Sophie would like it on the record that, when she accepted the job, she didn't know that the Librarian had to do so much bloody politics. She could be out healing the sick, like Natan in his day. She would love to be out healing the sick. Instead, she's in one of the innumerable studies of Hush House, searching for a book for Hokobald, even though she wishes dearly that she could toss him out on his shiny arse. She doesn't mind helping out Yvette, or Arun, or really most of the others. It's just Hokobald in particular who should really go fuck himself. But it is her duty to remain strictly neutral, and she takes that duty seriously. So she'll find his damned book, and watch like a hawk while he reads it. And should he happen to violate that neutrality himself, well, she might have a few things in her pockets to introduce him to. (Swaddled Thunder isn't casual to make, nor the Rubywise Ruin in case of violence. But she's made them enough to feel they're replaceable, at least.)
Well, if she doesn't like all those bloody politics, how would she like to be pulled (suddenly and violently) through a confusing magical anomaly, and dropped into a small square stone room with two unconscious and badly wounded women?
Well, it's novel.
She sets about assessing their injuries. Color? Responsiveness? Is she going to need the Rubywise, or can she get away with bandages and balm?
They both have heartbeats and have some automatic responses but are pretty badly off!
This one has a bunch of huge gashes all over her body and rent through her light armor. She's bleeding all over the ground!
This one (more of a wizardy type, incidentally) looks like she got hit with some kind of horrifying flamethrower???
Sigh. Rubywise it is, drizzled over the gashes and a tot between the lips for each patient. And some Eigengrau poured over the burn victim. Winter is rarely a healing Principle, but needs must when the devil drives.
(She does not notice, at this time, that she did not have a jug of Eigengrau on her person. This is the kind of thing one can fail to notice, when one is a Librarian of the Watchman's Tree.)
As the crimson fluid soaks in, it burns, and the wounds gnarl over into gruesome-looking scabs. The Eigengrau has a gentler effect, chilling and numbing and flattening blisters, while the Rubywise entering their systems accelerates the healing process.
She spreads some Regensburg balm on the scars and the burns, after they've dried a touch. It's anesthetic, and it'll stave off infection, and moreover it'll keep those scabs from popping the second the girls sit up. She'll have Gideon's on hand for them next time they bathe. If she's still here by then.
How did she get here, anyway? Whatever happened felt a little like Knock, a little like Rose, and a lot like neither, just someone playing silly buggers with the fabric of reality.
And, now that she comes to think of it, where is here? Is there anything written on the walls? It's not guaranteed to be in a language she reads, of course, but that'd be information too.
(The healing stabilizes both of the women - they begin to stir, slowly.)
There's no obvious sign of what could have brought her here, though she probably noticed that the women arrived at the same time she did and then collapsed! (If she was attentive, she would additionally have noticed that the shorter woman had one hand raised, the younger woman was holding a katana, and they were holding hands before they fell.)
There's no writing on the walls! The stone is very old, and the air is dry.
Sophie is nothing if not attentive, in the sense that if she were inattentive she would be dead dozens of times over.
Probably their simultaneous arrival implies the same force playing silly buggers with all three of them, though Occam's Razor is hardly a guarantee when Hours are involved.
The younger-looking woman's eyes snap open. She springs to her feet absurdly quickly, wincing in pain, and looks around wildly.
(Ridaya, on the ground, hurt but alive. A tiny, stone room. An unfamiliar human woman, wearing unfamiliar clothing, no obvious equipment but that just could mean she's hiding it... some dragons can shapeshift)
Her eyes widen in terror. She puts herself between the still-down woman and Sophie, and is clearly eyeing her sword but afraid to reach for it.
She barks out a short sentence in a language Sophie doesn't know.
Sophie, in turn, doesn't pull Thirza's knife, despite considering it. See, she's polite.
Not knowing a language is a feeling she hasn't actually had in a while. It's sort of heady, a reminder that there are more things in heaven and earth. She tries her own languages, in approximate order of most- to least-likely.
(These include Latin, French, English, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Vak, Aramaic, Sanskrit, Mandaic, Ericapean, Sabazine, Phrygian, and, not really expecting it to work, Old Cornish.)
She doesn't seem to recognize any of those! But trying a bunch of languages in a row, for whatever reason, has her glancing at her sword less. (She's still very clearly shaken, though).
When she opens her mouth again, the language(?) she uses doesn't... exactly sound like a natural language, to someone from Earth. It's breathy, melodic, flowing, and has almost no hard consonants.
She can't quite keep herself from grinning. That does not sound like a natural language! It sounds like a supernatural language! Those are useful!
She'll parrot back the words, then cock her head. More lexemes?
Ah, yes, the situation might be too urgent for linguistic fun times. Tragic how that can happen. Hello, other woman who also probably doesn't speak any of her languages.
She drops to a crouch once the smaller woman moves and helps her up, talking rapidly in the first language.
She's clearly very distressed, and after her friend(?lover?) says something quietly, she starts crying.
She holds her companion, looking miserable. (She's giving Sophie the occasional curious glance, though.)
Unfortunate. Understandable, though; you don't get injuries like that without something bad happening. Sophie will school her expression and lament that she does not have tea and pastry to offer the distressed girls, as would ordinarily be her wont.
As the burned girl glances her way, she gives a little finger-wave.
(She gives a little nod.)
The two of them have a short but very emotionally intense conversation.
...she sits down on the floor, looking exhausted and upset, and turns away from the two of them, rather pointedly.
It is still not the best time for linguistics fun time but that looks like someone who could use a plausible distraction.
She points to herself and says "Sophie." Then she pauses a moment, points to herself again, and says "Sophie Hatter."
Point to burned girl?
It takes burned girl several seconds to figure out what Sophie wants, and when she does, more tears fall from her eyes.
She swallows, then points at Sophie.
"Sophie. Sophie Hatter."
Point at herself. "Ridaya. Ridaya Biru."
Point at the upset girl on the ground. "Luto. Luto Zils."
('Luto Zils' makes some kind resigned groan upon hearing her name, but doesn't turn to look at them.)
...she tries the phrase from earlier, cocking her head in what she hopes to be a universal gesture of uncomprehending.
Actually, wait, these people have no idea who she is or what she can do. She... says the phrase, pointing at Luto, then turns and points at herself, cupping her ear and frowning in confusion. Then she'll babble for a little while in the phonemes the phrase used, pointing at Ridaya and making time-circles with her other hand; then she'll point at herself and babble the same way.
That was utterly silly and may very well have been a complete waste of time! But if Sophie never did anything that would probably make an ass of herself, she wouldn't get out of bed in the mornings.
Ridaya looks very confused the first time she says the phrase, but after Sophie says it while pointing to Luto she seems much less lost.
She cocks her head, thinking, and then says three new sentences in the melodic language, watching Sophie curiously.
Smile! Not too exuberantly because they're sad but smile!
She starts looking for lexeme breakpoints. It's a very fluid language, but she's pretty sure that word was separate, what about this one? She doesn't have enough corpus to construct even very wrong sentences, but she can indulge the echolalia a bit before gesturing for more new language.
Ridaya is easy to prompt into clarifying word boundaries!
She also looks like she's getting an idea.
Ideas: probably good! (Some ideas are bad, but it's hard to imagine one that would hurt right now.) She smiles encouragingly.
Ridaya holds up a finger, then... makes a weird set of very precise gestures while saying a few words in a different language. (She looks like she's done this thousands of times.)
Then she starts making a bunch of differently-colored spheres, cubes, and other regular polygons, all about the size of a marble, all looking frail (like they could crumble any moment), and all appearing floating in the air between them. Each one takes her a bit of concentration and a few seconds.
Impressive! Some work of... she doesn't really know what art might do this. Impressive nevertheless. She claps her hands lightly.
(The applause earns her a brief, slight smile.)
Ridaya moves most of her shapes off to one side, arranging five in a row in front of Sophie; black-green-white-purple-black.
She says a five word sentence in the language, first at normal speed, then slowly, tapping each object in order. (Sophie will recognize the middle word as one that was in both Luto's initial phrase and Ridaya's first sentence).
She pauses to see if Sophie is basically following along.
Sophie follows! (She's briefly confused at the repetition of black, then clears her preconception and gets back on track.)
Ridaya brings over two blue shapes and swaps them for the black ones, flips the green one upside down, then repeats the sentence, except the first word is now 'Ridaya', the last word is now 'Sophie', and the second word is in a different tone.
She iterates through configurations of blue/black and Ridaya/Sophie - all 4 are valid, apparently, and the green-flip version of the second word is associated with 'Ridaya'.
Black for nouns, blue for proper nouns? And the language might be tonal, that's a fun complication. (But it's complicated to tell a semantic tone apart from emphasis, this early in hearing a language. Reserving judgment.)
Ridaya continues to introduce new sentences and word variations in this manner for several minutes! Sophie will pick up that it's a tonal language, but tone appears mostly be used for verb conjugation.
Via pointing, Ridaya gives her the words for most objects in the room, easily indicable body parts, and a basic suite of verbs. (The verb in her five word sentence was 'speak/talk', apparently.)
It might be a bit early yet to notice, but Sophie doesn't forget words. And she's got very good grammatical intuitions.
"...sad," Sophie attempts. "Sadness that you are sad. I would help if a thing would help."
Through the tears, she manages to say "No thing can help" and then adds, rather bitterly, "Ridaya says no thing can help. And no thing can help if Ridaya no help."
Ridaya looks a bit like she's been stabbed in the chest. Metaphorically.
"[Unknown(1)], Luto. I - I [Unknown(2)] [Unknown(third person pronoun)] [Negation] [Unknown(3)] you, I-I can't, [Unknown(1)] [Unknown(1)] [Unknown(1)]"
She drops to her knees, not at all gently.
Half-paralyzed by awkwardness, Sophie finds herself distractedly going through the motions of a process she is very familiar with. The tisane is a simple one, sweet and soothing and just the thing when one has been crying. It steeps quickly, and a bit of cream leaves it the perfect temperature and a lovely shade of pink. She could make it with her eyes closed.
She would not have said she could make it without a cup, or water, or... ingredients of any kind.
But it would seem she could. Because she is, currently, holding a cup of hot-but-not-scalding witching tisane, which she was not holding a minute and a half ago.
She offers it to Luto, since it's not getting any warmer, and starts on another in the absence of anything better to do.
...her eyes widen and her face softens considerably.
"[Unknown 4]," she whispers.
(...Ridaya still looks like she's struggling a fair bit, but she nods gratefully at Sophie.)
And in a minute and a half there will be tisane for Ridaya too.
She's going to... test the limits on this ability, a little bit.
If she tried to make Swaddled Thunder, could she? (Absolutely not.) If she tried to make more Regensburg balm? (Easily.) If she tried to make... Pyrus Auricalcinus? (She'd need some wood, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility.)
Hm. File it under "abilities she might have actually already had and not noticed". How are the others doing?
Ridaya accepts the drink and drinks the entire thing in one go. She steals a few glances at Luto, but doesn't say anything.
She catches Sophie's eyes and... reaches out a hand?
She appears to be going for - some kind of armgrab handshake dealie? But she's very easy to make back off if Sophie does not seem interested.
No, no, she'll just be awkward about it because she's a fundamentally awkward person. This is fine.
This will not bother Ridaya.
She says something to Luto, and then turns to Sophie, mimes eating, and says "Do you want [new word]?"
"Yes, thank you." It's been a bit since lunch, and she doesn't in fact have wood to turn into strange fruit.
Ridaya nods, and then opens her backpack and pulls out a medium sized bag. She proceeds to sticks her head and torso into it, despite there not being nearly enough room in the bag for this to be reasonable?
After several seconds spent rummaging around, she withdraws holding a different bag and what is probably a waterskin.
From the new bag, she fishes out a variety of preserved foodstuffs, which she offers to Sophie.
