Winning vote:
[] "Slaughter artists are mainly accepted if they're useful."
There's no one simple answer to Olerac's question, so you excuse yourself for a moment to give the fish-thigh to Dad and then come back out to him and to Beti. Dad is the best cook in the family, so he'll know what goes best with the fish, and since Mom's doubtless trying to catch up on her sleep, it'll give you a little privacy with Olerac, sitting beneath Beti's boughs.
"There's a few different things you could do," you tell him. "Especially with how good you are with veils, we should be able to scrub it out of your spirit or get it quiet enough that almost no one should notice. I think that the mark gets deeper and harder to get rid of the more you do." He nods. "That wouldn't be easy. I might be able to make some pills that would help it. We'd definitely have to focus on that right away, because it's like getting a stain out of clothes in some ways. The longer you let it set, the harder it is to scrub out. It would be something you'd have to commit to."
"Would I have to give up on death madra completely?"
"I don't think so." You open your spirit up to Beti, and the two of you perform a few demonstrative cycles as you sip on the limited aura of your home. Olerac's Jade. He can sense what you're doing. "People know that I use a bit of death madra, but it's more that of a scavenger than a killer, so I don't get much comment about it. But you'd still have to stop pushing for advancement for a bit if you had to clean your spirit like we're talking about."
Your friend listens avidly. "But you think it's something I have to do?"
"I think it's something you should consider, because it might be the best option," you say. "But it's not something I think definitely is necessary. I worked as a courier for an Underlady for a bit while I was Jade.
She would give me a token that showed I was going on her business, and even people two stages higher than me would rather bow and stand aside and wait for half an hour than risk crowding me and her taking that as being rude to her indirectly. She's not a slaughter artist, but it wouldn't have mattered if she was, not about this. She is an Underlady. It's worth almost anything to be on her good side."
"An Underlady." There's an awe to the title, for him. "So she's as strong as... what, as strong as your tree?"
You surprise both of you with a laugh. "Much stronger. Beti's not
that strong compared to some other Truegolds." Olerac's eyes are very large. "Remember that day when my dad got hurt and the margravine lit up the entire town with her Ruler move? She was a strong Truegold at the time, and she's an Underlady herself, now."
"Hard to believe anyone can reach those levels," says the boy who didn't get to witness Monarchs clashing. "But that seems... hard." He frowns. "If the Temple is stronger than the Seishen Kingdom, it seems like a bad idea to try to assume I can show up there so strong that they don't mind that I smell like slaughter. Even if I go hunting cave bears every week or something."
"There's other options," you say, which get his attention away from navel-gazing about how to hunt bears. "There's a few places where slaughter artists can be accepted even as slaughter artists. Like this."
You take out one of the dream tablets Prachi loaned you, warn Olerac about what the contents are and what sort of violence he's going to have to witness, and wait a couple minutes as his eyes go unfocused and he examines the contents of the tablet. He doesn't seem particularly rattled as he gives it back to you, but you suppose that he's had to handle a lot of death compared to you, even if most of it was scavenging natural traces of death. "There's some jobs where a slaughter artist can be accepted for being a slaughter artist. Soldiers and champions of various sorts, for instance, like that tablet. They aren't really well-liked, but they can be accepted, just... I think there's like general social limits. Slaughter artists might find that people want them to check in a lot, or not be out alone, things like that. It's limiting."
You definitely understand the concern, even if only academically. You might know Olerac, but others don't. Especially for a stranger, it's not too hard to imagine that an unknown slaughter artist is a potential threat, even if it's someone like Olerac. It would be terrible if
you were seen like that. You don't even like to imagine someone looking at you and fearing for their life, but it's not like it would be unfair to be worried.
When you run out of words, Olerac is silent for a minute, deep in thought. Eventually, he rouses himself a fair bit, and hands you back the tablet. "Thank you," he says. "I need to think a little more, but that's helpful. I know what sort of thing I have to consider going forward." He manages a smile, as uncomplicated as he gave you in the duel for the Hinterlands' future. "I'm also going to be curious to see how strong you've gotten. I don't think I can beat you now, not even after advancing to Gold, but... I have some surprises. And I don't think you're all the way ready for Argen. It should be fun to try. And thank you for everything else, too." He holds up the scripted cage with the wolf's Remnant.
You let him make his good-byes and go on his own way. You're starting to smell the fish cooking, and it seems like Dad's added some lime to flavor it.
