Ailee is a creature of vice - this truth is tattooed into fur. But she's a creature of virtue too, and chief amongst hers is imagination. With sufficient imagination you can perform certain miracles of the mind. She'd always known that she was heading into peril, and had always known that she did not possess the physical ability to fight the horrors she might find in the Heart. So instead she'd spent long hours in contemplation of violence.
She genuinely hadn't known if it would be of any use at all; if she'd be up against an unstoppable wall of force before which mousy strength was worth nothing. But she had determined that the one thing she could not abide was freezing, flinching, or hesitating at the critical moment. She'd be so ashamed if she went out like that that she'd come back as a ghost just to scream at any family members who burned incense at her grave. And so, she'd contemplated. In the small hours of the night she'd piece by piece peeled back ideas of restraint, dignity and social conditioning. She'd flexed her fingers and felt her heartbeat rise and made the decision again and again. She'd imagined every unstoppable horror she could, each death she could, and resolved to meet them all the same way:
Biting.
She's hurting, she's breathless, she's untrained but 'evil Jackdaw' was absolutely on her concept list of nightmares she might encounter in the Heart so she's in no way surprised. She goes for her friend with feral aggression and she'll contemplate the emotions later.
"Right now is what matters!" Reality itself revolts against those words. The walls twist and thrash and the stars grow fingers and claw away the veil. Time dissolves in saffron light, rolling back further, resolving from yellow to silver-white.
Thriss walks with you through this. She is young now - fierce and feral, an intelligence so mighty that she might understand the problems you deal with and so predatory she would hunt the stars themselves. She does not know of Cronus' forbidden lores. She does not know that cannibalism in ritual to the ancient father has more power than the gods would like to admit. But you always wonder if she might sense it.
Would that there was another like her.
"It is as you suspected, Director," said Thriss. "Humanity as a species is on the brink. Too many have vanished into genetic solipsism - entire ecosystems are sculpted to serve the preferences of individuals. They build their own paradises and spend lifetimes with their own thoughts made manifest. They have become a billion selfish creator gods, each building their own worlds to their own preferences, and then abandoning them due to boredom, apathy or death. Agony follows in their wake."
Dolce!
The paper ignites with black fire right as Artemis has begun to reach for it. "She lives yet," said Hades.
He has come to you in the form of a pyramid of black marble, vast and surrounded by columns woven with gold. Look at him askew, try only to glimpse the fragments - to look at him directly is to confront the reality that scale and stone are but playthings of the gods.
"I apologize," said the Pyramid in a voice that was worthy of it - don't listen to it directly either. "If I had given you future warning that would have enabled Artemis to launch an even more terrible ambush. Redana is trapped upon Hermes' path."
"She is among the wolves," confirmed Artemis, all the more fearsome for how she stands in relation to the pyramid. Hades may be that ancient structure but before it she is the hero who will adventure into its terrible depths without fear.
"You must become a bandage," said Hades. "You must stretch yourself taught and stanch the bleeding. Tend not to your own wounds."
Moments later, the bars pull away and Alexa enters through the door.
Alexa!
Ramses smiles like sunflowers - finger raising to point as the seeds begin to drip down onto the ground. You can feel the ants swarm across your feet as they gnaw away at the fallen seeds. The pink mist of Aphrodite starts to fade and your spear feels hot and wet beneath your fingers.
"Hunger for her," whispers Demeter. "Hunger for her. You want her. You want them. You want to bend and let them break you. You want to take their want. You don't want her to fill you. You want me to fill you. You want to drink me until you're free of you."
How is she like this? Her fingers sink into your shoulders like skin instead of stone. You've had the attention of gods before but nothing like this. She speaks in craving, and there is malice behind that craving.
You have a clear line to the kitchens and Isty is still with you, but Ramses and the Hermetics glitter in the radiance of the rising harvest moon and soon they will bloom.
Vasilia!
This is a place conditioned to obeying the whims of lionesses. There is no resistance from the Lanterns. The only one you must contend with is Demeter.
She walks behind you, casting seeds by the handful into every drop of blood that falls from your many cuts. Each patch explodes into a verdant riot of flowers, grains, tubers, and venus flytraps. Her calloused fingers tug away at your scarf and bite after bite of moths gnaw away at the fabric. Her hands pull your tail and stick into your mouth so that they can trace your teeth and always she's whispering into each of your senses.
