1 Chloe looks at her feet, "We were getting to be friends before all this, sir, Gegi and I, it's just--" she sighs. "And what are we now?" she asks quietly, seeming less angry and more tired. She glances up for a second. "I didn't mean to threaten you, Gegi. You... no, not you, this whole thing just frightened me out of my wits for awhile, I'm sorry.." 2 Bavin offers Gegi a lightsaber. "It's not a fake... I suggest you very carefully point it away from anything and press and hold down the 'on' button, after taking the safety off. Then you might like to take a few practice swings in the circle. But if you want to spar with anyone please ensure that they are very, very, good, or at least capable of regrowing or re-attaching cauteristed severed limbs..." "Does it not have a setting that'll keep it from cutting through things? Imitation of dull blade for practice purposes? I would think it would be simply a matter of readjusting the fields to be self-contained..." "Very sorry, it is a light sabre, and does not have a safe-use practice setting!" "Well, that's ridiculous... almost every weapon known has some form of safer use, whether it's stun settings or striking with the flat only... and they call that a weapon of honor?" She shakes her head and carefully puts it away again, then looks around. "Anyone have a normal sword or two and want to give me fencing lessons?" Bavin gives his dangerous grin. "And while a real expert in... Forces might be able to adjust it how you suggest, I really don't think I am skillful enough to attempt it." "Somehow I doubt that you lack skill in anything you would choose to attempt." "And if you are interested the energies of the blade are particularly easy to sense with the Forces, Mind and Spirit Spheres, and that the red colour of the blade should indicate your... state." "It's a red? I had wondered. There's some sort of trick you're supposed to be able to do with a lightsaber and a cloth of the same color frequency... makes a flash or something... I forget. What do you mean by state?" "So it will go green if she sorts out her demon trouble? Gegi, you've got a possesion indicator," comments Shane. He doesn't sound too serious. She tucks back her hair and sighs. "I'm -not-. Really." "Well, at your best, it should be a healthy cheerful colour, at your worst a dull shade like an almost extinguished coal..." says Bavin. "My best or worst what, though?" "You might want to remember the bit about the Dark Side..." "And which bit would that be?" She shrugs. "I know I'm corrupted, but I'm not gone, and I don't intend to be. Balance." 3 Astarial examines Chloe. "However, it's dormant at the moment; as far as I can tell, you'd probably have to will it to awaken yourself." Gegi nods. "That would make sense." "Could you explain it to me? Very little's made sense forme recently." "It's always a matter of choice." She looks at Garret. "Magick. Willpower." "Even when the choice is someone else's?" "How do you mean? She's being offered a choice. It's up to her to decide what to do with it. No one can decide it for her." "If she doesn't know what the choice is, who the offerer really is, how to make it, or what the consequences of making it might be," - he takes a breath - "is it really her choice? Or is it simply a cowardly trap set by an honourless [untranslatable Eledhrin obscenity]?" "Considering how much warning -I- was given, and how seriously my words were taken, when I didn't even know what I was saying... it's still a choice. But you never know -all- the possible outcomes." "It may well be *a* choice. But is it *her* choice? An oath extracted under duress does not bind, nor one given unknowing or by trickery." She gestures to herself and Garret. "It binds." Astarial pulls out his lens, and peers fixedly at Gegi through it... She looks at him. "What do you see?" He looks almost relieved. Almost. "Well, nothing immediately terrible, fortunately. You might want to consult a diviner, though, just to check if you have a... sorry, what your future holds." "My future's just been largely rewritten... I should probably let it settle a bit before I have anyone try to figure out which way it's going." She pauses. "Have a what?" He looks vaguely embarrassed. "Future. It definitely looks as if there's something nasty in the offing. Now might be a good time to prepare for it. Find out what, for a start. Maybe buy some heavy weaponry. That sort of thing." She raises an eyebrow, but doesn't look terribly alarmed. "My, how comforting." "Incidentally, are you doing anything to affect the local temporal flow at the moment?" "Time? I'm not good with time. We don't match up quite right. It can speed up, slow down, go for a loop, spin sideways, whatever, I wouldn't notice. I don't do linear very well." He shakes his head. "Better to know, than not to know. At least that way, you can prepare; even if all you can find out is the time it's supposed to happen, you can, say, pick that time to tour the five-mile-deep top-security bunkers..." "Come, come, you're not playing nice with fate... if you're destined to be incinerated by a random blast of cosmic energy, all that approach would do would be to insure that a lot of nice security bunkers got blasted as well... You're better off just accepting it. And trying to keep innocents out of the line of fire." She seems rather calm about the whole thing. 4 I love this city, You feel so alive : Shelley tilts her head and looks at Garret and Gegi strangely, "How do you dance on a tightrope? How do you stand on the ground? It's not so hard to balance, firmly footed either side..." "Not all of us have mastered walking on air..." says Gegi. Shelley spins (snipsspins) and giggles, "Such a pretty thing...To blind gravity's eyes..." "I kept dreaming it over and over again... choosing whether or not to weigh, picking up my feet and drifting. Sometimes I forgot where the dreams ended. We can fly..." "And we can all fall down." "Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows..." She smiles. "Allemaraine." Shelley looks at the floorboards and stands, tippy-toe high, on one of the lines with both feet, swaying a little but not falling to either side, "You can stand like this... But you'll probably fall one way or to the other side..." Gegi stands on one foot. "You know, it only takes two or three people... just stand together, balancing like this, and others will walk by and ask you why... and then they join you. The numbers grow. It only takes a little seed. People are funny that way." She wobbles and puts the foot back down. "Bad ankles and no sense of balance." And Shelley jumps, landing one foot firmly one either side of the line, "Or you can stand like this for practically ever even!" "Some of us have enough trouble standing with -both- feet on the ground." Shelley starts to softly sing, dancing in little circles, "Teacher, teacher, burning bright, Showing path in darkest night Slowly burns all fuel away, Blackened corpse to point the way." Gegi pauses, mind wandering backwards. "... and as shallow waters warm are reddened by the spray The body-temple in the water slides slowly t'ward decay," she says. "But teacher does it for a reason!" says Shelley. "There's always a reason." She looks at Garret. "I don't know that I could... no, I know that I could, but I don't want to know that." Shelley sings. "Little girls who play with fire... ..Are usually 'et by their desire." 5 Chloe explains the visions she has seen, and Astarial nods. "Just an initial speculation. I don't know most of those people, but can you see any sort of pattern in those alterations?" Gegi thinks. "All the Garou became terrible monsters, except Jean and Malcolm. I don't really know Malcolm, but he seemed like a nice guy. Very strange looking, though. His mother was one of the evil werewolves... But she got better. She's fine now. He has a bad reputation because of it, though, I gathered. And as for Jean-Baptiste..." she looks over at him. "He's a very confused individual. I think -part- of him was bad, once... I don't know what he is now." "Garret and I... have both had dealings with demons in the past. You saw how that worked out." "Hmm. Maybe I was near the mark, then," Astarial says. "We are -not- evil." "No, but she might have sensed the mark of past Diabolism and assumed that you were, perhaps? Or at least the perversion of vision she created might have done, which more or less amounts to the same thing." "Maybe." She looks at Garret. "Something Gabby said, though, about what the woman said to him... seems that she knew far too much about us to make a mistake." "What did she say? Anything could help..." "She told him to take care of her children... meaning me and Chloe." She looks at her hands. "I think there's more to that... but I can't speculate, or even ask him, without violating a confidence. She knew things about Garret's past. That's all I'm guessing." "As for Rhiannon..." her voice drops. "From what I can tell from having been here and listening, something bad happened to her when she was mortal. She lost a child, or her children were stolen and used against her, or something like that. It's a painful subject. For