That's a very blatant magical effect. Much like the illusions, it's hardly beyond the limits of magic as she knows it, but it's... off.
She gratefully accepts some kind of dried fruit and hard biscuit. It's not exactly hearty fare, but it'll do for an afternoon tea. And she can even make some more tisane to go with it; it doesn't feel like a limited kind of ability.
Once she's eaten, would anyone like to help with more language lessons? She's hoping to have it down in her usual twelve hours, then maybe get some context on where the hell she is.
(Ridaya will also offer Sophie some water, if she wants it.)
She spends a while gently coaxing Luto into eating some food as well, but once she's done with that, Ridaya will resume teaching Sophie the language.
First she solicits time-words. Then she says "Ten more hours, maybe, and I speak correct."
...Huh. Ridaya cocks her head, but then nods.
Once she's taught Sophie a word that probably means 'magic' (for examples, she points at the tisane cups, her conjured small objects, and her bag that is bigger on the inside), she says. "Ten hours for you to speak correctly... magic?"
This does not seem to present any challenge to Ridaya's worldview - she nods and continues teaching.
She's definitely picking up on where Sophie's strengths are, and is giving more ambitious examples, particularly when teaching syntax and grammar rules.
After she finishes forcing herself to eat, Luto... disappears entirely into Ridaya's bag, for a minute, and emerges with some bedrolls and blankets, and some miscellaneous smaller items. She begins to set up the bedding.
(She's still not making eye contact with either of them, though she does glance occasionally at Sophie.)
Ah, bedding. She does not currently need to commune with the Mansus or dream on an important bit of memory but it's nice of them to – wait, right, normal people do that every night. That was really inconvenient, she remembers.
"None for me, thank you," she says.
Ridaya seems to run out of grammar she wants to teach and says "Okay. Now I will do some magic to help me give you more words!" and then does the same kind of hand movement/verbalization combo that she did before (both the hand movements and sounds are different).
When she finishes, all sorts of objects appear in the air between the two of them! (She absentmindedly waves a hand through one to demonstrate that they are illusory.)
She begins pointing and naming them.
Nouns! Sophie loves getting to the nouns, the meat-and-potatoes course of a language. Sun, moon, teacup, tree...
...Scroll, potion, wand, staff, rod, spellbook, several kinds of weapon, armor, and accessory...
As she finishes naming groups of nouns, Ridaya shrinks their images and moves them off to the side to make room for new ones. The images seem to require her ongoing concentration, but that's probably good for her.
Angel, fairy, another kind of angel, a rainbow of dragons and also several metallic ones, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, orc, goblin, as many as several devils, daemons, and demons...
...huh.
Sophie doesn't get so much confused by the words she doesn't have a concept for, as concerned when they come so hard and fast.
"These are real things? People?"
...Huh. Where's Sophie from?
She nods. "All real, all people." Then she waves a hand, sorting them into two piles.
elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, orcs, goblins, dragons, fairies (she adds humans to this group and names them): "Mortals."
devils, daemons, demons, angels: "Outsiders." She adds more kinds: inevitables, azatas, proteans, asuras, elementals (earth, water, fire, air).
Sophie thinks.
"In my home," she says, "almost everyone is human, or was human. The ones who were human do not die slowly with time, and they look strange. And they love and do things for... the biggest and most powerful things, of whom only a few dozen exist."
Ridaya's eyes light up. Cosmology!
She flattens the existing set of illusions until they're all about an inch tall and down on the floor, then makes a planet. (It's earthlike, but it's clearly not Earth - different continents, and there's also a weird hole that's visible at this scale.)
She points at it. "This is a planet, named Golarion. Many kinds of mortals live here. We are here now."
Zoom out. A solar system with a sun and eleven planets. She names them in turn: "Burning Mother, Aballon, Castrovel, Golarion, Akiton, Verces, Eox, Triaxus, Liavara, Bretheda, Apostae, and Aucturn. "Other planets have people, too. Mostly mortals, I think - would need the good books about each planet to say for sure. Elves say they come form Castrovel. We can see what is on other planets with magic, but it is very very hard to go to them." And... Sophie seems like the type of person who would appreciate the trivia fact that "no mortals live on Burning Mother, but some fire elementals do!"
Is Sophie following ok?
Yeah, she's following.
"Our Burning Mother is a biggest-most-powerful-thing," she mentions. "Sort of."
She nods. "Biggest-most-powerful thing is 'God', I think. The Burning Mother is not a God."
Zoom out again, until Burning Mother is just a dot among stars and then indistinguishable in a larger galaxy, which disappears (along with other galaxies that briefly come into view) to a point of light as she zooms out further. She highlights the spherical universe and points. "This is the Material Plane. All mortals come from the Material Plane."
Next, she adds spherical layers surrounding it, one by one. "These are the Inner Planes - the Plane of Air, the Plane of Wood, the Plane of Water, the Plane of Earth, the Plane of Metal, and the Plane of Fire. Elementals come from the inner planes."
She waves a hand, and these planes resize and fold out from each other, a series of spheres instead of one nested one. "You cannot go from one plane to another without magic, no matter how good or fast you are at moving." She hasn't given Sophie words for the mathematical reasons why this is true, or how to talk about it topologically, but hopefully they'll get to that later.
Ridaya reverses her hand movement from before, and the seven planes of the inner sphere resize and collapse back into one. (She leaves a quarter of it cut out, so the others are visible within the plane of fire). "The Inner Planes make up the Inner Sphere."
Zoom out again, so the inner sphere is at the center of a larger sphere with eight very distinct regions in different parts of the edges. "These are the Outer Planes - Heaven, Nirvana, Elysium," (three rather distinct but all rather nice-looking places), "Axis," (a vast, incredible metropolis) "the Boneyard," (a small region directly above Axis), "Hell, Abaddon, and the Abyss" (three places that look various kinds of terrible). She highlights the area between them. "This is the Maelstrom."
She draws a line from each of the nine outer planes and brings up the non-elemental outsiders from before, sorting them. "These outsiders live in these Outer Planes - so do our Gods. When mortals die, their Souls sorted by Pharasma (our first, biggest God)" (she re-arranges the nine groups of elementals into a tic-tac-toe board) "and then are sent to an outer plane. After many many years in an outer plane, mortal Souls can become outsiders. Outsiders - sometimes love and do things for Gods, but not always. They are the most like that in Heaven and Axis, and not at all like that in the Abyss or the Maelstrom."
She sighs, looking unhappy. "Hell and the Abyss are both very bad. Hell hurts all mortals who go there very much, either to turn them into devils or just for fun. Many people who are sent to the Abyss are destroyed by demons, and most who survive long enough to become demons are sad and hurting all the time. Abaddon is - a different kind of bad. Everyone who goes there is destroyed."
Luto is pretty sure that some of the stuff Ridaya is saying is different from how Zan or Uma would explain this stuff?
...thinking about it just makes her want to cry, though.
Eternal damnation, eternal reward. How the Solar Church would have loved that.
"Loving and doing things for gods is not... good," she says. "Not all of the time. Not most of the time. The people who love the gods are sad and hurting. But they chose it."
She nods. "I think - devils, demons, and deamons are really really not okay, and will probably never be okay. But... I have talked to angels and azata and agathions and aeons, and they were all... doing okay? Not sad, not hurting, doing things because they want them."
Hmm, how to put it... "I think that... when those kinds of outsiders do what a God wants, it is because they think they want what the God wants, and that the God can see how to get it better. And... I think they are usually right? Gods give mortals God-magic*, when the mortals want and do things that those Gods like" oh wait she should explain alignment!
She circles the top line of the tic-tac-toe board with her illusion and points. "The word for this is Good-aligned**. And... Good-aligned Gods give mortals God-magic for doing things like - healing the sick, helping those in need, saving people from each other, or disasters, or other people who want to harm them. And people who also want those things tend to go to the Good-aligned outer planes, and become outsiders there." Hopefully that makes sense?
*: when talking about magic before, Ridaya sometimes used a modifier word that Sophie didn't have any other context for. Here, she's using a different one, which via the grammar rules of this language is clearly related to the word for Gods.
**: 'Good' is the word for good (as the opposite of bad, thumbs-up emoji, etc etc), but with a proper-noun/specific-concept marker
How... bizarre? Yet somehow adorable?
"We have no Good gods. Maybe we have some Bad gods, but mostly we have Not-Good Not-Bad gods. Who do not care about helping, but do not care about hurting us."
That sounds horrible?
"...I think that would be... sad, and scary," Ridaya says. "Evil-" (she illusion-circles the lowest line of the tic-tac-toe board and highlights the Lower Planes on the sphere) "-aligned Gods and Evil-aligned outsiders are... very very bad, and make many many problems. Many are badly hurting all the time, themselves."
She circles the middle row. "Not-Good, Not-Evil is NeutralG/E. The NeutralG/E-aligned Gods are..." she shrugs vaguely, her knowledge of religion struggling. "They want and care about things that are not helping all or hurting all, I guess? There is a NeutralG/E-aligned God of merchants and moneychanging" (illusion of a key, in a different color than the outsiders are, goes into the center-left square), a NeutralG/E-aligned God of mountains and winter" (illusion of a snow-capped volcano erupting, center of the grid), and..." hmmm, who is else NeutralG/E...
She was about to remember that!!
"...Pharasma, the God who sorts Souls, is NeutralG/E-aligned." A set of scales goes into the center box, next to the volcano.
(Sophie miiight be getting the impression that although Ridaya is really quite knowledgeable in general, she isn't especially educated on Gods in particular.)
Sophie's used to it. People specialize, because they have to. Even she has to specialize, to an extent! That extent is reduced by her mystical bond to the most powerful library in western Europe, but she isn't omniscient!
"We have about three dozen. They care about things like snakes, or doorways, or when people eat people. Not things like merchants."
She tilts her head in thought. "I think we have Gods that care about all of those things, but not... only those things? And I don't remember which, I'm not -" (her face twists and her voice catches) "- our Gods-knowing person, that was..."
Ridaya snarls, and then -
disappears with a pop.
(The illusion disappears as well.)
"I could have helped," Sophie mutters. "Would you like a weapon, Ridaya. Would you like to talk about what to do, Ridaya. Would you like to see if I can make your friend be here like I can make tea, Ridaya."
Then she looks at Sophie, eyes wide, having processed what she just said. "Can you? Bring them back?"
"No! That is stupid! But so is going back to where she was burning to death! And so is calling her a coward for not doing that! Everyone is stupid!"
She looks crushed at the 'no', like she's about to say something when Sophie (incorrectly) calls Ridaya stupid, and like a wilting plant when she (correctly) calls Luto stupid, because, augh, yeah.
"-I didn't mean it," she says quietly, miserably, like it could fix anything.
After a beat, she remembers that she should also say "-she didn't go back, though. She - she wouldn't. I - think she's just calming down. She - she hates being angry at any of us." Even when I deserve it, she doesn't add, but she's not trying to hide that she thinks it, either.
"I will believe you when I see her. Ugh. I thought, learn the language first, no one is going anywhere – no! Stupid! I know enough language! Where are we!"
She gets up to examine the walls for doors.
She continues to be in a square stone room, twenty feet to each side. There's doors on the north and south sides, though they don't look like they've been opened recently.
On the other side of the thick door, she's panting, shaking, trying not to scream.
She hears Luto scream her name. She ignores it.
Coward. Coward. Coward. The sound of it echoes in her mind.
It's stupid, is what it is. So what if Ridaya could technically cast one more teleport today? Taking them back in this condition would kill them both (or all three of them if Sophie wanted to join), and for what? Because Luto feels guilty for not parrying the dragon? He was enormous! Ridaya doesn't think all five of them could have beat him well-rested!
So why - why does it hurt so much - why can't she breathe
Sophie shoves a cup of tisane into her hand.
