[Legends of the Modern Age (Scion)] Chapter 1.C: Twists and Turns

shepsquared

shepsquared

Hopeful Fool
The grey robed woman tilts her head, her eyes briefly shining blue through her mask.


"Please, ask one question each. I shall provide answers and it may make up for your bother."
 
The Scion of Athena steps forward, shield still on her arm. "What kind of games are you playing with us?" she demands.
 
"Before we get into all this 'I am the Oracle of Vegas' crap, you need to give us information." Grisl stepped forward to face this grey-robed woman who appeared from the mists. She let the base of the staff she had taken from the statue thunk solidly on the floor. "You need to tell us why you brought us together, who you are, and what the hell is going on here."


She gestured to the rest of the group behind her with the staff, "We were all led here under false pretenses. But some of us are not looking to alert enemies that we are here, and asking questions like this might prove more dangerous than we are prepared to face. So none of us are going to be asking any questions until you even out the playing field."


Loki had told her to stay off the Asgardian radar, and talking to some unknown person might prove dangerous should Odin decide that Loki's grandchildren should no longer draw breath. She had lived her life in the warmer climates trying to avoid their attention. She had never learned to ski or skate, never climbed an alpine peak, and had avoided invitations for ice fishing. And now she was being given one question to ask, and if she got the question answered she had wondered about her whole life, she needed to know that Frigg wouldn't find out and rat her out.
 
"Well said," Karima agrees, "when we know nothing of the kind of answers you are willing to give, our questions are likely to tell you more than your answers are going to tell us. And that's assuming you even have our interests in mind at all, which given how we were brought here does not seem like the most likely possibility."
 
Liam quickly thwacked Libby's leg with the Gae Dearg's haft, shaking his head. "Now, now, let's not get completely overboard here. She is still technically the one with all the cards here."


"As for the question at hand, well, you definitely want us for...something or other. Involving the gods, no less. And so you decided to throw together a handful of yahoos across the known World and across pantheons. You want us for something, so you may as well get right to it."
 
"I play no games." She responds and falls silent, before tilting her head and continuing. "You are here because the labyrinth calls to heroes and because I need the assistance of such. I simply enhanced the call, none of you were called here specifically. You are scions, and that means that Fate itself intends to set you upon a path. If you were not here today, you would simply encounter such a situation in another place, on another day. For example," She says and pauses, gesturing to her right as an aging irishman manifests from swirling fog.


"Mr O'Maley here was late for your group meeting, but chose to enter the labyrinth alone. He has promise inherent in such courage and such was the purpose of the labyrinth."

@Mei @FollowerOfDarkPaths. You are in this thread, so, participate.
 
Kendra just keeps her mouth shut. No point in her messing things up by saying the wrong thing.
 
"Goddamnit! You really are the fricking Oracle of Vegas!" The news surprised Grisl. She had been certain that there was someone behind all of this and she would have welcomed the chance to strangle the person right there on the spot, or at least have said some nasty words to them. Now she was thwarted in both chances.


Still, she was known as a hard-line business woman, capable of getting the lowest price and the highest profit from her clients. She had already wrangled answers from the Oracle without having used her precious question. It was simply a game of manipulation, something which she was very good at, especially when she had a little leverage. But Oracles were hard to deal with, because they knew answers you didn't want to hear and if you pushed them too far, they would tell you fates you would rather not know.


"Mr. O'Malley, you may as well join us over here. You made it through the Labyrinth but I am not sure we are capable of leaving just yet." She is wracked by a sudden fit of coughing, one hand covering her mouth while holding herself steady with the staff. Whatever disease had sprung up yesterday had festered long enough to reach her lungs. The fit over, she straightened herself again, ignoring the fact that she was one step closer to death yet again.


"I suppose that it is now safe to ask our precious question. Then she can tell us her favor that she needs from us. And then we can barter the price, though I think our exit from here is probably the most we can expect. Who wants to go first? Kendra, maybe you could find out if I was flirting with you." Her gravelly voice seemed to have a slight lilt to it.
 
"Hah! I knew it!" The Scion of Ares grins widely. "You just admitted to flirting with me, so, yeah. Should I use my question for that? I'm not exactly sure what to ask, either way."
 