{Go about another fifty feet, then take a sharp right turn,} Etaja instructs you.
It's now after dinner, but since you're back in the area, Etaja has asked you to come out to his place. It's been a bit, so he's saving you time by giving you directions.
It's weird to think about, but this is actually only the third time you've ever met face-to-face. You met just after turning five, then just after turning six... and now here you are, more than five years later. Now you're not just a Copper, either, but a full Gold.
This time, you're ready for the transport. The last time you were out here, Etaja had pulled you from the normal patch of rocks and thin aura where his hideout was, and you noticed nothing of the transition. This time, with Field's Strength speeding your thoughts and senses to the utmost, you manage to catch the tiniest flash of a profoundly deep blue, just for an instant, before you're in his place, the lean-to shack he'd set up on the side of Cradle's metaphorical wall.
It's still a strange place: there's a pool to rooms full of water you're not equipped to visit, and a little low table you both can kneel at here. The walls you're a lot more able to see, now that you're more advanced. It feels like something
like scripts, although it's not triggering your Copper sight or Jade sense quite the same way, holding back the pressure of rocks that would otherwise squeeze this space away. The script-alikes seem to be woven out of seaweed. Some of them are doing other things: one pushes a breeze of sweet air to you, one is putting out light...
"You really are way too curious for your own good, yeah?" Startled, you look down and see Etaja, lounging bonelessly on the opposite side of the table. He's still talking in your head, not out loud, but somehow his voice still sounds different in a way you can't quite put your finger on when he's right here.
You shrug. "It's interesting! And I probably won't get to see it like... maybe ever again?"
"True." Etaja doesn't try to pretend otherwise. "But can I have my bracelet back for a moment?"
You remove it and hand it to the Vroshir. "What are you doing with it?"
"Didn't we
just talk about you being too curious?" A mouth full of sharp teeth flashes in a brilliant smile. "Nothing too big," he says. "Now that I know your world a little better, I can tune this to help me sense your madra powers better. It probably won't be much difference you can see. I wouldn't have asked you to come out here just for this, but since it was handy, I figured I'd take the chance, yeah?"
You try to watch Etaja work, but you fail miserably. Your eyes want to slide off what he's holding, and no matter how hard you focus your eyes and spiritual sense on what he's doing, all you get is a sense that Etaja is holding a bracelet and there's some obscure blurring motion hiding the details.
Eventually, you give up, and try to scan the walls again. You find a decoration on the wall that you hadn't found earlier, what with the weird anti-noticing-things effect Etaja has going here. Your first impression is that it's like a painting, but the more you try to look at the picture, the more you feel like something is surrounding you. It's not
actually shifting. You can still see your normal surroundings. You feel... maybe like you would if you were linking emotional feelings with the painter as you feel the scene. It's not quite the same as a jade tablet, being way more artistic than literal, and a frozen
moment more than an experience.
The scene is from underwater, amidst a forest of kelp and coral, with a collection of strange-looking fish and crabs swirling around, never too close to the painter, observing from beyond reach. Just like the sealife is separate, so is the land. The painter is staring up, up through the last couple dozen feet of sea, up towards a beach. A beach she cannot manage, so distant and yet so close. To climb up on it would mean gasping death, and so she has never done so. It is nearer than it has ever been, and yet even just to walk upon its shore is impossible, not just now, but ever, for painter and beach shall part, never to be this close again—
You gasp, pulling your attention away from the painting, breathing hard as you try to avoid being overwhelmed by the melancholy the painter poured into it.
"Huh," Etaja says. "I thought you'd either not be able to see that or else it wouldn't draw you in. A lot of you air-breathers find Creinthea's heartscapes only confusing." He's not worried, so you weren't in danger.
"What... what is it?"
"A heartscape, painted by Creinthea, the last great artist of my world. Her post-evacuation masterwork, drawing on the Circle of the Mystery of the Mind as much as mundane paints. She called it 'The Last Island of Nekton', and gave it to me as thanks for the population, including her family, settling well into the seas of the world Amorenthus." Etaja is unusually somber while reciting this. "A trifle, as most ascended beings would consider such art, of only middling value, but it's the most prized thing I own." He pauses, and big white teeth flash again. "Life-saving tools excepted, of course." There's still only a shadow of his usual casual air in what he says.
"What happened? Why did she feel so... sad?"