Chloe to see, not her, but someone else, carrying a child... and someone who looked just like Chloe, prompting her to be confused and ask the person she saw about herself, about the child... well, it sounds like a setup to hurt Rhi." A furious expression flickers over Astarial's face for a moment, before returning to his normal calm. "Someone needs to die for all this. Now I just have to find out who." "Good luck." Chloe looks at Gegi worriedly. "Gegi, what do you think I should do?" She flinches. "Don't ask me!" she says forcefully. Then, more quietly, "To refuse to serve the powers is to become a tool of the powers. To agree to serve the powers is to become the powers. Beware the choice, beware refusing it..." She shivers. "And to reduce the powers to undifferentiated Prime is...? At least if they're demonic powers. I personally wouldn't care for either serving or becoming them." "The Powers. The Bright Ones. God. To serve Life. In Life's name, and for Life's sake... the Oath I took long ago. To preserve that which grows, till Universe's end." Astarial looks puzzled. "I don't think we're dealing with any Bright Ones here. Or serving Life." "It's always about serving Life. You have the Choice, you see. First you are chosen, and then you choose. When they choose you, an ordeal follows, a testing, and after that, if you succeed, there is the Choice, of whether to continue, or abandon the path, give up the magic, and know that the universe dies a bit sooner for it." 6 There's high-maintenance women, And idiot sons : "It's a bit've a shock to discover you aren't as high up the food chain as you thought." "So who's eating at you?" she smiles. "You guys... Myself... Lots of little bites, but they add up." "Tell me about us, then..." "Erewhon...", Michael smiles, "There's a man with his head on his shoulders. A good place to keep it." "Don't you want to take off your head?" she misquotes, then smiles and starts to say, "T-" and cuts off with a look at Bavin. "I have to stop doing that." He obviously wonders what she started to say, but leaves it alone, "I wouldn't mind a flip-top head..." He looks at Bavin too then back to Georgina, "A dangerous place to seek reassurance..." "Not reassurance. Warning and reminders. To stop saying names that shouldn't be said here. And 'Ere' works as well for both of them..." The eyes hiding behind his hair, if they could be met, would say that when we are everything there is nothing left. Becoming one with all, we become the loneliest we will ever be. Perhaps, just perhaps, he begins to understand how God feels. Love. Unity. Has to be. To join, to be carried away, carried in. Desire. Pain. That by which we know we live. Fear-grief-pain. Always. Sometimes more anger than fear, sometimes more love than grief. Suffering from wounds that have yet to be inflicted. He jests at scars. "Duane?", he questions, "Who's Duane? All the gods I've ever met were selfish bastards... Even us..." "Diane Duane. The author." She pauses. "Selfish, yes, but not all cold... I did love them. Even the ones I destroyed. And I always tried to heal them. It saddened me to create a plague I couldn't cure... but I still did it." She shakes her head. He nods sadly, "I feel the same way about the fae..." "You made the fae?" Never must. That he does is what makes it mercy. "But far more Gabriels..." Mercy. Vulcan justice. What is given must be earned. "The trumpet sounds..." He shudders. "But that's hers now, not mine." She nods, having suspected as much before but chosen to answer otherwise. "Love. Healing. Help." Michael smiles, "I think you've got plenty to give then..." She shakes her head. "Love? I don't know if I can. Healing? I couldn't. Help? How? -She died anyway-. I did nothing. Maybe I can't love... maybe I only know how to own, and to destroy. If I can't hurt them I have to hurt myself. What good am I? I am -not- a good person..." "What good is timeless eternity? "Exactly my quandary..." "You're still in time, to some degree, at least." "If it was timeless, it wouldn't be eternity... Would it?" "It can't be eternity unless it is timeless. TO be outside of time. Unchanging, never dying. No way out." He shakes his head, "But none of that matters except in time. Eternity out of time would be wonderful, but I've only ever experienced the practical applications and they are _hell_." "Because the mind can't handle infinity... the very large space makes a better impression of it, and millenia upon millenia a better impression of eternity, because in the real thing, you couldn't really care..." She smiles. "Three rules, now. Don't ask the oracle when you're going to die, never probe the dead, and never ask "Where the hell are we?"" "Once more over the cliff..." A smirk appears, "I don't think you comprehend the gravity of the situation..." Her Trek-trained mind begins to formulate <* I believe the proper response would be, "Go to Hell." *> but she manages to stop herself and hunts for a less dangerous Spock-ism... "And as for what he thinks... He thinks he's making all this up. He thinks it's all theoretical and mildly amusing." "No." "Yes." "It's not amusing. He knows that. Fascinating, more. Little serpents circling the candle flame, tongues darting, mesmerized. Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn." "He's got another think coming." "No." "Yes." "You should not. Do not take him." More quietly, "I'd offer you me, but I think she has enough trouble at the moment, what with trying to save the universe and all." 7 "How very, very strange... -not- just a simple bad seems good and good seems bad, then..." Gegi muses to Chloe. "Not simple at all, rather complexly crafted. And if she was feeding me those images, she certainly knew many things about me. It was as if all the Garou were as horrid as I could possibly imagine any monster, and if I came to be able to imagine something worse, like the blue fired hands, they all would have it in an instant." "She knew a lot about a lot of people... is there anything else you remember seeing? Anything strange about anyone else that doesn't match up?" "Well, there was the halo and Rowan's nun outfit and now this..." she bites her lip, "dragon, here? But it seems that everyone is seeing that.." Gegi nods. "And that man over there? His whole arm was covered with these horrid... well, tentacles I believe. I thought he was going to eat that poor little girl or something." "His arm? His right arm?" She looks over in Edge's direction. "You got that fixed, didn't you?" Chloe shakes her head. "No, it was the left." Michael overhears and looks confused. "The left? But I never had tentacles on my left arm" "The good gone bad and the bad good" Gegi murmurs. They discuss the magick that is woven into Chloe. "How do you know that it's better to leave it?" "If it's part of you, pulling at it might make you unravel... the surest way to cleanse is to kill, they say..." Shocked, wary, "That sounds rather like... exactly like, actually, killing the patient to heal the sickness!" Dryly, "At least they can be sure the job's done." "That's a horridly cruel joke, if that's what it is. And if it's not--" Wide and wild eyed she stammers for a moment, obviously not happy with Gegi's manner. "Hey, it's not -my- suggestion. It's what a lot of people thought should be done with -me- once they found out demons seemed to like me. Remove the risk factor. After a while you're not scared anymore. Just tired." "Tired? I'd be dead!" "Tired of being threatened. Here, at least, no one seems too likely to go through with it..." She smiles and quotes, mostly to herself, "You lack the courage of your convictions, sir..." Chloe looks at Gegi worriedly. "Gegi, what do you think I should do?" She flinches. "Don't ask me!" she says forcefully. Then, more quietly, "To refuse to serve the powers is to become a tool of the powers. To agree to serve the powers is to become the powers. Beware the choice, beware refusing it..." Chloe frowns, looking at Gegi suspiciously. "Are you sure there's no other information you want to share?" "Don't trust me. Don't trust anyone." "That makes it rather hard to get better.." She smiles and sings quietly, "Does it get any better, can it get any worse? Does it go on forever, is it over tonight..." 