Edifier
Trusted within thoughts.
- Location
- Court of Moon Wizards
Was it really a gentle hand when the logic is that of long as it's considered reducing harm mind control is acceptable? I wonder. A lot would be permissible with that rationale.
It's a Girl's World -- And Lilly wants Adventure
- Thread starter Slyvena
- Start date
- Original Mature Fantasy Action
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
The point is putting thought into each use rather than making it standard issue.
Glad to see we're still in the game though! But seriously, 70 hour weeks? I do 84 on rotation and that gives me no time in and of itself!
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Mindstate Lilly: I swear, I can't stand to watch you stumble around with all these inefficient sub-directives, like "feeling bad for other people" and "sheltering people who AREN'T effectively your slaves" and "caring for your family without any expectation of getting anything in return". How do you even function!?
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A certain amount of caring and empathy can actually contribute to long-term success.
Sooner or later, you'll run into other people you can't mind whammy. Even people that you can't mind read. If you're not careful you'll end up like a somewhat more functional version of Valerie, unable to grasp any reality outside the one you create. Being able to convince others to participate in the shared delusion which is "us" is an essential skill. Malevolent narcissists who can't learn how to hide it aren't likely to thrive or even survive once they run into peers.
Of course, caring and empathy can also get you killed.
- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
As far as we've seen? We should operate on the assumption that anything can get us killed, so we might as well be nice and make friends because its not really any more likely to get us killed than anything else, and having friends makes Lilly happy. Also probably increases survival chances; even being strictly utilitarian, empathy exists for a reason, and that reason is that there is strength in numbers and a group as a whole is much more likely to survive if the individual members of that group go out of their way to support each other than if they're all completely selfish.
Which is frankly a good counter-argument to Mindstate Lilly's casual self-centered sociopathy. Why reject everyone else when you're more likely to survive long-term when you have others willingly backing you up? We do already know that powers can be blocked or disrupted, so depending heavily on mind control just seems like asking for someone to jam it and then watch you get torn apart by enraged former-slaves.
Which is frankly a good counter-argument to Mindstate Lilly's casual self-centered sociopathy. Why reject everyone else when you're more likely to survive long-term when you have others willingly backing you up? We do already know that powers can be blocked or disrupted, so depending heavily on mind control just seems like asking for someone to jam it and then watch you get torn apart by enraged former-slaves.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Also, keep in mind.
Mindstate Lilly was a fail state. It was focused on survival above all else, which meant it wouldn't be in a position to protect itself when the sky caved in. Because the point of a 'Survival above all else' priority is avoiding risk... Which is not very good for levelling up.
Mindstate Lilly was a fail state. It was focused on survival above all else, which meant it wouldn't be in a position to protect itself when the sky caved in. Because the point of a 'Survival above all else' priority is avoiding risk... Which is not very good for levelling up.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[Citation needed] on that one. Her musings on being able to harvest Liatris' Deific Fragment indicate the opposite, since Valerie came to harvest that herself. She was aware that Lilly was threatened, but not that Valerie would be arriving that night, Mindstate!Lilly had no way of knowing that.
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Well, at this point the optimal location of said base would be in the Dreamspace. If we want a place of safety where we can store supplies, create smithies and workshops and libraries, and allow our family to have a good night's sleep without fear of another Valerie stomping everywhere, that's the ticket. The issue is that we currently don't have any methods for pulling people or materials into the Dreamspace, but if we can get past that, we've got a nigh-unassailable location that only we have access to and that we can reach no matter where we go. As for building the actual thing, [Towering Edifice to the Heavens] seems to have most of the tools we need. [Imposition] for building things out of thin air, [Constructs] for refining materials, and [Entities] for manual labor and/or security.
Whether or not our family is okay with staying in a house in the infinite void where Lilly is the one who controls when people are allowed to leave will be a separate issue.
- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
As for the waking world, I wouldn't be surprised if continued investment into [Dream] and any other [[Flower]] related Ethea we get might result in Lilly's eventual territory being more-or-less 'All the forests'. Petal has already integrated into the clearing around her to a significant degree, and there is no indication that she is anywhere near the maximum level of that. And with [Geometer] antics, it may be possible to eventually make it so that there is no difference between one forest and another distance-wise for Lilly if she doesn't want there to be. Hyperspatial root networks connecting all trees in the world ahoy!
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Just checking in. Hope life's not been too stressful.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Thats weird, why is an entire small child sitting on your shoulder, isn't that heavy?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Oof.
I actually have my first shot tomorrow, just hoping that things settle down, I still want to see where this story goes!
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Lilly, being 12, is not of an age I would describe as "small child"
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
All children are small though. Perfect size for Punting.
...I don't think I'm allowed to be a parent.
...I don't think I'm allowed to be a parent.
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Wait, Australia has states? *looks online* Huh, learn something new everyday.
Anyway, hopeful for the next update, more hopeful that everything turns out alright on your end.
2.6 - Heroine - Part 2
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
Chapter 2.6 - - - - Heroine – Part 2
9th Day, 3rd Moon, LE 2302
(Morning)
The space between spaces is an interesting thing. Every time you step through the deepest reaches (or at least as deep as you have ventured so far) it has not been just things such as distance that become twisted, but to a certain degree, time and other concepts too. Never in a way that has any real noticeable effect and you've always had more important things on your mind (like you do right now honestly) when you've travelled through the {Slipstream}, but it still leaves you feeling like you are touching upon the barest slither of what Essence actually is. There are hints of an entire realm of existence beyond what you can see… but {Riemannian Geometer} will likely never be even close to powerful enough to truly understand what lays beyond.
Sigh
If only you had the time to ponder such things, instead of the gruelling task that lays ahead. But life is what it is, not what you wish for. You steel yourself for the sight that you will face… stepping back into the natural world.
The enhanced sense of hearing and touch from your Domain lets you both feel and hear some of Micah's blood as it squelches beneath your feet on arrival. The bitter tang of fear and despair courses to you along the channels of the Construct from your family's minds. Emotions are born inside the Wake, but they fill a room with an atmosphere. There are superstitions about how powerful emotions and events leave behind echos to haunt a place where they occur, your current experience lends more credibility to those ideas than you'd have given them before.
The blood has cooled, the last hints of its balm colour fading to a cool frigid within your thermal sight. It joins watchman Legle's body and Valerie's head as morbid decorations to your annihilated home.
Despair had no place near you nor your family. As your innate Essence unfurls around you in an explosive outward nova, {Affective Radiance} piggybacks upon the wave leaching all remnants of the sickly emotion from the air. You do not look your family in the eyes as you get to work, you could not bare to properly process the horrors you have all witnessed, instead you simply begin your work.
You step over shattered wooden debris that were formerly part of the roof, a light breeze blows through your home now through the shattered wall and out through your front door. You sense of its structure through your essence sight shows you that many of the panels and logs have shifted dangerously throughout the building. The whole thing will need to be rebuilt from scratch.
Mother is the highest priority, battered and bruised by your own body in the desperate melee against Valerie Nireile, at a glance you know her injuries will likely be terminal over the course of a few hours if left unattended. The table flips over and lands several metres outside as you chuck it out of the way to get to her.
Without really considering it much, you push the idea of rest to Evie, you have no time to tend to her immediately, but she needs to stop trying to help and rest. {Hybrid Siphon} stills within your soul as Evie, weak as she is, immediately falls into a deep slumber. The minor relational link between the Siphon and Myah slips away.
Myah, she is outside again, bawling her eyes out. Sometimes you dread your senses, they let you feel the trickle of her tears as they run down her cheek before falling to lightly patter amongst the grass. You do not have time to go see her.
When you begin to heal your mother, you are not gentle; now is not the time for half-measures. You use all three minor relational links you possess on {Hope-Shock}, {Oaken Core} and {Affective Radiance} to extend the concept of /SELF/ onto her. In the very next moment as you lay your hands upon her heart and head to extend your Domain fully into each, you lay a density of Essence so thick, so rich and so dense that it gains a physical force dwarfing anything you've ever accomplished before. Unto this foundation you apply the {Hope-Shock} at full 100% blast, using {Rest State} to ensure it is only applied onto that which is truly your mother and nothing else. Within your Domain senses, you witness how the very tissues and fibres within your mother try to rip themselves apart under the insane assault of Essence that is being drilled into her in this instant, but with {Oaken Core}, her body holds.
You cannot gift the full benefits of even a sub-power with a minor relational link, in truth you merely apply the durability of the {Oaken Core} with none of necessary secondary characteristics that stop it from rendering a human body completely non-functional. But your mother only needs its power for a few vital seconds, enough that even the temporary lack of heartbeat it causes is trivial. You could not have pushed it this far for someone outside your own family, but the blood shared between you is an already wide bridge which you are merely stretching wider rather than trying to build something from scratch.
You've seen healing that was quick, you've seen healing that looked impressive, but this is the first healing that looks brutal. There is a change within some of the thick vicious essence within her, a critical density combined with your many talents insisting upon a certain result. With a deep crack like thunder as air is instantly displaced from where it had rested still moments ago, your mother writhes and snaps straight as a plank. In a singular momentary flash, bones and flesh snap, knit and fuse; her body is immediately hale and whole.