"Lethe, lethe, lethe. Just sink back! It's right here, you'll be reorganized, you'll be in a new pattern. You are ripe, eggplant juicy, let me make you eat. It's just some indigestion, dear, it's just that you've grown so much that your trellis has ripped off the wall and now the rusty nails are showing and jagged and the clippers will cut you back to your knees. You want to taste it. Open your mouth wide, I can fit the entire river in there."
Bella!
You can smell more than the growth now. You can see more than the sensation. Demeter is still behind you, pulling the plough behind her shoulders leaving a deep channel through the steel, but you're more than just that. You can see more than the fact that these things grow; you can see how they can break.
It's just a matter of following the scent. How did you not smell it before? These saffron thieves had stolen one of Nero's treasures. You can smell it radiating out from the heart of the vessel. The enormous beam radiating down onto the planet - that's her. She's there, she built this, and she is more miserable and fragile than you've ever felt her. You just need to get through to the heart of this ship where they've weaponized Imperial suffering. Get there and you can break something that matters. Break that and it might be enough.
Coherent are everywhere, but you have Hera on your side.
You travel next in the care of Zatoichi the Blind Samurai.
In some measures this statement is inaccurate. Zatoichi is not blind, he is not a samurai, and his name is not Zatoichi. But in terms of driving style no statement could be more accurate.
The little white truck screams around mountain bends at speeds that require both a handbrake and a flexible attitude towards keeping all four wheels on the ground. The gear shift whirls and clacks from second to fifth and back to first with the wild speed and flawless footwork of deadly battle. The last second reaction to each corner speaks to the swordsman's blindness, the willingness to take off-road shortcuts through the underbrush speak to his connection with nature, and the unflappable stare of the gleaming sunglasses speak to his fearlessness. The roaring pulse of Mongolian throat-singing from his car's CD player that keeps him from hearing phrases like 'slow down!' and 'watch out!' and 'AAAAAAAAAAAA' represents his perfect battle focus.
If there's a silver lining to all of this it's that his driving is not meaningfully impacted when the windshield starts to become blocked by all the Assault Ribbons he's hitting.
In a way it's worse when he hits the flagstones. Yes, he's not putting you through wild turns and spins any more, but that just means he can floor the pedal and let the little truck roar to its fullest. Things are definitely worse when he hits the stairs and now you're going up diagonally, everyone thrown together into a heap against the back doors of the truck, left to helplessly watch as the Zatoichi takes one hand off the wheel to grope around under his seat for a bottle of water. He starts taking a drink right as the car hits the top of the stairs at a speed that sends it sailing spectacularly into the air and sets the bottle down right before the bone-shaking impact as it lands again.
Zatoichi then grips the handbrake and pulls it as high as it will go, throws the wheel hard to the left, and swings the entire truck around in a complete one-eighty degree spin. The truck screeches to a halt at last and the tangled heap of girls in the back of the vehicle finally sinks down to the floor.
Zatoichi hops out and walks around to the back, opening the doors like a gravedigger opens a coffin. "We're here," he grunts as he bites down on an eucalyptus drop, crunching it like a candy. "Princess Qiu's palace."
This is a palace worthy of the Empress of the Middle Kingdom. A great field of stone, filled with enormous black marble pillars rising regularly up to the sky like a great stone forest. A great terraced pyramid of stairs rises up, layer by layer, and continues within the palace itself. It is bright, bright in a way it rarely is - the sun dares not disappoint the Princess who dwells here. It is a field that calls for armies to stand upon it and their absence is deliberate, it is a palace that should be forbidden but the doors are open wide, it is a landscape that would make a spectacular battlefield and its potential is exciting.
Zatoichi is already climbing back into his truck. There's only one way back out of here and probably no one thinks much of it right now.
Response Level: 6 This was a trap a year in the making, and your journey was destined to end here.
The Order of Hermes: The Order of Hermes is present here in force. The Huntress Awakens: You are being observed, no matter where you are or what you do. Patterns of Enforcement: Investigative channels have opened from the Magos to the Order's forces; they will attempt to arrest any player character they encounter Deathless Murder: The dead will arise as bonsai The Jungle Hungers: Demeter is immanent, and she brings with her hunger True Hunter: This area has a second Boss
Redana!
It is Thriss who stands by your side as you look at the radiant wreckage of burning stars. An entire sector of space alight and ablaze. The laws of gravity tugging at the unleashed powers as the moon holds back the tsunami. Half the galaxy dead and bleeding all the blood-soaked colours of Poseidon. The Spear of Civilization thrown through the heart of the cosmos and sending it down to the House of Hades.