8 "The bad seems good?" Chloe bites her lip for a moment. "That would mean Gegi and Garret and Jean and that little one..." "That's just my speculation, now! Although I don't know Jean, neither Garret nor Gegi seem evil, exactly, and as for... scarach! What *is* that thing?" asks Astarial. She shrugs, "It's lost. It's very frightened, and very gentle, and some people want to heal it and some people want to kill it. I wanted to help, but it didn't seem like there was anything for me to do." Astarial looks at the bane some more. "More to the point, what was it? It's... had something done to it. As if it was crushed in a fist of corruption.", he says, with dawning revulsion. "He... I'm not quite sure, but it was fed on pain and made to serve the demons, I believe. But I think it saw the Garou do some dreadfully horrid things as well, or maybe they did some horrid things to him, I don't know. He's hurting a great deal, though." "I don't think it's so much evil as insane. But I still don't trust it," he says. "It's not insane. Its mind may be fractured a bit, very confused, but he well, he understands things very well, I believe." "Twisted, then. Twisted by what it has experienced." Chloe says pointedly, "And so I don't want anyone to hurt him." "I won't do anything to it unprovoked, especially as it might still find its natural self. But if it does try to harm you, it's rat-bait." "Oh, it won't harm me! I'm quite sure of that." He shakes his head. "And will you let me help you, then?" She looks at him for a long moment before replying. "I suppose if you wanted to harm me, you could have done already, right? And I don't know anyone else to prefer, and I so want to be healed..." "Well, let us try then. First, I'll need to find out exactly what she's done..." He takes out a sheet of parchment, and a quill pen, which he places on the nearest table. He then produces his lens, and affixes it in front of his left eye. "Now, could you look straight ahead for a few moments? And if you could try not to blink too often?" She does as he says, silently. Using his lens, he examines Chloe's eyes for a minute or two, making frequent notes on the parchment. Should anyone try to read them, they're actually a complex runic design based around a hexagonal layout. "May I know, sir, what you're doing?" "Ah, I think I see what's wrong! It looks as if your eyes have been altered to allow in too much light, so everything's whited out. Rather crude work, actually. And it isn't connected to the other weaving, which is what I was rather worried about. It should be simple enough to correct, at least. If I may?" "Oh yes, please do.." "Could you close your eyes for a moment? Oh, and you may feel some of the effect, but it won't hurt." Astarial covers Chloe's eyes with his right hand, takes the crystal around his neck in his left, and begins to recite a soft incantation. A faint purple light wells out from between his fingers. To Chloe, it'll tingle a bit. Chloe closes her eyes and, just for general personal security needs, raises her hand to lay on his right arm gingerly. He might feel her eyelashes fluttering on his palm when he's done. "You can open your eyes now. Are they all right now? No monsters visible?", he asks, in his best bedside manner. She opens her eyes and looks around the pub, as if taking everything in for the first time. A huge smile slowly creeps across her face. She visibly restrains herself from throwing her arms around his neck, instead just curtseying most enthusiastically, her head bowed, "Thank you, sir! It's all fixed, it's my own sight, now it is!" "Now, about the other problem..." "The darkness. I saw it. Karieta showed it to me. It's very dark right in the center of my soul, yes? What... well what can be done that's not dangerous?" "I'll be honest with you. At this point, I don't think we have any options that aren't dangerous, to some extent." "Dangerous to whom? I don't want you or the others to be harmed on account of me!" "I can only speak for myself, but I'd be a sorry excuse for a man if I failed to help you for the sake of a little danger. It's ashamed to walk among my fellows that I'd be. The House of Cyprium are called a lot of things, but none live who dare call us cowards! Besides", he says with a broad grin, "I rather like you. And if I can't risk a little harm for friendship's sake, what can I risk it for?" "You are truly an exemplary gentleman, I only hope I could do something in return someday for you." Smiling a bit, "Though, preferably, not demon battling." "If all else fails, it might be possible to unweave it with less risk, given time to study it. But there are a couple of other possibilities - if it's linked in some way to that crystal this 'lady' gave you, there's a chance that destroying the crystal might cause it to dissipate. If that doesn't work, then if a couple of the other mages in here would help, it might be possible to summon this 'lady' back here - which shouldn't be too dangerous if we erect enough wards to prevent her from using her powers - and force her to tell us how to remove it. But I'm sure that we will find a way to solve this eventually. Sure." She nods, trying to look positive. Taking out the crystal, "Would you like to study it, sir? For I fear if we destroy it, it may forever bind this to me, and then we'd have no way to summon her back for option two. Of course I fear option two as well.." "Well, that is one possibility, yes, although I'd think you'd have to use the crystal for it to trigger anything. I'd have to look at it more closely to be certain of it. I don't believe I'd be at any risk - I have, after all, considerable experience with the arcane. And I accept any risk gladly." A small smiles creeps to her lips. "You are brave as well as kind, then." "Don't give up. There's always hope, until we die." A brief smile touches his lips. "And sometimes a bit beyond." "Well, let's hope for my sake we stay before the death barrier.." "Perhaps it would be better if you weren't holding the crystal while I study it, though, in case I trigger something. Right..." Astarial concentrates for a few moments; as he does so, the crystal floats up from Chloe's hand and hangs suspended in the air in front of him... "And now for a close examination." He takes out a new sheet of parchment, replaces his lens in his eye, and begins an in-depth study of the crystal... Chloe takes a couple steps back, but tries to peer over to what he's doing. 9 The leftover hippies, The 50 ft woman : He obviously wonders what she started to say, but leaves it alone, "I wouldn't mind a flip-top head..." He looks at Bavin too, then back to Georgina, "A dangerous place to seek reassurance..." "Not reassurance. Warning and reminders. To stop saying names that shouldn't be said here. And 'Ere' works as well for both of them..." He nods, suddenly serious, "You're probably right... You probably need to watch yourself even more than me." "I never could keep my mouth shut." She smiles, and the smile wobbles a little. "Especially since Allen died, really. Telling the truth and be dashed with secrets. Hiding does little good..." She casts an annoyed glance at the wall. "I am -not- a rock." Pain. That by which we know we live. Fear-grief-pain. Always. Sometimes more anger than fear, sometimes more love than grief. Suffering from wounds that have yet to be inflicted. He jests at scars. Reality carved from his own flesh; is it any wonder it hurts when we move? So tired. Sick at heart. "Diane Duane. The author." She pauses. "Selfish, yes, but not all cold... I did love them. Even the ones I destroyed. And I always tried to heal them. It saddened me to create a plague I couldn't cure... but I still did it." She shakes her head. He nods sadly, "I feel the same way about the fae..." "You made the fae?" "Uh?", he blinks, half-shaking out of reverie, "Oh, not _just_ me...", still distracted, talking more to self than someone else, "We had such good intentions..." "We changed their names... Raised them up and woke them from sleep... We gave them a purpose, to inspire humanity, to teach them of the magic in all the world, in every waking moment, to teach them to be free..." "That was always Christine's crisis... if you raise all to be free, then only madness ensues, the center cannot hold, and all destroys itself, but if you leave structure in place, leave the order, leave the command, then you betray yourself and everyone else, you betray freedom... and who loved the masses more? I, who can barely stand the mindless ones but would gladly take control of them, keep them safe, or she, who would put a sword in every hand and teach them all to fight, regardless of how unworthy of her they might be... and leave them broken and bleeding in the end." "She -is- Sabbat, but Wyld, not Wyrm... servant to the darker side of the Goddess. And who's to say who is right?" A sudden painful snort of a laugh ripples through his frame, "God didn't like us playing with his work... So he showed us up, he did it one better... He took the same materials we had taken and he molded and shaped them, created keepers, shepherds, to watch over the world, over humanity, to keep them in line, to keep _our_ creations from them...", he looks around, glance not slower at a single member of the gathered Garou, "To stop us ever doing the same again, to stop anyone `corrupting' his `perfect' little world ever again..." "What's the point of having it if nothing changes?" He looks around, forlornly seeking, "I thought I was doing the right thing...", Michael shakes his head and laughs, "You think it would've been enough, wouldn't you? But I couldn't stop... I had to take it one step further, my infernal curiosity... "Infernal curiosity," she echoes quietly, looking at the burnt spot on the floor. "I thought if we could raise the animals and the very stones themselves to such heights, what more could we do with humanity itself taking a more direct hand..." "So...", his voice falters, it almost starts to echo itself, and the tears have finally worked their way to his eyes, "So