Something is different about [Dream within the Forest] since you touched Petal. Without really noticing it you can feel your powers pushing further than they have before, what you've just done shouldn't have been possible. It goes further than just the [Dream] though, your Domain, your other abilities, they are starting to cross over and extend each other in ways beyond each's original scope. Not in an obvious way of sprouting new sub-powers, but you can feel the change beginning within yourself. You've reached some kind of tipping point, or perhaps you've been there for some time and the events of this morning have pushed you over. Whatever is happening, if it helps your family and grants you power, you will not look a gifthorse in the mouth.
Within your mother's soul (which you can see parts of with your Domain extended inside her), you can see where her Essence runs in counter-intuitive patterns. The distortions corresponding one-to-one with similar irregularities within the currents of her Wake.
Found you.
You drop your Relational Link to {Oaken Core} and attach it to {Rest State}. Applying {Rest State} with {Hope-Shock} to your mother, you solidify the Essence patterns within her soul that you can tell are natural and unmolested thanks to {Rest State}'s intuitive knowledge and in some small way {Tremendous Mechanist}'s assistance.
That is when Valerie's handiwork becomes directly noticeable. A grinding pressure tries to pull both the Essence Strands and Flow Currents into deformed directions that {Rest State} identifies as Wrong. You focus the full strength of your {Thread Compression} (which has exploded into power without you really noticing) onto {Hope-Shock} hyper-reinforcing it into an incredibly rigid frame that will obstinately resist any unnatural alteration of any kind within your mum's soul.
At the same time {Affective Radiance} flows out of you like a river into your mother. Normally there would be some heavy limits on how rapidly and severely {Affective Radiance} could affect a person's internal thoughts rather than simply changing the atmosphere of what thoughts were conducive around their Wake. But, you are mother and daughter. You are linked by a blood, linked by a lifetime spent together, linked by love and shared adversity, linked within your Domain, linked through Essence and you also note that you have always been linked through Flow even before you had gained [Shine]. Perhaps even with all that, what you do next would not have been possible… but you also have {Tremendous Mechanist}.
The puppet-master is a tiny packet of an idea within the centre of a person's thoughts. It is an incredibly unobvious thing. Even with your perceptions pushed dimensions beyond mortal limits, {Tremendous Mechanist} is still only able to spot the pattern because it is working so hard against the {Hope-Shock} you have installed to resist it (Which is able to retain some degree of continuity thanks to your experience with {Applied Currents}). The intrusion is actually still winning easily, for all the rules you have stepped over creating the {Hope-Shock} frame, it would still at best only allow your mother to perhaps think about moving every couple of seconds or so. It is a wickedly cruel thing, a decentralized pattern visible only within the state of change of a person's thoughts and only if you could track an obscene number of moving parts all at once. It never directly enforces an action, but instead operates through layers and layers of proxy alterations whose cumulative effect is always the enforcement of the Command. There is no central weakness for any remedy to target.
Beyond even this, the Command-Node as you have so labelled it actually slowly commandeers a tiny pocket of the soul itself, slowly making it into something other. If you had an Oath Ethos you likely could more readily identify what it is doing. It also makes copies of itself that exist as near-invisible Essence structures floating freely within a person, you can only spot those now that you've seen the node's structure, they were invisible to you even as you worked upon your mother's essence moments ago. Remove only some of this multi-faceted design and it could be reborn from the others. It is a curse that co-exists in multiple Sources all at once. And you bet that there are iterations within the Pithe, Mana and perhaps even Concordance too that are simply beyond your scope to detect.
For anyone else, the prospect of finding a solution would be hopeless…. Most would assume that none could overrule Valerie or that anathema of a thing that had dwelled within, but they have no idea who they are dealing with!
For all its complex redundancies, the Command-Node has a weakness that can be exploited. That tiny pocket of altered soul and the idea within the Wake are the key anchors the other backups restore to and from, if they are removed and the other backups are prevented from immediately recovering them, the entire system should fall apart.
With Essence you were able to pull a soul back from the beyond, which means Essence can directly pull upon a soul. That is the key to the first step of your solution.
You take the incredibly thick mass of Essence saturating your mother and you bend it sharp, carving out that tiny altered pocket from within her. Essence normally could not do such a thing, but your Domain allows you to directly interface Essence and souls together. Simultaneously you push out an obscene amount of influence from {Affective Radiance} into your mother's mind simply demanding her thoughts be 'normal' as directed by {Rest State}. An ordinary human mind would have far tighter limits on how hard it could push, but you have not only a {Very Keen Mind} and {Steel Will} to draw from, but the crystalline structure of your {Core Heart} can have a ridiculously higher mental strain placed upon it without fracturing unlike the weak flesh your mind was formerly housed within. With {Tremendous Mechanist} you milk this expanded capacity for every single last iota that it is worth. Your push is unhealthily strong, the channels between the two of you can only possibly carry such a huge volume of effect due to your immense level of linkage to each other, and only {Hope Shock} protects your mother from the likely outcome of mind death as her Wake is buffeted by the hurricane of your overwhelming Will. The Command within her Wake shudders when the many layers of your mother's mind all rigidly start resisting the intruders influence, the source of strength the Command has built within her soul is ripped out from under it. As you watch you see the sub-structures within her essence try to reinstate the Idea but fail against the rigid maintaining frame you have installed and hold with {Hope-Shock}. You think you feel a tiny amount of Pithe move within the Resonance Field and attempt to reinsert the Command, but your mother never had much Pithe to begin with and it cannot succeed against your continual and sustained overwhelming barrage. The whole system strains, then dissipates.
The Command-Node withers to nothing. Your mother, is free.
You barely notice the euphoric relief rushing through you as you release the essence structures within her and the Command still does not return, your mother really is free. You'd collapse from exhaustion were it not for your powers insisting your body remain strong, and [Shine] holding your mind steady.
You move quickly to your two brothers, Sarah lies on the ground breathing quickly, her body whole but her mind having a lot to process even with {Affective Radiance} sucking most obstacles to clear thought out of the air.
The process is quick and easy to repeat, each time you lay down the Essence Frame, gut the soul piece and press natural thought. Your brothers collapse bonelessly as the Command shatters, similarly lost in shock like your mother.
You don't have time to be concerned about there current state however. You feel the familiar sensation of Captain Martin arriving at the edge of your Essence sight, accompanied by four other Watchmen, Yola among them.
Because of course I cannot have a moment of peace.
They venture toward your home, likely not seeing just how damaged it is from the front angle, the demolished roof and wall being only partially visible. There are some deep holes and tunnels carved into the ground from Evie and the black Spirit's pockmarking the land around the house that are clear evidence for anyone arriving that something has happened here.
Through the extended range of your Essence senses and {Affective Radiance} you taste tones of regret, grief, hope, and bitterness. The Captain is ready to fight, perhaps not you, but ready to find an enemy. That worries you, he is far too distraught and angry to simply be following up the loud noises Evie and the Thing's fight created, something else has happened.
You quickly free your father and race out the front door past Legle's corpse as the Captain draws near to the fractured shell of your home. The other Watchmen hang back a little, but remain plenty close. You hear a startled gasp from Myah as she hears you race out the front door and come to a stop standing near her. The Captain finishes his approach.
Two girls and a soldier, the three of you make quite the awkward three-way standoff.
You quash the part of you that considers if you could win a violent confrontation. It is quite surprising how bold your thoughts become when freed of apprehension, hesitation and doubt by the alterations you have {Affective Radiance} running on yourself. You'll need to watch out for that in future.
I probably could win though, if it comes to it.
Captain Martin exudes suspicion and apprehension, he doesn't want to assume the worst, but is most of the way toward doing so anyway. There is still a significant yet repressed emotion of hope, hope that there is some explanation that will justify everything he's seen (whatever that is) without crushing his dreams and ambitions of riding alongside your upward climb to fame and glory. It is a simple act with {Affective Radiance} to begin devouring the residue of the suspicions around his Wake. Deprived of the positive feedback-loop that emotions form between the Wake and the Construct, it naturally leaves room for his more positive thoughts toward you to grow and the negative ones to wither. Someone who was not a family member can resist this process if they didn't want it to take hold, but Captain Martin is the opposite, actually wishing that his suspicions are unfounded and for his hopes to be confirmed.
There is no way you could normally read this much detail out of the emotional eddies through the Construct's channels with [Shine] alone, but {Tremendous Mechanist} and your {Very Keen Mind} has already allowed you to gain solid intuition of these things and tailor the aspects of emotions that you devour with far more deftness and precision. You can't read minds, but you can do just about anything short of that.
"Captain," you say, meeting his eyes as one with nothing to hide. "We need to talk."
The Captain regards you silently from atop his horse, seemingly reluctant to begin a conversation that may end in violence. In fact you know that is exactly what he is feeling. Beyond withering his mysteriously gained suspicion, you are also promoting trust and companionship. You cannot easily create emotions or feelings out of thin air, but there is a true and genuine part of you that wishes for the two of you to have a long-standing partnership of mutual support. It is a simple matter with {Affective Radiance} to have your Wake push out a huge volume of those emotions as you have just learned to do into the surrounding Construct as seeds to incept into and grow true within the Captain too. Not so ridiculously fast as you can with your own family, but still an order of magnitude faster than you could with [Shine] alone.
