone needs a little fun to take their minds off things. Conveniently, welters is absolutely Janet's idea of fun. There's a bunch of insane rules, violence is encouraged, and you win if you're good at magic and being bossy.

The mansion grounds are also a little tempestuous as to their character, but apparently the master magician toying with all their lives is feeling charitable today. She's found a big, flat stretch of undisturbed grass, and she's sketching out welters squares with a piece of chalk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well. That is not the kind of command that he usually got from the Danish royal family, which means that at the very least it's interesting. A little real mirth steals into his expression; "As my lady wishes," he says, and lopes off toward the far end of the grid.

He hopes it's a small rock.

Janet, immediately caught up in her own game and forgetting to be cool, gives him a little salute and then backs up a few steps until they're at opposite ends of her grid. Out of her cleavage, she fishes the object in question: it's called a globe, in welters terms, but it's about the size of a ping-pong ball, and made of smooth blue marble.

Focused, now, Janet gives it a careful underhand toss toward Laertes. It soars pretty neatly his way through the air, farther than it should be able to go if one were feeling married to the laws of physics.

And oh, that's not something he's ever seen a woman do so casually before (although Ophelia sometimes carries a little pomander between her breasts, but that's different, that's his sister)--does she have no pockets? Or is she deliberately toying with him? ... and in his surprise, he very nearly forgets to watch the arc of the globe.

Very nearly. He sprints for it, and catches it in both hands. "Shall I throw it back, my lady?" he calls. "Or would you prefer a less meteoric return?"

Janet laughs, slightly giddy with it. Maybe nobody will even agree to play with her, and maybe she's going to have to change the rules so much it's barely even recognizable as the game she loves, but it's really, really nice to pretend for a second that she's back at Brakebills, day-drunk with her friends and fucking around.

"You're good," she calls back, and jogs toward him. "I just wanted to make sure I could reach it from there. No point if the grid set-up is impossible."

"Tell me more about this game," he says. He is a little discomfited by the warmth of the marble ball in his hands, and eager to vouchsafe it to her again. "Is this how you play? Catching rocks? I'd expected more from magicians' entertainments."

"That's how you start." Janet holds her hand out for the globe. "You capture the squares, with magic. If I can get this going, I'll have to turn some of these squares into things other than grass. You know, sand, water, sheets of metal, whatever. It changes every game. Different kinds of spells win different kinds of squares."

He tips the ball into her hand, then folds his own hands at his back. "Something like a wizard's duel," he guesses. "But wielding the elements as blades."

"Thanks," Janet says, casually popping it back where it came from. This top isn't that boobtastic, honestly, it's just a great place to store something that took a lot of work to make and that you really don't want to lose.

"Yes, essentially. A good welters game can get pretty crazy." She smiles at the thought. "Anything goes as long as you can capture a square. And then there's protecting the ones you have, or recapturing the ones you lost."

"Would I wielded such powers!" says Laertes, and he sounds genuinely envious and interested. "This game makes mine own middling duels appear no more than schoolboys' brawls."

"Aw, no." Janet reaches behind herself just to demonstratively tap one of the black-metal staves strapped to her back. "I can use these things, and I can be pretty scary when I use them, but I don't really know what I'm doing with most weapons. Magic or bust for me."

Immediately, Laertes's gaze--previously fixed on Janet's eyes to avoid her other orbular parts--snaps to Janet's weapons. "What are those?" he asks. Where before his interest had the kind of guileless curiosity one might expect to accompany pure ignorance, at the mention of a weapon, his focus sharpens. He is, Janet may notice, wearing a rapier strapped somewhat incongruously over his well-fitted jeans.

Well, okay. If the puppy-eyed boy insists. Janet smiles thinly and reaches back with both hands, then, to balance one stave in each hand. "They turn into axes," she says, as if that explains it.

He studies the staves, looking for the mechanism by which they become axes. "More magic?" he guesses, when no spring-loaded blade is readily apparent. "Are they very heavy to wield?" He knows well that, when dual-wielding, every scrap of weight that he can shave off improves his speed and stamina.

"Magic, yes. Ice magic." Janet smiles, sharply. "They used to be a spear. I broke it in half. So, no," she says brightly, "not too heavy. But heavy enough." Heavy enough to send a god tumbling to the ground with blood trickling all down his stupid ovine face.

Laertes eyes each staff up and down, this time with rapt appreciation. "I would dearly love to see you fight," he says, for once forgetting to temper himself. "You must be an avalanche unto your foes."

Well, that's nice. Janet's smile turns into something a bit less about to drink the blood of my enemies in response. "I do okay. You could beat me in a swordfight, easy. But I could beat you in an anything-goes fight, also easy."

"Is your magic the kind that can be taught, my lady?" he asks. "Or is it a gift native to your soul?"

Janet thinks about this. "It's hard as shit," she says, "but it's teachable. I went to school for it, but there are hedge witches and hedge wizards who taught themselves."

"How might I begin?" Laertes asks. The difficulty doesn't seem to deter him. "If it's a skill that's teachable, I greatly desire to learn it."

Janet tries not to make a little grimacing expression and, luckily, does a pretty good job, all told. "There are textbooks in the library," she says. "Some of them are the ones I got when I started at Brakebills. That's -- that's, uh, the college of magical pedagogy I went to."

Laertes dips his head in acknowledgment, filing that information away for future library runs. "If I should come across others who practice such arts as you do, I'll tell them of your game, my lady," he says. "For although it may be threescore years before I'm fit to join you, I'm afire to witness such sport as magicians play."

Privately, he is excited to imagine what Lan Wangji could do on a flying sword.

"It is amazing," Janet assures him. "You can absolutely spectate if I can't figure out a way for non-magicians to play. And..." Yikes, is she going soft? Maybe a bit. The desert stripped away some parts of her, and maybe it didn't strip away nothing but weakness. "Be careful. Magic can be dangerous. When you start, just... let me look at your form sometime, okay?"