there was a woman I'd fascinated... I lay with her and she conceived... I wasn't the only one... Nor was she... And our children grew in knowledge and beauty and stature... Mighty men and women of renown," his smile twists, "You always knew when a child o' mine walked in the door..." He holds his hands up in despair, "But it all went wrong... Terribly wrong... Instead of teaching humans freedom, the humans taught them order, and the end result was chaos... God destroyed the world." Michael stares listlessly ahead. "There are reasons I don't look too hard for answers," Gegi says quietly, more to herself. She nods, having suspected as much before but chosen to answer otherwise. "Love. Healing. Help." Michael smiles, "I think you've got plenty to give then..." She shakes her head. "Love? I don't know if I can. Healing? I couldn't. Help? How?" He smiles, "See, you've got the hang of it already!", he speaks softly serious, "Hold onto your doubt, it makes you whole... You'll know what to do when the time comes." "But I didn't. -She died anyway-. I did nothing. Maybe I can't love... maybe I only know how to own, and to destroy. If I can't hurt them I have to hurt myself. What good am I? I am -not- a good person..." "There's no such thing. Only evil men and deluded fools. At least try and be an evil man with good intentions... Woman, even. As long as you keep questioning you'll be just fine.", he reassures. She shakes her head. "If you fear your madness then you must be sane, and believing that sanity, being mad, and desperate in your darkness saved, and believing in salvation damned.. what's the point? It's enough to make one switch over to predestination... then it's no longer your fault." "Because the mind can't handle infinity... the very large space makes a better impression of it, and millenia upon millenia a better impression of eternity, because in the real thing, you couldn't really care..." "If there ever was infinity, someone broke it into little bits to make the world." "And still more remains, and always will." "And as for what he thinks... He thinks he's making all this up. He thinks it's all theoretical and mildly amusing." "No." "Yes." "It's not amusing. He knows that. Fascinating, more. Little serpents circling the candle flame, tongues darting, mesmerized. Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn." "Swallowing its tail... Appropriate... Like killing your parents... Disbelieving the lie..." "I'm doomed, you know. Destiny." "He's got another think coming." "No." "Yes." "You should not. Do not take him." More quietly, "I'd offer you me, but I think she has enough trouble at the moment, what with trying to save the universe and all." He sighs and crumples, "I'm not going to do it... Not yet... Not now... I'll let my curiosity drag me by the nose just a little longer..." She echoes the sigh, but her attention is elsewhere. 10 "Considering how much warning -I- was given, and how seriously my words were taken, when I didn't even know what I was saying... it's still a choice. "It may well be *a* choice. But is it *her* choice? An oath extracted under duress does not bind, nor one given unknowing or by trickery." She gestures to herself and Garret. "It binds." "Only if you insist on being bound by it - at least in Garret's case, I'd say he bound himself to his oath, out of his own beliefs." She laughs. "And me? I didn't have any idea what was going on. I didn't know I was promising anything. I didn't even know what the words meant. At all. Not 'I wasn't sure exactly what the consequences of this promise would be', but 'I was reciting gibberish that I was told to.' And for -that- I get a demon in my head and a permanent taint on my soul. And they didn't even give me anything in exchange." "In the *demon's* opinion, you might have been bound to fulfil the oath. But from *your* perspective? What binds us to oaths but ourselves or the laws we make?" "From my perspective, no, it wasn't fair, it shoudn't have done anything to me, I shouldn't be bound. But the elf -said- my aura was tainted... well, look for yourself." "Unless they used some type of actual arcane binding, of course, but that's another issue altogether..." "And I'd have no idea." She looks uncomfortable. "Although they -did- say that by joining the circle I bound myself to them, and if ever I broke that circle, which I did, by running away, I would be cursed with great misfortune..." They discuss her possible lack of future. "Better to know, than not to know. At least that way, you can prepare; even if all you can find out is the time it's supposed to happen, you can, say, pick that time to tour the five-mile-deep top-security bunkers..." "Come, come, you're not playing nice with fate... "Fate doesn't play nice with me. I return the favour." "You can't win. There's really little sense in fighting it. If you're destined to be incinerated by a random blast of cosmic energy, all that approach would do would be to insure that a lot of nice security bunkers got blasted as well..." "It depends on the awaiting nasty fate, I suppose. If I was destined to be incinerated by a random blast of cosmic energy, if such things happen 'round here, I'd make *damn* sure that at the appropriate time I was encased in energy fields stacked somewhere over the six-hundredth power. Divinations and raw cunning have kept me alive so far. It's not as if the future is immutable, after all..." "Isn't it? Not from our perspective, certainly... but Out There... it's all already over. It doesn't mean you don't fight, but really, sometimes, the harder you try to resist it the more inevitable you make it." "I'd disagree with you there. Rather, the more inevitable you consider it, the less hard you try to resist it. Believe something is inevitable, and you yourself will cause it to happen." "It's a matter of not thinking about it. If you think about it all the time and put all of your energy into avoiding it, you're practically -begging- fate to smack you across the head. Murphy's law. If you just go on with your life and don't -worry- about it, then maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't, but at least you had a life in the meantime. You're better off just accepting it. And trying to keep innocents out of the line of fire." She seems rather calm about the whole thing. "*Accepting* it? If I was fated to die for some grand purpose, then perhaps. But if fate has planned that I should die meaninglessly for no good reason, then fate can go drown itself!" "Nothing's meaningless. Either I die, or I'm damned. I'm not sure how much it matters." "Quite a lot, at least as far as you're concerned. As much, as far as those others who might die or be damned with you are concerned." "As I said, I don't intend on pulling anyone else down with me." "Not to mention your future selves. For their sake, if not for your own, *fight* *it*!" She sighs. "I try. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. I'm a little bipolar, you see... there's all this energy bound up in me, and sometimes it turns into anger and gives me strength and I can take on the world, and sometimes it turns into fear and curls up inside of me and leaves me helpless." He does his best to look sympathetic. he's not very good at it, but he tries anyway. "As long as you try, that's the important thing. It's giving up that's fatal." She smiles. "Fatal? Really? I wouldn't say that... I've taken all the options. I've given in. I've gone over. I've resisted. I've chosen to destroy myself rather than risk harm to others. I've tried them all. And yet I always end up back in the middle again, back with the choices looming, never able to escape, but never quite able to end the cycle. It's all just preparation for some final, more binding resolution, I suppose..." 11 Chloe is discussing her situation with Kao-liang. He shrugs again. "Up to you. Like I said, it's your choice. And there are other people you could ask too. Although you might want to think carefully about asking Gegi, since she seems to be the reason that lady came in. Gegi overhears. "It was -Chloe- she went after, not me..." "Or it just might be, that being the suspicious bastard I am, I'm rather cautious of people who say they didn't know what they were doing when they summoned a demon and didn't mean it, they were just being friends, especially if black magicians start following them around, but it's someone else and not them that gets the shaft. Assuming of course that the various magicians in this place are correct when they say that the lady was a black magician of some kind." "I -told- you, they were a cult, they had me alone in New York with no real way to contact anyone, if I didn't do what they said they might have sacrificed me or something... I'm not a fighter, I wasn't a mage, I don't see what option I had but to play along until I had a chance to escape. Maybe it's been too long since you were mortal for you to remember what it feels like to be helpless. I did -not- want to end up the virgin on the altar, okay?" A rather ironic twist to his mouth, he answers, with a bit of black humor, "Do you really think being a vampire means I don't know what it's like to be helpless? Although there is a reason shinobi in modern Japanese can translate to English as spy, sneak thief, or a surreptitious visit to a house of ill repute, so I might not qualify in some respects." "You're near-immortal, probably a trained warrior, and, I assume, possessed of -far- more powerful arcane disciplines than I am now, and what I am now is vastly more able than what I was then... I'm not saying you never were, I'm just saying that you're not now." "A few new powers, and a few new vulnerabilites, that I don't intend to expound upon," he says wryly. She tries to regain some composure. "They told me to recite some chants. And I had never seen real magick then, the big stuff, the sort of thing that changes reality visibly. I didn't believe. I thought they were just a little crazy. But just in case I was trying to shield anyway... I tried. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know about the demon until it took me over." "I -loved- him! Do you think I would willingly have let anything into me that might hurt him?" Kao-liang shrugs, then starts enumerating a few points, "I don't know much about human telepaths, so I don't know how hard it is to figure out someone's true intentions. Though any group that summons demons, with malice aforethought if you believed that they would sacrifice you if you didn't go along with them, I would think that they would give most telepaths the creeps. And from what I remember, they didn't kidnap you to go to New York." "It's a matter of groups within groups. My group, my friends, the ones I knew from Duke, were a lot like me. None of them gave off evil vibes. We were just all a little weird. I don't think any of them was really evil. There was some big meeting being called in New York, though, you see. There were other groups in that warehouse besides the people I knew. And yes, when the leader-type man picked me up at the club, he did have an aura of nasty power about him. That's why I figured he was the right one to go with if I was looking for the demon's helpers. I thought Jay could just track me mentally if I found their hideout. I didn't know about his range limitations. I knew I was getting myself into a dangerous situation at that point. I just... thought it would work out. I'm a lucky person." "Odd definition of lucky." "Strange luck. My life is filled with unbelievable coincidences. It's not all good, but I've lived through it so far" "As to loving someone," he looks expressionlessly at her, "I think you have something of a martyr complex. If you could see sacrificing yourself by letting the demon possess you so your lover isn't so possessed, then what? And I start wondering why one would be friends with demon-summoners in the first place." "Because I didn't know... we were just goths, we thought vampires were cool, it was all just a game, you know? It was only a game..." "Yes, your contention that you are the only real person in here, since everyone else is simply the figment of someone's imagination." 12 Astarial is examining the crystal and sketching a pattern of hexagonal runes again, interspersed with a few lines and notes in a cursive script. "Well, here's what I've worked out about it - Chloe, while all this may sound terribly technical, I'm sure you'll be able to follow it, if you want, but please feel free to question me." He points at his diagram, which, at the left hand side of the sheet, has a sun-like symbol at the top, a threefold pattern of runes below it, and an outline of a person at the bottom, with a large arrow curving through the rune-pattern. All of these are in black. "As far as I can tell, the weaving is fueling itself out of Chloe's own Flow, here" - blue line running from the top of the large arrow - "and then passes into this effect" - cluster of blue runes amid one lobe of the threefold pattern - "twined into her Mind, where the trigger is. Then, it passes into the crystal" - double blue line to other side of sheet, where there's a sketch of the crystal surrounded by blue runes, with plenty of notes attached - "and then it seems to run back into her," - double line, and clusters of blue runes around the sun-symbol, and the top lobe of the threefold pattern - "where there's a complex effect - using what I'd call Prime, Spirit and Entropy - woven around her soul, and the pattern of her fate. At a guess, activating it will awaken her latent Talent, but what else it might do, I don't know." "Are there any ways other than unweaving to rid my mind and soul of all those demon doings?" "The crystal itself is another story" - gestures at the sketch and its clusters of runes - "it certainly has a lot of echoes in it. One of them that I pick up when I scan it for mental impressions is the phrase 'I bind myself to thee...', which leads me to think that it might be a soultrap, or some other such thing. And I believe it's some sort of correspondence-link as well, although to what, I'm not certain." "Correspondence-link... that sounds about right if what she said about it bringing her back here is true. Or does that mean that she could use this as a, well like a homing beacon, and find me wherever I may go to?" She frowns and rubs her head. "Either, or possibly both. There's a principle in the Art we call the Law of Contagion - once together, always together. While this crystal exists, she can sense through it, or affect it quite easily. Fortunately for us, however, the Law cuts both ways. While *we* have the crystal, we can find and affect *her* through it just as easily. That's about all I know. What have I missed?" "Motivation! I may not be religious, but it's not as if I sacrifice small animals or drink blood. And, though I understand how a simple, nice girl is a good catch for a demon, I don't really see what kind of power I could yield, what kind of reward I could bring to her masters. And if out there, everyone jumps on anyone with a bit of taint, it seems rather like a waste of time to taint someone who isn't much of a fighter." "I have rather been concentrating on the practicalities of removing this weaving, haven't I?" "It's just that 'why' can often be useful." "Well, now, perhaps I can be of some assistance in discovering these things. My House's talent is divination, after all. If you could tell me what you do know, or suspect, there are a few means I can use to try to find out more." Astarial rummages in an inside pocket for a few moments, eventually producing a small mirror, about twelve inches on a side. It's not a glass mirror; it's made of a polished, slightly curved sheet of some silvery substance, but it doesn't have the look of metal. He hands the mirror to Chloe. "This might be a good first step. Could you look into the mirror, and envision this 'lady', until an image of her forms in it? Hopefully, I'll be able to use that to produce an image of the events that occurred when she was here. See if there were any clues, that sort of thing." Chloe nods. "She walked in, and then a couple of her split, as people seem to do in here. One came to me, and..." she raises her chin up, her voice suddenly sounding a bit mesmerized, "she made, well very gently, made me look at her. And didn't say anything for a moment. Her eyes," she focuses hard on the mirror, "black and then silver and then blue. But, they sort of were _everything_, _everywhere_, so even if I could've looked away, there was nowhere else to look. So perhaps her witchery required that I look at her." "As for theories, I can hardly imagine anything. Like I said, well like I said Mauritz said, a nice girl would be a valuable catch for a demon, maybe worth a promotion with the head demon. Worm man, right? Or perhaps she's just a horrible sadist, thriving on pain and fear, and setup all these situations that would cause such things. Or maybe she's insane. Or maybe I'm insane and none of this is truly happening.." She reconsiders her words and frowns. "I'm not being very helpful, am I?" "And, while were on missing pieces, did she really know me when I was little? How did she know Gegi and Garret? Why couldn't I look away?" "She knew you when you were little, and knew Gegi and Garret as well? It seems there's quite a lot about this visitation I was unaware of, even accounting for it having occurred before I arrived." "Perhaps it would be best if you were to tell me what happened while she was here, from the beginning." "Well she said to me something along the lines of 'We were all so worried about you, little one. But you were so brave', which made me think she knew me when I was a child. I had something of an... untraditional upbringing? Well, actually quite traditional, but not in that sense.." she shakes her head, switching back to the original train of thought. "But I don't remember her at all." 13 Gegi shivers. "Nephandi. Somehow I get the unfortunate feeling that I'm going to be seeing more of them." *Very* quietly, Shane adds, "Falling is always a danger." Quietly, in a tone that suggests she knows perfectly well what the word means, "Falling?" "Never get too sure of yourself, never convince yourself that you're doing the right thing, and never forget about