Myah almost approaches you to speak, you briefly flare her emotions of uncertainty to cause her to bite her lip for now. This is a tense situation and Captain Martin will unconsciously feel more secure and in control if he is the one that breaks the silence. You whisper an apology to Myah she cannot hear, but given her close proximity to these events you could not guarantee her safety if things took a turn for the worse. You do what you do for her own good.
'Time is of the essence, I still need to tend to Evie,' you not to yourself, wishing you could rush this but knowing that you cannot.
"Lilly..." Captain Martin starts, "...just..." He remains at a loss for words a moment longer before his eyes harden and you feel his emotions settle. He is prepared to make a decision, no matter how hard it may be. When he speaks, his tone is sharp like a blade, "Men are dead Lilly, I know you are involved, explain."
- - -
(Mid Morning)
"Can we speak alone."
Those were the words you uttered ten minutes ago to pull the Captain out of earshot of the rest of the Watch (and Myah). Even without others present, you still would have had doubts sharing the truth of what happened to you were it not for {Affective Radiance} informing you how dire Andrew Martin's misgivings were (and the confidence it gives you to manoeuvre a heartfelt conversation).
So the two of you spoke a short distance away while the Watchmen and Myah looked on, seemingly transfixed waiting for the result of your conversation. Your family begun to stir, but still moved about listlessly, at a loss for where to go or what to do other than staring blankly at different bits of debris about the house. Distracted as you were, you still managed to eat the worst forms of panic and shock that continually threatened to grow out of them.
Before you got to anything you convinced the Captain to have one of the Watchmen lead your family back to the camp to be cared for. You'll probably feel guilty about it after you drop {Affective Radiance}, but the kind of trauma they have suffered would take days to deal with that you don't have the time to waste. Once they started talking with you, they wouldn't have wanted you to leave again. It is better this way, you think.
You didn't suggest taking Myah, and thankfully everyone was still shaken enough to not consider it. You know the girl would outright panic at the mention of being removed from your presence. That's another problem to deal with at some point.
So as the morning light was replaced by a clear day's sun, you and the Captain spoke.
You had already decided to be almost completely honest about what had happened, censoring parts such as Evie's existence and role in events, but less than a few minutes in you revised that stance. The way the Captain responded to mention of the dark spirit within the girl Valerie that had assaulted you were clearly emotions of personal and direct hatred and anger. Not a general sense of aversion to Spirits, but to that specific entity in an immediate and visceral way. Combined with the hints of heavily repressed grief (really well supressed, to the point you think a power could be involved), the puzzle pieces came together. Amidst the frenetic melee between you and Valerie, you did have a vague memory of the direction that most of Evie and the dark Thing's fight came from, the direction of the camp.
So you revealed the existence of Evie, of her sacrifice to defeat the Spirit, of her placid and child-like nature.
"Lilly... this changes things," the Captain says to you now. His emotions are still a roiling mass of uncertainty, but through your tact and words you know you have won him over. A resolute loyalty to your combined cause has grown into a central fixture that dominates his current thoughts.
If you had your way you would be tending to the fraught and strained form of Evie within yourself right now, even with {Hybrid Siphon} shut off, you are still not sure what her fate will be.
"A... power like this," The Captain still has some misgivings about Spirit's in general, but Evie's actions of which you have been given the briefest description did wonders to predispose him positively to her specifically, "There were witnesses Lilly, too many to keep things quiet. Swathes of Watchmen dead, Spirit's acting in the mortal plane, the action from the d- the wolf attack. Things are about to spiral wildly outside my or anyone else's ability to control." You could tell the Captain is deeply concerned by this even if you didn't have [Shine], it's plainly written across his face and body language.
He's right. You can see the writing on the wall too. This isn't even about only you anymore. All the dead had families, some of them important and who will not accept a simple cover story. The Captain has the respect of the Watch, but not enough to stop every loose lip, not when money and resources will be expended by those seeking the truth. In short order, a lot of people in Harmuph and then beyond are going to know that not everything is business as usual here. Investigations will begin, investigations that would be disastrous even if Lord Waters wasn't the one with ultimate presiding authority over them. He said he was travelling East, but you doubt that will likely matter, men like that have influence that reaches far and powerful servants to act in their stead.
"Then, what do we do?" you ask. You understand that danger and suspicion will be approaching, but not its scale nor its speed.
The Captain looks you levelly in the eye, his emotions are unsettled with the worry that he won't be able to convince you. "The timeline has moved up. You need to make a call on whether we go or stay. Because if you are going, which I recommend, then it needs to be no more than a few days. There are no guarantees how quickly things could spiral beyond our control after that."
Our control he says, you were not 100% sure which side he'd come down on, but the Captain really has doubled down on backing you.
"Luckily," he interrupts your musing, "We have the girl as a scapegoat to take all the blame in the short term."
You look at the Captain in that moment ready to argue. For all that Valerie has cost you, you find yourself feeling sorry for her more than anything else. You do not even know if she was truly blameless, but the depths of empty foulness that the creature which left her possessed has left you with a strong intuition that she was hardly a consenting party. If she does share some of the blame, and you cannot find a way to bring your brother back, then you might just render justice yourself. But you think there is a very different story to be told than that. To levy an angry mob at someone who may well be entirely innocent just seems wrong.
The Captain continues, "The dead girl, of whom the only thing remaining is her severed head. The Watch has had its vengeance." Captain Martin actually winks at you as he finishes. He puts on a strong outward mask, but you see genuine emotions of repressed anger. He is willing to go along with this, but you suspect that should he ever come to think Valerie was a willing party in what happened then he will strike her down himself without a single word or delay.
[Shine] is filling up and budding out throughout your soul in numerous ways, growing at a prodigious rate, you think it likely it shall expand multiple times in the coming days judging by the dramatic changes it is undergoing.
"Aye," you respond simply, "a tragedy for which justice has already been served."
It's not a perfect solution, but it's what you have.
With the general plan outlined, the Captain seems to deflate somewhat from his hyper-alert stance, a deep weariness overtaking him. He wishes this day was already over, but there is more to be done. "Lilly, come with me to the camp. There is something I need you to do, it is important, I truly cannot tell you more. But after we have done it, depending on what happens, that will be the time to decide whether to dig in or to flee. The hour runs short."
Ah yes, this mysterious task that needs to be done. Unlike previous times where you could not verify, this time you can feel the Captain's genuine desire for you to do this coupled with no ulterior motive hidden behind it. He believes it will be something that greatly benefits you. Grudgingly, that is something you can accept.
But first, "I must go somewhere a short distance away, I will return by noon," you state. Your tone brooks no argument. You know the Captain will push for you to come now if you are anything less than resolute, but you simply must do two things first. See if you can do anything to improve Evie's chances, and go find out the truth of your name by the Hillock out west. You even have a slim hope that the hillock may hold a key to helping Evie, there's a bond that exists between the two of you and surely the one who gave you your name would be invested in keeping any assets you have healthy and whole. You don't think of Evie that way, but it's certainly the way you'll pitch things if you get an audience with some powerful being. What a life you have, that it could be the second such extra-planar encounter in one day.
You stare certainly at the Captain, his own hard gaze judging your resolve. "Noon," you repeat, "I promise."
The Captain hesitates a moment longer, before replying "Noon Lilly. Your life, your family's lives, a lot is at stake."
Without another word he remounts his horse, is rejoined by the other watchmen and makes pace back toward the camp, emotions of relief and hope flowing from him. He is nervous about how events will turn out, but determined to work them for the best possible outcome.
You breathe a sigh of relief yourself as you are left in no one's company except for Myah. You push down your own desire to explain everything to her immediately, seeing to Evie takes precedence.
Myah almost starts running toward you as all sorts of ugly fears of rejection and abandonment wash over you like a tidal wave. It is nearly disorientating, but you still say, "Myah, stop! I need to tend to a friend who is hurt. Please, we will talk, but give me a moment or perhaps longer, I need to see to this, now."
Myah exudes hurt and worry and fear and just such a tangled mess of emotions, but she will wait. You begin to drink in that horrible mess with {Affective Radiance}, but most of your attention instead now points inward.
Evie, please be okay.
- - - - -
[Effervescent Animus] sits in your soul, firmly anchored. It is everything else that is the problem.
Normally an Ethos spirals out from its centre, growing like veins and arteries through the soul as it slowly imposes structured dynamic order and patterns on the organic chaos of the surrounding space. But the [Animus] is shredded apart in numerous places. Veins grow twisted around each other, malignantly entwining and corrupting each other's efforts. Others reach out far too far without gaining any support from other strands around them and thus become lost and adrift within the oceanic volume of the greater Soulspace. Most are simply incomplete and broken in ways that make it unclear what the whole they used to be a part of once was. This is something that {Rest State} seems unable to lend guidance on restoring and that {Tremendous Mechanist} lacks the foundational references from which to extrapolate an original picture.
