15[20:07] The witch's concoction twists in their guts as an unruly vibration spreads from core to extremity. The hot perfumed air of the hut, the heat and breath and heartbeats of the tightly gathered intitiates envelop them all, comforting or suffocating as each's perspective interprets. [20:07] 4Mmmmmm. 14Mmmmmm. 15[20:12] While the body's stress and sensation preoccupies, their bewitched minds lend it new context and meaning... 15[20:14] Dryas feels herself buffeted and knocked about, overheated and clammy and itching and afraid. Pins and needles like the prickle of rough fabric, cold cold wrists and a chest and just can't ever seem to get quite enough air. A voice: "Wake up, we're here. Why are you shaking?" 15[20:16] Daizo is jostled on all sides, as if forcing himself through a dense city crowd. His throat is hot and acrid, and the light that still lingers behind his wedged-shut eyes is a dazzling green. The noise, the noise...! Screeching and wailing and threats and boasts and the ceaseless mastication of stone and glass. [20:16] 07Dryas opens her eyes. "Where?" [20:21] 10What is this place? Where was I going? I can't remember, can't concentrate… 15[20:22] Piu struggles for breath, choking like a drowned woman and shaking with primal rage and terror. The push is sudden, and vivid, and while the air comes eventually, the pressure never diminishes. High and bright and hot and suffocatingly still. [20:23] 4Fuck, shit -- is this -- she shouldn't have -- why did she -- 14Get control. War damn eagle. 15[20:24] Zhangyu's eyes sting, and his mouth fills with saliva. He's being dragged through hot mud, jeered at. Passersby kick dirt in his face - beggars, children. He can scarcely move with the stiffness in his limbs. [20:27] 6What is - why. How. Who dares-- if he opens his eyes, can he see? 15[20:29] The figure Dryas sees in her mind's eye is leathery and taut - a slave, like her, surprising for his apparent relative age. The air tastes coppery, like she's bitten her tongue. "Stand up... there you go. You were dreaming. What's your name?" [20:32] 07Dryas looks down at her hands. "What? Sorry... I was having the most lovely dream..." 15[20:33] Piu is in a garden, beautiful and stiflingly hot. The cherry blossoms mark it as early spring, but the sun has the indifferent, cloudless glare of an inland summer. She's dressed lavishly - a man's clothing - and is cooled from within by the chill, nameless dread that pierces her chest. Somewhere is the tiny clink of ceramic on ceramic. An unformed fear urges her toward it. [20:35] "My name? Avens." 15[20:36] Daizo's thoughts are a cold prickle in his fevered mind, coming from somewhere distant and safe and, one judges, altogether more comfortable. And his scholar's mind knows what his burning heart denies: that he has entered the true Hell. Malfeas, under its pitless green sun, the torture-pleasure-prison-palace of forgotten titans, where silence itself is death. [20:37] 14Hhhhhhhhh. [20:37] 14Where's the cover. [20:38] 14Piu will head for it, but only from the side. 15[20:40] Zhangyu sees something dimly familiar. A village - somewhere in the Threshold. The people jeering him are ragged and pale. The brutes that hold him at bay and press him onward are faceless and vast, a tide of flesh that impels him forward through the mud, threatening to consume him if he flags. None of these people are anything to him. None of these people are anything. [20:43] 6Numb limbs, an army against him -- it would take this much to hold him back, but still... 15[20:44] "If you like your name, you can keep it," says a voice Dryas instinctively fears, honey-warm and mocking all at once. She smells wet rot and feels a hot breath and swordpoint in her back. The path before her twists and rotates, wood grain giving way to a texture like overcooked meat. [20:45] 10Daizo looks down. His own clothes are sewn all over with tarnished brass bells, jangling discordantly with his every movement. Then at the crowds hemming him in, pressing him on from all sides. Not one could be mistaken for a human. That's right. Only the mightiest or the most foolish ever dare breach the gates to the Demon Realm.  [20:45] 6Zhangyu will try and struggle to his feet - no sense being dragged any further. And maybe then he can get a better look around and figure out where he is. [20:48] "What?!" 07asks Dryas-as-Avens, stumbling forward to get away from the swordpoint and looking back to catch a glimpse of her assailant. 15[20:50] Piu has an assassin's discipline, and clings to a hedgerow that separates stands of cherry trees. There is no shade save beneath their boughs - the sun's perfect noon angle leaves no standing shadows. The paths seem to extend in every direction - a trick of the eye, perhaps, since the hedgerows and clouds repeat in uncanny and mathematically rigid patterns. Only her own spying and the 15[20:50] tea service she feels impelled toward vary the landscape. [20:52] 14High noon. Bad omen. 15[20:53] The magnificent red-haired woman holds a glass orb in her lap like a beloved pet, and the old man opposite her is the oldest, tiredest creature she's ever seen. She feels sick with hate, and overpowered a crisis of resolve - this is madness, this is doomed, everything has gone wrong... 15[20:54] But Piu still feels pushed forward. [20:54] 14So it goes. And so goes Piu. [20:54] 14But she'll only step into open at the last possible instant. [20:55] 14Who are these people? [20:56] 10Adrift in the sea of demons, Daizo casts about for signs, signifiers, snatches of conversation audible through the din. 15[20:56] Dryas has little wiggle room - she can't escape the swordpoint, but she can steal looks back at the creature forcing her onward - a pampered velveteen princeling, ostentatious in dress and coiffure, all a-ruffle, with the rotted, scabrous, ruptured face of the long-drowned dead. 15[20:57] Half-rotted eyelids narrow in suspicion, and the man's accent loses all its gentility. "Go on! Get!" 15[21:00] Daizo shuffles through the crowds as best he can, his position as fluid as their faces and limbs as the crowds of hell render in his mind as an elaborate clockwork emerald dance and the ceaseless writhing of a vast and many-coiled serpent - and the sense of claustrophobia grows. Attempts to interpret or make further sense of his surroundings deepen the anxiety, as the clarity he seeks 15[21:00] eludes his grasp again and again. It is all confounding. [21:01] 07Avens yelps and scampers along the strange path. "Who are you?" 07she inquires. That half-long-drowned look seems a little familiar... 15[21:04] Zhangyu struggles to his feet, and the jeers come fiercer. His limbs burn with overexertion, and a sort of scaffolding comes into view. Three posts for three to hang until dead. Two occupied, one awaiting him. There is a man younger than Zhangyu, and a man far older. [21:05] 6Does he know either of them? [21:06] 6He probably can't fight all of these people off alone. And even three against the mob is a dicey proposition. Still, he's got to find friends where he can. 15[21:06] No. The might be kin to one another. 15[21:06] *They might [21:07] 6...well, shit. [21:08] 10This is going nowhere. If only he had a guide. He had a guide, before. What happened? The blazing green sun is merciless, the air is growing hotter and fouler by the second, perfumed with the stink of six billion demons. He inhales, deep, and shouts— [21:08] 10Daizo: "—————————————" [21:09] 6Okay. Maybe he can learn their names, before he dies. He barks: "Who are you?" 6nodding to each in turn. ...not his finest moment. [21:09] 10The words stick in his throat and die. 15[21:11] The drowned man forces Dryas onward with a scowl. "Don't trouble yourself, my little starling. A moment hence, and you will never see me again." The corridor disgorges them into open air, salty and ashen. The daylight is hazy and brick-red. The earth crawls with people, brass people that rattle and wobble from end to end along fixed paths, and among them hooded slumps that glide along 15[21:11] the same paths, gray tentacles dangling from their cowls like live shellfish. [21:13] 10They fester. Daizo's racked with coughing fits. He doubles over and pukes, then falls to one knee. He wipes his mouth, and tries again. This time, in a croak. "ʷᶦˡˡ ⁿᵒ ᵒⁿᵉ ʰᵉˡᵖ ᵃ ˡᵒˢᵗ ᵗʳᵃᵛᵉˡᵉʳˀ" [21:15] 07Avens' mouth hangs open at the nightmarish sight before her. She puts one foot ahead of the other, staring at the brass people and the hinted-at horrors of the slouching figures. 