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<<nobr>><<set $bestlantern to 2>> <<set $Eldionfreed to 0>> <<set $Wounds to 0>> <<set $SaltcastConsideration to 0>> <<set $Ornatekey to 0>> <<set $forcedoor to 0>> <<set $Greymothertoken to 0>> <<set $missScore to 0>> <<set $hitScore to 0>> <<set $score to 0>> <<set $star to false>> <<set $moon to false>> <<set $sun to false>> <<set $seconds to 0>> <<set $Soimatoken to 0>> <<set $Amaristoken to 0>> <<set $Eldiontoken to 0>> <<set $moments to 0>><</nobr>>You’re on a quest that will probably kill you. So far, the quest has entailed sneaking out of your house at midnight and an endless, aching amount of walking. This is the furthest you’ve ever been from home. The trees here look different; they’re taller, with canopies that reach high into the autumn air, grasping at the pale sun. There are huge boulders scattered across the landscape, glittering stone that looks nothing like the occasional flint pebbles that fleck the paths long behind you. The smell in the air is sweet, unflavored by human industry. You’re at the end of the single trail which leads into the heart of this wilderness. In front of you are two signposts and the unimpressive hole in the ground which opens into the cave system below. The older of the two signs is visibly ancient, splintered and faded and overgrown with moss, but the words on it are still just legible. BEWARE KINGTHRALL CAVES UNSANCTIONED SALTCAST ARE WITHIN Do Not Enter If You Wish To Live. The second sign is new and brightly painted, almost cheery. It matches with the pamphlets which made it to your village in the wagon of Old Tory, the merchant: pamphlets which set you off on this journey. BY ORDER OF THE KING A REWARD will be given to WHOSOEVER aids the kingdom by DEFEATING the darkness within these caves. 10, 000 SPLENDOURS [[Take stock]]Your name is Madelaine of Roshorn. You’ve lived your entire life in a small village in the south-east of the kingdom of Amantan, near enough these caves for their presence to be a constant looming threat. Your parents were farmers, but the farms of the village have been curse-struck again and again by roving Saltcast, and the land no longer produces enough for its workers to keep up a living. You have been trying to stay afloat as a weaver, using the poor materials available to you and with only Old Tory to carry your products beyond the shrinking village. You have two children—Patricia, eight summers old; Mattias, six— and a sickly husband, James. All of you have been slowly starving for years. You are carrying a few bottles of well-water, a skein of rope, a rusty knife and the weakly enchanted lantern you inherited from your grandmother. You have a hood to hide your face, though you hope not to be seen at all. You bear on your arm a slim metal band, gifted to you by your husband when he pledged himself to your marriage. He told you when he gave it that it ought to give you good luck. You have a plan. A feeble plan, flimsy and helplessly optimistic, but something to hold on to. You know there’s no chance of you walking into the caves and slaughtering every Saltcast within. Instead, you hope you will find some secret or clue about their weaknesses, something you can take back to your village or even to the king, so that a group of warriors can come here and do what you can’t. You hope there will be a reward for even slightly advancing the defeat of the monsters. [[Examine your anxieties]]You step past the signage and bend to inspect the hole. Its walls are mostly rock, but there’s a clagging percentage of mud as well, and the tunnel seems to lead almost straight down. Years of deprivation, funnelling all the food you can find into the mouths of your children, have pared your body to bone and wire, and you should be able to fit inside easily. The idea still squeezes you with fear of confinement. You clench your teeth and prepare the lantern you have strapped to your shoulder, then slide your feet down until you get a toehold on the rock below the lip of the opening. Death, directly below, must be readying to swallow. You climb down into the dark. [[Descend]]As soon as the top of your head dips into subterranean space, the daylight cuts off. You’re so startled that you almost lose your footing, and your alarmed shout flattens itself on the rock an inch in front of your mouth. Your shoulder lantern, weaker than moonlight on a clouded night and prone to flickering out, is just bright enough for you to see the viscous black ceiling that has appeared out of nowhere, blocking you in. When you reach up gingerly and touch it with the very tips of your fingers, it feels cold and hard and smooth. It came out of nowhere, but it seems very solid. Your fingertips sting from the contact. [[Try to break the obstruction with your fists]] [[Try to cut the obstruction with your rusty knife]] [[Ignore the obstruction; continue climbing down]]For the top few feet, the walls of the tunnel are wet and you worry about slipping. Falling into the depths and shattering yourself before you even meet any of the monsters that live down here would make for a poor end to your pitiful quest. The walls dry out, though, and they pinch closer and closer together, and all your thoughts turn to getting stuck instead. Maybe your corpse would plug the hole more faithfully than its freshly appeared black lid does. That would help the kingdom but wouldn’t get your family the 10,000 splendours they need to survive the next winter. Is this even the only way for the Saltcast to emerge, or just the only one widely known? Keep going. As you slide downwards, all your half-examined fears come baying in across the dark and the cold. <<linkappend "//Suffocation//">> <span class="fig">[img[No air|images/gasp.png]]</span> You asked James about it the night before last, fingers knotted in your thin blanket, pretending it was an idle question. “Well, all the stories say they talk, don’t they?” he’d murmured, eyes firmly shut. “If they talk, they must breathe. Stands to reason.” You just have to hope he was right about that. <<linkappend "//The spellbeasts?//">> <span class="fig">[img[Spellbeasts|images/spellbeast.png]]</span> As you were taught in temple school, every act of sorcery requires, firstly, the goodwill of the gods—but secondly, a mirror. The mirror lets the sorceror look upon the world as simply an image, an shallow impression of reality, which can be made malleable by an application of human will and Moshidiah’s salt. If the magic goes wrong, through some mistake on the caster’s part or fault in their character (//for we fall short of the Gods and their desires for us//), a spellbeast may emerge into the world through that mirror. Unlike Cursed Hosts, spellbeasts can take any shape. In temple school you were shown illustrations of them in old books. Some of them were beautiful, some repulsive. All of them chilled your blood. You’ve never seen one in person, though you’ve seen the result of their activities in the dead fields around your home, the collapse of your future security. <<linkappend "//The Cursed Hosts?//">> <span class="fig">[img[Cursed Hosts|images/cursedhost.png]]</span> When the process of a spell goes wrong, whatever phantoms lurk in the half-created space between fantasy and the real world may escape through the mirror. When the process goes very wrong, they emerge as Cursed Spirits. You know little about the qualities of Cursed Spirits, because they seldom exist in their original form for long. They have the power to possess humans and almost immediately do so upon creation. Light may briefly hold them off, but lanterns fail in their presence, and even under a midday sun, they will swiftly overtake any human of their choosing. The human, thus overcome, becomes a Cursed Host. Like spellbeasts, they have an innate access to one particular 'type' of magic, as if they can continually cast the same spell over and over without bothering with the usual forms of sorcery. Some of the temple texts conjecture that this is based on the original spell which created them, although as far as you know, even the great scholars aren’t certain. <<linkappend "//The unyielding dark?//">> <span class="fig">[img[Dark|images/reach.png]]</span> Your grandmother’s lantern makes for dubious protection. You've never succeeded in selling it, even though enchanted items are rare and usually fetch good prices—it sits in a rare space between 'too useless' and 'too precious'. Those around you don't need weak magic lanterns when they can have cheaper, more reliable ones made from mundane materials. The rich in the towns and cities expect their magical items to be obvious luxuries, easy to show off. <<linkappend "You’re afraid it will simply die, and that you will shortly follow.">> The descent levels out much sooner than you were expecting. At a guess, accounting for all the twists and turns and ups and downs, you’re only about three meters underneath the world above. You’ve always imagined these caves as deep, miles down, cradled in the heart of the earth. Maybe most of them still are, but you’ve reached the apperture leading into the first cavern already. <span class="fig">[img[images/figure_madelaine.png]]</span> [[Hold up your lantern; look ahead]] <</linkappend>><</linkappend>><</linkappend>><</linkappend>><</linkappend>>You can see very little. You're in a small, featureless space with a smooth arched ceiling of black stone. There's a door on the opposite wall, which sits open but is screened with thick shadow across its threshold. Your other senses have more to offer, as you’re hit immediately with a new smell, rushing over the background scent of must and damp stone. It smells like food. In fact, it smells like a feast, and as soon as you fully recognise that fact, a violent cramp seizes your empty stomach. You double over but take your first step through the little door, led onward by the scent of roasting meats, of fresh baked bread, of spices which you don’t recognise but which still make your mouth water. The chamber you enter is large and crowded with long tables, which are covered end to end with platters of food. You’ve never seen this much food, or such grand presentation. There are four different species of fish, baked well and placed out with pats of butter slowly melting into the flesh. There are stacks of sliced meat, each a different shade of pink and marbled with fat. There are huge wheels of cheese, and plates piled with enormous fruit enclosed in radiantly bright and colourful peel. There’s an entire roasted peacock, its skin and feathers intact, which sits shining at the centre of one of the tables. To one side are a number of barrels, and an array of ale mugs and crystalline wine glasses suggest their contents. You’ve been enduring your body’s weaknesses until now, but you’re suddenly faced with all this plenty, and it fully awakens all your fearsome hunger, your desperate thirst. It’s hard to drag your eyes off the riches which sit in front of you, and hard to drag your mind off your wailing stomach, but one further detail eventually catches your attention. By the back wall of the chamber there hangs a birdcage, and within it sits a large and very bedraggled golden bird, watching you with a cautious intelligence in its sad dark eyes. Its beak opens and it sings a single note, as golden as its feathers. Though the cage is almost as tall as you are, and its width and depth would allow you to spin around inside it with your arms fully spread, it is not big enough for the bird to open its wings all the way. You see, too, that its pinion feathers have been clipped short. There is a curved metal panel attached to the bars just above the key, and an inscription upon the panel. It says: //From those who feast upon my heart The beast of hunger shall depart. My living blood will them sustain The wyrm of thirst shall thus be slain.// Dangling from a chain at the bottom of the cage, there hangs a knife. The chain is just long enough for the knife to deliver a fatal blow to the bird’s breast, if you choose to strike such a blow. What will you do? [[Kill and consume the bird.]] [[Ignore the bird and eat some of the food from the tables]] [[Ignore the bird and drink some of the ale from the barrels]] [[Unlock the cage and release the bird]]It’s not that you aren’t aware that this must be a trap. The stories say Saltcast need far less food to live than regular mortals do, why would there be a feast just sitting here? It’s just that you’re so hungry your stomach chews your bones at night, and since you’ve come here you’ve only felt weaker and weaker. Perhaps eating will give you the fortitude to survive when this trap is sprung. You grab a loaf of bread and tear it open. It’s so fresh that a little steam escapes. The crust is crisp and the taste is rich and faintly nutty. After a few mouthfuls you take a bite of some of the cheese. It’s buttery and smooth and goes well with the bread. You eat bread and cheese alternately, rushing to cram a new batch into your mouth every time you’ve finished gulping down the last. Each swallow feels substantial as it slides down your throat, but your belly feels no fuller. If anything, you’re growing more frantic with hunger. Your hands are shaking as you serve yourself some of the sliced meat: you barely taste it before it’s gone and you’re seizing a round red fruit and sinking your teeth through the skin into the flesh. More. More. More. It feels like nothing will sate you. It feels like the hunger will eat away your soul as well as consume your body. Your eyes drift to the plaque on the bird’s cage. [[Heed the plaque and use the knife on the bird]]It’s not that you aren’t aware that this may be a trap. It’s just that you’re so thirsty that your skin feels like parchment and each blink scrapes across your eyes. You were carefully saving your little bottles of well water, but faced with this abundance, your self-control has snapped, and what you had prudently horded will no longer begin to suffice. Perhaps drinking will give you the readiness to respond when the trap is sprung. It’s been a long time since you’ve drunk wine, but ale is something you regularly brew yourself for the household. Although this tastes better than any you’ve made, for now you’re not very concerned about the taste. All you want is the feeling of returned vitality, the quenching of the ravenous thirst inside you. It doesn’t come. Even as you empty the mug down your gullet, you feel drier and emptier yet. You refill from the barrel and drink again, but again, you only feel worse. Your eyes drift to the plaque on the bird’s cage. [[Heed the plaque and use the knife on the bird]]You ignore every screaming prompt of your nerves and focus instead on action. There’s something deeply wrong with this set-up. And you know what it is to be trapped. The bird stares at you as you approach. You can’t read its face, of course—your only experience with avian emotions was observing the chickens you used to keep, and this is a different order of being—but it cocks its head to one side. Its eyes track your fingers as they close on the key. The key is beautiful. It’s decorated with fine detail but still delicate, light as bird-bone and shining. You turn it and the lock clicks. You have to step back to allow the cage door to swing open, and there’s a pause as the bird continues to watch you carefully. You take a few more steps back, jostling against the tables. Something slick touches your skin, and when you glance behind you, you see that the heaped piles of food have been replaced by a shimmering, oil-dark flood of some viscous liquid, streaming from the platters, dribbling over the sides of the tables and pooling on the floor. You swallow, hard, and look ahead again. The bird has shuffled to the outer lip of the cage floor, its talons curling over the edge so that the tips of them dip into freedom. You silently will it to make the last move, to shrug forward past the bars and open its wings fully, even if it can’t fly. Its eyes fix gravely on yours. After a moment, it inclines its head, beak ruffling the plumes on its chest, and it takes the final step into release. You watch as the feathers spread, and a startled exclamation bursts out of you as the clipped wings suddenly sprout new primaries, bright as freshly smelted gold. It wheels once around the roof of the chamber, then whirls down to the dark gap in the wall leading onwards and vanishes. Perhaps this choice will be significant. Perhaps not. You look down and realise the key is still in your hand: your first treasure. <<set $Eldionfreed to $Eldionfreed + 1>><<set $Ornatekey to 1>> [[Move on to the next tunnel]]It stares at you as you approach. Its eyes are wide and wild, an umber ring of iris around huge black pupils. There’s a reproach in the darkness therein. But you can’t stop. You’re so hungry, so thirsty. You take up the knife. The chain slithers against your wrist, cold and slick. You wonder, distantly, who set all this up, who wrote the words, who caged the bird. It tries to spread its wings, and they slap off the bars of the cage, a flat, hopeless sound. There’s room enough between those bars for your arm to slip through, but you’ll have to be quick. The bird’s beak is sharp, and, even clipped, its wings could do some damage if they struck you. You //are// quick, and the knife has been honed to a razor’s edge by some unknown hand. The bird screeches only once, the musicality of its voice in ruins, and then its blood is gushing up out of the mortal wound in its chest. You drop the knife and reach in to seize it by the neck, dragging it closer so that you can sink your teeth into the torn, weeping meat of it. Your mouth fills with thick blood, and you eat your way in, seeking the promised heart. You come back to yourself slowly. The hunger and thirst inside you have been replaced with a weighty numbness, leaden in your fingers and lips. Blood drips from your chin, but not all of it has flowed from the stricken bird. There’s something sharp cutting into your tongue and the roof of your mouth. You raise a shaky hand and spit. It’s a shard of glass, thin and delicately crafted. When you swipe your thumb over the surface, you expose reflective silvering, and see your red-tinted double staring back at you. If the bird had a mirror at its centre, then it was surely a spellbeast. If you came here to harm them, you have taken the first step towards succeeding. But you feel no stronger for it. You feel heavy and tired. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 2>> [[Move on to the next tunnel]] You trudge onwards. The rock walls scrape against your shoulders, rough and grainy as though encrusted with salt. The passageway is almost straight, but it angles steadily downward. There are small holes in the ceiling. Perhaps these are the airholes you speculated must exist. You can still breathe, at any rate, though each gulp of air comes quick and shallow. The circle of wavering light in which you move makes the darkness beyond look like a receding tide of ink, pooling in the depths as you make your way along. All of this means that, when you step into the next open chamber, you don’t realise at first that there really is a deep pool of dark water in front of you. You almost walk right off the shelf of rock, but reverse yourself at the last second, stumbling back. A ripple rolls across the surface of the water. Gingerly, you inspect the cave around the pool. There’s no opening anywhere. Every alcove proves to be shallow as soon as you look closer. You know the cave system doesn’t end here. You’ve seen few of its horrors, barely any magics. You know the way onward must lie under the water. But for just a moment, you quail. By the Iceborn Six, it’s so black, unreflective, indifferent. You’d be nearly blind down there; your lantern is water resistant but so feeble. The cold would sap what’s left of your strength. You’re a half-starved peasant woman, not a hero. [[Do what you must]]You close your eyes, see your children’s faces. Thin, wan, smiling. Mattias’s teeth have started falling out because he does not eat well enough. You step out over the water, and plunge down and down and down. The water is like ice, moulded around your body as you struggle to keep your bearings. [[Search to your right]] [[Search straight down]]You swim until you touch the pool bed. Then you run your hands over the rock until you find something that feels more like varnished wood than stone, smooth but still with an identifiable grain. More fumbling finds a protrusion which seems like it’s made of metal, which you recognise as a door handle. You try turning the handle, but nothing happens. When you press your fingers around the metal, you find a keyhole. <<if $Ornatekey === 1>> You have the key from the cage. Something makes you try it here. It turns smoothly, but when you turn the knob again, the door stays jammed. [[Try to force the door]] [[Search straight down]] <<else>> You’ll need to search elsewhere. [[Search straight down]] <</if>>You have to swim until you reach the very bottom of the pool. Your outstretched hands come to rest on a strange shape sitting proud of the surface of the floor, and feeling around eventually tells you that it’s a loop of some kind of metal, hinged into a panel of what seems like the same material, which is set into the bare stone of the floor—something like a doorknocker. <<if $forcedoor lt 4>> [[Search to your right]] [[Knock]] <<else>> [[Knock]] <</if>>You work the hoop up and then slap it down with your palm, fingers splayed out so they don’t get caught underneath. The water is hot, tight around you as feversweat, and your lungs are starting to strain. One more try. You can’t hear the knocker hit the metal plate underneath it; your ears are clogged with wet heat, and it doesn’t feel like you’ve managed to put any force behind the knock. Too much resistance from the water. You’re still trapped. You need air. As soon as you roll yourself so that you’re facing towards the surface, the world around you heaves. You hear the roar of it even underwater, and then you’re falling in a screaming torrent, everything chaos except for the darkness obliterating your sight. All you can do is tuck yourself into a ball and wait to land. [[You hear the crunch of your own landing]]You throw your meagre, floating weight against the wood. Perhaps it gives just slightly. <<if $forcedoor is 2>> It seems to you that the water around you is getting just a little less frigid. The door may be a little looser. <<set $forcedoor to 3>> [[Try to force the door]] [[Search straight down]] <<elseif $forcedoor is 3>> The water now is definitely warmer. The door may be a little looser. <<set $forcedoor to 4>> [[Try to force the door]] [[Search straight down]] <<elseif $forcedoor is 4>> One more push might do it, but the heat of the water is starting to sting against your skin. You need to find a way out. [[Search straight down]] <<else>> <<set $forcedoor to 2>> [[Try to force the door]] [[Search straight down]] <</if>> It’s still dark. <<if $Lethronprayer === 1>> [[Surrender to the hospitable night.]] [[Cling to consciousness]] <<else>> [[Surrender to the grasping night.]] [[Cling to consciousness]] <</if>>You let the pain fade out of you, your mind sinking down into the quiet depths. The world turns dim and silent and for a moment you think that there’s nothing in it that could hurt. Then tendrils of fierce colour sweep across the blackness, red and gold and shining emerald green. The colours wind together into robes, and drape over the ivory figure which has suddenly appeared opposite you. “Who’s this?” the figure says in a light, masculine voice. You left your body behind at the top step of unconsciousness. You can’t find a voice in the amorphous cloud of self you currently occupy. All you can do is watch as your dream companion steps closer to you. The face is sculpted marble, cold and remote, but there’s a touch of amusement in the eyes. “Do you know, yourself?” he says, mocking. “Come here and I’ll give you an answer.” He steps closer still. As he advances, first the ground surrounding each footstep, then the rest of the world fills in. You are standing—floating?—in a corridor covered walls to floor to ceiling with mirrors of every variety—polished metal and silvered glass and well-shined stone, large and small, perfectly geometric or wildly irregular. He blazes across each surface. You are hard to see in any of them. You are a phantom made of pale wisps, a few threads of faded colour. The metal band on your arm is the most visible aspect of you, faintly shining, everything else wound in and out of it. He's moments from you, stretching out his hand, and all you can think to do is wisp the floating substance of yourself down towards the mirrored floor, pressing against it, willing it to crack and let you fall. The band your husband gifted you clinks softly against the glass. Then again, louder. A spiderweb pattern of cracks rewards your effort, shards starting to flake upwards, the band on your arm shining brighter— His white fingers thrust towards the heart of you— The sound of shattering is a cacophony, as not just your mirror but every mirror there bursts into ruin, a hundred thousand spinning fragments of chaos all reflecting each other’s destruction, and you see those laughing eyes widen— You sit up too fast and every ache you shed in unconsciousness slams back into you all at once. You’re wet and freezing cold. You’re full of residual fear from your nightmare. But your lamp is still shining weakly, and in the distance, you think you can see another fleck of light to pursue. There’s a soft clink as the band on your arm breaks in two and falls free. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> [[Investigate the distant light]]You’re pretty used to hurting all over, and dreams are a fickle escape. They’ve offered you safety and joy and peace, and they’ve offered you terror and death and the end of hope. Getting up is harder in the aftermath either way. So you do your best to stay awake now. <<if $Lethronprayer === 1>>At the apex of your effort, there’s a soft clink, and the band your husband gifted you snaps in two and falls from your arm. Abruptly, you feel more clear-headed. <<else>> At the apex of your effort, there’s a sharp new pain, and the band your husband gifted you snaps in two and falls from your arm. The pain lingers, faint and tingling, but fresh enough to unfuzz your mind. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> <</if>> There’s a thin puddle of hot water underneath you, but you can breathe again, and the air is cold and clammy on your face. Your lamp is shining weakly on your shoulder, illuminating wet grey stone. In the distance, there’s an answering prickle of light calling you to investigate. [[Investigate the distant light]] A thousand scrapes and bruises try to seize your attention as you move, but everything still works. You trudge forwards until the glowing wall comes into view, and you realise that the golden shapes upon it are words. Your parents struggled all their lives with reading, but a directive from the king meant the priests taught your generation from early childhood. Casual reading is still reserved for the rich, but you’ve read all sorts of tracts on moral living, as well as religious texts. In fact, most of what’s written on the wall is quite familiar to you. It says, //In the very beginning, there was nothing in the universe but an eternity of ice and the winds that howled across it. Day and night did not exist in those times, so we cannot know how long it was before the winds each found within themselves words, and became voices. But, though we do not know when or how, we know that it was so, for such was the beginning of the Gods. Six voices came to be, and so loud were they in their ceaseless calling that they chipped away at the ice, sculpting out huge forms, and eventually each of these forms was made free of the ice surrounding it, and was inhabited by the voice that shaped it. And this was how the Gods took bodies for themselves, and learned to be whole. And so there were six Gods living together on the ice. They were named Lethron, Torbet, Yenyet, Salrea, Dicuar, and Moshidiah. It may be that ages passed for the six of them together, or perhaps it took very little time for them to turn their thoughts to further creation. They decided to create the world, and to make also new life so that there would no longer be six but instead many. Some say they tried many different ways of doing this, but none of those efforts worked. These people say that those discarded worlds were tossed away, scattered everywhere, and that is why we have stars. But others say that the Gods knew immediately what was necessary, and that Yenyet volunteered for it at once, and the stars are instead the other Gods' tears. It is not for us to know everything about the Gods. What we have been told and know as a certainty is that Yenyet died so that her body could be used to create the new world, and her final breath was blown inside the new life that was made from her. So that world came to be. But it was not our world. Though the other Gods had molded it with their own hands, it and the beings that belonged to it were true to the essence of Yenyet, who was as their mother. The other Gods grew discontented, each saying, 'I have given life to this creation, but it does not heed me, only its mother, who is dead.' Then the peoples of that world became wise enough to build temples, and at first the Gods were pleased. But in the temples, the worship was to Yenyet. At that, the Gods' discontent became alarm, for to worship a dead god is a strange and dangerous practice. And the winds of Yenyet's world had begun to carry whispers, many familiar voices saying unfamiliar things, speaking of pain, and endings, and darkness. The five Gods met together to decide what to do. Three of them declared that it was best to unmake their first effort and try again, and this time weave in more of themselves. Torbet would cut off a foot for material, Salrea planned to sacrifice a hand, Dicuar would give her teeth and ears. But Lethron and Moshidiah stood against this plan, saying that Yenyet's world was all that was left of their sister and its people were her children, and they did not wish it unmade. So there was much dispute, and even violence amongst them, until at last Lethron gave in, saying that he would not lose the remaining four of his fellows in trying to stand by the one already lost. For the new world, he would give his tongue, no longer to argue. And Moshidiah despaired, and, weeping, surrendered their heart. So that world was unmade, and a new one was made with foot and hand and teeth and ears and tongue and heart and Yenyet's last breath. And the world made with all those things is our world.// Around the words sits the outline of yet another door. [[Push your way in]]It’s like you’ve stepped from a cave into the ruins of a palace. A great vaulted ceiling curves over your head, stone marbled with twisting, shimmering veins of crystal. Golden pillars define the boundaries of the room, each one topped by a carved beast, talons and claws and fangs threatening to avenge themselves against your intrusion. But the floor is covered with twisted, tarnished pieces of metal and thick shards of glass, jabbing into the thin soles of your boots, and there’s dust and fallen rocks everywhere. You walk a little further in, and you see the bones in amongst the rest of the detritus. They are clearly human. A half-crushed skull winks up at you from a pile of rubble. Well, you've heard stories of people who have disappeared down here. There are enough bodies here to account for those stories and then some. <<if ($left === 1) and ($right === 1)>> [[Evaluate]] <<else>> Look around. [[Search on the left]] [[Search on the right]] <</if>>There’s a lot of metal here. Some of it looks like scraps of armour, roughly torn free from the body they protected, but there’s also the cracked remains of thin, highly polished circles of copper, silver, bronze, obsidian, glass, still reflective even after however many years they’ve been lying amidst the dust and rubble. You swallow. You think you know what they are, and maybe even why they’re here. Broken mirrors. Hundreds of them. <<set $left to 1>> [[Go back ->Push your way in]] Most of the bones are scattered across this side. A closer inspection shows many of them are cleanly sliced apart as if with a very sharp blade, but several are mutilated in stranger ways. In some places the bones are blackened as if burnt, and some look almost melted. You’re sure this is the work of the Saltcast. <<set $right to 1>> [[Go back ->Push your way in]] Masses of distorted, once-armoured bodies, and piles of broken mirrors. This is the aftermath of a fight between human warriors and the Saltcast. You’ve never actually seen anything like it before, but everyone’s heard the tales. There are no weapons left behind in this room, unless they’re buried particularly deeply. The bones are all clean, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re old—who knows what scavengers scuttle around down here?—but there’s no cloth remains either. You think whatever happened here, it happened some time ago. When you step forward, the mess under your feet crunches and then crumbles inward, dropping you a few inches and making you stumble sideways with a yelp, the light on your shoulder wobbling and sending shadows skittering up the walls. You fling your arms out for balance, and your shadow obediently windmills its own limbs—but even after you’ve got your footing back and resumed a more normal stance, the frantic motion in the darkness below you goes on. It twitches and bulges and then splits into two: your own familiar silhouette and a cascade of reaching shadowy hands. Your first Cursed Spirit, unhoused and looking for a body to possess. [[Run]] It's faster than you, slipping smoothly towards you while your feet crunch and stumble over mounds of disintegrating bone. You manage about five strides before one of the hands catches you by the hair and yanks you backwards. A spray of ivory shards shoot up from your sliding feet and you fall, a sound that’s half squawk and half warble bursting out of you as your back slams into some long derelict pile of armour. There’s another hand at your throat a moment later. You touched silk once, in your childhood, passing a stall in the town closest to your village during a business trip of your father’s, knowing you weren’t supposed to be getting your grubby, calloused hands on the fancy wares and doing it anyway. The hand feels like that, smooth and light and cool. It doesn’t feel like it should have the strength to squeeze the air out of you, but you can’t breathe. The cold rustle of a whisper in your ear. Its shape looks almost human now: two arms, two legs, one head. Red eyes. A mouth which is just a crescent split in the shadow. “Join with me,” it says. [[Use the rusty knife]] [[Use the lantern]]Once, many many years ago, it was useful. Today, it snaps in your hand as soon as you jab it into the seething darkness sitting on your chest. The fingers on your throat tighten their hold. There’s a deep ache inside your ribcage, like your heart is being squeezed in that same grip. You have lost your knife. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds +1>> [[Use the lantern]]You fumble the lantern free from its straps and thrust it up over you, hoping that the pitiful magic flame will do some damage if you just get it close enough to your attacker. For a moment, it flickers out, and you feel despair course up to you in the thick tide of absolute darkness that washes over your body. Then the light returns, dazzling, so bright you have to shut your eyes against it. The insides of your eyelids glow orange, and the weight on you lifts. When you open your eyes again, you see the Cursed Spirit recoiling, its arms folded protectively over itself. Your lantern is still blazing, brighter than it’s ever been in the decades you’ve owned it. But it’s no longer the only source of light. A myriad of golden spheres are floating at the back of the room, around the outline of a door you failed to see when you were searching the place. A moment later, a human figure bounds in through that door, waving its arms and yelling. The golden spheres multiply until they throng in the air like birds over spilled seed, and the Cursed Spirit hisses and retreats from them. “Go on,” shouts the man of the dancing lights, his arms flapping back and forth wildly. “Return to your maker!” As he gets closer, you see that his exposed skin is covered in scars—but not the random marks of a life of violence or a terrible accident: tiny intricate inscribing, his body decorated with words upon words upon words. [[Run from this encounter too]] [[Say hello and thank the stranger.]]You roll back to your hands and knees and lurch away, heading in the direction of the nearest exit—the door through which he came. Maybe there’re more like him through there, or more like the Cursed Spirit, but all you can focus on is the panic propelling you onwards, away. “Hey,” the man calls after you. “My friend, I will protect you!” You don’t listen to him, but perhaps your knees do, because they cut out from under you as the pain and exhaustion of the last few minutes finally lands, and one more time you fall. You lie atop the heaped dead, almost as breathless as any one of them, and shaking. A gentle hand takes your elbow. “All is well,” he says. “The Cursed Spirit has fled. There is no need to look so distraught; I am the only other one here, and I pride myself on being quite harmless.” [[Continue to listen]]He comes to a stop by you, panting slightly from his run. When you greet him, he beams at you, as if overflowing with untapped amity. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You seem to have pleased him.</div></span> “Hello indeed!” he says. “And well met. I hope you’ll forgive the intervention: it seemed you were having some trouble with that unruly spirit. I’m afraid they like to linger up here, hoping for lone intruders to inhabit—though of course, no human has been foolish enough to come this way for many years, and Hosts can fight them off.” He shakes his head, apparently saddened by this uncivic behavior. “When they’re unhoused, they avoid the light, and as you see, light is my particular talent.” A halo of glowing spheres executes a swift twirl around his head. <<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration +1>> [[Continue to listen]] “I’m sorry to say it, but it is dangerous to be travelling here, especially on your own,” the scarred man says. “Besides the unhoused Spirits, the work of defusing the Hydra King’s traps is still underway. As a matter of fact, that is why I am here.” As he speaks, you examine him. He looks very human. You’ve only ever seen spellbeasts from a distance, but they’ve always been noticeably otherworldly in some way, with obvious animal traits, or proportions that would be impossible on a human body. You would almost take this man for a regular person, if it weren’t for his entourage of lights. He looks into your face in the pause that follows his little speech, clearly expecting some response. All you can muster for him is a nod, but it seems to please him, as he nods back at you and continues talking. “During the period of his dominance, the Hydra King spent a great deal of effort on controlling our environment—his will is embedded into the very rock of some of his old centers of operation, and he was particularly focused on places of entry and egress. You should head away from here—I’m sure you don’t realise it, but we are only a few chambers from one of the few ways into the upperworld!” The Hydra King. You’ve never heard the name before this, but something about the way he says it makes you shiver. He looks around you and sighs. “In any case, this is an ill-fated room, as you can see. The air itself is tainted with death.” You can read some of the writing on his body—it seems to be a list of characteristics belonging to some unnamed ‘he’: his favourite season was autumn, he served nine years in the army as a pikeman, his primary worship was to Lethron, to whom he called out when he was dying. Sometimes the words glow, as though golden light is swimming under the stranger’s skin. Perhaps he catches you staring, because he shifts and rubs at his bared arms, as if cold. “To which faction do you belong, if you’ll forgive me asking? Amaris’s, or Eldion’s? Or perhaps mine, in which case I must beg your pardon a second time?” You had no idea they had factions at all, or kings, or… You’ll just have to guess at the right answer. [[Say you’re with his faction]] [[Say you’re with Amaris’s faction]] [[Say you’re with Eldion’s faction]] [[Tell the truth: you’re an outsider on a quest]]You don’t want to stumble into some unspoken hostility with another group, and he seems willing to believe that he might fail to recognize someone from his own. He looks embarrassed: a hint of pink blooms in his ears and high on his cheekbones. It reminds you of the way your father used to blush when he had to be reminded of something important. Is this truly a Saltcast? He doesn’t seem evil or threatening. Perhaps it’s a trick. “Clearly I have neglected you,” he says, and sweeps you a full bow. “I regret that the neglect must continue for a little longer while I fulfil my duty here. But please, when we have both returned to the central caverns, come and find me, and I will attempt to remedy my failing.” [["Ah, Citizen," he says, as another thought seems to strike him.]] “Ah,” is all he says for a moment. Then, “She always did draw in the daring ones.” He smiles at you, and rubs a finger over some of the text on his wrist: served nine years. “Still, if you intend to confront the Hydra King’s forces out here, you should be better equipped, and you should not be acting alone. When you return to her, perhaps she might offer you some training?” [["Ah, Citizen," he says, as another thought seems to strike him.]] He laughs, a loud, boisterous sound that rings off the stone walls. It’s a laugh of disbelief. “Ah, I’m certain the humans have long realized this place is too dangerous to venture into! If they were to send anyone, it would be another army. A good jest.” He pats your back. “Well, regardless, perhaps you should be more careful. The Hydra King’s forces have been bold of late. In fact, I would have taken you for one of his Hosts, if you were not so…well, uncombative. You have an unusual shape, if it’s not rude to say so.” You just blink at him. He clearly thinks you’re a spellbeast, and you’ve never had to consider what one might take offense at before. [["Ah, Citizen," he says, as another thought seems to strike him.]]His face falls, but he looks sad, not hostile. “I am sorry. Is that what has led you out so far? Might you be searching for him?” He seems to take your hesitation as a yes, for he reaches out and clasps your shoulder. “So are we all,” he says. “He will be found.” [["Ah, Citizen," he says, as another thought seems to strike him.]]“Perhaps you could tell me…I have been replacing the Hydra King’s barriers with doors which should allow safer passage. Given the opportunity, I have added certain…embellishments. I’ve always felt an appreciation for history, so I have inscribed the doors with stories I believe will feed the Seeming. You have passed at least one to get in here…would you say it was…at all…long winded?” [[No, of course not]] [[Perhaps a little]]His face literally lights up, glimmerings rushing across the scars on his skin. “I’m glad to hear it! I’ve been told I am a talker, but I did try for brevity.” <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You seem to have gained some favour with this answer.</div></span><<nobr>><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>><</nobr>> [[Did you have any other questions?]] [[Ask him about the history he has inscribed upon his own skin.]] [[Ask him why he thinks this Hydra King’s forces are getting more active]] [[That's all]]He nods solemnly. “I feared it was so. Thank you for your honesty.” [[Did you have any other questions?]] All the life seems to drain out of him. The globes of light floating around him dim. “When I first saw you, I thought you might be another like me,” he said, and shakes his head. “A Cursed Spirit will rarely miss the opportunity to attack a Cursed Host, after all.” A Host? Your heart drops, and you barely have enough attention to take notice of the casual drop of information none of your temple books ever contained. “But you do not have the shame on you, or the cruelty which would be needed to keep shame at bay. “His name was Joseph. All I felt when I emerged from my source-mirror was anger at the world, and a desperate desire to live. So I clawed my way into his body, to use it as armour against all which might harm me. I was not prepared to feel him die. Everything he was flared bright inside me, and then went out. It took all my anger with it. It seems I am alone among Cursed Spirits in that loss. “I was afraid to forget him. To let my own crime be forgotten. So I wrote it down, for all to see.” [[Go back ->Did you have any other questions?]] He shrugs. "The tides of the Hydra King’s internal battles must have turned. I know not what he has planned, but so it has often been, over the centuries. Those same tides will turn again, and his power will diminish, sending his minions back into the shadows." But something appears to trouble him, and his scarred brow creases. [[Would you answer one last question for me, Citizen?]]“It is a matter that troubles us all…those of us to whom leadership has come must remain connected to the will of the people. What do you think we should do about the Hydra King?” Who or what is the Hydra King? You've no idea. You’ll just have to try for a reasonable answer based on the scant clues he’s given you. [[Try to destroy him before he regains his lost power?]] [[Continue to live around him, containing his exploits where necessary?]] [[Abandon the caves and flee, braving the outside world?]] [[You’d rather not answer]]“So Amaris believes.” He looks troubled. “But is it possible? How many would be lost in the attempt? We tried once before. There was a steep cost for the ground that was gained. But thank you for your answer, Citizen. I will meditate upon it.” [[Go back ->Did you have any other questions?]]It seems to be the option he was hoping for, but he sighs and shakes his head anyway. “Thank you for answering, Citizen. I know I am unworthy of the role duty has placed upon me. Sometimes I wonder how unworthy. Is it cowardly not to act, when the lives you are trying to preserve are not your own? And yet he festers down there, and none of us know true peace.” [[Go back ->Did you have any other questions?]]“Ah.” He seems surprised. “An unusual viewpoint. This has been our home for so long, and there is evil outside as well as within. But perhaps we could learn to live with that fresh evil better than we live with the more familiar one. The humans would be afraid, and many of us have given them cause to be afraid. You believe we could negotiate with them? It is something to consider. Thank you for your thoughts, Citizen." [[Go back ->Did you have any other questions?]] He bows his head. “I understand. There are many reasons not to place your trust in me.” [[Go back ->Did you have any other questions?]] “I should continue to work on the new doors, and to investigate the proliferation of the Hydra King’s forces. Please, be careful if you choose to go on exploring these isolated areas. And…” He points at your lantern. “This seems to be somewhat underpowered, considering its rare potential. My particular gift relates to light…perhaps I can help.” After only a moment, your shabby old lamp glows bright as the midday sun.<<set $bestlantern to 1>> [[Bid him farewell]]He continues on his path until he is out of sight. Your first two monsters, excepting whatever the caged bird was, and you don’t know how to feel. Who is the Hydra King? What internal disruptions have you walked into? You knew you were coming in with no strength and no magic, and it has become clear too that, as far as these beings go, you have no knowledge either. You were not expecting a kingdom, or factions, or…or politics. And you were not expecting to receive help from anyone you met down here, but your lantern burns with steady golden light. [[Go to the door he entered through.]]There are words on the other side: //After the creation of the world, the Gods left six gifts to mankind. Five derive from the parts which were sacrificed to bring the land into being: power flowed out from them, and in the process every discarded part turned to stone. As each stone became the source of immensities of new matter, it was ground up and carried away in the great tide of rock and earth and water. Now, these remnants of stone can be found scattered all across the world, and, if converted to powder and cast, by priest or pious worshipper, into any fire which sits before a mirror, can be used to call for the blessing of whichever God they originated from. In this way even a poor human can seek justice against their superiors, and there are many stories of such blessings. However, only humanity can make use of the Blessing Stones. The sixth blessing is called Moshidiah’s salt. It is said that after Moshidiah sacrificed their heart, they also took the ashes of Yenyet’s world and sprinkled them across the new one, and those ashes took the form of salt. The salt may be used to perform sorcery. The rituals to use Moshidiah’s salt are similar but separate from the rituals necessary to use the other blessings, involving more of the caster's own will. Magic, unlike miracles, sometimes creates the Saltcast: spellbeasts and Cursed Spirits. How we truly come to be is not yet known, but we are born from the mirrors used by spellcasters.// You were aware of most of this already from the priests and your books, although you’ve heard other versions of the story. You didn’t know the Saltcast were concerned with the nature or worship of the gods, and it had never occurred to you that they might even try to use the Blessing Stones. [[Walk on]]You slide the cover down on your newly restored lantern so that you can creep a little less conspicuously into this new space. It is a long corridor leading down, a bare and almost unvarying stretch of grey rock with only very occasional bands of discoloration in the walls. It seems to you that you’ve spent the last century or so walking, walking, walking. After what to your knees certainly feels like a further thousand years, the tunnel starts branching. But it branches vertically, so that you see connecting passages far over your head, into which your shuttered light scarcely penetrates. Muffled voices murmur down from them. Eventually you hear noises ahead of you as well, and creep along until the space opens up. The place in front of you is almost as crowded as it is enormous: rows and rows of carts and stalls all surrounded by a bustling throng of Saltcast. After the scarred man, guiltily settled into his human skin, the real variety of form among them is stunning to you: each spellbeast seems as different from their fellows as a butterfly is from a flower is from a star. After a moment, which you spend staring in wonder, you do start to recognize certain things. Those behind the carts and stalls are cheerfully bellowing across to those in front of them, and the latter are leaning close, pointing, arguing, reluctantly handing over some small items pulled from the folds of their clothing. This is a market. [[Cross]]There’s no real way to creep around this kind of gathering: the stalls are jammed in all the way to the walls, and there are Saltcast everywhere. You tug your hood down further over your face, square your shoulders, and walk straight into the market. Each glance to the side gives your eyes a feast of strangeness, though you gradually notice that there seems to be very little food for sale. One rat-like vendor, at the outskirts, has a cart stacked with fresh vegetables, but he's the only one you can see. There are pretty trinkets, gems and carved stones, and things you think are probably magical items, glowing or buzzing or, occasionally, levitating. There are stacks and stacks of books, thick tomes bound in what looks like leather. Do the Saltcast keep livestock? You’ve never thought about it before. Most of the Saltcast seem to be bigger than the human average, as well as much more brightly coloured. You feel both very small and very conspicuous at sea in such a parade of giants. “Hey, you! The little one!” a vendor calls, claw pointing directly at you. "All sorts of things for sale! Strengthen your Seeming!" [[Pretend not to hear her call]] [[Tell her you don’t have anything worth trading]]Your shoulders shooting up around your ears might give you away, but nobody stops you as you keep moving forward. You make it a little distance before you hear a terrible noise from the other end of the cavern. [[Look up]]She’s loud but doesn’t seem hostile, so you shuffle over to tell her you can’t afford her wares. The large, plate-like scales on her face rearrange themselves into a composition you think indicates skepticism. Then she looks down at the lantern strapped to your shoulder, and her eyes go big. You’re pretty sure this time the expression is one of greed. “I’ll take that,” she says, voice gone so much quieter that you have to lean in to hear her. “You’d be better off with a nice small one, wouldn’t you, being so little yourself? You don’t need a big clumsy thing like that. I’ll give you sixty cullons for it, and you can buy whatever you like.” [[Sell the lantern]] [[Turn her down]]Maybe you’re getting better at reading her, because her eyes are very clearly delighted, even as her tone remains casual. “Wise choice, wise choice. Here, ten cullons for this lovely replacement, how about that?” She slides a small, fairly bright lamp across the stall to you, and grabs your old lantern out of your hands as soon as you offer it. The coins she gives you next are completely alien to you, heavy, silvery things with a square hole punched in the middle of them. You have no idea what their value may be. <span class="newItem">You have gained an acceptable lantern!