Perhaps most concerning of all is that Evie is still, far from the eddie of power and activity that all your other Ethos embody, [Efferverscent Animus] languidly pulses and ripples, moving like a man two steps away from the grave. It reminds you of a dog you once saw trampled by a horse and carriage, the way the keening animal kicked in disoriented eratic bursts, growing slower and weaker until finally it stopped twitching at all. You never told your parents in case they thought you were still too young to venture off alone, but it took many weeks for those nightmares to pass.
You can't fix this, not directly.
But, you think you see a path forward.
Essentially everything outside a very short distance from the anchor is difficult to discern if it's even helping or hurting Evie. Plenty of it looks fine, but you are sure there are many damaged sections that are not outwardly obvious within the dazzlingly complex structures. It honestly looks like Evie tried to fix things from the centre out... but quickly became unable to do more, entering a sort of comatose, nearly static but still undeniably downward decline. You cannot continue her work... but maybe you don't have too.
There is a power you have had for a day that it has never seemed urgent enough to touch, but a major relational link sits within the [Towering Edifice to Heaven], available and beckoning. Your soul is strong, linked to another being of equal if not greater health too. The Link is clearly intended to reach out, to extend to and draw in something beyond your being, but there is no strict mechanism preventing you from instead deepening that which you already possess. It is a shot in the dark, but so is every solution. Could {The Ladder} even address something like this if it was not exhausted and your [Cleaver] were back at full strength? You have your doubts.
You have no sure bets, only wild shots in the dark. And this is the most workable idea you have at hand, so you begin the process that will likely take a day.
Forming a major relational link is nothing like the minor connections you have dabbled in so far. The entire [Tower]'s pattern within your soul shifts and undergoes complex revisions you cannot even begin to understand even with {Tremendous Mechanist} looking directly at them, but you can describe it as somewhat like a maw opening up to receive something or perhaps a mechanism to project something... or maybe even a paradox of both.
When you reach out with the major link, it feels akin to vertigo, like your entire being is shifting. The [Tower] and Evie always had a number of linkages to each other already, but what you witness is almost akin to the [Tower] eating [Effervescent Animus], literally unfolding and unhinging various patterns to stretch out and around Evie. At first when the link begins to form, a well of disappointment wells up in you as you realise you are gaining an enormous amount of control over the shape and structure of the [Animus] as well as the ability to halt all further changes (or deterioration)... but no ideas or further insights into how to fix anything at all.
But, that familiar sense of information from beyond yourself tickles your senses from [Shine, my Gentle Heart]. Without really knowing what you are doing, you receive a sense of a series of incredibly specific tugs, prods and tweaks to press unto the structure of the Link. You have no guarantees, but in your heart of hearts you know Aurora has directly interceded. In an act of faith, you carry out the instructions having no idea what you are actually doing as you sever some connections and connect others in seemingly unrelated or outright contradictory ways. Sometimes you enact a step connecting two pieces, only for the next step to be an immediate reversal of what you just did. If there is a method to the madness, you do not see it. In total there are 357,211 minor tweaks of such intricate precision you can only outwork them due to the conceptual nature of soulwork and {Tremendous Mechanist}.
You don't know how long it takes as you speed through thousands of individual alterations at a blindingly fast pace, some time, minutes at least. Absolutely nothing happens during the process, the [Effervescent Animus] continues to weakly throb from time to time with no discernible reaction. That is, until the very last tweak finishes. You sense a minute shift in your Wake, a slight realignment inward and a few channels within the Construct twitch in reaction to a change you otherwise missed. Your soul itself flows almost exactly the same, but for a few minor redirections whose nature you do not understand the purpose of. Well, that is until-
Sraf be so!! Mala tay grash!! Lalia tay!
'Evie!' you shout toward the very centre of the [Effervescent Animus] as it surges alive.
'Lilly!' Evie squeals in delight. 'I have thoughts! Big meta-referential ones too, not just moments of sentience. Oh my goodness my internal self-conceptualisation is practically at the 2nd strata of cognito- you know what nevermind THANK YOU!' Most of the [Animus] remains dead and still, but the tiny central pocket which you suspected Evie had done some repairs on hums with life, sheltered within the [Tower]'s embrace.
'Oh Evie,' you would swoon were you actually in real space. 'Are you really okay?'
'...No actually,' Evie replies, but quickly clarifies when you rush to question what is wrong, 'You made a good start, but I'm dying in ways your sense of your soul can't even see. Actually, in about 732 seconds. I... I gotta go work on some stuff. Sorry to gain sapient awareness and then duck out on you but it's gonna take, uh, about three hours or so to save my life. I'll prod you with bits that are safe to fully enshroud within the [Tower] as I fix them up. Then we can have a big talk. Super awkward to hi and bye you like this, but yeah, thank you so much, and see you this afternoon I guess.'
And like that the voice at the centre of the [Animus] goes quiet. It is still a hive of activity though, beginning to sprout fresh inky veins out into its own surrounding structures, you begin to see tiny changes already underway within the rest of the [Animus]. Just like that... Evie is saved? Yes, you suppose she is. You were prepared to lose her, but just like that, she is okay.
'Thank you, Aurora,' you whisper to the deity in gratitude for her assistance. You surprise yourself that you actually mean it too.
You 'open' your eyes. The line between your physical and Domain senses continue to blur further into each other, full 360 degree awareness of your surroundings via multiple forms of sight not reliant on your body means even little things like feeling the need to look directly at something you are examining is a habit that is starting to erode. Still, you do take your focus off your soul and look at Myah who has been standing silently watching you.
Literally. The entire time you spent with Evie, Myah has just been watching you. It is nearly painful feeling her emotional mixture, the acrid smell of desperation, the bitter taste of fearing rejection, a nauseating self-denial and repression of the literal bloodbath she witnessed coating the walls of your home. (That still doesn't bother you emotionally, you really do need to tamper down on {Affective Radiance} putting off your own trauma about that soon). Outwardly, Myah presents as timid and scared, inwardly you see that for all that you may have rescued your friend from her circumstance, she is far from well.
"...Lilly," Myah steps closer to you reaching out to touch your arm. There is a pang of terror at being struck that she quickly represses, you stand still and let her touch you. "I don't understand what is happening Lilly."
She is begging. Begging to know, to be included. The day is bright, but Myah is still trapped back inside her dark home.
Damn, damn this world and damn everything in it!
You embrace Myah, the strength leaves her and she sags as you hold her in your arms. Rather than let her fall, you scoop up her legs and begin to bridal carry her as you walk. Myah says nothing, simply closing her eyes and breathing against your chest. There is a joy growing in her, sullied somewhat by its almost manic nature, but there is also a sense of peace as well. Progress, you'll take what you can get.
You would be a comical sight to anyone who witnessed the pair of you. One girl carrying another easily her own size in her arms as if she were no heavier than a small stone. The maelstrom of emotions within your friend subsides slowly, some due to your efforts to snuff out the worst of them, some due to Myah's own growing comfort. The whole while, you both say nothing. You don't know what you even would say really, knowing Myah's internal state of mind honestly makes any form of encouragement or comfort you can think of seem pitifully insufficient.
You settle for a promise. "Myah... I'll explain everything. Just rest now okay?"
Myah raises her head as she opens her eyes, her long fiery hair running down your arms and chest. A moment of hesitation, and she then places one hand on your face. You feel a barely perceptible tingle on your skin as your friend does something, the moment passes and Myah simply presses her head back against you. There is a sense that something has been added to you, something wholesome and hale, but you are not quite sure what.
Whatever was given, it took a fair bit out of Myah, the dense knot of twisting emotions grow calm as she drifts off into slumber in your arms. You look out and across horizon in the west, the next thing that must be done.
Well Myah, let's go find out why I'm named after a flower. That and 'Bloomling' can't be a coincidence.
After a moment of hesitation before you head out, you add to yourself, '...and find out if mum's apprehension and fear were at all justified.'
It's almost an afterthought to tack up Chariot from the barn (thankfully unscathed by the nearby melee), you could likely match a natural horses speed yourself these days even without {Riemannian Geometer}. But Chariot can still push further than that with you empowering Chariot atop his back.
With powerful loping strides, he carries you and your friend westward. The next mystery awaits.
9th Day, 3rd Moon, LE 2302
(Morning)
The space between spaces is an interesting thing. Every time you step through the deepest reaches (or at least as deep as you have ventured so far) it has not been just things such as distance that become twisted, but to a certain degree, time and other concepts too. Never in a way that has any real noticeable effect and you've always had more important things on your mind (like you do right now honestly) when you've travelled through the {Slipstream}, but it still leaves you feeling like you are touching upon the barest slither of what Essence actually is. There are hints of an entire realm of existence beyond what you can see… but {Riemannian Geometer} will likely never be even close to powerful enough to truly understand what lays beyond.
Sigh
If only you had the time to ponder such things, instead of the gruelling task that lays ahead. But life is what it is, not what you wish for. You steel yourself for the sight that you will face… stepping back into the natural world.
The enhanced sense of hearing and touch from your Domain lets you both feel and hear some of Micah's blood as it squelches beneath your feet on arrival. The bitter tang of fear and despair courses to you along the channels of the Construct from your family's minds. Emotions are born inside the Wake, but they fill a room with an atmosphere. There are superstitions about how powerful emotions and events leave behind echos to haunt a place where they occur, your current experience lends more credibility to those ideas than you'd have given them before.