"Drink the tea. Slowly. Think about the tea. Not about your problems."
She accepts the drink with a cowed nod. "Sorry."
Siiiiip. Focus on the tea, not - focus on the tea, focus on the tea,
Sophie retreats back into the room and sits down again.
"Sorry for shouting. We will talk when everyone is calm."
Ridaya follows, meekly, closing the door (it swings shut eerily easily), and then sits down on the far wall away from Luto, clutching her tisane.
Sip. She should - no, focus on the tea.
Sip. She wants - focus on the tea.
....turns out being silent is kind of excruciating even if she's a more than a little bit mad at Luto and a bit scared of Sophie!
"Sorry for leaving, I just, I needed -"
"I have shouted at people the amount I want. Do not be sorry to me."
It comes out all in a rush. "Ridaya I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have said that, I didn't mean it, I know why you won't do it."
She sucks in a shaky breath. "It just feels wrong, to leave them there. My job, my purpose, is keeping all of you safe, so why should I-" be alive, when they aren't, why isn't it me dead back there and Zan or Uma or Vakt here with you, why why why
"It's o-" she catches herself, because it's not really okay, is it.
Sip. "...It wouldn't be better if you'd died, Luto. They wouldn't have wanted that, and I wouldn't've either. You know how much it scares us, when you jump into harm for us."
"Red dragon. An extremely powerful one. He would have beaten us all even if we were ready and well-rested." Though probably they would have all survived, in that case.
Siiip.
"Dragons. We do not have dragons. We have stories about dragons."
She considers.
"Can poison kill them? Can lightning? Can you make them drink?"
Ridaya shakes her head. "A dragon that big? It would take... so much lightning, to kill it. Maybe four bolts from a deadly storm, if it were standing still. Much more than that if it were magical lightning, or if it could move - a dragon's hide can shrug off many spells, and dragons that live to be that old can protect themselves from energy with magic." (She pauses, fills in the vocab gaps as best she can without her illusion, and then continues.) "And I do not think a poison would work, not unless your poisons are much much stronger than ours, much stronger than your lightning. Certainly I do not think we are likely to get him to drink it."
She slumps against the wall.
It dawns slowly upon Sophie that she might have the solution to this problem.
She does not want that to be the solution. It is, almost without exception, the wrong move, to use it in a way that is not prescribed, to use it frivolously – she might never find another – she doesn't know these people –
but that doesn't change the fact that she has a lead-sealed vial of Nillycant in her pocket, and it doesn't change the fact that she knows damned well that if an encaustum terminale can rewrite the very heavens, it can kill an overgrown lizard.
"I have a bad idea," she says quietly.
She looks at Sophie carefully. "...how bad of an idea?" Don't get your hopes up, don't get your hopes up, don't get your hopes up,
"Very bad. It –"
She breathes deeply, and puts her hands over her face.
"We have stories of dragons. Do you have stories of... magic doing too much? You ask for a broom that sweeps on its own, and it never stops, and in a thousand years it has swept your house into dust?"
She snaps taut with sudden anxiety. "...yes, we have that. If yours is like ours - it would be a very, very bad idea. I would not want that."
She takes in a deep breath. "Luto. You know I love you, love them, would do almost anything to get them back. Do you trust me? About magic?"
"This - if it is anything like what I am thinking of, magic that does too much, it could easily kill us all. If we were lucky, it would only kill us all. It is very very difficult to use safely, and when used unsafely..." she shudders.
That's all true.
(But she's the Librarian. Who cares what anyone else can do?)
She knows it'd be a bad idea.
(When has magic ever been a good idea? But she's built a life out of it.)
She is an idiot.
(She is not a coward.)
She takes out the little vial, and a sheet of Nivine parchment, and a steel-tipped quill.
"If either of you interrupts me, it will be worse."
And she punctures the seal and begins to write.
She could - no, it's too late, Sophie is already writing,
She casts message on Luto. "Don't move," she whispers urgently.
Luto isn't sure if she's ever seen Ridaya this scared, not when she was bound and bleeding about to die two months ago, not in the Abyss earlier today, not even when the dragon's claw was reaching out to her before Luto jumped in the way.
She's as still as a statue, praying. Please, she thinks desperately. Please, Kofusachi, don't let this go wrong, don't let whatever Ridaya is so afraid of come to pass, please, please, that cannot be the path to flourishing and abundance,
Hours of the Mansus, I beg thee heed my plea.
I call upon thee, Madrugad, cold grey light of dawn. Your gloaming brings the final sleep, and this is what I need.
I call upon thee, Sun-in-Rags, bloodied sunset-king. You are fallen from your throne, and this is what I need.
I call upon thee, Chiliarch, soldier without peer. You say the word and thousands die, and this is what I need.
I call upon thee, Lionsmith, on whom no shadow falls. You fight until the last man falls, and this is what I need.
I call upon thee, Double-Edge, final god from stone. You cleave what is from what is not, and this is what I need.
I call upon thee, Wolf Divided, death's begotten son. You love hate, and crave destruction; this is what I need.
Let that on which I lay my curse forever cease to be.
The room grows colder as she writes, and there's a smell of metal and stone. Then she rolls up the parchment and stands.
"We should use this quickly. They can see it."
She takes in a trembling breath. "How quickly - do I have time to make us less likely to get roasted alive when we arrive - is it too late to reconsider -"
She's already moving towards the bag, if they have to do this now they should be doing it invisibly, so she should head for the wand. (She's shaking, quite badly.)
"If you can do it in the space of a few minutes, it should be fine. It's... a matter of pacing."
Minutes. Okay. The pieces slot neatly into place in her mind.
"Okay. In case this does something worse than killing all three of us, I want to have said that I'm really very upset that you did that without at least" her voice becomes muffled as her head and arms disappear into the magic bag "talking to us about it more, this wasn't urgent on the scale of minutes or hours, and on our world the kind of magic I suspect you just used has ended civilizations."
Given the givens, her voice is remarkably level (which is to say, it is shaky but she's not, like, yelling about it or anything?)
"Luto, get your sword. On arrival, defend Sophie, not me, okay? She's our primarycaster, here. Both of you, get over here."
Luto bounces to her feet right away and heads towards Ridaya, grabbing her katana on the way. "Got it."
(...she recognizes Ridaya's "I think maybe we can win this actually, please just trust me and do exactly what I say, no time to explain" voice. She rarely uses it - she loves taking the time to explain - but when she does, almost never wrong.)
If she'd asked then she'd have gotten talked down, because this was and is a stupid idea.
"Yes. It will be over quickly."
Ridaya pulls the bag off her head. She's holding what Sophie knows is probably a wand, two scrolls of parchment, and a medium-sized pearl.
She grabs the pearl and focuses on it - there's no obvious visual effect, but it clearly does what she wanted it to, because she relaxes before she tosses it back in the bag.
"Sophie, I'm going to cast some spells on you to give you a temporary edge. Mostly to your reaction speed, but some other general stuff as well. Then I'm going to use the wand to make us all invisible, cast one more spell for speed on all 3 of us, and then teleport. It will take about half a minute all in all. Ready?"
(Celestial makes it clear when Ridaya is saying the name of an arcane spell.)
(Luto is already here, one hand on Ridaya's shoulder to steady her nerves and for the Teleport, when it comes, the other hand gripping her katana.)
"Give me your hand. And when you feel the magic of the spells, let it in." She unrolls one of the scrolls with one hand and reaches out for Sophie's with the other.
Heroism.
It makes her feel... not, necessarily, like everything will be alright. But it makes her feel like she can win this. Not just getting through the extremely short (one way or another) battle ahead, but making good, getting out, finding a way to make things work.
It's a heady feeling.
She doesn't use a scroll for this next one, just moves her free arm rapidly and chants.
Anticipate Peril.
She starts the wand-boops. They disappear, one by one; Ridaya, then Luto, and finally Sophie.
"Teleport in two moments. Luto, count it down off from here, I have to cast."
She feels Luto's hand squeeze her shoulder in acknowledgement. She casts Haste, from the scroll.
"Teleport in one."
Luto lets her power flow through the coin weaved into the hand on Ridaya's shoulder, and she feels her nervous system adjust to the magic flowing out of it.
Her mind is perfectly empty of worry or fear. She is flowing water, a clockwork mechanism of grace and beauty and deadly sharpness. Protect Sophie.
Casting Teleport (any fifth-circle spell, really, but especially Teleport) is an incredible feeling. For one perfect moment, Ridaya is conducting an incredible amount of arcane power, the simultaneous culminations of millennia of arcane tradition, the years of her life spent on hard study and dangerous important fieldwork, and two minutes of incredibly difficult math this morning.
She holds the dragon's lair in her mind as she says the words and makes the hand motions, completing open loops of the spell. Here, she tells reality. Take us here.
The spell unfolds from the scaffold. It politely asks Reality to bend, just so.
Reality obliges.
(That same Knock-Rose-not feeling. Something like this called her here.)
Kaxalaroth has had an exciting day. Earlier, a group of foreign adventurers appeared in His private lair, which is the type of thing that a Dragon in the second century of His life has learned to be very aware of, if He wants to live to see a third.
However, these adventurers were not here to fight. They were, as a point of fact, just as surprised to see Him as He was to see them. And He was faster, of course.
Two of them got away, barely, which is extremely irritating; He feels it as an itch at the back of His mind, a loose thread. They intruded, and for that they must die. (They might already be dead; He did manage to cast a Dispel as the Teleport went off, which caused a magical reaction unlike any He's seen before. But He still has to check.)
For now, though, He's got loot to sort. Most of the big stuff is done, but the pretty one had a big pile of scrolls for Him to work through - all divine magic, so not especially useful to Him.
He snaps to attention, eyes scanning the area. Who dares -
He can't see anything - He starts casting See Invisibility -
And Sophie extends her arm, unrolling the parchment, and says –
Three words at once. All the same, in a way, and completely different in another.
Kaxalaroth might, in the coming moment, have the chance to feel the pain, as his body shreds away into rust and snow.
He doesn't have enough time to wonder how, in the moment He dies, this could possibly be happening. (It isn't impossible, necessarily, because enough arcane or divine power, few things are truly impossible. But - He had no archmage enemies, He was careful about that, He wasn't stupid -)
He does have enough time to feel pain, enough pain that when oblivion comes, even knowing where His soul is headed, it's almost a relief.
He might think he knows where his soul's headed. But even the best-trod path can be so... unreliable.
(Especially when traveling at night.)