Etaja is silent for perhaps twenty seconds. "Nekton's gone, kid." He's told you that before. Last time, he said you were too young to hear the story. This time, you're older, and far more cunning. You stay quiet, too. If he wants to share, he will, and letting him think is more likely to let it spill than reminding him that he feels some duty to not twist you to his views. Eventually, he keeps going. "I discovered it once I ascended. Nekton's physical laws weren't as strong as some Iterations, and they were starting to break down. There already were forgotten corners where they'd corroded faster than expected. They'd already started to attract ██████. A couple centuries hence, it would come to a head. Our fate was to have the world break. I went to the Abidan, first, although Nekton was outside of their system. They gave me sympathy, and said that when the damage became too much, they'd help evacuate the survivors. I asked why we had to wait. They said that saving everyone now, severing Nekton's fate, would harm other nearby Iterations, killing many times more than it would save." Etaja's voice is utterly flat and grim. "But those other Iterations were never my home. I went to those who
would save all of my people. And this is the result: the greatest work of our greatest artist is about the pain of never seeing the lands of our home, now gone just as much as the seas she'd also never see again. It's about the pain of being somewhere not our home, no matter how well Amorenthus treats us." The torrent of words finally stops. "████, sorry, kid, I didn't... I shouldn't put this on you. We all live with our decisions, is kind of the point of the heartscape, yeah?" He hands back the silver bracelet that's the symbol of your oath to each other.
You take it. It doesn't look or feel any different than before. "Thanks for letting me see it, anyway." Then you sit up straight. "Wait! I wasn't thinking. I should have brought you some of the fish. You eat fish, right? You've been here for six years and you haven't even tried any of our food. Do you have some soil? I have some seeds; I can at least get you some fruit or veggies if you—"
Etaja's laugh is out loud, which is still a little confusing with the mind talk. "Don't worry. I'm trying to touch your world as lightly as possible, remember? I've been using all the tricks I can since I dropped in not to leave any sign, to be completely unremarkable. I'm doing fine for myself. Information is really the best gift you can give me. Now, shoo, let's not leave any clues we don't have to that there's anything weird going on with you."
This time you miss the blue flash. You're just out in the rocky landscape again.
Risshon keeps having to fight the urge to rip the veil from his spirit. It's not nerves, or not exactly. He's still Truegold, so even under the veil he's not in any danger. Even the fact that his flying sword isn't with him isn't really an issue. Part of the reason for getting it to begin with is that it's enough to hold attention: people pay less attention to where else they've seen his face when it's always next to something so eye-catching.
Really, though, a tight veil is just uncomfortable because it
is a veil. His spiritual sense is almost never this weak or restrained. But no Lowgold should have senses like he does, so he has to chafe under this restriction even as he makes his way to the warehouse on the east side of Great Crevasse wearing a cheap, paint-splattered outfit that makes him look like he sides buildings for a living. With his hair down, jewelry off, dressed down, core veiled, and flying sword left behind... there's little here that most people would recognize as 'Risshon'. He's just an ordinary day laborer, absorbed in his own little world, same as a thousand others on every street.
Eventually, he reaches the right location, and goes up to a worker's side entrance on right warehouse, and pounds on the sheeting until someone answers the door. "Yeah?" is all the security guard offers.
"Forgot to return a book to the foreman," he says. "He'll rip me a new one if I don't get it back, and I don't want those sort of stars below."
The guard chuckles. "He can be like that," she admits. "Kind of the evil king of his own domain, but don't tell him I said that."
"I promise I have nothing but justice and hope in my heart."
"Then I guess I've got a bright future, huh?" The guard undoes a couple of locks and opens the door. It's not the most nor the least awkward exchange he's ever had with their group's passwords.
Once the door is safely shut behind him, then the guard looks significantly more serious. Risshon doesn't think they've met before, but she still gives him significantly more courtesy, suggesting she knows enough to recognize he must outrank her. "The other two are in the manager's lounge, sir. You are the third of three I was told to expect."
"Thank you," Risshon says, and gratefully loosens his veil enough to not be so uncomfortable. This
is a real warehouse, too, but at this time of day, at this time of year, it's got no one but the security guard who is supposed to be here, which makes it decent cover. Ignoring the handful of scattered shipping containers, he heads for the only decently-appointed room in the whole place.
