"I'm... not from Prydain," you admit at last. "I'm from somewhere far away. A place where I learned how to fight like I did, use magic like I did. A place where I was sworn and trained to fight the forces of darkness."
"You're from the Summer Country?" Coll asks, baffled and incredulous and a little awestruck all at once. Your brow furrows.
"What's the Summer Country?"
Coll blows air into his cheeks. "(You really aren't from 'round here)," he mutters. "The Summer Country is a land that lies far across the sea, over the horizon. It's a place of magic and eternal light, ruled by the folk that journeyed here once in ancient times to free us from the Horned King's tyranny. Their descendants - that's the Sons of Don - have ruled here ever since."
You chuckle drily. "If that's not the way Prydainians refer to where I come from then that's an awfully big coincidence, I must admit. But we call it Daybreak."
"I saw you use a key like a sword, turn it into a whip then conjure lightning from nothing, kid," Coll replies simply. "I'll believe anything you say."
Hahaha, "I'm basically a pagan angel analogue," that's one way to make an impression I guess.
"Just that you seem awful young to fight the way you do."
"I've been training since I was fourteen," you reply. "I'm sixteen now, and this is my first ever solo mission in another world. You can uh, kind of tell."
"Must be one heck of a prodigy," Coll remarks.
"Not really. I actually became a cadet a little late." You lower your gaze, drumming your gloved fingers on the rough-hewn tabletop as you cast your mind back through the years. "Usually you're chosen by the Keyblade as a preteen, thirteen at the latest. Sometimes kids as young as ten manage to summon one. The younger you are the purer your heart. Once you turn teenager things get a little... messy."
Coll pauses. He half-turns, staring at you over his shoulder as if trying to work out of you're kidding. You meet his gaze guilelessly. Long seconds of silence pass, and he returns to the stew. Hands as rough and tough as leather pat the sides of the pot to check how it's heating, and a wooden spoon swirls through the mysterious mix to make sure the new gets cooked in properly with the old. You start to worry. Did you offend him somehow?
Oooh that's...
ooooh. You can
see the gears turning in his head as he tries to reconcile the apparent child soldiery with the talk of 'pure hearts' and Aevum's apparent... Non-fucked-upness.
Coll sighs. "Well, I wasn't always a farmer. Once upon a time I was a young fool. I went to war, and I was good at it. Very good. Came a time they called me a hero for it, but I never felt like one." He glances back at you again. "Be thankful you only fight back the dark. Even if that's a war you can never win, it's a war you can fight day after day for the rest of your days and know you're doing the right thing. Wars between men? Well..."
Oop. This feels at once like sage advice, A Mood, and ominous foreshadowing for where this quest is going, given the vote about Dallben and Tenfold's earlier talk about dysfunctional relationships among the Foretellers.
[X] Don't swear. It's not that you don't want to know. You do,
obviously you do, you're Anguis. But you don't want to have to lie to everyone back home, potentially even to Chirithy if they're not listening in. You feel like letting things lie will save both you and Dallben a whole lot of grief.
Yyyyeah we can't in good conscience make that oath. Dallben seems like a good man, a wise man, and we're thankful to him for saving our life, obviously, but we have duties to our comrades, our order, our master, and our home. Duties we've been raised to for our whole lives. Even just knowing this Book of Prophecy-analogue
exists somewhere out there means we're obliged to seek it out, we can't just turn around and betray everything we've grown up to be on our very first outing. If we could do that, we wouldn't even be the sort of person Dallben could trust to ask such an oath of in the first place.
Aevum has done fairly alright so far by being straightforwardly A Good Egg, and I think it best to stick with that. Heck, maybe this'll turn out to be a secret test of character from Dallben.
