"That is so cool. --I can make more ash, if a bigger diamond would work better."

"I think this is a good size but it's possible I'll want a second one, I'm not sure yet, I'll figure that out while I'm cutting it." She begins to mark up the surface of the diamond with chalk to indicate where it needs to be faceted.

She makes a bigger jar with more ash just because there's no reason not to and it might help. Also she removes the block of wax and the dead worms so that she can yeet them into the void via her pocket dimension. 

Valid to yeet. Aadhya has lapidary tools in her locker; she fetches those and gets underway on the cutting. "The reason artificers don't have to learn as many languages," she says, as she gets the diamond set into appropriate clamps, "is that you can do a lot of putting intention into an artifice while you're physically assembling it without words, or with informal ones. And all the very basic making-your-tools-and-materials-do-what-you-want spells are available in basically every language. So I'm just gonna talk to this diamond here about what its job will be, and you can help if you want."

"My affinity is divinations, so I expect participating in the process to be helpful, yeah." She sits down opposite Aadhya. "Hi. I don't know if you know anything, or have any opinions, or anything, yet, but you and I are going to work together to connect with and understand some people who have been very, very not okay for a very, very long time. I realize that 'very, very not okay' is an incredible understatement, but they don't make words to describe what being inside a maw-mouth is like, really. And every one of those people has been suffering alone for a very long time. Alone, even though their bodies are mixed in with the bodies of other victims, because they can't talk to them, can't communicate with them, can't really experience them as other people and not just as a part of their suffering." 

I want to fix that, as best I'm able. By connecting with them, by communicating with them, by giving them a part of their selves capable of experiencing anything other than the horror of what's happening to them. But, also, I have some very strange powers. There's one called 'It Gets Better,' and its description is as follows: 'You're going to be okay. Your mind and body may never be perfect, but they are yours, and cannot permanently be taken from you. In time you will heal from any injury, escape any imprisonment, and recover from any trauma; maybe not in exactly the ways you hoped, but always in ways you're okay with.'"

And I have one called Cotton Candy, and its description is as follows: 'The sharp edges of the world are blunted around you. That's not to say that nothing bad can happen, but that the worst things happen a lot less often, and happy endings large and small are much easier to come by. This effect can ripple outward to improve the lives of people you've never met.'"

And I have one called I Can Help Them, and its description is as follows: 'Regardless of how lost to darkness someone is, your love can save them, if they're willing to accept it. This power will not directly alter someone's mind except to allow them to believe a true thing they couldn't have believed otherwise, or to change something that their pre-alteration and post-alteration selves would hypothetically be able to agree was good if they talked it over honestly with full access to each other's perspectives. In cases where the outcome of the hypothetical is uncertain, it will default to not making the change.' ...By 'lost to darkness,' it originally meant being a bad person, but I trust it to extend to the kind of suffering a maw-mouth produces."

And I have one called Ever Onward: 'When you reach out to someone with love in your heart, whether to redeem them or just to connect as friends or lovers, your power can spark something in them. If they choose to believe in love and kindness with you, they can draw strength from your companionship, and pass that strength on to those they spark in turn. The effects of this power are subtle, but very far-reaching. Those you uplift with it, directly and indirectly, become better both at living their own best lives and at helping others.'"

I don't know if the exact phrasings are important. The entity who gave me those powers seems like the kind of thing where the spirit of the law matters far more than the letter. But spells are specific sequences of words, often, so it might matter to you." 

I think I can save those people. But I think I will be able to save them better, and sooner, if I care not only that the incredibly bad thing is happening to someone, in general, but to these people specifically. I want to get angry on their behalf. I want to grieve for them. And for that purpose, I want to know them."

That, ultimately, is what you're here to help me with. I'm not trying to put the entire burden of this project on your metaphorical shoulders. But I think you can help."

"We can talk to people in maw-mouths," murmurs Aadhya to the diamond. "But they can't really talk back. But I think you're going to be good at letting them, aren't you? That extra push to turn it into words, whatever it is they'd have to say. And any other people who are lost and far away and we don't even know about them. Maybe people in the Void who never came back. Maybe people who disappeared when their enclave was ruined with them inside. Maybe even people who are just dead, because you're very special, aren't you? You're made of some very special stuff and you're gonna help all those people tell us whatever they have to tell us. You're gonna help."