A lesson. A vision. A reminder.
"Humanity may have been the first," said Thriss and her voice was exultant, "but even they are not peers to the gods. When the end comes calling it shall be Zeus Storm-Mother who shatters the heavens and Poseidon One Eye who shatters the earth and Hades Root-Gnawer who consumes all within his gut and Demeter Fairest who brings forth new life, rampant and wild. And the wreckage shall be ours to inherit. From the fires of Ragnarok shall come the Wolftime."
She looks at you with a terrible vigor that you do not feel in your ancient bones.
"For all things, there is a season."
Alexa!
A smile cracks those ancient lips and brown-green eyes twinkle through the smoke. "If you're willing to die for something, Alexa, then the worst thing that can happen to you is being kept alive while you lose what you were trying to protect. So be honest about what you're prepared to die for, yeah?"
He stands up as flashes of sickly yellow-green light up amidsts the purple-grey smoke. Coherent - dozens of them. Setting up their grand and unwieldly weapons as priests scuttle for safety in all directions, the clanking shadow of a MRU looming over them, sculpted into the face of an empty fish.
"After all," he said, "your life isn't at risk here. The assassin can't hurt you until she's killed Dolce. All of this is delaying action."
That's not entirely a comfort - there are plenty of really bad non-death things that can happen when walking into a Coherent phalanx, and Isty and Ramses are well within the blast radius. Aphrodite's smoke is currently keeping the three of you concealed but not so much that you can close the distance to the Hermetics easily - but you do have a moment to think.
Dolce!
"You know, it's not often anyone takes an interest," said Artemis, going over the paperwork from behind discreet silver glasses. "Normally it's all running and screaming, and I guess that's at least quick."
She seems so normal, just like any other person. Some gods have a presence like a pulled bathplug, sucking reality in all around them, but Artemis emanates such a mundane stillness it's so easy to overlook the intense violence that dwells underneath that suit.
"Most of my assassins master a single art. This one has all four - and the price of that is that she must go through them in cycles, as the moon does. Planning, disguise, poison, violence. Planning did for Redana, disguise did for Birmingham, poison was for you, violence was going to be for Vasilia, coming around to finish off Alexa with planning again. Now the cycle is broken she has to kill you with violence before she can move on to any of the others. That means she's going to come at you directly and as soon as she's tooled up, and you will not be able to fight her - but at least she can't kill anyone else until you're dead first."
The Master of Assassins First, murder death. Chosen of Demeter: Overlord Stat The vessel of unrestrained life, unblemished by death. Threat to the World: You must pay a price to act against her Cycles of the Temple: The Master of Assassins can take on the aspect of each of the Temple Assassins in turn, though without their Rampancy. Gardener of Fate: Anyone killed by the Master of Assassins rises again as a bonsai tree - still alive, in a sense.
Vasilia!
This knife is an Anathame. It is your death, a fated dart that you cannot defend against, something that will be your end. An awful, wretched thing to have, but better that you have it than any other. For as long as you hold the fate of your death like this no other blade will claim your life and no copy can be forged. It will seek to betray you in ten million ways but it is limited to the manifestations of chance that can befall a knife. As your blood already speaks, it cannot be trusted - but it can be controlled and it can be destroyed.
Once you have time to come to yourself, you must make a decision of how to handle this wicked blade. If you break it damage a stat, but such will be the end of it. If you hold it, gain Protection from a Location Stat though it will seek to betray you when it can.
Bella!
Demeter sits kindly here and there, maiden of spring. Her hair is crowned with flowers and strawberries bloom about her feet and every glance at her is a <##########> of raw sensation. Here she pours you another glass of wine and there she places a blackberry in your mouth and now your bare feet are crushing the grapes beneath your toes. She is so easy to lose yourself in, the way she touches your neck and her teeth brush your ear and she's biting it so hard it really hurts but that's the only way she can whisper just how incredibly mad she is that you denied her promised murder -
But all of those sensations cannot lift your heart, heavier than all the gifts of Hermes. The storm of thorns slough off your regal clothing and Hera helps you lift your head tall. If nothing else, Bella, you are still beautiful.
And your beauty is illuminated. Lights in the dark ahead - knights in armour and plate, lanterns held across from their mighty swords, leading an army. The Lantern Knights light you up and you see a ripple of awe run through the crowd of menials. Silently they kneel before you in their dozens, their hundreds. You may be heartbroken, but you are a heartbroken queen.
