The crone turned to Dann, “First? No. Last? No. Tiresome waves upon waves. Good for business, and my partners are always looking for more gold.” She faced, her expression stern, off into nowhere for a moment, “You are the largest group by far. Ragnarok must be soon if they’re desperate enough to make so many of you at once.”

While the trouble child moved to the shirt and rip it into strips, he found that this item seemed oddly real, compared to the showcase of illusions that covered other seemingly normal items, that were anything but. There must be some normal items mingled in with the paranormal. 

Soraya spoke up, voicing her question as well, and got a surprisingly warm, awkwardly so, expression on the eyeless face of the crone, “Knowledge, pay no mind you’ll be getting your own soon enough.” She cackled, in an almost stereotypical witch-like manner, although the slight tilt in her direction showed she was more attentive to Lucky trying, and failing due to pain and blood, to properly wrap his own hands. He obviously needs some help with this. However, while he does try and fail, a thought occurs to Lucky. If he hadn’t tried to steal some coin, she would’ve gotten his present very easily from the room. The item intended for him is still in here, somewhere.

But the look of amusement at pain was quickly replaced with a more earnest delight, “A good question, that is,” she said, turning her hollow gaze to Jagred, whom she now realized had put the bracelet around his neck, donning it as a necklace. She sputtered a bit, “You weren’t actually supposed to do that.”

Jagred, if he would make any attempt to try to take off the necklace in response to that, would find the teeth bending inward a bit, gripping into the flesh about his neck. The seeress just sighed, “I had wanted you to find out what it did on your own, but even my prophetic skills didn’t see this coming.” She shook her head, “You’ve been collared, like a mongrel dog. The teeth will dig in tighter, and tighter if you try to remove it, or if you otherwise misbehave. It was supposed to be poetic and take your hand for justice if it sinned too greatly, but, well...” she made a bit of a gesture that could only be summed up as ‘lose your head and die’.

“But,” she continued now, Gavriil’s attention returning to the room from his introspection, “There is something you can do, that the gods cannot. Fate, is an eternal meddler, and its attentions are fickle and cruel. It wants a story, a grand one, to play out, and the divine and monstrous are the biggest actors. Mortals, and weaker beings such as myself, are not as strongly tied to any course of action. Where the Gods step on eggshells to avoid making Ragnarok worse, preferring shadow deals away from mortals when they can, you all are not so hampered.”

“You are, Free Agents, lets say. Your stories have not yet been set in stone. You still have more free will than the Gods. Their hope, is to throw you into the story, and hope it changes and maybe things manage to not get worse for it. While I am far your greater now, your potential is grander still. Fate loves a story, they’re hoping your story is saving their lives.”

She laughs, “It’s strange, isn’t it? You’ve more agency in this tale, and yet you can still be so easily pushed around by their, and my, words. I could, right now, tell you to kill yourselves, and you would do it. What hope do the Gods have?” Her words are followed by silence, interrupted only by a cold wind rattling into the shop, a reminder of the winter present outside.