</span> "If you're looking for more money," the vendor says, "The cult of Yenyet's Children are looking for a Host like you to do a spell for them." It seems the scarred man isn’t the only one to assume you’re a Host. But a spell? She continues, "I can sell you the salt, if you don't have enough."<<set $bestlantern to 0>> [[Before you can respond, you hear a terrible noise from the other end of the cavern.]]She makes a faint hissing noise and her claws twitch in the direction of the lantern, but she accepts the refusal. “You’re making a mistake, but all right,” she says. “Anyhow, if you’re looking for money, the cult of Yenyet’s children are looking for a Host like you to do a spell for them. Do you have the salt for it?” She leans close, breath damp on your face, scentless. “I’ve got a little, if you’ll reconsider that trade.” [[Before you can respond, you hear a terrible noise from the other end of the cavern.]]The sound is a mix of the crash of falling rock and a howl of vast and sulfurous rage, shortly followed by the screaming of the Saltcast up at the end the noise originated. The tide around you, previously slow and full of eddies, immediately surges away towards the corridor you first came in through. Most of them move much faster than you can, and they knock into you, almost taking you off your feet. The beast driving them all before it towers almost to the vaulted ceiling, so you can see it even above the heads of the panicking crowd sweeping you along. It has two heads, which seem nearly as occupied by attacking each other as they are by laying waste to their surroundings, but that doesn’t stop their advance from devastating everything around them. Each head is vaguely lupine, but hairless and yellow-white like old bone, with jagged shards sticking out like eruptions of rough crystal. The wounds they have inflicted on each other ooze gold. The left head is bigger and broader, with longer teeth; the right one is almost delicate even in its hugeness, every angle slim and sharp. The body is more bull-like than wolflike, thick, rippling muscle powering it forward on cloven feet, crushing all the glittering valuables of the market underneath its hooves. It is still roaring as it comes your way, and you can hear the smashing of the market stands it wades through. The vendor beside you lets out a yowl of protest, and draws a huge sword out from under the lip of her stall. Apparently, she’s not willing to stand by and let her wares be destroyed by this…thing. [[The vendor launches herself forward, swinging her sword in a wide arc.]]The sound is a mix of the crash of falling rock and a howl of vast and sulfurous rage, shortly followed by the screaming of the Saltcast up at the end the noise originated. The tide around you, previously slow and full of eddies, immediately surges away towards the corridor you first came in through. Most of them move much faster than you can, and they knock into you, almost taking you off your feet. The beast driving them all before it towers to the vaulted ceiling, so you can see it even above the heads of the panicking crowd sweeping you along. It has two heads, which seem nearly as occupied by attacking each other as they are by laying waste to their surroundings, but that doesn’t stop their advance from devastating everything around them. Each head is vaguely lupine, but hairless and yellow-white like old bone, with jagged shards sticking out like eruptions of rough crystal. The wounds they have inflicted on each other ooze gold. The left head is bigger and broader, with longer teeth; the right one is almost delicate even in its hugeness, every angle slim and sharp. The body is more bull-like than wolflike, thick, rippling muscle powering it forward on cloven feet, crushing all the glittering valuables of the market underneath its toes. It is still roaring as it comes your way, and you can hear the smashing of the market stands it wades through. You hear a yowl of protest from behind you. Apparently the vendor you just passed isn't willing to stand by and let her wares be destroyed by this…thing. She draws a huge sword from under the lip of her stall and runs into the fray. [[The vendor launches herself forward, swinging her sword in a wide arc.]]One of the great heads catches her mid-leap. Its teeth sink in with a wet swlop, and her swing goes suddenly loose, her fingers losing their grip right at the moment of contact. The sword strikes the monster’s bone-coloured flesh and bounces away, flipping once in the air before it flops to the ground almost at your feet. Freezing up has cost you your chance to run. In one stride the beast will reach you. [[Pick up the sword]]This time, when the monster screams at you, you can make out words. “KILL US!” it screams. The voice is discordant, a storm of different tones, layer upon layer of rage and grief. You don’t know how to use this sword, but you raise it in some approximation of a guard position. The left head drops the vendor’s body and strikes at its smaller twin, seizing it by the throat. “KILL US!” howls the right head, red eyes fixed on the tip of your blade. [[You lunge forward.]]It’s the biggest spellbeast you’ve ever seen, but it must be a spellbeast. It must have the mirror through which it was summoned somewhere on it. If you can find that, you may have a chance. It’s distracted fighting itself. There must be a chance. You slice at one of its towering legs, darting around to the left side to avoid being trodden on. There’s a small, encouraging splatter of gold, but the thin cut seals itself shut almost immediately. The cloven foot stomps in your direction, and you have to fling yourself forward to dodge it—and then you’re underneath, the ribcage heaving far over your head, out of reach. You see a glimmer of light up there, flickering just under the beast’s right armpit, where one of its own attacks have ripped into its body. Could the glimmer be the source-mirror, exposed? There are many loose rocks scattered on the floor. Perhaps if you threw one, you could shatter it? It may be made of glass, but it may also be polished copper, silver, stone. [[Keep trying to attack with your sword]] [[Throw a rock at the possible mirror]]<span class="death">You swing and swing, opening up a few more shallow cuts on the beast’s legs. That achievement will have to content you for the rest of eternity, because one of the cloven feet then comes down faster than you can follow, and smashes your ribcage to powder on the stone floor. You have died!</span> [[Go back->You lunge forward.]] For a moment, you take your eyes off the dancing feet currently threatening to crush you, and scan the ground for a stone light enough to be thrown the right distance and heavy enough to carry through your intention. You switch the sword to your left hand as you make your pick, and run to place yourself for the throw. You used to throw stones at the birds flocking in your family’s fields, but you were always aiming to scare them away more than to actually hit them. Still, you know you can clear a fair distance. The flicker of light peeks out again from under the beast’s right leg. You throw your stone. [[It shoots through the air in a long, clean arc]]You hear it land, the clear, high-pitched burst of noise that means something fragile has been broken. For a moment, the relief is so heavy in your body that you almost drop to your knees right there. You’ve done it. It seemed like an impossible fight, but you’ve destroyed the spellbeast’s mirror. In only a second, it should turn to thin mist, its purchase on this world stolen away. Over your head, the cavernous ribcage starts to rumble. It takes you a few seconds to recognize this new sound as a laugh, much more unified than the beast’s voice had been before. It’s not a feral or a maniacal laugh—it’s a warm, deep chuckle, almost fatherly in tone. As you expected, the massive body is dissolving into mist. But it’s not dissipating—it hangs around you like smoke, turning darker and darker until it almost feels like you’re back in the black pool again. It spreads over the ground, getting shallower as it covers a greater area, so that eventually it falls below your eyeline and you see the man at the center. Despite everything you’ve seen so far, his appearance still manages to shock you. His skull is exposed on either side, but a wide strip down the middle of his face looks like living marble, sculpted into regular human features—a patrician nose, a wide mouth that opens on both sides into the skeleton’s bare grin. His eyes, half housed in carven white flesh, half in black sockets, are the same gold as those belonging to the left head of the beast you have apparently failed to kill. They crinkle a little as he smiles at you. “Goodness me, are they sending people down from outside again?” he says. [[Say nothing. Back away.]]He doesn’t seem that interested in you anyway. He half turns and makes an imperious gesture, and the dark mist curls around him like a mantle. Then he bends down and scoops something out of the vendor’s collapsed stall. It’s a little cloth bag, torn on one side so that some of the contents spill out between his white, skeletal fingers. It looks like finely-ground salt. “Ahhh,” he says, and tucks the bag away inside his mantle. [[Stay silent. Keep edging backwards.]] [[Ask him who he is.]] He pays you no mind at all. [[He turns and walks through the destruction the titanic spellbeast left behind it.]]He looks back at you, surprise on his unnatural face. “Brave little one,” he says. “You may call me ‘your majesty’.” He flicks one white hand up, and a black tendril lashes out from his palm. It hits you in the shoulder, so fast it doesn't hurt, and your blood splatters hotly against your cheek. "Should you speak to me again, do it from your knees," he says. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds +1>> [[He turns and walks through the destruction the titanic spellbeast left behind it.]]It takes you some time to bring your limbs back under your own power, and longer still to ride out the shaking. It’s eerie how quiet the cavern has fallen, where before there was lively, joyful bustle. How strange, that the lack of Saltcast should seem more unnerving than their presence. And yet that…thing, monster, man, was even worse than any of the nightmares you’d expected. Regardless, there’s no going back. The only way forward that’s accessible to you is the way the man just passed through. You don’t want to run into him again, so you go slowly and quietly, creeping along the tunnel. Once again, the cave has been decorated like the interior of a palace. Pillars stand at intervals, simple fluted stone rising to ornately decorated capitals. Carved arches cross the ceiling. There are more passages up there, fates forever out of your reach. Some of the passages are sealed with what look like more of the scarred man’s doors, inscribed with history. They’re mostly too distant to be readable, but you can see the golden glimmer of the words he lit up, and you eventually pass one only a little distance over your head. It says: //Between the Year of the Coruscating Star and the Year of the Peacock Nimbus, Eldion’s faction made a number of important discoveries about our nature as Saltcast. Perhaps the most illuminating was the revelation that acts of kindness, nobility or heroism, if fed to a source-mirror, have a potent effect on the Seeming. We can claim to be blessed, since beauty and goodness give us sustenance on the level of our very souls!// Below, scrawled in what might be charcoal and is certainly a less attractive hand, are the words, //THE HORRORS FEED IT TOO.// [[You shiver, wrapping your arms around yourself, and trudge on through your beautiful, cold surroundings.]]Something unusual finally breaks into the splendour of the corridor. There’s a smooth stone mound bulging up from the floor, about seven foot high at its peak. It’s at odds with every other feature of the place—there’s no obvious use for it, and it certainly isn’t decorative. Suspicious, you sneak up on it, alert for danger. You almost squeak when you see the eyes staring out at you from a slot in the stone. “Did you see him?” asks a slightly echoing voice from inside it. “Did you see the Hydra King?” "[[Yes...]]" "[[No.]]"“Kind of a thrill, huh? He hasn’t come up this far in that form for an age. I’m glad I was running late to the market, I can tell you that. As soon as I saw him, I threw up my barrier and put my head down, and luckily he just ignored me. Wheew! How’d you survive, do you have a good defensive power or what?” You hesitate. “Hang on. Now I come to look at you…hey! Are you a human?” "[[Yes?]]" "[[No?]]" “Lucky you! They say there’s a kind of curse that comes with seeing him. How does the stupid rhyme go? ‘One time seeing the king, a gruesome death he’ll bring. One time to be seen, you go to join the queen…’ No, that’s not it. What is that? That’s terrible. Doesn’t even scan. Anyway, you look weak, so you probably wouldn’t have survived it.” You fold your arms and bite your tongue to keep from contradicting the creature. The eyes blink. “Hang on. Now I come to look at you…hey! Are you a human?” "[[No?]]" "[[Yes?]]"“You are! Wow, a human down here. What are you here for? What are you planning to do?” [[You’re here to save humans from the spellbeasts and Cursed Hosts who live in these caves]] [[You’re here to save the spellbeasts from the Hydra King.]] [[You’re not sure what you need to do anymore]]“Come off it. You’ve got such a human sort of look on your face. Gormless. I just know. No point denying it. What are you here for? What are you planning to do?” [[You’re here to save humans from the spellbeasts and Cursed Hosts who live in these caves]] [[You’re here to save the spellbeasts from the Hydra King.]] [[You’re not sure what you need to do anymore]]“Haha, really? How are you going to do that?” You had some ideas when you first came down here, but they’ve all been shaken loose. You don’t want to admit that to this creature, though, not when its eyes are narrowed into mocking crescents. You glare back, trying to look resolute and formidable. It laughs out loud. “Ahh, humans are pretty scary! I’ve always thought we should take an army up above and see how much we can take from you, but you’re putting me off, little hero.” [[”You’ve been so entertaining! I’ll let you ask me a question. Go on. Ask anything.”]]You say it on the spur of the moment, not really sure where it comes from. It’s not true. You probably can’t even save yourself. But maybe, deep down, you think it’s something to wish for. Most of the Saltcast you’ve met thus far haven’t seemed evil, haven’t seemed like creatures which deserve to be crushed underfoot. “You? You??” You don’t know what sort of body the creature has under its mound, but it must be pretty tough, or else it would have ruptured something from laughing that hard. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">Somehow this seems to have gained you favour.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[”You’ve been so entertaining! I’ll let you ask me a question. Go on. Ask anything.”]] In their dark alcove, the eyes go very wide. “You don’t know? But you must know you’re in mortal danger just being here! Are you…human, would you say you’re more of a fool than others of your kind, or are you in line with the average? [[More a fool]] [[Average]] [[Tell it it's being rude.]]“I see, I see. That makes sense. I think you must all be fools to some degree, though. Everything I’ve seen up above suggests you are. It’s something I hope we’ll exploit someday.” [[”You’ve been so entertaining! I’ll let you ask me a question. Go on. Ask anything.”]] “A whole species, just wandering about up there like that…that’s almost a little scary. Maybe we should hold off longer on going above after all.” But it laughs dismissively anyway. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">Somehow this seems to have gained you favour.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[”You’ve been so entertaining! I’ll let you ask me a question. Go on. Ask anything.”]] [[Ask it about going above]] [[Ask it what the Hydra King is]]There’s a tinny little laugh. “No offense intended! I’m just curious about humans. I think we ought to go out into the world and see how much of it we can take from you, instead of staying down here with the Hydra King.” [[”You’ve been so entertaining! I’ll let you ask me a question. Go on. Ask anything.”]] “A lot of us were brought into being down in these caves when the Hydra King was expanding his kingdom, but not all of us. Some were created by careless humans up under the sun. You know most come out angry? Not even we know why. Don’t remember anything from before the mirror. People like Yenyet’s Children think they have the answer, but I don’t know… But anyway, even those born above end up down here. Here’s where we’re strongest, where we have our own place, our own way of life. But there could be more! Whenever his scouts have gone out, they’ve been able to dominate huge groups of you humans. I think we could take over. "That was the plan, in the beginning.” [[Find out more->”You’ve been so entertaining! I’ll let you ask me a question. Go on. Ask anything.”]] [[“So, human, I’ve told you things you didn’t know. Would you do me a favor in return?”]]“Does anyone really know? Those of us who don't work directly for him mostly don’t talk about him, there are only whispers. He could always be listening. Oh, don’t look annoyed, I suppose I do know more than you do, little human. “In the beginning he was just the king, the strongest of all of us, the one who built the palace and excavated the caves and summoned us here. He was going to lead us out as a mighty army, and claim the world as a prize. Then, after years of preparations but before we were ready to begin, a human queen came down with fighters of her own, and there was a great confrontation. Their bodies are still up in the higher chambers. But even though she lost, she did something to him, some magic or miracle-working, and it changed him. Split him somehow, so that he's at war with himself. Most of the time he hides away, working in the shadows, but on days like today he loses control and goes out on rampages.” [[Find out more->”You’ve been so entertaining! I’ll let you ask me a question. Go on. Ask anything.”]] [[“So, human, I’ve told you things you didn’t know. Would you do me a favor in return?”]] The eyes blink shut as the spellbeast sighs. “Tell me a secret of the world you come from.” [[Tell the spellbeast a secret of state: the one every peasant knows about the people who rule them.]] [[Tell the spellbeast a gentle secret from within your own house.]] [[Refuse]]Your family are beautiful, kind, loving. You’ll kill anyone who hurts them. The spellbeast just laughs. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You have gained favour with the Saltcast.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[Move on.]] You tell it that the Saltcast who cause trouble up above almost always come into contact with peasants on the periphery of the kingdom, not those most fiercely defended by the crown. You tell it that’s why they’ve been so successful in causing problems. The king doesn’t care enough to send out his army, not yet, not for people like you. But if there was a real threat to his food supplies, or to the prosperous cities which kept the splendours in his coffers, or to trade routes, he would send out his knights and his armies. You tell the creature in its mound that its scouts have only fought the weakest of you, but a real fight is waiting for the Saltcast if they seek it. The creature is silent. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You have gained favour with the Saltcast.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[Move on.]] You’re not going to give any information to a being that has just announced its own malign intentions. Who knows what advantage your secrets could be twisted into? “How rude,” he says, and laughs. [[Move on.]]You hesitate. Does one bid farewell to a potential enemy when walking away from them? Before you can decide whether or not to speak, the spellbeast makes a small noise of alarm and blinks their glowing eyes shut, returning the cavity in their stone cocoon to darkness. You spin around, and see another creature approaching you. <<if $bestlantern === 1>>“That light,” the new creature says. “That clear, carrying, obnoxious, intrusive light! Surely it derives from Soima, the scarred Host, that regent of blasphemous orthodoxy, that defiler of the truth! You know where he is! Do you know what he’s done???” The questions must have been rhetorical, because it ploughs right over your answering stammer. “Do you know what he’s written? His…his cowardly perversion of divine history, inscribed on the very doors of our home??” This time you get a whole three syllables of stammer—uh, um, er—out before it sweeps onwards with its rant. “Torbet did not cut off a foot, as the lie goes, but instead his male member, which was essential for the act of creation! Any who have given real consideration to the mysteries of the world knows this to be true!” You’ve heard of this brand of heresy before, though never encountered it personally. You can’t see how it really matters, except that it would have delighted one of the priests you’ve known to talk about it, and horrifically embarrassed the other. Do Spellbeasts even breed? Do they even have... Actually, never mind. “Where is he? You know! You acquired that lantern from him!" [[Tell it where you last saw the scarred Host]] [[Refuse to tell it where you last saw the scarred Host]] [[Lie about where you last saw the scarred Host]] <<else>>It looks you over critically. “You! Have you seen the scarred Host?” "[[...Yes?]]" "[[...No?]]" <</if>>It demands the details. When, where, under what circumstances? You answer as elliptically as you can, focused on not giving away how little you know about this place and the people in it. But the Saltcast seems to get the idea, because it makes an angry hissing noise and strides off down the way you came. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">The scarred Host probably disapproves of this choice.</div></span><<nobr>><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration - 1>><</nobr>> [[That certainly happened.]] “You! Complicit! Why do you twist our truths, even despite their beauty?” It leans in very close to you. Its breath smells oddly floral. Its whiskers are quivering. You cross your arms and try to look implacable. Perhaps the effort pays off, because the Saltcast jerks upright again, hissing angrily, and turns its back on you. “Fine. Uphold your hideous lies. There will be a reckoning.” It stalks off into the dark, its angry chuntering folding echoes around itself until it sounds like the rumble of rain. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">The scarred Host probably approves of this choice.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[That certainly happened.]] “Oh-ho? This way, then a left, another left, a right, a left, and upward through a high passage? Thank you for your contribution to our reclamation of the holy truths!” It hurries off, jittering in apparent excitement. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">The scarred Host probably approves of this course of action.</div></span><<nobr>><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 2>><</nobr>> [[That certainly happened.]] It demands the details. When, where, under what circumstances? You answer as elliptically as you can, focused on not giving away how little you know about this place and the people in it. But this new Saltcast seems to get the idea, because it makes an angry hissing noise and strides off down the way you came. What was that about? Another instance of internal politics, perhaps, but one you’ll probably never unravel. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You can guess, though, that the scarred Host may disapprove of your choice to be honest.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration - 1>> [[That certainly happened.]]It makes angry sputtering noises, and marches off into the dark. What was that about? Another instance of internal politics, perhaps, but one you’ll probably never unravel. [[That certainly happened.]] You stare blankly ahead of you for a few moments. That was certainly an encounter. The mound-creature is still huddled down in shut-eyed silence, so you don’t bother saying a farewell. You move on as quickly as you can. The passageway continues to slope downwards, and continues to occasionally branch off into new paths which would be too hard for you to access—most of them rising through the ceiling, but one leading down and entirely filled with water. You can see the darting shapes of fish in there, some dull, some jewel bright. Finally, you come to a point where the passage splits into multiple accessible paths, with just one unreachable exit far over your head. When you look up, you can see it's closed with another of the Scarred Monarch's doors, and this time the door is just close enough for a few illuminated words to be readable. //Lost. Faction. Searching. King. Eldion.// You have a choice to go left or right, or to continue through the central passage. [[Left]] [[Right]] [[Center]]As you step forward, you hear the door above you grind open. A voice says, "Oh, another one. You're late!" Something huge clamps around your middle and yanks you upward. The shock of it makes you drop your lantern, and your eyes remain fixed on that one bright point as you are abruptly pulled into the yawning blackness above. <<set $lanternmissing to true>> [[There's no time to scream before it's over]]As you step forward, you hear the door above you grind open. A voice says, "Oh, another one. You're late!" Something huge clamps around your middle and yanks you upward. The shock of it makes you drop your lantern, and your eyes remain fixed on that one bright point as you are abruptly pulled into the yawning blackness above. <<set $lanternmissing to true>> [[There's no time to scream before it's over]]As you step forward, you hear the door above you grind open. A voice says, "Oh, another one. You're late!" Something huge clamps around your middle and yanks you upward. The shock of it makes you drop your lantern, and your eyes remain fixed on that one bright point as you are abruptly pulled into the yawning blackness above. <<set $lanternmissing to true>> [[There's no time to scream before it's over]]The main sign that you've transitioned from the tunnel into a larger space is the sudden drop in temperature as you’re brought into more almost perfect darkness. The pressure clamped around your torso releases, and you find yourself back on your own two feet, wobbling with shock. Around you are tiny clusters of light, sparser than the stars in the night sky, but just bright enough that a short period of concentrated peering reveals figures moving around. A hand, obviously not human in its size and anatomic arrangement, slaps against your back. The voice you heard just before being kidnapped says, “Hurry up, magician. Bring out your salt and join the others.” You stumble off to one side. Careful observation suggests that the figures are clustered into two groups, one with the bizarre and varied proportions of the spellbeasts, one deceptively normal. A little chill goes racing through you. More Cursed Hosts. You doubt these ones are as friendly as the first one you met: he said himself he was a rarity. What have you been mistaken for? 'Bring out your salt' the spellbeast had said. You feel around in your pocket for the small bag you collected after the Hydra King's rampage. It's too dim to see it even when you take it out and balance it in your palm. If you’ve been mistaken for one of them, you should try and play into it as long as you can while you look for a way to escape. [[Look around]]You shuffle towards what you assume is the Host group, peering around as you go. The clusters of tiny lights are telling you that the room you’re in is enormous, but some other instinct has you feeling like you might stumble into a wall at any moment. The Hosts are all silent as you join them, but you feel an odd buzz on your skin this close, and you’re not sure if it’s the salt or just their particular nature. At any moment they could realize what you are, and then… “The candle shall now be lit,” someone announces. The first leap of flame eats a hole in the world, sears through your eyes. A moment afterwards, once you’ve finished blinking, the modest candlelight reveals that the smallish room you’re in is almost entirely bordered in mirrored glass, re-creating the minor crowd of beings around you as a vast throng of duplicates. Just behind the candle, in the center of the room, there is another large mirror, this one seemingly made of black polished stone. A spiral of words has been scrawled around it in a language you don’t recognize. On one wall stands a heavy door, etched in shining gold, which is almost as reflective as the glass. The group of Hosts surrounding you form a procession and approach the central black mirror. [[Join the line]] [[Try to hang back]]Each Host dumps out a little more salt into the circle, and you imitate them, tiny crystals trickling between your fingers onto the stone. Panic is gnawing through your chest. What can you do? One of the spellbeasts steps forward, their reflection swelling up into the center of the black mirror. “I volunteer as a test,” they say. The Host who drew the initial circle shakes their head. “No,” they say. The voice is strangely normal, melodic, with an accent that reminds you of Old Tory, the merchant from Vingroor city. “All of you together desiring the same thing, willing it to come to be—that will drive the spell. We will perform it on all of you at once.” The spokes-spellbeast falters. “How are we to know you will do what you promised, rather than some other enchantment to benefit your master, cast on all of us so that none can hold you to account?” A soft laugh, like the rustle of autumn leaves. “Fulfilling your wish will gain us more than perverting it, child of the Dead God. All the denizens of these caves wish to know the truth you are attempting to uncover. If we find your answers on the other side of the mirror, and drag them into your possession, every other being here will wish to have their own histories returned, and will make the same bargain to get them. In succeeding, we will swell the king’s army. So, you may be assured that we will do everything we can to succeed.” Whatever's about to happen, it sounds larger and more abstract than anything you’ve heard attempted with magic. Certainly not the kind of spell anyone would want done with the involvement of a terrified interloper trying to pretend to be something she’s not. The Host with the gentle voice steps back into line with the rest of you. “Let us begin,” they say. [[Confess]] [[Begin]] [[Attempt to commandeer the spell]]<span class="death">You tell them all to wait. The wave of concentrated attention that immediately hits you turns your throat dry as stale bread, but you stumble onwards. You're not a Cursed Host, you're—you're an unusually human-looking spellbeast. There's been a mistake. You shouldn't be a participant in any of this. The Host closest to you leans even closer. You can just make out their eyes, a brightness as faint as a new moon behind a mantle of cloud. The nacreous gaze examines your face, sweeps up and down your body. "Human," the Host says, and laughs once before an impenetrable shadow rises up from their reaching hand and spears straight through your chest. You fall, but you're gone before you can feel yourself hit the ground. You Have Died! </span> [[Go Back->Pretend to know what you're doing]]You all walk slowly around the mirror in a circle. The mirror is polished to a reflective sheen on both sides, though the reflection is blurred and dark. The letters curling across its twin surfaces seem to distort the images it captures. As you circle, you look into the dimly reflected faces of the spellbeasts crowding the room, and feel cold under the weight of their expectation. The Host with the gentle voice steps into the salt circle. They extend an arm until the tips of their fingers are just brushing the mirror, and with their other hand, they drizzle more salt into the candle flame. In the real world, the flame remains small and steady. In the reflection, it leaps upwards into a tower of blue light, and when it subsides, the rest of the image has changed too. The spiral of words painted on are now radiating the same vivid blue, and the dark, clouded surface of the mirror has turned bright and clear, so that everything in the reflection looks closer, larger and more intensely coloured than it appears in real life. The spellbeasts, whom you know are standing some distance behind you, seem to loom up over your reflected double’s shoulder, glaring out of the stone with a hostility that turns your skin cold. A quick glance confirms that the real spellbeasts are still where they were before, and their expressions are mostly ones of anxiety, with a smattering of nervous excitement mixed in. “We reach into the realm of death,” says the gentle-voiced Host, tone turned persuasive, caressing. “We journey into the shadows to find what was lost.” Their fingers flick and the reflection lurches, reality bending into something unfamiliar. A whisper goes around the crowd behind you. [[Watch on]]You shut your eyes and wait. There's a lot of screaming, and more feet thud into the soft parts of your body. Eventually the chaos of sounds becomes muffled, although whether that's because you're sliding closer to unconsciousness or not isn't clear to you. Not much is clear to you, until there comes the loud, unmistakable noise of stone shattering. A hand seizes upon your shoulder. "What's this?" a cool, feminine voice says. "Not a Host, I'd swear to it. Why, it's been a century or more since I've seen one such as you. Are you truly dead?" [[Open your eyes]] [[Play dead harder]]You force yourself to your knees. In the mirror, your reflection grins a long and winding grin. Your real teeth don’t glitter like that. Cold hands slip through the stone and reach for you, scratching nails into your arms, your throat. An alien rage catches in your lungs, weighted with some ancient betrayal. “Sorry,” you tell yourself, and set your weight against the obsidian. It tilts, tips, falls. Shatters. You close your eyes and breathe deep through your nose until the ground under you seems to stabilise. Another hand settles on your shoulder, and you almost scream. When you lurch around, you see the spear-bearer looking down at you. Her face is flat and snake-like, with eruptions of something crystalline around its borders. Her vivid green eyes fix on you with surprised amusement. “You’re not a Host,” she says. “You seem to have got yourself into some trouble, human.” You can only nod in agreement. She hooks her fingers around your elbow and lifts you easily to your feet, then dusts you off. Her people seem to have overwhelmed both the Hosts conducting the spell and those affected. You watch as screaming, weeping spellbeasts are bound and gagged, still trying to kick out at each other. One of them has about a dozen tentacles, and its captors are having trouble getting them all pinned down, but they’re helped by the way the tentacled spellbeast is ignoring them in favour of lashing out at another from the original crowd. Shattering the mirror may have prevented anything dangerous from escaping, but it hasn’t reversed what’s been done. “Thank you for your help there,” the spearwoman says, nodding to the shards scattered around your feet. “That was brave. I would be interested to know how you came to be here, in this situation.” <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You have gained favour with the Saltcast.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 4>> [[Tell your story so far]]"Oh, it lives!" the spear-bearer says, smiling. Her face hovers just above yours, serpentine and flat, with crystalline protrusions about the border of her jaw and erupting out of her temples. When you blink up at her, she laughs and seizes you by the waist and shoulder, lifting you as if you are weightless. Her clawed hands are surprisingly gentle. "You are very far from home, little human," she says, without hostility. "I would be interested to know how you came to be here." [[Tell your story so far]] "Perhaps allow your tongue to loll, or try releasing an unpleasant odor," the voice advises. "If you wish to be more convincing." [[Open your eyes]]You try to simplify it to a few sentences. She listens with her arms folded, spear upright against her shoulder, and makes encouraging noises when you stumble. Once you’ve petered out, she clicks her tongue. “Brave indeed. So, you survived an encounter with the Hydra King. Very good. I…” For the first time, she seems uncertain. “I have a favour to ask of you, human, but first we should be introduced, and there are things I must explain. “I am Amaris. Many of those who live in these caves consider me a leader. It’s a formality, mostly: we’re a small and divided people. There's no true seat of control. But when we must counter the machinations of the Hydra King, I have the authority to direct our warriors.” She starts to walk, and you realise you are expected to follow. Your head still aches from the blow you caught, and trying to process everything she is saying is difficult. Still, you hurry to keep up. “We kept most of our healers back,” she says. “I’ll order one to attend to your head and other injuries. I hope that will show goodwill. I know that humans have as few reasons to trust us as we have to trust them.” You stumble a little, and she’s catching you before you even see her move. She props you up without any difficulty at all. You’re as weak as you are because of the curses which have left you starving. A little part of you is angry that she thinks the situation is equal, but you know there’s so much you don’t know. What have you each done to each other? Would you give up on a chance to answer those crimes of the past with justice, if it meant you still had a future? “Here,” she says, and leads you into another room. “Everyone, the situation is contained. Healers, move in. But not you, Meshi. I need you to work on…what was your name, human?” "[[My name is Madelaine]]""Madelaine,” says Amaris solemnly. "Wait here one moment." She moves over to confer with some of her spellbeasts. After a few minutes of rapid-fire conversation, she leads the healer she selected back over to you. “Meshi, she took a hit to the head, and some trampling,” she says. Your assigned healer is mostly grey-skinned, with vivid swirls of violet in symmetrical patterns over his cheeks. His features are slightly frog-like, protuberant eyes and slitted nostrils. He looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know much about human physiology,” he says, stepping up to you and reaching out to place one blunt-fingered hand on top of your head. Despite his vaguely amphibian appearance, his palm is very warm. Another wave of dizziness goes through you—for a moment even your knees feel dizzy—and then your head is clear. <<if $Wounds gt 0>>Meshi frowns. “You have some other injuries, friend. I can heal them, but it will use up more of your energy.” After a moment, he adds, “You seem to be in very poor health generally. Do you have some kind of wasting disease? Your energy pool is very low.” You pull away and tell him that you're simply hungry. “Oh,” says the healer knowingly. “Humans are very susceptible to that condition.” The spearwoman clicks her tongue again. <<else>>“This doesn’t seem right,” says Meshi. “My specialty is healing injuries, but…you seem to be in very poor health generally. Do you have some kind of wasting disease? Your energy pool is very low.” You pull away and tell him that you're simply hungry. “Oh,” says the healer knowingly. “Humans are very susceptible to that condition.” The spearwoman clicks her tongue again.<</if>> <<if ($Wounds gte 2)>><<set $energydrain to 1>><<elseif $Wounds gte 4>><<set $energydrain to 2>><<else>><<set $energydrain to 0>><</if>> [[“Well,” says the spearwoman.]]“Perhaps there are some things you want to ask me, now you’re healed?” [[Ask about Yenyet’s Children]] [[Ask about the Hydra King]] [[Ask about the spellbeast society]] [[Ask about the Saltcast which leave the cave]] (This will move the story forward) [[Ask about the favour she's seeking]] "The Hydra King maintains much control of the entrances and exits," Amaris says. "He keeps his own people stationed there. When he wants to know what goes on above, or steal resources, or strengthen the Seemings of his subjects, he sends out his scouts. You have said many of them have blighted your village with their talents? I do not know what benefit he gets from that. Probably it's amusing to him, to worry at the edges of another's kingdom. Perhaps he is trying to bait more of you down here to die. Perhaps he is simply ensuring that no alliance between your people and mine is possible." [[Go back->“Well,” says the spearwoman.]] She looks startled. "It is what it is. I do not know how to describe something that is everything. We live. We tell stories. We protect each other through the Seeming." She must notice the question in your face, for her eyebrow ridges raise. "You do not know of this? If it…Meshi, tell her of the Seeming." Meshi, resigned to his role as spokesman, shuffles forward again. "I think a human might understand it as…a kind of eating for sustenance, or a kind of dreaming for wisdom," he says. "You know we each come into the world through a particular mirror, and have to keep that mirror safe in order to continue to exist? Well, the Seeming is a time when we must look into our source-mirror and see what secrets it has to tell us of the world. It has to happen regularly, or we start to decline. We are vulnerable during our Seemings. "The more of the world your mirror has reflected, the more the Seeming sustains you. If you’ve fed something especially spectacular to your source-mirror, you may get stronger. That is one reason we often roam widely at the start of our lives." "Or it was," Amaris interjects. "Now only the Hydra King's scouts are safe to leave here. We make do with telling stories, reading tomes of ancient knowledge, viewing art of far-flung places, and visits to the few whose talent is scrying." [[Go back->“Well,” says the spearwoman.]]"Yes. The enemy." She crosses her arms and looks contemplative. "Eldion knew most, but was bound not to tell. I will tell you what we do know. He is a different order of Saltcast to the rest of us. We each have a single particular talent: one ability that breaks the rules of this world. Most are simple. The Hydra King has a vastly greater number of such innate powers, and he, like the Hosts, can also do magic himself. “He came here centuries ago, whence I do not know, and set about summoning more Saltcast. Those who came, he dominated and ruled. I was one of those created by him, and I served in his army. Others came here voluntarily, drawn by stories of him. There was a plan in place to build our strength until we were powerful enough to go to the world above and take it from the humans. We did as he commanded, or else we would be destroyed by him. I wanted to go above, yes, but he was not a kind ruler, and I wished also to be free of him. “In those days, the human kingdom had a division of soldiers who were specialised for fighting Saltcast. After some years of the Hydra King's rule here, this division came to visit us. It was led by a human sorceress, who had also control of some of her own summoned spellbeasts. Eldion was one of these. They challenged the Hydra King. He near wiped them out. Their leader fled deeper into the caves and begged us for aid, though we were under her enemy's dominion. Few agreed to fight. I did, and Soima, the only Cursed Host to turn on his master, and Eldion was at her side through the whole of it. I knew it was hopeless, but I could not bear to sit and do nothing. We opposed him. In a way, we won." Amaris' green eyes shine in the lamplight. "One of his many talents is some kind of absorption. I don't pretend to understand it. But he can capture the—the life, the essence—of those he chooses to use this talent upon, and take that essence into himself. He did it with any Saltcast who openly opposed him. Perhaps that was his original talent, and how he acquired all others. I would not have believed it possible with a human soul. But it must have been, for he slew that human woman and took her into himself. It was a mistake. “She must have been strong inside. As arrogant as him. She remains awake inside him, and he, who sought to control everything, no longer has full control over himself. He withdrew to fight that internal battle, and it has occupied him for centuries. It was the two of them together you saw at the market. She drives him out every few decades, and they rampage through our lives, he attacking her, her begging the world for death. So it is. But don't mistake me. He is still dangerous. He still lurks in the shadows, plotting war. He still commands his own army. Whenever our guard is lowered even slightly, he is there to attack. I do not intend to endure more of it." She takes a long breath after she finishes speaking, and looks faintly abashed. "Forgive me. I am not much of a talker usually, but upon this subject… Soima and I have been arguing for years about what must be done." [[Go back->“Well,” says the spearwoman.]] "Ah," she says, slapping the spearbutt against the ground. "They fight uncertainty by becoming fanatics. Where has it got them?" A simmering pause, and then she sighs and goes on. "We ourselves don't know what we are, as a people. But Yenyet's Children heard the story of the destruction of one old world, and found a reason in it for our creation and for our anger." When you continue to stare at her, awaiting more explanation, she gives Meshi the medic a slightly helpless glance. He clears his throat, causing it to balloon up briefly, and fills in for her. "They believe that we come from the souls of the unmade peoples of the world the Gods discarded. They think Moshidiah scattering its ashes into this world has given us a way to come back," he says. "Nobody really knows, but they believe—believed—that it was the only thing that made sense of us. And they believe that the Dead God exists still on the other side of the mirror, and might grant them their memories of what they consider the true world back if they call on her enough. "It…appears to have gone badly. From what they are saying...they all seem convinced now that, first, they really have got their memories back, and second, that each of them was deeply wronged by the others in that old life. That's about as much sense as we've got out of them. I don't know if it's true, or if there's any way back from the brink of the madness they've been driven to. It's dangerous to call upon the darkness." Amaris shrugs and takes over again. "As for the first, who cares? We have more practical matters to worry about. As to the second—it's their own business. We will keep them from killing each other in the meantime, if we can. And the healers will attend to them when we can spare them. That is the most we can do. Considering they bargained with the enemy for their 'truths', perhaps that is more than they deserve. Another mystery to ponder, if you care for such things." She glares at you as though she suspects you of philosophy, but it's only a moment before her face softens. "Anything else?" [[Go back->“Well,” says the spearwoman.]] Again, she seems uncomfortable, but she meets your eyes steadily all the same. She raises her free hand to her chest and then opens it to you, as if she were handing to you that moment when her palm made contact with the armour protecting her heart. “I ask this of you only because both our situations are desperate. Because the Hydra King will never be satisfied with his conquest. Because you have already proven that you are prepared to face death,” she says. “In the depths of the Hydra King’s domain, he has a collection of the resources he has stolen or discovered over the centuries. Among these treasures is a hoard of Moshidiah’s salt, which he uses both to manipulate reality in his favour and to summon more of us to swell his armies. As you have seen, his Hosts can use the salt also. However, he has also collected holy things neither he nor any of his subjects can use—the Blessing Stones of the Gods. “In the past, we have sent agents into his secret treasure rooms, to take what we may use against him, and to deprive him of as much power as we can. We’ve stolen salt, since, as a Host, Soima can use it—though he himself will admit he is not an adept. We have never attempted to take the Stones, for we are Saltcast, and cannot call upon their power either.” She thumps her spearbutt into the ground emphatically. “But you can, Madelaine. Any human can. I am asking you to go with our scouts into the heart of the Hydra King’s rule, and invoke the Gods’ blessings upon our fight.” Your mouth feels very dry. [[Can’t the scouts bring the Blessings back with them? Do you have to go with them?]]You’re no expert in stealth. You can only imagine that you’ll get in the way of whichever scouts she sends you with. “No,” says Amaris bluntly. “We have discovered, to our cost, that though getting into his innermost lair is difficult, that difficulty is nothing compared to escaping with stolen resources. But if that was all, I would of course give you the choice of which risk to take. No, it’s that he seems to have some…ability to sense the locations of both the salt and the Stones. Probably one of the many talents he has absorbed. My hope is that using them on site won’t be as detectable. “I will not deceive you. This endeavour is likely to end in your death, and the death of the entire party I am sending with you. But I can promise you that, if you agree, I will see to it that your village and your family is protected. You were willing to die to save your husband and children. This particular death will do that. Upon my word.” You're afraid. You're too weak. [[Accept]]She bows to you as Meshi watches quizzically. “In that case, I have many things to arrange. I will send someone to look after you in the meantime. They should arrive shortly. Perhaps use the time to rest, or to…make peace with what you stand to lose, if you can." You nod and then swallow, a hard gulp with your dry throat. Amaris turns and walks away. Meshi dithers for a moment and then hurries to catch her up. You suddenly feel very tired. There are beds here, but you think they’re for the injured. Instead you settle against a wall and shut your eyes. [[Think about your husband]] [[Think about your children]] [[Think about yourself]] [[Sleep]]James has the best heart of any man you've known, sweet and gentle and full of strength. He has never given up hope about your situation. It's so unfair that for all that, physically, there is something broken inside him. He cannot do physical labour for long without going pale and grey and starting to stagger like a man drunk. His hands often shake, which makes craftmanship difficult. Sometimes it is painful for him to even rise from his bed. If you were richer, and could afford books written by the wise and learned, he might succeed as a scholar, because he is bottomlessly curious and absorbs knowledge like a sponge, and he is sharp, finding connections and contradictions wherever they lie. You hope that will be in his future, if Amaris is true to her word. If he could, he would have come here. But he could not have even made it to the cave entrance, let alone continued through everything which followed. You must succeed, for his sake. [[Go back->Accept]] [[Sleep]]Patricia likes to go by Patty. Mattias insists on Mattias, no pet names for him. Patricia wants to be a bard, and she's always coming up with little rhymes, narrating her chores and games in song. She dances as she composes, and the memory makes you smile a little until it develops sharper details: her calloused unshod feet, the scrawniness of her flailing limbs, the way she's started getting out of breath almost right away. She’s old enough that you’ve tried to get her a place with the house-staff of the Baron who owns the estate, but even he must be hard hit by the area’s poverty, for he has reduced his staff and will take on no more. Mattias' great loves in life are insects and bugs. Whenever a line of ants gets into the house, he can be found crouching over them, eyes wide and full of wonder, and he'll squat-walk in procession with them as they roam over your floor. Every year when you spring clean, he goes around the corners of the house, warning the spiders that your duster is coming. All of his father's curiosity is concentrated in him around this one subject. Every day, he makes you laugh with the openness of his joy. Almost every day. You believe Amaris' promise. You have to believe it. [[Go back->Accept]] [[Sleep]]Do you still know who you are? Are you sure you haven't gone and mistaken yourself for a hero? You are, right now, probably the most knowledgeable human in the kingdom when it comes to Saltcast, but that doesn't seem to count for much. You'll never get to tell the king any of it. Not that you'd be welcome in his presence. Are you still in his kingdom at all, or is this a different one? The Hydra King's demesne, or maybe Amaris' republic? Your body aches, even after healing, its exhaustion a pain all of its own. You are the person sitting here, bouncing off the thought of death. You are everything you stand to lose. You open your eyes, blink at the faint light, squeeze them shut again. [[Go back->Accept]] [[Sleep]]You think of the lullaby you used to sing to the children. //Birds in their nests, beasts in their lairs; the winds, preaching summer, say lay down your cares Skies will be blue, leaves will be green We sleep now in comfort, 'til dawn just to dream...