"You say you play no games," Karima begins, even as she sends a slightly amused in Kendra and Grisl's direction (whether or not it is Fate that makes them stand so close together is anyone's guess) glance, "and yet you do not tell us the scope of questions you can answer. We have no idea what your goals and areas of expertise are. For all we know, you could be in a position to answer questions about nuclear launch codes, the Riemann Hypothesis or the Voynich Manuscript."
 
"Now, based on what I've been seeing, a lot of the imagery around here seems to be about the stories of gods and Scions, but one of the things that seemed to be in there was the thought of rebelling against the gods. Now, I'm all for the Attack on Titan ideal of God is dead and if you're going to fight, fight to save your own sorry arse, but...why would that even be an option in the first place? That a bit of subliminal messaging on your part?" asked Liam.
 
"The rebellion of the lesser against the greater is always possible. The old war between the Gods and the Titans is evidence of that. I do not know of what you mean in terms of God being dead, but I can say that there is more to this labyrinth than you know or that I can control and other parties can turn it to their purposes. If that is what you saw, it could be the work of those who seek to rise above their current station, or it may just be your subconscious. I cannot say, as I do not know what lies in your heart." She responds, tilting her head towards Liam.
 
"Fine, no games," says Libby, pushing up her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I suppose you're not a maiden either. I shouldn't expect a prophecy to make sense.


"You said you needed our assistance. With what?"
 
"I am trapped here in Las Vegas. I desire agents who could act for me and maybe free me. Beyond that, I have many debts and debtors. If you help me, you will be rewarded threefold.' She responds, after looking at Libby for longer than usual.
 
"Alright, we're getting more concrete, that's good," Karima says with a slight smile, "although I have to say that freeing mysterious creatures of vast power and knowledge rarely ends well in the movies I've seen."
 
"So, it's alright if I waste my question on that thing Grisl was talking about earlier, right?" Kendra looks to her team mates all serious-like.
 
"Yes," Karima replies, "if nothing else it will give us some idea of what we can expect from this oracle," she finishes, eyeing the woman before them warily.
 
"Well, she said she can't see into our hearts, which is too bad because I can't figure mine out right now. But I agree that it will give us some idea of what insights she has." Grisl raised her arm as if to place it around Kendra's shoulder in a supportive gesture, but then held herself back not wanting to spread any disease her touch might have.


"Perhaps you could answer this question too. Why do our parents care so little about us? Did their Titan war take so much out of them that they can't visit us, or are they just living fat, dumb, and happy in their god-world laughing at us blunder our way through? I have never so much as seen my mother and my grandfather seems to just make everything into tricks so you never know where you stand with him." Grisl's gravelly voice demonstrated, but the words spoke of a loneliness that she was burying deep inside of herself.
 
"So, yeah, oracle lady... Tell me why Grisl has been flirting with me!" Kendra just grins dumbly.
 
"I cannot see into the hearts of the gods any more than I can you, but I can say that it is not Hel's nature to be warm and loving, anymore than it is Loki's to be honest and straight forward. Most of you are the victims of circumstance and ill fortune in your relationship with your parents. And Kendra." The oracle begins before falling silent and laughing. "That is truly not my place to say, especially since the answer is obvious in the question."
 
Kenji steps out of the shadows while clearing his throat "Now everyone allow me to waste my question. Why were you imprisoned in this Labyrinth?"
 
"I was an obstacle to the plans of those I once called my friends. Here they may force me to speak of what I see and deny me to their foes." She responds, her voice tinged with sadness.
 
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"I can probably guess why it is your friends imprisoned you here." Grisl tried not to become frustrated even further than she was at this situation. She had business to attend to and an appointment she was missing. And despite her distaste for being lured here, she couldn't stopping looking at the smile on Kendra's face. "You have a very strange definition of obvious," she said to the Oracle.


"So, you have debts and debtors. I assume you need someone to take care of paying off those debts, and once that is done, you plan to repay us... Three-fold you said. You imply that your debtors owe you a great deal more than you owe to others, why not just have them pay off your debts?" She was haboring doubts that they would ever get out of this labyrinth. This woman was likely to talk them to tears first with veiled inferences to all manner of things.
 
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