15[21:15] Piu knows immediately that she beholds the Scarlet Empress, just as surely as she knows she is expected to reveal herself, and just as surely as that delicate note assured her that time had been ripe to strike, and a failure so sudden that the sequence of events is incoherent. Had she been revealed and then captured? Captured and then revealed? She had been killed, that much was sure, 15[21:15] and driven mad as the pit brought her back. Even now she feels a restless feral urge to fight and kill, an aging and resentful caged predator. 15[21:16] The old man is some functionary or other. [21:17] 14No he's not. [21:17] 14...She controls the paranoia. [21:20] 14She approaches. [21:20] 14One does not sneak up on the Empress of All Things. Indeed, not doing so was in the mission brief. 15[21:23] Zhangyu is lashed to the final post, and for once the jeering draws silent. The crowd parts and the maimed god rises from the river, indicting the triad as water drips from his limbs intermixed with the blood from wounds on his arms that can never heal. "There must be a settling of accounts." 15[21:23] The old man says to the Empress: "There must be a settling of accounts." [21:24] 14... [21:24] 6... 15[21:28] Daizo's pleading is strangled, and comes out barely a whisper... but it pierces the heavy moment like a needle. His vision is clouded by a peppering of dark spots that dilate rapidly until his entire vision has boiled over with blackness, and the air is rushing and cold. Soon the earth tears, and a night (a night! blessed night) shimmers green as light spills forth from the great iron 15[21:28] rift. Life recoils at Daizo's approach - vines wither, grass dies. 15[21:29] He snatches a bird from the air and its feathers fall limply away before crinkling up into ash, leaving a bald and sickly corpse in his palm. 15[21:34] At some point Avens can't directly perceive she goes from marching on line to sitting on her kneels in a hot brass trolley that rattles up and into the mountain. Ash-faced leathery slaves adjoin her, their backs and necks given over to segmented assemblages of copper wire and plate that expand and contract as they breath the sour air. 15[21:35] The slaves are totally impervious to her presence, their faces blank with either perfect concentration or utter vacancy. [21:37] 10Daizo whispers as he walks. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." 10The world is sickened by the mere fact of his existence. It would be easy to simply lie down here and wait for the poison to consume him too. [21:38] 10But while he yet lives, there is hope. If this is what happens when he passes by… don't look back. For the love of all that is holy, don't look back!  [21:38] 10Holy? Haha. Good joke. [21:39] 07Avens shuffles forward again with the masses. She tentatively touches one of the copper wires of the unfortunate in front of her. [21:39] 10If I can't get holy, can I at least get clean? 15[21:40] The maimed god balls his wounded hands into fists, a long face contorted with rage. A voice somewhere recites the crimes of Zhangyu and the men beside him. The content of the words slips through his mind, but the crimes are shaming, the young man is defiant and vengeful, even now, and the old man bitterly pleads for mercy. 15[21:40] The Empress smiles warmly at Piu, and gracefully offers her hand for kissing. "He has risen, indeed." [21:41] 14She kisses the hand, as is expected. [21:41] 14Who has risen? [21:42] 6Zhangyu instead says nothing at all. The younger can rave, the elder can plea, but he will remain silent in the face of death. 15[21:42] Avens's finger buzzes and burns. It's a strange sensation, and she withdraws her hand instinctively. The slave she touches twitches once, and then returns to their stupor. 