theweirdos | TLV: Inbox

"Pretty much. It's going to kill me eventually if I don't use a deal to fix it," he shrugs. "I pretty much expected to kill myself with it bringing my parents back. It's really not fair, having magic on my version of Earth be so crappy, whenever every other magic I've read up on or run into here is so much cooler."

"Shit, so fix it," she says.

And looks down at her hand again, expression conflicted. "Is it just your magic? Or does it help if you - I don't know. Channel something from someone else?"

"Don't know. I mean, these little guys--" He holds out his hand, and a spider forms up on it out of ash. "--they're technically small demons. But they don't contain any power of their own. Anything they have comes from me. I can summon spirits, but not bigger demons, that I know of, but I can only assume they wouldn't be giving me power freely even if I could. And spirits take so damn much power, they're definitely not helping me any."

He dissolves the extra spider, unsummoning it, and settles back with his glass again. "I don't know if gods like yours exist in my universe. But I don't know a lot about my universe's magic that I didn't learn on my own or from my dad, so."

"Manon's a god, but he's also the world. Life, death, earth, sky, all of it. That's still gonna be there, even if it hasn't - formed any sort of awareness or personality." She shrugs a little. "If you can learn how to tap into that, maybe it'd give you some options. You know, in case this all gets fucked up and you aren't able to get a deal."

Chase shakes his head. "I'm pretty sure somebody would've figure it out by now, if it were possible on the world I come from. When I did find the other witches, they were legacies: had families who taught them everything, had records and stuff, and they were still freaked out about the addiction and life-sucking parts of it. I haven't even really managed to master any kind of power drawing or sharing on the ship or in ports, even though I've been trying."

He abandoned that line of research pretty quickly, honestly, when he failed so spectacularly at even sensing power that wasn't active magic tied to a cast spell, let alone use it.

"Maybe that'll change with a deal, maybe not," he finishes. "Maybe I'll have to specify exactly what I want the changes to my magic to be, if I go that route."

"How'd they get magic in the first place? Do they even know? It's gotta start somewhere - maybe the whole accelerated aging thing is a curse or something because one of your common ancestors was a giant dick."

She runs a hand over her face again. This time, when she drops it, the face that looks back at him is his own, though the eyes are a shade or two darker than his natural blue. She grins, the expression ever so slightly unhinged.

"No idea," Chase admits. "Maybe we're all descended from faeries or something. I didn't get a chance to read those other guys' history books, and if my birth father knew, he didn't bother to tell me. Believe me, at some point I am going to go back to that little town and sneak in and read all their books, see if they even-- what the hell?"

Guess when he finally noticed her face changed.

Nancy cackles in delight. "Guess it worked this time."

Her voice remains her own - whether that's more jarring or less is up to him to decide. After a moment, she drops the illusion and takes another sip of her drink.

"You ever find anything from your world in the library? I found a couple books from mine."

"Not magic books. Fiction, though, sure. All the classics, a bunch of Steven King, I even found a couple of my childhood favorites," Chase answers, still looking her face over with interest even though it's changed back now. "I've done that before," he adds. "Turn my face into someone else's. It didn't look quite like that though."

"It's the first kind of glamour we started with," Nancy says, then cocks her head, regarding him with equal interest. "--What does yours look like?"

"It's more flashy, like, you know, most things about my magic," Chase shrugs. "Also takes more time to do than yours. I have to build it rather than just-- cast it, like you did. It's a lot easier to dispel than to put together, though. I can show you, but it'll be a couple minutes while I piece it together."

"We had to put it together the first time, too. Plus I kinda got supercharged, which you probably know if you read all about my life."

Which is still a bit of a disconcerting prospect. She shrugs, not half so nonchalant as she wants to appear, and takes another sip of her drink. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Yeah, I read it." He doesn't honestly care about privacy violations, and he couldn't risk her doing what he did to Wen Ning and simply snatching it away before he could. He can't imagine she'd be any more forthcoming about stuff than he was. "You want to read it while I try and put a new illusion together? Or do you not care?"

"You just don't want me to watch you doing it," she accuses, though the faint twitch of her lips suggests it's not an entirely serious accusation. Still, she holds her hands out for the folder, fingers waggling.

"You got me, I'm self-conscious," he deadpans at her. He passes the folder over, then has a gulp of his drink and climbs to his feet to give himself some space to work while she reads.

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