As nice as that would be, you are fairly sure seeing through walls does not entail the ability to walk through locked doors, see into people’s thoughts, or… see money out of people. However that works. Scouting the imps in Tavia’s attic could be kind of useful – if it’s just one, you could maybe eye-of-fear it – but that’s pretty far away and it looks like your, ah, “EAGLE VISION” is already wearing off.
Aaaaaand it’s gone.
You guess that’s probably a good idea, yeah. I mean, it’s getting late. You still need a place to stay tonight, and if Lenka knows alchemy maybe she could tell you which local plants around Kvatch are valuable. Or make you another weird eye-healing, wall-permeating sandwich so you can count those imps proper.
You head back to the field where you and Gaius stopped by the barbecue during his long flashback, but the grill is already packed up and Lenka is nowhere to be found.
You do manage to find a scrap of bread, though.
You put it in your inventory, since you’re apparently the sort of person who scavenges scraps of bread off the ground now.
Whoop-de-doo.
You know you said this before, but… you really don’t want to talk about this. Or think about it.
It doesn’t feel like you’re “important”. If anything, it’s just a reminder that nearly everything is out of your control. You used to at least be able to blame yourself; to keep telling yourself that this was all your fault, and if you lived life differently and changed who you were, things could change. If you couldn’t be happy, Katia Managan could. You used to be able to believe that the old life you drove into the ground was just a prequel to something good.
But now… you know that something is out to get you. Something big, that you can’t shed with a change of name, or run from in another country. You don’t know why, you don’t know what it wants, but you just know it’s one more in a world of things and people working against you, and you’re powerless to stop a single one of them.
The world wants you to fail, and there’s nothing you can do to control it.
And that feels…
Well, you don’t want to think about what it feels like. You guess you’re just going to keep going. You’ll eat food off the ground, try to find some way to make money, and hope that whoever’s out to get you that day of the week takes pity.
You guess the word for it is “scared”. Not a sharp, sudden fear, but a low, dull, hopeless hum. If you smile, joke, and ignore it, maybe you won’t have to feel it.
Of course, that’s kind of ruined now.
Do NOT attempt to “steal back” what you “lawfully gave” to Sigrid. |
You have been thinking about this, on the other hand, and…
Well, you’re with Sabata2 here: you think it might be time to throw in the towel on getting your stuff back from the Kvatch Mages guild.
You know it would fix things. You really do. Getting Quill-Weave’s package back would prove to her you can be trusted, and even a handful of coins from that goddamn heap would solve your food and housing problem for weeks to come.
However, it’s also a huge, dangerous gamble. And unlike delving into an ancient ruin in hopes of finding treasure or jumping down a well to kill some fish, you don’t even have a place to start. It’s just false hope; the warm feeling that if you could get in there, it would certainly be nice. Idealistic false hope like that is the sort of thing that lured you in there to begin with.
Not to mention… well, you’re safe now. They took your stuff, they probably think you’re still under the spell of Sigrid’s weird pheromone stuff or whatever, and they have no reason to come after you further. If you start trying to cause them problems, who knows what will happen. Whatever it is, you suspect it won’t end pretty for you. You want everything to be better, but you guess you’re starting to realize that you can’t be careless about it.
There’s still that low, quiet feeling of anger telling you that you should do something, that you should get some kind of revenge. But you just have to keep reminding yourself that this isn’t a storybook, and you’re not some sort of hero. And even if you wanted to be, the entire situation is still out of your control.
You notice your thoughts heading back down that path and push them away. You’re wasting the meager remaining daylight, and you still have plenty to do if you don’t want to sleep hungry on the streets.
So yeah. You are making an executive decision right now, in spite of all argument: no more fantasies about taking down the Kvatch Mages Guild. Quill-Weave is still counting on you not to screw up. Between this and your nightmares, you have to focus on what is in your reach, not waste time chasing after unseen malefactors.
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