15[21:44] The Empress must see a man when she looks at her. Piu remembers dying, though not how, and she remembers crawing out of the depths, dragging madness with her. She has risen. [21:45] 14The Sun is too high... [21:45] 14Is she (he?) invited to sit? 15[21:46] There are two places yet unoccupied. One is hers. [21:47] 14If there's anything casually reflective, she will try to see this body's face. But decorum prevails. 15[21:51] As Daizo sees the devastation he wreaks, he is overcome with the simultaneous urges to kill and die. He charges blindly toward light and heat, energy burning in the dark distance, and rolls and tumbles until the world is spinning and he locks arms in vicious struggle with a man who fights with righteous, uncomplicated fury, black wings spread like the bird's, feathers falling to dust 15[21:51] all the same. But as Daizo and Daizo fight, neither tires. 15[21:53] Piu can sneak a glance in a silver saucer, and sees a handsome older man with sweeping, white-streaked hair and a resting expression of deep-set suspicion. [21:53] 14Mmmmmm. [21:54] 14Yeah, I'd fuck me. [21:54] 6Please do not. 15[21:56] The cart's tunnel gives way to an open cavern criss-crossed with rails and lit by a tangle of wires clinging to the cave's high ceilings that burn bright and hot. Avens's cart is deftly split off from a longer train over a series of forks in the rail, until the cart rides alone on a wide, low spiral around the cavern's central pillar, where the glowing filaments keep it hot as an oven. [21:58] 07This is all probably fine. Normal stuff. 15[21:58] "I take responsibility," says the Empress as she serves Piu tea, "for the predicament you were put in. It was a great disrespect. One that you weren't owed." 15[22:00] The old man dies first, weakening steadily as his final breaths plead for clemency. The prideful boy continues his blandishments. And the maimed god continues to press Zhangyu for justification. How could he? [22:01] 14Piu, in her mask: "Thank you, my Empress. We collect the debts we must. Sometimes books lie." [22:02] 6...He ignored what he was even accused of. So, continued silence. He will watch his accuser with no hint of shame or fear. [22:05] 6Jesus Christ. [22:08] 10It's infuriating. This stolid fool. Mutant. Freak. All our life we've been a freak. It was just easier to hide than something so unsightly. Easier to pretend. Why don't you just break? Shatter and die! Disappear foreveeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! But we know better. We have to be twice as good as anyone else, just to keep up. Can't break won't break. 15[22:10] Daizo's mind and body tangle and merge until he can't tell if he's wrestling green fire and hate or flesh and stone and vengeance. Soon there is no distinction, and he blazes as a single scintillating soul, turbulent mind held serene by some inarticulable understanding. But the darknees grows, shadows advancing, sweet and alluring and ever-more inviting... [22:14] 6He's got to try and -- flex -- get free. Either slip his bonds or just, break things. [22:17] 10I can't settle for a secondhand account. I have to see. I have to know. To lay hands upon the fruit and taste it. 15[22:17] The winding track finally sinks into the pillar like the spine into the skull, leveling off in an airy, open theatre, cool and white-lit. Shapeless movement ripples behind the opaque glass that forms every vertical wall. Avens can't count the bodies - some immaculate and still, some half-replaced with copper prostheses, a few mangled and unrecognizable like a man with elephantine tusks 15[22:17] growing from his lower jaw and upwards into his own skull. Many of them are alive, with labored breathes or cloudy eyes that track the movement of the cart as it squeaks to a stop. [22:20] 10If I must, I will burn my soul to light a path. [22:21] 07Dryas looks about. A chance to make a break for it, here? Amidst the confusion? 15[22:22] The Empress: "Then you understand that our first priority is to ensure that the descendants are cared-for." 15[22:22] Piu grows impaient, her attention drawn repeatedly to the still-empty place. Where is he? [22:24] 14Hhhhhh get out of my--I will get IMPATIENT on my OWN. Fuck. FUCK. Sip the tea. Say: "Do they deserve to be cared-for?" [22:24] "My empress." 