The Ninth Trial

[advisories]

Who: everyone
When: Day 18, starting just after dawn
Where: The Hermit's Tent, and all around

[This morning as the sun begins to pour through the train's windows, there's the tremor that signals a Trial.]

Come hither, Heroes. Prove thy worth. Or something like that!

[It's the same older man's voice from the sixth trial, and outside is the same fortune teller's stall. Today the front flap is lifted to show a normal interior -- there's a wooden table, carved with geometric patterns and painted in bright colours, lit by teal-coloured carved candles.

At the table sits a man of indeterminate age, somewhere between 30 and 60. He's wearing what appear to be monk's robes, teal with patterned trimming. In front of him is a crystal ball and a stack of bingo cards, along with a stand-up sign bearing the rules of this Trial.

Across the top in large font, it says:

Icebreaker Bingo

Good luck and have fun!]

Comments

[malignstar]

I'm game for any—Whoa, is that blood?

[desirestruth]

[You got her mid-slurp. She just sort of pauses. Swallows.]

Yes?

[malignstar]

You're a vampire?

[ Says the dude with red eyes and fangs ]

[desirestruth]

People keep using that term as though I know what that is.

[She's basically been just smiling and nodding the whole time.]

[malignstar]

Fanged human-like person that drinks blood to live. Also usually undead but the newer stuff likes messing around with that.

[desirestruth]

I wasn't human to begin with but I can't really deny being in some state of undeath given I did die...

[Hmm.]

But you speak as though they're largely fictional?

[malignstar]

Where I come from, they are—Wait, you remember dying?

[desirestruth]

No, I was too young to remember. But the aftermath for my brother and I, as well as our mother was...well-documented.

[malignstar]

Documented?

[desirestruth]

Our mother kept notes on the fact that our death and revival freed us from the curse over our kingdom. When she was no longer able to keep them coherently, I'd started doing so myself.

[uM]

[malignstar]

Right...

Uh, sorry for asking, but is this a prophecy thing?

[desirestruth]

No, not really? [Slurp.] If there's a prophecy about this mess, I'd like to have the oracle strangled.

This is simply the results of magic and egotism. My mother was betrayed and started a war which would result in cursing two nations, cracking the protections laid into our homeland, dooming the people she was to rule into become mindless beasts and turning herself into a monster to revive her children, which technically worked, but my brother and I require life energy or blood to keep existing.

So, I'm half-dead and that all counts for a secret.

[...So it does!]

[malignstar]

[ A lot of this is probably way more familiar than it should be and leaves him looking kind of stricken ]

That's... a lot...

[desirestruth]

[She didn't even get to the worst parts!]

It is my life. It's not as though I can change that.

[malignstar]

I mean, obviously. I just means it sounds intense and I'm sorry you had to go through that.

[desirestruth]

I appreciate it, but it's not really something I particularly dwell on much.

[She is lying through her pointy teeth.]

[malignstar]

I wish I had something of equal weight. But all I've got is that I can heal with my blood.

[desirestruth]

Yourself, or other people?

[malignstar]

Everyone but me.

[desirestruth]

Ah, that seems...a pretty troubling weakness.

[A beat.] I have a similar magic, but I have not regained most of it.

[malignstar]

Maybe it's just not that kind of magic. I mean, I'm not going to complain about being able to help people.

Similar?

[desirestruth]

It controls...vitae. Life energy. In most living animals, that's in blood.

[WELL.]

[malignstar]

How do you control blood?

[desirestruth]

....Do you want the long explanation or the short one?

[malignstar]

Well, when you put it like that, I've got no choice but to pick long.