the sleepers." She smiles a bit. "Sure of myself? Me?" "Just don't forget." Astarial and Gegi discuss her future. "Either I die, or I'm damned. I'm not sure how much it matters." "Quite a lot, at least as far as you're concerned. As much, as far as those others who might die or be damned with you are concerned." "As I said, I don't intend on pulling anyone else down with me." "You may not intend it, but how can you be sure of it? And if you're damned, how can you be sure you'd care?" Quick as a wink, she flashes from calm depression to anger. "Be -sure-? How the hell am I supposed to be sure? I do the best I can! I'd give my life to save another in a second, and you know it! What am I supposed to do? Go hide in a cave somewhere where no one can see me or find me or worry about me so that I won't be a danger to anyone else? Because I can, if that's what you all want me to do... I -will not- burden you with my existence if you don't want me to." Her voice calms a little. "Care? Of course I care. It's what I do, what I am. I care too much...." 14 Astarial and Gegi discuss magickal methods, or his, at least, which she doesn't seem to like. "It works here for me, therefore it should work here; and there it works for humans who are lucky enough to have the talent, which you are; therefore it should work for you. Theoretically. And if it doesn't it will at least have been an interesting experiment." "You and your experiments," she says with a smile. "How much do you know about your magick, then?" "Urk. Theory, you mean? Well. Um. Everyone's a psychic, you see. Minds are powerful things that shape the reality around them. Rather like the way souls bend light - auras - but I'm not too good at seeing them. Just the brightness, not the colors." Astarial nods. "That's pretty much the same theory as we use at base, although ours elaborates a bit more on the mechanism that the mind uses to interact with reality. Flows reacting on flows, and so forth. If you'd be interested?" She nods. "I know in mage theory there's something called prime, but I don't really know what it is... Anyway, so everyone has power. But it's difficult, because you spend your whole life being told that you can't do that, and you're crazy to believe, and so on. So you don't dare try very hard. Just little things. Coincidence. Things that almost fit in. And you get a reputation for being weird, and people become more willing to accept strange happenings around you, and it gets easier." "Coincidence? Disguising weavings to look as if they were coincidences, do you mean? Or causing coincidences to happen by twisting chance?" "A little of both. But you never dare try too hard, push too far, for fear that it was all -just- concidence, really, for fear that if you look too far inside yourself, you'll find that nothing's there..." He looks at her with the vaguely puzzled expression of someone who wouldn't recognize self-doubt if it came up and kicked him. She has the briefly mischievous thought of showing him exactly how it feels, but manages to stifle it... (The difficulties of being a broadcaster.) "Really? I would have thought that a bit difficult - after all, when you exert enough will to channel a weave, you *know*." "When you're hiding everything you do behind the mask of coincidence, there come times when you're not sure... especially when you're more than a little crazy to begin with. When your reality doesn't always seem to line up with what everyone else is experiencing... you never know. So everything was doubt. And then I saw a demon. And then I could fly. And I met gods, and floated around in the astral plane, and had fireballs thrown at me, and fell in love, and wandered into my old fantasies, and had my faith broken, and lost -everything-... and then I was touched by the light, and I won everything back again." "I don't know whether humans age at the same rate here as in my reality - though it would seem likely - but if so, that's one impressive tally of experiences. Someone up there doesn't like you. Or does like you. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference." "More to the point, two different someones like me... and keep preparing me for the Choice." She pauses. "Although that probably doesn't apply anymore. That would be in her department now. Who knows what my fate is..." He looks puzzled. "Her? Who? And which someones?" "Eh. Sorry. Remember what I said about having been more real? I came out of another universe, and not all of me made it in here, so I was sort of a projection of my other self, who was still in her world... but with a little help from Bavin and Garret and one of the Powers of the other side we managed to pull me loose and create me as an independent entity, with my own destiny. So she - the other me - is still out there. Anyway, -her- destiny seemed to be forever balanced between the powers of darkness and light, because she's supposed to decide the fate of the universe someday, whether or not it's worth all the pain it causes, whether it should continue or just put us all out of our misery. This being a different reality, I don't know if it would be affected." "So what sorts of things could you do, then, with your gifts?" "Knowing what people were thinking and feeling. Contacting other minds at a distance. Weird twists of entropy. I did storms sometimes, too..." "Hmm. Mind and Entropy. Perhaps Forces, but perhaps not..." "Probably not. I can't start fires or anything." "Storms using Entropy. Well, that's an interesting approach, but a little random for my taste. How much control did you have over these storms?" "Control?" She laughs. "Well, I could make them strengthen or weaken, and I never got killed by them. But I couldn't direct a lightning bolt to go over -there-, nor could I convince a tornado to safely pick me up and fly me off without hurting anything else." "And of all the dozens of specialties, what sort of areas would you be interested in?" "Heh. What sort of options are there?" "I like what I do, I'd like to be better at them. Mind magick, tricks of chance, weather... healing would be nice, I'm not very good at that yet. I can make things stop hurting, but I can't fix them..." "Weatherworking, hmm. I don't know if I could show you that. Your technique seems to use Entropic effects, and the weatherworking I know uses manipulation of the forces in the atmohydrosphere." "Well, it would be nice to learn Forces, even a little... TK has never been my thing but being able to specifically apply a little push might be easier than having to twist chance and hope that it works out right." "Healing's trickier, as with the areas you seem to know it's not that possible. Mind isn't that much good for actual healing effect, as you've found out, and while it might be possible to do something with Entropy, it's not something I'd care to chance. I could show you a few elementary healing rotes, see if you could pick them up..." "Sure. I can accelerate my own healing processes... or make myself sick... and I -might- be able to strengthen plants a little, but I can't do much for other people yet. And I want to." 15 Astarial and Gegi discuss magickal discipline versus emotive force. "But that's not really the point, is it? Assuming that their methodology is fairly close to mine, which seems likely from the description. Emotion is the driving force behind the will that creates the power, but while any neophyte can cause *something* to happen merely by force of emotion-driven will, the formula and ritual serves several valuable purposes. Firstly, of course, it imparts discipline to the mage. It helps eliminate the uncertainty behind pure will-fueled magery - all those nasty little side-effects that can happen because your subconscious has twisted what your conscious mind intends." She smiles. "Sometimes my subconscious is wiser than I... or seems to have a better idea of what's really going on, anyway..." "Subconsciouses are tricky things. Mainly, they often do things that are... less than prudent. Much as my subconscious may tell me that I want to kill, maim, rip, shred, and destroy some individual for some reason, most of the time there is some reason why my more rational conscious will tell me that it's not a good idea - such as it being likely to get me killed myself. These are not good times to have your subconscious doing things with your Talent that the rest of you doesn't intend." "Well, admittedly, sometimes I've had some strange violent urges bubbling up from who-knows-where, instructing me to do crazy things... but those are only whispers, not strong, not like the other stuff. Usually when the Other takes over, she gets me out of trouble... leads me to places I need to be, stuff like that. She helps me. And everything works out. I'm a very lucky person..." "Secondly, ritual allows you to use your talent when you *aren't* full of emotion-fuelled will. That works fine when you're furious, or full of some other passion, but when you're cold, wet, scared as hell and too exhausted to be enraged, having ritual formula to rely on is damned useful. That's one of the first parts of our training - to discipline oneself to be able to