// Patrica, with her dream of being a bard from her earliest years, used to sing along with you. Mattias would just drop off right away. You're not sure he ever got to the end of the first verse. For a little while, peace. [[The world comes back.]]You open your eyes to see constellations of little lights drifting overhead. “Ah, I didn’t wake you, I hope,” says the scarred Host, Soima. “Amaris sent me to attend to you as she prepares for what’s coming.” You sit up with a groan. He’s half turned away from you, looking up at his own lights. Flickers of gold race around under his skin. “I think she’s well aware…” He pauses. Rubs at his face. “I think she knows that I disagree with what she’s attempting to do. Bringing a human into this…” He sighs. “Never mind. The choice has been made.” <<if ($bestlantern === 1)>>He pulls your lantern out from under his cloak. It blazes as bright as ever. “By the by, I believe you dropped this.” <<set $lanternmissing to false>> <<elseif ($bestlantern === 0)>> He pulls a lantern out from under his cloak. "Our lanterns don't hold my talent as well as the one you brought with you, but I've done my best. You'll need this." <<set $lanternmissing to false>><</if>> "[[Arranging things will take a little time.]]""I’d like to show you something, if you don’t mind…? You’ve already seen so much of the worst of things down here. If you’re to fight for us, it’s fitting that you also know some of the best.” [[Disagree]] [[Agree]]You want to be alone with your thoughts in the short time left to you. He nods. "Of course. Then I will not disturb you." He walks a short distance away and seats himself upon the ground, staring out into nothing. It's easy enough to ignore him when you have so much of yourself to wrestle with. [[Eventually, Amaris returns.]]He watches as you clamber painfully to your feet, and pats your shoulder. Then he leads you out of the room and through a maze-like series of corridors. As you go deeper, a sweet floral smell starts to tickle your nose, and the golden lights that seem to follow the scarred Host everywhere are bleached fainter by the growing background glow. It feels like you’re walking in daylight. The air is warm and humid. You notice moss growing on the stone walls of the tunnel, first sparse, then increasingly thick, until you’re surrounded by living green, a thousand different shades and textures. It's soft under your shoes, comfortable to walk on. The room you come to isn’t really a room. It’s an immense garden, the sort you always imagined when told of the imperial grounds surrounding royal palaces. There must be earth under the moss here, because there are even trees, solid and silver barked, their branches stretching up into the light that beams down from what seem to be gaps in the cavern roof. “It’s done with small channels to the surface lined with mirrors, I believe,” says the scarred Host, reading your thought. “We’re still very far below the ground. But we have no shortage of mirrors, of course.” There’s a small stream leading to a pool of water. You can see to the bottom of the pool, maybe twenty feet down, and when you poke a finger into the water, it’s icy. There are flowers floating on the surface, waxy pink and white petals resting on broad leaves. “I come here often to think,” says Soima. “There are so many different kinds of life here, all flourishing together in a system. It makes me hopeful that we can also live in a way that benefits each other.” His gesture sweeps over the mushrooms in the corners, the ropes of ivy hanging off the trees, the starlike flowers nodding around the edges of the pool. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">By coming, you seem to have gained a little favour.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[It’s a lovely thought]] [[Does he think the Hydra King could live in that ideal system?]]"Thank you, I think so too," he says, and smiles. "Have you looked your fill? This isn't the only place I wanted to show you. It's not far to the next. Will you come?" [[Refuse tactfully]] [[Go with him]] “No,” he says promptly and without regret. “Not as a productive part of it.” You watch him as he bends over a plant with plume-like leaves and tightly furled orange flowers. He brushes away a bead of water from the tip of a petal. “He wouldn’t be able to exist here without trying to dominate everything,” he says after a moment. He straightens up. "This isn't the only place I wanted to show you. It's not far. If you don't mind?" [[Refuse tactfully]] [[Go with him]] "Of course. I'll guide you back and we'll wait for Amaris." He smiles at you gently, a dead man's face inscribed with a dead man's past, and he beckons you on towards your pitifully short future. You follow him back to where you started, and return to your seart on the ground. [[Eventually, Amaris returns.]] You've nothing better to do. Seeing different places strengthens the Seeming, you remember. Perhaps to him, this expedition is meant to sustain you. You nod, and he nods back at you solemnly. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You have gained favour with the Saltcast.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[He leads you on through down a small channel under one of the heavy rock walls.]]You have to crawl to get by. It must not be accessible to everyone. The next room is a perfect contrast to the green paradise of the last, and, in its own way, to all of the palatial architecture you've wandered through in your journey through the caves. It seems almost completely untouched: a natural cavern which has suffered little in the way of excavation. It would be pitch black without Soima's talent, but when his little golden globes bob up to the ceiling, they cast their shine into every corner. The effect takes your breath away. Veins of precious stone and precious metal thread cover the walls, floor and ceiling in a tapestry of shining glory. Whole stalactites seem to be made from crystal, unpolished but still beautiful. You see gold, copper, silver, gemstones everywhere. "It may not be naturally occurring," Soima says in answer to the awe on your face. "It's conceivable that painting with such things was someone's talent, long ago. I can only say I salute them, if that is the case. Regardless, we have no particular use for such things beyond being nourished by their beauty, and little could be more beautiful than this arrangement as it is, I believe, so we've left it mostly untouched. I thought a human would find it impressive." You do. You can't help but see the monetary benefits that would come from mining this room, splendours upon splendours, but you see the glittering beauty folded into the earth as well. He pats your arm. "Should we wish to bargain with humankind someday, there are certainly things we could offer them," he says. "Though it would be a shame to disturb all this." [[One last place?]]You have to repress a yawn. [[Rest instead]] [[Just one more, then.]]You're so tired. The distraction was useful at first, but now all the fear is spilling in around it, and all you want is to sit and cradle your terror until it stops wailing at you. "Of course. I'll guide you back and we'll wait for Amaris." He leads you through a few new passageways until you're back where you started out. You drop down to the ground and pull your knees to your chest. He sits beside you silently, staring into nothing. [[Eventually, Amaris returns.]] He beckons you onwards. You follow him into a small cozy cavern filled with candles and a circle of spellbeasts. One of the spellbeasts seems to be mainly composed of grey mist, and is funnelling the smoke the candles produce into its gaping mouth, keeping the air clear. Another is holding a large tome open and reading from it. You see the glitter of exposed mirrors on several of their bodies. “Many years ago and many miles away,” the one with the tome begins, “In the human world, a young lord married a princess and they set about producing heirs, as humans do.” The smoke-absorbing spellbeast gives a small whoop. Soima clears his throat. “Why’s it always nobility?” someone complains, and everyone hushes them. "We feed the Seeming with tales such as this," Soima murmurs in your ear.<<nobr>><<set $Soimatoken to 1>><</nobr>> [[Listen to the tales]] [[Tune them out.]]"I've been musing upon our roles and responsibilities, recently," he says. “Amaris, Eldion (Gods keep him safe) and I were declared leaders simply for being the first to oppose the Hydra King. I wonder often if I am truly fit to give even one other person instruction, let alone issue directions to hundreds of my fellows. And even if I am, will I remain so, as the world and my people each change? We do not have laws as your kind have laws, but we are used to being constrained by a king. If the Hydra King falls, will we be expected to fill the gap he leaves? “I have heard that some human kingdoms produce a document which details a covenant between leader and their people. Something which binds the state to certain rules of government. They derive legitimacy from behaving as the document dictates.” You stare at him blankly as you jog along at his side. You are not versed in political theory. As far as you know, your king can do whatever he wants, so long as he keeps the army and most of the biggest landowners upon his side. “Perhaps I should start asking people to give me their thoughts. I could find an area with high foot-traffic, and write our covenant on the walls! I think witnessing a declaration of rights and freedoms would feed everyone’s Seemings quite heartily, and this would be a gesture of good faith…” You're starting to think Soima just really likes scribbling on the world around him. [[Encourage him.]] [[Discourage him.]]The Saltcast don't need the same sort of things as humans do. You can't really picture daily life in a world where you 'eat' experiences and only rarely need real physical meals. You know they have currency—do they work to produce new things for 'the Seeming'? Do they get wages? Do they own any part of the caves themselves? How would one rule such a people? It seems complicated. And Soima is very earnest, and very uncertain, which don't seem to you like traits suited to leadership. But maybe if they all figured it out together, it would work. You tell him so, and he beams at you, and starts telling you his ideas about leadership systems and how best to carve lettering into rock. If everything goes according to plan, you'll have died before all of this has a chance to come to pass. But your family would be safe. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You have gained favour with the Saltcast.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[When you get back to Amaris, she has assembled a small group.]]Your own king doesn't have any such system. A leader can't always be worrying about what everyone else thinks: nothing would ever get done. It would probably just end up favouring anyone who has power to fight, anyway. He looks disappointed, but agrees that developing a system for equitable rule is hard. "If there is such a thing," he adds, which would certainly be treasonous back home. Equity! It's a nice thought, but it's not realistic. You just want your familty to survive. [[When you get back to Amaris, she has assembled a small group.]]She introduces you to each in turn, and lists their particular talent: [[This is Teccah]] [[This is Grissol]] [[This is Parvad]] [["This is our most elite team," says Amaris.]][img[images/teccah.png]] Teccah stands about three feet in height, and is wearing worn leather garments, topped off with a heavy hood concealing his features. A pair of ursine ears poke out from ragged holes in the hood. "My talent, yes," he says, in a high, nervous voice. "I'm a pathfinder. I can take you on the best, the most efficient route to any stated goal. I'm pleased to be at your service." He bows twice to you, then once to Amaris and once to Soima. Amaris takes this with stoicism, but Soima looks startled and bows back seemingly instinctively. [[Go back->When you get back to Amaris, she has assembled a small group.]] [img[images/grissol.png]] Grissol is a ghostly wisp of a girl, floating and grey-toned, her thin left arm spindling down to a huge gauntleted hand on the ground which drags her behind it wherever it moves. The arrangement makes you think of a large spider trailing a few strands of web. She giggles when she looks at you. "You're pretty for a human," she says, grey eyes limpid. "My talent is confusing people!" You blink at her, and Teccah hurries to translate. "She can, at will, cloud the senses of anyone nearby. Very useful for getting past guards, very handy. Oh, ah, no pun intended. It'll likely affect you too at first, but you'll acclimate." Grissol giggles even more. [[Go back->When you get back to Amaris, she has assembled a small group.]] [img[images/parvad.png]] Parvad is man-shaped, with the head and wings of a large bird—perhaps a crow, although the colouring is all wrong for any bird you've ever seen. His wings are an iridescent silver, his beak white and slightly chipped, the rest of his feathers dark blue. "I find traps and curses and disable them," he says tersely. [[Go back->When you get back to Amaris, she has assembled a small group.]] "We have survived two expeditions into the Hydra King's stores," Parvad affirms, feathers ruffling. "Three times is the charm," chimes Grissol, and giggles wildly. "We are prepared to die," Parvad says, looking over at her with censure in his dark eyes. She giggles harder, but nods as she does so, the fingers of her gauntlet performing a brisk dance across the ground. "Of course we are," she says. "We have made our peace, of course, of course," Teccah says, and jerks his head at you. "Are you ready, my lady? There will be many trials, both to the body and to the mind." For a moment all the answers you could give crowd your tongue. A good portion of them are invective. Some are desperate refusals, some bold declarations of victory. [[In the end, all you do is nod.]]Amaris and Soima bow to you. Teccah says, "Follow me," sounding more confident now. Parvad pulls a shining knife from his belt, and hands it to you. The four of you walk towards the Hydra King's stronghold. [[END OF PART ONE]]<span class="titlewrap">[img[images/chaptertwo.png]]</span> [[PART TWO]]You're on a quest that will probably kill you, and you're not alone. You and your spellbeast companions are mostly walking in silence, although Grissol occasionally bubbles up into wordless giggles and the other two shush her. As you progress, you notice that the look of the tunnels and chambers are changing, all the soiled opulence replaced by starkly functional wall and roof supports. Teccah leads you through a maze-like series of intersections. When you have to climb, the others help you. They move together easily, well-practiced. You're the only part of the group that doesn't fit perfectly, but you do your best. "Guards!" Teccah warns, gesturing for you all to flatten yourself against a wall. "Grissol, could you please, if you would…?" [[Grissol would indeed.]]She hums softly, her upper body swaying into a gyration which reminds you of a weasel's hunting dance. You avert your eyes, a little unsettled, but not watching doesn't preserve you from the wave of confusion which suddenly sweeps over you, blurring your sight and filling your ears with water. You wobble, try to re-find your balance by taking a step and almost slam face-first into the rock wall you were leaning against. From a spiralling distance, you hear a babble of voices. Something makes you think they're important, so you focus in as much as you can, even though it makes your stomach roil and your throat tighten with nausea. "—happening? Torbet's forsaken toenails, have we walked into one of the traps???" "Help, help, I can't see! I can't…I can't think, where…" "No—no, this area should be clear, we were instructed to patrol freely…" "Please, no spike pit, I don't want to shatter in a spike pit…" "Tell him! We would never betray him, he must know, he must know that, he made it so. I didn't want to be here…" You turn the words you hear over idly in your head, smooth and slippery as river stones. You understand most of them separately, but what do they mean in sequence? You know, at the least, that the voices are frightened. You know, with a full body certainty, that there's good reason to be afraid. This isn't a safe place. Something close to you is moving very fast. Displaced air washes over your face, making your fogged-over eyes sting. The babbling words are replaced with a series of loud cracks and thuds. You blink, once, twice, trying to make sense of the knot of shadow and light writhing around a few paces away. One last blink, and Grissol releases her talent, letting grim awareness crash back into your brain. [[The guards lie in a heap on the ground.]]Teccah and Parvad must be used to operating through their teammate's ability, because they've neatly dealt with all five of your foes. You don't know how stages of injury work for Saltcast, but these ones look thoroughly battered. "Find their source-mirrors and shatter them," Parvad says flatly, and uses the long knife he's holding to slice into the chest of the spellbeast under his boot. [[Watch them die]] [[Intercede]]They're mostly silent as they die. One of them, slim and scaled like a fish, with a protrusible mouth, burbles something when one of Teccah's knives exposes the mirror that sits where the stomach would be on a human figure, but you don't understand. Watching them fold away to nothing but dust and mist makes you very uncomfortable. Death should be more gradual than that. Nobody should vanish from the world as if they were a fleeting dream. You look instead at your new companions. Teccah is surprisingly unmoved for someone you'd pegged as the nervous type. Parvad shakes his head as he works, something sorrowing in his half-lidded eyes, but the sharp movements of his hands seem almost angry, contemptuous. Grissol is inscrutable, her gauntleted fingers playing with the cracked mirrors that remain when all is done, angling them to reflect each of you. [[No time to ponder the implications of your choice.]] You remember with clarity now the way these guards spoke of their master. There was no love or loyalty there, only fear. He frightens you as well. You're moved to pity. There's rope still in the bag slung over your back—perhaps it would hold them? None of them seem especially mighty. Parvad shakes his head at you, but Teccah hesitates a fraction. Since you've been entrusted with this mission, he seems to think your opinion has some weight. The defeated guards huddle together and stare. None of them have anything to say in their own defence. Grissol skitters up close to you and peers into your eyes. Her own are dark and solemn. Her breath on your face is cold, and you have to steel yourself against the shiver that wants to seize you all over. She moves away again as abruptly as she approached, her head bobbing in a nod. "I think so," she says. "It's better to spare them. We'll be discovered sooner or later anyway, we always are." "Later is better," Parvad argues. "You're as bad as Soima. This would be an act of self-defence, not some moral crisis." "It's not wrong to kill them," Grissol says, eyes untroubled, tone casual. "It's better to spare them. For later." Parvad's feathers ruffle, and he clicks his beak. "You have to admit," Teccah says, edging along sideways so he's physically between the other two, "The Hydra King is hard to deny. He made most of these types himself. Yes? And they're young, you can tell that, can't you? Perhaps they'll help the word get around that there're other ways, ways to escape him, if we let them live." "All tyrants are hard to deny, and they're aiding him in his attempts to subjugate the rest of us," Parvad said. "But fine. We don't have the time to debate this fully. Knock them out and bind them, if it's all you can stand to do. Perhaps later we can paint up some subversive graffiti in between giving our lives for a thin chance at an advantage; Soima would no doubt applaud that too." Grissol just giggles. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You have gained favour with the Saltcast.</div></span><<nobr>> <<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> <<set $guardsreturn to random(1, 10)>> <</nobr>> [[No time to ponder the implications of your choice.]]Teccah moves on to investigating the great stone door sealing off the corridor, the occasional humming noise of interest drifting back to you. [[Wait for his evaluation]]Nothing is more important right now than your mission, is it? You're sorry. You really, really are. You walk through the door and the screech of pain fades behind you. [[More traps up ahead, Parvad says.]] You're not letting this turn you into a monster. You tell the others the trapped spellbeast must be released. "But…" Teccah is having trouble taking his eyes off the cage. "Perhaps on the way back…we can't waste the chance with the Blessing Stones…" You shake your head, trying to look resolute instead of merely stubborn. Parvad laughs suddenly, brittle but genuine, and puts his taloned hand on your shoulder. "This prisoner is clearly an enemy of the Hydra King," he says. "And any enemy of the Hydra King is a comrade of mine. Besides, Teccah, brother, though you've never told us your reasons for becoming a raider, you know mine. Walking away would be a betrayal of those reasons." Teccah finally brings his eyes down again, and glares at Parvad. "Eldion understood sacrifice, didn't he? He did. //He// would never have asked you to save him at the cost of the rest of us. At the cost of our mission, of Amaris' orders. No one who would ask is any comrade of mine." He's still wringing his hands as he says it, though. "All we have to do is not die," Grissol offers reasonably. "That's all. And Parvad never asks for things." "It's the human's choice," says Parvad. “Oh. Well.” Teccah looks at you dolefully. He seems to know you’ve already decided, and he won’t outright argue with you. You nod. Resolute. All you have to do is not die. "Be ready," Parvad warns. Grissol rears up on the littlest finger and the thumb of her gauntlet, then digs the sharp tips of the remaining fingers into the stone of the door. Laboriously she levers her way up, leaving a trail of pits behind her, until she's high enough to reach the cage. "Now!" she shouts, and severs the pulley cords attached to the spellbeast inside. Immediately the room rumbles around you. Cracks rush along the walls, and there are already chunks falling from the ceiling as Grissol drops back down and rams into the door along with Teccah and Parvad, cage tucked under her spindly free arm. Maybe it's their efforts to break through, or maybe it's the room's structural collapse, but a gap opens up in the stone ahead of you. You throw yourself into it just a fraction too slowly. There's a searing pain in your leg, then numbness, but you drag the dead weight behind you until you're in a wider empty space, and the dust has mostly settled again. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<nobr>> <<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> <<set $Eldionfreed to $Eldionfreed + 1>><</nobr>> [[Through!]]When you're done catching your breath and processing how close you just came to disaster, you sit up and look around. Your leg is torn and bleeding, stormcloud purple bruising fully wrapped around the calf, but it doesn't seem to be broken. You can flex your foot still. In a minute or two you'll probably be able to walk on it. The other three all seem to have made it out unscathed, and the birdcage is mostly intact, although Grissol has forced the door open, bending some of the bars. The little creature inside is making suffering noises. You winch yourself around to peer more closely at it. It's a grey bird, about the size of a chicken but with a hawkish cast to its head and wings. In fact, something about the shape of its features reminds you of the bird you encountered when you first entered the caves, and for a moment you're distracted from the ache in your leg by the unease rippling through your chest. But then the bird opens one of its eyes and peers up at all of you through a pupil that eclipses the iris. Its sides are heaving, its wings look mangled, and you yelp when it scrambles up on skinny limbs and tries to hop away from you. "Hey, hey," Parvad says, reaching out. "You're safe." He pauses. "Comparatively: we're in enemy territory. But we will not hurt you. All we want is to tend your wounds." It keeps on staring, teetering back and forth on taloned feet as though balanced right at the centre point between fleeing and falling over. Teccah and Grissol are keeping a respectful distance, letting Parvad try to do the reassuring. "Here," he says. "Allow me to bandage your wing." He inches closer, and the smaller bird stares and quivers, but doesn't try to get away. "You…you look a great deal like someone I used to know, who was also taken captive." An even more pronounced twitch ruffles the feathers. "Perhaps you might have seen or heard of his fate? We called him Eldion." As soon as the name emerges from Parvad's beak, the little bird jerks all over, shedding a billow of grey, and shoots up into the air with a frenzy of flapping. You're shocked it got off the ground, but you make an instinctive grab for it as it heads towards you. Your fingers brush feathers. The bird lets out a soft, musical cry, and—splits, a second, equally bedraggled self peeling off the first, their trajectories parting so that the first shoots over your shoulder and the second flies straight at your chest. The substance of it seems to evaporate as soon it connects with you, dissolving into mist and a sear of blue light. And yet all the breath is driven from your body by that brief, bursting impact. For a second, blue is all you can see. Then black wells up to meet it, and you feel yourself start to fall. [[float]]You're floating in the dark, and around you swim darting shoals of light and colour and sound. There's no way to reach out to them, but sometimes their course through the void brings them close enough to perceive clearly. Laughter, soft but cruel. A pale hand pressing on glass until it breaks. Your feathers plucked out, your wings broken. A voice you've heard before saying, "Let's see what your talent can really do, shall we?" Someone calls your name. You blink and the real world slides back into place between your eyelids. You're lying on the stone floor again, Teccah standing over you. "I told you so," he says to the other two, almost snapping, and then looks down and sees that you're awake. "Human! Are you all right?" You tell him your name is Madelaine, not 'human'. His ears swivel sheepishly. "Well… yes. Well. That all went badly. There was a flash and you fell over. I think it was all part of the trap, or maybe... Well, we don't have time to unravel the mystery. Can you continue?" You struggle to your feet and take a few testing steps. "Good enough," Teccah says, in a tone of resignation. "Yes." [[More traps up ahead, Parvad says.]]All of you tromp onwards in sullen quiet, until Grissol suddenly stops and points. She points with both hands, the gauntlet rocking back onto its wrist to allow its index finger to extend upwards at the right angle. Obediently, you look up, assuming you'll see some horror or danger hanging over your heads. Your gaze is met with an iridescent constellation shining in the light of your lantern, coruscating like the hands and throat of a well-decorated noblewoman. Your breath catches, first at the beauty of it, then again at the realisation of what it represents. Uncountable shards from uncountable broken mirrors, hung as trophies from the roof. A graveyard of the Saltcast. "The Hydra King's enemies, not his own subjects," Parvad explains, even though you'd hoped to stay in ignorance. "It's considered respectful to reassemble as much as you can into a whole after a source-mirror is shattered. He hangs them up in pieces as a declaration." Despite yourself, you peek upwards again. There's so many. "When we bring him down, we will crush his shards to dust," Parvad says. The other two hum in agreement. The quiet as you walk on remains uncomfortable, interrupted only when Parvad has to warn you of covered pits or Teccah must steer you through false walls. After what feels like a long time, Grissol says, "Which God will you petition with the Blessings?" [[Which God will be most receptive?]][[Lethron]] Tongueless diplomat, the god of peace after suffering, the god of the small joys that must be searched for. Petitioned for endurance, for sparks of light in the dark, for gradual change. Associated with rivers, lanterns, gifts between lovers and comic songs. [[Torbet]] One-footed hunter, god of justice and plenty, of the riotous joys that capture crowds. Generous, cruel, invoked by comfortable kings and righteously angry revolutionaries both. Associated with the sea, with archers, good harvests and revenge. [[Salrea]] One handed dancer, god of craft and beauty, grief that enriches, stories that start and end in the same place. Petitioned for wisdom, changes in perspective, for glimpses of what may be to come. Associated with the winds, the arts, institutes of learning, symmetry, notable asymmetry, young children and the dying elderly. [[Dicuar]] Fangless warrior, god of war and mercy, high achievement and heroism, hope that creates anger and anger that creates hope. Petitioned for victory, survival, strength, redemption. Associated with autumn, campfires, frosts, roads, orphans. [[Moshidiah]] Heartless psychopomp. Guides the dead into the dark. Petitioned to for endings. Associated with loneliness, heartbreak, caves, shadows, salt, and Saltcast.Lethron is the God your village temple dedicates itself to, and the one you grew up petitioning. The Hydra King has been embedded here for centuries, and all those under him have had to endure. They’re hoping now that this endurance will be rewarded. They hope for change and will work towards it. Lethron should look favourably upon that perseverance. [[The others nod along to your reasoning.]]Surely there’s some justice in bringing down a marauding beast like the Hydra King. In this mission you bring the will of two peoples together in vengeance. Torbet is for kings who preside over stability, and there is rot at the root of the Hydra King’s domain. His favour may fall on revolution instead. [[The others nod along to your reasoning.]]As a crafter, you should have some of Salrea’s goodwill. Wisdom would aid the rebels perhaps as much as pure might would. Salrea is not usually petitioned over battles, but you want victory here to mean flourishing hereafter, and you think their one guiding hand could ensure such a result. [[The others nod along to your reasoning.]]Dicuar is a god for heroes. You won’t claim the title for yourself, but you know unseating the Hydra King will require some. And you have hopeful anger and angry hope in abundance. Victory for the virtuous cause. Whatever it takes. [[The others nod along to your reasoning.]]Moshidiah. Everyone above associates them with the Saltcast. Perhaps they still have some affinity for the children of their sister’s ashes. The end of a king falls under their jurisdiction. Should they carry him down into the Dark, never to return, they would be offered the rare tribute of gratitude. [[The others nod along to your reasoning.]]Grissol is looking at you so intently that she missteps onto one of the pit coverings Parvad has warned you all about, and has to skitter sideways on her thumb and index finger to avoid falling. The covering drops away, revealing thin spikes jutting up from the bottom of the pit. She giggles, but nervously, and Teccah tuts. "We must concentrate on getting there," Parvad says, although there's no censure in his voice. "We don't know where we stand with the Gods," Grissol tells you frankly. "Most worship Moshidiah if they worship at all, since They're closest to being our creator, but none of the ancient texts say They ever claimed us. Some follow Lethron as the most tolerant and accepting, believing He would watch over us if anyone would. Nobody on this side admits to worshiping Yenyet, but there's at least a few. And the Hydra King has a temple to Her, maybe just to scare people, or maybe not." You shiver. A death god is one thing, but surely worshiping a //dead// god is courting disaster? "Maybe none of them will answer, and this is all for nothing," Grissol adds, lightly, as if it didn't trouble her much. "Hush," says Teccah, and shakes his head. "Dangerous to be making so much noise." "We have our duty," says Parvad. The silence crawls back into its previously vacated space. [[Dutifully continue]]You're focused enough on putting one foot in front of the other that you don't notice anything odd at first. But eventually a faint buzzing tickles your ears, and you falter. Parvad picks up on your unease almost instantly, looking back at you with his head tilted to one side. You cup a hand around your ear, signalling that you hear something strange, and he nudges the others, hushing them. The four of you each stop and try to decipher the sound; Teccah is the first to render judgement. "It's music," he whispers. "That's right. Someone singing." "Could be dangerous," Parvad says. "There are talents that involve harmful or compelling voices. We're still too far away from me to sense anything definite." "Perhaps we should block our ears," Teccah says. Parvad agrees with that, and shortly afterwards each of you have your ears stuffed with rags. It's not a perfect solution. As you get closer to the source of the singing, it starts to become audible even through the rags. You clap your hands over your ears, but you can still make out snatches of the words being sung. You hear 'Eldion', you hear 'captive', you hear 'guarding'. You squeeze your skull tighter and it all fades to buzzing. You turn another corner. You hear 'Hydra', you hear 'war', you hear 'daughter'. Parvad waves a hand to catch your collective attention, then goes rooting through Grissol's bag. He fetches out an undecorated wax tablet and a simple stylus from it. He writes: //Heard enough. Trap baited with secrets. Could be lies but think not—potency maybe connected to truth. Voice compelling at full exposure, not direct harmful. Could risk one listening, rest protect. ?// [[Continue on, trying to block out as much as you can]] [[Have one of you listen in on the song, protected by the rest of the group.]]You shake your head definitely, but you're still a little surprised at how readily the rest defer to you. Teccah produces some more rags. Each of you look ridiculous in your swaddling, but the song is too muffled to be tempting. Eventually, you pass far enough on that Parvaad indicates you should all unwrap again. The tunnel around you is quiet, each of your footfalls muffled. Something drips occasionally from the ceiling and lands with a soft 'plink'. [[Walk and think, think and walk.]] The other three scrawl waxy debate over the tablet until they finally decide that Grissol should be the one to listen and transcribe. She has the best defensive skill and the least to do with deciding your route. She seems perfectly happy to risk herself, and unwraps her head without a flicker of hesitation. The song seems to catch her almost immediately: her eyes go even dreamier and she sways forward over her gauntlet as it starts scuttling along on a new trajectory. Parvad and Teccah grab hold of her and steer her back onto your established course. She goes reluctantly but without much struggle. You're afraid she'll be so captured by whatever the magic is filling her mind with that she'll forget to write down the lyrics being sung, but she promptly puts stylus to tablet. You watch as words flow across the wax. //From where in the world came the many king's rise Ten thousand facets through one set of eyes And from where in the dark comes the many king's end? At the teeth of a stranger the gods thought to send?// A torrent of loud gurgling laughter, audible even through the cloth shoved in your ears, and you faintly make out the tune of the song changing. Grissol makes another attempt at turning, but she's gently deflected by the others, and doesn't stop her transcription. She has surprisingly beautiful writing. //From faithful in service the avian lord Joined in a trio of mutual accord Eldion: noblest, surest of slaves In taking triarchy seized hold of these caves… A punishment suited to arrogant theft Your high-flier was torn, his warp from his weft And hung in his hiding from followers dear Too far for your finding, the heart of your fear And does he know something you each seek to find A chance to unravel the Many King's mind? And is he forsaken, his secrets to keep Condemning your leaders to ignorant sleep?// Parvad's consternation is obvious. His efforts to keep Grissol on Teccah's chosen path have faltered, leaving Teccah to try both to lead and steer, and his attention is visibly wavering between the words Grissol is writing and the direction she keeps trying to go in—presumably the way to the singer, although you can imagine the magic luring you all into a pit instead. Teccah reaches across Grissol to slap Parvad irritably on the shoulder. Parvad snaps his beak back, the feathers on his neck rising to stiff ridges. After a moment of standoff, he pulls a second stylus from his satchel and scribbles on the side of Grissol's tablet: //Should find out what singer knows! Capture & interrogate!// Teccah shakes his head. Parvad snaps his beak again, then, oddly formal, turns and hands the stylus to you. [[Agree with his choice: more information could save you]] [[Protest: you cannot deviate from your mission]]“Iceborn Six,” hisses Teccah, and then sighs. As soon as they stop nudging Grissol off the path the song is compelling her to follow, she speeds up dramatically. You have to scurry to keep pace, afraid of losing her, and you’re distracted enough with catching up that you don’t notice immediately that the music is getting louder. It’s only when you get close enough to see Grissol’s tablet again that you start to understand the mistake you’ve made. She’s still scribing, but it’s nothing but swirls and spirals. And as soon as you see that, you realise that you’re starting to catch words again—and by then it’s too late. //…. To shatter … glass w…n’t dis…tle … cage You must ... your own ... his stage …// Damnit, you’re drifting. All you can think of is the flow of the music, how it pulls you in, winds around you. Not relaxing, no, filling you with a sense of urgency. You have to serve the singer, you have to please her. You have to get closer… [[You break into a run, vaguely aware of the others charging alongside you.]]Parvad takes the stylus back, and dips into a bow, eyes downcast. He takes his place at Grissol's side again, and your collective pace picks up. //Poor bird in his tangle of silver and light His talent-born fragments now all put to flight No loyal companion to weep for his loss His road to salvation too risky to cross…// Her stylus comes to a halt as the final taunting verse reaches you, and Grissol's gaze slowly unfogs. She bobs back up and looks around, then glances down at the tablet resting on the back of the gauntlet, registering the writing on it with an expression of mild surprise. She stays alert as you continue on, and after a few minutes Parvad clears you all to unwrap your ears. [[Walk and think, think and walk.]] "This part might be a little difficult, huma—Madelaine." Teccah gently pats your arm. "But I'm certain you can manage. Certain." This is perhaps less encouraging than he intended it to be. You heft the lamp and peer ahead. The corridor dips in front of you, sloping down until it meets the lip of the pool of dark water that cuts it off. "It isn't very long," he says. "You can hold your breath for a minute or two?" There are greenish glints in the water. You swallow hard. A minute, maybe. Two? "It's the best route," Teccah says hopefully. "Safest, shortest—best. I've been in this region before, and I think this is the way the Hydra King's officers themselves use." <<if ($bestlantern === 1)>>Something glints at the bottom of the tunnel, more gold than green. [[Something tells you to try and focus on it]] [[Two minutes. You tell them you'll do it.]] <<else>> There's something glinting at the bottom of the water, but your lanterns are too dim to properly pick it out. [[Two minutes. You tell them you'll do it.]] <</if>>You squint down into the glimmering pattern under the water. Irregular, all angles, bright with the light from your lantern. Reflecting…shards… You crouch by the side of the underwater tunnel and reach down. In the sharp light, you can just about see a hand reaching back at you, and your skin turns cold. Mirror pieces, hundreds of them, scattered across the floor of the tunnel. This is a place of death, too. When you point them out to the others, Teccah vibrates with consternation. "They must have added some trap, some trick to it," he says, and apologises a full five times in succession. "Something particularly vicious. We must take the long way round." [[You circle round through yet more tunnels]]Teccah spends the next few minutes apologising until you reach your next obstacle. The end of this part of the tunnel is also sealed by a door. This one is plain and practical, opened with a pull ring. All of you stop warily anyway. Teccah advances to prod at it, while Parvad flaps a hand around, searching for traces of danger. "There's someone talking on the other side," Grissol says, and edges past her comrades to smack her ear against the door. "Two or three people. Sound upset. Don't sound like they're leaving anytime soon." "We must pass them," Teccah decides. "They may not be guards. If not guards, they probably won't take action. If they are, we'll have to fight. No choice but to fight." "I'm ready to fight!" Grissol says, and flexes her gauntleted fingers, the rest of her bouncing on top. "Or draw seditious graffiti!" "Yes," is all Parvad says, but as soon as his buy-in is given, Teccah yanks on the pull ring. [[The door opens]]You manage to crane your head round to catch Parvad's eye. He seems to know what you're thinking. He gives his head a gentle shake. You know why. There are too many. It would be too dangerous. There's nothing you can do. [[Keep waiting.]]"No need to keep you in suspense," the Host concludes. "Bring him." The other Hosts surround Xeia and seize hold of his arms, dragging him back towards your door. You shut your eyes. How long can your luck hold? A swirl of dizziness tugs at your thoughts. It's disorientating enough that even with prior experience, it takes you a few seconds to recognise it as a low-level use of Grissol's talent, fuzzing things so that none of your enemies are focusing as they pass you by. They don't even close the door behind them when the last of them has gone through. The four of you stay in place until the echoes of their footsteps have fully faded. Parvad nudges you forward then, and you all reclaim your various pointy bits. "What do you think that little creature's mission was?" Grissol asks. "No way to know for sure," Parvad says. "Eldion used to sometimes hint around the idea of the human queen who brought him here experimenting with modifying the mirrors used to summon us. It may be that the Hydra King picked it up when he absorbed her. If we survive to return to Amaris, we can alert her, but we must not be distracted." "Unfortunately, we're going in the same direction as them," Teccah says, resigned. Of course you are. "Of course we are. There's a great hall near here where they'll likely be doing...the execution. We must pass through it to get to our goal. If we try and wait it out, we'll very likely, almost certainly, be discovered. We may as well use the crowd there'll be in there to sneak through." [[Sneak through.]]You think at this point you may have seen more Saltcast than you ever have humans. Certainly you've never seen such a vast space so packed with people. The great hall of your village is tiny in comparison. But even if it had been equal in size, it would be nowhere near as imposing. The village hall doesn't have acts of torture and death depicted in bass reliefs on its walls. It doesn't glitter with mirror dust. It doesn't have human bones set into a black tower in its centre, yellow-white skulls gaping out from a spiral that winds to a platform at the tower's apex. There are a number of other platforms jutting from the tower's sides, and Hosts stand on them, slowly beating large drums. The air ripples rhythmically, each beat creating a tactile sensation on your skin. It's disorientating, and becomes more so as Grissol sidles close by your side and starts gently fuzzing the minds of those surrounding you. Most of the crowd is stationary, but there's enough shuffling around that the four of you slowly weaving your way through hasn't caught anyone's attention yet. Still, every time the drums thunder across the hall, the tension in you winds a little tighter. At any moment, they could be joined by the outcry of the Hosts, sensing enemies in their midst. [[As you move, you become reluctantly aware of what's happening on the tower.]]As you move, you become reluctantly aware of what's happening on the tower. A Host, perhaps the one to hand down the sentence, is standing on the uppermost platform. Xeia is kneeling before them, arms bound behind him, head bowed. You duck behind a row of especially tall spellbeasts, which cuts off your view. It's a relief, but once you're past them you can't help looking again. You almost trip over your own feet. Xeia's source-mirror has been pulled out of his chest, a single fleshy tendril still connecting it to him. "Watch!" the Host commands, and a barrage of drumbeats roll over you as they pour something dark and slick over Xeia, a shimmer of iridescence clinging to the wet black drenching his fur. Lantern oil? you wonder, and stare, horrorstruck, as the Host gestures fire out of thin air. Xeia is screaming before the fire even touches him, but there's nothing he can do to avoid his fate. "I cast Moshidiah's last Blessing into the fire," the Host narrates. Don't stop walking. The execution scene falls in and out of view as you travel. "Grey Mother, Yenyet, accept our sacrifice, answer our call." "Speak." [[Listen]] [[Block your ears]]You are expecting something terrible to happen. You aren't expecting the voice that answers or the way your body responds to it: the ache of a killing frost in your teeth, in your bones; the darkness that unfolds under your eyelids; the hypothermic shaking of all your limbs, uncontrollable; the nothing in your head—your whole self, your entire sense of reality flattened into a stage for that voice to occupy. You don't understand the words, but it doesn't matter. They fill you anyway, swelling inside your skin, beautiful, terrible, indifferent. You have no room to doubt that it's the voice of a God. You're barely aware that hearing it is killing you. Then it stops. Silence like a breathless new birth, the prickle of empty seconds stirring you back to awareness. There's blood oozing from your nose and ears, the only warmth remaining. Your body is wet—with sweat, or condensation from the icy air? Your vision sparks with stars when you try and face the memory of what just happened. The Saltcast all around you are cowering, shuddering, reacting to the need to rebuild themselves about as badly as you are. When you look around for your comrades, you see Parvad kneeling, hands clasped to the sides of his head, Grissol slumped on the floor, fingers splayed, Teccah standing, hood tilted back, the glitter of his eyes damp and vacant. Up on the uppermost platform, the Host conducting the execution starts laughing. After what came before, it should have no power to reach you, but it feels so alien as a reaction that you find yourself looking up. The Host is holding up Xeia's source-mirror. Or rather, what was a mirror. It has turned ash-black, and instead of reflecting light, it now seems to suck it in. It's dark enough up there that you can barely see that Xeia himself is gone, reduced to an outline on the wall behind the tower. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">...Have you sustained a wound?</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<nobr>> <<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 2>> <<set $Greymothertoken to $Greymothertoken + 1>><</nobr>> [[Get out of there]] You don’t have time to fuss around with rags or wrappings. You just shove your palms up to your ears and press in until it hurts. Whatever it is which answers the Host, hearing even the muted murmur of it aches in your bones, spins a spiral of stars out before your eyes, chills your blood so that your lips and fingers go numb. A trickle of blood slides down your lip, the only line of warmth in the universe. You can’t breathe. The oppressive weight cracks down on your head, falls on right through you, and for a second your skin feels like ice breaking on a frozen lake—but then it’s gone, dropped out through the soles of your shoes, vanishing into the earth. Your lungs swell. The bead of blood which was sliding down your face drips off your chin. The voice has stopped. The Saltcast all around you are cowering, shuddering, folded in on themselves. Most of them haven’t reacted to the new silence. When you look around for your comrades, you see Parvad kneeling, feathered hands clasped to the sides of his head; Grissol slumped on the floor, fingers splayed; Teccah standing, hood tilted back, the glitter of his eyes damp and vacant. Up on the uppermost platform, the Host conducting the execution starts laughing. After what came before, it should have no power to reach you, but it feels so alien as a reaction that you find yourself looking up. The Host is holding up Xeia's source-mirror. Or rather, what was a mirror. It has turned ash-black, and instead of reflecting light, it now seems to suck it in. It's dark enough up there that you can barely see that Xeia himself is gone, reduced to an outline on the wall behind the tower. [[Get out of there]]Grissol is closest to you, so you try to lever her up. Lifting her by the shoulder is like pulling on loosely woven fabric—she seems to stretch in your grip, and it feels like she could tear apart with just a fraction too much force. You give up on that part of her and tug on her armoured thumb instead. You're focused enough that Parvad stepping up to your side makes you jump and nearly scream, a harsh breath puffed through your nostrils pumping more blood down your chin. He'd been smart enough to cover his ears, though, and he looks more put together than you feel, a faint smear of red on his beak and a hint of something shaken in his gaze the only signs of his collapse. "Grissol!" he calls, and she twitches at last, her thumb curling out of your hands and tucking underneath her. "Get up!" She does, slowly, woozy as a drunk. "What was that?" "No time to think on it," Parvad says. "The guards are trying to move the crowd along. As soon as the effect wears off, there'll be a stampede to get out." He's right. You can smell the stink of terror in the air. The other spellbeasts are stirring around you, finding their feet, pawing at the ground as if they don't trust that it'll stay settled under them. There's a feral edge to the shuffling, and you can tell it's all building to something more dramatic. "Teccah!" Parvad hisses. Teccah ignores him, continuing to stare into whatever vision has captured him. "Teccah, brother, we need you! Show us the way!" That invocation of duty finally summons your guide's attention back. He jumps and shudders, more like a man shaking off a dreadful temptation than like one moved purely by fear, and his focus returns to you. "Yes. Yes. We should go." [[The guards are chivvying spellbeasts a few rows away from you.]]The wave doesn't stop them looking at you with suspicion. Hosts seem to be ranked higher in the Hydra King's forces than spellbeasts, so you're expecting any trouble to come from the hooded figure in the middle of the line. But in fact it's the huge spellbeast with features that look carved from rock who approaches you. "None of you are assigned to this area," it says. You can actually hear the scrape of its eyes narrowing as it examines your group. You feel the tell-tell fuzziness of Grissol using her talent. [[Fight]] [[Bluff]]You drop your head and look down at your feet. They seem to you to be very conspicuously human feet. Each step they take rachets up the tension a little more. You’re sure you’re not going to get through this unnoticed. You feel it when the suspicious stares fix on you. Hosts seem to be ranked higher in the Hydra King's forces than spellbeasts, so you're expecting any trouble to come from the hooded figure in the middle of the line. But in fact it's the huge spellbeast with features that look carved from rock who approaches you. "None of you are assigned to this area," it says. You can actually hear the scrape of its eyes narrowing as it examines your group. You feel the tell-tell fuzziness of Grissol using her talent. [[Fight]] [[Bluff]]<<if $Bluff !