C̷̨̧̢̛̮̤͚̱̪̝̣͕͚̹̱̺͚̻̹̹̻͓͐͋͗͐̏̐̽͐̀̒̔̔͑̊̃̐̾̄̾̍͠͝Ơ̸͎͔̲̙̱͉̲͖͈̞͖͆͛̌̿́̔͋͌̄̓̒̿̑̿̈̌̂͋̚̕͝L̶̢̛̝͇̰͈̞͇̱̗̦̯͇̻̺̐́̄̽̄̉̈́͐̋́̃͌̄̕̕̕̕͝Ḑ̶̛̛͕̲̱̬͔̗̲̪͖͖̭͙͚͉̫͇̞̀̄̈́̂́͐̒̍̍̌̽̅͂̃͋͒̆͗͒͂͛̌̀̆̊͌́̈́̀̅́̑͑́̉̏̎̈́̌̀͊̕̚̚̚͠͝ͅ.̸̧̧̠̳͇̩͓̟̟͍͖̞̘͕̯̺̦͍̞̝̺̻͍͇̲̱͕̠̲̰͙̣̬͍̤̤̮̯̳̳̠̓̾̈́̓̉̍͐͌̈͌͑̌̂̽̕͜͠ͅͅ ̸̨̨̧̨̨̮̟͍͚͔̞̺̦̞̼͓͙͎̩͖͕͙̞͖͕͙̼̜̞̜̘͈̺͕̞̻̠̘̔̃̉̏͛͆́́͗͂̍̐̋̈̀̍̂͐̒̾̊͐̓̊̈̓̓̂̆̄̾͗̐̎̚͝͠͝͠͝͝ͅ ̸̛̛̛̛̳̒͑̊͒̄̔͐́̈́́̏̓̓̔̋̾̈́̈͋́̑̾͂͋͑̌̊͗͊̈́͂̇́̃̈̔̀̓͒̋̔̋̀̍̽͛͛̿͘̚͘̚͝͠͠͝͝W̸̨̡̛̞̤̲̯̻̮̟͉͓̰̼͖͇̫̺͛̏̍̄̊͗̈́͊̑́͒̔̎͆͗̄͊̈́͗̈̿͂̅̅̓̋͌̈́́͂͗͐̚͜͝͠͝͝Ŗ̵̢̢̢̢̧̛͓̭͇̥̞̮̳̤̯̦̠̩͉̳̹̘̞͍̻̙̰͕͈̞̱͖͕̼̟̩͓̭̗̗̠̼͕̪͖̏̋͌̓̈́̈́̋́̾͛̓̅͐̉̊͋̅͛̒͆̋̈͒̐̍͑̋̓̈́͋̀̒̑͐̏̆́̀͋͘̚͝͠͝͝͝ͅͅͅO̸̧̢̧͖̜̦̱̹̬͖͔̘͔͚̺̜͈̖̤̺̦̫̤͙̥̙̬̫͉͚̪̮̟͎̞̳̲̩̰͍͔̠͖̝̻͚̘̯̅̉̃͒͐́̀̇̀́̑̒̑̍͋͊̆̓̎͘̚ͅͅN̸̡̨̨̢̛̺̺̘͖͚̰̹̗̠̝͚̓͛̀͌̓͒͛̏̽̀̂͑̇͑͗̏̇̈́̕͜ͅĜ̶̡̨̧̨̢̧̢͓̪̻̭̩͍̤̩̞̞̪͚̟͚̗̱̰̲̼̻̜͈̮̩͈͍̗̘̠͙̤̣̞̝͈͇͐͋̍̓̽́̌̀͗̀̒̇̔̈̀͗̚̕͜͜ͅͅͅ.̵̡̰͍̳͙̭͇͓͂̿̇́̈́̊̂̓̀̽͋́͋̒̉̐̉͌̈͐̽̆͛̉̽̎͌̉̿̀̓̀̄̍͒̿̀͗̃̔̄͐͌̉̂̒̽̈́̌͘͘̕͝͝͠
There are some people who are very excited to make his acquaintance, see.
...let us draw the curtain of charity over the scene.
Where were we?
There was a dragon here. Now, there's a pile of treasure, a pile of rust and snow, and a small pile of dead bodies.
Focus.
"Sophie, is any part of what you just did... ongoing? Is it safe for us to get closer?"
Sophie shakes her head, trembling, as the page crumbles to ash in her hand. "Their work is done. It's... safe."
(That's overgenerous. Nothing is safe, right now, nor will it ever be – but that's not Wolf-Snow, it's just a nonreactive byproduct of the absolute idiocy she just committed.)
Luto, meanwhile, notices the trembling, and gently places an arm on Sophie's shoulder. "Are you okay?"
(It's easier, now that her brain isn't full of screaming hot paingriefguilt, to ask herself what Zan would do in a situation like this.)
"The invocation... was not easy. And I am thinking about what I have done."
Luto hugs Sophie, almost without thinking about it. "Thank you," she murmurs.
...Zan would have asked first, she thinks belatedly, but it's a bit late for that, so she is just going to pay attention to Sophie's body language and back off quickly if it seems like she messed up.
Sophie freezes instantly. (She is an Englishwoman of the early 20th century. Hugs are not her area of expertise.)
Whoops! She begins to let go slowly (no sudden movements). "Ah, sorry, I'm too used to my family," which is true even if it's not exactly what happened here.
Ridaya's brain is still in Tactical Decisionmaking Mode, because she's in over her head too much has been happening Sophie is terrifying they might still be in danger. Dragons this old have enemies, occupy major positions in the balance of power in their area. One of them will notice that there's a vacuum, now, and try to move in, in which case they would likely come here as a first or early step.
She doesn't know how long to expect that to take, and if she's being honest, she thinks they would have to be really unlucky, for someone to show up in under an hour. That doesn't mean it can't happen, and if it does happen, they're currently grossly unprepared for it. She's basically out of spells, Luto's almost out of her tricks, and they're both hurt. Sophie's capabilities are a huge unknown (OBVIOUSLY), but Ridaya is not currently inclined to test them further!
So - she needs to search the dragon's hoard, quickly, for magic items they can use. Ideally, she'll find something that can be used for emergency escape - a scroll of teleport, or similar. If not - the more capabilities they have, the better.
And they should be ready as they can to run away at a moment's notice. She walks over to the bodies of her dead family members, and - she doesn't have the leverage to load them into the bag quickly, so she plucks off a few hairs and feathers, murmuring an apology as she does so.
She looks back at Luto and Sophie, and. Ah.
...she can't bring herself to interrupt them right away, so she just casts message on Luto to avoid shouting across the room.
"Can you wrap up in a few minutes and let me know when you have?"
"It's quite alright," Sophie apologizes to Luto in turn. "I'm used to different social ways."
She observes Ridaya searching the treasures and hurries over. "Do you need any help? I... don't think we can carry all of this... but you have your big bag."
She nods, already getting the bag out. "You two load everything in this pile into the bag first, and then start on the bodies." (The dragon was still going through her family's gear, so it's conveniently all in one place, easy to load up.) "I'm going to look for a scroll of teleport or something, just in case we need to leave in a hurry."
(She trails awkwardly behind Sophie, distracted by the sight of her currently-dead family members who she let die)
Sophie is by no means too pretty to carry her weight. She shovels the treasure industriously, whistling a tune while she does so. (A good song is often remarkably useful in the course of physical labor.)
Ridaya moves further into the lair, letting detect magic guide her to the items she seeks. She starts pocketing stuff opportunistically - a few rings, two different pairs of gloves, an amulet, a cloak, what she has to assume is a hand of the mage (gross), a pair of goggles, a cloak...
Luto helps Sophie with the gear retrieval. (...She's worried about Ridaya, but she's not sure if there's much to be done there, at least right now.)
"Do you know what you'll want to do next?" she asks. "If it's something we can help you with - we owe you a great debt, for this."
"I have important work where I am from. But I do not know how to go back. Ridaya's magic brought me. So I should stay with you until I understand."
She nods. "We will help you get home." Ridaya and Uma are both geniuses, they'll figure it out.
Oooh, that looks like a Pearl of Power, and it's bigger than hers!
She picks it up and activates it immediately, hoping she's lucky enough to get one of her good buffs back for it.
Ridaya does in fact want a Teleport back yes please and thanks.
She pockets the Fifth Circle Pearl of Power, grinning like a loon.
Sophie finishes packing up the gear and turns her attention to the piles and piles of treasure.
This ring... it's got a little blossom of white opals, set into a platinum band, a lovely little design. There's a spark of Sky in it, but she thinks there's something more, too.
She is not foolish enough to put it on without a thorough look-over. But she does slip it into her pocket.
Luto takes in a few deep breathes to steel herself, and then starts loading Vakt's body into the bag of holding.
"It's going to be okay," she whispers in Tianji, unsure if she's reassuring Vakt or herself.
Oooh, a little side room full of scrolls? That seems like a good place for a Ridaya to go check out.
The new arrivals include:
an ageless-looking woman with white hair, wings, and a long scarf which moves like a fifth limb;
a blue-skinned man with two curved blades gripped in his hands;
and two persons too heavily armored to gender, wielding gleaming scythes.
The woman speaks in a commanding, yet slightly bored tone: "You stand charged with taking actions with the potential to cause ruinous harm to the fabric of Pharasma's Creation, and the misappropriation of a soul rightfully Hers. Surrender the Outer Being to us and your charges will be tried fairly. Resist, and you will be killed."
The wizard, an elvish woman with long white hair adorned with purple flowers, is already casting some kind of divination. Next to her, a woman in expensive-looking Mithril armor has her butterfly holy symbol at the ready, eyes focused on Luto and Sophie.
She holds up both her hands and straightens up, inching closer to Sophie while doing her best to seem very nonthreatening.
The scarf lashes out and cracks like a +5 Brilliant Energy whip at Luto's feet. "Stay where you are."
Augh. This is all her fault! If she hadn't said anything, Sophie and Ridaya would be okay...
...and she can't even warn Ridaya through the silence field.
The elvish wizard frowns, peering at divination output. "Huh. This is fascinating. I can't really see a source, but I think - "
Suddenly, Sophie feels the same tug on her as she did about a minute ago, when Ridaya teleported them into the lair.
(Luto can't say anything and won't risk moving, obviously, but her face relaxes.)
One day, she'll stay in one place long enough for the consequences of her own actions to catch up with her.
Not today, though.
She follows the tug, allowing it to draw her to wherever it wants her to go.
Ridaya is nowhere to be seen, but it's pretty unmistakably her hysterical laughter coming from near the wall!
Ridaya finishes identifying the magic in the rod, blinking in surprise. (Who was this dragon?)
The scroll case she pilfered is overstuffed with good stuff, and she regretfully eyes the spells she's leaving behind as she gets the whispered message from Luto.
Trouble. Here for Sophie.
And now she has to figure out a new plan, alone, again.
Ridaya isn't Uma. She likes reading, but she's not always reading; she's got a good memory, but not a near-perfect one. She knows a decent amount about a wide variety of things, but she's not a walking encyclopedia set. She's smart, but she's not Uma. Which is why when they needed to make really good plans, it was always her and Uma, together, with Uma supplying the important facts and Uma checking over every detail and Uma making sure it all made sense.
...Uma isn't here. Ridaya will have to do.
She casts Invisibility from the wand she still has on her, and then peeks her head out the door.
She can see - Sophie at the top of the treasure pile, Luto a little further forwards, both standing very still. There's also (she peers at the magic intently) an interesting Silence variant surrounding the two of them, which means that Luto can't hear her. But she can't see the people who presumably teleported into this cave (they can't have been waiting here for Sophie, after all); they're on the far side of the treasure pile. They probably don't even know she's here.
Think.
Okay.
She knows:
- A group with at least a fifth-circle wizard is after Sophie. Even if they escape this cave, they're very likely to be scried and pursued, within days if not hours.
- But also - they probably don't have greater scrying, because if they had, they'd know that Ridaya was back here, and they would have gone after her.
- Sophie and Luto are currently inside a silence and under close observation.
- Even if they have a see invisibility or truesight, the people observing the two of them can't see Ridaya, just as she can't see them.
- They're in Avistan somewhere - the plane shift clearly didn't take them back to Kyonin, and her Teleport out of here went wild when the dragon tried to dispel it, but combined they could not have gone over fifteen hundred miles.
- The square room they were in was underground (the smell, the clearly-hewed-in-place stone...) somewhere dry (really noticeably non-humid air, no moss or fungal growth) and sandy (small grains of it, in the corners). Desert.
- One of the desert countries bordering the inner sea (Osiron, she thinks?) has a city built around some kind of enormous artifact that blocks divination. If they can get there, they might be able to use it to hide from a scry.
She has - the rod, a bunch of scrolls, a bunch of unidentified magic items, and a Teleport ready. Which means - as long as they don't notice in time...
She steps out of the alcove, carefully, low to the ground. She focuses on Luto and Sophie. They're about fifty feet away. Perfect.
She holds up the rod. She holds the image of that stupid tiny stone room in her head.
Reaching Teleport.
Sophie allows herself to breathe.
"Thank you. ...are they going to follow and kill us all."
