[audio; all the locks ever + open]

[swatwithdragons]

[Lance got back home on Sunday night, and now it’s Monday he has a bunch of things he needs to say to people-at various points during the day/evening. For those who spoke to him not long before he left? He sounds worlds better. Calm, and not in a weary faking-it sort of way. Tranquil.]

Comments

[ghostlighter]

... Wait. So do you actually work there, or what?

[ghostlighter]

[ PSSHT. ]

Since when?

[swatwithdragons]

Since always. Everyone knows that bias and narrow-mindedness equals elitism.

[And he's totally not elitist, nope.]

[ghostlighter]

Still doesn't mean you aren't biased.

[swatwithdragons]

Never said I wasn't. Just that it didn't count.

[ghostlighter]

It doesn't work like that.

[swatwithdragons]

How does it work, then?

[ghostlighter]

Bias is bias. If it doesn't count, then you wouldn't be biased in the first place.

[swatwithdragons]

If you say so.

Just think of it as broadening your horizons.

[ghostlighter]

As if getting stuck here in the first place wasn't enough broadening.

[swatwithdragons]

Depends on if you're rejecting it all outright or not.

[ghostlighter]

[ Scoffs. ]

No. What I'm rejecting is that there's no way out of here on our own.

[swatwithdragons]

Good luck with that. I've been here for ... sixteen months.

[Yes, he did just need to stop and count.]

Granted, I've left the city under my own power before, but it didn't take me home.

[ghostlighter]

[ !!! That's the first Chris has heard of something like that, from someone who supposedly couldn't leave. ]

What do you mean? How?

[swatwithdragons]

It was a spell. Bete Noire isn't just floating randomly in the ether; she's attached to her own version of Earth. I had to go there to find our new Magistrate.

Others have been elsewhere. I knew a man who'd been to Hell, and others have been to Babylon. The city just ... doesn't let you go to your home universe unless she chooses to let you, for whatever reason.

[ghostlighter]

What spell? [ This guy's a witch? ] It's better than nothing.

[ Contemplative pause. ] And how did they do that? Do you know?