== 1>>You glance back at the others, certain that fighting will be necessary, but not able to do the job yourself. The rocky giant, who had been hesitating over you, recognises something in the answering shift of your companions and responds immediately. With one hand, he gestures his troop over. The other hand clenches into a fist and canons towards you. All you have time to do is blink and flinch before Grissol leaps over your head and seizes his punching arm around the elbow with her finger-legs, forcing it to bend back instead of completing its arc into your face. <</if>>Parvad grabs you around the waist and throws you clear of the fight. The dizziness of being jerked around combines with Grissol's talent to leave you in a puddle of nausea and confusion, struggling to sit up. The grit of the floor under your hands itches in your brain. You've never been at sea, but your father had travelled with the army for years after being conscripted, and the stories he'd told had featured storm-pitched ships that had left him barely able to tell up from down, and projecting vomit in both directions anyway. You feel fresh sympathy as you try to track your comrades in the melee, fighting the blur in your eyes. The guards all seem to have talents suited to combat. Rocky seems able to grow extra stone outcroppings on his body, which work defensively and bulid upon his physical attacks. One of the others is wielding a long sword, and every time the blade makes contact, it releases some kind of forceful blast, making parrying impractical and dodging necessary. There is already a deep gouge in the metallic surface of Grissol's palm from one of its explosive slices. The Host's talent takes a while for you to figure out, but eventually you realise that it is able to attack through your comrades' shadows as well as their bodies: if it or its own shadow touches one of them or one of their shadows, they react with pain. Nonetheless, even though your group is much less suited to fighting in terms of talents, they're more than holding their own. Both Teccah and Parvad barely seem to notice Grissol's field of confusion, and they move smoothly together, freely switching opponents, defending each other and Grissol and setting up each other's attacks. You can't quite follow the sequence of their movements as they speed up into some kind of climax, but between one blink and other they've knocked down the Host and the swordmaster and moved to focus on Rocky. The Host and the swordmaster are injured, but their source-mirrors are fully intact, leaving the possibility that they'll recover and rejoin the fight. [[Stay back]] [[Kill the downed enemies]]You’d like to avoid fighting if it’s at all possible. This is a tough-looking group of guards, and you’re surrounded by the Hydra King’s subjects. You’ve started to get used to the effect of Grissol’s powers, so you fix a plan of action firmly into your mind now before the dizziness gets stronger. Words, expressions, you’ve got them lined up and ready to go. You’re going to bluff ‘til you’re blue in the face. (Look innocent but contrite.) You were indeed assigned to this area. (Look worried.) Perhaps the execution meant things were rearranged? (Look thoughtful: bow.) Parvad jumps in, following your lead in a way that’s slightly flattering and slightly alarming: perhaps he isn’t sure you could win this fight either. “We are diligent workers,” he says. “We will serve the king wherever you want to put us.” The rocky giant glances back over at his fellows. You look, too, and see the Host give a slow shake of their head. “If you’re not spies then you must be dissidents,” Rocky says. A stir passes around the spellbeast spectators. “You go where you’re told to be. Things haven’t been rearranged.” “Oh, sir,” Parvad starts. Rocky cuts him off. “If you’re loyal, then stay still.” He pulls back a fist. You freeze as he swings it, but Parvad ducks smoothly out of the way and draws his long knife, clicking his beak in annoyance. “Well, it was worth a try,” he says, inclining his head in your direction. Another ripple passes around the small crowd surrounding you. You can’t tell if it’s hostile, or if your show of defiance is just hard for them to understand. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">Have you gained favour with the Saltcast?</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> <<set $Bluff to 1>> [[Fight]] [[Try to win over the spellbeast stragglers]]You’re not a fighter, but you’d be willing to fight if there were no other choices. Executioner, though, is another matter. You can’t bring yourself to move at all. You lie still and watch as the Host starts to twitch, fingers curling, knees bending to the side until she fully rolls over. She pushes herself up with one arm, visibly groggy, and sways in a rough circle as she takes in what’s happening. Her eyes fix on you and she smiles, a small, crooked, almost friendly smile. Then she starts crawling towards you. With a lurch of alarm you realise that your lantern has fallen behind you and your shadow is stretched out towards the Host, almost within her grasp. You twist round and grab the lantern, jerking it up and over yourself so it lands between you and her, and manage to force yourself into a crouch. She scuttles forward. You scuttle back. You have regained enough energy and focus to feel a little ridiculous, but you know she will kill you if she catches you. Her smile grows wider as she backs you up against the wall. You try to shuffle sideways, but she’s faster than you. She flings out one long, draping sleeve, extending the dark pool of her shadow until it just barely brushes against your arm—and then bloody gouges rip open around your wrist, and an irresistible force yanks you down. Hot tearing pain chains its way over your forearm and up your bicep, and you lash out with the lantern, but all it does is warp the shadows clinging to you into long, twisting shapes. The pain hits your shoulder, coursing over to the area above your heart and beginning to dig in. Your scream sounds pitifully thin and quiet. You don’t expect the others, caught up in a far more frenzied battle, to notice. But they do. Parvad pulls a knife out of his belt, and, without even looking over at you, throws it into the Host’s extended hand. There’s a squawk and the pressure on your chest lifts, and then Teccah is speeding over to your side. He lunges, and you hear the sharp crack of glass as his blade impacts the Host’s torso, right where her heart must be. A few shards spill out from the wound on her breast as he pulls his sword back. He flits back to the other fight before her body has time to hit the floor. You lean back against the wall and shake. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span> <<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> [[A shard of stone catches you in the cheek.]]You crawl forwards on your hands and knees, every joint unstable and your stomach pitching. You've killed livestock before, of course, but this is different. You reach the Host where they lie limply on their back. Killing the human body will release the Cursed Spirit, still dangerous in its own right even if vulnerable to your lantern. You need to find the mirror. You draw out your knife and make a shallow slice down the centre of the Host's chest. Don't look at the face. (A young woman, wild red curls and an unlined brow. She looks gentle.) Ignore the smell of blood. Look for anywhere the flesh seems distorted. Here, a raised square on one side. You cut again, and are rewarded with (blood, the stink of exposed innards, a little gasp of pain from the Host as they—she?—starts to come round) the shine of a mirror. Smash it. Now. Don't hesitate. Unlike spellbeasts, Hosts leave a corpse, though it's a stolen one. It’s better not to look. You move on to the swordmaster and repeat the process. Their mirror is harder to find, since you're less certain of how their anatomy is supposed to appear, but you find it eventually embedded in their foot. Once it's destroyed, their body crumbles to black dust, replacing some of the blood on your hands with a sticky residue. Behind you, the spellbeasts who were assigned to this area watch you murder their guards. It's impossible for you, a novice in this world, to tell what they're thinking. <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">Have you gained favour with the Saltcast?</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[A shard of stone catches you in the cheek.]]You’re afraid they’ll be moved to join in on the other side if you don’t do something. You let the others move forward to fight, and instead square your shoulders and try to think of what made the priests seem impressive in their sermons back in the village. Conviction. Building each new thought off years and years of tradition. Never asking a question without an answer ready. You open your mouth. You ask them if they aren't tired. It's not what you mean to say, but it's what comes out. You stammer for a second, then go on. You ask them if they want to serve under a tyrant who orders things like the execution you all saw. You ask them if they want their every move dictated, their lives kept small and scared. This was probably a mistake. You know enough about the Hydra King to be horrified by him, to accept Soima and Amaris’ cause, but you don’t know the day-to-day things, the small details of the lives of those who serve him. You can’t tell them anything they don’t already know. And you’d never revolt against //your// king: true, he’s done nothing to cushion the collapse of the curse-struck regions apart from offering a reward for someone else to fix it, but he’s too far away to blame. He’s busy. And the Baron who lives in the Estate, who employs most of the village to work his fields and his household—he’s not so bad. Wages are neither cruel nor generous. He’s tried to get the land right again. It’s not his fault he failed. Someone should have saved you, but you don’t have a face for the someone. You clear your throat, try again. It would be easier without Grissol's talent muddling your head, but still not easy. You ask them if they don't want more. You ask them what the Hydra King does for them. You ask them whether, once they take over the surface, he'll let them keep any of it. You answer your own question, telling them they'll get a tiny, dried out corner, at best, and that when he needs someone to die for him, they'll volunteer, because there might be a chance he'll throw another scrap their way. Oh. Maybe you do blame your king a little, after all. Deep down. But you don’t have to room to think about it now. Iceborn Six, but you’re tired. [[You can’t tell if you’ve reached them even slightly.]]This pack of guards seem more dangerous than the last lot you considered leaving alive. But they’re still only tools of the Hydra King, subject to the same fears and dependencies as any of the population. After your little speech, you find yourself wondering about their motives, wondering if they’d give up the fight with the right push. You’ve learned to think of Saltcast as people. These, though, are the people who go out and terrorise the world above, your world. They’ve starved your family, kept everyone you know in fear. You can’t muster much softness in your heart for them. They’ve made your life brutal, now they’re going to reap brutality. Unless you speak up and save them. You call out for the group to wait, and then stop, undecided. The others glance back at you, but they won’t hold off for long. You’re still hesitating when the Saltcast stragglers rush the downed guards. They don’t have weapons and don’t need them. The guards are injured and helpless. Despite yourself, you avert your eyes, but you hear the mirrors shatter. Fair enough. "That fight was loud and dramatic enough that I'm sure reinforcements are already on their way," Parvad says. "We need to hurry." <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">Have you gained favour with the Saltcast?</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[Hurry.]] They’re brisk, unemotional. They find the source-mirrors much more easily than you would be able to, and smash them with precise blows. "That was loud and dramatic enough that I'm sure reinforcements are already on their way," Parvad says. "We need to hurry." [[Hurry.]] When you look up, you see that Grissol, Parvad and Teccah have dispatched two more guards and have focused a final assault upon Rocky, literally chipping away at his defences. He roars and swings his fists, but they dart around him, Parvad and Teccah drawing him out and Grissol getting the heavy blows in. When he tries to throw all his strength against her, ignoring the other two, they make him suffer for it: you get the sudden impression that Teccah's pathfinding might apply to the physical vulnerabilities of an enemy. Every attack he issues seems to widen the cracks and fissures in the stonework spellbeast's hide, which Parvad exploits immediately, his poisoned blade darting into each freshly opened wound. Finally, Rocky goes to his knees, arms still windmilling weakly. Teccah slaps Grissol on the shoulder and points, and you see her nod. She backs away a few paces, then charges, her index finger extended like a spear. She hits him midback and the point of her talon bursts though just under where the collarbone would be on a human body, pushing out a spray of obsidian shards. A moment later, the shards and a pile of dust are all that's left. "That was loud and dramatic enough that I'm sure reinforcements are already on their way," Parvad says. "We need to hurry." [[Hurry.]]Years ago, before life turned so difficult, you enjoyed running. None of the things which spoke to you about it—the freedom, the wind in your hair, the sense of wild achievement and possibility—are present in the mad dash you must now commit to. The cave around you twists and turns, and you long ago lost all idea of how far you've intruded into the Hydra King's demesne. Parvad disables the traps in front of you so quickly that it's hard to trust that they've truly been broken, but thus far you've passed them without trouble. Teccah leads you through hidden passages, finding the secret openings and trapdoors you'd never be able to even guess at if you were alone. Most of the route is through cramped corridors and little rooms that force you to go two by two, and you rarely see other travellers. But occasionally you pass through larger spaces, and see Saltcast performing combat drills or sorting materials or lowering glass onto mercury, and you get a glimpse into the industry sustaining this part of the Hydra King's kingdom. It puts extra force into your stride, hurrying you onward. [[There's farther to travel]] It's not long before you hear guards on your heels again. You stumble through the warren of passages, flinching as the sounds behind you get closer and closer. Soon the pursuit is close enough to start hurling attacks after you. Teccah takes you by the arm and manoeuvres you through a pattern of evasion, leaving the other two to manage it themselves, which they do smoothly. You stagger as he presses you into a low duck, and a writhing ball of what looks like hair shoots over your head. There are arrows, too, and even musket balls, but the oddness of the talent-based attacks shake your nerve most. The hair unravels and tries to catch at your legs as you jump over its strands, and some kind of vibrating beam knocks rocks down from the roof over your heads. Advancing a little more slowly than the guards, but steadily, unstoppably, despair too gives chase. There's so many of them, and you're so tired. You put your head down and keep running, but deep down you're almost certain they'll catch you. "This way!" Parvad says suddenly, and yanks Teccah, and through Teccah you, into a side passage. It's the first time he's interfered directly with Teccah's navigation, and a spark of curiosity brightens inside you. Compared to the rest of this area, the passage is notably more decorated, with scrolled columns and square blue tiles on the floor. The temperature, already cold, has dropped. Your panting breaths crystalise, the lantern turning the mist glimmering gold. The sound of the guards' footfalls ceases, though arrows continue to patter off the walls behind you. A glance over your shoulder tells you that your pursuers are clustered together at the passage entrance, none of them having put even a toe across its threshold. Strange. [[At the other end of the passage, a new door comes into view.]]It is set at the centre of several layers of recessed stone, a heavy wooden thing rising to a pointed arch, intricately carved with a pattern of stars. It reminds you of the doors of the temple in the city—twice your height, and broad, its metal furnishings ornately scrolled. Despite its obvious weight, it opens easily, gliding out of your way as you step through. The view of the inside strengthens your impression of a temple, though an untidy one. There are statues lining the walls and scattered around the space, a medley of different styles and forms—here a gigantic stone sculpture of what appears to be a two-headed cat; here a draconic figure in tin, claws outstretched; here a crude wooden carving of a headless torso with dozens of arms. At the front stands a vast block of some material that shines like the stories say diamonds do, glacially clear and cold, remote in its beauty. Inside it, some artistry has made a hollow in the shape of a human woman. It is crudely carved about the face, the features blurred and vague, but wildly detailed about the hands and feet, so much so that you're sure that if you got close enough you could see the ridges of her fingerprints. One of her hands is outstretched, extended in an eternal gesture of longing or perhaps greed, and the index finger of that hand passes the border of the block at the last joint, showing only as a hole where interior hollow meets exterior plane. The tip of her finger continues invisibly past the edge. "Yenyet's temple," says Grissol, with more trepidation than reverence. "Why did you bring us here?" "You know why," Parvad answers. "They would have caught us otherwise, but they'll not follow us here. They'll be circling around. And see, they have all these images of her, but each one is so entirely different, it's clear they're fumbling in the dark for something they don't understand. She doesn't dwell here. Besides, I feel no enchantments." "When they called her at the execution, something answered," Teccah says, shuddering. "Something.... We shouldn't tarry." "We've no time to tarry anywhere at all," Parvad says, a little tartly. He nudges you to keep walking. As you walk closer to what you've decided must be a block of diamond, you hear something begin to gently tease your ear, soft and lovely and insinuating. A voice, perhaps, or the burbling of a stream, or the rumble of thunder, or the crackle of fire, or the song of birds. The light of your lantern catches inside the cradle of the hollow woman, gold fragmenting into a thousand different colours at once in her heart. [[Ignore the whispers in your ear.]] [[Approach her avatar and look through the hole where her finger exits the diamond]]You shake your head, like a pony jerking away from a fly. It’s surprisingly difficult to move past the block, to force your eyes forward. You wonder why the temple is here when none of the Hydra King’s forces dare enter. You don’t want to know what they’re so afraid of. Head down. Feet, one in front of the other. Try not to think about what’s behind you. //Moshidiah, grant me a peaceful death. Keep me from your sister’s grasp.// You reach the other side of the room, and the relief is a rattling blow. [[Continue to outrun the guards on the other side.]]You know better, you really do. But all your resistance has been worn down, and the lure of beauty is a fishhook in your lip, dragging you on. You look up into the blurred, near-featureless face, then lean close to the hole in the surface of the diamond. "What are you doing?" Under other circumstances you would be amused at how Teccah's voice squeaks, but not now. Now all your attention is on your mother's dead hands stroking your cheeks, her dead eyes filled with dark and with the celestial spirals of stars burning themselves out, her prayer a sweet blasphemy in your ears, frost on your tongue, everything in the universe cold, every summer day a lie— "Human!" They yank you back, these strangers, the ones who don't want you to know the secrets of the dark and the cold, they rip you away from your mother. You try to speak some of the words you've learned, but they force something into your mouth. "Madelaine!" You blink at the ceiling. The rag wedged against your tonsils is making it hard to breathe, but the others seem to know you're back inside yourself and allow you to spit it out again. There's blood on your lips. "That was stupid," Grissol tells you cheerfully. Parvad’s feathers are all standing on end. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<nobr>> <<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> <<set $Greymothertoken to $Greymothertoken + 1>><</nobr>> [[Continue to outrun the guards on the other side.]]With that short-cut, if it can be called that, you've regained a little head-start — although in the distance you can still hear running feet. There are still traps, which Parvad helps you evade or disarm, but it's hard to get through them safely at the pace Teccah is setting for you. Something glitters at the end of the passage, despite the shadows. [[Nearly there]])You cross into the shadows, and come face to face with your next challenge. Since that challenge appears to be a gallery of mirrors leading into a mirror-maze, the face which confronts you is your own, multiplied a dozen times over in an uncanny pageant. There's a subtle warp in each mirror's surface which makes your reflection seem strange and wrong—a different distortion in each of the dozen: some stretched, some bulbous, some with their pale lips tilted up into smiles, when your own expression has been fixed in a tight, worried grimace for the last few hours at least. The view behind you is also different in every reflection: blurred shapes and colours that add up to a nonsense landscape at odds with the plain stone walls you passed to get here. You look over your shoulder and see only what you saw on your way through, although you're sure the guards are coming as fast as they can, and will be appearing there at any minute. "Hmm," says Parvad, shifting from foot to foot. "Something very strange about these. They are definitely cursed, but…the magic's focused elsewhere. They almost feel like source-mirrors, but not quite." "We'll beat whatever the curse is when we find it," Grissol says, and cracks the knuckles on her smaller hand. "This way," Teccah says. "We're nearly there. The end is close." His talent makes mazes easy to navigate, though it's still unnerving to be surrounded by a crowd of your doubles and their rippling, slanted movements. Several times, out of the corner of your eye, you think you see a tendril of red light go swimming across the glass, though when you turn your head it's always gone. You have no doubt you're on the most efficient route through, but there must be others, because you often hear the guards on the other side of the mirrors, and sometimes they throw attacks over the tops, although, since they can't see you, these are very inaccurate. Still, you don't enjoy the experience of being pelted with deadly objects. [[You duck and an arrow breezes past your ear.]]Consider everything you're afraid of. [[Spellbeasts]] [[Cursed Hosts]] [[Suffocation underground]] [[The unyielding dark]]One of the two kinds of monsters which are called //Saltcast.// You know little about how they come to exist, only that they’re the result of attempts at sorcery which have gone wrong. The old books say that, to kill a spellbeast, you must smash the mirror used in the misfired ritual which created it. This source-mirror is always carried within the spellbeast’s body, concealed and protected, though never too far from the surface. [[Think of your other fears|Examine your anxieties]] [[Are you ready?]]One of the two kinds of monsters which are called //Saltcast.// Generally regarded as even more dangerous than spellbeasts, for reasons the old texts you were shown in temple school didn’t deign to record. Like spellbeasts, they are created when a sorcerous working fails, but they are twisted fusions of a human and the Cursed Spirit released by the failure. You may kill the Host in the same way as you might kill any human being, but this will release the Cursed Spirit, which will then attack and probably possess you. To truly destroy the threat, you must find and shatter the mirror used in the spell which summoned it, which will be hidden somewhere within the Host’s body. So the old tomes claim, anyway. [[Think of your other fears|Examine your anxieties]] [[Are you ready?]]You don’t know much about exploring caves, but you know it’s dangerous work. There’s air down there which can poison both man and beast, and that’s if the whole system isn’t flooded with toxic water. Your hope is that the Saltcast need clean air just as much as you do, and have arranged things so that they can get it. [[Think of your other fears|Examine your anxieties]] [[Are you ready?]]You have no particular fighting skills, no magic, no scholarship. No godly blessing. Your belly is empty and the trek to this point has used most of your strength. You coming here is a ridiculous thing. Death, directly ahead, must be laughing in your face. Nonetheless, you intend to go on. [[Pray for guidance]] [[Go on]]This time your knees really do give out, and you drop to the floor. The sharp and jagged rocks upon it jab into your legs, but, at first, you can’t make yourself move. The salt he spilled is mixed with dust and rubble, but there’s still enough there to make a handful. If it’s Moshidiah’s salt, that small amount would be worth more than your entire village. Slowly, you reach out and scoop yourself up a handful of trouble. [[Get back up and carry on.]]She has brought with her a small group. She introduces you to each in turn, and lists their particular talent: [[This is Teccah]] [[This is Grissol]] [[This is Parvad]] [["This is our most elite team," says Amaris.]]They’re making an effort to get all their missiles over the glass, not trying to go through. But one of them aims too low, or slips, or something else goes wrong, and the mirror you’re currently passing shatters at the impact and then shatters even further upon each piece hitting the ground. A billow of glass dust sweeps over your boots. You stare through the new gap at the equally startled guards. All of you, even forever unflustered Grissol, jump at the earsplitting scream from the upper end of the mirror maze. Something huge and red flashes across the shadow-formed horizon, before dropping back into the dark. An angry rumble travels through the mirrors, shaking them out of place so that each mirror in the row slumps sideways, knocking into the others. Mostly they prop each other up, but one slips out of line, falling onto several of the guards on the other side. It lands flat on the ground, as if there was nothing beneath, as if the glass had reabsorbed the Saltcast into whatever mirror-space they first emerged from. The gap has been reduced to a small triangle showing the remaining guards’ lower halves. But now that it’s there, running opens up your backs to any of them who slip through after you. It seems like once again you’ll have to stop and fight. [[Fight directly]] [[Try to tip more of the mirrors over onto the guards]]You get a brisk education in how much damage a spellbeast can take without truly dying as Parvad outright beheads one of the guards as soon as they slip through. The guard, who, in one piece, looked a lot like a scarecrow, slumps to the ground. His head rolls across your feet and bounces off into the distance. He doesn’t dissolve, though, and his body keeps trying to crawl towards you until Grissol kicks it a long way down the hall of mirrors. “The source-mirror breaks by itself after a while if you hurt them thoroughly enough,” Teccah tells you in the patient tone of an instructor, ducking under a shot from a creature which looks like a toadstool with a musket. “Or if they can’t eat for a very long time, or miss the Seeming. But Amaris trained us to go straight for it wherever possible. More efficient. Perhaps even more compassionate, if that is a factor. But, certainly, more efficient. There may be healers amongst them, after all.” He smashes the hilt of his sword into the stipe of the fungal spellbeast, and you hear the increasingly familiar sound of cracking. Beside him, Parvad gives his wings an almighty flap and the wind of it arrests several arrows midair. “That’s all very well if you have a pathfinder talent,” Parvad says. “But the source-mirror isn’t always so easy to reach. Cumulative damage slows the enemy down so you can find it. That’s why I poison my blades.” He slashes through the tentacle coming at his face. “Each to their own!” Teccah says, impaling a hairy, many-armed thing through the chest. "We all have our preferences. No offense meant, my friend!" “Smash!” says Grissol, giggling, as she slams her full weight onto a pig-faced guard carrying an axe, and crushes him to the floor. <<if $guardsreturn gte 7>> Even though your companions are obviously better close-ranger fighters than your enemies, and the guards are vulnerable as they squeeze through the gap to reach you, more and more of them keep coming. The latest few seem somehow familiar, and after a moment you recognise them as the very first guards you ran into, the ones you spared and left tied up. A stab of guilt hits you as a slender, fish-scaled enemy shoots off several of Parvad’s feathers. You were the one who interfered, against the advice of those with much more experience. You should have—but the thought cuts off as another of the guards swings their blade in your direction. You twist away, and find yourself cornered by a third spellbeast, who strikes you on the side of the head with his bludgeon. The Baron whose estate surrounds your village has a belltower by his manor, used at the start of each shift for those in the fields. You feel like that great bell has just tolled in your ear, shaking your sense of the world around you to pieces. You teeter on one foot, lost in grey mist, on the brink of falling into the dark. A splatter of something hot hits your face, and the caustic smell helps tug you back to reality. It’s blood. The spellbeast who hit you is impaled three ways: Teccah and Parvad’s blades piercing him through each flank, and Grissol’s taloned foot-hand skewering him through the throat. The rest of the space is clear, except for mirror fragments on the ground. “Many apologies,” Teccah says, tone oddly embarrassed. “We shouldn’t have let him reach you. I beg your pardon. One moment.” There’s that shattering sound. “Are you well?” asks Parvad. There’s no hint of ‘told you so’ in his voice. “I’m sorry that they repaid your kindness with such poor coin. We are not all so faithless.” You nod. Your head throbs. “Then we will go on.” <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> <<else>> In what feels like very little time, all the guards in this group are dealt with. You know it’s not all of them, but the rest are dispersed through the maze, and you probably have enough of a head-start to escape them.<</if>> [[The maze is long, but, guided by Teccah, you eventually complete it.]]You mime the suggestion to the others, and they each nod. Parvad particularly seems almost eager. You guess he’s curious about the magic in the mirrors. He said it was strange. Something keeps you from putting your hands on the glass directly. You grip the narrow frames and feel them leave indents in your palms as you throw all your weight into pushing. It takes all of you working together to shift the mirror you’ve selected, and you notice all of the others push against the frame as well. The feeling of resistance vanishes suddenly as you pass the tipping point, and the guards on the other side yelp—but mostly don’t get out of the way in time. Again, the mirror falls flat against the floor. <<if $guardsreturn gte 7>> There are still a few guards left, and while they seem alarmed about the falling mirrors, they panic forwards, swarming towards you through the space which has opened up in the wall. You drop back and let the others manage things. There are enough enemies that even though it’s clear your companions are the better close-combat fighters, they’re still struggling to pin down all of them. As you watch, you realise that some of the guards look familiar. Eventually you place them: they’re the first set of guards you encountered as the group was starting out, the ones you convinced the others to spare. A stab of guilt hits you as a slender, fish-scaled enemy shoots off several of Parvad’s feathers. You were the one who interfered, against the advice of those with much more experience. You should have—but the thought cuts off as another of the guards swings a blade in your direction. You twist away, and find yourself cornered by a third, who strikes you on the side of the head with his bludgeon. The Baron whose estate surrounds your village has a belltower by his manor. It is rung at the start of each shift for those in the fields. You feel like that great bell has just tolled in your ear, shaking your sense of the world around you to pieces. You teeter on one foot, lost in grey mist, on the brink of falling into the dark. A splatter of something hot hits your face, and the astringent smell helps tug you back to reality. It’s blood. The spellbeast who hit you is impaled three ways: Teccah and Parvad’s blades piercing him through each flank, and Grissol’s taloned foot skewering him through the throat. The rest of the space is clear, except for mirror fragments on the ground. “Apologies,” Teccah says, tone oddly embarrassed. “We shouldn’t have let him reach you. I beg your pardon. One moment.” There’s that shattering sound. “Are you well?” asks Parvad. There’s no hint of ‘told you so’ in his voice. “I’m sorry that they repaid your kindness with such poor coin. We are not all so faithless.” You nod. Your head throbs. “Then we will go on.” <<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>><</if>> As you walk through the rest of the maze, you notice a certain busyness in the mirrors whenever you’re not looking directly at them. Shapes moving behind your own reflected outline, flecks of colour between the pulses of red which were already there. When you focus on what you can see from the corner of your eye, you make out the ghostlike figures of the guards who vanished under the falling glass, drifting aimlessly along beside you. “Hmm,” says Parvad, but adds no more. [[The maze is long, but, guided by Teccah, you eventually complete it.]]Here the hints of sourceless red light you occasionally noticed in the glass all come together into clear, stark lines, beaming along between the mirrors. You take the final turn into open space and find what's waiting for you on the other side of the maze. It's such a blur of movement that at first all you can make out is the red of it, a chaos of shades and textures, all the stages of spilled blood drying. Next you register the frantic rustling of feathers. And then you see its eyes, black pits staring at everything and nothing above a great hooked beak. "My lord," says Parvad, astonishment wiping every other emotion out of his voice. You want to look over at him, try to read more information from his expression, but you can't take your eyes from the obvious threat in front of you. It stands about twice your height, with a vast wingspan fully spread, each wing sweeping a wide arc across the ground. Although it's undeniably formidable, it's not in good shape. It twitches and squirms and clacks its stained beak in a way that reminds you of the shifting of your husband during his worst days, when constant motion is the only relief he can find for his pain. Its feathers are bedraggled and a number of them are missing. You can see raw skin, as red as the rest of it, and puckered scar-tissue webbed across it. The giant bird comes mostly to a rest for a moment, sides heaving, and the pause allows you to see what you'd missed. The multiple beams of light passed along by the line of mirrors pierce it like spears, holding it trapped in front of the great doors which must, you realise, lead into the Hydra King's store-room. It can move a little way from side to side, but it can’t leave its post. Its head swivels as its attention focuses in on you. Its hiss is so low and loud that it makes your ears ache. You step back, and almost stumble as you collide with Parvad, still frozen in place. [["It can't be," he says.]] "What was that!?" gasps Teccah, bent over with his hands on his knees. His rounded ears swivel back and forth, searching for cues from every angle. The fingers of Grissol's gauntlet hand drum in sequence on the stone floor, sending little ripples through the glass of the mirrors. Parvad straightens beside you, his beak angling up with something like defiance. "That was certainly Eldion." "What?" Teccah's ears stop moving, each left pointing in a different direction. A new coil of light undulates lazily through the mirrors. You watch it as it as it escapes the boundary of the glass and beams off out of view, perhaps another skewer for the creature in front of the doors. "It is," Parvad says, the feathers on the nape of his neck ruffling up. "I know his face. And his talent was self-duplication—not like that, and yet, close enough to be clear. It must be him." "But why would…Eldion would never serve the Hydra King." Teccah straightens, his gloved hands going slack at his side. "He would not. Would he?" "Not willingly," Parvad says. "Did you see the lights?" asks Grissol. The other spellbeasts turn to her, and her frail floating body drifts towards the furthermost mirror. "Do you see?" The subtle distortion in the reflection adds bulk to her waifish build, turns her head bulbous and her eyes round and staring. In the places where the light passes through, there's a reddish tint in the blue of her dress, faint like blood in water. "You think the Hydra King is channelling some sort of influence through them?" Parvad says, slower now. "That they're not part of a trap for us, but instead one holding Eldion? That could be so. In that case…what shall we do?" [[Try to sneak past]] [[Break the mirrors]]This isn't a rescue mission and there's no time to delay. You know immediately, instinctively, that there’s no winning a fight with that thing—if the party could even be convinced to fight their lost faction-head. But it—he—is clearly disorientated already, and with Grissol’s talent, maybe the four of you could pass him unnoticed, get the door open, and slip through without ever facing him down. You suggest this to the others. Parvad sags a little, his usually stiffly upright figure folding, feathers drooping. But he doesn’t argue. Perhaps now, so close to your goal, he feels the fate of all his comrades on his back. You feel your family on yours. “We can’t take a chance on him happening to miss us,” Teccah says nervously. “We’ll need a proper distraction, something to keep his eye from turning this way.” “I’ll do it,” Parvad says. “He may recognise me. Even if not…I can hold his attention, I’m sure of it. The three of you go as soon as I’ve led him off to one side a little.” “Leaving you?” Teccah asks—not quite objecting, just confirming. “You’d be exposed. Alone. Outmatched.” “Our mission was to get Madelaine to the stock room,” Parvad says. “It’s right through that door.” [[Consider another way]] [[Go ahead]]Grissol laughs when you suggest it, and, before the others can even discuss the idea, teeters up onto thumb and little finger, using the remaining digits to smash against the mirror she's next to. Despite how heavy the blow looks, and how thick her armour is, the mirror doesn't crack. A kind of frenzy takes all of you, and you rain down attacks on the glass. You're weaker than the rest, and you've been tired for what feels like a very long time, but you numb your hand around the grip of your knife in the collective assault anyway, and it's a wobbly strike from you that catches the mirror right where the light crosses it—and smashes it into dozens of pieces. Nearby, the corrupted guardian shrieks in unmistakable agony. It sounds like the sort of agony something could die of. But the beam of light turns to pale smoke in the air, and the rest of the mirrors quiver and rumble. [[Continue breaking the mirrors]] [[You're hurting him. Look around for another option]]You're not going to allow Parvad to walk to almost-certain death when there may be other options. [[Break the mirrors]] Parvad inclines his head to you. Then Grissol’s talent activates, and time blurs into bubbles on a breeze: jumbled moments which don’t connect, floating together. Teccah’s hand on your wrist, yanking. Parvad’s voice, pitched to carry, but somehow still soft, mollifying, like he’s talking an excited toddler into bedtime. Great red wings fanning the air, leaving phantom after-images hanging in the vacated space. Grissol digging her pointed finger-feet into the crevice between the doors. The great hooked beak lowering slowly towards Parvad’s outstretched hand. The groan of the doors swinging open. The shriek. The scream. Teccah grabbing the back of your shirt as well as your wrist, lifting you over the threshold. The blood on the floor, pooling. The doors slamming shut, drowning out the clatter of falling shards of glass. There’s a thin gap between the doors. It’s wide enough for you to see Eldion’s red eye pressed up against it, the pupil shifting restlessly. [[His voice is a flat drone.]] "You're in, but you'll never get out." A laugh: ugly, ragged. "Do you want to hear a story, before you die? Eldion never got to tell this story. But it's all right now. You won't tell. "Once there was a king. The king had a daughter. They had the same monster inside them: the same wet reaching hands and stench of blood, the same hunger. They hid it from one another. The king loved the princess. No one else. Only her. He gave her everything she wanted, but what she wanted was to take. They were the same. She knew this and he did not. "The princess was a sorcerer. She loved magic. Nothing else. Only magic. She tested it. Tested the rules. She made a little army out of the dark things that climbed through her mirrors, learned to make them loyal to her. The king was pleased to have an army of dark things. Eldion was one. Her precious pet. "One day the princess called the king to her study. She had placed mirrors on every wall, mirrors on the ceiling, on the floor. She called the dark in through all of them. The dark crawled onto him. Into him. Why did she do it? She never told. Eldion didn't know. She was hungry, inside. "It didn’t work. The king let them all in. Ate well. No Host stood where he was standing. No new hand on the reigns. He let them in and they became his. No one else's. Only his. Nothing but a king. But he left her, came down to these caves, started building. Gnawing on the borders of the land. Waited. Waited. Waited. "So then she was queen. Until she came with her troops and her pet Saltcast, like this one, like Eldion. Until they fought. Until he slew her. "Wouldn’t let her go. Drew her down inside him with the spirits. They were the same. He knew this and she did not. Knows her magic now. Knows her tricks. Testing. Testing. Trying to take all the control. Spun this one, spun Eldion into different parts. Parts that could kill a friend. Parts that could guard a door. Parts that could suffer. Useful for a king. Many uses. One. To watch through my eyes. He’s on his way, now.”<<set $Eldionfreed to 0>> [[Through the doors]]It’s doing something, you know. Eldion’s cries are getting quieter, and the maze is collapsing on itself, even up at the other end, far away from your destructive efforts. Still, a sense of unease is growing at you at pace with your exhaustion. The lights are pulsing red, and whenever your knife touches the glass, a jolt of pain goes up your arm, through your shoulder and neck, and melds with the crunching headache which holds fort in your skull. Strange images snatch at your mind: a woman with the human-form Hydra King's strong nose and arching brows layering mirror after mirror around a candlelit chamber; the Hydra King himself, absent the exposed skull and marble pallor, standing in the centre of the chamber as dark shapes rush from the walls and ceiling and floor; the woman again, grey creeping into her dark curls, a crown atop them, baring her teeth and snarling at a boy in a messanger's livery. One last mirror falls, and a scarlet flash blinds you. Behind you there’s a wail and a crash, and you fumble your way around, trying to blink away the pink sparks in your eyes. Eldion is lying on the ground, wings spread, eyes blank and glassy. Parvad makes a stricken noise and runs to his side. The rest of you are more cautious, hanging back, but it becomes obvious that he no longer has the ability to attack you. The great head turns sightlessly. <<if ($Eldionfreed === 0)>> “You’ve come,” Eldion rasps, voice scraping hoarsely through the two syllables like shaping them is an enormous effort. “Free.” “Of course we came,” Parvad says. “Parvad…” Teccah says. “We can’t move him.” “Free,” says Eldion. "I..." Parvad hesitates, looking back and forth from Eldion to Teccah to you. "My lord..." Eldion raises his head. His beak opens and closes a few times before he manages speech. “Need...a promise...." "I..." "Destroy me," says Eldion. "Destroy this body.” “What?” says Parvad. “My talent. Useful...to him. King. Experimenting. You’ve seen. Some.” Another deep breath, more ragged than the last. “Using me. To fix. His weaknesses. This is. The main form. Anchor. Destroy it. Let me go.” “But…My lord…” “No-one’s lord. Just. Eldion. Free. Please.” The chest splits down the middle. From it extends a dark tendril, supporting a small round mirror. Strangely, the source-mirror’s surface is already cracked, various shards missing. “There's more mirrors. Inside the store room. He. Can take them out. Send them into. World. For. Seeming.” A faint laugh. "So much. To tell you. About what he is. About the queen. His daughter. No time now." Each word seems to cost him more. “Just...Break them all. Mine. First.” “I…” Parvad sags. “I’ll do it,” Grissol says. She sounds sober, gentle, nothing like her usual self. “We’re probably not gonna live through this either. But Teccah’s a finder. If there’s something on the other side, he’ll find us, and we’ll find everyone else, and then we’ll all be together again.” “She’s right,” Teccah says. You’re silent. It’s not your place to speak. After a long moment, Parvad nods. Grissol slips her smaller hand over the edge of Eldion’s source-mirror, touches it briefly to her forehead, and then shatters it against the armoured knuckles of her gauntlet. Such a large body shouldn’t dissolve to nothing so quickly. You say a prayer to Moshidiah in your heart as Parvad clambers back to his feet. “Let us finish this,” he says. <<set $Eldionfreed to 5>> [[Through the doors]] <<else>>“S’all right,” he says. “Free. Talent. ‘S okay.” “Talent? What do you…” “Watch…” The barrel chest expands, broader than any breath had made it until now, swelling and swelling—and then a ripple passes over it, as if there are no bones underneath, but instead a dozen creatures moving independently—and under your horrified eyes, beaks and talons start ripping their way out. Eldion—bursts, and where he lay are instead a handful of smaller birds, most of which immediately take flight. It's not just your ignorance of Saltcast habits which renders this amazing. You can tell from the gobsmacked expressions the rest of the group are wearing. One of the little bird lands on Parvad’s shoulder and gives his feathers an affectionate preen. “What?” says Parvad. “Been the subject of some experimentation,” says the bird. Another one swoops down onto Parvad’s other shoulder. “The Hydra King finds my replication very interesting,” it says, in the same voice. “Usually enough of me to go around. He wanted more. Some magic, some messing with the Seeming, various results.” “Finding it a little hard to keep myself together,” calls down one of the birds in flight. “Talk more inside.” Parvad still looks bewildered, but he climbs up to his feet and lets Grissol pull the doors open. <<set $Eldionfreed to 2>> [[Through the doors]] <</if>>You don't want to harm him any further, but there may not be much time left. The guards could be closing in. The urgency of the pity you feel surprises you, given everything here that's at stake. You think of the two trapped bird-form Saltcast you've already encountered, and each of their fates. Could this be connected? It must be. Are you torturing the Hydra King's enemy for him? A droplet of blood oozes from your knuckles and splatters onto the broken glass. You look down into the red-tinted reflection of your own stricken expression. <<if ($Eldionhint === 1)>> You remember the words of a hypnotic song, one meant to trap you. [[To shatter the glass won’t dismantle the cage/You must bring out your own hearts onto his stage]] <<else>> [[Use the broken mirror to redirect the beam of light]] <</if>> You pick up a shard and slot it into your palm, gentle around the sharp edges. Then, gingerly, you place it over one of the beams emerging from the side of a mirror. There's a soft chiming sound, and the light angles back on itself just as you were hoping it would. But the shard in your hand shudders and heats up, and an odd ache crawls along your arm, as if the bones inside are gathering frost. For a moment, your head swims, and even at the end of the maze, you feel lost. Then you snap back to the reality of the pain searing through your palm. You grit your teeth and endure it. The others join in once they realise what you're doing. None of them comment on the way the attempt makes them feel. The pain drifts in and out. Grissol is hissing under her breath as she shifts around, trying to get the beams she's reflecting in line with the ones you've already brought together. They inch closer until they're all concentrated into the same mirror, and you see your reflection jerk as though an earthquake has struck the other side of the glass. After a moment, Teccah and Parvad follow suit, moved by some unnameable instinct. As the final beam slips into line with the rest, you hear a shuddering shriek of tension rush down through the mirror maze, and then the world seems to burst into rainbow-hued fragments, a thousand winking facets spinning through the air. You throw your arms up just in time to protect your face from the shower of broken glass. It doesn't cut you, the edges seemingly blunted, but it feels like being caught in a hailstorm. When you lower your hands again, the room is dark except for the glow of your lanterns. In the distance, you hear a soft, avian chirping. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span> <<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> [[Eldion?]]It’s a dangerous thing to trust, but the others are more likely to be able to tell if there’s any chance of truth in there. You remind Parvad of the words you heard then. He clicks his beak thoughtfully. “It is dangerous,” he says. “A very convoluted way of killing us, but potentially one way. However, based on my read of the singing Host’s talent and the magic at play in these mirrors…I would say it is worth trying. For Eldion’s sake. I will be the test.” “Wait!” Teccah exclaims, ears flattened against his hood. “Don’t be a fool—” But Parvad has already lifted his source-mirror out of his chest and stepped into the beam. There’s a soft chime as the light hits his mirror and folds back upon itself. All the mirrors in the rows start to glow white. “Hmm,” says Parvad, not moving. “I’ve never known you to be so…so reckless, Parvad,” snaps Teccah. "You're supposed to be the reliable one," agrees Grissol, though she doesn't sound unhappy. She's watching the mirrors with interest. “Eldion is my leader and my friend,” Parvad replies simply. “And extracting him intact is probably also our best chance of surviving this mission when the Hydra King inevitably notices that we’re here. That is worth the risks.” "Okay," Grissol says, cheerfully, and before you have time to blink, her source-mirror is out too, and she's holding it in the path of the light. "Teccah, if we die from this, get her through to where she needs to go, okay?" Teccah splutters, then curses, then says, "If this doesn't work, I won't ever forgive either of you. I mean this truly." "Understood," says Parvad. "It's okay, Teccah," says Grissol. "You're a finder. Even if we don't make it, If there’s something on the other side, you’ll find us, and we’ll find everyone else, and then we’ll all be together again. It'll be okay.” "That's not—" Then there’s a crunch, interupting him. Each of the mirrors in the corridor crack into the same spiderweb pattern. In Parvad's own source-mirror, a shape slowly clarifies, like something approaching through thick mist. A bird in flight, swooping between stars. It fades again just as the light slowly pales out of the other mirrors, and the beam whisps into nothing. In the distance, you hear a soft, avian chirping.<<set $Eldiontoken to 1>> [[Eldion?]]Parvad doesn't wait for the rest of you to corral your wits. He hurries off in the direction of the noises, one hand out almost carelessly to comb the air for magical signatures. You want to just sit for a while and absorb everything that has happened, but this isn't the sort of quest which allows for breathers. The other two follow in Parvad's wake, and you follow them. <<if ($Eldionfreed is 0) or ($Eldionfreed is 1)>>The great bird lies against the doors, breathing fast and jerky. Parvad is crouched at its side, his fingers resting on its ribcage, and his hand bounces up and down there with each breath. “You’ve come,” Eldion murmurs, voice patchy but with a soft musicality underneath the roughness. “Of course we have,” says Parvad. Teccah clears his throat. “Parvad, you know this isn’t a rescue mission.” Parvad’s shoulders stiffen, but he doesn’t argue. Eldion chuckles, rasping a little. “S’all right,” he says. “Free. Talent. ‘S okay.” “Talent? What do you…” “Watch…” The barrel chest expands, broader than any breath had made it until now, swelling and swelling—and then a ripple passes over it, as if there are no bones underneath, but instead a dozen creatures moving independently—and under your horrified eyes, beaks and talons start ripping their way out. Eldion—bursts, and where he lay are instead a handful of smaller birds, most of which immediately take flight. It's not just your ignorance of Saltcast habits which renders this amazing. You can tell from the gobsmacked expressions the rest of the group are wearing. One of the little bird lands on Parvad’s shoulder and gives his feathers an affectionate preen. “What?” says Parvad. “Been the subject of some experimentation,” says the bird. Another one swoops down onto Parvad’s other shoulder. “The Hydra King finds my replication very interesting,” it says, in the same voice. “Usually enough of me to go around. He wanted more. Some magic, some messing with the Seeming, various results. Borrowed a trick from his daughter's book.” “Finding it a little hard to keep myself together,” calls down one of the birds in flight. “Talk more inside.” Parvad still looks bewildered, but he climbs up to his feet and lets Grissol pull the doors open. <<set $Eldionfreed to 2>> [[Through the doors]] <<elseif $Eldionfreed is 2>>The great bird is huddled now against the doors, mostly upright but drooping at every corner. The garish red of its feathers has been replaced with a restful brown, except in spots where what seems to be real blood has seeped through. Parvad is crouched by its side, his fingers resting on its ribcage, which rises and falls slowly but steadily. One eye opens and fixes on you, very bright. "You've come," Eldion breathes. It’s a sweet, mellow, masculine voice, but it trails off into a rasping cough. "That's right," Parvad said. "Of course we've come." Teccah clears his throat. "Parvad…you know this isn't a rescue mission." Parvad ducks his head, refuses to look at him. Says nothing. "Oh," Eldion says, and laughs. "It’s not so tragic as all that, my little friends." He straightens up, feathers puffing out so that for a moment he looks like a huge dandelion seed head, and then he shakes himself and he's sleek and fierce again in an instant. "Three times you've freed me from his traps," he tells you. "His regal bastardness wasn't counting on something like you rooting through his demesne, I reckon. I've strength enough to help you all get back into safe territory if you conduct your business quickly enough, so better hop to it." "Wait, wait," Parvad says. "We're not here to steal resources now." He stampedes through an explanation of your goals. "Any information you have could be worthwhile in shaping the wish! Have you been trapped here all this time? Have you learned anything more of the nature of our enemy than we already knew?" "His nature?" Eldion pauses. "Well, if it's story-time, we should get inside where things are a little more defendable. I don't like all this open space."<<set $Eldionfreed to 3>> [[Enter the stockroom]] <<else>> This is a bug. <<print $Eldionfreed>> <<set $Eldionfreed to 2>> [[Through the doors]] <</if>>You're almost at the end of the road. It makes you jittery, impatient. "I don't know where the Stone Blessings are," Eldion says. "But I know the Hydra King. I'll talk while you search, how about that?" What are you even looking for? You've never seen a Blessing Stone. You don't know what they look like, other than being large rocks. Maybe there'll be some special quality to them which will make them unmissable. He tells the story matter-of-factly, as if it were village gossip. “Three or four centuries ago, as the humans count it, the human monarch was a particularly power-hungry sort. He had a daughter just as bad as he was, and she was a sorcerer. Together, the two of them did all sorts of magic, and raised all sorts of Saltcast. I was one of their creations—well, hers, really.” As you look around, the words tug at your imagination. You find yourself visualising it: stumbling into existence, strands of wet dark still clinging to you, an imperious princess checking you over to see how her experimentation with the act of summoning has worked. //They brought me through a cracked mirror, and found I could duplicate myself like the facets of a reflection…I saw one of the ways they used to keep us under control: loading a mirror up with images of royal power and authority before they brought anyone through it: him on his throne, commanding his army, her artistry with a knife…// You find you can’t disobey them, not at first, not when you barely know who or what you are. The princess keeps you at her side, one of her first creations, one of those with the most potential. She talks to you of her sciences, her experiments, like one would talk to a pet. You try to hoard the knowledge, knowing you don’t have any other power. You’re commanded to never tell her secrets, and that command will hang on you for centuries, only growing lax after you’ve been torn apart totally enough for there to be nothing left for it to attach to… You shiver, and try to focus on your job here, which is to search. You jiggle the lock of a stout, ornate box, then slide it down the pile towards Grissol so that she can smash it open. “Just some poisons!” she calls back to you. You scuttle sideways towards some canons, intending to check in their shadows. There are a row of strange, ornate mirrors close to you. Your reflection there looks slightly wrong, and you move away from them. [[The story continues]]The stockroom is large, but so over-full that it looks smaller. The resources kept here seem utterly disorganised to you, stacks of different currencies, weapons, strange contraptions you think might also be weapons, mirrors, mirrors, mirrors. What are you even looking for? You've never seen a Blessing Stone. You don't know what they look like, other than being large rocks. Maybe there'll be some special quality to them which will make them unmissable, but if there is, it must only appear when you’re closer to them.<<if ($Eldionfreed === 2)>> The flock of … Eldion swoops about, chirping. “I don’t understand,” Parvad says, staring up at them. “Eldion’s talent was duplication, but he made identical copies which only existed if they were in the eyeline of the original body. Nothing like…this.” “I’m his favourite test subject,” chorus about five of them. “I was his daughter’s, first. She made me. It’s important!” “Some kind of magic has been done on him, then, one may assume,” says Teccah. “His would be a useful talent for a servant to have. Perhaps the Hydra King had his Hosts attempt to make Eldion stronger as well as bend him to his will. But, Parvad, loath as I am to say it, I'm afraid I think whatever has been done has made him…unreliable. One way or another.” Several Eldions clack their beaks in Teccah’s direction. Parvad maintains a troubled silence until he catches your eye and explains for you, “’Daughter’ is a human concept. The Hydra King could not have any such thing.” After a short pause, he adds, “We should focus on looking for the Blessings.”<</if>> You clamber up one of the mounds of unsorted items. There’s a row of particularly fancy mirrors there, each looking like something pulled out of a grand house or manor. <<if ($Eldionfreed === 0)>> As you approach the mirrors, there’s a burst of angry noise from over by the doors. The crack between them looks like a long red thread from where you’re standing. “He doesn’t like you going near those,” Teccah calls nervously. <</if>> Things slide under your feet and you sway, arms out for balance. What if the Blessing Stones are underneath one of these piles? How would you ever find them?<<if ($Eldionfreed === 2)>> “Important!” trills one of the little birds, flying down to circle your head. It remains silent for a while, still circling, as if it has forgotten what it wanted to declare. Finally, another of the birds flitters over and bumps into it, and the two fuse together like a pair of small soap bubbles merging into one larger one. It is slightly nauseating to watch, but it seems to restore the memory of what was important, because they—he—go on. “He’s not a real Saltcast,” they whisper. “He doesn’t have just one mirror. Has lots, lots, so many. So he can separate them out, send them out to devour the world for his Seeming. He won’t die if he loses one. We…we…we…need…” He splits again, and the two birds chorus, “To break them all.” You shiver, but he—they—don’t say anything else, and you go back to looking. Is it hopeless?<</if>> No. There, you see them. Among the disorganised piles of treasure, wedged between some kind of contraption made of cloth and steel and a stack of hookguns, sits a row of five black stones. Simultaneously shrivelled and bloated, pocked with holes and covered with frilly protrusions, they are vaguely sickening to look at. But when you reach out and touch the nearest one, you feel a pulse of warmth travel up your arm that relaxes all the tension in your body, unclenches your jaw, unknots your guts, fills you with a sense of hope and free potential you haven't felt since you were a very young child. These are the Blessing Stones. You're certain. You gently pass your hand over the top of each one. Peace, Justice, Wisdom, Mercy…Truth. The last gives you a shiver, but there's no cruelty there, only a cool inevitability. <<if ($Eldionfreed === 2)>> Feathers brush your ear as one of the Eldions comes down to perch on your shoulder. He whispers, harsh and almost frightened, “She wanted the human kingdom from him, all those centuries ago. He ought to have died when she brought the Spirits through all those mirrors, hundreds of them, Spirits crawling on him, into him. But he didn’t. He conquered them all. She made the Hydra King out of him, and he came here. And, when she came after him, eventually he took her in too. Father and daughter. A sad story.”<</if>> You wave a hand over your head and shout that you’ve found the Blessing Stones. [[The others come over.]]<<if ($Eldionfreed === 0)>>“Well,” says Teccah, and folds his arms awkwardly over his chest. “There we are.” "We needn't have brought our own mirrors," Grissol says, gesturing with her smaller hand in the direction of the collection of mirrors you passed, the ones which had Eldion beating on the doors. “I think we did need to,” says Teccah. “If there’s something strange about them, who knows what effect using them for the Blessing would have?” <<elseif ($Eldionfreed === 2)>>"Are you ready, then?" Parvad asks. You stare down at the Stones for a moment, taking deep, levelling breaths. Then you turn to him and nod, once, decisively. "We needn't have brought our own mirrors," Grissol says, gesturing with her smaller hand in the direction of the collection of mirrors standing about five feet away from you on a levelled off area of the mound of stuff. “You should break them, break them!” exclaims the flock of Eldion. “Break them all!” “I think using those would be a bad idea,” says Parvad. <<elseif ($Eldionfreed === 1) or ($Eldionfreed === 5)>>"Are you ready, then?" Parvad asks. You stare down at the stones for a moment, taking deep, levelling breaths. Then you turn to him and nod, once, decisively. "We needn't have brought our own mirrors," Grissol says, gesturing with her smaller hand in the direction of the collection of mirrors standing about five feet away from you on a levelled off area of the mound of stuff. “There’s something strange about those,” says Parvad. “I think we should stay away from them. I wish we could have asked Eldion…” But he trails off and shakes his head. “It’s time.”<</if>> [[It's time.]][[You'll pray to Lethron.]] [[You'll pray to Torbet.]] [[You'll pray to Salrea]] [[You'll pray to Dicuar]] [[You'll pray to Moshidiah]]You stare down at the stones for a moment, taking deep, levelling breaths. Then you turn to him and nod, once, decisively. "We needn't have brought our own mirrors," Grissol says, gesturing with her smaller hand in the direction of the collection of mirrors that made you uneasy. "We certainly did need to," Parvad says. "Those are source-mirrors—from what Eldion has told us, the Hydra King's own. Who knows what the effect of using them for the Blessing would be? I shudder thinking about it. Now…It’s time." [[Time to choose.]][[You choose Lethron.]] [[You choose Torbet.]] [[You choose Salrea.]] [[You choose Dicuar.]] [[You choose Moshidiah.]]<<if ($Eldionfreed === 2)>>The doors of the stockroom blow open, wood splintering, their hinges sheared in half. Your body freezes defensively, but your footing is unsteady and the books under your feet slide away, throwing you backwards. It takes an effort of will not to drop the Blessing Stone: instead, you hug it to your chest as you fall. When you raise your head, you see him standing in the doorway, the exposed bone on each side of his head glittering in the light he himself is generating. Your companions have reacted more productively than you, none of them having fallen over, but you know neither their ready stances nor the best applications of their talents are going to turn the tide against the Hydra King. The cloud of birds which represent Eldion go flying upwards in a panicked whirl, squawking out a disjointed jumble of words, impossible to parse. At the last moment, at the last gate, your mission has failed. You don't accept it. Rather, you can't accept it. You've found the limit of your endurance, and, against all reason, that very limit forbids you to give up. You've come so far. You won't stop until the last spark of life in you has been stomped out under your enemy's heel. You can't reach the others to use any of the mirrors they brought. They're all in flowing motion, darting around like ants fleeing a cruel child's boot as the Hydra King waves his hand in a series of lazy, imperious gestures, and blasts of fire and water and stone pursue them. Eldions flutter between them, sometimes pulling them out of danger, sometimes trying to draw the Hydra King’s attention, but it’s not enough. You see Grissol go down as a bolt of lightning strikes her in the back, her metal legs jerking wildly then falling into a wide splay, blue crackles of electricity buzzing over them. Parvad shouts and tries to reach her, but the Hydra King predicted the attempt, and the next heave of erupting stone takes him in the chest, throwing him backwards. The Eldions sweep down and lift his limp body just before the ground can swallow him, but that takes them out of the fight, as it’s all they can do to keep him aloft and on the move. Teccah seems focused entirely on dodging. Attempting to get in the middle of it all is out of the question. You look over to the source-mirrors, then down at the stone in your arms. There are no choices left. <<elseif ($Eldionfreed === 0)>>The doors of the stockroom blow open, wood splintering, their hinges sheered in half. Your body freezes defensively, but your footing is unsteady and the books under your feet slide away, throwing you backwards. It takes an effort of will not to drop the Blessing Stone: instead, you hug it to your chest as you fall. When you raise your head, you see him standing in the doorway, the exposed bone on each side of his head glittering in the light he himself is generating. Your companions have reacted more productively than you, neither of them having fallen over, but you know neither their ready stances nor the best applications of their talents are going to turn the tide against the Hydra King. Parvad is probably already dead. To escape, the others would have to get past what was once Eldion. At the last moment, at the last gate, your mission has failed. You don't accept it. Rather, you can't accept it. You've found the limit of your endurance, and, against all reason, that very limit forbids you to give up. You've come so far. You won't stop until the last spark of life in you has been stomped out under your enemy's heel. You can't reach the others to use any of the mirrors they brought. Teccah may be able to see the very best path to survival, but the Hydra King’s attacks are so swift and so powerful that even he seems to have no time to do anything but keep running. Grissol attempts to close with the king, the claws of her gauntlet reaching for him, but he waves a lazy hand and a blast of fire engulfs her, enough force behind it to knock her backwards mid-leap. She rolls on the ground, terrifyingly silent, her frail body lost amid the billows of smoke it so resembles. You’re out of time. You look over to the source-mirrors, then down at the Stone in your arms. There are no choices left. <<elseif ($Eldionfreed === 1) or ($Eldionfreed === 5)>>The doors of the stockroom blow open, wood splintering, their hinges sheared in half. Your body freezes defensively, but your footing is unsteady and the books under your feet slide away, throwing you backwards. It takes an effort of will not to drop the Blessing Stone: instead, you hug it to your chest as you fall. When you raise your head, you see him standing in the doorway, the exposed bone on each side of his head glittering in the light he himself is generating. Your companions have reacted more productively than you, none of them having fallen over, but you know neither their ready stances nor the best applications of their talents are going to turn the tide against the Hydra King. At the last moment, at the last gate, your mission has failed. You don't accept it. Rather, you can't accept it. You've found the limit of your endurance, and, against all reason, that very limit forbids you to give up. You've come so far. You won't stop until the last spark of life in you has been stomped out under your enemy's heel. You can't reach the others to use any of the mirrors they brought. They're all in flowing motion, darting around like ants fleeing a cruel child's boot as the Hydra King waves his hand in a series of lazy, imperious gestures, and blasts of fire and water and stone pursue them. You see Grissol go down as a bolt of lightning strikes her in the back, her metal legs jerking wildly then falling into a wide splay, blue crackles of electricity buzzing over them. Parvad shouts and tries to reach her, but the Hydra King predicted the attempt, and the next heave of erupting stone takes him in the chest, throwing him backwards. He hits the ground and it opens under him, dropping him out of view. You can’t tell if he or Grissol are already dead. Teccah seems focused entirely on dodging. Attempting to get in the middle of it all is out of the question. You look over to the strange mirrors a little way away from you, then down at the Stone in your arms. There are no choices left.<</if>> [[Get up and run to the mirrors]]You hope your loyalty to Lethron will be rewarded. You hope the steadfast work the Saltcast have done to free themselves will earn them his favour. A light in the dark, growing ever brighter. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Lethron">> [[Hope.]]Torbet’s name has been invoked against many tyrants. You will lay your blood and your spite and your sense of justice down on his altar, and hope he finds the offering worthwhile. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Torbet">> [[Hope.]]To defeat something as dangerous as the Hydra King, everyone will need to make all the right decisions. Let the wind change; let something beautiful begin. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Salrea">> [[Hope.]]For victory. In some ways it’s the simplest choice. You just hope it won’t cost too much to bear. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Dicuar">> [[Hope.]]The Hydra King must die. He’s evaded Moshidiah for a long time, but no more. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Moshidiah">> [[Hope.]]You hope your loyalty to Lethron will be rewarded. You hope the steadfast work the Saltcast have done to free themselves will earn them his favour. A light in the dark, growing ever brighter. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Lethron">> [[You’re ready to begin, but—]]Torbet’s name has been invoked against many tyrants. You will lay your blood and your spite and your sense of justice down on his altar, and hope he finds the offering worthwhile. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Torbet">> [[You’re ready to begin, but—]] To defeat something as dangerous as the Hydra King, everyone will need to make all the right decisions. Let the wind change; let something beautiful begin. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Salrea">> [[You’re ready to begin, but—]] For victory. In some ways it’s the simplest choice. You just hope it won’t cost too much to bear. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Dicuar">> [[You’re ready to begin, but—]] The Hydra King must die. He’s evaded Moshidiah for a long time, but no more. Choice made, you stoop to lift the Blessing Stone of the God you've put your faith in. It's heavy despite its porous texture, but the energy which flows up your arms dispels your exhaustion and makes the effort easy. You turn and take a step back towards the others. Though the fear of everything going wrong, and of what might come next even if it all goes right, is still alive inside you, you're almost excited for this. You've come to believe in the cause of your companions. Saving your family is the most important thing and always will be, but now you have a chance to save more people than you ever imagined. <<set $gods to "Moshidiah">> [[You’re ready to begin, but—]] The doors of the stockroom blow open, wood splintering, their hinges sheered in half. Your body freezes defensively, but your footing is unsteady and the books under your feet slide away, throwing you backwards. It takes an effort of will not to drop the Blessing Stone: instead, you hug it to your chest as you fall. When you raise your head, you see him standing in the doorway, the exposed bone on each side of his head glittering in the light he himself is generating. Your companions have reacted more productively than you, none of them having fallen over, but you know neither their ready stances nor the best applications of their talents are going to turn the tide against the Hydra King. Even Eldion, an unexpected factor with a talent the Hydra King himself values, stands no chance. At the last moment, at the last gate, your mission has failed. You don't accept it. Rather, you can't accept it. You've found the limit of your endurance, and, against all reason, that very limit forbids you to give up. You've come so far. You won't stop until the last spark of life in you has been stomped out under your enemy's heel. You can't reach the others and use the mirror they brought. They're all in flowing motion, darting around like ants fleeing a cruel child's boot as the Hydra King waves his hand in a series of lazy, imperious gestures, and blasts of fire and water and stone pursue them. Eldion is bearing the brunt of the fight—or at least his duplicates are, swarming everywhere, constantly rendered into red splatter and just as constantly renewed. If he weren't there, you're sure someone would be dead already. Attempting to get in the middle of it all is out of the question. You look over to the source-mirrors, then down at the Stone in your arms. There are no choices left. [[Get up and run to the source-mirrors.]]The Hydra King doesn't appear to be paying you any attention. You're only a human peasant woman. You have no particular fighting skills, no magic, no scholarship. No godly blessing. Your belly is entirely empty and you've reached the end of your strength. Your final desperate run is more of a sluggish stagger, and when you reach the mirror you're targeting, you fall against it. There's a gentle thrum under your cheek where it touches the glass. You straighten. Raise the Blessing Stone above your head. Smash it down into the ground. Again. Again. Again. Chips have formed on its surface. A small cloud of grey dust hangs around you. On the ground, a handful of dust. You take it. Your handful of fate. [[Thow the Handful of Fate into the lantern's flame.]]The Hydra King doesn't appear to be paying you any attention. You're only a human peasant woman. You have no particular fighting skills, no magic, no scholarship. No godly Blessing. Your belly is entirely empty and you've reached the end of your strength. Your final desperate run is more of a sluggish stagger, and when you reach the mirror you're targeting, you fall against it. There's a gentle thrum under your cheek where it touches the glass. You straighten. Raise the Blessing Stone above your head. Smash it down into the ground. Again. Again. Again. Chips have formed on its surface. A small cloud of grey dust hangs around you. On the ground, a handful of dust. You take it. Your handful of fate. [[Thow the Handful of Fate into the lantern's flame.]]You unstrap the lantern from your shoulder and set it before the mirror. The light bleaches out your reflection, making you look pale, ghostly. You meet your own eyes in the glass. The dust of the Blessing Stone hits the magic flame of your lantern, and the flame puffs up briefly but is otherwise unaffected. It doesn’t feel like the attention of the Gods has turned upon you. You feel alone.<<if $Greymothertoken === 2>> [[Perhaps there is one more choice, after all.]] (This will end the game prematurely.) [[Make your plea.]] <<else>> [[Make your plea.]]<</if>> Yenyet, Yenyet, Yenyet. After all, you’ve heard her voice, felt her call crystallise inside you. The echo of that call presses against your teeth. All your hopes are over. Death has arrived. Why not invoke the Dead God, here at the end? The parts of you which are afraid peel away from her livid name: “Yenyet.” Cold gushes from the mirror in front of you. The skin on your face stings, though your lips went numb as soon as //Yenyet// passed between them. Behind you, the sounds of conflict drop to silence. All you can hear is your own icy breath, rasping. A swirl of white passes over the silvered glass. You have just enough sense of self left to step back when the maggots start dribbling through it. They fall to the floor with a soft squelch, then burrow into the rock—no, the rock ripples around them, and they sink easily inside. It hurts your eyes to watch them, sets up an ache inside your head, frost on bone. The weaver inside you, the part which registers a skipped warp thread, sounds the alarm. Something is wrong with the way the world strings together now. Wrongness is flowing from the mirror along with the cold. You step back again. The silence behind you feels heavier, but you can’t bring yourself to turn and look. Why did you do this? You can’t remember. The quiet sound of something cracking. The mirror? No. The air itself is cracking open. You see more maggots inside, writhing over...something. A blink, and your sight clears. All is well. Your mother is coming. In the distance, someone calling your name. Are those your children’s voices? They seem so far away. It’s all far away, except the long white finger which extends through the mirror. An answer. An advance. She heard you. Her Blessing...what might it be? The finger presses against your chest. Presses //through// your chest, your flesh folding smoothly around it so that it passes unhindered. Finally you can look behind you. The others are frozen in a fierce tableau, even the Hydra King standing perfectly still. You would have thought time had stopped except that everyone who is still upright is tracking the finger with their eyes as it travels, metre by metre, towards them. You’re speaking. You can’t hear the words coming out of your mouth, but you know they match with the visions flickering behind your eyes: shrunken stars turning red; endless coils of string; infinite darkness collapsing and collapsing and collapsing until it’s all contained in a single grain of black sand—and through it all, an immortal hunger, waiting, waiting. And the cold, and the writhing, gnawing things which death summons. The Hydra King is the finger’s target, but he stands stiffly, doing nothing to evade it. Perhaps there’s a shine of answering hunger on his face. The rest of the emerging hand has reached you, a slender, elegant hand with red nails. The other fingers curl into your chest, but the extended index continues until it brushes the Hydra King’s face. It strokes the skeletal hinge of his jaw, affectionate and chiding. The world cracks again around the contours of that touch, a winding fissure opening through the air, through the king’s pale flesh, weaving a net around him in the space of just one breath. He closes his eyes. The world spasms, a painful jerk like the flank of a tying-up horse, and it folds, the parts of it which are free of him flowing together and melding, and in just one moment, he’s gone. The stench of death hangs heavy over the scene. You’re talking, blood in your teeth. The white hand gracefully, discretely withdraws. Time blurs. Perhaps you stand in place for months, dreaming aloud, while the Saltcast try to piece themselves back together. Perhaps it’s only hours before they come for you. You can't hear what they say, but you know the sense of it. The gateway in you hasn't quite closed. Yenyet hasn't quite let you go. You're too dangerous to release into the world. Too many secrets hum within you. But they're afraid to destroy you, too. They're curious. They want to know about their secret ends, the old betrayals which linger behind the mirrors. They argue. It doesn't matter. A summons is coming, and death will not stop it. They're all in her debt, now. Yenyet. Yenyet. Yenyet. There's no end to the cold.There are lots of words you could use. “Let the triarchy win. Let the Hydra King lose. Let my friends and family live. Give us peace, though not at any cost. Give us justice. Give them wisdom. Show us mercy. Let the tyrant die.” You fit your request to the patron you’ve chosen. There’s a feeling of a weight lifting as the words leave your lips, but you’re holding out for something bigger. A confirmation. A moment of divine spectacle. Something undeniable. Your gaze is fixed on the mirror—so you see it when your enemy finally notices you, and you see it when the stabbing dark tendril shoots from his palm and skewers through the air towards your back. But you don’t have time to move. There’s no dodging it. There’s no saving yourself. There’s pain. The tendril crashes all the way through your torso, shattering and pulverising bone and flesh, the steel-sharp tip emerging from midway down your ribcage to tap gently against the mirror in front of you. There’s so much to register all at once that the pain feels like a mountain viewed through thick fog, simultaneously so vast that it blocks out every other consideration and so unknowable that you can’t focus on it. You’re just aware enough to know that everything below your waist is cut off from that pain, cut off from all feeling, and your legs are folding and you can’t do anything to brace for the fall. Strangely, the impact of hitting the ground hurts more, or at least the hurt feels closer to you. The shock of it runs through you, a profane shout ringing through a cathedral. There’s blood sticky in your throat and you can’t draw in a breath. All you can do is look at the red splatter dripping down over your reflection in the mirror as it all starts to blur. There’s a figure in the reflection standing over you. Not the Hydra King. Not Parvad or Teccah or Grissol or Eldion. Not anyone you’ve ever seen before. It stoops. Your grey-faced, obviously dying double behind the glass lies still as this figure’s hand descends upon her head. Something brushes your cheek, tucks your hair behind your ear. The tendril still embedded in your chest, still binding you back to the Hydra King, throbs with new heat. You close your eyes. Fingers immediately pry at them, tugging the lids back up. But when your eyes are open again, the figure is gone. Instead, the Hydra King is approaching you, hand still extended, the roots of the tendril bulging from his palm. The blood on the mirror has run thin enough that you can make out the features of his face, and see that they’re creased in a deep frown. Sometimes he shakes his arm as though trying to dislodge the protrusion. A flicker of bewilderment darts through you and fades behind the immensity of your imminent death. He’s already killed you, you know. Whatever happens next is just clean-up. Again your eyes drift shut. The rest of the world doesn’t seem like your business anymore, although you hope that the others have used this opportunity to escape. <<if ($Eldionfreed === 2) or ($Eldionfreed === 3)>> With Eldion here, it at least seems possible. <</if>> Something tugs on the back of your head. You ignore it. //Moshidiah, be gentle with me.// You’re going to see your father again, hear his stories of adventure. You’ll meet the mother who died before you can remember. Reunite with your brisk, practical grandmother. But you’re leaving behind your loving, well-loved James. You’re leaving behind your beautiful children, Patricia, who must sing a dirge now instead of her usual compositions, and Mattias, who will tell you no more of his tiny discoveries. You’re leaving them to a world with the Hydra King still in it, and despite Amaris’ promise to take care of them, you’re afraid. The sensation of something tugging on you becomes more insistent. You squint your eyes more tightly closed and try to sink deeper into your own stillness. Every morning, in much the same way, you begrudge the dawn’s light as it summons you to your duties. But it’s death’s iron grip on you now, not sleep’s gentle hand, and you won’t answer this call back to pain. Your father used to start his stories: //Ten times a hundred and a thousand times ten, that’s how many miles away this adventure took place.// You hear the Hydra King’s voice from eleven thousand miles away, or even further. “What have you done?” he says. As much as you can. You can do no more. But the Gods must disagree after all, because this time, the pull on you strikes every inch of your cooling body, takes hold of your eyes and teeth and the shards of bone impaling your organs, takes your fingernails, the spoonful of air left in your deflating lungs, the shreds of your flooded heart. Tangled in a net of all of that, the substance your priest would call a soul is pulled along too, and the physical pain which was starting to ebb is replaced with a whirling agony of the spirit as your awareness crashes into a cacophony of foreign thoughts and impulses. //Kill us. Even yet, I can take control. Show me the ruins of the world that once was. Above all others, I am worthy.// You realise, with a moment of horror that cuts through everything else, that you are being drawn into the Hydra King’s amalgamated selfhood, taken as <<if ($Eldionfreed === 3) or ($Eldionfreed === 2) or ($Eldionfreed === 0)>> his daughter <<else>>that historical queen who opposed him<</if>> had been into a soul that knows only conquest of others. You’re lost, trapped, defeated. This is worse than death. You’re on a quest that will probably kill you… This is worse than anything you imagined might be your fate. Peace, Justice, Wisdom, Mercy, Truth. You want to go home. Your spirit brushes up against another at least as anguished. //Kill us.// A daughter, a queen. Eternal child to her father. //Kill us.// Love as twin parasitic vines, throttling each other. //Kill us.// Imperial hunger unfed. //Kill us.// Nothing outside the self to reach for. //Take you down with me.// Trampling the world until she gets what she wants. //Kill us.// You flinch away, but though you want to reject her utterly, a tremor of pity passes through you, disrupting the drive to flee, to make yourself as small as possible. This is a queen? This is the spirit whose will challenges the Hydra King’s dominion? Your desire to protect your family, your friends, strangers, is just as strong as her hate and spite and grief. You are yourself just as much as she is herself. You coming here is a ridiculous thing. You think of the faces of your children, too thin, beautiful. James’ smile, lopsided, with its single dimple barely visible anymore in his sunken cheek. The people in your village you love and the people you cordially dislike. Mrs. Adams, who waters down her beer too much and tells petty lies about her neighbours. The miller, who was a cheat until you all began to starve, and then stumbled into honesty, astonishing everyone—but his tongue is still too sharp, and generosity is still a foreign concept to him. You think of the swelling in your chest when your father told his stories of heroes. Your name is Madelaine of Roshorn. You’ve lived your entire life in a small village in the south-east of the kingdom of Amantan, near enough these caves for their presence to be a constant looming threat. You know yourself, and you know what you’re not. You take on mad quests. You don’t give up. You mean to continue. From the depths of the Hydra King’s demesne, you reach for the surface. <<if $Wounds gt 4>> <<set $energydrain to $energydrain + 1>> <<elseif $Wounds gt 6>> <<set $energydrain to $energydrain + 2>> <</if>> [[Time passes]] an arterial gush of seconds, a bloodless eternity. <span class="titlewrap">[img[images/chapterthree.png]]</span> [[PART THREE]]Your name is Patricia of Roshorn, and it has been almost ten years since your mother disappeared. Almost ten years since your family’s fortunes changed overnight. You have been by turns angry, guilty, hopeful, desolate. Now, conflicted emotion has transmuted to singular impulse, and singular impulse has been forged into steely resolve. You intend to discover where your mother’s bones rest, despite the risk that the attempt to find them may inter your own beside them. It’s a selfish thing you’re doing, not a heroic quest. If you die too, under the very same dirt that must entomb your mother, your poor father…But he’ll have Matt, and his books, and security. And there is reason to hope that this choice won’t be the end of you after all. Besides the Incident of Sepmonth 5th, the attacks by Saltcast have almost completely cut off. And the Incident is five years past, and not a peep from any monster in all that time. Something’s changed down there, and it began, you think, you hope, with your mother’s choice to sneak away in the middle of the night and try to earn 10, 000 splendours from the king. You’ve made your living as a bard singing songs of heroes. Most of them are made up, or may as well be, as ancient and embroidered as they are. You want another song to sing. A true one. One year since you finally sat down to write a Rest Song for your mother, who never had a funeral because her body was never found. You’d intended it to be beautiful. A gift to her memory. Worthy of her. Something which could comfort your father and your brother, and, just perhaps, even yourself. Instead, you produced one mess after another. Your first attempt was a childlike ramble about every moment she’s missed, an aimless narration of life since you came down one morning to find your father holding a note he refused to show you. //Oh, Mama, it’s been a while, Every second separates us like another new mile And all I remember is remembering, [[Just a lonely replacement for the real thing.]]// Your second was an accusation, angry, unjust, petulant: //Now grief has become my mother, I am a dutiful daughter, I bend beneath her hand, Serve her in preference to any other, With relief accept her claiming brand You are a stranger now that [[Grief is my mother.]]// Your third song was merely guilty. //I have never seen your tomb, the dark which holds your bones, Is too peaceful for my grasping touch. The secret in its great stone womb Delivered me a firstborn cry: [[You can’t be dead unless we’ve seen you die.]]// <<set $bestlantern to 1>> [[So here you are.]]You got up an hour before sunrise to start your chores. Father was such a light sleeper that it wasn’t unusual for him to be up before you, so you weren’t surprised to come upon him standing in the dark. You noticed his rigid shoulders, his unseeing eyes, without concern. Both your parents had been moving within a cloud of tension all year, but there was nothing you could do to clear it except continuing to live as you always did. Then he half turned, and inhaled, an odd broken sound, and you saw the coarse sheet of birch bark in his shaking hand. When you asked what it was, he put his fingers up to his mouth and bit the tips before answering. “Your mother’s gone away for a while,” he said finally. “She’s…gone into the town to find work.” As far as you knew, there was no work in town that would bring more money in than having Mama here would save. They’d searched for jobs there before. But Mama wouldn’t do it if it was pointless. You hoped she’d find something. Two days afterwards, the withered vegetables in your little garden seemed to come back to miraculous life. A wave of game birds crashed into the wall of your house and died, and you ate what you could and preserved a little meat for later. Every time your brother went fishing, or foraging, or hunting rabbits, he came back with as much as he could carry. You wanted to tell Mama about your new good fortune, about the priest's certainty that the gods had set a blessing on the whole village because the crops were growing so well, the weather was so good, nobody was getting sick. But she never came back. [[Go back|PART THREE]]It was months later that Father told you and Mattias the truth, and let you see the note written on the birch bark. You’re not a fool, you know the abundance which you now have must be connected to her choice to go to the caves. She must have found a Blessing Stone, or something of the kind. She must have done something heroic. Some part of you can’t forgive her. [[Go back|PART THREE]]A year after she left, you were digging up a row of carrots when you found a sackcloth bag buried in the dirt. Inside the bag was a large collection of golden splendours. You could afford to go away to Bardic College in the capital. Your father bought books, though he refused to buy a better house in town. Your brother disclaimed all ambition, and continued as a seasonal worker in the fields, but his future was made secure in that moment all the same. The Blessing again, you thought, grateful and resentful and deep down hopeful that it meant your mother had succeeded, and in succeeding had survived. Another thing kept feeding that thought. The Saltcast incursions seemed to stop around the same time as the turn in your fortunes—although rumours travelled slow between the villages, your move to the capital confirmed things for you. There were few spellbeast sightings after that period, and whenever they were seen, they fled instead of attacking. Something had changed, down there in the caves, and you were sure, bone-deep certain that your mother was the author of that change. You learned to sing comic songs of fools and epic songs of heroes, and it rankled at you, not knowing the story of the foolish heroism that you were sure had given you this life. Not knowing for sure that she was gone. Not knowing how, if she was. But there was just enough doubt to keep you still. [[Then came the Incident of Sepmonth the 5th.]]You thought it would be more impressive, somehow. You were expecting a vast, jagged gape of stone, not a muddy little hole in the hillside. You were expecting an ominous silence, not the twittering of birdsong. There isn’t even an atmospheric swirl of mist rising out of the dark interior. If it weren’t for the aged signs signalling danger, you might think you’d come to the wrong place. But no. This is it. It’s going to be a bit of a squeeze, but you’re pretty sure you can fit down there. You’ll have to take your travel pack off your back and drag it along behind you, though. It’s time. [[You slide down among the dirt and the stones.]]Loose pebbles roll along your spine as you contort yourself into the shapes the shaft requires of you. Your lantern hangs from your pack, which you’re pulling down after yourself, so your own body blocks most of the light before it can reveal the passage ahead. You fumble and claw your way onwards, hands quickly scraped raw, finding the coming twists and drops with your feet. You think of your mother. In your memory she’s of course bigger than you, big enough to be an enfolding presence, to swoop in and scoop you out of trouble. Did she struggle here? Was she afraid of getting stuck? One final effort propels you down into a wider space. You’ve found the first cavern. You slip your pack back on and look around. [[Are you alone?]]The urgent rhythm of your heart drums loudly in your ears, and you clench your fists as you examine your surroundings. It’s a sizeable space, squared off at the corners, and empty. You spend a few minutes chasing shadows around with your lantern just to be sure. No lurking monsters. No human remains either. Nothing to hint at how your mother’s story might have unfolded from here. In the distance, you hear someone scream. [[Run to give aid]] [[Hesitate]]Perhaps it’s foolish. Why would anyone down here be a potential ally instead of just another threat? But at one point your mother was here, and you’re here now, and there was real terror in that scream. You break into as fast a run as you can manage in an unfamiliar space, rushing through the first chamber and into the thin passage beyond it. You only falter upon reaching the other side of the passage and seeing what lies in the next room. There’s a square-hewn pit perhaps fifteen foot deep. At the bottom are two doors of solid wood, mundane in themselves, but bizarre in their current context. The left door is sealed shut, but the right one is open, and up through it seethes a tide of shadowlike forms, swarming over each other in a frenzy of aggression. They cover almost all of the bottom of the pit, except for the space protected by a small, wavering circle of lantern-light, in which two hooded figures huddle. The figures are tiny, each about two feet tall, and the slighter of the two is holding its lantern over its head as the larger one scrabbles fruitlessly at the handle of the left door. In the few moments you stand frozen, the shadow creatures start scuttling up over the walls, manoeuvring themselves behind and above the flickering lantern-light. It seems to you that the genuine shadows pinned under the two beleaguered targets are slowly stretching out towards the edge of the circle, almost in range of the shadow-creatures. The Cursed Spirits. You close your eyes briefly and push away the memories of Sepmonth 5th. But losing focus for even that brief blink was a mistake, because as your eyes open again, you see that the Cursed Spirits foamed up over the sides of the pit onto the same level as you. Your lantern is keeping them at bay, but there’s so many of them, and they’re starting to risk approaching the border of your golden halo… “Hurry with the door!” shouts one of the hooded figures from the pit, their voice shrill and chittering even under the panic. You catch a glimpse of a furry snout as their hood tilts back, and feel a cold shock go down your spine even as you realise you’re not surprised at all. Of course everyone down here is one type of Saltcast or another. But why are they attacking each other?<<set $hangingback to 0>><<if $forcedoor is 4>> [[Step in]] <<else>> [[Intervene]]<</if>>No-one down here is likely to be an ally. This could be a trap. The kind of trap, you can’t help but think, which might have caught your mother. She was a compassionate woman. So you don’t rush to investigate. You walk cautiously onward, continuing to interrogate every shadow. Your hand rests on the short sword on your belt. As a bard, you have had to travel, and you’ve learned how to defend yourself from human threats. It remains to be seen if your training can stack up against the strange powers of the creatures which lurk down here. After at least fifteen minutes, you reach a pit in the rock floor and see where the screaming came from. There's a dark mass of Cursed Spirits filling both the pit and much of the tunnel. They recoil from the light of your lantern, clearing just enough space for you to map out roughly what has happened. At the bottom of the pit, about fifteen feet down, there are two doors. One of them has been flung open, and there’s still a sluggish stream of Spirits clambering up through it from whatever space lies below. Pinned in the corner of the pit are two small hooded figures, attempting to defend themselves with a lamp which has almost flickered out. One of them is kneeling in a slick of blood, shoulders shaking. Whoever they are, they’ve been chased into this corner, and are almost out of fight. “Help!” the one still standing shouts in a shrill, squeaking voice, hood turning towards you. <<set $hangingback to 2>> [[Make a desperate attempt to aid them]] [[Hang back]]You essay a mad dash toward the pit, knowing as you go that you’re unlikely to make it through the wall of Cursed Spirits. You wonder what tune you’d compose for the short, tragicomic ballad this endeavour could be turned into. You should have stayed a bard, just enough of a fighter to protect your earnings and your virtue when travelling, and no more. A Cursed Spirit makes a leap towards your back, and you swing around with both sword and lantern. It recoils midair as if the light was a solid thing, and you skewer it with one smooth extension, like you were in the habit of cutting down monsters made of shadow and malice. But if you were in that habit, you would know better than to twist around so violently, throwing yourself off balance and leaving a thousand openings available for the creatures surrounding you. A sharp claw slices into your calf and an inky arm wraps around your waist, tugging you back. You shout and flail and somehow that’s enough, you’ve knocked yourself loose even though you’re bleeding. Not dead. Not possessed. Not yet. <<if $forcedoor lt 4>> [[“Here, over here,” squeaks the spellbeast.]] <<elseif $forcedoor is 4>>“Here, over here,” squeaks the spellbeast. “Nearly got the door open! Clear me space for one more pull!” You brawl your way along, picking up cuts and bruises you’re too full of panic to properly feel. The light of your lantern makes the oily, liquid skin of the Cursed Spirits bubble angrily and they flinch back when you turn it on them, but they’re fast in their pursuit of your shadow, and your sword does them no permanent damage. One more sidestep, and you’re teetering on the edge of the pit. The Spirits down below hiss and giggle, and you hear the scrape of their claws as they start to climb towards you. Would it be better to be torn to pieces, or to be...inhabited? [[Only bad ideas left.]]