There's the sound of Ridaya trying to catch her breath. "I think they will try, but I think for them it will not be simple to find us right away, and I will make it harder."
...right, she doesn't need to be invisible. She pops back into sight. "Luto, get the rope from the bag."
Luto is pretty overwhelmed right now but she can follow directions! She starts digging in the bag of holding.
Rope? ...she really can't complain about silly components, when she makes pears out of wood and ink out of dreams, but it does seem a silly thing to have to scramble for.
(She probably should have put Uma's handy haversack on instead of in the bag of holding, but in her defense she's been very distracted!)
"Ridaya - I only got Vakt's body, I'm sorry,"
Ridaya gives Luto a quick hug. "It's okay. I got hairs. We can get them back." If we survive this.
She takes the rope and casts a spell with it.
It... suspends itself in midair, the end of it seeming to disappear into something?
"Follow me," she says to Sophie, and then climbs up the rope and then out of sight.
Sophie dutifully climbs. An odd little ritual, but no stranger than the rest of what she's seen here.
When she gets to the top, there is... now an entire extra room. It's not huge, but it definitely wouldn't fit in the small room they were already in, and there's a (somewhat magical?) window that peers back out into the stone room.
She's already digging through Uma's flask bandolier, squinting to read the scribbled labels. She pulls two out, then looks at Sophie.
"Drink this one," (her left hand is raised and wiggling slightly) "then rinse this one" (right hand) "around in your mouth and spit it back into the container, please? It'll make you harder to find."
Sophie follows this instruction to the letter.
"Thank you. We're safe here?"
She makes a wobbly gesture with her hand. "We are harder to find, here, and you even more for the next nine hours - Luto, you too, I can't prepare mine for another two hours and they saw you." She hands over the appropriate vials.
"Then we can talk about... what comes next, I guess."
Sophie fidgets with a length of string, cat's-cradling it from one hand to the other. (She's got an idea for making herself harder still to find. It isn't nearly so stupid as her last.)
"Do you have any ideas?" she asks. "For what we should do. I think I'm at a disadvantage, not knowing anywhere to go even in theory."
"I think - and hope - we are near a city that would be a very good place to hide for longer, and to make Vakt alive again. And she's - really good at figuring out the right thing to do in a scary situation, and with her help we can get Zan and Uma back and get their help too."
She yawns. "I need to sleep soon, to get my magic back. You don't need sleep, right?"
"No. Really I shouldn't, for a while. I will do safe things while you sleep."
Ridaya wants to do a bit of a glare about that, because she is still, actually, kind of really upset about the unsafe wishmagic and being reminded of it doesn't help, but Sophie seems (as best as Ridaya can tell (which is not very good!!)) to be genuine about doing safe things while she's asleep.
And also she is actually really tired, at this point, and that's overruling.
She extracts from the bag of holding 2 sets of bedding and a pair of fancy-looking headbands. She hands the silver one with orange and red gemstones to Luto. "Here."
"I - but -" it's Zan's, she thinks miserably. (Then she sees that Rids is holding Umakhi's headband and wow she really should not be making this harder!)
She puts it on, and then gives Ridaya's hands a gentle squeeze. "We'll get them back," she says softly.
Ridaya nods stiffly, like she doesn't quite believe it, and puts on Uma's headband.
She turns to Sophie. "I sleep now. Need two hours to start getting my magic ready. Luto... maybe sleep, maybe not? Up to her. She will need more sleep than me but... needs it... less urgently?" and probably wants it less, with a fresh new source for her horrible nightmares and no Zan or Vakt to hold her when she wakes up... :(
"...I have something to help sleep, too. If needed."
(It isn't the most efficient use of Solomon's elixir, but it's a potent weapon against nightmares.)
"...If Luto wants, when she sleeps? I won't need it."
She wraps herself up in a blanket, curls herself around Luto such that her head is behind Luto's back, pulls her cloak over her head, and falls asleep. (She's a fieldwork wizard - she's very good at sleeping, when needed.)
Luto pets Ridaya gently, sighing.
"...worried about her," she says softly to Sophie, after Ridaya's breathing changes.
Luto nods glumly. "When you just started writing, earlier... I've never seen her that scared before, even in situations where she thought she was going to die. I think it's less bad, now, but... she's still scared of you."
She hugs her knees. "...It's not just that, though? It's - with Umakhi gone, Ridaya's handling everything that they used to do together, and it must be making her constantly think about Uma, and... "
Luto does not pay a lot of attention to most magic, but she is definitely qualified to talk about this one.
Hand-wave. "Kinda? It is... something magic can do, but not easily or cheaply. It's cheaper and easier if you have the body, or at least a part of it."
"The version if you have the whole body - Vakt could cast the spell for that, if she had a big diamond. We had one, but - we had to use it on Ridaya a few weeks ago."
It'd been hard on all four of them, even knowing they were going to get Ridaya back the next morning, but Umakhi had been miserable. She'd stopped talking almost entirely, stopped reading which was actually a lot more worrying, and had refused to sleep that night, claiming that she needed to make sure nothing happened to Ridaya's body before the morning.
"The version with just a part - harder to cast, and takes a diamond twice as big. We should be able to find someone selling both in a big enough city, though, and we can pay."
Sophie nods. "Big diamonds are expensive. Even when no one does magic with them. I am glad you can pay."
She nods. "Me too. We have been very blessed," (lit God-favored) "to be able to do the things we have done. I am very proud of my family." Petpet the sleepy wizard.
...unsurprisingly, with Zan's headband on, it's easier to ask herself What Would Zan Do.
"Do you have... other people, who you work with? Live with?" It's useful to know if people will come looking for Sophie (especially if they can do the kinds of things Sophie can do), but also - she doesn't really know Sophie, like, at all, and it would be nice if that changed. For both of them, probably.
"I work with many people, but I live alone. My house is very old, and has many strong books and strong magic. It would not be safe."
And maybe she can pretend that's why she lives alone.
Luto almost says wait then why do you live there but manages to catch herself in time. Surely Sophie must have her reasons (quite possibly something to do with the scary book-related magic?)
Still, it clearly bothers her. "I am sorry," she says gently. "I know that for some people it is fine, being alone like that" (Luto's tone and face make it very clear that she is not even slightly like this) "but it's still sad, to not have the option."
She dips her head slightly. "What are the people you work with like?"
"Some of them want very much to help as many people as they can. I think they are good, and I like them. Others want to help their friends. This is sometimes enough to like them. Others only want to help themselves, and those I dislike, but I do have to work with them. ...some of them do not want to help anyone, just to know as much as they can. They are dangerous. But I sometimes find I like them anyway."
Luto smiles, though she also tilts her head at the last one. "It is dangerous, where you are from, to want to know things? I do not think it is like that here," though she glances down at Ridaya, because, well, she's really not the subject expert.
(and then her face falls, because Ridaya is not actually their subject matter expert either, and suddenly she misses Umakhi, misses the way she'd brush her wings against Luto instead of saying hi, misses her bad jokes and Ridaya trying to explain them through tears of laughter, misses coming back from a bathroom trip or a watch shift and seeing her partially entwined with one of the others reading some complicated-looking book,)
"It is terribly dangerous. If someone wants to know one thing, that may be fine. If someone wants to know everything? People like that..."
She sighs.
"People like that do what I did."
She rolls that around in her head.
"Can I ask... why did you do it? I'm extremely grateful you did, you've given us the chance to get our family back, but it... you barely know us."
"I did it because... I am here. I do not know you, but you are the only ones here with me. You are good. You are... Good. You were in pain. I thought of something that I could do to help you."
Then she shakes her head. "...it was not really for you. It was to make me feel strong. To say, I have solved your problem, and I am important. I am very stupid."
...oh. She nods in understanding. "It may have been a thing you did for you, but... you still solved our problem. Thank you."
She reaches out and pats Sophie on the knee.
"...I am the stupid one, in my family, the one who does impulsive things when feeling scared." smile. "I have never killed a dragon about it, though. It was very impressive."
...awww, Sophie has such a nice smile. "Even if we ask very nicely?" She bats her eyelashes.
That startles a laugh out of her. "I think only you would ask!"
Yesss she made their new attractive and dangerous friend laugh!
Luto giggles. "You have only met two of us! Maybe we will get Zan back and she will say" (she adopts a noticeably different voice and register) "'O Great Sophie, I know it is not easily done and I do not wish to impose on your kindness, but I do have a small, tiny, very big and also urgent problem with this other dragon, and I have nobody else to turn to in my hour of need, please help me', and then poor Ridaya will be out-voted..."
Her eyes are sparkling in a way Sophie's never seen them before.
"I'd want to see if that one dies to thunder, at least! It's not my first instinct. That would be terribly expensive."
"Maybe there are kinds of dragon who die easily to thunder... I don't know much about the kinds of dragons, just that there are lots of them. Umakhi, the one with the wings, is our main Knower of Things. A scary number of things, really. We joke sometimes that has a hard time with people because she is too busy being friends with every book she ever meets."
She sighs, and continues in a softer voice. "...I miss her. Miss all of them. I really hope we can get them all back without more problems."
She hugs her knees.
"I hope so too. I wish I had diamonds to help, but they are so rare."
She uncurls a bit. "We have the money to buy diamonds, once we get to a city. You got us the bodies back, and that we could not have bought."
"Well. That is good."
Before the silence can get too awkward, Sophie says "Would you like to practice Celestial? I am close to knowing it properly."
She nods. "Yes!"
Luto is... not nearly as good at impromptu language lessons as Ridaya, but she knows Celestial just fine and can be prompted to give Sophie more words and better grammer.
More words are most of what she needs, by this point. Her grammar quickly solidifies, leaving only the awkward circumlocutions around vocabulary, and that part can only be fixed by exposure. But she takes less exposure than most.
A few minutes in, the red thread in her game of cat's-cradle begins to weep black ink, and she knots it off sharply before it can get everywhere. "There."
"Ah – it's a little charm." She traces the knotwork with a finger. "I am not me, it says, in Killasimi, a language of secrets. The threads are soaked in Perhibiate, the ink of naming. It should be very annoying if anyone tries to find me."
Ah, okay, this is just Sophie is doing her Weird Magic again. She doesn't seem stressed about it, so Luto doesn't need to worry. She nods.
More language? Luto has been telling stories of her early life, before she met Zan and Vakt. (She lost her parents when she was twelve, and stowed away in a trading caravan and convinced the swordswoman there to teach her how to fight.)
Sophie can return the favor with exciting tales of the life of a British schoolgirl. (She's not really ready to get into her professional origins, but Queen's College had plenty of adventures even for a mousey wallflower.)
Luto seems to have no context on anything post-industrial-revolution, but she's plenty interested!
Ridaya stirs, and then wakes up and unrolls in one swift motion, shaking her head. She says a word that doesn't sound like it uses Celestial phonemes, and an obviously-magic book appears out of nowhere in front of her. She catches it without looking.
She looks worried about Luto still being awake, but she doesn't say anything to her.
"Good morning," Sophie says, in now-nearly-perfect Celestial. "If you'd like tea or coffee, I can brew some up."
She looks grateful. "Tea sounds very nice. I will need about fifteen minutes to ready my magic, and then we can explore this place, try and find our way out?"
"Very well. I might prepare a few reagents of my own."
Sophie tries for a nice Assam, this time, in place of the witching tisane, and finds it straightforward. It feels odd, like it's stretching different parts of her soul than before, but not in a bad way, and she's used to stretching her soul in all kinds of ways.
Luto sips her tea and fishes out some of their trail rations from the bag as Ridaya prepares her spells. She sets out some for Sophie (though none for Ridaya?), and eats some dried meat and cheese for herself.
Sophie suspects, with the only-sleeping-two-hours, that Ridaya may not need as much sustenance of various sorts as an ordinary human. It's no difference to her, except that their rations will last longer. (Assuming she can't just work up a cake like she does the tea, which is hardly guaranteed.)