produce one's normal repertoire without a great backing of will, so that you're never caught out that way. It's pretty well essential, especially if other people are counting on you to do your part." "And it's certainly not dangerous to rely on per se, although it might not be too healthy to use it for trivial things if another mage is scanning for your signature. I mean, the entire technology of the Empire is built around the use of magic; we light our cities, heat our homes, clothe and entertain ourselves, travel, communicate, work and play using it. It's never done anyone any harm to do so that I've ever heard of. Just look at that drying charm I gave you. Or this robe I wear, with what amounts to a pocket realm sown into its fabric." "Actually, only about half of my training involved learning the assorted rules and formulae. There's also a lot of peripheral learning - studying the physical laws, for example, to learn how best to manipulate them by arcane means, and learning our rune-symbols for the representation of weaves and patterns in a written form. But that aside, there *is* a lot of practical work - practising weaving, tests on finding the best solution to set problems, challenges to develop your own weavings, and plain time set aside to stretch your talents in your own way, albeit under supervision." "So the ritual is helpful when you run out of emotion. For that matter, the same applies if you're just tired, and don't want to have to summon up a whirl of emotion just to light the fire, fetch your slippers, and create a bedtime glass of brandy because you forgot to buy any." "Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, it serves to prevent you from making any of the many, many potentially fatal mistakes. Especially with the more unforgiving Spheres - Prime, Entropy, Forces, Life - even Spirit - there's only one small error between being a mage and being a wraith asking 'What happened then?'. Knowing that thousands of mages before you have used the same formula successfully is good; knowing from theory that it will work properly is excellent." "Fourthly, of course, there's the energy-efficiency - or, should I say, Prime-efficiency - issue. Ad-hoc willworking is usually hopelessly inefficient; the flows bleed and dissipate turbulently, squandering their power. They usually require much more effort for the same result. Now the time-tested and carefully advanced techniques embodied in formula and ritual have been devised and pared down over generations to not waste the least jot of Prime. In a life-and-death situation, those savings can make the difference." "At least to us, the rules and equations - and other such things - *are* important, at least learning the basics. As for why, well, take Elavar Lokassiales. He was a mage who lived over two millenia ago, an astronomer, and he wrote what is still the *definitive* work on magics dealing with light. No-one can go back and talk to him now, but anyone who needs information on light can go to any library and read his work, along with exacting details of the weavings he devised, formulae to adjust them to the situation, and suggestions on how best to modify or incorporate them. That's the great use of them. Building on the works of mages past." "But with a last point to the value of our practices, I might point out that if something goes horribly wrong with a ritual, there're worse things to be holding that six feet of silver-shod oak and a razor-sharpened ceremonial sword, no?" She hefts the cane with a smile. "I did squish a minor demon with it, after all..." 16 After Simon took Gegi up on the request for fencing lessons, she and Garret began discussing other weaponry. "I'd like to learn with a staff at some point... I don't know. My aim isn't so bad, I'd probably be a better shot -throwing- things then attempting a hand-to-hand combat... but throwing knives isn't my style." "What about other thrown weapons? Or firearms? Knives are more reliable than guns, though, particualrly when you're dealing with other wizards." She winces a bit at the mention of guns, looking down and moving her left foot to reassure herself that it's still there. "It still hurts to think about it... the problem that I have with guns and throwing knives is that it seems it would be hard to control how much damage you do. You can't subdue someone with a thrown blade... well, I suppose if you're really good, you could try to pin them to something, but... and guns just seem so impersonal. And deadly." She looks up, eyes sad. "I don't -want- to hurt anyone! A sword, a staff, that's self-defense, you parry, you fight til surrender, you can fight just for competition, it's not... weapons that are purely offensive are just..." "Useful." He shrugs. "Remember who you're talking to. I don't think death is an evil thing, and while I'm a far cry from the homicidal maniac some of the other traditions sometimes paint me as, I do kill." "Death isn't so evil. It's just the pain. Which, I suppose, might be an argument for me towards guns... kill faster, less suffering. My prime is empathy, after all... other people's pain bleeds into me. So I do my best to lessen it." "I try to make it quick even if I can't make it painless, but I do it. I know you don't want to hurt anyone, but in the world you now inhabit, it's sometimes a sad fact of life. More than likely, you *will* find yourself in a situation where it's you or the other person, and you can't run away." She shakes her head. "I know. Even if I really don't want to be using a gun, Mother always said I should at least learn how to operate one... for my own safety. I've never even held one." Her expression hardens a little. "If I had to hurt, had to kill, I'd want it to be with a knife in my hand, everything at my command, under my control. Not at a distance." "The need to be in complete control is something that's essentially an illusion. How much control do you have over a sword blade once you've swung it? Over a punch once you've thrown it? To take action of any sort is to give up a certain amount of control. And taking action is something you are eventually going to have to do." He smiles. "Just think about it, hey? I'm not your daddy and I'm not going to start telling you how to live your life. I'm just offering options." She smiles. "I'd be happy to show you some pointers, if you want. Just don't expect me to teach you to fight fair." "Define fair..." He smiles. "I use any and every opening I'm presented with. If my enemy turns his back on me, I strike. Combat is not about style or presentation. If you decide you need to kill an enemy, strike as swiftly and silently as you can, and hopefully, he'll be down before he even knows what's going on. Not very honorable, but it's very practical." "And that I can understand." She shrugs. "I'd really rather not be in a situation where I'd have to fight, or need to kill, but we can't guarantee the future... if I have one." "Exactly. Depending on where you go, your combat skills become more or less valuable. If you joined us, you'd be given the same sort of training I was...and you'd use it. With the others, it really varies. Some of the Verbena never touch an athame except to use it in rituals. But even they understand that when a HIT Mark bashes down your door, you had *better* know how to defend yourself." 17 Astarial is speaking with Garret. At this point, he glances over at another copy of himself, who is talking to a Chloe and a Gegi. The other copy looks at him for a few moments before turning back to its conversation, and he nods in return. "I'm sorry to have to ask this, but... well, I'm trying to help Chloe with ridding herself of what looks like a demonic weaving attached to her soul, inflicted by some 'lady' who was here before I arrived. I gather that she seemed to know you and Gegi? And know things about your past?" "I think so," he says grimly. "Her arrival sort of precipitated this whole Astaaroth thing. Perhaps they were working together." Gegi looks at Astarial. "When I was pulled through, made real here, recreated, like I told you. It was right then that the rift to Garret opened." Garret nods slightly. "I think your thread was anchoring me. When it snapped..." "But Astaaroth failed..." "In a sense. But he also succeeded." "Could you tell me what happened? And is there anything else you could tell me about her? I don't *want* to pry into personal matters, but anything you could tell me would be a great help." He looks thoughtful. "She frightened me. That is unusual. She knew about my deal with Astaaroth, she must have, despite the fact that in twenty years, no-one else has been able to pick up on it, including me. She called Chloe and Gegi her children, and asked that I look after them. She knew things about all of us that we didn't know ourselves." "She gave us to you to be protected..." says Gegi quietly. Garret shakes his head, his remaining eye dark. "That is all I know. She is tainted with infernal energy, but what she truly is, I cannot say, nor do I know how she knew the things she did, or how she managed to frighten me so badly." Gegi looks at Garret, Rhiannon, and Chloe. "She knew