The blood has cooled, the last hints of its balm colour fading to a cool frigid within your thermal sight. It joins watchman Legle's body and Valerie's head as morbid decorations to your annihilated home.
Despair had no place near you nor your family. As your innate Essence unfurls around you in an explosive outward nova, {Affective Radiance} piggybacks upon the wave leaching all remnants of the sickly emotion from the air. You do not look your family in the eyes as you get to work, you could not bare to properly process the horrors you have all witnessed, instead you simply begin your work.
You step over shattered wooden debris that were formerly part of the roof, a light breeze blows through your home now through the shattered wall and out through your front door. You sense of its structure through your essence sight shows you that many of the panels and logs have shifted dangerously throughout the building. The whole thing will need to be rebuilt from scratch.
Mother is the highest priority, battered and bruised by your own body in the desperate melee against Valerie Nireile, at a glance you know her injuries will likely be terminal over the course of a few hours if left unattended. The table flips over and lands several metres outside as you chuck it out of the way to get to her.
Without really considering it much, you push the idea of rest to Evie, you have no time to tend to her immediately, but she needs to stop trying to help and rest. {Hybrid Siphon} stills within your soul as Evie, weak as she is, immediately falls into a deep slumber. The minor relational link between the Siphon and Myah slips away.
Myah, she is outside again, bawling her eyes out. Sometimes you dread your senses, they let you feel the trickle of her tears as they run down her cheek before falling to lightly patter amongst the grass. You do not have time to go see her.
When you begin to heal your mother, you are not gentle; now is not the time for half-measures. You use all three minor relational links you possess on {Hope-Shock}, {Oaken Core} and {Affective Radiance} to extend the concept of /SELF/ onto her. In the very next moment as you lay your hands upon her heart and head to extend your Domain fully into each, you lay a density of Essence so thick, so rich and so dense that it gains a physical force dwarfing anything you've ever accomplished before. Unto this foundation you apply the {Hope-Shock} at full 100% blast, using {Rest State} to ensure it is only applied onto that which is truly your mother and nothing else. Within your Domain senses, you witness how the very tissues and fibres within your mother try to rip themselves apart under the insane assault of Essence that is being drilled into her in this instant, but with {Oaken Core}, her body holds.
You cannot gift the full benefits of even a sub-power with a minor relational link, in truth you merely apply the durability of the {Oaken Core} with none of necessary secondary characteristics that stop it from rendering a human body completely non-functional. But your mother only needs its power for a few vital seconds, enough that even the temporary lack of heartbeat it causes is trivial. You could not have pushed it this far for someone outside your own family, but the blood shared between you is an already wide bridge which you are merely stretching wider rather than trying to build something from scratch.
You've seen healing that was quick, you've seen healing that looked impressive, but this is the first healing that looks brutal. There is a change within some of the thick vicious essence within her, a critical density combined with your many talents insisting upon a certain result. With a deep crack like thunder as air is instantly displaced from where it had rested still moments ago, your mother writhes and snaps straight as a plank. In a singular momentary flash, bones and flesh snap, knit and fuse; her body is immediately hale and whole.
Something is different about [Dream within the Forest] since you touched Petal. Without really noticing it you can feel your powers pushing further than they have before, what you've just done shouldn't have been possible. It goes further than just the [Dream] though, your Domain, your other abilities, they are starting to cross over and extend each other in ways beyond each's original scope. Not in an obvious way of sprouting new sub-powers, but you can feel the change beginning within yourself. You've reached some kind of tipping point, or perhaps you've been there for some time and the events of this morning have pushed you over. Whatever is happening, if it helps your family and grants you power, you will not look a gifthorse in the mouth.
Within your mother's soul (which you can see parts of with your Domain extended inside her), you can see where her Essence runs in counter-intuitive patterns. The distortions corresponding one-to-one with similar irregularities within the currents of her Wake.
Found you.
You drop your Relational Link to {Oaken Core} and attach it to {Rest State}. Applying {Rest State} with {Hope-Shock} to your mother, you solidify the Essence patterns within her soul that you can tell are natural and unmolested thanks to {Rest State}'s intuitive knowledge and in some small way {Tremendous Mechanist}'s assistance.
That is when Valerie's handiwork becomes directly noticeable. A grinding pressure tries to pull both the Essence Strands and Flow Currents into deformed directions that {Rest State} identifies as Wrong. You focus the full strength of your {Thread Compression} (which has exploded into power without you really noticing) onto {Hope-Shock} hyper-reinforcing it into an incredibly rigid frame that will obstinately resist any unnatural alteration of any kind within your mum's soul.
At the same time {Affective Radiance} flows out of you like a river into your mother. Normally there would be some heavy limits on how rapidly and severely {Affective Radiance} could affect a person's internal thoughts rather than simply changing the atmosphere of what thoughts were conducive around their Wake. But, you are mother and daughter. You are linked by a blood, linked by a lifetime spent together, linked by love and shared adversity, linked within your Domain, linked through Essence and you also note that you have always been linked through Flow even before you had gained [Shine]. Perhaps even with all that, what you do next would not have been possible… but you also have {Tremendous Mechanist}.
The puppet-master is a tiny packet of an idea within the centre of a person's thoughts. It is an incredibly unobvious thing. Even with your perceptions pushed dimensions beyond mortal limits, {Tremendous Mechanist} is still only able to spot the pattern because it is working so hard against the {Hope-Shock} you have installed to resist it (Which is able to retain some degree of continuity thanks to your experience with {Applied Currents}). The intrusion is actually still winning easily, for all the rules you have stepped over creating the {Hope-Shock} frame, it would still at best only allow your mother to perhaps think about moving every couple of seconds or so. It is a wickedly cruel thing, a decentralized pattern visible only within the state of change of a person's thoughts and only if you could track an obscene number of moving parts all at once. It never directly enforces an action, but instead operates through layers and layers of proxy alterations whose cumulative effect is always the enforcement of the Command. There is no central weakness for any remedy to target.
Beyond even this, the Command-Node as you have so labelled it actually slowly commandeers a tiny pocket of the soul itself, slowly making it into something other. If you had an Oath Ethos you likely could more readily identify what it is doing. It also makes copies of itself that exist as near-invisible Essence structures floating freely within a person, you can only spot those now that you've seen the node's structure, they were invisible to you even as you worked upon your mother's essence moments ago. Remove only some of this multi-faceted design and it could be reborn from the others. It is a curse that co-exists in multiple Sources all at once. And you bet that there are iterations within the Pithe, Mana and perhaps even Concordance too that are simply beyond your scope to detect.
For anyone else, the prospect of finding a solution would be hopeless…. Most would assume that none could overrule Valerie or that anathema of a thing that had dwelled within, but they have no idea who they are dealing with!
For all its complex redundancies, the Command-Node has a weakness that can be exploited. That tiny pocket of altered soul and the idea within the Wake are the key anchors the other backups restore to and from, if they are removed and the other backups are prevented from immediately recovering them, the entire system should fall apart.
With Essence you were able to pull a soul back from the beyond, which means Essence can directly pull upon a soul. That is the key to the first step of your solution.
You take the incredibly thick mass of Essence saturating your mother and you bend it sharp, carving out that tiny altered pocket from within her. Essence normally could not do such a thing, but your Domain allows you to directly interface Essence and souls together. Simultaneously you push out an obscene amount of influence from {Affective Radiance} into your mother's mind simply demanding her thoughts be 'normal' as directed by {Rest State}. An ordinary human mind would have far tighter limits on how hard it could push, but you have not only a {Very Keen Mind} and {Steel Will} to draw from, but the crystalline structure of your {Core Heart} can have a ridiculously higher mental strain placed upon it without fracturing unlike the weak flesh your mind was formerly housed within. With {Tremendous Mechanist} you milk this expanded capacity for every single last iota that it is worth. Your push is unhealthily strong, the channels between the two of you can only possibly carry such a huge volume of effect due to your immense level of linkage to each other, and only {Hope Shock} protects your mother from the likely outcome of mind death as her Wake is buffeted by the hurricane of your overwhelming Will. The Command within her Wake shudders when the many layers of your mother's mind all rigidly start resisting the intruders influence, the source of strength the Command has built within her soul is ripped out from under it. As you watch you see the sub-structures within her essence try to reinstate the Idea but fail against the rigid maintaining frame you have installed and hold with {Hope-Shock}. You think you feel a tiny amount of Pithe move within the Resonance Field and attempt to reinsert the Command, but your mother never had much Pithe to begin with and it cannot succeed against your continual and sustained overwhelming barrage. The whole system strains, then dissipates.
The Command-Node withers to nothing. Your mother, is free.
You barely notice the euphoric relief rushing through you as you release the essence structures within her and the Command still does not return, your mother really is free. You'd collapse from exhaustion were it not for your powers insisting your body remain strong, and [Shine] holding your mind steady.
You move quickly to your two brothers, Sarah lies on the ground breathing quickly, her body whole but her mind having a lot to process even with {Affective Radiance} sucking most obstacles to clear thought out of the air.