15[22:24] Zhangyu breaks from the post with a great exertion, wood splintering and twine snapping, and charges for the Nazarene... but the jeering crowd cuts him off like a rushing tide, and Zhangyu grows cold and dark and afraid. 15[22:25] What do they want from him? What does he want from them? [22:25] 6What he wants from them is unfettered access to the Nazarene so he can strangle-- 15[22:29] The Empress's expression changes. "Shenesh worried the pit would change you irrevocably. He argued - cogently - that the greater kindness would have been to let you die. He may have been right. But he was wrong that it would change you. You haven't changed at all. You still believe in 'deserve'." 15[22:29] "They will be cared for because I need them. You live, now, because I need you. Do you understand?" 15[22:32] Zhangyu grows only darker and colder. The jeering blurs into white noise, like frothing water. 15[22:33] Avens could attempt to escape... though she finds herself very unstable on her feet. How long was she riding? She feels as weak as if she'd been sick in bed for days. The half-copper living corpses offer little recognition of her plight one way or the other. [22:34] 14... "No. Not yet. Perhaps I will, my Empress. My life is unimportant, and always has been. What is important, as told to me, my Empress, is what I represent. If I might ask: how do you intend to represent yourself, to the 'cared-for?'" [22:35] 14She knows she should try to be this man, but here, at the end and beginning of things, it feels proper to be herself. [22:36] 6There was a song like this, he thinks dimly. 15[22:37] "Good question," croaks the third old man to join the Empress. This one sitting now is easily the cheerfulest and most infirm of the triad. He levers himself into place with a jade cane, after paying the proper respects to Her Majesty. Is it triumph or treason that makes old Shenesh so chipper? Piu can only speculate. [22:40] 14They're not mutually exclusive. [22:44] 07Whatever awaits the others here is surely not anything pleasant. There must be a way through, even if nothing more than a rat-hole. Avens looks for something, a way through or beyond. 15[22:48] Avens is clever and many-shaped, but her body is so cold and so heavy that she struggles to move. Those manacles that bind her arms feel like they're wrapped around her ribcage too - she simply cannot catch her breath. But still she rushes through the theatre, hoping for any exit. The ground grows slick and rubbery beneath her feet, and soon she finds herself running the length of an 15[22:48] impossibly vast snake, whose coils double back on themselves and seem to surround her on all sides, blotting out her vision, a scaled spine forever long lined with thousands of eyes and thousands of thousands of teeth. 15[22:49] But Avens finds this strangely comforting. Unlike the specimens she fled, this creature is, irrefutably, alive. [22:50] 14To the Iselsi grandmaster of questionable loyalty: "Many greetings, down few roads." [22:51] 14She must know who this body is. [22:52] 07That is a comfort in the midst of this bad trip. Alive means food and water, somewhere. In the form of a tick or flea, sustenance. If the bonds that bind her can be broken. (Another form?!) [22:55] 14So she stares into the space slightly to the right of the saucer. She does it multiple times, from multiple angles, using the tea service to contrive this. She gets the full view of this man. [22:56] 14Her -- his -- etiquette is impeccable. [22:58] 14And her face doesn't move when she realizes that she is in the body of Bhàsmhor. 15[23:00] Zhangyu labors in the darkness, but even the white noise fades. Now there is nothing. No sight, no sound, no smell, no taste... no Zhangyu. He experiences perfect stillness without conscious thought, without a self to name or shape the feeling of nothingness. 