Once she's broken her fast, she starts in on those reagents. She finds it easiest to keep a memory of power tied down if she attaches it to a physical object, something small and unimportant; she's good enough at finger-crochet to make little snarls of yarn for them. Pull the thread, and the memory rushes back into focus just long enough to make it count. She's disadvantaged, right now, in what memories she can actually access, but necessity is the mother of any number of virtues. She can begin with an invocation of the old wound in her hip, then stretch that with Torgue's cleansing rite and a Labhitic tincture into a winning move... maybe she can get through a Thunderskin paean, too? It'll be tight, in fifteen minutes, but it's a useful thing to have on the tip of your tongue.
Fifteen minutes later, Ridaya puts her magical book back in her bag, and pulls out... a pair of gloves, a mummified hand on a string, a cloak similar to the ones she and Luto are wearing, and a headband.
"Sophie, I found a few magic items that you might find interesting, earlier. And... " She holds up the cloak and headband, looking uncomfortable. "...These belong to Vakt, but it would be a good idea for you to wear them, until we get her back. They'll make it harder for hostile magic to harm you."
"...thank you. Truly."
She accepts the cloak, putting it on immediately, and begins removing her hat to fit on the headband. The gloves and... hand... she examines as she does so. Obviously they're magical, but... "What do these do? Do you know? There are ways I could find out myself, but not trivially."
Then she gets the headband secure, and
oh.
Oh, this is not good, is it.
Because – the thing is –
the thing is, that Sophie's mind has up to now existed in a careful balance between the self-awareness necessary to function, and the self-awareness that would lead her to understand that she is miserable, and that she is slowly going mad, and that she is killing herself by half-measures.
It's not that it's more relevant than it was a moment ago. It's more salient, certainly. It's more obvious. It feels like noticing suddenly that she's drowning, like looking around and seeing that she's been talking to a mannequin. Like noticing that she's been writing out an extended letter to an acquaintance, disagreeing with their literary opinions in the most uncompromising terms, while her fucking house is on fire.
There is really very little that she can productively do about this, especially right now, some part of her says. She tries to fold this little breakdown away, to put it in a little cabinet in the corner of her brain, but her very English repression fails her. She cannot repress this, not anymore. She will face herself, and the lingering traces of her first and greatest mistake, or – there isn't anything else. She will.
(She's gone very pale.)
Luto notices first, interrupting an explanation Ridaya had just barely started. "...Sophie, are you okay?" She puts a hand on her shoulder hesitantly.
(Luto has had Owl's Wisdom put on her many times, now - Uma makes her drink a potion of it before they get into fights with spellcasters. Mostly it feels like like having an Imaginary Vakt in her head giving occasional commentary on her thoughts, which is kinda nice, but also... Imaginary Vakt is noticeably worse at this than Real Vakt is, and talking to Real Vakt isn't a second circle spell and also often comes with snuggles, so on the whole she's never been especially impressed with the experience. Though it would be nice now, because Real Vakt is NOT HERE,)
...oh. Oh dear. "Sorry, I should have mentioned, the headband works by, um, by making it easier to notice your thoughts and reflect on how your brain works, which occasionally people can find to be kind of distressing. It's not permanent, you can take it off if you want,"
"I'm so sorrysympathy*," she says, because that sounds like a very scary thing to realize all at once!
"Do you want to tell us about it? Is it something we can help with?"
(Almost unconsciously, she opens her arms to offer a hug.)
*: Celestial has different words for sorrysympathy and sorryapology, of course.
Sophie collapses slowly into her arms.
"I was born other than I am," she recites numbly. "I have forgotten the name she was given. She lived her life, and grew old, surrounded by family and a few friends. But she had heard of the music of the Roost, those gods who take the form of birds. They said if you listened, you'd lose your mind, your soul, your skin... and that it would be worth it. And she was old, and thought she had little to lose. She studied the occult ways, and found where the aviform gods would roost this year. And she went, and she listened.
"She lost her mind; only scraps of memory remain. Her soul was shaped into something else. And her skin..." Sophie scratches at her arm. "I'm still her. In some ways, ways that matter. But she's dead, too. I lost everyone she had, and the music... it haunts me. It's the most beautiful thing I ever heard. It shaped me around it. I can never have it again. I've been running from it ever since. I became the Librarian because... it meant that no one would rely on me, if I couldn't take it. But it cuts both ways. I'm so lonely, I could die without anyone noticing. I don't even know if they've noticed I'm missing yet. The music still eats away at me. I've been flinging myself into danger, hoping to stave off the realization that I just had for as long as I could."
She doesn't say the second half: or die, before I had to face it.
Luto holds Sophie close, gently rubbing her back, her breath regular and gentle against her neck. That sounds... so horrible and scary..
"-You aren't alone, not anymore," she says, gently but firmly. "We would know, and we would be very sad, if you died. ...We would try and get you back, unless you told us not to." There was a lot else, there, but she glances at Ridaya, because she knows what she's good at and it's not this.
Ridaya is rotating all of that in her head! It's quite a lot. (She does flash Luto an encouraging smile from where she stands behind them, and reaches up to put a comforting hand on Sophie's shoulder.)
"...that's it, I think. Because it's my duty to go back, even though I've found you here. I've had a taste of human comfort, and it'll kill me to give it up."
She squeezes Sophie's shoulder. That makes sense.
Hmmm... "Do you have to go back very soon? And would you need to stay there all the time? I think... there are maybe some ways we could help you with your song-problem... Maybe not right away, but our world has... different kinds of powerful magic than yours, I think. And I would come visit you sometimes, if I could."
She squeezes Sophie a little. "It seems like you could really use one," she says kindly.
"...Do you want to make yourself some of that tea? It really helped me, earlier."
She starts a cup. "...it was her recipe," she mentions. "The one before."
Ridaya has so many questions and most of them seem like they'll have answers that are predictably horribly sad!
"Is the recipe itself magical, or just - the way you are making it?" Did she do magic, too, before she decided to unravel herself into song?
"There isn't always a sharp distinction. She learned it the same way she learned the songs that make one swift and unseen, or the way I learned how to turn wood into extremely good pears. – on which note, if you have any miscellaneous wood in your luggage, you should let me know, they're extremely good pears."
"We do not have any random wood on-hand, though... depending on how much wood it takes I could paint up a few small pieces?" It's not an especially wise use of the paint, in most cases, but it seems like the kind of thing that mind cheer Sophie up (both the paint and the pears, really).
"Ideally you'd want a good-sized branch, for the stems to grow off. It's not any kind of priority... speaking of which, we've gotten quite badly off-track. You were explaining the items you'd allocated me."
"Oh! Right, yes." Ridaya's brain obidiently switches tracks to Shiny New Topic.
She points to the creepy hand. "That is a Hand of the Mage. If you wear it around your neck, it lets you use the spell Mage Hand whenever you like, allowing you to pick up and move light objects from up to twenty five feet away."
Point at the gloves. "These are Gloves of Shaping. The let you sculpt stone, wood, or anything else that's about that sturdy or less like you were working with clay."
Luto is noot sure if they should talk more about Sophie's Whole Big Thing, but... she was the one who changed the topic. (Maybe she should bring it up later, though? She misses Vakt so much.)
Sophie puts on the gloves immediately. "The hand sounds quite useful, but... under the circumstances I'm used to, wearing it would mark me as a freak at best. Are these so common that people would recognize it as a general-purpose tool? ...is it not really someone's hand, that would be nice."
She winces. "...It is a real hand, yeah. They're definitely not uncommon, I feel like half the magic item shops I've been in have one?"
"I think that's the kind of magic item nobles love buying, right? For the taste of magical power without any hard work or risk involved."
"Hands of all things. Still, if I won't give people the wrong idea I'll wear it. Tuck it into my neckline, maybe." She does so; it mostly works.
Then something occurs to her, and she brings the ring she found out of her pocket. "I found this among the treasure, while we were recovering the personal effects. It didn't seem like one of yours, but – I liked the look of it, and I could feel some power coming off it, so I pocketed it. Do you know what it might be?"
She peers at it for a second, and then smiles and holds up her hand, showing off an identical ring.
"That's a Ring of Feather Falling! While you're wearing it, you'll float gently to the ground if you ever fall from a dangerous height."
"Oh, that's quite nice." She fits it on her left hand. (Under the glove.) "With that I think I'm fine to set to exploring this... place. You should try to let me know if something we face is dangerous enough that I should give you an assist, Luto, I can help guide your sword-hand for a bit."
She smiles, (though her eyes flick to Ridaya, who nods).
"-Ridaya is going to be a better judge of how worried we should be about what we're fighting, but we'll definitely keep it in mind, thank you. Is it like -" and then she turns to Ridaya because she doesn't quite know how to word the thing she wants to ask.
"- so our magic has different ways of making people better at using a sword, and they work in different ways: some of them draw out the courage of the heart to make it easier to strike true, others give what is best described as an increase in skill (as though the wielder were more practiced with the blade than they actually are), still others by manipulating probability in the target's favor -" she interrupts herself, shaking her head.
"...I should not list them all right now, there's a bunch of weird small categories and I suspect you get the point!"
"Anyways, these things all feel different and can interact with each other in interesting ways, which is why it can be nice to know what to expect. How would you describe yours?"
"...closest to the last. It's as if, for a brief period of time, you can... decide how your battle went, in advance, and the world will oblige."
She thinks and then nods. "Okay, got it. And - is it the kind of thing you can use once every so often? Is it consuming some finite resource? Other constraints?"
"I can't do it all day, no – I can straightforwardly replenish my stocks of anything I use up in making it, but I have to exercise my soul for the 'final product,' so to speak. Maybe three times per day, or two if I want to leave open the option of healing someone."
Huh, neat. "At some point I would love to talk to you more about how your powers work! But now is not the time."
She smiles. "I will be aiming to leave open the healing option, Luto is very deadly and I am very good at setting things up for her, but neither of us can heal."
(Luto does some dramatic sword-posing when Ridaya describes her as 'very deadly'.)
Hee.
"It's a good option to have; it's how I saved you both, when I arrived. ...incidentally, I've got something that should help if your wounds flare back up, and you should probably rinse them with it anyway next time we stop for the night. I almost forgot it."
She nods, inspecting her wounds at the mention. (They're healing what seems to be a basically-unsurprising rate.)
Ridaya's wounds, on the other hand, are - a surprising amount better than they were when she went to sleep? Certainly not all better, but it's a lot faster than normal humans heal, by Sophie's experience.
(Neither her nor Luto seems at all surprised by this.)
Somewhat unusual, but Ridaya is also the one who barely needs sleep and doesn't eat, so Sophie's more or less set aside her biological assumptions.
"Shall we?"
The door opens onto a short descending staircase that empties into a semicircular chamber, about thirty feet across.
The flat wall opposite the stairs is dominated by a massive stone double door, almost three times Ridaya's height. It's carved with the profile of a hawk-headed figure holding a crook and flail. Warm amber light glows through the seams.
The air in here is warmer.
"...how very pharaonic," Sophie mutters to herself, following along.
Luto scans the room methodically - "nothing obvious, taking a closer look" - and starts investigating the edges.
Ridaya's eyes glow with magic, and she peers at the door.
"...huh," she says, a moment later.
Sophie will also examine the room, in her own way: checking for carvings, off-color panels, hidden things. She has committed enough archaeology, and been subjected to enough of the company of Corso Reverte, to be fairly confident in her step.
"Something interesting?" she asks.
(There's various Egyptian-themed wall carvings, but nothing in a language anyone here speaks.)
"Yeah. I think..." she pokes the door, and an invisible barrier ripples, stopping her finger. "Yeah. Sealed. I suspect the locking mechanism is back the way we came, further in. There's some kind of linked divination reaching out that way, it's neat."