"They cannot help you," said Hera. "But you can help them. That is power, Bella."
One magic! Soft and crinkly paper, old enough that its sharp edges have faded away enough to make it fit into your hands comfortably. There are only eight images in the sequence but nearly forty pages of commentary. When transitioning between stances #2 and #3 ensure to let your thumb brush each of your fingers. This discharges the accumulated energy and prevents mana burn. It's very daunting; there's a lot to remember! If you do it right then you should be able to complete the motion in exactly five seconds, but you've got to satisfy the conditions of each of those forty pages. It's a lot! It almost seems hopeless, doesn't it, learning to fly? Training at some arcane skill that may or may not ever resolve into a thing of beauty?
Hyra watches on sympathetically, wishing she could help but unable to do anything other than provide a fluffy pillow for Cyanis who is taking casual selfies and then spending extremely non-casual sessions sorting through the dozens of pictures, applying filters and photoshop, endlessly working towards the perfect prison mugshot. You can't leave these things to the monks!
You have a long autumn afternoon to practice before the ship will arrive to take you to visit the most powerful Princess in all the lands, with the triangle squad as your cheering section. Tell us about magic. Do you know any other spells, or is this your first? What is learning it like?
Daimyo Mengekai - he should never have been a soldier. He was a creature of golden fur and faultless trust. His gifts were a smile and a kind word. If only you hadn't had to mislead him so.
"Of course, Director," he said and oh, so gentle! "Simply put, we reclassify this world as destroyed. We signal the Sowers."
And isn't this atrocity upon atrocity? A blood-soaked innocent, still naive despite the oceans of blood upon his hand - he believes you so totally he doesn't see a problem with extending your lies on to your last pure children. Like a drop of ink in the water your falsehood extends twisting tangles to corrupt everything without end. And yet tick, tick, tick. The number on the Auspex counting down until the Spear of Civilization is finished grinds down so fast and there's no time left.
The emotions crush upon you, the agony of racing against time and losing - but they're not quite yours. You can feel its colossal heaviness but the full weight doesn't stand entirely upon you. Something has gone wrong with the weapon - you're experiencing someone else's pain and your own self becomes clearer in the contrast.
Dolce!
As warmth spreads through your veins your ears pop - Demeter is howling, howling so loud you have spent minutes entirely deaf without knowing, and that sound was hollowing you out from the inside. But as calm starts to settle in the kitchens the sound starts to resolve and it's not a howl at all. It's a song, sweet and twisted, the song of a maiden on an island all the wet and raging things in the ocean.
"You want to sail - you want to stop You want to thrive - you want to lie You don't want to see Let my hoe break your spine Let my hoe grind your bones Let my hoe till your soil Till you're all just compost It's the way you want it It's the way it is It's the way you want it Come back next year"
The voice fades away until it takes up unwelcome residence in the back of your mind, a twisting earworm that runs deeper.
Then - Ding! Order up! The receipt from the service desk slides into the back and you hang it up on a peg on raw instinct. It's the glyph of Artemis, a black circle of ink like an iris - a simple and ancient ritual and message: You are being hunted. The assassin knows you have evaded her first attempt and she must now ritually appease the Goddess of the Hunt by giving you notice and a few minutes head start before she tries to murder you again.
The door out is still locked.
Alexa!
"What are you on about? You don't give a single shit about the Alced," said Aphrodite between puffs of smoke. It hangs preternaturally thick and heavy, spreading to block out the external windows. "At best you care about these girls. So just steal a ship and get the fuck out of here. Leave the others to die, fuck 'em, what are they to you?"
The smoke flows grey-purple and faded pink, curling and cascading, filling the whole room and rendering everyone else flickering red silhouettes. "You go to Athena for tactical solutions to military problems. You come to me to get what you want."
Vasilia and Bella!
Green light strobes softly somewhere deeper in the Anemoi and the ships silence and stillness begins to break and stir like rain on a stagnant pool. Distorted footsteps echo in the distance - heavy boots stepping on soft and wet mush rather than sound absorbent alloy. You are not in immediate danger but this place is not safe.
Had something... happened to Sandsfern? Was this truly her? The leader she remembered could have driven this guilt from her mind. Her charisma would have been enough to drown her doubts for long enough to reach the next drink. Her smile would have been able to chain her heart in a moment. What had happened? Where was she? Why wasn't she convincing? Way wasn't she able to get inside her head and make everything else go away?