15[23:01] Daizo's experience of darkness is altogether different. It envelops him like a lover, and he feels so sweet and rewarded that it takes real effort to notice the sting. [23:03] 6 15[23:07] The Empress: "Your cousin is impertinent, but truthful. The task you describe is yours. My mandate is this: do not abandon your work. I need you to take your children, and your children's children into the shadows. Embed them in the houses that will take your holdings. Train them as you trained yourself. Train them to serve. Train them to hate. Let them hate me, if you wish. Make them 15[23:07] love me if you desire. Whatever cause they hold dear, let it sharpen them into a blade you can pull across the Realm's open throat." [23:08] 14She, as Bhàsmhor: "A great ask. A tumultuous ask. ...It will be done." [23:08] 14Meeting eyes with Shenesh: "Won't it?" 15[23:09] A slender hand takes Daizo's and pulls with surprising strength. He feels cold, suddenly. Swimming in the darkness he sees... first it looked like Caxi, then it looked like Seiri, then the hand and the face burn so bright white that that it burns his eyes, staring at a pinprick of darkness in the heart of the sun. 15[23:10] Shenesh inclines his head, and then sighs. Wistfully: "I had hoped it wouldn't come to this." [23:10] 14She, as Bhàsmhor: "It has." 15[23:11] Shenesh: "The world has grown so terribly ugly." 15[23:11] The old man pipes up. Piu'd all but forgotten he was there. "No," he says. "It hasn't." [23:12] 14Hhhhhhh. [23:12] 14She, as Bhàsmhor: "It will, in time." [23:13] "Unless we act. That is why we act, yes?" [23:13] "Something of importance monumental." 15[23:13] "Always," agrees the Scarlet Empress. [23:14] 10So bright. How does the darkness survive being surrounded in so much light? [23:15] 14She, as Bhàsmhor: "Then the House is to be gutted. Families thrown into the streets. Less fortunate ones gutted down to the smallest child. Debts leveraged, to repaid over time. Monstrous violence. We will prepare for it, since we know there is a wise outcome at the end." [23:15] 14Now she looks at the 'old man' direct. "And there had better be." 15[23:17] Avens finds not strength but resolve quickening her pace as she runs forward, along the eternal serpent's way. It could be days or centuries she runs, but every step forward impels her onward with ever greater urgency. Soon her heart swells with the certainty of approaching life, and as the road dissolves into a symbolic tangle of scales and fangs and eyes, her chest burns with a stolen 15[23:17] song. 15[23:17] The old man says simply, "There is no alternative." 15[23:19] Zhangyu is the first to come to something like his senses, as awareness of his mind and body trickle in, unwanted, wracked with aches and pains as he comes to in the heat of the witch's hut. [23:19] 14She feels an angry brusqueness in her. "Thank you for the tea, my Empress. We're done here. Forever, I think. And then we will begin again." 15[23:20] The reply never comes, and Piu is alone in a limitless dark with her thoughts and her anger before she comes to her achey senses too. [23:20] 14To the 'old man': "I never want to see you again." [23:20] 14It is not a threat. [23:21] 14She, no longer as Bhàsmhor, will stare at the ceiling on her back until otherwise roused. [23:21] 6Zhangyu: "Hnnnn," 6he groans. 15[23:23] Dryas hears the song in her medallion resounding in her mind's ear, forcing her to pained wakefulness. [23:23] 4Piu: "Hey, big man." 15[23:23] Avens - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nOEOUzVlGI - You’re free, but in your mind -- your freedom’s in a bind. [23:24] 14Where's the witch? 15[23:24] Daizo wakes up steadily and peacefully and feels, honestly, great! [23:24] 6Right, okay. He's aware. He's - hurt, but that can be ignored -- can he see what's around him? 15[23:25] The Witch of the Far Side is holding Seiri, who is half-curled up and half in the older woman's lap, sick and shivering and rubbing fiercely at her eyes. 15[23:28] The hearth, starting with Zhangyu and Daizo, see Sadako placidly asleep. Their eyes refocus in the smoke and realize that it looks for all the world like her severed head is planted serenly on the packed-dirt floor, neck seeming to rise directly from the soil like a native plant. [23:29] 10Daizo gasps, all of his peaceful feelings gone in an instant. [23:30] 14Coldly, with an eye on the girl: "How much of that was me, and how much the truth?" [23:30] 07Dryas groans. "What a trip." [23:30] 6...That's. Uh. He'll groan again and try to clear his vision -- he's not seeing things. Okay. "Sadako?" [23:31] 14Sadako's a big girl. [23:31] 14Weird, but. A big girl. [23:31] 6Considerably less big, given her burial in the ground. 