Got To Start Somewhere (Mumble)

[Merlin Emrys]

Something was very, very wrong. Everything was so similar and yet subtly different, Merlin was fairly sure that if it wasn't for his high magical skill, he wouldn't have even noticed anything was amiss. He didn't think he'd changed at all (not that he would have noticed, he supposed, if he had), but something had definitely happened.

The best place to start was the library, he wasn't exactly sure it would actually hold the answers, but he felt much better there, if there was anywhere he felt safe it was surrounded by books, except maybe during an earthquake or something, that would probably be a fairly dangerous place to be, but this wasn't an earthquake, it had been something magical, so books were a good place to start.

As his mind meandered down this bizarre train of thought, he was stood in the middle of the library, staring into the middle distance with a frown on his face. If only he knew where to begin...

[Mumble]

There had to be a book somewhere on how to defeat an evil woman with dark magical powers. Surely there was some kind of manual on...defense against the dark arts or something (why did that sound familiar?) Mumble didn't spend a whole lot of time in the library, but he got there every now and then, and today he was on a mission.

He was walking across the open area in the middle of the large room when he had to step around a guy who was standing right in the middle of the floor. Mumble glanced over, and noticed that not only was the guy standing in the middle of the floor, he looked kind of...lost, or confused or something.

"Hey, you need something?" he whispered. "I mean, I don't work here, but I just saw one of the junior librarians over in the history section, and I'm sure she could help you. You okay? The bathroom's over that way." He executed an unnecessarily dramatic half-dance turn and pointed in the direction of the men's room. A thought occurred to him.

"Oh, hey...and if you find what you're looking for, let me know if you see something on how to defeat evil sorceresses along the way, yeah?"

[Merlin Emrys]

It took him a second to realise that the whisper he heard was aimed at him, and he looked over at Mumble, blinking himself out of his thoughts. Since he hadn't quite been listening, he was silent for another moment as his brain tried to process what he'd actually been asked, by which point the other boy had carried on talking, and then he just had to wait for a pause in the speech in order to say that no, he was just fine thank you, and he didn't need the bathroom.

Shaking his head, he smiled politely, opening his mouth to speak those very words, when something made him stop, and he stopped his head shaking and said some very different words.

"You're having some trouble with an evil sorceress?" It wasn't that he wanted himself to get in any more trouble with magical beings, he had enough as it was, but he couldn't help but want to help people out.

[Mumble]

Mumble could sympathise with not quite knowing what people were saying. Lately it felt like his life was going by in a kind of blur...like riding in a car going so fast that by the time you saw something you were interested in, it was behind you and you had to crane your neck to catch sight of it at all. That was pretty much how it had felt since Redd had worked her magic...since even before then, if he was honest.

"Yeah," he said, quietly, both because of the setting and because he didn't like to talk about the matter out loud. "She's um...blackmailing me, sort of. Why, do you know something about them?" It wasn't like Mumble to try and coerce help out of people he met randomly in the library, but he was desperate. "She does...crazy things with plants, and she can...do things to you, magical things. I think...I think she might be...poisoning my dreams, too. Is that possible? Can you do that with magic?"

[Merlin Emrys]

Even if Merlin couldn't sense the other boy's desperation, his automatic setting was to help people, and privately, he actually quite liked being able to help out with magical problems.
Besides, even though it was potentially important to find out what was going on, the task was a little daunting and it was nice to distract himself with something more concrete.

"I think that's possible," Merlin nodded "I've certainly read about things like that anyway." The crazy things with plants was an intriguing one, it was a well-documented field of magical usage, but he didn't meet that many people that made a habit of it, it seemed to be one of those things that often got specialised in. "I might be able to help you come up with some sort of defence..." he offered hesitantly, confident in his own abilities but not wanting to give the boy false hope in case there was nothing he could do.

[Mumble]

The human brain does funny things when it reaches a point of desperation. At least, Mumble's certainly did. He needed a solution to his problem. He was growing more and more exhausted, and more and more desperate by the day. He couldn't sleep anymore, and every day that went by without a night of sleep to separate it from the last left him feeling a little more vulnerable. The things he had taken for granted were beginning to look shakier as time went on...like Andy, who had been his solid ground for so long, who had suddenly started...well, he wasn't quite sure what was going on there.

He needed...something. And he had seriously begun to doubt whether he'd ever find it in the natural world. That had been what had driven him here, looking for some kind of unnatural way of handling it. His problem was magical, he was sure of that. He could feel it in the bizarre songs that threatened to sneak out whenever he got emotional...that wasn't natural, that wasn't anything that could have been achieved, even medically, and she'd just...touched him, and made it happen.

"If you could do that," he said, averting his eyes, trying to figure out how to phrase things in a way that wouldn't sound melodramatic and laughable, "If you could even...try...I will owe you more than anything I own." That didn't sound very promising, but it was the truth.

[Merlin Emrys]

"Hey, it's ok," Merlin said, feeling a little uncomfortable, he did like recognition but he didn't need people to go over the top, and he'd never help someone just for the reward. "The important part is fixing your problem, dealing with evil magic-users is a tricky business, believe me, I know."

He looked around for a place to sit, beckoning Mumble with him as he headed to a nearby table.
"First of all, you're going to have to tell me as much as you can, I know it might be personal but the more I know, the more I might be able to help." If he could work out the type of magic she was using, or how she'd cast it, it might make it easier to find a way to combat it.
Once he'd sat down and pulled out a notepad, ready to take notes like this was a case study in magic class, he certainly realised he'd done his magic-obsessed thing and forgotten some basic manners.

"Sorry, I'm Merlin."

