The Chained Watcher

To Bother, or not to Bother

~~~

Scar hums a little tune as he strolls along the many layers of dwarven-esque structures carved into the heart of the mountain, pausing on his way to admire a few nicknacks someone bought from a distant town to resell here. Though he might not be the best at appraising things, they certainly look interesting, and he can sense what he's pretty sure are weird little squiggles of magic trapped within.

Are these enchanted? That would explain the magic. But what do they do? Should he go ask Grian? His Watcher friend would definitely know. But...

No, not right now. Scar shakes his head to dispel the idea, turning away from the pretty little baubles and continuing on his way towards Grian's current house/apartment. For one, he wants to practice his shield-parachute thingie and figure out how to not use up pretty much his entire mana pool for less than thirty seconds of gliding. Just because Grian can probably talk about enchantments and maintain an updraft at the same time doesn't mean he can maintain his shield while trying to understand Grian's explanations.

And two... Wouldn't it be more fun to figure it out himself? Asking Grian is easy. No doubt he has perfectly efficient, completely optimized versions of whatever he'll find here that are a hundred times better but only take a fraction of the mana cost to enchant. But if he does that, can it really be called his achievement anymore? He won't be able to change anything with whatever magic blueprint Grian gives him without making it worse.

Besides, he knows that Grian prefers when he figures stuff out on his own too! Progress along the path he's been shown gets praise and a warm sense of pride, but when he deviates from that path, finding a new way he hadn't been shown, Grian's reaction is... different.

Grian's still proud, sure, and the praise is there as well, but there's an undertone of excitement that isn't usually there. It's the same kind of excitement that shows up whenever he notices something Grian hadn't been expecting him to notice on his own. And it's... the same type of excitement Grian had when he refused his offer to do the work for him optimizing the shape of his shield spell for flight.

Standing now at the door, Scar smiles, putting words to the source of Grian's excitement. Grian's happy that he's doing more than just copy-pasting everything he's teaching. That he's actually trying to figure out why things work, instead of just accepting that if the thousand-year-old Watcher says it's true, it must be true.

As he lets himself in unannounced, he muses, how old is Grian, actually? He's never given him a number, so he just assumed it's somewhere in the four digits, but who says he can't be older than that? His giant sun-snake thingy, Jormungandr, certainly didn't look less than a thousand years old.

Eh, doesn't really matter right now. All that matters is dragging his friend to help him practice!

Opting to try to sneak up on him, Scar tiptoes through the small building, ignoring the locked basement he's 95% sure is Grian's default return-teleport destination. He can hear him in one of the side rooms, typing on a keyboard.

The door's hinges are silent. Using what he's learned from Grian's rather unrelenting sparring sessions, he keeps his eyes off his distracted friend, sneaking closer...

His eyes are drawn to the screen of the oddly round computer screen. It's a... What were they called again? Debate Rooms? Yeah, that sounds about right. Didn't Grian get tired of those though? Something about uninformed imbeciles muscling their way in every time he manages to find someone informed enough to hold a proper debate with.

Scar's confusion grows even as his eyes narrow into an uncomprehending squint. What the heck is a hydrolocked dual-helix crystal-matrix chrono-stabilizer supposed to be?