001 ✶ video

[scarletcast]

[ username reads: wanda ]

​​​​[ Having had time to recover from the fight, Wanda looks no worse for wear. She's outside in the abandoned village, out of the glare of sunlight, moving her fingers slowly. Thin red wisps of hex energy weave around her fingers. A small rock, part of a doorframe, and a water bottle are moving in a slow, lazy circle like they're being turned on an invisible Ferris wheel. ]

​​​​[ She's quiet at first, concentrating. Then, she pulls the water bottle into one hand. The other two objects keep circling. ]

What is this called, where you are from?

​​​​[ Her mouth curves in dry amusement. ]

Is it magic?

Comments

[conqueress]

Godhood is easily claimed. [ She sounds dry. ] A man can be a god with his conjuring tricks when he is boasting to women on the docks, yet humbled and destitute when he lays some grievance before me.

[ She is not making light of the question, but she is skeptical. ]

When I was a little girl, the truer feats of magic were things of myth. Now they return, and I am beset by warlocks who come bleating of immortality. I cannot deny their gifts, yet even they were not gods.

[ As proven by how their house burned down. ]

[scarletcast]

Everyone becomes humble in front of power.

[ It's an observation to herself more than one aloud for Dany. She mentioned no special abilities, but Wanda has seen how she sits, and how eloquently and patiently she speaks, she can see Dany as nothing less than a queen. ]

Where I am from, one is born with it, or has some tool they can use. I was — this happened to me, much later.

[conqueress]

[ The non-disclosure is intentional, these days. Dany has found that here, where titles mean little and her world even less, it has proven more effective to show Audentes what she is. Many have arrived at the same conclusion they might have reached if she'd parroted it, and perhaps with a greater measure of respect. ]

Happened to you?

[ It is repeated curiously, as though she is expecting to hear of some accident. Perhaps not now, though. Not when Wanda phrases it so hesitantly. ]

[scarletcast]

In a way. It is a long story, [ not really, she'd rather just be honest with Dany where she can. This is not a woman to lie to or erase the facts ] and I am not sure how best to describe it.

[conqueress]

Do you understand? How it was done to you.

[ Or perhaps the story is simply a difficult one. ]

[scarletcast]

I was aware of the process. We did not know what the result would be — all of us who chose it came out different.

I do not believe I was given sorcery, but I do not know what else to call it, or what it really is.