She turns her head to the side, looks at her mistress. She looked the same as always. Sounded the same as always. But this time her heart did not pound and her stomach did not churn. Something was different and if it wasn't with Sandsfern...
"I am glad," lied Robena, for she had to shed all her oaths now. "That you are content, for such was my final service. I have died here tonight, Lady Sandsfern. My oath is fulfilled, and I can be at peace that you were pleased with my service."
She dropped her axe. Its mighty weight sinks inches into the soft earth and it stands tall like that.
Ailee looks at the book pile with deep suspicion. She's not touching that. That's got mold. That's unhygienic.
And besides, she's never given a single damn about first editions or figured out why some people go ga-ga for them. What a worthless hobby! You're getting the same book but with extra typographical errors, and often with the unspoken assumption that you'll never actually wind up reading it. And a shelf full of lovingly maintained first editions provokes the same suspicion that this heap of moldering antiques in a stack do: this isn't for people who like reading. To go digging through this heap of trash for buried treasure is the act of a treasure hunter, not the act of someone who loves books.
There exists a middle ground. There exist bookshops where everything is dry and musty and just faintly yellowed, books with broken spines held together by tape, books where some sociopath might have written commentary in the margins, books that you might pick up to find a hidden letter drop out of. And even then none of that stuff is necessary, or even desirable in and of itself - they're just side effects. What makes a book valuable is the story inside of it, and any physical damage to the work itself is only valuable insofar as it means that someone loved the story so much that they tore apart the physical container trying to get more of it, trying to live it one more time. If the story was somehow detached from paper and placed in a realm where a little number incremented by one every time somebody looked at it that would communicate that same sense of love.
But she doesn't say any of that. She doesn't even let out an acidic quip at the professor, even though she's got an audience. She... knows she probably won't have time for any more books, and she's going to have to go to the Heart with the stories she knows already.
"No," she said. "I just wanted to be dry."
But did she? Her eyes turn towards the doorway and it seems like the rain is calling to her. Melancholy swims uphill against emotions fixed in tattoo-fire, but she flexes her mind and tidies it all away. Then she glances at her new friend. "If you need to fight these guys, I can probably take the guy in the hawaiian shirt."
There is a special magic to a market like this. It's not about what you want as much as what they have that you might find a use for. Three things catch the eye, and with the gold given to you by Rose you might purchase no more than one of them.
The first is a scroll with detailed instructions on how to perform a magic spell. Spells are tricky to get the head and hands around and you'd expect this one to take from weeks to months to learn depending on how much focus you can give it. The reward for such effort would be that you might reduce the call of gravity upon yourself, letting you run and leap like a figure from a show.
The second is a true curiosity - a wax-sealed envelope that claims to have a code for invitation to Princess Kikil's website. It's a challenge! Kikil designs fortresses and her website is no different; the legend of it runs through high and low parts of the world. With this invitation you could take part in the great exploration and try to uncover the treasures the Hive Princess conceals within.
And finally, something dangerous - an Assault Ribbon, twisting and thrashing inside a long glass tube. These are Princess Qiu's weapons, unleashed in great swarms to distract, delay and bind so that she might close the distance to finish off each opponent. This one flows in electric blue and writhes like a snake before tying itself into beautiful woven knots and bows, playing dead for a time.
You stand upon a beach alongside Lord Hades. You watch three figures sprinting away, heels kicking up splashes as they cut across the gently rolling tide, trailing their fine uniforms behind them in fragments. One blooms with blood as a spear bursts from their back and the other two come to a halt to first scream in horror, and then scream at each other. Like mad beasts these comrades fall upon each other with claw and blade.
Hades looks away. His gaze instead falls on the rushing tide of vicious wooden figures that pour in their thousands from a great nozzle twenty meters above the ground. His gaze traces up the enormous thing's form - spacer silver banded with gold, beaded through with the green weavings, branches enough to wrap the Yakanov and eat it like a tiger might eat a dog.
A tear glitters in the eye of Hades, and you feel regret.
The clock swings back further. It is drawn, it is called, it hunts. You feel reality click into place like it was made to be this way and everything else was but a dream.
Your auspex recovers first, though at first you are terrified it is broken. No, not broken - that it has reset to the standard set for it by Nero. It is flooding your mind with data in the way it did before it learned your limits. For a moment it's terrifying but then you realize you're handling it. Sort of - you're not understanding it, but it's washing through the back of your mind without crushing you. Perhaps it's like the ocean - you have learned you can be on the same world as the ocean without being made to drink it all.