"I have another power, The Rescuer, for helping dead people. Its description is as follows: 'If someone is dead who would want to be alive again, and you set your heart on returning them, you will find a way. It may have costs or difficulties or take a long time, but you will find it, and it will work.' I don't know if it will help with the people in maw-mouths, at all; I don't think those people are dead. But knowing people who are dead better will certainly help, with it."

And there are bad things where I'm from, too. A coffin that buries people alive, people who are cursed to drown forever--those people, too, you can help."

"And I bet you can show us where they are, too, if they don't know, because that's still something about them, isn't it? How to get to wherever they are..."

The two of them continue on in this manner, alternating telling the stone things about its future, for as long as the stint in the workshop continues. 

Eventually Aadhya puts it away. "I'm thinking I embed it in a mirror frame, I'm knocking off for the day but I'm gonna want -" List of stuff, not all mal parts.

Kareen nods. "I can do that."

And they can part ways.

Kareen's schedule for the rest of the evening is handing out food-and-gifts at dinner, one study group, and then find Nia for a little boost to her before-curfew nap. 

She's happy to oblige. Nice efficient high density nap.

And then MURDER?

Oh, so much murder.

El does her bathroom runs with Aadhya, usually, and doesn't have a pocket dimension yet (she apparently subconsciously expects it to be, somehow, a bad pocket dimension in her case specifically, and will get around to it when she's dealt with that) so she still has to do those. Aadhya, bursting with gossip, accompanies El on a late last-minute pre-curfew trip, even though Aadhya does have a pocket dimension now and this is strictly doing El a favor.

And Aadhya tells El about her new project.

About the vibes she got off the ashes, turned to a new purpose, and Kareen engraving her words on the jewel alongside her, reciting her powers from the notebook and telling it why she chose them and the diamond's role in the whole thing - the Rescuer, sounds like a tarot card almost, could slot into the major arcana between the Wheel of Fortune and Justice - Cotton bloody Candy -

El stays at the sink after she's washed her hands, staring at the mirror, for a second. ...two.

"...El? You done?"

"...are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Go on."

Aadhya is a nice person but she is not a reckless one. She will ask, twice even, after a hallmate who is staring into the chipped blotchy Scholomance mirror a minute before the curfew bell. But she will not push past an "I'm fine" to get said hallmate chivvied along at the expense of getting her own self behind closed doors and wards. "See you tomorrow."

"Mm-hm."

El doesn't know any dead people. Of them, sure, their names - she knows lots of names, some faces. But she has never had a friend who died: she has never had a friend.

But.

El stands there, with her crystal on her necklace, hooked up to insane gluttonous scores of more just like it, brimful and clean and ready and all linked up to one another so she can cast from the network of them, new ones sung in alongside their identical dodecatuplets and more than that and more than that, bagsful of the things until she was wearier of the prospect of connecting them to the others than she was of the prospect of having to build mana for graduation, they're free now, she gave one away and now they're free, full, for everyone.

She stands there.

The bell rings.

Nothing comes at her immediately. There are a lot of mals in the school - there are so many mals in the school - but it is not an infinite number. There is a specific and finite and limited number of mals in the school, and it has been going down.

Finally, one amphisbaena slithers out of the faucet between her hands. Nothing more than could easily have happened during the day.

El kills it. Nothing more than she often has to do during the day.

She walks out of the bathroom. There are six mals in the hallway. She kills them.

Her crystal glows at her throat. She is being stupid. This is stupid. There is nothing on her mind that cannot wait until morning. She has all the mana in the world and all the killing potential of Orion Lake, and this is still objectively stupid, and she is still doing it.

She walks to the stairwell and she goes down. There are mals on the stairs. She kills them.

She walks through the corridors, long-legged strides eating the distance, metallic footsteps steadily weaving between the corpses of the mals as they appear and are extinguished before her. She can cast La Main de la Mort. She can cast her own mortal flame. She's got that spell that silly freshman gave her. She can cast a hundred spells in the same vein. She can kill anything she wants. All she has ever needed to do it was enough mana.

El opens the door of the gymnasium, crackling with dark lightning and smelling of ozone and ash.