The process is quick and easy to repeat, each time you lay down the Essence Frame, gut the soul piece and press natural thought. Your brothers collapse bonelessly as the Command shatters, similarly lost in shock like your mother.
You don't have time to be concerned about there current state however. You feel the familiar sensation of Captain Martin arriving at the edge of your Essence sight, accompanied by four other Watchmen, Yola among them.
Because of course I cannot have a moment of peace.
They venture toward your home, likely not seeing just how damaged it is from the front angle, the demolished roof and wall being only partially visible. There are some deep holes and tunnels carved into the ground from Evie and the black Spirit's pockmarking the land around the house that are clear evidence for anyone arriving that something has happened here.
Through the extended range of your Essence senses and {Affective Radiance} you taste tones of regret, grief, hope, and bitterness. The Captain is ready to fight, perhaps not you, but ready to find an enemy. That worries you, he is far too distraught and angry to simply be following up the loud noises Evie and the Thing's fight created, something else has happened.
You quickly free your father and race out the front door past Legle's corpse as the Captain draws near to the fractured shell of your home. The other Watchmen hang back a little, but remain plenty close. You hear a startled gasp from Myah as she hears you race out the front door and come to a stop standing near her. The Captain finishes his approach.
Two girls and a soldier, the three of you make quite the awkward three-way standoff.
You quash the part of you that considers if you could win a violent confrontation. It is quite surprising how bold your thoughts become when freed of apprehension, hesitation and doubt by the alterations you have {Affective Radiance} running on yourself. You'll need to watch out for that in future.
I probably could win though, if it comes to it.
Captain Martin exudes suspicion and apprehension, he doesn't want to assume the worst, but is most of the way toward doing so anyway. There is still a significant yet repressed emotion of hope, hope that there is some explanation that will justify everything he's seen (whatever that is) without crushing his dreams and ambitions of riding alongside your upward climb to fame and glory. It is a simple act with {Affective Radiance} to begin devouring the residue of the suspicions around his Wake. Deprived of the positive feedback-loop that emotions form between the Wake and the Construct, it naturally leaves room for his more positive thoughts toward you to grow and the negative ones to wither. Someone who was not a family member can resist this process if they didn't want it to take hold, but Captain Martin is the opposite, actually wishing that his suspicions are unfounded and for his hopes to be confirmed.
There is no way you could normally read this much detail out of the emotional eddies through the Construct's channels with [Shine] alone, but {Tremendous Mechanist} and your {Very Keen Mind} has already allowed you to gain solid intuition of these things and tailor the aspects of emotions that you devour with far more deftness and precision. You can't read minds, but you can do just about anything short of that.
"Captain," you say, meeting his eyes as one with nothing to hide. "We need to talk."
The Captain regards you silently from atop his horse, seemingly reluctant to begin a conversation that may end in violence. In fact you know that is exactly what he is feeling. Beyond withering his mysteriously gained suspicion, you are also promoting trust and companionship. You cannot easily create emotions or feelings out of thin air, but there is a true and genuine part of you that wishes for the two of you to have a long-standing partnership of mutual support. It is a simple matter with {Affective Radiance} to have your Wake push out a huge volume of those emotions as you have just learned to do into the surrounding Construct as seeds to incept into and grow true within the Captain too. Not so ridiculously fast as you can with your own family, but still an order of magnitude faster than you could with [Shine] alone.
Myah almost approaches you to speak, you briefly flare her emotions of uncertainty to cause her to bite her lip for now. This is a tense situation and Captain Martin will unconsciously feel more secure and in control if he is the one that breaks the silence. You whisper an apology to Myah she cannot hear, but given her close proximity to these events you could not guarantee her safety if things took a turn for the worse. You do what you do for her own good.
'Time is of the essence, I still need to tend to Evie,' you not to yourself, wishing you could rush this but knowing that you cannot.
"Lilly..." Captain Martin starts, "...just..." He remains at a loss for words a moment longer before his eyes harden and you feel his emotions settle. He is prepared to make a decision, no matter how hard it may be. When he speaks, his tone is sharp like a blade, "Men are dead Lilly, I know you are involved, explain."
- - -
(Mid Morning)
"Can we speak alone."
Those were the words you uttered ten minutes ago to pull the Captain out of earshot of the rest of the Watch (and Myah). Even without others present, you still would have had doubts sharing the truth of what happened to you were it not for {Affective Radiance} informing you how dire Andrew Martin's misgivings were (and the confidence it gives you to manoeuvre a heartfelt conversation).
So the two of you spoke a short distance away while the Watchmen and Myah looked on, seemingly transfixed waiting for the result of your conversation. Your family begun to stir, but still moved about listlessly, at a loss for where to go or what to do other than staring blankly at different bits of debris about the house. Distracted as you were, you still managed to eat the worst forms of panic and shock that continually threatened to grow out of them.
Before you got to anything you convinced the Captain to have one of the Watchmen lead your family back to the camp to be cared for. You'll probably feel guilty about it after you drop {Affective Radiance}, but the kind of trauma they have suffered would take days to deal with that you don't have the time to waste. Once they started talking with you, they wouldn't have wanted you to leave again. It is better this way, you think.
You didn't suggest taking Myah, and thankfully everyone was still shaken enough to not consider it. You know the girl would outright panic at the mention of being removed from your presence. That's another problem to deal with at some point.
So as the morning light was replaced by a clear day's sun, you and the Captain spoke.
You had already decided to be almost completely honest about what had happened, censoring parts such as Evie's existence and role in events, but less than a few minutes in you revised that stance. The way the Captain responded to mention of the dark spirit within the girl Valerie that had assaulted you were clearly emotions of personal and direct hatred and anger. Not a general sense of aversion to Spirits, but to that specific entity in an immediate and visceral way. Combined with the hints of heavily repressed grief (really well supressed, to the point you think a power could be involved), the puzzle pieces came together. Amidst the frenetic melee between you and Valerie, you did have a vague memory of the direction that most of Evie and the dark Thing's fight came from, the direction of the camp.
So you revealed the existence of Evie, of her sacrifice to defeat the Spirit, of her placid and child-like nature.
"Lilly... this changes things," the Captain says to you now. His emotions are still a roiling mass of uncertainty, but through your tact and words you know you have won him over. A resolute loyalty to your combined cause has grown into a central fixture that dominates his current thoughts.
If you had your way you would be tending to the fraught and strained form of Evie within yourself right now, even with {Hybrid Siphon} shut off, you are still not sure what her fate will be.
"A... power like this," The Captain still has some misgivings about Spirit's in general, but Evie's actions of which you have been given the briefest description did wonders to predispose him positively to her specifically, "There were witnesses Lilly, too many to keep things quiet. Swathes of Watchmen dead, Spirit's acting in the mortal plane, the action from the d- the wolf attack. Things are about to spiral wildly outside my or anyone else's ability to control." You could tell the Captain is deeply concerned by this even if you didn't have [Shine], it's plainly written across his face and body language.
He's right. You can see the writing on the wall too. This isn't even about only you anymore. All the dead had families, some of them important and who will not accept a simple cover story. The Captain has the respect of the Watch, but not enough to stop every loose lip, not when money and resources will be expended by those seeking the truth. In short order, a lot of people in Harmuph and then beyond are going to know that not everything is business as usual here. Investigations will begin, investigations that would be disastrous even if Lord Waters wasn't the one with ultimate presiding authority over them. He said he was travelling East, but you doubt that will likely matter, men like that have influence that reaches far and powerful servants to act in their stead.
"Then, what do we do?" you ask. You understand that danger and suspicion will be approaching, but not its scale nor its speed.
The Captain looks you levelly in the eye, his emotions are unsettled with the worry that he won't be able to convince you. "The timeline has moved up. You need to make a call on whether we go or stay. Because if you are going, which I recommend, then it needs to be no more than a few days. There are no guarantees how quickly things could spiral beyond our control after that."
Our control he says, you were not 100% sure which side he'd come down on, but the Captain really has doubled down on backing you.
"Luckily," he interrupts your musing, "We have the girl as a scapegoat to take all the blame in the short term."
You look at the Captain in that moment ready to argue. For all that Valerie has cost you, you find yourself feeling sorry for her more than anything else. You do not even know if she was truly blameless, but the depths of empty foulness that the creature which left her possessed has left you with a strong intuition that she was hardly a consenting party. If she does share some of the blame, and you cannot find a way to bring your brother back, then you might just render justice yourself. But you think there is a very different story to be told than that. To levy an angry mob at someone who may well be entirely innocent just seems wrong.
The Captain continues, "The dead girl, of whom the only thing remaining is her severed head. The Watch has had its vengeance." Captain Martin actually winks at you as he finishes. He puts on a strong outward mask, but you see genuine emotions of repressed anger. He is willing to go along with this, but you suspect that should he ever come to think Valerie was a willing party in what happened then he will strike her down himself without a single word or delay.
[Shine] is filling up and budding out throughout your soul in numerous ways, growing at a prodigious rate, you think it likely it shall expand multiple times in the coming days judging by the dramatic changes it is undergoing.
"Aye," you respond simply, "a tragedy for which justice has already been served."