The other two are already in here, as he'd been informed. They'd all sensed each other the moment he stopped veiling himself so tightly, so there's no surprise. Enohel is just sitting on the floor, cycling, while Geneil is methodically eating all the peanuts out of the bowl of mixed nuts Enohel had set out for refreshments. The Brightflare elder doesn't even slow down as Risshon takes one of the unoccupied chairs. He only stops when Risshon starts the conversation. "How fucked are we?"
Geneil pauses, then has one more peanut before he responds. "We should be fine," he says. "I'm still monitoring any fluctuations in fate, but nothing has thrown me off since that crazy fight a continent away."
"That's
something," Risshon says, scrubbing his face with his hands. They are all theoretically co-equal in this room, after all, so he's not concerned about propriety. It's hard to be, with these two. "What are the odds that Monarchs would just accidentally strip away all our esoteric defenses?"
"They were never 'stripped'." Geneil looks personally affronted at the suggestion, as well he might, since it is his path of dreams and fire that their conspiracy has used since its infancy to try to keep themselves undetected: he scans for and burns away possible futures where they are found out. "It was only a brief period where I couldn't use my techniques, and that was equally true for other oracles and seers. Odds are no one even was looking to begin with, and even if someone picked up
something from that couple days, they wouldn't have context. I'd say we're far more likely to be found out through standard channels than fate reading. Especially after..."
The Brightflare elder joins Risshon in glaring at their third member. Enohel hasn't moved since Risshon came in, but they shift, now, raising their bald head to look at the others. "Sorry, sorry! Not even I can guarantee a mob follows plans. I stir up the hostility we need as I can, but opportunity arises where it chooses."
"Do you know how many people you killed with that stunt with the elevator and the fight with the crowd?"
Enohel chuckles. It's a low sound, like every sound they make. Enohel has very little left to themself any longer: from hair to voice to health,
everything else has been sacrificed for power and ambition. All three of them are Truegold, but only Enohel can weave soulfire. When combined with their horrifically powerful path of death and destruction, Risshon firmly believes this monster could defeat most of the Seishen Kingdom's Underlords in a one-on-one confrontation. "Ahh, I apologize, I apologize! I know you don't want unnecessary bloodshed. The moral compass of our little club you are, Risshon."
Risshon holds his ground. "You know the deal," he says.
Enohel nods, their head sagging down again, as if meeting eyes is too tiring to keep up for long. "I do, I do. I promise, it was a calculated risk. If things had played out a very little differently, my attack would have turned public sentiment against the Luxe
and weakened the clan at just the right moment for the Brightflares to seize sole control of the city. That would make the rest of the plan easier; with the Luxe on the back foot, fewer overall deaths would have been needed. It is not my fault the Brightflares were unready to seize the moment. Did they not have a Truegold oracle to tell them to strike while the iron was hot?"
Elder Geneil crosses his arms, rejecting the implied slight. "You can't just launch a plan like this without consulting us! If Brightflare had been too eager to capitalize on a tragedy, we look guilty instead of just seizing a chance. That was
my price, that the School must genuinely be able to call me a rogue if you can't finish your plan."
Enohel hangs their head further. "I apologize, I apologize again most sincerely!" It's still little louder than a whisper. "You must forgive my limited viewpoint, down here in the mud with the rest of the rabble, nowhere near your exalted stations."
Risshon's stomach turns as he watches Enohel pretend to subordinate themself. This is a monster he's allied himself with, and he knows it, but it had been necessary. This project needs money, so much that it would be hard to pull off with less than three Truegolds to bankroll it, and too few Truegolds were truly unhappy with the status quo. It was so difficult to find trustworthy allies. The Stars Below is not a happy society, but its leaders still must meet at times, or their cooperation will fall apart.
Enohel gets past their theatrics, none too soon for Risshon's tastes, and continues with business. "Risshon, how is the next weapon coming?"
"It will be some months yet," he has to say. "If it were easy, you wouldn't need me. Your people won't throw this one away, will they?" The last is just defending his own position. It is true that he has to be cautious: when he provides Nightworm Venom weapons to Enohel's assassins, he always gets the precursors from different sources for reasons that could be innocent and does the final work himself. It's one of the few things that their group can source that will let a Lowgold strike down a Truegold. A few successful assassinations had helped set back the Seppelin family and the Bloody Bayou Sect, buying more time, but Enohel's people losing one of the weapons, to a Truegold Luxe woman who then advanced to Underlord, no less, is still one of their more prominent failures.
"I see, I see." Enohel's head bobs, acknowledging the barb. "Please, do contact me when you are ready. It's important! The next time the Prince visits, we'll have our best chance."