Sophie leans in.
She can't see magic, in the most literal sense. But if she closes her eyes and opens her ears – she can, a little bit, hear it. She listens to the door, and it does sound like a pretty comprehensive ward, not the kind of thing she could tease out easily with the tools she has.
...also, there's a very faint song coming from her ring finger. She holds her hand up to her ear, and hears the tinny echoes of something rich and deep.
"May I listen to your ring?" she asks Ridaya. "Sorry, I've gotten myself distracted, but it might be relevant."
It's practically silent, bar the faint hum of having any magic at all.
"Thank you. I don't think my ring is actually the same as yours, and might want to investigate it later."
"...Huh." She thinks for a moment, frowning consideringly. "Uh. The only thing I could know that to mean is very unlikely, but if it is the case would make that ring extraordinarily useful, once awoken."
"Hmm. Perhaps I'll think on how I'd awaken something extraordinary, then. We could use it."
Ridaya nods. (She'd say there's no way, but after the dragon adventure and aftermath, she really isn't sure.) "I don't have any ideas how to awaken it, if it's the thing I'm thinking of. It would be... something air-themed, if that helps on your end."
She glances back the way they came. "Shall we?"
"By all means."
She's got ideas. It'll be a project, of course. She'll do it in stages. And she'll need some wood. (Without even getting to make pears out of it. Her sacrifices are boundless.)
Luto comes up empty-handed, and then they can all head out back through the room they started and through the other door.
This door opens into a long hall, maybe eighty feet across, with a row of sandstone pillars flaking the central passageway. The walls are painted with faded scenes from a funeral procession - mourners, priests conducting rites, offerings placed before a gold figure on a throne.
The central passageways' floor is a channel of sand. fragments of bone and pieces of bronze weapons are visible sticking out of it, further down.
Sophie can't help snickering. "I think I'll throw in with Luto on this."
She sighs. "I mean. Yeah, okay, it's probably skeleton ambush, past that point in the middle. There isn't much I have that will do much good before they jump us, so just - stay together, get ready to step back?"
Overland Flight. She hovers above the two of them, rotating until she's upside down and her head is next do theirs, her hair falling down towards them. (This is actually quite difficult! She's showing off.)
"Luto, take point?"
Luto pokes the top of Ridaya's head, then moves her brain into Fighting Mode, drawing her katana. She's ready to advance once Sophie is.
Sophie will move with her. (Her heartbeat is quick. For all the danger of being the Librarian, it's not a position with as much live combat.)
And then, halfway through the corridor, hands of bone begin to reach out of the ground in front of them, grasping upwards. It's skeletons.
Thirty-two skeletons, pulling themselves a careful phalanx in rows of four, each clad in identical bronze plate and wielding long, curved blades. Their eyes glow red.
Luto, sword still drawn, starts stepping backward, making sure Sophie is retreating behind her.
(She visibly relaxes, as the skeletons appear. Nothing to fear, here.)
Once they're both well clear, she glances up at Ridaya.
Ridaya sighs. It's never fun to see a scene like this.
Mindless undead aren't people, but they were, once. Now they're just - souls being tortured, fuel for the sick (and lazy! magical constructs exist!) desires of whoever created them.
But at least those souls go to rest when the undead are destroyed, the magic that binding them to the material unravelling.
And it's not hard to destroy skeletons, even if there's a lot of them and they have fancy armor.
Black Tentacles.
Sophie's seen Ridaya cast spells before, and some of them have done some quite impressive things, but none of them have really been anything like this.
Large, rubbery, jet-black tentacles emerge from the ground in a massive area, filling the entire corridor in front of them, so dense that each of the skeletons is surrounded in seconds.
They don't have eyes, or for that matter any other sensory organs. They don't appear to need to.
Every single skeleton is engulfed by tentacles, restrained, and slammed into the ground, repeatedly.
The slamming sounds of the bodies hitting the ground are muffled by the sand. The horrible snapping and cracking of shattered bones, however, are very audible.
It's an overwhelming wall of noise, and a horrific sight to see.
But it doesn't last long.
"Potent magic," Sophie says after her heart calms down. "Thank you."
Ridaya dismisses the spell once the last of the skeletons collapses, and floats in the direction of the debris, her eyes glowing again. "Ah, no problem. I only have one more of those for the day, but it's a very useful spell. Especially when Luto is right about skeletons."
Luto notices the pause, and remembers a lot of stories of Sophie's past, none of which seemed to involve any adventuring... "Are you okay?"
"...it was, um, intimidating. To suddenly face so many foes. But I'm alright."
Ridaya floats back over. "We'll keep you safe," she says. "Luto especially. I have years of experience hiding behind her in fights."
A small smile. "I should make myself more appetizing, then, so that she can put up with me too."
"Oh, no need to worry," Luto says nonchalantly, "I never mind when it's someone prettier than me."
Ridaya sputters, then starts giggling when she sees the look on Luto's face.
Sophie freezes in place for a moment.
(In what universe is she more attractive than – irrelevant! Completely irrelevant!)
She's never actually worked out what to do when anyone flirts with her. Coquille has done it for her own amusement, eliciting fierce blushing; that obnoxious Grail-long, who seems to delight in her sharp retorts; once, Reverend Timothy, who tried after to pretend it had never happened, with her enthusiastic cooperation.
Maybe she can get away with that??
"We should get a move on," she says brightly. "Can't get bogged down by a few skeletons."
(Then she takes a look at Sophie and manages to stifle it.) "Give me a few moments? I want to finish checking the debris."
Her eyes glow again and she flies off towards the far end of the room, picking carefully through the pile of debris before grabbing one of the weapons. "Huh. this one's decently magical."
She slides it into the bag. "Anything interesting, Luto?"
Sophie will busy herself looking for Stuff. There's... a pile of mostly broken earthenware behind this pillar! Exciting! She rummages a bit, and comes up with a stoppered flask that still has a generous slosh of liquid in it.
She lifts it, evaluating. "Does this seem more likely to be some kind of magical elixir, or wine long since turned to vinegar?" she wonders aloud.
Ridaya floats over, staring at it interestedly for a bit. "Definitely magic! Can I see?"
Ridaya stares at it curiously, swirls it around, stares some more, and then nods, handing it back to her.
"Potion of cure serious wounds," she says with satisfaction. "These are handy."
"Oh, very good. I can supplement the Rubywise... which is important, because I have just realized that I can't make more Rubywise without some kind of flower. Any flower will do, at home I'd just pick a rose from the gardens, but." Vague gesture at sandy tomb.
She smiles. "Flowers! Our magics are so different. I can make you many flowers without much paint, if we need it, but they will also be cheap in the city."
"Oh! Excellent, painted flowers should do very well."
(They haven't actually discussed the magic paint, but it's come up a couple of times and Sophie has internalized that it can make stuff under certain limitations. Doesn't really merit a whole digression unless some confusion comes up.)
Yeah.
She reaches out and touches Rids' shoulder, gently. "Let's get going?"
Nod.
(She can't take it personally, when it hurts them to smile. They'll get the others back.)
The door Luto opens leads into a square room, thirty feet to a side. The walls are lined with stone slabs at about countertop height, with a variety of jars scattered about them.
Above the slabs are a set of paintings depicting the gold figure from last room in various dramatic regal situations - in front of a massive crowd of bowing people, calling down lightning and fire upon his fleeing foes, ordering the construction of incredible buildings. (On closer inspection, there's some tile mosaics spread out between them, noticeable primarily due to the contrasting visual style.)
On the far wall, there's a sealed door with no handle, no hinges, and a plain circular indent at chest height.
In the center of the room, there's a stone pedestal with a bowl in the top, about the same size as the hole in the door. It's surrounded by a ring of stone tiles in the floor, each with a symbol carved within.
Luto stares into the room intently but she's not seeing anything move immediately, so she opens the door and steps in, beckoning to the others to follow a moment after.
Sophie follows.
She takes in the room. "...some kind of ritual chamber? Maybe a puzzle-door..."
She nods. "Puzzle room, yeah." (Ridaya floats into the room above the two of them, looking down from above.)
From above (or from deeper inside the room), the symbols on the stone tiles are all visible. There's a flame, a drop of water, a leaf, a gust of wind, a stone boulder, and a star.
"...Waters of Nun... stone of Benben... star could be Khepri or Ra... after that the theory falls over a bit, though," Sophie mutters. "I don't even think they had a fire god who wasn't mostly a sun god."
Luto, having finished her initial investigation of the room, drops to the floor with an effortless grace a cheetah would envy and begins inspecting the tiles.
"These are pressure plates," she says, frowning. "Can't tell if this is the kind where we press them in order or a few at once, though. ...Or what happens if we fail." (That's usually Uma's job, which she's not going to say because it'll make Ridaya sad and she already knows.)
"Mmmm," says Ridaya. Flame, Star, Leaf, Wind, Water, Stone...
Her eyes fall on one of the mosaics. It's... a plant sprouting out of a pool.
"Hey, check this out." She points.
Ooh!
"There's a clue. I was hoping for one, but so often these turn out to be checking if you're in the tribe, what order do we venerate these gods... That looks like water-and-leaf to me."
Other murals?
Luto pops back to her feet in a motion that surely must have involved pushing up with her arms or something, but it's not super clear when, especially if you happened to blink.
"This one is... a sunrise? over a bunch of plants? ...leaf and fire?"
"could be star, too," Ridaya says on autopilot, still looking around, "Burning Mother's a star, just a lot closer."
She floats over to a point near the ceiling on the left wall. "This one is just a star though."
Sophie finds one with a gust of wind, carrying seeds from a plant that looks like a more grown version of the plant from the first tile mosaic.
"...water birthing plants, sunlight strengthening them, here I've got wind spreading them... and a star. That seems like an odd man out, here."
Luto finds, half-tucked behind a piece of pottery, a fifth mosaic: dust falling from the star onto... a rock? "Hmmm. Star-and-rock?"
"Hmm. Is it just a sequence? Except... I'm not sure what to make of the star, or the sunset..."
"Right. And I'm not certain of the order, either, even for just the plants – it seems like water is probably first, but sunset and seed dispersal both seem like valid endings to the sequence."
"–here's another," she says. "And I think I might have an idea for the sequence? You start with the star alone, then the star falls to make a stone, then the stone gathers water, then the water sprouts a leaf, then the wind carries away the leaf's seeds, then the burning sun sets on the leaves... I don't know, does that sound right? One single, then five doubles?"
Lower chime, with discordant notes.
Both tiles flash red - the star tile stops glowing green.
Luto steps on wind, which is next to star, and gets another green glow and note in the sequence. "Oooh."
The final chime plays. Then the sequence of notes repeats from the beginning, the intro to a hauntingly beautiful piece of music that fills the room.
As it does, differently-colored streams of magical energy (purple, brown, blue, green, grey-white, and orange-red) flow out from each tile and coalesce in the hollow pedestal, swirling and mixing.
Sophie watches as well. (It's tempting to break this down into an alchemical parable. She doesn't have nearly enough context to do so coherently. It's only that it feels like one.)
Luto is only looking at it occasionally - she's scanning the room constantly for other changes, because sometimes the people who build these places are assholes.
As the music swells to a crescendo, the light coalesces into a softly glowing golden orb, filling the pedestal exactly.
It remains there as the music fades, pulsing slowly.
Pick up the orb?
Halfway through the movement, she remembers the severed hand around her neck. Pick up the orb telekinetically?
The orb slots into the door, and golden light flows out from it in branching patterns that might remind a reader of circuit diagrams until they reach the outline of the door, where they flare.
The entire door recedes into the floor, revealing a short hallway that slopes gently downwards.
It's a pretty uninteresting downward-sloping stone corridor! No decoration on the walls, nothing cluttering the pathway. There's a normal door at the bottom. The air is cooler in here.