It's not a perfect solution, but it's what you have.
With the general plan outlined, the Captain seems to deflate somewhat from his hyper-alert stance, a deep weariness overtaking him. He wishes this day was already over, but there is more to be done. "Lilly, come with me to the camp. There is something I need you to do, it is important, I truly cannot tell you more. But after we have done it, depending on what happens, that will be the time to decide whether to dig in or to flee. The hour runs short."
Ah yes, this mysterious task that needs to be done. Unlike previous times where you could not verify, this time you can feel the Captain's genuine desire for you to do this coupled with no ulterior motive hidden behind it. He believes it will be something that greatly benefits you. Grudgingly, that is something you can accept.
But first, "I must go somewhere a short distance away, I will return by noon," you state. Your tone brooks no argument. You know the Captain will push for you to come now if you are anything less than resolute, but you simply must do two things first. See if you can do anything to improve Evie's chances, and go find out the truth of your name by the Hillock out west. You even have a slim hope that the hillock may hold a key to helping Evie, there's a bond that exists between the two of you and surely the one who gave you your name would be invested in keeping any assets you have healthy and whole. You don't think of Evie that way, but it's certainly the way you'll pitch things if you get an audience with some powerful being. What a life you have, that it could be the second such extra-planar encounter in one day.
You stare certainly at the Captain, his own hard gaze judging your resolve. "Noon," you repeat, "I promise."
The Captain hesitates a moment longer, before replying "Noon Lilly. Your life, your family's lives, a lot is at stake."
Without another word he remounts his horse, is rejoined by the other watchmen and makes pace back toward the camp, emotions of relief and hope flowing from him. He is nervous about how events will turn out, but determined to work them for the best possible outcome.
You breathe a sigh of relief yourself as you are left in no one's company except for Myah. You push down your own desire to explain everything to her immediately, seeing to Evie takes precedence.
Myah almost starts running toward you as all sorts of ugly fears of rejection and abandonment wash over you like a tidal wave. It is nearly disorientating, but you still say, "Myah, stop! I need to tend to a friend who is hurt. Please, we will talk, but give me a moment or perhaps longer, I need to see to this, now."
Myah exudes hurt and worry and fear and just such a tangled mess of emotions, but she will wait. You begin to drink in that horrible mess with {Affective Radiance}, but most of your attention instead now points inward.
Evie, please be okay.
- - - - -
[Effervescent Animus] sits in your soul, firmly anchored. It is everything else that is the problem.
Normally an Ethos spirals out from its centre, growing like veins and arteries through the soul as it slowly imposes structured dynamic order and patterns on the organic chaos of the surrounding space. But the [Animus] is shredded apart in numerous places. Veins grow twisted around each other, malignantly entwining and corrupting each other's efforts. Others reach out far too far without gaining any support from other strands around them and thus become lost and adrift within the oceanic volume of the greater Soulspace. Most are simply incomplete and broken in ways that make it unclear what the whole they used to be a part of once was. This is something that {Rest State} seems unable to lend guidance on restoring and that {Tremendous Mechanist} lacks the foundational references from which to extrapolate an original picture.
Perhaps most concerning of all is that Evie is still, far from the eddie of power and activity that all your other Ethos embody, [Efferverscent Animus] languidly pulses and ripples, moving like a man two steps away from the grave. It reminds you of a dog you once saw trampled by a horse and carriage, the way the keening animal kicked in disoriented eratic bursts, growing slower and weaker until finally it stopped twitching at all. You never told your parents in case they thought you were still too young to venture off alone, but it took many weeks for those nightmares to pass.
You can't fix this, not directly.
But, you think you see a path forward.
Essentially everything outside a very short distance from the anchor is difficult to discern if it's even helping or hurting Evie. Plenty of it looks fine, but you are sure there are many damaged sections that are not outwardly obvious within the dazzlingly complex structures. It honestly looks like Evie tried to fix things from the centre out... but quickly became unable to do more, entering a sort of comatose, nearly static but still undeniably downward decline. You cannot continue her work... but maybe you don't have too.
There is a power you have had for a day that it has never seemed urgent enough to touch, but a major relational link sits within the [Towering Edifice to Heaven], available and beckoning. Your soul is strong, linked to another being of equal if not greater health too. The Link is clearly intended to reach out, to extend to and draw in something beyond your being, but there is no strict mechanism preventing you from instead deepening that which you already possess. It is a shot in the dark, but so is every solution. Could {The Ladder} even address something like this if it was not exhausted and your [Cleaver] were back at full strength? You have your doubts.
You have no sure bets, only wild shots in the dark. And this is the most workable idea you have at hand, so you begin the process that will likely take a day.
Forming a major relational link is nothing like the minor connections you have dabbled in so far. The entire [Tower]'s pattern within your soul shifts and undergoes complex revisions you cannot even begin to understand even with {Tremendous Mechanist} looking directly at them, but you can describe it as somewhat like a maw opening up to receive something or perhaps a mechanism to project something... or maybe even a paradox of both.
When you reach out with the major link, it feels akin to vertigo, like your entire being is shifting. The [Tower] and Evie always had a number of linkages to each other already, but what you witness is almost akin to the [Tower] eating [Effervescent Animus], literally unfolding and unhinging various patterns to stretch out and around Evie. At first when the link begins to form, a well of disappointment wells up in you as you realise you are gaining an enormous amount of control over the shape and structure of the [Animus] as well as the ability to halt all further changes (or deterioration)... but no ideas or further insights into how to fix anything at all.
But, that familiar sense of information from beyond yourself tickles your senses from [Shine, my Gentle Heart]. Without really knowing what you are doing, you receive a sense of a series of incredibly specific tugs, prods and tweaks to press unto the structure of the Link. You have no guarantees, but in your heart of hearts you know Aurora has directly interceded. In an act of faith, you carry out the instructions having no idea what you are actually doing as you sever some connections and connect others in seemingly unrelated or outright contradictory ways. Sometimes you enact a step connecting two pieces, only for the next step to be an immediate reversal of what you just did. If there is a method to the madness, you do not see it. In total there are 357,211 minor tweaks of such intricate precision you can only outwork them due to the conceptual nature of soulwork and {Tremendous Mechanist}.
You don't know how long it takes as you speed through thousands of individual alterations at a blindingly fast pace, some time, minutes at least. Absolutely nothing happens during the process, the [Effervescent Animus] continues to weakly throb from time to time with no discernible reaction. That is, until the very last tweak finishes. You sense a minute shift in your Wake, a slight realignment inward and a few channels within the Construct twitch in reaction to a change you otherwise missed. Your soul itself flows almost exactly the same, but for a few minor redirections whose nature you do not understand the purpose of. Well, that is until-
Sraf be so!! Mala tay grash!! Lalia tay!
'Evie!' you shout toward the very centre of the [Effervescent Animus] as it surges alive.
'Lilly!' Evie squeals in delight. 'I have thoughts! Big meta-referential ones too, not just moments of sentience. Oh my goodness my internal self-conceptualisation is practically at the 2nd strata of cognito- you know what nevermind THANK YOU!' Most of the [Animus] remains dead and still, but the tiny central pocket which you suspected Evie had done some repairs on hums with life, sheltered within the [Tower]'s embrace.
'Oh Evie,' you would swoon were you actually in real space. 'Are you really okay?'
'...No actually,' Evie replies, but quickly clarifies when you rush to question what is wrong, 'You made a good start, but I'm dying in ways your sense of your soul can't even see. Actually, in about 732 seconds. I... I gotta go work on some stuff. Sorry to gain sapient awareness and then duck out on you but it's gonna take, uh, about three hours or so to save my life. I'll prod you with bits that are safe to fully enshroud within the [Tower] as I fix them up. Then we can have a big talk. Super awkward to hi and bye you like this, but yeah, thank you so much, and see you this afternoon I guess.'
And like that the voice at the centre of the [Animus] goes quiet. It is still a hive of activity though, beginning to sprout fresh inky veins out into its own surrounding structures, you begin to see tiny changes already underway within the rest of the [Animus]. Just like that... Evie is saved? Yes, you suppose she is. You were prepared to lose her, but just like that, she is okay.
'Thank you, Aurora,' you whisper to the deity in gratitude for her assistance. You surprise yourself that you actually mean it too.
You 'open' your eyes. The line between your physical and Domain senses continue to blur further into each other, full 360 degree awareness of your surroundings via multiple forms of sight not reliant on your body means even little things like feeling the need to look directly at something you are examining is a habit that is starting to erode. Still, you do take your focus off your soul and look at Myah who has been standing silently watching you.
Literally. The entire time you spent with Evie, Myah has just been watching you. It is nearly painful feeling her emotional mixture, the acrid smell of desperation, the bitter taste of fearing rejection, a nauseating self-denial and repression of the literal bloodbath she witnessed coating the walls of your home. (That still doesn't bother you emotionally, you really do need to tamper down on {Affective Radiance} putting off your own trauma about that soon). Outwardly, Myah presents as timid and scared, inwardly you see that for all that you may have rescued your friend from her circumstance, she is far from well.
"...Lilly," Myah steps closer to you reaching out to touch your arm. There is a pang of terror at being struck that she quickly represses, you stand still and let her touch you. "I don't understand what is happening Lilly."