15[23:32] The Witch's tone is gentle, perhaps for Seiri's sake, perhaps for Piu's, perhaps for her own. "They don't exclude one another. We get as much of ourselves as we offer up, and as much of the truth as we are willing to see. But there is no one answer." [23:33] 14She sighs, and permits herself, for the first time in a long time, an actual smile. "Thank you, elder." [23:33] 4Glancing over at Sadako: "So what's going on here?" [23:34] 10Daizo: "Cousin… is she all right?" [23:35] 6That's what he'd like to know. [23:36] 6He tentatively reaches out a hand to attempt to pat her head. [23:36] 4Piu: "That's condescending." [23:36] "Poke her ear." [23:37] 6Zhangyu: "That seems worse." [23:37] 07Dryas coughs a few times and rolls to a seated position. "Sadako? Sadako!" [23:38] "Poke! Her! Ear!" 15[23:38] On contact, Sadako's eyes snap open, and for just a moment her wide, wild gaze causes an involuntary prickle of fear in each of them. But when her gaze focuses, she also has an uncharacteristic smile. "Look!" she says, triumphant. "Mother was right." [23:39] 4...Piu: "That's great!" [23:40] 10Daizo: "Right about what?" [23:41] 07Dryas blinks a few times in recollection. The sorcerous ship, the capsule, a girl without memory but an attachment to her Mother. "You learned about your mother?" 15[23:42] Pale arms push up from the soil like fast-sprouting plants, before bending backwards in a hideous double joint to clutch the earth with fingers that sink effortlessly into the packed-dirt floor. Ilm by ilm Sadako pulls herself from the soil, flowing from it as easily as it were water, leaving not a trace of turned earth as she emerges, whole and healthy and totally clean, to sit 15[23:42] cross-legged on a floor just as flat and smooth as when they entered. [23:42] 6Zhangyu thankfully did not quite get to the point where he poked Sadako's ear. Also, uh, what. [23:42] 4Piu stares at this, then, after a moment's pause, turns to the witch: "How's Seiri?" 15[23:42] Sadako: "'Words may fall. The body remains.'" 15[23:43] The Witch: "Young Seiri had a very intense experience. She was quite overcome." [23:43] "Poor kid." [23:43] 14Normatively and technically true. 15[23:44] At the sound of her name, Seiri stirs, sheepishly sitting up. Her eyes are rubbed raw and her face is streaked with tears. "Is everyone okay?" she asks tremulously. [23:44] 10Hey! She gets paid a good wage. 15[23:44] Sadako: "You were all saying weird shit." [23:46] 10Daizo: "…I think so. I think I touched the surface of what I'm looking for." [23:47] 6Zhangyu: "We do tend to do that." 6...Is everyone okay? He's sore but probably not wounded... [23:47] "I've never seen anything like it," 07Dryas murmurs. And this after watching her ward and - friend? - pull herself back together like a grotesque child's toy. [23:47] 10Daizo: "I think you were there too, for a moment. I don't know what it means yet." 15[23:47] The worst-off by far seems to be Seiri, and even she seems physically safe, if badly shaken. [23:49] 6Also, and this is not even REMOTELY Zhangyu's job, but is anyone going to tell Sadako off for cussing. 15[23:49] Sadako: "Can you see now?" [23:50] 14The smile turns serious when she meets Sadako's eyes, then gets silly after: "Yes." 15[23:50] Seiri takes a long and careful look around, squinting periodically. "...yes, thank you. I'm-- it's terribly wobbly, though." 15[23:51] "That was the most awful thing." [23:51] 6Zhangyu, once he climbs to his feet, will offer a supporting arm if she needs one. 15[23:52] Seiri: "I couldn't see anything. My vision went completely. And I got so angry I could burst. I didn't know someone could be that angry." [23:52] 6Ha. [23:53] 14Sweet child. [23:53] 07Dryas gets to her feet - unsteadily and sorely - and passes Seiri her wine-flask. "Poor thing. I ended in darkness, but there was something there in the darkness with me. And there was more before." 