The Chained Watcher

Mister Sleepless Wonder

~~~

"Syn-chro-ni-za-tion"

The room waits with bated breath, eyes all fixed on a single object. A chipper 'Ding!' rings out, eliciting cheers from the gathered players.

Grinning, Grian rolled for his word, announcing, "My turn!" 68 and... 23. Looks like this word's a simple one. "Oh this one's easy. 'Meld'." ding promptly rings out, much to the groaning dismay of the other players in the room.

Much like last time they had to learn the language, the Hermits have gathered together for a study session so they can have fun with it, instead of laboring in a dingy room over a dictionary. Grian doesn't care that Jimmy and Martyn are probably listening in from somewhere vaguely nearby. There's nothing he'll say in front of everyone here that they don't already know.

Waiting for the chance to challenge for a word or for his turn to roll around again, Grian absently notes the couple of things he doesn't want the two Listeners to know. For one, his Tier. Right now they think he's a lower Tier than he is, so they don't see him as too much of a threat, but it's impossible to predict how they would react to the knowledge that he's breached the double digits.

And then there's the matter of his name. It's something he thankfully hasn't told any of the Hermits yet, so it's something they won't accidentally use where it'll be overheard.

Xelqua. A name that, despite how few fights he would get into, still became very well known amongst the Listeners. He overheard some talking, once upon a time. While it's rather amusing to see how he's frustrated them with his elusive habits, he knows how much they hate him, and how much they want him dead.

He'd snuck into one of their bases once, using his jerry-rigged shrinky dink thingie and his rock to both let him fit and keep him undetectable. There'd been no real motivation behind it –he got bored and felt like snooping– but he found a list of names. Names that, as he quickly realized, belonged to high Tier Watchers whose activities have far-reaching ripples. A list of names, ranked top down with the Watchers they wanted dead the most being the only members of said list.

His name was at the top. Despite one of the Watchers on the list being three Tiers higher at the time, it was still his name that was at the top.

It didn't take a genius to figure out why. His monoliths, while rather useless for the higher Tiers, were both impossible to track and incredibly useful for the low Tiers. A very delicately diffused thought eventually managed to nudge one of the younger recruits into searching up his name in their database, and he got to see all the data they've collected on him.

It wasn't much. Not compared to any other 'problematic' Watcher on their list. Due to how he keeps to himself, only ever venturing out to complete jobs or gather materials, just about the only thing the Listeners knew for sure was that he was a genius enchanter, coming up with countless strange and challenging new enchantments that make fighting a Watcher with something of his noticeably more difficult than it would have otherwise been.

Grian can't help but smirk a bit at the memory, just like he did back then. Enemies they may have been, but no Watcher can help feeling pride in the acknowledgement of their work.

Lost in his memories, Grian barely acknowledges his turn arriving, calling it out without much thought.

A harsh beep jolts him back to the present. "Wha?" Everyone around him is staring at him with some variation of shock and amusement. "Wait, what? I swear I said that correctly!"

Xisuma coughs quietly, muttering in an awkward, too-quiet-for-most-to-hear voice, "Wrong language..."

His eyes widen. "Hold on, redo! I was distracted!"