But you don't need to drink the ocean to know it is whipped by a storm. The specifics flow in maddening detail but you know that the galaxy is at war, and that it is your will that it be so.
You sit on a velvet red pillow, the court shrouded from you by a red curtain veil. You sit on what isn't yet a throne with the legendary wolves of Ceron below you - guarding the stairs leading up to you, engaging each other in debate, pushing miniatures across maps of a burning world.
You look in the mirror and see yourself as Director Nero, pretender to the Imperial Throne.
Alexa!
"Keep your spear, Alexa," said Artemis, and terribly it was indeed pity. "This is a murder a year in the making and all the forms have been observed - and you have not observed Athena's forms of defense. Neither I nor she are positioned to help you."
She gave you a complicated expression, like she was compromising a principle as an act of charity by saying this. "It is too late to prepare, Alexa. You need something more... impulsive."
She folds her papers under her arms and leaves. In the space behind her are two choices. There is Aphrodite sitting at the bar, habitually flicking a broken lighter in search of a spark to light his cigarette. And there is Ares, outside in the void of space, grinning and knocking on the glass.
Dolce!
[Overcome with Grace: 6]
You try to make your way through the kitchen but you can't resist tasting a passing dish - and then another. How could you resist when it smelled this delicious? When everything smelled... so...
You try to taste another but it's snatched away from you. The chef crams it into her face like that is the only place it might be safe, and you find yourself reaching to prove her wrong...
The blow shocks you. One of the cooks has struck another in the last gesture either of them gave as a thinking entity, because after that both of them have their teeth in the same bone and are pulling back and forth and snarling like dogs. All around you the kitchen is falling into a frenzy - and as you watch you can see those who fight over the scraps are physically withering as though they were weeks starved. And you can feel that cold, consuming hunger raise inside you too.
The assassin looks over at you from the doorway, a broken vial at her feet and its scent is starvation. She gives you a smile and a wave, then closes the door and slides a bar into place, locking you inside.
Vasilia!
You raise your head to see an elegant horror.
The practice of bonsai is a traditional art for a genewright for nothing is less becoming than engineering an ugly species. So one begins with a plant, weaving it on a genetic level with precisely targeted serums and on a physical level with cables and wires. One must learn the tricks of scale, what the plant is capable of and what it will try to get away with should it be permitted. One must learn synergistic plants and practices; when moss will add to the beauty of one's creation and when it will smother its delicate roots.
For all of that, this is a masterwork. The leaves hang like puffs of clouds at the end of twisting branches, four distinct almost circular shapes. The roots are thick and strong and give the impression of enormous age. The plant's crown fades from green to yellow with just the smallest tip of fire red. All along its trunk mossy patches glitter with tiny flowers that smell far too sweet and strong for their size. There are a great many trials to create a thing of such beauty, and it is a great statement that the artist was able to do so with a plant that was to burst out of a person's skull.
Ivory Smile is dead. Through his brain and face grows this terrible bonsai, roots running in and out of his bloodless flesh, delicately falling autumnal leaves catching on his shoulders. He is dead but he still moves - and how he moves! He moves with a plant's carelessness towards pain, slowly and achingly, but with enormous strength. He shoves Bella aside and storms towards Vasilia.
The fact that Vasilia's name is engraved upon the knife he wields makes his intention perfectly clear.
Bella!
There are many shocks here. Seeing a human dead in defiance of Imperial law is not the least of them, but added to that a priest killed in this way? All mortals are called to the House of Hades in time and to commit this sacrilege speaks of a truly immortal hubris.
Another shock, though, is that this is a new way to kill.
You know so many ways to deal death - so many ways someone might hurt Redana. You've never seen this before, this arboreal zombification. How are you to guard against it? What are its limits? What are its capabilities? The Auspex is racing to find out but this is new to it too. It tells you what it can - the engraving on the dagger is sacred to Artemis, but when you look at the tree your vision flashes with the green of hunger and the blue of hatred and the name Demeter, Demeter, Demeter rings out in your eye like the thoughts of a fearful granddaughter.
You know from the chill in your bones and the sudden empty craving in your stomach that the Harvest Goddess personally wants Vasilia dead. And for once in your life you don't have a biological imperative hardcoded into your being telling you to protect her. You can choose to let her die safe in the knowledge that veridian craving will not then fall upon you.
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