The Chained Watcher

Making Contingencies

~~~

Waiting for the rest of the Hermits to fall asleep, Grian made eye contact with Xisuma and went over to a secluded (as secluded as can be found in a house full of Hermits) area to wait.

Sure enough, the admin came over after making sure he wouldn't wake anyone, directing a quizzical look at him. With the corner of his mouth pulling up into a grin, Grian asked, "So, could you tell what the musician was?"

"I- what? Wasn't he just a weird magic user?"

His grin grew. "Nope, that my friend was a bonafide cultivator, though an injured one."

Xisuma stared at him in disbelief. "You mean the crazy people who chuck themselves into the Void without any proper gear or abilities to deal with the corruption? Those cultivators?"

He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. "Yeah, though at least this one doesn't seem like a battle junkie. The guy definitely had a bad run-in with Watchers though."

"How can you tell? Do you think he knows about... you know, you."

"The thing he said about instruments was definitely referring to them, but that's not actually why I know he had a bad time with them. Do you know just how hard it is to actually do damage to a cultivator that they can't get rid of with some gimmicky ability or magic artifact? Even cockroaches are easier to kill than cultivators, and that's saying something."

"I noticed the traces of Watcher magic lingering beneath his blindfold, that's how I knew. There's a spell, only usable by Watchers as far as I know, that... Well, it's not pretty, I'll say that much. It's applied to the Watcher's claws, so at least it can't be used as an AOE, but when an attack is landed with the spell active it sinks itself into the wound. As long as the spell is there, it'll steal energy from the person it's attached to in order to strengthen itself and keep the wound from healing."

"So it eventually kills the victim? That's..."

"No, it doesn't, actually. It weakens the person afflicted with it more the longer it's left unchecked, and failing to remove it will just make it worse. The purpose is, to put it bluntly, to make it easier to capture a target that's too good at running away. Of course, there's probably quite a few Listeners that also get hit with this spell, so it's not like the only victims in this are cultivators."

Xisuma was thinking hard and looking more worried with every passing second. "Then what do we do if one of the Hermits gets hit with it? If it just gets worse each time we try to remove it-"

"That wouldn't be a problem." The admin looked up in confusion, with a little bit of hope. "It may get harder to remove the spell with brute force each time an attempt fails, but there is actually a built in way to release it." He waggled his fingers. "When a Watcher does the right thing with their magic, the spell comes right out without any fuss. It was made to get captives after all, not cripples."

Grian then picks up the oversized coat and glasses, starting to pull them on before Xisuma interrupts. "Wait, are you heading back out? Don't you need to get some sleep too?"

"Don't worry, I won't be long. I figured I'd help the cultivator in exchange for getting him to keep an eye out for the other players when possible. One thing I have learned is that a cultivator rarely goes back on their word, so long as it doesn't go against their morals."

Quietly opening the door, he slipped out into the night.

~~~

When he found the empty square again, the cultivator was in the middle of another song, this one sounding more sorrowful than the one played earlier. He leaned against a wall silently while waiting for the song to finish, scuffing his foot against the ground to let the guy know he has company.