<</if>>She reaches out a paw to touch your sleeve, tugging a little so you don’t stop moving. “Oh, dearie. I don’t think we should be the ones to tell you about what happened, but we’ll take you to someone who can. Someone with all the details.” [[Is she…still alive?]]Cursed Spirits are the only Saltcast who have attacked human settlements in the last ten years, and something helped stop them on the night of the incident. All you have is supposition and instinct, and instinct tells you to try and save the two little spellbeasts. They seem harmless. They’re afraid. Maybe it’s a trap, but you don’t think so. Of course, intention doesn’t equal capacity. You have a good lantern and you were tutored in some combat skills by your patron in Bardic college, so you might be able to break through, but what then? “There’s some give, but it’s jammed!” squeaks the spellbeast who is working on the door. "Keep trying!" calls the other. Right. Finding a way out seems like the best option, and if the spellbeasts who live here think it’s this door, you’re willing to try it too. You heft your lantern in your left hand. With your right, you draw your sword. You charge ahead, slicing at the Cursed Spirits who fail to scuttle out of the way in time. They cringe back, hissing, their skin—if the oily substance wrapping the surface of each of them can be called skin—bubbling against the assault of the light. You don’t think you’re doing any permanent harm to them, but you yourself are unscathed as you force your way through their ranks. The feeling of resistance your sword meets every time it connects confirms to you that they have a physical presence, which gives you an idea. A very bad one, true, but you’ve been committing to those since you first decided to come here. [[With a yell even you recognise as mad, you launch yourself into the pit]]“It’s hopeless!” shouts the slightly larger hooded figure. “Completely sealed off!” “A seed!” cries the other. “Cecil, use a seed!” “I’ve none left!” ‘Cecil’ says, wringing stubby little hands—no, paws, you realise. “I used them up when we were in the upside!” “Oh!” the smaller creature’s shadow has stretched out of the ring of light, and the Cursed Spirits swarm to it, yanking. The little Saltcast’s feet skid on the rock floor of the pit as whatever force the Spirits exert on its shadow transfers to it, and it lets out a squeal of pain. “Celia!” shouts Cecil, grabbing for his companion. You intended to help them, but faced with such a mass of enemies, you don’t know how, what aid you have to give. You’ll have to think of something fast, though, because the Cursed Spirits have noticed you and the light you’ve brought against them. A few of them break off their siege on the two spellbeasts, and start to creep up the tunnel towards you. “You, up there,” shouts the one called Celia, urgent. “Human! Do you have a seed?” You flounder for a moment. A seed? You have a lump of bread in your travel pack which was spiced with Caraway seeds. Would that suffice, baked though it is? Or does she mean a live seed, which might be planted and produce a sprout? What use is such a thing? But all you can do is try. You glance down at yourself, and notice the layer of mud on your boots. You walked a long way here through overgrown paths. Perhaps you picked up something? Awkwardly, you stand on one foot and peer into the dirt on your soles. Something paler glints in the brown. Is that…? [[“This?” you call back, waving a squashed berry over your head.]] “I s’pose that makes sense,” he says. “Though if you had any sense, you wouldn’t be down here.” “Cecil!” exclaims Celia, apparently scandalised. “You know why she’s come.” “Well, maybe,” he grumbles. “That’s if this’s even the right human. Can’t tell ‘em apart.” “You’re Patricia, aren’t you, dearie?” Celia asks you directly, while Cecil humphs in the background. “Madelaine’s daughter?” [[Your breath catches]]“Ha!” Cecil snorts. “No such thing.” “Don’t be so dour, you old grump,” says Celia. “Lots of people are generous!” “People, yes. Humans…” “Cecil! What a thing to say to Madelaine’s daughter!” [[Your breath catches]]“Mad, every last human,” grumbles Cecil. “You ought to know why you want to do something before you do it.” “He means thank you,” translates Celia. “We were in a lot of trouble. It’s been a while since there’s been a Spirit outbreak, and it caught us on the hop. Just out doing a bit of cultivation in the fields with Cecil’s talent—he can make anything grow, you know, anything at all. He’s one of our best.” “How would she know?” Cecil mumbles. His large pink ears have gone a shade pinker. Celia chuckles. “She’s just a mad human.” “Nonsense. He’s grateful, really,” she tells you. “To you, and your mother. That’s right, isn’t it? You’re Patricia? Madelaine’s daughter?” [[Your breath catches]]You need to protect yourself. You can’t trust the Saltcast, no matter which kind. Maybe you’d like to help, but you’re not getting yourself killed to do it, not for strangers. You pull back into the tight tunnel space and hold your lantern in front of you, drawing your sword and waiting. The Spirits on the same level as you mostly ignore you, which surprises you because you’ve always heard that they are drawn to humans so they can possess them. However, perhaps they’re focused on the prey they were already pursuing, and view you as something to be mopped up later. As you listen to the distant hisses and laughs and wet slitherings of the Cursed Spirits, the weight of despair gets heavier and heavier, as if all the layers of rock above you have pressed down upon your neck. Maybe you’re not getting out of this. The fight you’re trying to ignore is loud and veers between unsettlingly animalistic and even more unsettlingly human, hisses and chittering and shouts for help. Your lantern is flickering. You’re sure by this point that you’re going to die. “Human!” shouts one of the spellbeasts under siege. “Help us!” [[Continue to hang back]] [[Make a desperate attempt to aid them]]What can you do? You're built for aftermaths, not crises. When you close your eyes, the orange glow of your light shines through, steady and reliable. You hear a crash and then a tearing scream, and there’s a crescendo of hisses. The glow intensifies. You can smell the stink of burning hair and flesh. A moment of quiet and stillness, then heat sweeps up the tunnel towards you, and your lashes crisp. It stings when you finally force your eyes open and stare at the approaching horror. One of the little spellbeasts has somehow set himself on fire, shattered remains of his lantern clinging to his blazing cloak, the flesh melting off the bone of his rat-like face, lantern oil soaked into his fur and burning white-hot. He grabs your wrist in one clawed, superheated hand, and drags you forward. You’re too weak with shock and revulsion to resist him, and the Cursed Spirits, too, are cringing away from the terrible light, so you’re drawn onward without interruption until he jumps with you into the pit. You land on the soft body of the other spellbeast, who lies in a silent, bloodsoaked huddle. You stutter out an apology. Spellbeasts don’t leave corpses after death, you know that much, so she must be alive—but there’s no other sign of that life, nor does it seem likely to last long. The burning spellbeast steps over her and her robes start to smoulder. The still-sealed door at the bottom of the pit is also burning. It has started to crack, some of the planks constituting it splitting and falling into the space underneath. As you watch, the hole through it grows gaping, flame licking at its glowing edges as a tongue might probe the wound of an extracted tooth. “Go!” rasps the spellbeast. You stare at him, your heart buzzing against your sternum, your breath coming in flat little gasps, a pittance of air scraping down your throat. “You have to live, girl. You’re Madelaine’s child. We owe a debt.” Your eyes are starting to dry out, your eyelids sticky every time you blink, the fire leaving red afterimages in your blurring vision. All your questions are trapped inside you, suffocating. The skin is gone from his hands. They leave wet prints on your coat when he pushes you towards the gap in the door. There’s no strength in the push, there can’t be, but you go anyway. Flesh drips off his terrible smile. “Did you like the way I made your garden grow, Patricia? I hope so. Go.” You half jump, half fall through the flames into the dark below. You’re burned. You’re too cold with shock to know how badly, but as you roll on the ground a few feet under the burning door, you know there’s no time for further assessment. You’re in a new tunnel. At any moment, the Spirits might follow. <<set $hangback to 4>> [[Run away]]You flee down the passageway, panicking. <<if $hangback is 4>>Your eyes sting and your lungs feel heavy with smoke, though their breathless aching doesn’t account for all the weight in your chest. <<else>>You told yourself you were ready for whatever awaited you down here, but the urgency of someone else’s life making demands upon yours is still a weight on your shoulders.<</if>> Your feet, too, are heavy: your boots were made to stand up to long journeys at marching pace: they’re too sturdy and solid for sprinting. You stumble and knock into the walls at every tight corner—and there are many in this section of the caves; you think this must be a naturally developed part of the tunnel, following some fault in the rock, because no surely no sane being would deliberately excavate such a winding mess of hairpin turns. If the Cursed Spirits are following you, you can be fairly sure that they’ll be forced into single file, but the knowledge doesn’t comfort you when you're unable to see far ahead or behind you, all sense of direction lost several turns ago. It takes you some time to calm down enough to actually listen for pursuit. You can’t hear anything but your own drumming heartbeat and ragged breathing, which doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. The tunnel starts to widen at the same point it gets straighter and slopes more sharply downward. Your panic erodes gradually down to dread, the heat under your skin leaching away until you’re shivering. You slow your run as the prospect of what might be ahead of you starts to compete with the fear of what might be following you, and at that first moment of hesitation, all the confusion you’d deprioritized comes rushing back in. Is it really true that you have spellbeasts to thank for your village’s good fortune, your family’s outsized good luck? Not the Gods, but the monsters which were the antagonists in every tale of magic and most tales of adventure? Why? Why are they at war with the Spirits, when every story says that Cursed Spirits were rare? <<if $hangback is 4>>Did the rat spellbeast die for your sake, or was he doomed either way? Could you have saved him? Did you want to? You can still smell burning. <</if>> Now that the tunnel has opened up, there are a few forks leading off of it. You choose your way at random, fearing another encounter and at the same time knowing that you’ll never find the truth without one. [[There’s a song in the distance.]]A gush of blood fizzes up into your head as your heart leaps. For a moment your tongue is so thickened with it that you can’t speak, but Celia seems to read your face, and she reaches out a paw to touch your sleeve, tugging a little so you don’t stop moving. “Oh, dearie. I don’t think we should be the ones to tell you about what happened, but we’ll take you to someone who can. Someone with all the details.” [[Is she…still alive?]]Celia’s whiskers twitch nervously. “Oh, that’s…a hard question to answer…” Your heart bludgeons against your ribs. How can it be hard? Don’t they know? “You’re making a mess of this, Celia,” warns Cecil, watching your face. “Shouldn’t have brought it up before we got her to Amaris.” “Well…maybe you’re right, but…” Whatever Cecil sees in your expression, it makes him drop some of the abrasiveness and speak softly. “You came here to say goodbye, right? That’s it. Don’t hope for more than that. Your mother’s gone.” //Now grief has become my mother…// Involuntarily, you look to Celia for confirmation. After a moment, she nods, eyes downcast. “Amaris will tell you everything. We’ll go right to her. I’m sorry, dearie.” [[Walk faster]] [[Insist they tell you more]]If they can’t tell you what you need to know, you’ll get to this person who can. You don’t want the story in stumbling implication and uncertain hints: you want the full truth. “Do you hear that?” Celia asks suddenly. “…Oh no.” [[You hear it]]They just shake their heads and speed up, murmuring disclaimers. [[Walk faster]] [[Force them to tell you more]]You round on them, teeth gritted. They’re small. Maybe you could threaten them, just a little, make them feel some of the urgency thrumming through your veins. Cecil gives you a knowing look tempered with sadness. “Don’t try it, little one.” <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">His recognition of your thoughts seems to have lost you some trust.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration - 1>> Celia isn’t paying you attention at all. “Do you hear that?” she says. “…Oh no.” [[You hear it]]The spellbeasts seem to have better hearing than you do. You’re following their lead, so you don’t question at first the way they drift through the twists and turns, heads cocked to catch what sounds to you like soft stray notes. By the time you’ve noticed how entranced they seem, you’ve also noticed how sweet the singing is, and how hauntingly sad. //Our grand palace, now a gilded tomb Our war drums now this mournful tune The many-king bent under Madelaine’s sway Finds soon that his many are peeling away Listen, my children, come cling to my song, I’ll drape you in visions of where you belong; Yes, listen, sweet children, and dance to my call, we’ll make us so merry before we all fall…// Madelaine…? You fall into line with Cecil and Celia, your mother’s name spinning through the vacancy in your head, failing to connect with anything. There’s something important in the song. The song is important. The singer’s voice is so beautiful, the best you’ve ever heard... A shard of professional jealousy spikes you unexpectedly. Is she really the best? Her voice is sweet and warm, and the sadness in it captures the soul, but some of the long notes get a little breathy. The words aren’t always as distinct as they should be. //Madelaine?// The tone doesn’t vary: it keeps hammering on that delicate melancholy until it saturates the listener. Your mentors at the college would have some critical feedback for her, you’re certain. A hurried blink clears your eyes for a moment, and you see what you and your companions are walking into. A short distance before you, a figure stands in the middle of a swirling vortex of darkness, so many Cursed Spirits dancing so closely together that it’s hard to pick out individuals. The figure looks human, but is scarred to such an extreme that its face barely has features: claw marks cover all the visible skin, thin straggles of hair emerging between the groves on its scalp, fresh wounds layered over the eyes and nose. The lips, though—beautiful, full, unblemished, drawn back to expose perfect white teeth as the Cursed Host sings the song that is trying once again to wrap itself around the inside of your skull. [[Listen to the Host's song]] [[Scream so loud you can’t hear her voice]]You’re moving towards the music before you’ve fully registered that it’s there. A soprano voice singing with a tragic lilt that makes your chest ache. <<if $hangback === 4>> Before, your urge to help was clouded by fear and the practical instinct for self-preservation. But now, you’re seized with a feeling of obligation so potent it seems to crowd out your other thoughts. <<else>> You’re sure that someone here needs your help, and this time, you can’t be hesitant about offering it. The feeling of obligation is so potent that it drives out all other thoughts.<</if>> //Our grand palace, now a gilded tomb Our war drums now this mournful tune The many-king bent under Madelaine’s sway Finds soon that his many are peeling away Listen, my children, come cling to my song, I’ll drape you in visions of where you belong; Yes, listen, sweet children, and dance to my call, we’ll make us so merry before we all fall…// //Madelaine…?// You drift down the fork towards the singer with your mother’s name humming in the quiet of your mind, searching for purchase. You used to like to dance along to your own songs, and your professional training taught you how to control your breathing as you move…but you’re not the singer this time. She’s the best you’ve ever heard… A shard of professional jealousy spikes you unexpectedly. Is she really the best? Her voice is sweet and warm, and the sadness in it captures the soul, but some of the long notes get a little breathy. The words aren’t always as distinct as they should be. //Madelaine?// The tone doesn’t vary: it keeps hammering on that delicate melancholy until it saturates the listener. Your mentors at the college would have some critical feedback for her, you’re certain. A hurried blink clears your eyes for a moment, and you see what you’re walking into. A figure stands in the middle of a swirling vortex of darkness, so many Cursed Spirits dancing so closely together that it’s hard to pick out individuals. The figure looks human, but is scarred to such an extreme that its face barely has features: claw marks cover all the visible skin, thin straggles of hair emerging between the groves on its scalp, fresh wounds layered over the eyes and nose. The lips, though—beautiful, full, unblemished, drawn back to expose perfect white teeth as the Cursed Host sings the song that is trying once again to wrap itself around the inside of your skull. [[Listen to the Host's song]] [[Scream so loud you drown out her voice]]You find the scream, readily available, just under the talent-imposed serenity. A moment of effort and it’s bursting out of you. Your lungs are well trained: you know how to achieve both volume and stamina. None of your previous performances have had you attempting to rattle the ears off your listeners, but you find yourself well up to the task. The singer’s melancholy stylings have no chance against the bardic howl which emerges from the depths of your terror and rage. Cecil jolts, his spine going rigid. Celia’s reaction is more subdued: she slowly raises her paws to her mouth, ears drooping. Both of them start to back away slowly, and you edge along after them, screaming all the while. The swirl of Cursed Spirits falters, begins to separate. You can see the Cursed Host’s lips moving faster, a little frantic, as the Spirits under her control start to come back to themselves. What was she trying to do with them to begin with? Use them as a weapon? But among those in the know, the rumour about Cursed Spirits is that, given the opportunity, they’ll always attack a Host. And as long as your voice is drowning out hers, she can’t maintain her grasp on their minds. You watch as the Cursed Spirits regain their inbuilt hostility. Their movements are still eerily in sync as they turn to their former commander. She’s holding herself in a way you recognise, belting out notes at a volume she doesn’t have the air or the control for. It’s no good. She can’t overwhelm your screaming with such a shaky attempt, and she’s out of time. The Cursed Spirits have her shadow stretched between them, a great expanse of black, your torchlight lapping at its border. You deliberately turn the light away. They swim up through her shadow and are on her in an instant, screening her from view. When you finally suck in a breath, her shrieks of pain take over the open auditory space, not muffled at all by the pile of bodies enclosing her. It might be time to run. [[You turn to follow Cecil and Celia]]<span class="death">You keep drifting closer. It’s like slipping into a beautiful dream. The dance calls to you. It’s an easy death, almost gentle. You barely feel it.</span> [[Go back|You hear it]]You find the scream, readily available, just under the talent-imposed serenity. A moment of effort and it’s bursting out of you. Your lungs are well trained: you know how to achieve both volume and stamina. None of your previous performances have had you attempting to rattle the ears off your listeners, but you find yourself well up to the task. The singer’s melancholy stylings have no chance against the bardic howl which emerges from the depths of your terror and rage. The swirl of Cursed Spirits falters, begins to separate. You can see the Cursed Host’s lips moving faster, a little frantic, as the Spirits under her control start to come back to themselves. What was she trying to do with them to begin with? Use them as a weapon? But among those in the know, the rumour about Cursed Spirits is that, given the opportunity, they’ll always attack a Host. And as long as your voice is drowning out hers, she can’t maintain her grasp on their minds. You watch as the Cursed Spirits regain their inbuilt hostility. Their movements are still eerily in sync as they turn to their former commander. She’s holding herself in a way you recognise, belting out notes at a volume she doesn’t have the air or the control for. It’s no good. She can’t overwhelm your screaming with such a shaky attempt, and she’s out of time. The Cursed Spirits have her shadow stretched between them, a great expanse of black, your torchlight lapping at its border. They swim up through it and are on her in an instant, screening her from view. When you finally suck in a breath, her shrieks of pain take over the open auditory space, not muffled at all by the pile of bodies enclosing her. It might be time to run. [[Turn]]You whirl around, ready to take to your heels again, and find your way blocked. Your last scream gets an encore performance, though a feeble one: more of a squeak. There’s a row of spellbeasts standing in front of you, examining you with what might be predatory intent, or might only be interest. They’re the strangest-looking creatures you’ve ever seen. While the forms of the Cursed Spirits are shifting and strange, they are broadly humanoid, and Cursed Hosts look simply like the human they once were. The spellbeasts, though, draw their features from across all of nature. The two you’ve already seen, and the few you saw in the distance on Sepmonth 5th, were startling, but not bizarre, their points of familiarity seeming consistent and easy enough to slot into your ideas of taxonomy. Not so with this new group. The largest of the company looks like a gigantic snail, a long, damp grey body, a swirl of startling colour in the shell on its back. But instead of oozing along on its belly, it is borne aloft by two dozen feet, each pink, with delicate little ankles and a few inches of hairy shin. Next in line for most unusual is the one which looks like a bear mostly carved from a vast mushroom stipe, spongy and yellow in the body, with a head that looks wooden, jaw hinged like a puppet’s and eyes like the knots on a tree. <<if $Eldionfreed is 3>>The third strangest looks like a ghost girl from a melancholy ballad of doomed romance, pale and floating, except she is fixed by one wrist to a massive gauntleted hand, which stands on its steel fingers. Despite the topography of her face being broadly human, you can’t read the smile she is giving you.<</if>> The rest are alike in their lack of uniformity, a mishmash of animal species, insects, plants, even inorganic matter like rock and metal. You tremble under their attention as the Cursed Host behind you starts to gurgle, then choke, then fall silent. The snail stretches out its neck, extending its head past your shoulder and peering into the mass of Cursed Spirits. “Too many trying to take over one body,” it says to you conversationally. “They’ll just—ah, there it goes.” You hear a sharp crack, and then several more, as of a mirror breaking and falling in pieces to a final shattering on the stone. The pile of Spirits slumps, its central support vanished. “Humans aren’t durable enough for that sort of nonsense. No offense.” [[None taken.]] [[Maintain a stunned silence.]]To your surprise, the two of them have only made it a few feet back up the tunnel. Their way has been blocked by a row of spellbeasts, who are examining the three of you with what might be predatory intent, or might only be interest. Your introduction to Cecil and Celia was so dramatic that you lost track of the strangeness of their appearances, and in any case they at least resembled something familiar, but this new group brings the visual oddness of spellbeasts back to mind with striking force. You find yourself stepping backward, even with the knowledge that the Cursed Spirits are behind you. The largest of the company looks like a gigantic snail, a long, damp grey body, a swirl of startling colour in the shell on its back. But instead of oozing along on its belly, it is borne aloft by two dozen feet, each pink, with delicate little ankles and a few inches of hairy shin. Next in line for most unusual is the one which looks like a bear mostly carved from a vast mushroom stipe, spongy and yellow in the body, with a head that looks wooden, jaw hinged like a puppet’s and eyes like the knots on a tree. <<if $Eldionfreed is 3>>The third strangest looks like a ghost girl from a melancholy ballad of doomed romance, pale and floating, except she is fixed by one wrist to a massive gauntleted hand, which stands on its steel fingers. Despite the topography of her face being broadly human, you can’t read the smile she is giving you.<</if>> The rest are alike in their lack of uniformity, a mishmash of animal species, insects, plants, even inorganic matter like rock and metal. You tremble under their attention as the Cursed Host behind you starts to gurgle, then choke, then fall silent. “Hello, Glannan,” Cecil says. “You’ve got good timing for a snail.” The pink feet perform an irate little march. “Not a snail, Cecil. You could stand to be more polite when we’re here to save you.” “Well, that’s your job,” says Cecil, dismissively. “Argue later. Deal with the incursion now,” says the fungal bear, as the snail stomps its many feet. [[”Assembled Spirits, surrender now or depart this area!”]]“That should sort them out,” says Cecil, with crashing sarcasm. Celia gives his hood a yank. “Behave.” In fact, a few of the Cursed Spirits do seem to subside back up the tunnel, but most of them reshuffle themselves into an opposing front, a wide clot of shadow periodically interrupted by red pinprick eyes. “Let’s get out of the way,” Celia adds, patting your arm. “Everything will be all right, dearie.” You’re thinking of the song. Your mother’s name invoked in opposition to some unknown king. Your head feels clogged, sluggish as stagnant water. Questions and no answers. “It won’t be long now before we reach Amaris,” Cecil says, an unexpected kindness. The skirmish is over quickly. The snail-Spellbeast’s talent seems to be spraying out some kind of acid, which makes the Cursed Spirits shriek and hiss as their amorphous flesh is eaten away. The bear puffs out spores which rapidly weigh down the enemy, holding them in place for other attacks. It’s too hard to track all the others, a rainbow of shifting effects, but the result is definite. The Cursed Spirits are overwhelmed, but none of those remaining attempt to surrender now. They focus on their counterattacks, yanking the dark out from under the spellbeasts and infesting it, claws and fangs and whatever intangible force connects them to the murk, all working to do as much damage as possible. One of the spellbeasts falls with a cry before the end, but it isn’t reduced to shards, and only minutes later, all the Spirits are. “This is Patricia, Madelaine’s daughter,” says Celia. “We’re taking her to the Leadership Hall to talk to Amaris.” “Oh!” says the snail. “We’d better hurry, then.” [[Follow along]] “Glad to hear it. We all have our weaknesses. I personally don’t get on well with salt. It’s a good thing we don’t have much down here. Although a Host once threw their stash of Moshidiah’s salt at me! Imagine wasting a God-touched material on that! But their aim was terrible.” “Glannan,” the fungal bear says. “You’re wittering. Look at that poor human. She’s terrified.” “Oh.” You’re suddenly face to…snout? with the snail. “How can you tell?” “Focus, Glannan. We’ve found another horde of Spirits. Fight now, bother the human later.” [[”Assembled Spirits, surrender immediately or depart this area!”]] “Oh. Maybe some offense? Don’t worry. We can take care of this.” [[”Assembled Spirits, surrender immediately or depart this area!”]] “Probably overoptimistic,” the snail tells you sideways, sotto voce, “But Soima says there should be rules to warfare.” In fact, a few of the Cursed Spirits do seem to subside back up the tunnel, but most of them reshuffle themselves into an opposing front, a wide clot of shadow periodically interrupted by red pinprick eyes. The fungal bear puts a spongy yellow paw on your shoulder. “Move back,” it says, not unkindly. You obey as quickly as you can, ducking between the spellbeasts and taking in a few deep, gasping breaths as soon as you find a space that’s out of the way. Your head feels clogged, sluggish as stagnant water, the stream of your thoughts a thin trickling flow barely stirring the surface. Questions and no answers. Your mother’s name invoked in a magic song about the downfall of a king. Spellbeasts protecting you, once again. War within the caves. [[Wait and watch.]] The skirmish is over quickly. The snail-Spellbeast’s talent seems to be spraying out some kind of acid, which makes the Cursed Spirits shriek and hiss as their amorphous flesh is eaten away. The bear puffs out spores which rapidly weigh down the enemy, holding them in place for other attacks. It’s too hard to track all the others, a rainbow of shifting effects, but the result is definite. The Cursed Spirits are overwhelmed, but none of those remaining attempt to surrender now. They focus on their counterattacks, yanking the dark out from under the spellbeasts and infesting it, claws and fangs and whatever intangible force connects them to the murk all working to do as much damage as possible. One of the spellbeasts falls with a cry before the end, but it isn’t reduced to shards, and only minutes later, all the Spirits are. “There,” the snail says, pink feet shuffling it around. “Now. Is this human one of the ones we’re supposed to know?” <<if $Eldionfreed is 3>> Spider-Gauntlet skitters in place in what looks like exasperation, floating body bouncing midair. When she settles back down, you see her roll her eyes.<</if>> “I think it’s the daughter,” says the bear, looming abruptly over you. “The singing one.” Why do they know you? What happened between them and your mother? [[Demand answers.]] “Ooooooh,” says the snail. “It seems like a long story. You know who’s good at long stories? Soima.” “You’re quite good at them too, Glannan,” says the bear. “No, no. I’m good at making short stories seem long. Not the same thing at all. We’d better take her to the Leadership Hall.” [[Follow along]] They hurry you along at the front of the small troop. Now you’re in a part of the caves which is clearly heavily trafficked, the plain rock walls of the tunnels have given way to intricately decorated panels and columns, the craggy roofs and floors replaced by smooth and colourful tiles—though almost all of the structures show signs of recent damage. Every so often, the spellbeasts stop to deactivate traps, which they reactivate once all of you are through. The heavy, usually trapped doors between sections are covered with illuminated text. You’re rushing, so you don’t pick up on all of them, but you read a few. One has the subtitle ‘Recent History’ and seems to be an account of a battle between the spellbeasts of ‘Amaris’ and the Cursed Hosts of someone called ‘The Hydra King’, during which the former defeated the latter and took their supply of Moshidiah’s salt. The names of those fallen during this battle shine particularly brightly. The final door before the Leadership Hall has your mother’s name on it. Madelaine of Roshorn Blessed of the Gods Humanity’s Emissary Our Reclaimer. We Owe a Debt. [[Get your answers.]]<<if $hangback lte 2>> The others hang back outside the door, letting you go alone. “Good luck,” mutters Cecil. “Take care of yourself,” says Celia.<</if>> You walk into the room with your head held high and your heart thrumming in your ears. In front of you stand <<if $Eldionfreed === 3>>three <<else>>two<</if>> Saltcast. One looks human, with tiny scars coiling over his skin, scars which you eventually recognise as a library’s worth of words. It’s hard to look past them and read his features, but you think he looks tired. The second is statuesque and scaley, holding a large and heavy spear in one hand and staring at you with vivid green eyes.<<if $Eldionfreed === 3>> The third is a vast bird with shining brown plumage, who ruffles up at the sight of you. <<elseif $Eldionfreed === 2>> There’s also a small flock of little birds, but they flap around without paying much attention to you.<</if>> [[”Tell me what happened to her. What happened to my mother.”]] Maybe it’s a long story, or maybe it just feels long. They tell you how they each met your mother. What she said to them. How she got pulled into the current of their fight. How they sent her to her death. How she failed to die in a way you know how to mourn. How the Hydra King acquired another soul, and another head. “He’s—they’ve—been stuck in the behemoth form ever since,” says Snake Lady, Amaris. “And they’ve started shedding Cursed Spirits. From what we’ve learned, and what she's been able to tell us,, he was originally a unique kind of Host containing many spirits, with his original human self still in control. Since he took in your mother, it’s as if he can’t keep control of them anymore. It’s made him less dangerous directly, though the Spirits can be troublesome. And his Hosts managed one last piece of magic in support of him before we went on the attack. They’ve established things so that when he enters his Seeming, he somehow pulls every other Saltcast into theirs. It’s his time of vulnerability, and we’re kept from using it.” You frown at her, disliking her focus on the parts of the story that don’t interest you, disliking even more her evident satisfaction at the bargain she made to get this result. Anger is a bank of storm clouds in your head, throbbing with thunder. She seems to read your thoughts from your face, because she adds, almost gently, “Madelaine achieved her goals. All she wanted was to protect her family. And we lost some people, too, in the defence of your village from the Spirits. I’m sure you remember that day.” It’s not the same, you think resentfully. None of the people they lost were your mother. It’s different. The thought feels foolish immediately, though feeling like a fool doesn’t do anything to discharge your anger. The scarred man has spoken only rarely through the whole account, except a few words about his first meeting with your mother. He doesn’t meet your eyes as he speaks now. “Everyone in each of our factions is deeply grateful for the sacrifice Madelaine made. Perhaps it is something our two peoples could build upon. I think she would want that.” [[Let the anger out]] [[Find the grief beneath]]You tell them they’re cowards. They couldn’t manage their own business, so they sent off someone desperate, weaker than any of them, to take the risks for them. Now they’re justifying it by saying their choices have killed some of their own, too, not only yours. Snake Lady is baring her fangs by the end of your rant, while the scarred man is staring at his feet. <<if $Eldionfreed is 3>>The giant bird is looking at you with its head cocked to one side.<</if>> <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You've displeased them. Good.</div></span> “That’s enough,” Snake Lady says briskly. “I understand, but there’s no time to work through this. Our aim is to destroy the Hydra King once and for all and release your mother. You’ve come at the right moment if you want to say goodbye. We’ve found the tool we need to finish things.” You hate that your face asks the question for you, hate the way she nods like she’s confirmed something. “Since we have our own Host, we have someone who can counter the Seeming spell. Soima’s been working on it for a while, and has finally succeeded in unbinding one person from the forced collective. Signs indicate that the Hydra King is very near his next Seeming, and I will be free to act during it. I will destroy him while he’s vulnerable.” She lifts her chin, a blatant challenge. “You may accompany me on the mission, if you wish to see this through. Otherwise we will give you a small escort home.” All that steely, structural rage turns to ice in a moment. To see her again, transformed. To see her ended. It’s not a choice. You can’t turn away from it. But the shards of your heart lacerate you when you give your answer.<<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration - 1>> [[Yes.]]So inside the fairytale, the dirge has been waiting, after all. You knew from the start there was no way she could return to you, but there was enough mystery to keep you from looking your certainty in the face. You’ve grieved her, unearthed her, grieved her again. You suppose you know enough now to be proud. She did what she aimed to do—saved you, saved a whole lot more people besides. She won over the Saltcast who met her, mostly. She was given a blessing from the Gods, or a curse—either way, more than a desperate peasant woman could have been expecting. She hobbled a monster for a decade. You can’t be angry with her anymore, and you find that the anger you have for everyone else is draining too. But underneath is the desolation you felt when you were a child, a child told her mother wasn’t returning. //I miss her! I want her back!// Back like this? The scarred man steps towards you, one hand up, as if he’s trying to catch your cascading thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he says, a little helplessly. “She’s lucid occasionally, and she said that if anyone came, it would be you. She said you were stubborn.” He gives you a little smile, sad, flecks of light spinning through the words scrawled on his cheeks. “She loves you all very much.” Saltwater squeezes out of your eyes. “Patricia, isn’t it?” he says. “You’ve come at a strange time. I can’t say if this will make things worse or better. I believe we have a way to free your mother. But it would be the freedom of a victorious end, not a return to the life she once had. With you.” You shut your eyes, and all you can hear is the sorrow in his voice as he says, “There may be a chance for you to say goodbye. But it would be dangerous.” When you don’t answer immediately, Snake Lady takes over to explain the logistics of the situation. “Soima’s been working for a while on undoing the Seeming spell the other Hosts cast. We’re almost out of salt, but he’s succeeded in releasing me from it. We’ve reason to believe that the Hydra King is very near his next Seeming, and I will take the opportunity to attack him then. I intend to finish this. You may accompany me, if you wish, but be aware that, even with his defences down, he is still a perilous opponent. There are also traps, and the Cursed Spirits he has shed between us and him.” There’s only one answer. Otherwise you would never have come. [[Yes.]]“Good.” Snake Lady nods, green eyes steely. “We should begin at once, so we arrive as soon as possible after the Seeming begins. Are you prepared?” [[Yes.|You are.]]“Then we’ll leave. Soima, <<if $Eldionfreed is 3>>Eldion,<</if>> make things ready here.” “I see you brought her lantern,” the scarred man says to you. “Here, I’ll renew it.” The light, already bright and unwavering, gains a fiercer edge, chasing the shadows to the very outskirts of the chamber. You nod once. <<if $Eldionfreed is 3>> “Wish you well,” says the bird, awkward. “Best of luck. Don’t get yourself hurt, now.” No. You have to get home safe, tell your family the truth. You have to write your mother’s Rest Song.<</if>> [[Thank them]] [[Leave in silence]]Soima shakes his head. Amaris nods. <<if $Eldionfreed is 3>>The bird bows, wings sweeping out to the sides.<<elseif $Eldionfreed is 2>> The flock of birds sing a brief, sad chorus.<</if>> <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">You have curried a little favour with them.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[Onward into uncertainty]]You can feel <<if ($Eldionfreed is 2) or ($Eldionfreed is 3)>>them<<else>>him<</if>> staring at your back—not expectant, but nonetheless waiting for something somehow. From the world, perhaps, rather than from you. [[Onward into uncertainty]]You trot behind Snake Lady, struggling a little to keep up with her long strides. She stops briefly in a side-room and picks up a variety of different types of spears. Some are short, obviously designed for throwing, others are sturdy things more like pikes. “I may as well explain my talent, as we’ll rely on it in this fight,” Snake Lady says, and sighs. “My abilities are powerful but have conditions. If I run in a circuit around an area of up to an acre, I can control where anything I throw goes within that space. I throw a spear and it travels in a heartbeat to the place I want it to go, at the angle I want it to be—and it will not move from that place unless I will it to. However, the circuit must be made without faltering or my talent will not activate.” You digest this. You’re still not entirely sure what a Seeming entails—will she be free to run a literal ring around the monster which contains your mother? It seems unlikely to be that easy. [[Onward into the depths.]]By this point the walls are plain again, except for the graffiti. There are scrawled insults, pleas, simple little announcements of presence. At least one Saltcast has written themselves a memorial, and you can sense why they might: there’s a feeling of dread sweating through the icy air all around you, dripping from the stone. <<if $Eldionfreed === 3>>//Teccah, Parvad, Grissol—champions of all// says a brightly coloured message, a cheerful contrast to the memorials.<<elseif $Eldionfreed === 2>>//Teccah, Parvad, Grissol—heroes//, says a a brightly coloured message. A darker addendum says //Grissol—we will remember you forever. Your story will brighten a thousand Seemings,// <<else>>//Parvad, Grissol—we will remember you forever. Your story will brighten a thousand Seemings,// says a message scrolled in what looks like charcoal, with a brighter addendum: //Teccah—our hero.//<</if>> As you pass a particularly huge inscription, //Moshidiah take the Many King,// you see the immense claw marks cutting through it and shiver. Still, despite the fear swirling tendrils through your innards, nothing uniquely threatening materialises. You pass a few traps, but most of them have visibly deteriorated since they were set: covered pits with the coverings fallen most of the way inside, tripwires which have sagged limply onto the floor. There are only two which would have definitely hurt you if you were alone: a section of tunnel which spurts fire from its floor, ceiling and walls at random but close intervals, and a wheel of spinning blades blocking your way. For the first, Snake Lady picks you up, tucks you under her arm and bolts through between the jets of flame. For the second, she manages to jam the wheel with a number of her sturdier spears, although it breaks two, and gives an alarming shudder just as you step past it. It seems to you that time is moving on twin tracks: passage down a short corridor takes what feels like hours, but simultaneously it feels like you’ve had moments at best to come to terms with what you’re here to do. “We’re close to his current lair,” Snake Lady says. You’re sure that’s impossible: it can’t be so near your starting point, can it? But instants later you’re stepping into a vast chamber, so big even your twice enhanced lantern can’t light it to its borders, and hearing three sets of low, rattling breathing. Your steps falter, but Snake Lady walks on without flinching, straight-backed and certain. A little of your old anger reignites. It doesn’t matter that you know rationally that the conditions have changed, her confidence now, following her previous inaction, grates at you. But there’s no time to dwell on that feeling. A few more steps, and you see what you’re facing down. [[See what you came for.]]It looks like a white mound in the middle of the room. It’s enormous, as tall lying down as four large men on each other’s shoulders. The composition of its body makes you think of a bull, with a broad barrel chest and cloven hooves. Just as you were told, there are three heads. They rest on the ground. Two of them have their eyes closed. The third one, in the middle, has no eyes, just empty sockets in its exposed skull. Is it …asleep? Is one… your mother’s part? A shifting glitter from the floor draws your eyes. It takes you a moment to understand what you’re looking at. There are sludgy black protrusions growing from the behemoth’s body, extending out onto the ground around it in a rough circle. Slowly, as you watch, the dark goop slides backwards, and mirrors emerge on the end of each tendril like infants escaping their caul after birth. The great lupine heads rise, towering over you, sending scattered motion rippling through the reflections. The two heads that have eyes have now opened them, but they’re glazed, gazing into empty distance. “Time to start,” says Snake Lady, and sets off at a sprint. [[Time to wait]]You shift on your feet, filled with urgency and completely bereft of any plans. You came to say goodbye, but there’s nothing here you recognise. All you can think to do is absorb every terrifying detail of the place, from the great beast in front of you to the pulsating colours in the mirrors. In a way, the latter are stranger: no longer reflecting the cavern, they each flicker through images of the world outside it. A hundred scenes a minute reflect all the possibilities the Gods have placed on offer—mountains, lakes, cities, vast forests, oceans. You see places you’ve only heard of in old songs and you see familiar mundanities; both palaces and farmyards. Something about the shifting display captures you, a detail you can’t quite formulate yet, so you edge closer, toes curling like you’re teasing up to the edge of a precipice. You start to lean in. Before you can pinpoint the mystery, a shadow races from mirror to mirror, dragging your gaze behind it. It catches up to Snake Lady as she runs. From the mirror closest to her bursts a sprawl of Cursed Spirits, all leaping to the attack the moment they materialise. She tries to keep running but enough of them were launched ahead of her that she struggles to push through them—and as soon as her step falters, you remember, that attempt is over. She’ll have to start her circuit again, so for now she stops to fight. Her spear wheels around her, slicing through the Cursed Spirits like they’re made of smoke—but there are so many of them, and more emerging. [[Use your lantern to assist]] [[Focus on figuring out the mirrors]]You approach as close as you dare, holding the lantern in front of you like a shield. Your heartbeat throbs in your ears, adding a menacing drumline to the slow breathing of the behemoth. At first, nothing seems to change. The Cursed Spirits ignore you. But as your daring slowly extends its territory, inch by inch, and you creep closer, you notice two things. First, though the scenes in the mirrors are still flickering past at the same rate, your light has started to reach into the scenery within, glowing off leaves and water and stone, rather than reflecting off the surface of the mirror. The nagging feeling that you’re missing something in there has grown spikes, nudging frantically at the edge of your awareness. But you’re distracted by the second thing you notice, which is that the Cursed Spirits are growing sluggish under the glow, and the few that spill slickly out of the shadow in the mirror crumple to the ground for a few moments before rising. You've edged close to the mirror they're emerging from, and now you twist around and try shining the full beam of the lantern into it. They turn on you at once, red eyes raging. They reach for you. You hold your ground, though your hands shake and your guts squirm. Yellow sparks flicker in the oil-dark depths of their skins. They're one single moment away, fangs and claws promising blood. And then Snake Lady’s whirling spear cuts them into nothing. She gives you an approving, triumphant look: the source-mirror isn’t destroyed, but with your light beaming into it, no new enemies succeed them. Still, you doubt your own achievement, peering into the reflected glare, sure that new threats are lurking withing. What you see instead is exactly what you’ve been missing until now. There’s a figure appearing in each new picture, the same where everything else is different, and looking straight at you. A man, thoroughly ordinary, except for the potency of his glower. “Yes, that’s him,” Snake Lady tells you. She’s not even out of breath. “The Hydra King’s human form.” You look up at her and she shakes her head. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Why not break as many source-mirrors as we can right away?’ But we don’t know how your mother is linked to them, and it would risk fully waking him.” She gestures to the behemoth with the spear-tip. “I’ll take them all out at once with my talent.” She sets off running again. You turn back to the phantasmagoria on display in front of you. [[Wait for the next horror to interrupt]]Snake Lady can handle herself all right, from what you can see. More to the point, when this 'Seeming' thing was explained to you, it was described as bringing the inner worlds of the Saltcast to the surface. You know your mother is trapped in the Hydra King’s inner world. You have to find her. You peer into the glass of the mirror in front of you. The images change so quickly it’s hard to even fully register what you’re seeing, let alone search each reflection for its secrets, but you’re sure there’s something to find. You shuffle your lantern up close, noticing that its radiance reaches into the scenery within, glowing off leaves and water and stone, rather than reflecting off the surface of the mirror. It's as if the light is inside each image. And then you see it, the thing you were missing. None of the scenes are entirely empty. There’s always at least one person. Always the same person. A man, sometimes distant, sometimes close, sometimes enclosed in a crowd, sometimes solitary, but always the same man, and always staring back at you with an expression of cold hostility. Your light shines on his face, glints in his glaring eyes. You flinch. Your gaze strays upward to the wolf-headed monster in the centre of the circle. It hasn’t moved. Its stare is still vacant, focused on far-away places. You look back down and almost shout, your hand flying down to the glass as if you could reach through it and tear out what you need. There’s another figure by the first one, reaching back to you. You haven’t seen her in a decade, but every inch of her is still familiar to you. She runs towards you as her surroundings morph and flicker, ocean-mountain-palace-farm, her fingers outstretched, expression one of joyful agony, the ground under her feet evolving constantly but never tripping her up. Snake Lady shouts something. You’re not listening. Your whole being is intent on the image in front of you. She's there. Your mother. It’s a mistake to ignore Snake Lady. A raking pain drags from your shoulder to your back, and your focus finally shatters as your blood splatters across the mirror. A Cursed Spirit has crept up behind you, spun your shadow into a path through the lamplight, and its claws have torn into the rhomboid muscle near your spine. As the scream jerks free from your throat, one of Snake Lady’s spears neatly skewers the Cursed Spirit, and it dissipates into fog. Snake Lady is scything Spirits down almost the moment they emerge: despite the skewed ratio of the fight, you find yourself surprised that one escaped her long enough to reach you. When you look back down into the mirror in front of you, your mother is gone. The man is still there, glowering up at you. You stare back for a few more seconds, waiting for the peak of your agony to recede, breathing through it. Then, when you shuffle sideways, trying to investigate the next mirror in line without causing yourself much more pain, you see that he’s in that one too. You’re filled with the sudden, overpowering urge to shatter it and every other one you can reach. Your left hand has curled into a fist and is flying forward before the impulse has done more than register with your rational mind, all objections hanging heavily in potentia, the muscles of your back shrieking. You’re angry but undeniably relieved when Snake Lady, Amaris, leaps back to your side and catches your wrist. “Don’t. We don’t know how your mother is linked to them, and it would risk fully waking him.” She gestures to the behemoth with the spear-tip. “I’ll take them all out at once with my talent.” She doesn’t let go until you nod. Then she takes a moment to inspect your back, peeling your shirt away and clicking her tongue. She clicks her tongue a second time. “You’ll live.” Then she gives you a firm pat on the shoulder, and starts running again. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You're injured.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Patwounds to $Patwounds + 1>> [[Wait for the next horror to interrupt]]You glance down. Just to check. Just to be sure. The man in the mirror isn’t glaring now. He’s smiling, a playful, almost gentle smile. He’s come very close, filling the whole reflection—filling every reflection that you can see in the ring around the behemoth. All the echoes of him, in unison, raise their right hand and point up. Snake Lady cries out as she flies upwards to the jagged roof of the cavern. She doesn’t drop any of her weapons on the ascent, but the crashing impact against a sharp protrusion in the rock is followed by her spear slipping out of her grip and dropping back to the ground, followed by several javelins coming loose from their holsters and falling. Whatever force lifted her is still working on her body, grinding her back against the unyielding stone, and she cries out again, voice competing with a loud snapping sound which has you wincing instinctively. [[Call out for your mother’s help.]] [[You can’t break the mirrors, but you could try flipping them over]]She’s in there somewhere, you know it. But though you scream for her, she doesn’t come. Snake Lady—Amaris—is writhing against the stone ceiling. Her arm is visibly bending the wrong way. There’s nothing you can do. It was a mistake to come. [[The duplicates in the mirrors collectively extend their left hands too.]]You reach down. The man tracks you with his gaze, still smiling. You scrabble, hooking your fingers under the glass, and start to lift it—and then searing pain scorches through your hands, clawing up your arms until a bolt of lightning explodes in your skull. You fall backwards, nose and mouth filling with the scent of your own scorched skin. It hurts. Ithurtsithurtsithurts. For a moment, the pain is blinding, blocking everything else out. It gradually eases back down into a sharp ache across your palms and fingers, and you become aware of the danger you’re in again. You sit up, using your elbows to shove off the ground because you can’t bear to let your hands touch anything yet. Some of the skin on your fingers is flaking away, the rest is red and blistering. They feel stiff. You won’t be able to lift your lantern now. That will make running away more difficult. You do want to run. Snake Lady—Amaris—is writhing against the stone ceiling. Her arm is visibly bending the wrong way. There’s nothing you can do. It was a mistake to come. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You're injured.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Patwounds to $Patwounds + 1>> [[The duplicates in the mirrors collectively extend their left hands too.]]This time the gesture snaps downward, and its target is you. You find yourself pressed to the floor, a crushing weight on your back. You feel like type in a printing press, laying your imprint on the dirt and dust of the floor. Your head is tilted sideways, angled so that the pressure lies against your jaw, temple, cheekbone: you can breathe, but your ribcage is so compressed that a whisper of air is all your lungs allow through. Your lantern has been crushed in the same wave of force which pinned you down. The light flickers briefly then fades. <<set $bestlantern to 4>> You whimper for your mother. It’s not a choice this time: some phantom child-self takes over, knowing itself helpless and seeking its most reliable source of comfort. No answer comes. [[You can just about see Amaris from the corner of your eye.]] Despite the fleshless state of her skull, she breathes, and her breath is warm, ruffling your hair. You want to close your eyes, make-believe this reunion is happening in a different way, in a different place. But you don’t dare. The other heads have also returned to some level of consciousness, and their misty eyes are regarding you with unsettling interest. The smaller, sleeker one on the right says something muffled which sounds like ‘daughter’, just a moment before its jaw gapes open and Cursed Spirits bulge gelatinously out of its mouth. They drop to the ground, much larger and less human in form than the ones you’ve seen before. At first you think there’s no humanity in there at all, but then the dark shapes shudder and squirm, and limbs sprout from them, a dozen each, and at least two heads but more often three or four—yes, human-shaped, which makes them even worse to look at. They come towards you, shambling but fast, and you find yourself leaning into the cold bone of your mother’s head, sheltering behind it like you once sheltered behind her skirts. You don’t see Amaris. She may not have intended to use you as a distraction, but you’ve turned out to be a great one, because everything hostile in the cavern seems to be focused on you. For a moment, the great circle of mirrors comes alight with dozens of images of your face, wide eyed, bloodied, full of fear and grief. They fade back into shadowy chaos as the first of the mutated, giant Cursed Spirits reach you. Your mother’s breath puffs once, blowing your hair into your eyes, and then her neck extends in a blur as she slams her head into the approaching Spirit. There’s a splattering sound, and the Spirit—bursts, coating your mother’s lupine skull with dripping black. She sways away, winding up for another attack on the next Spirit in line. The stillness of the behemoth main body seems bizarre contrasted with the convulsing of the neck of the smallest head, vomiting out Spirits, and the defensive flailing of your mother, protecting you from them. The largest head remains still as well, cocked slightly in a way which looks odd atop its long muscular neck—and then it rumbles a laugh and lunges out, clasping its jaws around your mother’s throat. Its teeth sink into the smooth white flesh. Golden ooze seeps out between the thick fangs, and with it escapes another laugh, somehow both avid and almost a little despairing. Every hair on your body is standing on end. You have to do something to help, but what? A few yards away lies one of Amaris’ spears. In a mirror to your left, a silhouette that looks like your mother presses its hands against the glass. If you stole a mirror containing her essence, maybe you could save her? [[Seize the spear and attack the largest head.]] [[Find your mother in the mirror]]It’s heavy, made for someone bigger and stronger than you. And you hurt all over; just lifting it has your whole body clamouring protest, your teeth clenching so hard your jaw creaks. Some small, silly part of your mind is wondering how on earth you’re going to manage the walk back home like this. The rest, more rational, though no more helpful, is just certain you’re going to die. But the pain and the panic are flooding your body with urgency, and that urgency can substitute for strength for at least a moment. You bring the spear to bear and lunge at the larger head, aiming for the eye. It rolls back to look at you—you, not the oncoming spear-tip—and you see yourself reflected in the dark slit of its pupil. You see your own expression as the smaller head from the right crashes into you. Then your eyes clamp shut as your body folds in on itself. You hit the ground and bounce, bursts of numb impact on your shoulder, your hip, your back. The nausea is more overwhelming than the pain. You’ve finally stopped rolling, and you’re lying halfway across one of the black tendrils, halfway across the mirror it’s attached to, wondering if there’s any point in fighting the urge to throw up. You’ve got bigger problems, haven’t you? But what comes out of your mouth when the hand from within the mirror reaches up and seizes you isn’t vomit, it’s just a scream, abruptly cut-off as you’re pulled down, down, down. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You're injured.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Patwounds to $Patwounds + 1>> [[Inside]]You run for the silhouette, one hand extended, but you’re unsurprised when it flickers to nothing, and only a little startled when three more figures in the form of your mother spring up and out of the mirrors closest to you, phantom flesh swirling onto phantom bones like ivy wrapping a trellis. Each of them has her arms extended, her eyes imploring. “I’m here,” says the mother to your left. “Those others are a trick. I know you know me, Patty. Take my mirror and we can escape.” “Don’t trust her,” cries the mother to your right. “I’m so sorry for leaving you like I did, sweetheart. I missed so many of your songs. Come here to me and let me protect you now.” “Just run, Patricia,” calls the mother slightly behind you. “Leave me and run!” [[Choose the mirror on the left]] [[Choose the mirror on the right]] [[Choose the mirror behind you]] [[Something’s wrong with all of them. Try to run back.]]You haven’t gone by ‘Patty’ in years, but in her voice is so familiar. It’s the wrong choice, if there even is a right one. As soon as you get close, cool, slick, silvery hands are grasping for you, jerking you around until your knees buckle and you fall. Your cheek hits glass—and then you’re sliding sideways and down, through; reality rippling around you as you drop halfway into the mirror. You open your eyes again and stare out into the interior space of the Seeming. [[Inside]]She loved your singing. It’s the wrong choice, if there even is a right one. As soon as you get close, cool, slick, silvery hands are grasping for you, jerking you around until your knees buckle and you fall. Your cheek hits glass—and then you’re sliding sideways and down, through; reality rippling around you as you drop halfway into the mirror. You open your eyes again and stare out into the interior space of the Seeming. [[Inside]] She’d want you safe, above anything. She proved that, all those years ago. It’s the wrong choice, if there even is a right one. As soon as you get close, cool, slick, silvery hands are grasping for you, jerking you around until your knees buckle and you fall. Your cheek hits glass—and then you’re sliding sideways and down, through; reality rippling around you as you drop halfway into the mirror. You open your eyes again and stare out into the interior space of the Seeming. [[Inside]] But you’ve stepped too close to the mirrors. The moment you turn back, cool, slick, silvery hands are grasping for you, jerking you around until your knees buckle and you fall. Your cheek hits glass—and then you’re sliding sideways and down, through; reality rippling around you as you drop halfway into the mirror. You open your eyes again and stare out into the interior space of the Seeming. [[Inside]]In a way, it’s beautiful. You can still see into the cavern on the other side of the glass, but it’s like looking through a screen of turbulent water, flecked with reflected stars. Your body is still lying on the dusty cavern floor, but your head and shoulders float in a night’s sky along with the pulsing ephemera of remembered scenery. Everything is blurry and distant except the arm that reaches out of the unreality and curls around your throat, pulling you in close. Pressed against you, your captor feels human: flesh and blood, a little pliancy in their skin, the muscle of their forearm stringy but solid as it constricts you. Their grip is tight, frightening, but it stabilises you as well. Without it, perhaps you would spiral off into the mirror’s memory, becoming just another fragment. [[Struggle]]Just as the thought of resistance solidifies in your mind, the lock on your neck tightens. A woman’s voice speaks into your ear, high and imperious. “What do you think happens in the Seeming, when the participant sees a miracle?” It’s a rhetorical question which relies on details from a world you’ve barely explored. You don’t waste any time considering the answer. You squirm, trying to tuck your chin into the grip and leverage it open. Your captor shakes you, almost lazily. “Your mother never expected to see you again,” the voice says. “She was sure she’d lost you forever. It’s disgustingly sentimental, but when she recognised your face, the whole Seeming shuddered with the fresh power of the miracle she believed it to be. But unfortunately for you—” the bone of her radius like an iron bar, pressing against your airway: another shake, “We’re all joined together in here. We all have access to that power. And, since my father is focusing on fighting your mother, and her heart is quailing at the threat to you, I can take most of it. I will take it.” You’re caught and held fast by a queen from hundreds of years ago. If your whole body was inside the mirror with her, you would try to stomp on her foot or shove an elbow into her solar-plexus. But your legs are still sprawled on the cavern floor, your arms still grasping at the edge of the real world, and you’re afraid to let go. All you can do is wait to be saved, if it’s even still possible. You’ve learned by now to stop thrilling with hope every time you see your mother’s shape manifest in front of you. But, as she appears again, thin and wan and dressed in rags, your captor hisses in your ear with true venom, and you’re halfway convinced she’s herself, not another illusion or fragment. The light flickers, and half her face shears away to bone, long and lupine. In the cavern beyond, you see the bony middle head jerk from side to side as it struggles to free itself from the Hydra King’s jaws. “Please,” Mother says. Amid the larger-than-life drama of monster monarchs and the vastness of the space behind the mirrors, her voice is very small. She sounds defeated. “Let my daughter go. I’ll stop fighting you, I’ll do what you want—just. Just don’t hurt her.” [[Beg her to save you]] [[Tell her to keep fighting.]]Her eyes are wet, but the tears don’t fall. Her hand rises, flickers out towards you, falls again to her side. “Let her go,” she says. “Anything you want. I swear it.” “Hmm,” says the queen, giving your neck another shake. “I’m not going to do that. But perhaps there’s another deal we can make.” You keep begging your mother with your gaze. Your own tears are rolling down your cheeks. “I can kill her,” says the queen, ignoring the little ‘no’ your mother whispers. “Or I can bring her in. All the way in. With the rest of us. If you focus your fight on my father, and let me do as I will. Don’t try to wriggle out. Don’t make me impatient. Those are your options.” [[Beg her to accept.]] [[Tell her to keep fighting.]]Her eyes flick up to meet yours. You can’t imagine what expression you’re wearing, but whatever it is, she blinks at it, searching your face. You’re no hero, you know that. Just a bard, built for aftermaths, built to tell those left behind that there was a good enough reason for all they endured, or at least a way to laugh at it. And you don’t have the gall to tell your mother that she must be a hero, for you or anyone else. But, truly, //Moshidiah take these people.// You’re sure they’re unfit for power. You’re sure you want to see them go down. They took her from you in the first place. Your hands are still clinging to the edge of stone, where the cavern floor meets the opening into the Seeming. You let go, and find yourself slipping all the way into the phantom space where the queen holds you—but with both arms free, you can made a solid effort at elbowing her in the ribs. Whatever replica of the physical world is down here, it’s close enough to allow that. It doesn’t free you, of course. The queen shakes you again, snapping your neck from side to side violently enough to let you know it’s in danger of being broken, and lets out an aggrieved chuckle. “Nice try, girl.” You bare your teeth, and look your mother in the eyes. She stares back at you for a long moment, and then nods. On the other side of the glass, you see the trapped skeletal head of the Hydra Beast say something to the king’s head. You can’t, of course, tell what it was which was said. But the results are immediate. The king’s golden eyes go wide as he stares down at you. His jaws loosen around the central neck, and the skeletal head thrashes free in a spray of ichor. Then he roars, a shuddering force which shivers across the boundary of the Seeming even though the sound itself doesn’t make it in. He lunges across towards his daughter’s part of the behemoth form, and you feel her human body stiffen in surprise behind you. Her grip, finally, loosens. You grab her arm with one hand, and with the other reach back over your shoulder to claw at her face. This seems to surprise her too, and she lets out an unqueenly yelp as you force yourself free. Your mother grins, wide and fierce. “I think you have some more miracles in you, Patty.”<<set $check to 0>> With the other two heads distracted, your mother’s lupine skull dips into the mirror-space. [[You reach up and grab on to her, and she lifts you smoothly out.]]You don’t want to die. You don’t, you don’t, you don’t. She shuts her eyes. She nods, once. The queen makes a soft, triumphant noise in your ear. You feel your body start to liquidate, bones softening, muscles unstringing. The queen puts her mouth to you, and drinks. [[It’s like a dream.]]Mama sings you a lullaby. The two of you are cocooned by the dark and the ceaseless murmuring of distant voices. Sometimes you think you hear the king, calling for his daughter. But the queen never answers. Of course, she has other priorities now: she’s planning her conquest of the upper world. In the moment when you were brought in, she stole your mother’s remaining power, and now she has full dominion over the beast. Only one head remains. It’s your fault. You know that. And so Mama sings you a lullaby, to sedate your guilt, and perhaps her own. The immensity of your own selfishness still astonishes you: the unreasoning beastlike instinct against death which blotted out the world—all its loves, its duties, every gentle edifice erected by humanity to withstand oblivion. You chose to aid a monster on its quest to subjugate everything, when your own father and brother lay on its path. Still lie there. True, you didn’t realise how totally the queen would triumph, but you didn’t spend time considering the consequences either. You just didn’t want to die. And yet, in the sheer scale of that selfishness lies your only kernel of hope. Your attachment to your own existence was so powerful, and you’re in a situation where internal power is desperately needed. Are you as selfish as the queen? Here you are, trapped, unable to touch the outside world—to live, as you recognise the term. Perhaps you can push her back before she ever reaches Mattias or your father, or any of the other people she could bury under suffering. You think Amaris escaped, though you’re not connected enough to the behemoth’s senses to be sure. If she did, she’s no doubt still planning to fight. Perhaps there’s a chance. But for now, you float in the nothing, and you listen to your mother sing of safety, and peace, and sleep. Your own masterpiece has yet to be composed. //Birds in their nests, beasts in their lairs; the winds, preaching summer, say lay down your cares Skies will be blue, leaves will be green We sleep now in comfort, 'til dawn just to dream...//You drop back onto your feet and look around. The Cursed Spirits are still dribbling from the open mouth of the queen’s head, but they’re smaller and come slower. There’s enough of them to block any sight of Amaris from view. Is she still making her circuit, or has she fallen? You can’t tell, and you can’t assume she’s going to save you. So. Miracles. Well, if you just being here was enough, there are a few others to choose from. <<if $check is 3>> [[Your voice is turning hoarse]] <<else>> [[Tell her that your father got a scholarly work published]] [[Tell her you graduated from Bardic college]] [[Tell her your brother has recently proposed to the miller’s daughter]] <</if>>As you keep talking, you notice odd ripples passing through the Hydra Beast’s body, parts swelling in concert with others shrinking, the king and queen’s fight getting looser, clumsy, each taking longer to recover from the damage inflicted by the other. Meanwhile, the central head is getting more alert, rising higher over you, the wounds on its neck closing over and sealing. <span class="titlewrap">[img[images/saltcastbeasts.png]]</span> [[She’s visibly stronger, though the twin sparks of her eyes are sad.]]It’s an incomprehensible treatise on alternative metals to make glass reflective, as well as ‘first surface’ verses ‘second surface.’ He developed an academic interest in sorcery after your mother disappeared—he must have had some of the same suspicions as you did—and started up a correspondence with various scholars in the field. The work was published by a university press, then picked up and reprinted by a larger publisher in the capital, where there’s the highest concentration of sorcerers. You’re proud of him, though trying to read anything he’s written gives you a headache. He told you once that it was exactly the sort of thing your mother used to wish he had the resources to do. He must have been right, because she’s delighted. Her head wobbles from side to side, and she…coos, a deep noise which makes your teeth vibrate. “Oh James,” she says, as if writing dry academia is the most desirable trait in a husband. <<set $check to $check + 1>> [[Say more|You reach up and grab on to her, and she lifts you smoothly out.]]The skull’s glowing eyes are so bright for a moment that your own vision falters, and the Cursed Spirits around you cringe back, many of them retreating to the outer bounds of the chamber. As you blink the spots from your eyes, you still don’t see Amaris. She must be somewhere on the other side of the Hydra Beast, in the part of the room still drenched in darkness. “I remember… her,” your mother says. Her voice, despite its wobbles and drops, is full of steady wonder. “A nice girl, I think. Is she…still nice?” You nod. She is, although you’ve heard enough of her arguments with her father to know her tongue is admirably sharp when necessary, too. You tell your mother some of the details your brother wrote to you about their courtship, their plans for their future together. As far as you can see, it’s a perfect match. His fiancé’s spider collection is getting pride of place in their new home when they move in together. <<set $check to $check + 1>> [[Say more|You reach up and grab on to her, and she lifts you smoothly out.]] The skull doesn’t have expressions, but the jaws part slightly and the head bobs. “I’m so proud,” she says, still a little slow and slurring, but much more coherent than she was when she first recognised you. “Is it what you dreamed of, Patty?” I wanted you there to see it, you don’t say. She knows now that you made it, anyway. You tell her instead of your favourite teacher, the largest crowd you’ve played to, the places you’ve visited. The songs you’ve composed yourself, not as popular with everyone as the old favourites, but good enough to get some of them singing along. The commissions you’ve taken from those wealthy enough to want a verse tailored to their specifications. You tell her you love it, and that’s true. Sometimes a Cursed Spirit will come for you, and your mother’s skeletal head will swivel towards it, projecting disapproval the way she used to when you said one of Dad’s ‘special words’ as a child. She has assumed enough control of the Hydra Beast’s body that she can swat the threats away from you easily. You keep talking. The king and queen’s heads keep tearing chunks from each other. Oily shadows and golden ichor splatter across the ground, and the mirrors swirl with furious colour. <<set $check to $check + 1>> [[Say more|You reach up and grab on to her, and she lifts you smoothly out.]]“Thank you,” your mother says. “For coming. For telling me all this. I think it’s nearly over.” She turns, looking at the struggle of the other two heads. “Did you hear? I think it’s time to rest. Neither of you are getting the world.” They look at her, for just a moment, jaws agape and splattered with each-other’s blood. For that brief second, you think they’re going to join together to attack her, forget their differences and share their bloodlust. Instead, the Hydra Beast shudders, unified in the movement but not in any other way. The shifting under its skin turns riotous, as if every one of the accumulated spirits which form it are suddenly making a break for freedom. You find yourself taking a step backwards, though you know there’s no safety behind you either. “No!” cries the king. “Not yet!” It’s strange: his tone is more pleading than demanding. The queen wails. "No more putting it off," says your mother. "You'll have to accept that you've killed each other. The future belongs to other people now." The lights in her eyes go dim. And then a pulse of energy knocks you off your feet, flattening you on the ground as your hair blows wildly into your eyes, afraid the rush of wind will scour the flesh from your bones. When peace settles into the air again, it feels cataclysmic. You push yourself up on one elbow and look around. For a moment you think the Hydra Beast has vanished into nothing, taking your mother and all your goodbyes with it. But no. There’s a small body curled in the centre of the circle of mirrors, connected to each of them still by a huge web of dark tendrils. But the Cursed Spirits have gone, wiped out in the blast of power. [[Your head is light, blood pulsing in your ears.]]“Patty?” Your mother climbs up to her feet, wobbling a little. She’s smaller than you remember, dark circles under her eyes. You heart races. She’s here. In the flesh, not a mirror-based illusion or a spectre. Is it over? Will you get to bring her home? As you step closer, you see the sorrow in her eyes, and your infant hope wizens and greys. She’s shaking her head. “They’re still fighting to take back control,” she tells you. “This won’t last forever. But for now…come here and give me a hug.” [[Run to her.]]You remember how she smells. You don’t fit in her arms like you used to, but when you lay your cheek against her hair, you recognise the smell of her soap. It makes no sense. It must be ten years since she last used it. But then, this body she’s in last existed ten years ago. Her arms are still strong. There’s movement to your left. You don’t want to let go, but you’ve been sensitised enough to danger to react automatically, leaning back and twisting your neck to catch sight of whatever’s there. It’s Amaris. There’s blood oozing from between the scales on her face and one eye is swollen shut. Her right arm is dangling uselessly. But she’s still going at a steady jog, travelling a slowly curving path back round to where she was dropped from the ceiling. She doesn’t even glance over at you until she’s reached her objective. Then she stops, turns, and bows. “Thank you, Madelaine,” she says. Then, without hesitation or sentiment, “Are you ready?” She bends smoothly to gather up her javelins. <<set $checktwo to 0>> [[Wait. WAIT.]]<<if $energydrain gte 3>>“There’s no time, sweetheart,” your mother says. “Amaris is right. Look after yourself, won’t you? I love you and Mattias and your father more than anything.” You take a deep breath to bolster the protest you’re going to make—more time, you need more time, you need— “Goodbye,” your mother says, and your desperate call for her doesn’t quite drown out the sound of all the mirrors shattering at once. [[Cry.]] <<else>>“I have a little time,” your mother tells Amaris. “If you’ll allow it…?” Amaris inclines her head. “Five minutes, then.” “Well…I don’t know what to say,” she says. “I never expected I’d have a speech to make in the end.” You’re close enough that her shaky, laughing exhale is warm and damp on your skin. “Just that I love you and Mattias and your father more than anything. And I’m sorry.” <<if $checktwo lt 3>> [[Tell her how angry you are]] [[Tell her you’re struggling with her Rest Song.]] [[Ask her what she wants you to do.]] <<elseif $checktwo === 3>> [[Your mother’s brow furrows, and she steps back from you, swaying.]] <</if>> <</if>>Eventually, you realise you desperately want out of here. It’s dark, and despite the size of the chamber, you feel confined. The air is cold and faintly damp. “I’ll escort you out,” says Amaris. [[It’s almost over.]]She just nods. Perhaps you’ll always be angry. It’s something you can finally accept. It’s not fair, and you’ll live with that. <<set $checktwo to $checktwo + 1>> [[A little time.|Wait. WAIT.]]She laughs, though it’s not mocking. People on their deathbeds often suggest approaches to their Rest Songs. Some rich people commission the whole thing while still entirely hale and hearty, although plenty think that takes the soul out of the tradition. “Whatever you do will be…” she starts, and then sees your face and stops. ‘Anything’ isn’t good enough. You need it to be enough. “Well. I suppose I’d like it to focus on…choices. I made a lot of them to get here. I don’t know if I regret any of them. I wanted to be there for you, but I don’t…I don’t know if I could have had it both ways—protecting you and staying with you. I wish it could have been that way. I can’t see what the results of all my choices will be. I hope they’ll be good. I know I made a difference—more of one than I ever really wanted to. I hope it’ll turn out to have been a good thing. I…I made a lot of them out of love, and because I thought they were the right thing to do. Some of them I made because I was scared. I don’t know if any of this would work as a song.” She lays her head down lightly on your shoulder. “I used to sing you and Mattias a lullaby I learned from my father. Do you remember it?” You’re crying. Your throat has sealed. You nod. “I think that would be nice to include somehow,” she says dreamily. “It had a pretty tune.”<<set $checktwo to $checktwo + 1>> [[A little time.|Wait. WAIT.]] You don’t know what to do. She leans back so she can look into your eyes. “You don’t have to do anything. I want you to be happy and healthy, and that’s all.” You shake your head. You want an obligation. You want to carry her will forward. She’s been trapped here under the ground so long; you want to bring her out with you that way even if you can’t do it with her whole self. She must see some of your thoughts on your face. “All right,” she says. “But you being happy and healthy is what I want most, so don’t let the other parts take priority over it, whatever happens.” It’s good to know she can still read you. You nod. “Then I hope there will be some way for the Saltcast and humanity to get along. That things will get better for all of us. We can share the world, I’m sure of it. I’d like our choices here to help make that happen.” <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">Amaris, listening quietly, catches your eye. Something's changed in her expression.</div></span> After a moment, you nod again.<<nobr>><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 10>> <<set $Amaristoken to 1>> <<set $checktwo to $checktwo + 1>><</nobr>> [[A little time.|Wait. WAIT.]]“They’re getting loud,” she says. “It’s time,” Amaris says. You try not to hate her. Your mother wants you to get along, apparently. “I love you,” your mother says. You say it back. You keep looking into her eyes until the end, even as you hear the sound of hundreds of mirrors shattering. She’s smiling at you, and then she’s just dust. Amaris waits in polite silence as you cry. [[Cry.]]As you follow her through the caves, various Saltcast stick their heads out of side-tunnels to stare at you both. The Hydra-King’s end must have released them from their Seemings. You ignore them, but Amaris sees a couple of her underlings and instructs them to go to the Leadership Room and tell Soima that the fight has been won. You’re glad you won’t see the aftermath. You’re sure there will be celebration, a wash of joy to salt your wounds. She makes you stop by a healer to have your various injuries fixed. It itches, but it’s fast. It leaves you even more tired. You try to hurry as she leads you on again, but your feet are heavy. The exit she takes you to isn’t the one you came through. There’s some kind of large door out into the hillside which, through magical or perhaps only mechanical means, is invisible from the outside. The wind hitting your face is a shock after so long in still air, raw on your reddened eyes. You gulp the cold down anyway, trying to chase away the tight, crumpled feeling in your chest. You take a few steps down the hill, then turn. Is this it? Do you just…walk away? Amaris stands at the threshold, her expression impassive. As you look back at her, Soima joins her, his corroded human shell pale, light shining from all his scars at once. <<if ($Eldionfreed === 3)>>The giant red bird flaps along up the tunnel behind them, head on one side. He’s the first to speak. “It’s over, then.” <</if>> "I do have something for you," Soima said. "An inheritance, we could call it. Madelaine used the Blessing Stone for us, but she didn't use all of it. A young citizen named Teccah managed to retrieve some. I believe this should go to you. A Stone of <<print $gods>>." You put out your hand, and he pours the stone dust and rubble into it. "We've had our Blessing," he says, and smiles. "I hope whatever you wish for is given in abundance." There's a short silence as you consider the weight of the future. “Things will change from now,” Amaris says. Though you can’t read her expression at all, you feel the intensity of her gaze on you. Is it a challenge? A warning? <<if ($Soimatoken === 1) and ($Amaristoken === 1) and ($Eldiontoken === 1)>> “Your mother impressed all of us, both before and after her sacrifice,” Amaris says. “I hope we’ve made that plain.” Part of you is grateful. Part of you doesn’t care, just wants to be away from these people and their devouring cause, which cost everything. Your mother would chastise you for that. Not for wanting to get away, or for your anger, but—she’d say ‘Not everything.’ The world hasn’t ended. You have to keep living in it. And she’d cared about them. “I think that without her, the revelation Eldion gave us that the Hydra King had his origins in humanity might have destroyed any hope for peace between our kinds,” Soima says, tentatively, like he thinks he’s imposing on you by daring to discuss anything broader than the strictly personal. But you find you do care, after all, that there might be a future where humans and Saltcast can get along. Maybe they couldn’t do what was done over the last decade for Roshorn across the whole kingdom, but they could help people…and since their most positive contact with humanity was a rural peasant woman, maybe that help might not be immediately bought up by the wealthiest. And for their own part, the Saltcast shouldn’t have to remain forever in hiding. It won’t be easy, but they’re powerful enough to negotiate for themselves. It might be possible. You nod at him, and even manage a small smile. “I won’t be likely to take the lead on any negotiations, as a…well, as a Host. Awkward. But I think those who do will keep her always in mind.” “And you, too,” says Eldion. “You’ll always be welcome here.” You think your father and Mattias will want to talk to them eventually. And there are stories here, a history that has opened up and allowed your family in. You wonder if they have bards of their own; at least, ones without magically compelling voices. You’d like to hear those songs. You’d like to let them all hear your mother’s Rest Song. For now, though, there’s the journey home. Life, just ahead of you, must be laughing at your plans. You being here at all is a ridiculous thing. And you're glad. You set your shoulders and start to walk home. You hum the tune in your head as it comes to you, piece by piece, and you know eventually it will be whole. <<elseif (($Soimatoken lt 1) or ($Amaristoken lt 1) or ($Eldiontoken lt 1)) and $SaltcastConsideration gt 10>> You’ve done what you came to do. You still need to process what you’ve learned and what you’ve lost, and you don’t think you’ll be able to do that until you’re home. The consequences of the fall of a monster king and the liberation of a perhaps less monstrous people are beyond you. Still, though, you hesitate to just walk away. Amaris says “It’s too early now to speak of plans, and we would not do so freely outside our own circles. But you should know, Madelaine’s choices have meant that our people are far more favourably disposed to humanity that they’ve been in centuries.” “We think there’s hope for a peaceful future,” Soima adds. A peaceful future. That’s something, then. “Perhaps, if you should choose to return, we will learn to understand each other better,” he says. “I think she’d want that.” She probably would. But first, home. Absorbing the story you’ve already lived. Telling your father and Mattias the truth. Writing the Rest Song that she deserves, a little ridiculous so that it suits her. Maybe then you’ll be back. “Goodbye,” you say, but not to them, and turn away. You’ve a long journey ahead of you. You set your shoulders and start to walk home, humming the tune in your head as it comes to you. It’s a sad song, but you think it'll be a hopeful one too, when it's finally complete. <<elseif ($Soimatoken lt 1) or ($Amaristoken lt 1) or ($Eldiontoken lt 1) and ($SaltcastConsideration <= 10)>> You’ve done what you came to do. You still need to process what you’ve learned and what you’ve lost, and you don’t think you’ll be able to do that until you’re home. The consequences of the fall of a monster king and the liberation of a perhaps less monstrous people are beyond you. Still, though, you hesitate to just walk away. Amaris says “It’s too early now to speak of plans, and we would not do so freely outside our own circles. But perhaps you should know that our people are…divided. Angry. They do not love humanity.” “We owe Madelaine a great debt,” says Soima, tone harsher than you’ve ever heard it. “Her kind—” “—Was also the Hydra King’s kind, as we have learned.” Amaris shakes her head. “Many think they cancel each other out at best. No. We cannot promise that we will never go to war with you. If that is what my people choose, I will not gainsay them forever. But. We promised to care for your family. So I am willing to swear that this someday-war will wait until you, your brother, and any children either of you produce have walked Moshidiah’s path. That is all I can give you, and it stands only if none of you take action against us. I regret it cannot be more.” You shuffle under her gaze, trying not to look either frightened or angry. Apparently you need to live a long life, and be either mother or aunt to long-lived children. You can’t afford to start a fight here. And it’s not as though you came into this situation expecting to broker a permanent peace. You incline your head, though not so low that you can’t keep watching the faction leaders. Soima sighs openly and sweeps you a deep bow, ignoring Amaris. “There are some years remaining, then, in which we may make more progress,” he says, resigned. “I hope we have something to build upon.” Amaris turns and walks back into the hillside. After a moment, Soima follows her, throwing you one last glance over his shoulder. <<if ($Patwounds gte 3) and ($hangback lte 2)>> You’re not left alone, though. There’s a small group of spellbeasts spilling out of the door in the stone of the hill, most of whom you met on your way to the leadership hall. Some you don’t recognise—a little hooded figure with ursine ears<<if ($Eldionfreed === 2) or ($Eldionfreed === 3)>>and a leather-clad birdman with bright, beady eyes.<<else>>, a few others who look more curious than committed.<</if>> Cecil scurries up to you. “Girlie,” Cecil says. “We saw you at that healer. We saw how you bled for the cause. We won’t let it go to waste. Them ingrates talking war—they’re blowing hot air. You’ll see. The others will listen to reason if we keep at it.” Your smile makes his ears turn pinker. He clears his throat. “You’ll see. But you better play nice in the meantime, you hear?” You give him your word. <</if>> It’s time to go. You’ve a long journey ahead of you. You set your shoulders, face towards home, and start to walk. As you trudge on, you begin to hum, a new tune slowly developing in your head. It’s a sad song, but there's hope in it, too, or there will be, when it's finally complete. <<else>>This is an error! Please contact author. <<print $SaltcastConsideration>> <<print $Soimatoken>> <<print $Amaristoken>> <<print $Eldiontoken>> <</if>> The End Your grandmother's lantern often flickers, and the light it casts is dim. Still, your hope is that the magical flame within it will survive rougher treatment than ordinary lantern-light would, and may do better against the magical creatures you'll be facing. You have a small flint and a few rushlights in your pocket just in case. The dark down there is dangerous. You could get lost. You could be found by some hungry thing which spurns the sun. [[Think of your other fears|Examine your anxieties]] [[Are you ready?]]<<if ($bestlantern === 1) and ($lanternmissing !== true)>> <span class="imagewrap">[img[images/bestlantern.png]]</span> <<elseif ($bestlantern === 2)>> <span class="imagewrap">[img[images/baselantern.png]]</span> <<elseif ($bestlantern === 0) and ($lanternmissing !== true)>> <span class="imagewrap">[img[images/mehlantern.png]]</span> <<else>> It's dark. <</if>>"It's a pulley system," he says at last. "The lever here is turned to move these interesting metal cords, which connect…ah. Oh no." You follow his look, up towards the ceiling. It's dark there, beyond the glowing nimbus of your lantern, but when you hold the light up you realise what he saw. A web of gleaming black threads spread across the roof, and dangling among them is a small birdcage. You can just make out the feathered figure inside, limp and grey, and the places where the cords have been anchored inside its body, making it part of the mechanism. It must still be alive, you realise. Any use of the pulley system will be torture to it. "Can we get them down?" Teccah asks, ears twitching. "Do you think?" Parvad raises his hand, swirling it in the air, feeling for something invisible to you. "The cage is trapped," he says, and his voice is harsh with anger. "Interfering with it would trigger at least one spell, and leave the door closed. We would have to force our way out while surviving whatever curse has been placed." [[Turn the lever and open the door.]] [[Release the bird and spring the trap.]] <span class="death">You fall into the dark. You were so close...</span> <span class="death">You have died!</span> <<set $Wounds to $Wounds - ($missScore + $finalgameNeg)>> [[Go back|Continue to outrun the guards on the other side.]]<span class="titlewrap">[img[images/title page.png]]</span> [[Start]] [[Credits]]Playtesters: Peter Wiehe Charm Cochran Kate Carpenter Janice Carpenter Panic judders through you. Your breath comes fast and hard and shallow, your lungs caged in constricting iron bands. No way out. They've shut you in. But the wild surge of your alarm gives you a little strength. You brace yourself against the walls of the cave and throw a blow upwards with your right hand, pouring as much force into it as you can draw out of your shivering body. Your toes dig against the rock. The first strike hurts mainly in your shoulders and back, but as you launch another, and another, and another, the stinging in your hands becomes a grinding agony. You only stop when you see a spray of blood from your knuckles splatter against the dark sheen of the obstruction and slowly sink into it, vanishing as the surface cleans itself. It's magic. There's nothing you can do. In the dim light of your lantern, your hands have turned puffy and purpled. You uncurl your fingers gingerly, swallow against the pounding of your heart in your throat. Down's the only way left. Win or die. But it's okay. Deep in your heart, you know there was never really any turning back. Down. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> [[Inch by inch]] Panic judders through you. Your breath comes fast and hard and shallow, your lungs caged in constricting iron bands. No way out. They've shut you in. You brace yourself so that you don't slip down as you fumble for the knife. You set its chipped edge against the black screen above you. It slides silently across, and even as you try to dig it in, there's no friction. Not even the shallowest scratch left behind. When you change your grip and try stabbing upwards, a small shower of powder falls down into your face. You shudder and shake your head, blinking, and in the dim light of your lantern see that the point of the blade has dissolved into dust. Another jab confirms the result: all this attack on the obstruction is doing is destroying your knife. There's some quality in the black surface that degrades the old steel. Magic, maybe. It's no good. Down's the only way left. Win or die. But it's okay. Deep in your heart, you know there was never really any turning back. Down. [[Inch by inch]]Panic wants to shake you like a ragdoll, screeching through your veins with NO WAY OUT, NO WAY OUT—but you just don’t have the energy to struggle against fate like that. Your original plan was always a long shot. You never really expected to return unscathed. You accept this. Win or die. You keep climbing down. [[Inch by inch]]It’s not that you don’t know that there’s a trap here. But whether it was laid for you or for another, it has already struck to the core of you. Now all you can think of is never being hungry again, and your children growing up without the forever ache of bodily need which has already commanded so much of their short, frail lives. Perhaps you could bear the stricken thing back for them, perhaps… Nothing down here is going to be a friend to you. You step towards the bird, though you still haven’t made up your mind. If it were an ordinary creature, it wouldn’t be down here. There’s a trap. For you, or for it? It stares at you as you approach. Its eyes are wide and wild, an umber ring of iris around huge black pupils. There’s a reproach in the darkness therein. You don’t stop. The promise is too great. You came here to earn yourself treasure, after all, and here it is. There’s room enough between those bars for your arm to slip through, but you’ll have to be quick. The bird’s beak is sharp, and, even clipped, its wings could do some damage if they struck you. You //are// quick, and the knife has been honed to a razor’s edge by some unknown hand. The bird screeches only once, the musicality of its voice in ruins, and then its blood is gushing up out of the mortal wound in its chest. A kind of frenzy takes you. You drop the knife and reach in to seize it by the neck, dragging it closer so that you can sink your teeth into the torn, weeping meat of it. Your mouth fills with thick blood, and you eat your way in, seeking the promised heart. A tiny part of you hangs back, ready to stop you from licking up every last shred. You need some for your children. It’s why you’ve made this choice. A sharp pain rakes your tongue and you choke, the shock of it jerking you back into full awareness. There’s nothing it your mouth now but the sharp-edged thing and your own blood. You raise a shaky hand to your lips and spit. A shard of glass, thin and delicately crafted. When you swipe your thumb over the surface, you expose reflective silvering, and see your red-tinted double staring back at you. You’re not hungry any more, it’s true. Your insides are leaden and numb. If the bird had a mirror at its centre, then it was surely a spellbeast. If you came here to harm them, you have taken the first step towards succeeding. But you feel no stronger for it. You feel heavy and tired. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 2>> <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">And you’re afraid you’ve made a mistake..</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration - 10>> [[Move on to the next tunnel]] “Now, that area was plagued by a mighty lion, which some said was raised up by the Gods as a punishment for the misdeeds of the people there. The young lord viewed its presence as a challenge for him, and went on many expeditions to find and kill his enemy. But each attempt ended with the hunters returning home empty handed, never having even seen the beast. During this period, the princess fell pregnant, and there were rumours that the lord was not the father, for he was so often away hunting that he and his wife rarely saw one another. When the first child was born, the humans were very surprised to discover that the infant had the head and claws of a lion!” “Oooh,” the audience choruses obediently. “The princess’s attendants were afraid to show the lord the child, certain that he would say there had been some mischief at conception, and this monster could not be his own. Since the lion had defeated him again and again, they were all sure the princess had given preference to her husband’s enemy, and lain with him instead.” “A human woman couldn’t lay with a lion,” opines a spellbeast with green fronds hanging down over its face. “She’d get eaten.” “These stories are full of such things,” says one shrouded deeply in robes, their features impossible to make out. “Always someone running around doing depraved acts with animals, making monsters.” “Well, when these old tales were first told, only the richest had access to Moshidiah’s salt, and they kept things about sorcery very secret,” says one covered all over in long white hair. “The common folk made up stories to explain our existence, and their women having children with wild animals was a popular one, speaking to the men’s fear of losing control of their lineage.” The storyteller flashes her commentators a quelling look. “However, the lord insisted on seeing his new son. When he looked in on it, he was silent for a long time. Then he raised his voice in a shout—of jubilation! For he said, ‘Our souls must have met when we made this child, for I have the heart and the courage of a lion, and so my son is a reflection of my inner self.’” Everyone laughs. “And in fact on his very next expedition, the lord found and slew the lion plaguing the lands, and so all was well, and some said he was right in his proclamation after all.” “Someone tell a story about us Saltcast,” says Green Fronds. “Too many humans in these books.” “All right, I’ve got one,” says Dark Robes. Everyone turns, attentive, to face them. “It’s a fable of two spellbeasts trying to bring new experiences into their Seemings," he begins. "The first spellbeast is a strong, adventurous type, raring to go out and see the world. The second is a slow-moving, sagacious fellow, renowned for thinking for a small eternity before any action. The first meets the second on her way from the caves, and suggests a bet to him: that her swift travels will strengthen her more than his ponderous ones will strengthen him. He thinks for a long moment, then agrees. "The first spellbeast travels across the realms, from the strongholds of humans to the remotest outposts, where only the hardiest creatures can survive, and sees wonders. Though she has no wings, she learns secret ways to take to the skies, and she swims to the depths of the oceans: she sees fire contained in mountains, and rivers under the sea. All of this she captures in her source-mirror, and brings into her Seeming. When she returns to our caves, she is as strong as a queen of our kind. She finds the second spellbeast sitting just outside the cave entrance in front of a tree. She can tell, just by looking at him, that he is her equal in power, and she is astonished. ‘Where did you travel?’ she asks. ‘What did you see?’ His answer is simple. ‘I remained here,’ he says, ‘And I watched this tree grow. I watched the seasons change it. I watched the bees gather at its flowers, and the birds nest in its branches. I watched animals live and die between its roots. I listened to the voices in the wind which blew through its boughs. I learned its habits and its essences, and I began to understand them.” ‘I have lost our bet,’ says the first spellbeast ruefully, ‘Though even yet I do not know how.’ ‘As your payment,’ said the second spellbeast, ‘Sit down with me and tell me tales of what you have learned from the world.’ And they sat together, and they were both strong.” There is a short silence. “Sanctimonious,” opines one of the listeners. "In real life, I'd still bet on the first." “Are there really rivers under the sea?” asks another. Gently, Soima nudges you. “Time to return,” he murmurs. You've been gone long enough for arrangements to have been made. [[As you walk, he chatters.]]You watch them instead of focusing on the words. They remind you of a family grouped around a dinner table, talking, the storyteller getting frequent interuptions: questions, opinions, counter-stories. There's laughter, expressive gestures. You think of your own family, not letting the scraps on the table keep them from leaning into life. Eventually, Soima nudges you. "Time to return," he says. [[As you walk, he chatters.]]You were visiting your father and brother in the village for a week. It was the second night, and you were pleasantly tired from hours of talking. You were just settling into sleep when you heard a strange noise from outside—a faint hiss, like falling gravel, and a scratch as of claws scraping against rock. A spreading silence around it, as all the animals which usually kept up the night's refrain fell quiet. When the scream came, it felt almost inevitable. You flung yourself out of bed and ran to the window, and your throat seemed to lock around your windpipe, strangling your breath, as you saw a swarm of shadows flooding across the ground, a vast, undulating smear of charcoal under the dim moon. You’d never seen a Cursed Spirit before, but you knew them from stories enough to recognise what was happening here—though none of the stories you’d heard had recounted them gathered in such a dark tide, surging up to your neighbours’ houses and slithering up over the walls towards the windows— You looked down into glittering pinprick eyes of red as a thin grey palm slapped against the glass in front of you. Iceborn Six, there were so many… In the distance, a light flared. New figures rushed into view, lit by that spreading golden glow. Your heart dropped. Was this why the Saltcast hadn’t attacked in the past few years? They’d been building up to an invasion? The Cursed Spirit clinging to your window curled its fist and slammed it into the glass. You jumped back and twisted round, calling for your father and brother to wake and light the fire as you dived for the chamberstick you’d brought to bed with you. But what you saw when you straightened up, candle in hand, drew you unwisely straight back to the window. The Spirit was gone. Outside was a ball of golden light, a miniture sun, which hung there until you approached and then dipped down to re-join the fight. And by then it was a fight. The tide of Spirits had turned back towards the spellbeasts, because the spellbeasts were attacking them. There was a blizzard of light orbs and slender columns of fire chasing the shadows around, and the clash of claw against claw, talent against whatever strange magic the Spirits could access. You could see a few human faces in the windows of your neighbours’ houses, too far to truly make out the terror that your imagination filled in anyway, but no-one had ventured out to join the battle. No-one did for the rest of that night. Everyone huddled round their fireplaces the same way your family did, baffled and frightened and expecting death to come before any explanation would. But there were no deaths, not in your village. Not of humans. Morning came, and you all crept out gradually into the peaceful outdoors. All the Saltcast had gone: what was left was a scattering of broken mirror shards, stone, glass, metal. And, just outside your door, two familiar objects. One, a broken armband which made your father gasp and weep. Two, a battered old lantern with a steady golden glow. [[Go back|PART THREE]]She’s still moving. There’s blood on the stone around her, but her unbroken arm is pushing back against the force holding her, creeping towards—what? You can’t tell. Your vision is starting to blur. When you blink, your eyelids feel sticky, and it takes some effort to get them open again. Ah. The javelin she still has in one holster. She’s pulled it free. Perhaps splitting his attention between both of you has made the Hydra King’s attack less precise, because it seems to be affecting only Amaris’ body—the holsters are still subject to gravity, and when she turns the javelin, she gets the tip pointed downward without any bending or splintering of the shaft. Can she throw it? She can. She does, silent but with a degree of effort you can see, even out of the corner of your blurry eye. It’s not a good throw. She couldn’t thrust her arm far enough forward. But the aim is good enough, and gravity provides the momentum the javelin might otherwise lack. It crashes down on the mirror closest to her and shatters it. The behemoth’s pale flanks twitch. The heads bob, eyes shifting sightlessly from side to side. Then their great jaws open, and each of them starts to keen, soft at first but increasingly loudly. The remaining mirrors grey out as if covered by fog, and begin to shake. It’s only as you clap your hands to your ears that you realise that you’re free to move again. A moment later, Amaris drops down from the roof, landing on her feet then staggering sideways and dropping to one knee. The back of her tunic is torn and purple with blood. “Patricia,” she shouts. “Run!” It would be nice if you could. Even with the unnatural pressure lifted from you, the weight of the whole situation is still leaden around your neck, keeping you on your knees. “Pat…ricia…” says the middle head, the one that has no flesh on its grey bones, no eyes in its dark sockets. “Pa…tri…cia…?”It turns slowly, as if tracking the echo of Amara’s call back to the source. “Patricia…?” It’s your mother’s voice. A faint light flickers on in each socket. The questing snout revolves round towards you. A little strength returns to your legs and you lift yourself into a stiff crouch. Running still feels impossible, even though you want to run to her as much as you want to run away. [[“Patricia,” says your mother, and the tip of her muzzle taps gently against your forehead.]]You say a small prayer to Lethron, the Silent God, the Mediator, that he will bless you now after all. That whatever comes next will not be for nothing. As you pray, you touch the band on your arm. //“My great-great-great—that is, my distant ancestor—was wearing it when she used the Blessing Stone of Lethron,”// James had said when he gave you the band, one stray dimple in his cheek, the one that had first charmed you, lopsidedly framing his smile. //“They say it carries his favour even yet.”// But though you have always felt lucky in your family, your family has not had good luck, before or since. Dithering and holy prayer complete, you step past the signage and bend to inspect the hole. Its walls are mostly rock, but there’s a clagging percentage of mud as well, and the tunnel seems to lead almost straight down. Years of deprivation, funnelling all the food you can find into the mouths of your children, have pared your body to bone and wire, and you should be able to fit inside easily. The idea still squeezes you with fear of confinement. You clench your teeth and prepare the lantern you have strapped to your shoulder, then slide your feet down until you get a toehold on the rock below the lip of the opening. Death, directly below, must be readying to swallow. You climb down into the dark. <<set $Lethronprayer to 1>> [[Descend]]You let the pain fade out of you, your mind sinking down into the quiet depths. The world turns dim and silent and for a moment you think that there’s nothing in it that could hurt. Then tendrils of fierce colour sweep across the blackness, red and gold and shining emerald green. The colours wind together into robes, and drape over the ivory figure which has suddenly appeared opposite you. “Who’s this?” the figure says in a light, masculine voice. You left your body behind at the top step of unconsciousness. You can’t find a voice in the amorphous cloud of self you currently occupy. All you can do is watch as your dream companion steps closer to you. The face is sculpted marble, cold and remote, but there’s a touch of amusement in the eyes. “Do you know, yourself?” he says, mocking. “Come here and I’ll give you an answer.” He steps closer still. As he advances, first the ground surrounding each footstep, then the rest of the world fills in. You are standing—floating?—in a corridor covered walls to floor to ceiling with mirrors of every variety—polished metal and silvered glass and well-shined stone, large and small, perfectly geometric or wildly irregular. He blazes across each surface. You are hard to see in any of them. You are a phantom made of pale wisps, a few threads of faded colour. He's moments from you, stretching out his hand, and all you can think to do is wisp the floating substance of yourself down towards the mirrored floor, pressing against it, willing it to crack and let you fall. Your effort goes unanswered. You have no weight here, barely any will. His white fingers thrust towards the heart of you—There's nowhere to escape to— You jerk awake again, your body screaming its protest. You’re wet and freezing cold. Some part of you still feels hunted. The rest feels like carrion, mauled and discarded. It takes a large effort to get back to your feet, and more still to take the first few steps. But in the distance, you think you can see another fleck of light to pursue. There’s a soft clink as the band on your arm breaks and falls free. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 3>> [[Investigate the distant light]]You tuck in at the end of the line, pulse loud in your ears. You recognize the set-up, and your instinct is almost immediately confirmed as the first Host draws out a small bag and starts pouring salt in a circle around the mirror. Magic. You’ve never heard that Cursed Hosts can do it, but you’ve never heard they can’t, either. You remember the doomed vendor's confiding tone as she mentioned a group recruiting for a spell. What was it called? The cult of Yenyet's Children. These spellbeasts must be the members of that cult, and the line you're in must be made up of the Hosts they’ve brought together for whatever spell they want done. [[Pretend to know what you're doing]]"What are you doing?" one of the spellbeasts asks you. "We made a deal. If you want us to rejoin the Hydra King's side, you'd better all keep it." The slap on your back is probably not intended to injure you. But you're not the sturdiest person, and the spellbeast is strong and careless. Your back aches. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds +1>> [[Confess]] [[Join the line]]<span class="death">You can smell the salt and the wax of the candle. You have no idea how to do magic. But it's the only way out you can think of. //Please,// you think. But Moshiadiah's gift is not like the Blessing Stones. You can't just ask. It's your own will which shapes the spell. You follow the others as they slowly walk around the mirror. //Sleep. Let all of them go to sleep.// You press the thought towards the reflection in the mirror. You've always kept your anger quiet and still so it won't eat through too much of your strength. Now you throw it out ahead of you, trying to pass it off as certainty. //Become harmless. Sink into the dark. Sleep. Sleep!// The other Hosts pause in their procession. Panic sinks its teeth into you as the hoods slowly start turning towards you. //SLEEP!// The mirror goes completely dark, all shine lost. There's a cracking overhead. It sounds like thunder. Then the ceiling caves in. It brings the night down with it, starless, moonless, breathless. For a moment it's heavy. Then it weighs nothing at all. You have died!</span> [[Go Back->Pretend to know what you're doing]]In the mirror, the clustered, too close faces are smiling. Your own reflection beams at you with the merry delight of a woman who has never been under the grindstone of life. A wisp of something wistful goes drifting through you, and you have to push down the desire to touch the mirror yourself. The spellbeasts are murmuring now, a rustling thrum of conversation that rises and sinks without ever quite petering out. You don’t quite dare to look away from the magic again, but you can feel the ebb and flow of their agitation against the back of your neck. “We are seeking the unmade,” says the Host, louder, fingers twitching and flicking at the silver gloss of the mirror. “Let the speaking winds carry their voices back to us.” The whispering now seems like it’s coming from right next to your ear. There’s a new darkness in the mirror, swirling around like a low hanging cloud, descending on one reflected figure after another. A bead of sweat tickles its way down your back. “Come to us,” says the Host. “Return.” Someone shouts behind you, a wordless, half-strangled cry of pain, and then the same voice raises again in fury. “How dare you,” it thunders. “I remember what you did!” You see one spellbeast lunge for its neighbour in the mirrored crowd, large clawed hands clamping down on a serpentine neck. And then it’s chaos. The crowd turns on itself, shrieking about blame and sin and vengeance. You see the gentle-voiced Host finally look away from their working, a momentary interruption in their poise, before the tempest overtakes the circle of Hosts and you lose track of everything but ducking and weaving around the flail of limbs tumbling through your space. But you’re not particularly fast or nimble, and something you don’t even see coming clouts you across the side of the head. Your knees fold up and you drop to the ground inside a cloud of pain and confusion. You’re just aware enough of yourself to know that you’re being trodden on, but you can’t seem to tuck into a small enough ball to avoid it. It’s okay. It’s all going further and further away, the cloud getting dark and thick and soft around you. You’re staring upwards, and you watch without anxiety as the fog-like, clawed hand reaches out of the mirror and start tearing at the people milling around you. Your eyelids slide down. Then the great golden door is thrown open in such a burst of light and sound that your mind is jolted back into awareness. More spellbeasts are streaming through it, but these ones seem organized, responding to the commands of the spear-bearing woman at their head, marching into the frenzied crowd and forcing the combatants apart. Several of them are making their way towards you and the hosts. What should you do? [[Play dead]] [[Knock over the central mirror]]The Saltcast inside don't look like guards. You're still not great at reading the expressions of the less human-looking ones, but nonetheless they all remind you keenly of men on the gallows, waiting as the rope is dropped over their heads. A crushed sort of fear fills the room; you feel sticky with it as soon as you step inside. They barely look up at you. One of them is worse than the others. This one squats on its haunches, rocking slowly back and forth, its beautiful fox-like tail twitching in the dust on the floor. "What shall I do," it moans, its claws leaving furrows in its russet fur. "It was an accident. It was not my fault. There were too many. They were too fierce. I fought! I fought with valour!" "Come on," murmurs Teccah. Whatever is happening here, it isn't your problem. The four of you walk on, single file, trying to seem casual even though the only onlookers are wholly captured by their own concerns. [[You're almost through the chamber and at the next door when you hear the stomp of oncoming feet.]]Parvad and Teccah react instantly and in perfect sync, gathering you and Grissol together and whisking you into the space behind the door just as it swings open. You squeeze there together, your kidneys jabbed by one of the spikes on Grissol's knuckles, Parvad's beak resting on your head, your elbow digging into Teccah's ear—and the Cursed Hosts who march past don't notice you in the shadow. There's a soft moan from the spellbeasts waiting on the other side of the room. The Hosts stop, arrayed in an official-looking line. "Xeia of the forth quarter," one of the Hosts intones, "You have failed your holy mission through flagrant lack of care, and are declared a dissident, your existence being an offense against the crown." "No!" cries the fox-form spellbeast, leaping up to its feet. "I am loyal! It was the humans, there were too many to fend off! I did all I could to protect it!" "How curious, then, that your own source-mirror is intact, and it is the one entrusted to you which was broken. You have the priorities of a traitor, Xeia, and you will be punished accordingly." The Host makes a sharp gesture and two of the others break out of formation. They turn back towards the door you are sheltering behind—the four of you squeeze in tighter still, Parvad's feathers tickle your nose—and fail to see you, exiting back the way they came without a hint of hesitation. Meanwhile, Xeia stands quivering, mouth agape. All its protests have bludgeoned themselves to silence against the casual indifference of the Host. "As for the rest of you…" the Host's hood turns slightly towards the rest of the group, "You are also partially responsible for allowing this betrayal. However, the king is merciful. A little pain, enough to teach the lesson, and then you will be permitted to return to his service." The spellbeasts fold themselves into prostration on the floor. You think one or two of them had their knees give out on the way down anyway. Your own knees are knocking—you hope not audibly. "Please…" Xeia strangles out. "Ah, back to you, Xeia. We have given thought to the mode of your execution. Having your source-mirror shattered is hardly sufficient, is it? After all, if you were a loyal subject who stood your ground against the humans, as you should have been, you would have risked that same end. Where's the incentive for loyalty if a cowardly traitor can achieve the same death as a hero?" You shift a little behind the door. You don't want to be watching this. You don't want to be listening to it. The cruelty in the Host's voice makes your skin itch, your stomach turn. [[Intervene?]] [[Keep waiting.]]There's a drift towards the exits beginning. Teccah gets you moving, but matches pace with those in the middle of this first migration, not allowing you to hurry even though you can feel the tension rising behind you as the crowd grows stormier. He glances back at you just a moment before the flood breaks its banks, and he swings into a lope as people start running, galloping, coursing out. You have to reach out and cling to the back of his cloak to keep from losing him, buffeted on every side by the panic of the masses. If you fall, you'll be crushed almost at once. At least you know it'll be nigh impossible for the guards to notice you now. There's a chokepoint at the door. You lose all control of your pace and direction there, and it's all you can do to stay on your feet. Teccah reaches back and grips your forearm hard enough to make your fingers spasm, and that keeps you together until you're through. A crossroads shortly afterwards splits the path four ways, and the crowd finally thins a little as Teccah tows you down the right passageway. A quick look around shows you that Parvad and Grissol have managed to keep up, though they're deliberately staying apart, making it less obvious that you're all together. The need to stay unnoticable increases as you turn left at another crossroads, and suddenly the stream of spellbeasts is just a trickle. The air is clearer here, and you take a few breaths, steadying yourself. You've made it this far. You'll make it all the way. Against the wall stands a row of Saltcast who are all watching the others, and occasionally stepping forward to reprimand one of the stragglers, telling them to hurry on to their duties. More guards. These strike you as more dangerous than the last ones you encountered. One of them is a Cursed Host, their small, human proportions looking almost fragile, utter confidence in their stance. [[Ignore the guards]] [[Give the guards a little wave]]//The king was pleased with all of her tests because he got plenty out of it. And he was easy to please because his daughter was the one person in all the world he loved. Maybe she loved him back, I could never tell, but she was the sort of person where that didn't matter.// No Stones. What if you’ve come all this way and you just can’t find them? For a moment frustration chokes you. You force a slow breath through your nose, ignoring the taste of bile on the back of your tongue. As you try to shake the panic loose, you latch on to Eldion’s voice again, talking about these distant royals not as grand and terrible, but full of petty flaws and cruelties, too selfish to consider the damage they did to themselves and those around them. People a peasant might be able to understand a little, people who might not be untouchable, even to you, small as you are. You listen as he tells of the princess, begrudging her father’s ongoing good health, setting a trap using powers she had yet to fully map out, using her indentured creation as a confidant. //She layered the floors, walls and ceiling of her workroom in mirrors, then invited her father in to watch her latest experiment. He should have known to be suspicious. Perhaps he never even considered that she’d defy him. Perhaps he loved her too much to be clear-sighted. She never told me the full plan. I can only guess. Maybe she put all those mirrors out because she was planning to make him a Cursed Host, under her control, so she could pull the strings without being suspected—because they'd never got it to happen reliably, see, getting a Cursed Spirit to come through for sure. They're tricky. And she wouldn't have got a second chance at taking him over. So maybe all the mirrors were insurance to make sure at least one came. Or maybe she never intended any Cursed Spirits to come, she was just trying to layer some sort of spell of control on her father directly, and it was too complicated to do with one or two mirrors. I know she didn't want what actually happened, because she screamed when it started.// The image is sickening. Scrabbling hands emerging from every one of the mirrors, dragging crumpled, newborn shadows behind them, reaching for the king in the centre of the room. Swarming him in the space of a breath, forcing their way underneath his skin, filling him with more Cursed Spirits than one body could ever be expected to contain. He ought to have died. But he didn't. They all crawled inside him, one by one, and Eldion could see them struggling, hundreds of hands yanking the puppet strings. And then the king stopped and just stood for a moment, looking at the princess. And then he laughed. Still himself, and laughing. Maybe there’s something different about royalty after all, because you can’t imagine falling into such a morass of souls and keeping in control of all of them. [[Can’t imagine ever being the Hydra King.]]You’re not surprised, though, to hear that he took no direct revenge. As you riffle through some dusty scrolls, you think of your children’s faces, and you think too of the thing you’re always trying not to think of: the two tiny gravestones in the corner of the village graveyard. No. You, too, would forgive them anything. //So then she was queen, and for the rest of us, things hardly changed. A decade passed at least, though I was never counting.// Then, apparently, reports started flooding in of Saltcast attacks around the area, whole villages destroyed, important crops turned to wasteland, safe roads overset. Worse than it is now. You guess that many families like yours starved as the queen seethed--though not for the sake of her subjects. She must have known it was her father, surely. Perhaps that was why she went herself once her people had tracked down the source of the attacks to a cave system in the south-east of the kingdom. There, among the disorganised piles of treasure, wedged between a stack of hookguns and a contraption made of cloth and steel, sits a row of five black stones. They are each very oddly shaped, reminding you of the fungus you find on dead trees when you go collecting firewood. Simultaneously shrivelled and bloated, pocked with holes and covered with frilly protrusions, they are vaguely sickening to look at. But when you reach out and touch the nearest one, you feel a pulse of warmth travel up your arm that relaxes all the tension in your body, unclenches your jaw, unknots your guts, fills you with a sense of hope and free potential you haven't felt since you were a very young child. These are the Blessing Stones. You're certain. You gently pass your hand over the top of each one. Peace, Justice, Wisdom, Mercy…Truth. The last gives you a shiver, but there's no cruelty there, only a cool inevitability. You wave towards the others, but they’re sufficiently absorbed in Eldion’s tale not to notice you right away. This part, they must already know most of, because even you’ve heard snippets of it already. The queen, leading her expedition into the caves. Overwhelmed by the numbers her father has built up and the power she herself gave him. Her soldiers, human and Saltcast alike, falling in the battle against him. Fleeing deeper into the caves, demanding that some of the Saltcast there help her. Eldion had been surprised that any of them actually could: he hadn’t tried rebelling since his earliest days. The final fight. The queen, mortally injured. The Hydra King, unwilling to let her go. Absorbing her. //Beats me how he could do that to a whole human, but maybe it was because she was still linked to him with her magic, or maybe it was one of the talents he got from his crowd of subordinate spirits. But it backfired on him. She wasn't as easy to subdue as those fresh-born minds, was she? She was a bad person, but she knew it, she knew where she began and where she ended just like he did…// [[You call across, and point at the stones.]]The others hurry back towards you, and Eldion concludes. “They've been struggling all this time, all the better for us. He's looking to make a change, though. He's been experimenting too. All the source-mirrors he absorbed means that he can survive having some of them taken out of him and away. He's working towards his next Seeming. He's filling those source-mirrors up with images of his power and authority, his people winning their battles against the humans, his storytellers telling his version of their story. She's been weakening. Lately, whenever she surfaces, all she does is ask to die. So we don't have much time left.” “How do his experiments on you fit in?” asks Parvad. Eldion lands beside you and ruffles his feathers. "His interest is in my talent. Duplication. I can make copies of myself more or less separate from my source-mirror, and they exist as long as they're in my line of sight. Or they did when he started with me. He used that ability as a base to work out how to split me into different selves, each with a connection to this central self. Of course, it's the Hydra King, so he set them up to be tortured just for fun. But what he cares about is working out how to use his talent with mine. Obviously duplicating himself or his army would be useful, but it’s not just that. He’s interested in separating ‘self’ from ‘talent’. He contains so many Spirits, so many selves, and he’s at the limit of how many he can control while keeping the queen subjugated. He wants to keep his powers, and expand them further, without bringing more consciousnesses into him. Perhaps using me he could learn to split some of those selves off without losing power. It pleases him to experiment further with me, his daughter’s favourite toy. In a way, I think he’s trying to invite her to play with him. Regardless, he's close. We have to win now." [["Are you ready?" Parvad asks you.]]//Go search for your subject beneath all the grey, Discover you’re with him and under our sway, Dance on to our piping wherever we may We’ll whisper a secret to fatten our prey…// It’s a beautiful voice. Surely you’ve never heard one more beautiful. (Yes, you have.) You’d do anything for that voice. (You know the difference.) Something has sliced out of the wall towards you. It hits Grissol across her armoured finger-legs and knocks her into you. The burst of pain numbs out almost immediately, and you get back to your feet and run again. The new limp slows you down, which is irritating. You need to be closer. (You’ll never hear your daughter sing again. Maybe she won’t sing at all if you don’t regain control.) You stumble. What was that thought? It’s drifted away. It feels important. But nothing is more important than reaching the singer… [[Concentrate on hearing the singer]] [[Chase the memory of your daughter's voice]](“Do you have a song for me?” you used to ask Patty. She always did. This one isn't like hers at all.) //Poor bird in his tangle of silver and light His talent-born fragments now all put to flight To shatter the glass won’t dismantle the cage You must bring out your own hearts onto his stage.// The singer is in sight. She’s willowy and frail, but she commands your every breath. (Patty’s songs are almost always cheerful. When you don’t come back, will she take to the minor key?) Without thinking, you duck under the great swinging blade which drops from the roof. A moue of annoyance mars the singer’s face. (//Don’t be a wreck, Just watch your neck, // sings the Patty in your head, giggling. She’s going to be a bard, no matter what. You’ll get her there) You drop to one knee at the singer’s feet, head bowed. The others are a little behind. That’s good. Maybe she’ll choose you over them. Something silver glints in her hand, as she reaches out to you. //We’ll whisper a secret to fatten our prey…// Without quite knowing why, you’re back on your feet, a few steps removed from where you were kneeling. Your head hurts. There are two songs occupying it: one sweeping, multilayered, glorious, one simple and silly and cheerful. The first tells you to kneel back down and wait for the singer’s will. The other… (//Make it quick,// sings the Patty in your head, //Give her a kick!//) The singer is slender, human-shaped. You know where the weak points are on such a figure, so you plant your boot squarely in her knee, and feel it crunch sideways. Her song abruptly turns into a squall of pain, and your mind clears. You’re in an enclosed space absolutely bristling with traps. Your love for your daughter may have saved you, but you must also just have got lucky. If you let her start up again, you and your companions are probably doomed. You kick her again in the other knee. Then you punch her in the nose. You’re no bard yourself, but you think blood in the sinuses is a barrier to good vocals. She makes a spluttering sound and starts to back away. “Iceborn Six,” says Teccah again. He draws his sword. Parvad, just behind him, hefts a knife. The singer turns and flees between the traps. “We are not following her,” Teccah says firmly. "We are not." “Agreed,” Parvad says, sheepish, which is odd for a bird-man. “That was a nice rest,” says Grissol. “But my legs hurt now.” There’s a deep gouge in the metal of her index finger-leg. You realise your own leg is bleeding from where she was bowled into you. “Let’s get back on track, please,” says Teccah, and you all fall into line behind him. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound.</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span> <<nobr>><<set $Eldionhint to 1>> <<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>><</nobr>> [[Walk and think, think and walk.]]<span class="death"> The singer is in sight. She’s willowy and frail, but she commands your every breath. You've closed your eyes so that you can concentrate only on her voice, so you don't see the trap which kills you. You hear the most beautiful laugh. You have died!</span> [[Return|You break into a run, vaguely aware of the others charging alongside you.]]Wading into the water makes your whole body feel several times heavier. You take some deep breaths, then duck under the surface and kick away from the tunnel wall. The others clearly consider your swimming too slow, because Parvad catches hold of your shirt and starts to tow you behind him. He's right: he's much faster. You wonder if his feathers are waterproof, like a duck's. It's not as cold as you were expecting it to be. The water barely stings against your open eyes. Your body is almost relaxed as you're tugged through the emerald haze. [[Focus on holding your breath]] [[Keep trying to swim along]]Eventually you reach one sealed by a door. This door is plain and practical, opened with a pull ring. All of you stop warily anyway. Teccah advances to prod at it, while Parvad flaps a hand around, searching for traces of danger. "There's someone talking on the other side," Grissol says, and edges past her comrades to smack her ear against the door. "Two or three people. Sound upset. Don't sound like they're leaving anytime soon." "We must pass them," Teccah decides. "They may not be guards. If not guards, they probably won't take action. If they are, we'll have to fight. No choice but to fight." "I'm ready to fight!" Grissol says, and flexes her gauntleted fingers, the rest of her bouncing on top. "Or draw seditious graffiti!" "Yes," is all Parvad says, but as soon as his buy-in is given, Teccah yanks on the pull ring. [[The door opens]]You close your eyes, try to imagine your body relaxed, your lungs satisfied with the air trapped in them, the seconds passing steadily. It works well enough for perhaps half of the first minute. Then--body enduring, lungs enduring, seconds lodging in your chest. Your throat strains: you imagine it welded shut. Not yet. Not yet. You open your eyes, trying to see the surface. Instead you see Parvad's smooth course through the water suddenly jerk as a current starts to pull at you, tugging all of you towards a swirl of white froth. You see Grissol double back, curling her gauntlet protectively around you just as the vortex turns violent. It's hard to track what happens next. The world whirls around you, and you and all the others slam into the walls of the tunnel again and again. Grissol's metal fingers cut into you with each impact, pain and shock and sheer helpless confusion: the others are fighting the current and the great rotating blades which emerge from the walls, but all you can fight is the urgency in your blood, the desperate need for air. Not yet, not yet, not yet. You close your eyes again. Either the others will win their struggle and save you, or you'll die here. But you won't let it end just because you lose focus. Body enduring, lungs enduring. Wait. Grissol's grip on you shudders, then opens. You fight back the panic, squeezing your eyes more tightly shut. Another hand on your wrist. Parvad. He's pulling you forward again, steady and smooth. You peek out into the emerald haze. There are thin curls of red snaking alongside you, but you think you can also see-- Your head breaks the surface. For a moment, your throat is so tight you can't take the first breath you desperately need, and dark motes dance at the edges of your vision. Then your whole torso heaves as you gulp down air, more and more until your chest aches will fullness instead of the painful hollow deflation of the last few minutes. "Hmm," says Parvad. "I think they may have added some traps since we were last here." <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 1>> [[You clamber up and progress into the next tunnel]]You have some pride remaining, and so even when it's obvious you can't do much to make Parvad's task easier, you keep flailing. But you tire quickly, and the squeeze in your lungs turns crueler and crueler. When the vortex first starts to twist the water, you think your eyes are tricking you, that you're just disorientated by the lack of air. It's only when Grissol doubles back and closes her gauntlet protectively around you and Parvad that you realise you're all truly in trouble. It's hard to track what happens next. The world whirls around you, and you and all the others slam into the walls of the tunnel again and again. Grissol's metal fingers cut into you with each impact, pain and shock and sheer helpless confusion: the others are fighting the current and the great rotating blades which emerge from the walls, but you can't, you can't even fight the overiding instinct which commands you to gasp in air, now, NOW-- The water floods eagerly down your throat. You feel yourself heave, rejecting it, riots of terror spasming through every muscle, but it's too late. Your eyes are shut, or perhaps it's just too dark to see, and you're going to die, so stupidly, so uselessly, and be another forgotten pile of bones among the shards-- A hammer blow falls on your sternum and then another on your back. Your eyes pop open. Teccah shouts something unintelligible and leans over to slap between your shoulder-blades again. You spit up a froth of green liquid onto the dry floor. You don't even remember being pulled out of the water. "That went pretty bad," Grissol says. Teccah looks like he wants to burst into tears. "They...clearly they have added traps since last we were here," he says. "She's alive," Parvad says. Death would probably be more comfortable at this point, you think, as you cough and splutter your way through your next few breaths. You didn't inhale much, but it hurts, like a part of you is still drowning. Eventually, you struggle back to your knees. "There, you see," Parvad says, and slaps you on the shoulder, which sets off another round of coughing. <span class="wound"><div class="woundcontent">You have sustained a wound!</div>[img[images/wounds.png]]</span><<set $Wounds to $Wounds + 3>> [[You clamber up and progress into the next tunnel]]Most of them are looking past you, watching the fight play out. You look round too, and see just how good your new companions are at fighting. They’ve already taken out most of the guards. The Host is dead, her human eyes wide and a little surprised, staring up at the tunnel roof. Rocky is the one giving them trouble. He’s strong, and fast for someone of his size. They’re co-operating together against him, Teccah and Parvad drawing him out and Grissol going for the big hits. When he tries to throw all his strength against her, ignoring the other two, they make him suffer for it: you get the sudden impression that Teccah's pathfinding might apply to the physical vulnerabilities of an enemy. Every attack he issues seems to widen the cracks and fissures in the stonework spellbeast's hide, which Parvad exploits immediately, his poisoned blade darting into each freshly opened wound. One particularly deep cut has Rocky doubling over and roaring in agony. Grissol takes her opportunity, rearing up and clouting him across the back of the skull. You don’t know how spellbeast bodies work, really, but they take damage even if only a shattered source-mirror kills them, and the big guy goes to his knees, head slumped to his chest. The other guards lie scattered around the floor. Except for the Host, they’re still alive. You know the others are about to remedy that. [[Think about interceding]] [[Allow them to finish off the guards.]]The bird screeches and jabs its beak towards you. Despite the distance between you and it, the ferocity of the movement is still terrifying. You reach back with one arm, not taking your eyes off it, and try to shove Parvad towards the maze again. He doesn't budge until the great wings flap, and a strange shifting goes rippling over the giant bird’s outline. Then Parvad’s shoulder shudders under your palm, and he finally goes with you a little, the two of you taking one stumbling step backwards. Your eyes are still fixed to the monster in front of you. You watch it warp, start to split. Your first impression, delivered upon a lightning bolt of horror, is of the Hydra King’s beastly form, as a second head rears up on a second muscular neck. But almost in the same instant the rest of the bird’s body twins itself, a distorted replica lurching free of the original and fixing bloodshot eyes upon you. The echo is in even worse shape than its summoner: parts of its body sag like there’s no bone structure underneath; feathers are melted together into sharp spikes; its beak is oozing black sludge. But it’s not caught by the light spears, and when it charges you, it comes fast. Your legs won't move. You can see down its throat as its beak opens. There's nothing but mist and red light inside it. Then Parvad is grabbing you by the collar and levering you away. "Run!" he says. A flicker of indignation kindles in you at his tone, given you were the one trying to shift him before, but there's no time to work it out. Grissol and Teccah have already escaped back the way you came. You scramble towards the mirrors. You're just fast enough. You feel the air heave on your left as the replica bird's charge carries it through the space where you and Parvad just were. It's going too quickly to stop, and it crashes into the outer edge of the maze. There's a shower of glass and feathers, and a burst of red, and then all that's left of it and its attack are the fragments of maze-glass on the ground. The bird still by the doors shrieks as you duck out of view. [[Catch your breath]]You land in a crouch on the backs of the seething horde of Cursed Spirits. Your lantern is held level with your boots so that the Spirits are too busy writhing away to attack in that moment of contact, then you jump again, springing down alongside the little spellbeasts by the door. You startle a squeak out of each of them, and the impact of your feet hitting the ground sends a groan creaking from between your own lips, but there’s no time to worry about either civilities or pain. Instead, you thrust your lantern into the paws of the one who was trying to pull the door loose, and grab the handle yourself. If this is a trap, this is the moment it would be sprung. Sweat prickles on your neck and the palms of your hands, but your fingers are calloused enough not to slip as you yank with all your strength on the slim strip of metal. The attack never comes. Instead, the two little spellbeasts gasp as the door yields to your effort and swings open. “Quick, quick!” says the smaller one. She loops the strap of her lamp round the handle. “This’ll hold them back a little while once we’re through!” Then she immediately jumps down into the dark. “Go!” shouts the second spellbeast, and shoves you hard between the shoulder blades. You topple through the doorway. It’s not a long fall, barely long enough to give you time to throw your arms out to catch yourself, though hitting the floor still hurts. So does the second spellbeast landing on your back as the door slams shut above you. But the relief of survival floods you with enough good feeling to quickly smother it, and you wobble back up to your feet. “That lantern won’t last all that long,” says the smaller spellbeast, looking up at you. “We’d better get going.” Her hood has fallen back, revealing a mouse-like head with sharp little teeth. “Hustle!” says the other one, and shoves you in the small of the back until you start walking down the tunnel. “Not a good place for little humans to maunder.” “Be nice,” the other admonishes. “I’m Celia, dearie. This is Cecil. Thank you for helping us.” “The question is why,” snorts Cecil. Cecil is distinctly ratlike in his features, with patched black and white fur and large pinkish ears. Rats are a nuisance and a danger at their regular size, but for some reason the giant monster version isn’t repellent: in fact, both he and Celia seem to you to be almost…well, sweet, in affect if not personality. Perhaps the air down here is too thin, or you’re giddy from the panic of the last few minutes. His ears twitch when he talks. “Well, why?” <span class="favour">[img[images/favour.png]]<div class="favourcontent">Despite his suspicion, you seem to have made a fairly good first impression.</div></span><<set $SaltcastConsideration to $SaltcastConsideration + 1>> [[You had a common enemy]] [[You’re a generous sort]] [[You don’t know]]You’re answered by Celia’s wail of pain as she’s dragged out of the protective circle of light and under the wave of Cursed Spirits. At almost the same moment, your fingers burn around the soft flesh of the berry, even as the air around you turns cold and dry. Your hand plunges downwards under a sudden weight, and you drop the ball of pale, wriggling roots with a yelp. Several of the newly sprouted roots burrow immediately into the rock of the floor, and others go twisting through the tunnel as they swell thick as your torso, smashing through the ranks of the Cursed Spirits, scattering them, crushing them against the walls of the pit. A loop of root wraps around you and bears you forward as three more crack through the door the spellbeasts couldn’t force open. Cecil hops through, and you’re tugged down after him. Celia’s limp body is borne along last, deposited gently at your feet, and then the roots release you and lock around each other, re-blocking the gap they’d torn open in the wood of the door. Celia groans and stirs, and you hear the squeaky sigh of Cecil’s relief. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ve not used my talent for combat before, just gardening, but I suppose it worked well enough.” He kneels by Celia’s side. “How are you, old girl?” “Don’t be rude, Cecil,” she says, and while her voice is laboured, her tone still manages to be prim. “I’m well enough. Thank you for helping us, young lady. Cecil, I’d be very obliged to you if you’d let me lean on you a little. We shouldn’t linger here.” Her hood has fallen back to reveal a mouse-like head with sharp little teeth, slightly bloodied. One of her large round ears has a fresh rip in it. “Too right,” says Cecil, and takes her arm delicately. “Come on then. Stop gawping and keep up, human.” “That qualifies as rude also, Cecil,” says Celia. “It’s what she is, isn’t it?” His whiskers twitch. You moderate your strides so you don’t outpace them and he shoots you a sideways look of reluctant gratitude. “You’re Patricia, aren’t you, dearie?” Celia asks you directly, while Cecil humphs in the background. “Madelaine’s daughter?” [[Your breath catches]]Then, incongruously, “A seed, a seed! Do you have any seeds!?” Another Spirit tries to slice through your ancles. You kick at it and it wraps itself around your leg, yanking you sideways until you slam the lantern down on its head. The light, to your immense relief, stays steady, and the Spirit loses its grip on you. “There! On your boot!” the spellbeast shouts. Despite the chaos around you, unwisely, instinctively, you look down. You don’t see anything. Your boots are covered in mud from the journey here, but— And then the spellbeast uses what must be its talent, and you do see. Whatever scraps of nature you’d picked up on the way are brought to violent life, and a ball of squirming roots erupts out of the mud, peels off your foot and doubles, triples, dectuples in size, several of the roots burrowing into the rocky ground and the rest coiling through the tunnel as they swell until they’re thicker than your torso. They smash through the ranks of the Cursed Spirits, scattering them, crushing them against the walls of the pit. A loop of root wraps around you and bears you forward as three more crack through the second door, the one which had still been closed. The spellbeast who called out to you hops down through this newly opened gap, and the roots tug you down after it. The limp body of the second spellbeast is borne along last, deposited gently at your feet, and then the roots release you and lock around each other, re-blocking the gap they’d torn open in the wood of the door. “We don’t have much time,” says the first spellbeast, leaning over his companion. He groans a little to himself. “Oh, it’s not good. Celia, please wake up.” ‘Celia’ doesn’t stir. Both the spellbeasts have lost their hoods in the struggle, and her face is exposed: a mouselike head with blood trickling from its nostrils, large ears torn, russet fur over swollen, bruised cheeks. She breathes in shallow puffs. He is ratlike instead, patched with black and white, beady-eyed. You’re not used to seeing such creatures emote, not used to feeling for them. But his worry billows off him, and he helped you, and you find yourself hoping that his friend will be all right. “We need to go,” he says at last. “They might break through. Look, you go off ahead, human. You see anyone, you warn them there’s another incursion going on. Ask for Amaris. You’ve those long legs, you’ll be faster than me. I need to carry her, find a healer.” You hesitate. This is the second time you’ve been saved by spellbeasts, but still. You grew up hearing stories of them as your enemies. Even if these two aren’t a threat, does that mean none of them are? The beady little eyes flick up to you, and he grunts. “Don’t blame you, I s’pose. All right. Listen. Not many spellbeasts still with the Hydra King. See any of us, you should be fine to talk. Hosts, Spirits—keep running by. You can trust old Cecil. You liked how my talent made your garden grow, didn’t you, little Patty?” He must see the questions bloom behind your eyes, because he waves a paw in the air hurriedly. “Go, go! I can’t tell you none of the things you’re here to learn. Ask for Amaris. Go on. There’s no time.” He scoops Celia up and squares his shoulders, and his whiskers bristle at you. “You still here?” You want to stay and interrogate him, but you know stubborn when you see it, and it’s glaring at you now. And the roots over your heads have started creaking ominously. You swallow hard, and start to run. [[Run away]]You turn and jump, landing in a crouch on the mound of oozing dark below, lantern held level with your boots so that the Spirits are too busy writhing away to attack in that moment of contact, then you jump again, springing down by the door which needs opening. You were enough of a distraction from the little spellbeasts that the pressure on them let up, and their fading lamp flares bright again. For just a moment, their path to you clears, and they seize their chance. One reaches you safely. The other trips over a coiling shadow and falls into a raking blow which rips through its sleeve and sends a spurt of red cascading over the shifting black mass of bodies. It manages to roll to your side and lies there, shuddering. The first spellbeast bends over its companion, forgetting its original objective, leaving it to you to bend to grab the doorhandle. You pull. It starts to open, catches, holds. You shove your lantern into the uninjured spellbeast’s paws, and growl at it to hold the light aloft. Then you clamp both hands about the handle again, and direct all your strength into wrenching it upwards. You feel the strain in your thighs, your shoulders. Your exposed back tingles with nerves. A shift. A yielding. And the door glides open, swinging free to reveal a short drop into another tunnel below. “Out of the way!” squeaks the uninjured spellbeast, and lowers its companion through the gap. “Now you!” You jump. Hitting the floor hurts a little. So does the second spellbeast landing on your back as the door slams shut above you. But the relief of survival floods you with enough good feeling to quickly smother the pain, and you wobble back up to your feet. “Left my lantern up there,” the spellbeast says. “But it won’t hold them long. Celia, can you walk?” ‘Celia’ clutches her bleeding arm, shivering. But after a moment she clambers to her feet. “I’ll manage, Cecil.” “Good. Get going, both of you.” Despite the gruffness of his voice, Cecil offers Celia his arm, and they scuttle along together. Their hoods fell back in the struggle, revealing both as murine, Celia, delicate and large-eyed, most like a mouse, Cecil, black and white and long-snouted, very much like a rat. Though your only association with such creatures is as vermin, neither seem threatening or destructive. They seem like safe candidates to ask about your mother. [[Celia looks worried at the question.]]