"We don't have to kill him next time. We'll have plenty of opportunities."
"Will we, will we?" Enohel tilts their bald head as if considering this. "Oh, that's right, you weren't here when our friend said the news!" One half-dead arm flops to point at Geneil.
The Brightflare sighs. "It's true, unfortunately. The First Prince has been Truegold for a while, now, and I recently got correspondence from the Brightflare branch in the capital that the king has hired a tutor. An Akura Underlord, apparently, allegedly even a
blood member of the family, who's tutoring the prince in soulfire. He could become an Underlord practically any time."
Risshon winces internally. Doubtless this tutor is a wash-out as far as the superpower that is the Akura clan considers things, but even an echo of an echo of the Akura clan could know secrets the Kingdom doesn't. If Prince Seishen Kiro advances to Underlord, that will make both Geneil's and Risshon's goals harder. "It will be expensive," Risshon says, looking at Geneil as he says it: even with Risshon contributing his own expertise, there's a lot of expenses that have to get covered, and Geneil has had to contribute to that. "But I'll finish the weapon in time."
Less than one year before the attempt on the Prince's life
Just over two years before the Dreadgod's arrival
Most of Hinterville is not much changed since the last time you were here, as you find as you go around and meet with and greet everybody you haven't seen in far too long. Only a few people have moved away or died from age or running into something dangerous. For most of the adults, they don't even really look much different after growing old for two years. They do all remark on how much you've grown, and speak approvingly about your Goldsign and about Beti, although Beti seems a little scary to a lot of them. The older kids are older, the babies are now little kids, and there's a few new babies. Even the upcoming wedding hasn't shown much change yet. The Silent Hinterlands aren't as given to pageantry as the big city, so there's mostly just an understanding that the evening before the wedding people will put up some decorations in the main square, and then Dad and Thantiriiz will say some meaningful things and that counts as a wedding ceremony.
There
are a few more people in town who have reached Gold. If it was about one in six or seven adults before, now it's almost one in five, a dozen or so new Golds across several hundred people. Hinterville is still a place of mostly Jades with only a little bit of Gold, but it still feels a little weird to you. There's not much reason for it. They've just found a few more Remnants than they used to, for whatever reason. If anything, it means that people are more normal about the fact that all of your friends are taking a couple days to ready themselves to advance to Gold and then take in the Remnants you provided, although all three are advancing absurdly quickly as the Hinterlands consider such things.
A couple days after your arrival, you have a chance to meet with the bride and groom. Bosc doesn't look very different to your eyes, although you'd swear you see her smile more than she used to. Jaylon, your future brother-in-law, you never really... knew well. Jay is one of those people who never quite seems to know what to say to kids so he doesn't talk to them if he can avoid it. Now, you're not really a kid any longer, not as he'd see it. A Gold who has a job and education in the Seishen Kingdom can't be a little kid any more, not even if you're eleven.
Which makes for an awkward little lesson now, because you and he are together getting lessons from a disinterested Bosc. "And then all you do is just take it away." She's slumped against a bench, cheek against the back, and just waves her hand as she demonstrates her version of the Desiccated Valley.
Perhaps the thing you've found hardest to adjust to on returning home is how comparatively weak the Jades here feel to you, now. Bosc's madra is insubstantial and thin compared to yours. It's less potent than Gardenia's was, the first day you met her.
That doesn't mean that Bosc is useless as a teacher, though. In actuality, it's turned out to be the exact opposite. Bosc only grudgingly helps out with the orchards and has never been given to consistent cycling practice. So when she's actually trying to work, she has to do it with a weak core and second-rate madra channels... and she still
can.
Her Verdant Valley, even when she's inverting it to work like the Desiccated Valley, is like a handful of needles falling on the plant she's working on. It won't heal them. The technique won't stretch very far. It won't reach multiple plants at once.
What it
does do is deliver extremely focused jolts of life madra at very precisely the parts of the plant she's trying to grow. Where you might just pour power into a plant and let it figure out how it needs its leaves and branches and roots, Bosc has to do that herself. It's efficient on one level, but it has to be mentally draining to do work like that. It's like she's so dedicated to being lazy that she's passed out the other side, into a field of direct and intensive effort dedicated to studiously discovering the minimal work needed to achieve things, no matter how difficult it might be to achieve.
Given that she's already manipulating life aura with that level of precision, it's understandable while she's able to use the same technique to equally
reduce it.
