[hr][hr][center][h1][b][i][color=F2541F]Atkin Bowman[/color][/i][/b][/h1]
[/center][hr][center][color=F2541F][b]Location:[/b][/color] Wizard Tower[/center][hr]
[color=F2541F]"Well that's a load of bullsh-winkle,"[/color] Atkin said, catching the swear before he fully managed to speak the whole thing. He could feel himself pissing all over a lot of what the Tower stood on, but frankly, he didn't really care at that moment. Or a lot of the time, really. He went along with it mostly because it wasn't worth fighting over, but this certainly was a case of something worth wrestling with.

[color=F2541F]"What bloo- blimey reason could he have had for settin' up something like that? And how did he even go about settin this up in the first place? 'Hey apprentice, draw from this pot so I can send you off to die and get someone better. By the way if you don't play along you die anyways.' 'Hey, remember how I tried to have you killed? Well your apprentice has to do it too. Don't worry, eventually once enough apprentices have died, there won't be any more danger except that apparently you can just add more murder stones.' There couldn't have been a Gathering or whatever the first few times, since there weren't enough ghosts."[/color]

Atkin was certainly more than a little mad and scared about the implications this whole set up had on his chances of living, but that wasn't the main source of his discontent with this whole situation. What was really setting him off was how unjust the whole thing came off. He knew most apprentices were way younger than he was, and didn't really have the same ability to object as he did right now. And that they were essentially made to draw a lot to see if they were killed off was arbitrarily sadistic as far as he could tell. 

That the event of people being forced to go on this Queste was well known enough to have everyone react as they did told him that there were enough of these things that more than a handful of people had to go on these Questes and the fact that only 2 survive indicated to him that whatever this fucking thing was, the fact that they survived was not an intended outcome. It would be one thing if this was an optional task one had to decide to take on for themselves despite the inherent risk. As it was, it was a game of Russian Roulette somebody else forced onto you. And every one of those ExtraOrdinary Wizard ghosts who Gathered for Draws was complicit in this.

[color=F2541F]"No,"[/color] he stated flatly. He was aware that he was probably coming off as having a tantrum, but it was either that or just let the whole stupid practice continue ad infinitum because he was too scared to do anything about it. Internally, he vowed that he would do everything in his power to stop these Questes as the barbaric ritual it really was.

[color=F2541F]"I'm not going to go to the Library, pick up a SafeCharm and hope that all the danger just passes over my head so the pillock who happens to come after me will get walloped by it. That's probably what whoever did this in the first place wants, for us to cower while they can do whatever they want. I'm not gonna be some wee hare freezin every half hour cause it thinks it sees a wolf. If this hogwash was able to be set up, and somebody was later able to change the conditions of the whole thing by addin' more. Than it can be undone. Or something. If we can't do something as simple as undoing a bit o' magyk on a pot, how d- darn ExtraOrdinary can the position be?"[/color]

It was at this point that Atkin realized how much he'd been ranting. So he shut up before he went too far with his flagrant disrespect for the history of Magyk and the traditions of the Tower and the Castle, as bull-headed as they were. Still, regardless of anything Arya or Rowland would have to say, he was deadset on doing something about this mess, even if that meant tracking down this damn Questing Pot himself and smashing it to pieces or chucking it into the sea. On that note, he had a feeling he was forgetting something.

[color=F2541F]"Oh fuck. We need to be at the Castle in half an hour."[/color]