"That's kitsune magic for you! It just works."

"Damn I wish I was meaningfully bilingual.  It would be interesting to test saying 'the same sentence', like, introducing myself - which isn't, really, the same sentence, because languages do funny things structurally compared to eachother, I saw this fancy infographic of elements of meaning often enough that I remember it existed even now - anyway, trying that across many different base languages but in Fox, and seeing if you could tell the difference from hearing it.  Or the inverse, seeing if you could hear a sentence in Fox as-translated into different languages...  Though already based on what I know of the morphology of the closest Earth analogue of this area's native tongue I'm probably using a bunch of things that shouldn't have a meaningful translation at all.  And I'm hearing things as you speak them, so there's either mild precognition or some weird brainfuckery..."

"...Anyway."

"Actually, this might sound somewhat absurd, but if you are bilingual - have you ever remembered hearing the same speech action in Fox, in different languages?"

"I think it's partly telepathically mediated? The metaphor I hear most often is 'kitsunes' bodies are more like an embodied dream than a machine of flesh and bone'."

"Well, sure, but...  Hmm.  Is that usually a consequence of telepathy...?  I guess it makes sense."

"...But then if it is telepathic, then why is it only foxes?  What makes a fox..."

"Hihihi, because Tamamo loves foxes, of course. What Tamamo says makes a fox makes a fox."

They continue chatting pleasantly over the rest of the meal; Megi pays the lady with a silver coin and gets some copper ones as change.

The next morning, Megi accompanies a group of soldiers who march out of town to a little bit of fanfare (a few friends and family wishing good luck, mostly). They stop in at the little village Alicia first found, then continue right on past it, down to the cliffy area, then the oak groves, then the marsh, and there set up a camp on a dry-ish spot while Megi goes and checks her wards again.

From there, it's pretty boring, but Megi and many of the soldiers are happy to try and teach Alicia proper Atsosi. About a quarter of them even know how to read and write!

She'll learn some more Atsosi, sure!

They continue guarding the site, spread out to have a few people in place near a wall breach hypothetical monsters might be able to exit through, and most down the main path. They are kept busy by the guard-captain dude, felling trees and digging and creating improvised defenses.

It's pretty boring.

A week passes. News has come that a pair of earth-sorcerers will be coming to join the attack, probably in another three days.

She keeps her nose out for monsters!  And waits to see the earth sorcerers!  That seems like it might be cool!

The earth sorcerers turn out to be an extremely sappy lesbian couple, one with deeply tanned skin and some sort of Polynesian-type cast to her, and one with local features and a surprising amount of buffness. They're almost cuddling and exchange whispers and kisses in very clear PDA. They introduce themselves as Key (dark skin) and Breaker (local).

"Even for us, basement and tunnel fighting is risky..." Key complains.

"We can't just bring the whole thing down on their heads?" Breaker wonders.

Megi shakes her head. "I, and then my replacement, have to be able to access the entire structure as much as possible in order to properly consecrate and purify it. You don't have to avoid absolutely any damage, but less is better. Just collapsing it from afar would mean... At least double the chance of ambient curses forming in the surroundings for the duration, and decades of additional time before it can be purified."

"What if it's in a reparable state? Nothing inaccessible, just... Torn up a bit. These old Tirran buildings are made of cement, rock, and metal- It's usually easy enough to rip holes in the walls and floors open up more angles of attack that way, and we can try to avoid anything that's critical to the structure..."

Megi nods. "It's not whether it's intact, it's whether we can get to the seat of the curse by walking. Buried under hundreds of tons of rubble: No. Some extra wall and floor holes: Probably fine."

"Okay, so that's the general idea. Now to turn it into a detailed plan. Maybe do some drills." Breaker nods, smiling.

Key nods too, and kisses Breaker on the cheek. "I know you've all been waiting for us, but can we wait a day or two more? I'll raise a few walls out here and can manually control some mud golems that ought to be about as tough as curses. Probably beetles and ants, if they form underground. Maybe slicksters since it's nearby wetlands, too, especially if the bottom of the place has any water intrusion... Their acid spit can be a huge problem in confined areas."

Oh gods they're pretty.

"...Is the seat of the curse itself something that could be either dug for or moved?"

Megi repeats this question for everyone else, and then answers, "Hard to tell without going in there and looking for it. It's also sort of... You know how a swamp or rice paddy is kind of flooded everywhere? Or a tree branches out again and again? There's a centerpiece, a core, and that's what I would really like access to. It's probably the site of some particularly poignant tragedy, that's how things tend to turn out with structures soaked in curses. Or someone's tomb, or an old shrine of some sort. But there's plenty of ick scattered around that needs draining too, if that makes sense? Like cutting off the head of a snake except the rest of the snake is still mean and spiky, just blind now."

Key shrugs. "I know sorcery and you know curses, priestess."

Alicia nods.  "...If I'm just retreading standard procedure then my apologies, I've never done this before - but can our sorcerers make a map or a model of the underground bits from out here?  Since surely even just the walls would help, even knowing just the volumes could help...  Is 'sensing your element' something sorcerers do?"

The sorcerers shake their heads.