[Mumble]

Mumble chewed on his lip uncomfortably, but he followed Merlin to the table the other boy had indicated. Detailing the entire situation to someone he'd just met seemed like it would probably be more than a little awkward, but...this guy sounded like he knew what he was talking about. And with what was at stake...yes, it was definitely worth the risk.

"Mumble," he said, returning the introduction. "Let me think..." He paused briefly. "I guess the first magic I ever saw her do was the thing with the plants. She can...grow them, out of nowhere, like, out of her skin or something, and she can control them. Wrap them around you, choke you." He lifted a hand to his neck involuntarily at the recollection of that experience. "And then I guess I made a deal with her, and she gave me...a singing voice, but I don't want it anymore. It's...not natural, and it makes me sing even when I don't want to."

He glanced over at Merlin, up from the surface of the table, which he'd been staring at since he'd started talking.

"Is this making any sense at all?"

[Merlin Emrys]

Merlin nodded, it sounded sort of classic, really, a deal that had gone wrong. It wasn't always the magic user's fault, sometimes magic just had a habit of, well, making you be careful what you wished for, but when it was a deal made with somebody that was obviously a little off to begin with? It usually deliberately went wrong.

"It makes perfect sense." He nodded "What was the deal for, if you don't mind me asking, what did you give her in return for the voice?"

Sometimes these deals were tricky, hard to break depending on the magic used to make them, if it was just a straightforward swap he might be able to simply break the spell, but if there was some kind of security in it, it could be a little more difficult. That and it might be important to get back whatever she had taken from Mumble.

[Mumble]

How had he not seen that question coming? How in the world had he not anticipated that? Mumble nearly choked, and looked back down at the table top. Heat crept up his neck, across his face, until he was certain his whole body was tomato red.

"I..." He cleared his throat, and tried to come up with a really delicate way to convey his point. "Er, there was..." He waved a hand in a sort of 'so on and so forth' gesture, and his voice lowered involuntarily. "Physical...things."

Yeah, now he felt like throwing up. Saying it out loud made it feel that much dirtier. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with it; he couldn't remember anything in the school code of conduct, and it wasn't as if he were a child...he was twenty years old, for Guin's sake, but it still felt like...like selling his soul for something that no longer seemed to matter all that much.

[Merlin Emrys]

"Ah." Merlin said delicately, understanding his meaning almost immediately, ok so there were a couple of things he could have meant, but the way he phrased it led Merlin to one conclusion "So... not something you could really take back, or want to, then?"

Definitely not a possibility of tricking them into taking it back when he broke his end of the deal then. He wondered if that made it a bit simpler, something so inconsequential (to some people, anyway) didn't really suggest a big plan, more it going wrong accidentally, or out of spite, so perhaps it was unlikely to be booby trapped if removal was attempted, hopefully...

"Is it... uh... still going on?"

[Mumble]

Mumble frowned. Take it back...well, he was a firm believer in the fact that everything happened for a reason...and if he hadn't gotten into this stupid deal with Redd in the first place, who knew where he'd be now? Maybe he wouldn't ever have realized exactly how much Andy meant to him...maybe he'd still be pining over Cimorene or something.

"I don't believe in taking things back," he said, shaking his head slowly. "But just the same, I'd like to get out of it now."

Was it still going on...well, there was the...thing in the church. Did that count? Maybe...

"Not...quite the same way." He shook his head. "I still have the voice. I could tell her to go...well, I could tell her I'm walking out on the deal, but I'm afraid of what she'd do to my girlfriend...and afraid of what she'd do to me. She's...very powerful."

[Merlin Emrys]

Merlin nodded, glad that Mumble felt that way, because of course if he had wanted to somehow take it back, it would have made it a lot harder for Merlin, probably involving changing history or modifying memories or something - lots of spells that were very difficult and could go very wrong.

"Do you think she'd retaliate if you just removed the spell?" Merlin asked thoughtfully "In terms of getting away... well I'm not sure what I could do to help, although maybe I could do something in the way of a protection spell, but I can definitely try and remove the singing spell."

It wasn't that long ago that they'd started studying how to analyse spells that were already on things, and in typical Merlin style he'd read many more books than was necessary, so he at least knew the basics. Plus, with a human you could at least ask them a little bit about the spell, which would probably help as well.

[Mumble]

It was so hard to think when you couldn't sleep. His mind just wanted to shut down, his body wanted to shut down, but every time he started to doze off, it was like something jolted him awake, like the end of a really violent dream that left you sweating even though you couldn't remember what it was. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, and took a deep breath.

"I don't know what she'd do," he murmured. "And now there's this...this other thing. I can't sleep anymore, and I don't know if she's done it to me or if something else is wrong, but I can't sleep. I don't mean that in a way like...my conscience is bothering me - it is, but I mean, even if that was the reason, I'd have to fall asleep eventually just because...you can't not sleep forever. Except it's been days, and I can't."

It was odd, if he'd had the wherewithal to realize it, that he was talking about this to someone he hardly knew. But...desperation could drive a guy to do funny things, and if there was the slightest chance that Merlin knew how to help him, or knew how to help Andy...Mumble had to take that chance.

[Merlin Emrys]

Merlin nodded in understanding, frowning at the sleep problem. He couldn't get to sleep? Perhaps there were two spells on him, perhaps one of them was a retaliation already, a hint that this sorceress knew that he was trying to find a way to break the deal they'd made, to get away from her.

That wasn't important, well, of course it was, but the important part was trying to remove the spell, or spells, that she'd put on him.

"I can deal with that too, hopefully." He said, as confidently as he could manage, he didn't want to instil false hope, but he didn't want to make Mumble feel bad either. "The first spell, the singing one, where you there when she cast it? Can you remember anything about how she did it?"