just what to say to bring pain, to bring fear." 18 "I start wondering why one would be friends with demon-summoners in the first place," says Kao-Liang. "Because I didn't know... we were just goths, we thought vampires were cool, it was all just a game, you know? It was only a game..." "Yes, your contention that you are the only real person in here, since everyone else is simply the figment of someone's imagination. Now, as I don't particularly see any difference between the *realness* of me and you, so an alternative theory could be that as an untrained telepath, you were picking up on a person from another shadow whose thought patterns were exceedingly similar to yours and using her as a character in a game. Assuming that the human version of mind-reading is easier if the other's mind is similar to yours instead of wildly different of course. And if Christine was quite capable of being vehemently against mind-control, but able to control her sister anyway and use her mind-controlling abilities when she wanted to, and also to torture people using her sister's body and be able to blame it on her sister without having any idea she was doing it, or even being a bit suspicious, the question is if you have the same tendencies. Which is possibly why your repeated insistence that "It's not my fault" make me a bit more worried than usual." "I'm more Synthea than Christine. I always have been." "Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Synthea. And overhearing your stories about the Other that protects you makes me wonder exactly what this Other does when she takes over - it sounds awfully close to the Christine scenario that she simply has another personality that she allows to take over when it's convenient to go against what morals she thinks she has." "She -" she shakes her head. "I don't have another personality floating around. I'm not a schizophrenic. I don't hear voices. I just get weird thoughts sometimes. It's not another person, it's just my subconscious manifesting and it doesn't drive me to amoral acts. It just offers me information. When I get violent - and I admit that I have violent fits sometimes - that comes from the bipolar problem. I'm somewhat manic-depressive. I can get a little crazy. But that feels entirely different from the weird subconscious promptings. And passion and manic-depression were Syn's derangements, not Christine's." "But of course I'm going to share some traits with both of them. They come from me. But I'm not the confident killer and charismatic leader. I'm the lonely girl snatched from a life she hated and put into a magickal world filled with uncertainties, trying desperately to help and be useful, but failing and always afraid, loving but finding herself increasingly disliked by those she wants so much to please. I am Synthea." He shrugs, "One possible scenario, and one of the worst ones, of course. It's equally possible that you simply had a run of bad luck, worse friends, and are currently wondering what weaknesses you have that made you so vulnerable." She looks at Rhi. "Some of us just have very bad luck where these things are concerned." "Humans are amazingly bad at calculating probabilities and tend to assume that it's something they did that was responsible for their luck, even when it wasn't. Or some Nephandi babbled a prophecy that you were going to destroy their influence on earth, so they've been desperately trying to derail that prophecy during this time. And so they tried a recruiting, a killing, and then an attempt to get the reflexive types to kill you for them by acting like you're a big honcho to demons when that didn't work." "I don't know what's going on. But I don't want to hurt anyone." "Does your Other? Or do you know, and more importantly, do you really want to find out?" "Know what's going on, or want to hurt anyone? I don't know what I want right now" 19 "I suppose that might be a reason to use the guns - kill faster, less suffering," says Gegi. "Actually, depending on the type of gun, they can be more painful and messy than a knife. I find the quickest, simplest, least painful way to kill someone is to shatter the cervical vertebrae, usually by twisting the neck violently. The problem is, sometimes I can't get that close or I can't get a handhold. You can kill very quickly by thrusting a knife under the ribs and puncturing a lung, it guarantees they won't scream, and it's pretty quick." He stops suddenly. "I'm sorry, that probably sounded very unnerving, didn't it?" She smiles, not seeming bothered in the least. "It's simply information. It doesn't affect me in the same way as the experience." Wisely, she is not allowing her empathic senses anywhere near him. "Don't forget knives," a nearby woman in a white labcoat points out. Garret sighs. "Well, you know what they say about people who live by the sword." She points a finger under her chin. "If you have a really long knife, this isn't too bad an approach. Right up through the tongue and into the brain or the back of the neck. Obviously it's not much use in a fight, but it works fine for ambush. And there are ways you can use it if someone's close in behind you, but then the knife has to be longer than your forearm." "If I can get that close, I'd just as soon use my hands. I'm no slouch at knife-fighting, but my real talent lies in hand-to-hand combat. I've studied akido, capoeira, and various other fighting styles, and I feel like I have an edge when using my body as a weapon. Plus which, I've got more control that way. If I don't want to hurt someone, I can do a foot sweep or a hold or a joint lock, and I don't have so many non-lethal options with a knife." Kao-liang, nearby, shrugs. "You haven't pointed out the advantages of piano wire garrottes, fun with poison, the old "drop a piano on someone as they walk under it" trick, persuading Elmer Fudd that your enemy is a devilbunny in disguise, that thing the KGB is supposed to do with umbrella tips, swindling the Mafia out of a few million dollars and making it look like he was responsible, or the old standby of yelling loudly that he's the taxman who's going to audit them in front of an armed militia. And ignoring violence doesn't make it go away, much as I'd prefer that. At least, if you give her some of your favorites, she can think of a counter to them before it's a matter of life and death." Garret seems boggled by this recitation. "Okay, that was more disturbing. Have you ever really killed someone by dropping a piano on their head? Poison I have problems with, it's too easy for someone else to get it by mistake, and piano wire is useful, but I'd rather make it as quick as possible. Although the swindling the Mafia thing is a tactic the Syndicate and the New World Order use on us a lot. Don't use credit cards, or checks, or anything that can be traced, unless you're very good with hiding finances or hacking." "Have I caused death by dropped piano? Actually, no, but I think the theory would be sound if you wanted to extend it to killing. It's just that both Tzimisce in zulo and wolf-men are hard to kill. Though dropping a piano on their heads does distract them nicely and give you a head start, even if the piano doesn't do a thing towards soothing the savage beast, in my experience." Struck by an idea, he adds thoughtfully, "Though maybe if I used a Boesendorfer instead of an upright it would work?" "How in the name of Shiva are you going to carry a grand piano to drop on someone's head? They tend to be a bit heavy and conspicuous. Not to mention how you're going to get them to stand still while you lug it up fifteen flights of stairs and push it out a window." Gegi points out, "Yes, well, if you're dealing with the right people, death by unexplainable falling piano might be coincidental. Same with runaway boulders. Rogue elephants are rarer, though." She grins and somewhat quotes, "Being tragically crushed to death by rogue elephants is catching. You can even die of it in bed." Kao-liang drifts back upon the topic. "And ignoring violence doesn't make it go away, much as I'd prefer that. At least, if you give her some of your favorites, she can think of a counter to them before it's a matter of life and death." Garret looks at Gegi. "Yes, it's better to know." She nods. "Even if I really don't want to be using a gun, Mother always said I should at least learn how to operate one... for my own safety. I've never even held one." He looks around. "Well, I can show you some basics of handgun safety. You game?" "Sure." He nods. "And I did promise you a trip." He gets up and stretches. "If we're going, we should be off." Garret strides quietly over to Rhiannon. "I'm going for a bit, Ke'chara. If you need me for some reason" He digs in his pocket and comes up with a polished silver disk about the size of a quarter and hands it to her. "Flip that like a coin and think of me." He smiles fondly at her. "I love you. When I get back, I want to ask you something." He gives her a quick kiss and whispers, "And I think we should do something fun when I get back, too. Way too much gloom and doom around here." With that, he turns and walks back to Gegi. "Ready? Splendid."