All that is to say that when Bosc waves her hand, the dandelion that's the victim of today's demonstration gradually dies. You're following what she's doing, how she's weaving the Ruler technique. The life aura weaves into a solid barrier, a rotating, semi-porous boundary field that spins and stretches outward,
pulling life aura and madra from inside out, yanking out the very power of life inside and not letting anything outside reach it. Her technique is even slower than Dad's, and not just because she's two stages less advanced: her Desiccated Valley isn't trying to be quick. It's trying to be efficient, instead. She doesn't suck all the power out instantly. She does it slowly. So slowly. The dandelion's lifeline slowly wilts and fades as its power gradually leaks into the air and is sucked away.
"And then you just do it two hundred more times every hour of every single day forever and ever. I'm going to go get some tea." Bosc gets up and goes into the house, leaving just you and Jaylon and Beti in your backyard.
Jaylon rubs his hands together and you feel him reach out with his madra to try to emulate Bosc's technique. Jaylon's worked in the orchards for a long time, now, but he's one of the people who just wandered in out of the Silent Hinterlands beyond the town one day, needing a job. He'd only had a weak wind-based path when he came in, so your family had taught him enough of the Forrester path to let him help more. Now it's looking like he and your sister are the most likely ones to inherit the Forrester orchards, so the family has to get him all the way up to speed.
You try not to say anything that might be discouraging as he tries to copy Bosc's work. He's not outright bad or anything, but it's... not good. You experiment a little to the right of him. As you'd noticed before, pumping the 'life vacuum' full of death madra makes it a little easier to get the technique to work, but you... don't do that in most of your practicing.
"You're pretty good at that," Jaylon tries, looking awkward as he tries to figure out the best way to talk to a not-kid-or-adult.
You recognize that he's trying to get to know you and hoping for tips, so you take pity on him. "It's a funny technique! I find it's helpful for me to picture that I'm trying to pull something apart." You demonstrate by having your Goldsign hands lock fingers in front of you and then yank on the wrists with your physical hands. The Goldsigns tear a little, but their insubstantial material flows back as soon as you stop exerting force; you're not hurting yourself, just giving a visual. "The technique needs to
encircle its target, but it can't be
at the target."
Jaylon tries again, then you demonstrate one more time, then he tries one more time. He's getting better, but he still shakes his head ruefully. "I take it back. You're
really good."
"I'm just very good at Ruler techniques. It's my specialty. And you'll get this one. It isn't something we need as much as the main growing technique, so it's fine to pick it up over time."
"Do you really think so?"
"Part of the reason my brother and I keep having to leave and do other things before we come back to town is that that's the case. Hinterville is quiet and safe and secure and things don't change that quickly. Barlett and I have too much curiosity. I have so much that I even infected a tree with it!" You wave three hands at Beti. "But I think we both feel better if home's in good hands. This is part of that. You'll do fine. Now, watch this and see if it helps." Even if Jaylon still seems intimidated by your Goldsign, he still leans forward to watch avidly.
You'd hardly call yourself a master of the Desiccated Valley yet, but you've learned it, now, and Jaylon is eager to follow suit. You eventually work out that he's less intimidated to learn it from you than have your dad explain it while potentially looking disappointed and much scarier.
That's probably flattering, all things considered.
As Keras picks up the
Desiccated Valley, they have learned that this is one technique that becomes easier and quicker if it includes death madra along with life. As such, while this is still a
basic technique, it is life-and-death aspected already. Keras can use just a life-based version for gardening, but the full version will be ready to test when sparring against their friends as soon as the three of them advance to Gold.
The death madra has as association that isn't just about killing its target. What is that association?
[] Fear of Death
The death madra is diffuse, tenuous. It won't hurt peer opponents, but its presence will feel oppressive. Victims will become more aware of the feeling of death, which will discourage or demoralize most of those you face, especially enemies of chance.
[] Death of senses
The death madra is confusing, baffling. It doesn't directly hurt peer opponents, but it interferes with sight and hearing a little. Victims won't always notice immediately: it tends to make it easier to miss things in the corner of one's eyes or quiet noises.
[] Exhaustion
The death madra is chilling, draining. It doesn't make it harder to do anything, but it just seems to sap energy and stamina a little more than it should, for basically everything. It won't do much immediately, but the longer a fight drags, the more it matters.
...Of course, regardless of which of these three options you found, if you
really tried to use it to kill, it might just do that.