"No, we're too far for fine detail work. Maybe one of the Grandmasters could do something like that but you've got us Acolytes instead. Plus, the easiest way to do it would be to vibrate the structure and feel the feedback and it'd definitely wake everything up."

"Ah well.  ...No, we don't have...  Actually, maybe we could..."

"I don't really expect this to be feasible, and I don't know if it would be any better than going all seismic mapping in terms of waking things up, but I feel like I can't not mention the idea.  Or.  Well.  It's barely an idea.  But.  You can look around corners with reflective surfaces.  And that's going to fall off a bit depending on how rough the surface is, but you could probably still chain a few reflections together to get some information.  So if it's - easier for you two to levitate things at a distance rather than make a seismic map, that might get us something."

She kind of collapses into herself after saying all that, but she's gotten it out of her head, even though she feels rather like this is - well, not mansplaining, but the same amount of stupid as doing that.

"Just.  Just a thought."

Breaker grumbles.

Key says, "That... Might be worth doing if anyone has a mirror on them? Does anyone?"

Megi reluctantly appears one from... Somewhere... "I'd really rather you not break this, I'm somewhat fond of it."

Breaker says, "Maybe against a more intelligent enemy, sure, but these are low-level curses. We can't take them lightly but they are, ultimately, very straightforward. They're not going to trick us. It's a complication, another thing to keep track of- Combat is fast and confusing. Better to know exactly where you are and what you're doing, most of the time. I don't wanna do it."

Key argues, "Come on, dear, we can at least check rooms before we enter them with it. Put it on a stick. Better than stumbling in and seeing if anything leaps at us. Someone carrying a torch to cast light..."

Breaker grumbles some more.

"Any reflective surface will do, if there's any spare metal.  If you can - flatten it out really hard.  Especially if you just want to look around corners.  ...I'd feel bad if I got Megi's mirror broken."

"...psst, Megi.  If there are any useful kitsune-specific tricks you can pull off, you can pin them on me or something."

"Oh, that's a good idea, but I don't think Tamamo's blessings will be relevant here," she says in reply. "At least not those I can channel. Well... Hmm. I will be able to do some healing. If necessary. I'd really rather not have to, and it's not a guarantee, and you have to survive to be carried to me, so... Still be careful, everyone."

She nods.

...It's highly unlikely that she's going to go in there, and all, but she's keeping that in mind anyway.

There's really not all that much more to discuss. Or at least not that's worth the screen time.

The sorcerers practice with the soldiers. The buff Captain guy very artfully damns the Mayor guy with faint praise- "Willing to sacrifice funds to ensure success". The buffer sorceress, Breaker, asks if Alicia may be petted and will do that for a while if yes.

And then a troop of armored and armed men, led by the two sorcerers, goes up the hill and into the compound. There's an hour of tense waiting. At one point there's a series of faintly heard crashes, ten seconds apart.

-And then half a dozen monsters pour out of the main gate. They're horrible black masses of chitin and scale, like ink and smoke made solid, moving with startling speed and aggression.

They charge straight into Captain Yhal's sword, and those of his squad, where he was waiting at a fallback position, and are summarily cut down by a firm thicket of ten blades. It's at this point he orders a march up into the compound, to check on the progress.

Megi continues to wait outside with her, cuddling and petting anxiously.

........But in the end, there are no injuries other than minor ones. Bruises, and a cut on the arm that would have been much worse without an armguard, which Megi decides not to heal- It's not nearly critical enough and will be fine on its own.

"Oh, good. I can do my rites and then we'll be firmly done with this."

Yes, Breaker may pet her.

And - Emotional Support Fox duty is important!  (She's helping!)

"...Yeah, and thank goodness.  I hate this smell."

She doesn't rightly know what she's going to do next, but she's really done with right here unless there's Tirran artifacts in it.

There are a few metal scraps and shapes long since decayed to rusty blocks, like something out of apocalyptic sci-fi. That might have been a bed frame. That might have been a fridge or shelf or cabinet. That might have been a desk. That might have been a car, given its position in a garage-like room. Faint hints of old wood and carpet are still visible here and there.

As far as artifacts go, there are a handful of bulky cylinders that are still un-rusted and look like they might be batteries of some kind, mostly inside the wrecks of vehicles and half a dozen in a storage room. The soldiers are split between wanting one to pawn somewhere and not wanting to touch them with a ten foot pole.

There is a basement panic room with signs of old bodies that absolutely reeks of curse. The stuff here is somewhat more intact, but only somewhat. Megi shows Alicia, to help her identify keystones in the future.

She kneels, and says a long prayer lamenting the tragedy of war and death and promising the people who perished here that they can finally rest. She invokes the goddess of the Moon, of cycles, of rest.

"...Those look like some sort of power cell, from how they're being used - I don't know this stuff, really, it's all millennia older than me, but I kind of recognize the design language here, y'know?", she comments of the batteries, "but we don't really have the supporting infrastructure, I don't think - and they might be dead anyway, I think that's a thing with rechargeables.  Might be worth salvaging, but probably not really worth it for us who don't have any big Tirran machinery to power."