15[23:54] Seiri takes the flask and drinks -- grimaces -- and drinks again, draining the flask. She looks scandalized when she realizes what she's done. [23:54] 6Well, all right. [23:55] 10Daizo: "Do you remember what you were angry about?" [23:55] 07That was a Juche RY733. 15[23:56] Seiri shakes her head. "Just... something was terribly unfair. I don't remember what. Someone got suffering they didn't deserve, or got away with something they shouldn't have." 15[23:56] Sadako: "Seiri kept saying there would be a settling of accounts." [23:57] "We need to -" 07Dryas gives Seiri a bit of a meaningful look here, sizing her up- "all have a conversation about what we saw. [23:57] 4Piu: "There always is!" [23:57] 10Oh kiddo. [23:57] 14Do we. Fuck. [23:57] 6Hmm. [23:57] 14Piu: "Sadako." 15[23:58] Sadako: "Daizo was begging for help. Piu was arguing w-- yeah, what?" [23:58] "Until we're back in Abalone, you look after Seiri." [23:58] "But maybe, with respect to the venerable Witch, we should have this conversation on the ride down, in the interest of upholding her political neutrality," 07Dryas continues. 15[23:59] Sadako looks over at Seiri and scoots along the floor until she's sitting beside her. "Let me know if you go blind again," she offers, helpfully. [23:59] 4Piu, to Dryas: "Seems good!" [00:00] 10Politics? Really? Daizo sighs. "I'll tell you what I saw, but I don't know if it's what you're looking for." 15[00:00] The Witch: "You came to me seeking answers, and you showed me trust and respect by sharing in my rites. Hold precious your private insights, but you didn't come for those." [00:02] 4Piu will bow as she stands. "Thank you again, elder." [00:05] 10Daizo nods. "It was a most enlightening experience, but… you are correct. We did come to ask you what you know of demon-summoners here." 15[00:05] The Witch: "You came looking for a path to the sorcerer you believe aided in the killing of Hamoji. And I believe I know a way to draw her out. Leave an offering at the invader's shrine when the moon is three hours' risen, a drop of quicksilver and a crushed peony blossom. She will come for it three hours hence. Observe, meet, or strike her as you desire." 15[00:05] "This is how the man with no name summons her." 15[00:06] She shakes her head. "Amatuea is in great peril." 15[00:09] It strikes them all belatedly that the Witch is speaking High Realm to them, with a studied accent. Almost exactly Seiri's accent, in fact. But Seiri isn't translating anymore. [00:10] 4A14hhhhh. [00:10] 10Fascinating…  [00:11] 14Her voice is slightly different this time. "Thank you again, elder." [00:11] 6... 15[00:11] The Witch: "Feel free to fill your waterskins before you go. Food won't keep if you take it down the mountain, or I'd offer provisions as well." [00:13] 14Piu nods. "Pass me your skins, I'll fill them. We need to get serious heading back." [00:13] "Learning always has a cost." 15[00:14] Everyone's gathered outside not long later. The fresh air invigorates everyone, and even Seiri seems almost recovered, if a bit distracted. [00:16] 10Before Daizo leaves, he offers the Witch the bow of a student to the master… or of a postulant to the head of a temple. "There is more that I would speak to you about, but we have imposed on you far too long this day." 15[00:18] The Witch: "As long as the mountain stands, I will be here. And now you know the way." [00:19] 14To Sadako: "You're at the hip now." 14She turns back to horsey, stroking his neck. "I've got faith, though. Wouldn't have asked otherwise." [00:20] 07Dryas, respectfully: "Do you have any affection for the Wyld-tainted creatures of the lower jungles? Are any of them your... property?" 15[00:20] Sadako nods. 15[00:20] The Witch: "The beasts of the jungle belong to themselves, as does whatever they kill. The jungle extends you the same courtesy." [00:21] 07Dryas grins and leaps gracefully into Diamond Weapon's saddle. [00:21] 4Hup! 15[00:22] NEXT TIME: One good mimic and one bad mimic