She is begging. Begging to know, to be included. The day is bright, but Myah is still trapped back inside her dark home.
Damn, damn this world and damn everything in it!
You embrace Myah, the strength leaves her and she sags as you hold her in your arms. Rather than let her fall, you scoop up her legs and begin to bridal carry her as you walk. Myah says nothing, simply closing her eyes and breathing against your chest. There is a joy growing in her, sullied somewhat by its almost manic nature, but there is also a sense of peace as well. Progress, you'll take what you can get.
You would be a comical sight to anyone who witnessed the pair of you. One girl carrying another easily her own size in her arms as if she were no heavier than a small stone. The maelstrom of emotions within your friend subsides slowly, some due to your efforts to snuff out the worst of them, some due to Myah's own growing comfort. The whole while, you both say nothing. You don't know what you even would say really, knowing Myah's internal state of mind honestly makes any form of encouragement or comfort you can think of seem pitifully insufficient.
You settle for a promise. "Myah... I'll explain everything. Just rest now okay?"
Myah raises her head as she opens her eyes, her long fiery hair running down your arms and chest. A moment of hesitation, and she then places one hand on your face. You feel a barely perceptible tingle on your skin as your friend does something, the moment passes and Myah simply presses her head back against you. There is a sense that something has been added to you, something wholesome and hale, but you are not quite sure what.
Whatever was given, it took a fair bit out of Myah, the dense knot of twisting emotions grow calm as she drifts off into slumber in your arms. You look out and across horizon in the west, the next thing that must be done.
Well Myah, let's go find out why I'm named after a flower. That and 'Bloomling' can't be a coincidence.
After a moment of hesitation before you head out, you add to yourself, '...and find out if mum's apprehension and fear were at all justified.'
It's almost an afterthought to tack up Chariot from the barn (thankfully unscathed by the nearby melee), you could likely match a natural horses speed yourself these days even without {Riemannian Geometer}. But Chariot can still push further than that with you empowering Chariot atop his back.
With powerful loping strides, he carries you and your friend westward. The next mystery awaits.
- Quick edit made to Heroine Part 1, I had misspelled Yola's name as Mola.
- Believe or not, figuring out how to rapidly heal people with Essence (even though that's a Mana thing) was not a notable roll. It is a natural consequence of your ridiculous number of stacking powers allowing each one to evolve in directions that would be too costly or ineffective alone but together form something far greater than the sum of their parts.
- Following on from this, meeting with your Locus means a whole bunch of hidden maluses on your growth are now removed. Which you have perhaps picked up on in this section. For one you can start fully benefitting from the [Towering Edifice to Heaven]'s huge bonus to learning/understanding powers that you've only gotten drips and drabs of so far now that the {Core Heart} and Petal are properly in sync.
- {Affective Radiance} is meant to have a lot of drawbacks in terms of the difficulty of figuring out what the sensations of the Construct are and how they translate to emotions. But your remarkable experience looking into the Soul, working with Essence and understanding complex mechanisms means you jumped over that hoop almost as fast as it came up.
- Lilly's noticing her thoughts are getting a little off-centre with her emotion suppression. That's definitely gonna come up again.
- Turns out being a detailed long-range empath completely changes the way one can approach any social interaciton, who'da'thunk it.
- Believe or not, figuring out how to rapidly heal people with Essence (even though that's a Mana thing) was not a notable roll. It is a natural consequence of your ridiculous number of stacking powers allowing each one to evolve in directions that would be too costly or ineffective alone but together form something far greater than the sum of their parts.
- Following on from this, meeting with your Locus means a whole bunch of hidden maluses on your growth are now removed. Which you have perhaps picked up on in this section. For one you can start fully benefitting from the [Towering Edifice to Heaven]'s huge bonus to learning/understanding powers that you've only gotten drips and drabs of so far now that the {Core Heart} and Petal are properly in sync.
- {Affective Radiance} is meant to have a lot of drawbacks in terms of the difficulty of figuring out what the sensations of the Construct are and how they translate to emotions. But your remarkable experience looking into the Soul, working with Essence and understanding complex mechanisms means you jumped over that hoop almost as fast as it came up.
- Lilly's noticing her thoughts are getting a little off-centre with her emotion suppression. That's definitely gonna come up again.
- Turns out being a detailed long-range empath completely changes the way one can approach any social interaciton, who'da'thunk it.
- You did better than average on helping your family. You'd probably have just pulled them all into the Dreamspace so they could remain unconscious until you could come up with a solution if you hadn't got a couple good rolls to let you figure something out now. As is, they are at least alive and in a position to start recovering. That's more than could be said for Valerie's other victums.
- Welcome to the world of what a Crit Success looks like. You rolled a natural 100 on fixing Evie. I kind of had to think of what an amazing 'shoot for the moon' success could possibly look like for that situation. Direct Divine intervention that will result in a fix even better than the original seems like a good fit.
- Welcome to the world of what a Crit Success looks like. You rolled a natural 100 on fixing Evie. I kind of had to think of what an amazing 'shoot for the moon' success could possibly look like for that situation. Direct Divine intervention that will result in a fix even better than the original seems like a good fit.
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
...Sigh
I really hate to do this guys.
The Good News
Is that I still love writing and am in fact still writing many different stories.
The Bad News
Is that "It's a Girls World" will no longer be one of them.
Frankly, the number of moving pieces and powers as well as the world Lilly lives in has grown to the point that I'd have to be a full-time writer to keep track of it all. I like writing her story, but I've bitten off more than I can chew with my current commitments in life.
Stick around, I'll be putting up some Lore stuff I've got stored away and answering any questions anyone wants to know about the world/magic/history etc.
I'm a bit sad, I know a lot of people wanted to follow Lilly to the end, I'm one of them. But I gotta be realistic and if there is one thing this story has taught me, it's my limits. Which will be very helpful for my other stories now that I have this experience under my belt. I don't feel that bad though, I mean I did write more than your average novel which is a hell of a lot longer than most quests last here.
Give me a follow if you want to see what I put up next. I have learnt alot through this quest and that's definitely going to be reflected the future.
I really hate to do this guys.
The Good News
Is that I still love writing and am in fact still writing many different stories.
The Bad News
Is that "It's a Girls World" will no longer be one of them.
Frankly, the number of moving pieces and powers as well as the world Lilly lives in has grown to the point that I'd have to be a full-time writer to keep track of it all. I like writing her story, but I've bitten off more than I can chew with my current commitments in life.
Stick around, I'll be putting up some Lore stuff I've got stored away and answering any questions anyone wants to know about the world/magic/history etc.
I'm a bit sad, I know a lot of people wanted to follow Lilly to the end, I'm one of them. But I gotta be realistic and if there is one thing this story has taught me, it's my limits. Which will be very helpful for my other stories now that I have this experience under my belt. I don't feel that bad though, I mean I did write more than your average novel which is a hell of a lot longer than most quests last here.
Give me a follow if you want to see what I put up next. I have learnt alot through this quest and that's definitely going to be reflected the future.
Yes!
We keep on juggling, and all the other analogies. I don't know who Sarah is, but everything worked out. Kinda.
Oh
It does suck to hear, but it doesn't have to be tragic. Considering everything, I'd like to think that we (and I don't know how I feel about including myself in the efforts) passed. As much as could be expected.
Like, this has been a unique experience in so many ways. It'll be sad to say goodbye to Lilly, but I hope that there can be some closure through questions asked.
(Like how you feel things would end for her, and us, with the trajectory she's been on. Stuff about Myah and her Ethos. Zack's Ethos. Flower, Lilly's mom, Mary, and Lilly's name. Is Lord Waters even a concern in comparison to all those other things? The dungeon, what's that all about? Then there's that NullError thing. What's it's deal, and what are the ramifications for our interaction with it? Was it always going to be a threat, and it just showed up early? Was accepting it's deal a mistake? If we hurt ourselves with this thing, how much does it effect Lilly's success overall? What's up with that sickness that's been spreading about? What are the options for Valerie? Did she kill her mom and her little brother? We're people sent after her? What are the odds that she 'joins the team' and how does that work? Back to Lord Waters, what's up with his underlings? Like with the rose and the bush, with that crazy guy. Then there's Kaymie. Was she being abused, when Lilly could've done something? Would opening a connection with her, like we had an opportunity to do, have been a mistake?
Phew. I didn't expect to have any questions when I started typing this out. I didn't even touch on meta stuff, or stuff geopolitically and culturally. Stuff for later, or even people more well informed.)
All that said, I'll definitely be looking forward to what comes next.
(I almost forgot to ask some pretty important stuff. Two things.
What are the odds that Lilly would be able to bring her brother back, and if it is possible then how far out would it be. Or I guess, what would she have to do to gain that ability.
Lastly, how did we do? This is quite the setup you have here, and even with that one month lost I'd like to think that we performed well. )
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
I suspected it was coming, but it's disappointing to see it happen.
Damnit. I almost wish we didn't get that followup if it was immediately followed by a "Yeah but the story's over now". But I suppose this at least ends it on a kinda high note.
Meh!
So what was Tower's deal anyway?
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