...on sufficiently close inspection, the traces of sand on the floor seem be shifting every second or so, as though the floor underneath it is vibrating a bit.
Luto holds up a hand, frowning, and then moves silently to the door and presses her ear against it, brow furrowed in concentration.
Sophie has a bad feeling about this, actually.
(There's a feeling of Scale in the air.)
Luto hears what she's pretty sure are footsteps. They're slow, heavy, and perfectly rhythmic, if you take the time to figure out which ones are coming from where, which she is definitely doing.
She makes the party's signal for "Ridaya, cast Message."
(She does so right away, targeting both of them, from where she's floating outside the corridor.)
"Three big unknowns patrolling - heavy, moving slow, unnaturally consistent." She frowns, concentrating. "I think they're walking in a circle."
Ridaya relays this on autopilot, and then adds "Regular footsteps means probably mindless undead or constructs. Based on the skeleton corridor, probably it's mindless undead and probably it's not going to be that dangerous, especially with the corridor as a chokepoint. Still... I'm thinking Haste, Sophie's buff on Luto, and then we see what we're dealing with?"
Sophie nods. "Say when, and I'll give you the winning move."
Ridaya smiles at the name. "We'll go on Luto's mark."
She floats down the hallway, so she'll be able to see through the door, and moves her hands where they need to be to start the spell.
She focuses, listening to the footsteps at the exclusion of all else, visualizing where she thinks their foes are.
Then - "Three moments...... two...... one......."
Sophie unties a scrap of yarn, and the memory rushes through her – perfect balance, a pirouette on the razor's edge – and into Luto.
It feels stranger than Sophie led her to believe. There's a sensation, at first, like looking through a compound eye, or into a broken mirror. A dozen worlds, narrowed by her intent, but still present at the border of her vision. Many things could happen, in the next half-minute. It's her choice what will.
Luto's eyes widen substantially. "...Wow."
She flings the door open, stepping into the room.
The most interesting thing about the room of beyond the door is the three oversized clockwork soldiers, each wielding a mighty sword and wearing heavy armor. The closest one is twenty feet away from the door - the furthest is at the far end of the large room, maybe fifty feet away.
(The room itself is mostly barren - there's a nondescript lump of stone near the far door.)
Simultaneously, they stop their patrol, heads turning to look at the three of them. The two closer ones, almost in unison, begin to charge.
The information from Sophie's spell is almost overwhelming.
She loves it. "Rids, get the one on the left."
Sophie will stay back, humming up a minor Heart-song in case Luto needs a boost. (She's a little bit confused, still, because tin soldiers should smell like Forge, and – they do, but it's not what she felt outside?)
The one on the left is further, of the two that are charging, but she trusts Luto to know what she can handle.
Ridaya really doesn't want these things surrounding them, and she hasn't gotten a chance to cast this spell, yet.
Icy Prison.
The construct on the left stops midstep, encased in solid ice nearly a foot thick.
(The sheer cold begins to bite into it immediately.)
The closer construct continues its charge, sword already swinging as it closes on Luto.
Luto looks through the kaleidoscope of futures she sees unfolding and picks the one she likes the most.
She steps forward and bats the sword that's almost bigger than she is aside like it's a bamboo stick, and spins in a full circle to carry the momentum into a savage slash across its chest.
Then she slashes it again, breaking through the metal protecting in its flank. The clockwork gears inside it grind in protest.
Her third strike beheads it. It collapses.
...oh, that's beautiful.
Luto probably doesn't need the song, if she's going to get that much use out of the effect. Sophie keeps humming it anyway. An extra bit of craft rarely goes to waste.
It does not get near her family because it has no arms and then, a moment later, no legs (or, really, any animating force at all.)
(She's not even breathing hard. She could do this all day, or at least until Sophie's magic wears off.)
That... sounds bad.
Will swords even work on a pile of rocks. Actually she should ask that out loud. "Is your sword sharp enough to cut stone?" she calls out.
Luto glances at Ridaya. (She didn't miss that tone of fear, and she's never seen a stone golem before.)
"It will work, Luto's sword is magical, but - not as well. And - stone golems are very tough, can hit hard, and are immune to most magic... They're very slow, though. We can outrun it." What spells does she even have that will work here - Black Tentacles is not going to work well, that thing is way stronger than skeletons, but it is slow...
If it's slow...
"...Ridaya do you have Grease? Sophie, how long will this last?" She's already stepping forward, though, sword pointed straight at the golem.
Um??? But also Gods she's so hot,
"I have two Grease and a Glitterdust."
"Thirty seconds from when I released the thread. I do have one more, and a song that can make you stronger."
Glitterdust will work? Luto laughs.
"If it's blind or on the floor, I can kill it in thirty seconds, with this power." She strides confidently forward.
She hasn't got this far by doubting.
Who is she kidding, she doubts everything.
She certainly won't get any farther by doubting. She pulls the thread on her second and final winning move.
It cannot! it is now blind, which is a bit of a problem.
It still attempts to attack the area where it last saw the swordswoman intruder as it finishes its charge, and to apply its slowing magic to her.
It will not be doing either of those things!
She shrugs the magic off, effortlessly dodges the blow, and steps backwards as she moves her blade through four perfect cuts across its body, cleaving a huge chunk of stone out of its chest.
Right???
...she casts Grease, but she's not even sure it's necessary, if Luto can do that.
The golem certainly doesn't think it's necessary! (It doesn't really think at all, though.)
The subjective experience it may or may not have isn't very pleasant. It is blind, and also it has fallen because the ground has mysteriously become mostly frictionless, and also -
It's being artfully cleaved apart.
Luto dances around the flailing attempts the golem makes at striking her from the floor, lashing out further with her sword than seems like should be physically possible and always striking it exactly where and how she wants it.
Chunks of stone fly off it with each blow, until, a mere two moments later, she brings her katana down with one final terrible stroke, and the thing shatters.
It is terrible that, with Sophie here, Ridaya should not fly over and make out with Luto even though she really really wants to
Sophie's giggling sort of manically, by the time it properly goes down.
"Nobody told me it was fun," she says. "Getting in fights."
"It's usually more difficult!" Luto says, panting only a little bit. "Sophie, that was unbelievable, I've never felt anything like that, it was like I could just choose to have every strike land exactly how I wanted it to." Her eyes are shining, her gaze intense.
"I've never seen it used properly, like that. By a real warrior."
Oh! Well, now Luto is blushing.
...come on say something!! "I'm delighted to have been the first worthy soul to wield this power for you." She bows.
Ahahaha cute???
(Ridaya makes herself look busy by inspecting the clockwork construct debris.)
"Well, I hope it wasn't all for me. You did have fun too, didn't you?"
"Oh, I had so much fun!" Big grin. "...The constructs weren't very interesting, with that kind of power. But the stone golem?"
She mimes an overhead swing with her hands empty, mimicking her final blow. "Very satisfying. Especially knowing how dangerous it would normally be."
"I can see that. Sailing through something that ought to be halfway impossible."
Sophie considers and discards the idea of asking if Luto can teach her to handle a sword. They don't exactly have a spare.
(Ridaya could make Sophie a sword! But Sophie doesn't know that.)
"Yeah. And it's fun to show off? And..." she looks at Ridaya, then back at Sophie "...very nice to not have to worry at all, about whether I can protect everyone."
Yeah, moving on seems reasonable! Ridaya is done (pretending to be busy with) picking through the construct parts and will head over to inspect the door.
(She kisses Luto on the head as she floats by. "Thanks, sweetie.")
The exit is a small, intricately-decorated archway that opens into a short hallway, with only barely enough room for two of them to stand side by side. The door is inlaid with gold leaf hieroglyphic writing that nobody here can read, and looks straightforward to open.
(Ridaya peers at it curiously, eyes glowing, but she floats out of the way to let Luto and Sophie slip past her after she's gotten an initial look.)
Luto examines the door visually, and, finding nothing interesting, presses an ear against the door and listens.
Sophie's going to take some rubbings of the inscription. Just for the sake of preservation.
"That little passage wouldn't be a good place for a fight," Sophie comments. "On the other hand, we don't have that much choice."
"If something jumps us, I can blink all three of us back into the big chamber behind us." But also... she floats forwards. "Maybe let the two of us go first, though?"
Ridaya trades places with Sophie (in a way that indicates absolutely zero concern for casual physical contact) and then nods at Luto, who pushes the door open.
The room beyond is circular, with a domed ceiling arching gently upwards. Compared to the intricate decorations in the other parts of the structure, this room is almost austere. The walls are bare, save a single unbroken line of text in the same hieroglyphic language as the door. There's a small sarcophagus made of dark basalt in the center, and nothing else visible.
It's clean, silent, and still, like a breath that's been held for hundreds of years.
"Let's absolutely not touch that bloody sarcophagus," Sophie whispers.
The face on the sarcophagus opens its stone eyes, and a voice projects itself into their minds.
Sophie freezes for a moment–
(it's not as if she's a graverobber, they're not here by choice, and diplomatic truth-telling is usually a good first choice)
"–We are wanderers, here by magical accident, seeking neither desecration nor treasure but only escape. My humblest apologies for our trespass."
The voice is silent, for a few moments, the stone eyes focusing on the three of them.
"...Wanderers, yes. Two Angel-Daughters, From The Dragon Empires," it booms in their minds, looking at Ridaya and Luto, "And... You, Songbitten, Are Very Far From Home."
(It's loud, but it's not angry. It sounds curious, and tired.)
"...I am," she admits. "Not by choice. Perhaps to the good, regardless. My Library will gain many strange works, if nothing else."
(She wonders whether this entity's familiarity implies prior contact between her home and this world. Perhaps one of the Roost wintered here?)
The sarcophogus nods.
"Angel-Daughters, Songbitten, You Who Are Neither Thieves Nor Pilgrims... I Have A Request."
(Ridaya nods hesitantly, trying and failing to keep her eyes from watering. It sounds so sad...)
"I Am - I Was Khetamun, The Second Starkeeper. My Request Is This: Travel To A Temple Of The Mother Of Souls. Speak My Name There."
The face on the sarcophogus looks so tired. "Set Me Free."
"That seems eminently reasonable."
So why does she have a sinking feeling? Is it merely that "mother of souls" is an ominous name? No – she's never heard it before. But what she has heard...
"...that woman yesterday, with the... scarf. She served a goddess who claimed dominion over all souls. Is that the same entity who bears this epithet?" she asks Ridaya (and Luto!) quietly.
...Yeah, that's Pharasma. Ridaya nods at Sophie. "Don't worry," she whispers.
Then she steps forward, hands clasped together.
"I will see this done for you, Second Starkeeper Khetamun. The Mother of Souls will hear your name."
A tension seems to leave the sarcophagus.
"Thank You, Angel-Daughter. Your Kindness Will Not Go Unrewarded."
Khetamun raises a hand.
There's a feeling of gathering power in the air, noticeable to Sophie pretty quickly.
Then, a beam of soft golden light traces a path from Khetamun's raised hand onto the ceiling, where it splits into a series of interlinked geometric lines that lead out of the room back the way they came.
"The Way Is Open, Now. And For Your Aid, I Offer You These Tokens."
A small ornate chest fades into existence in front of them.
"Now Go In Peace, Travellers. And..."
"Tread Carefully, Songbitten. The Rules Are Different, Here. And The Rest Of You Is Too Far Away To Help."
The sarcophagus's eyes close.
Sophie belatedly exhales.
"Don't have to tell me twice," she mutters.
Ridaya turns to Sophie. "Are you okay?"
(...she wants to ask about the thing Khetamun said at the end, but she doesn't know if it'd be rude or not.)
"Yes... yes, I'm fine. Just, you know – it's always disconcerting to be... known, like that."
Hmmm. Ridaya isn't sure she does know, actually. "That was... a very old spirit, I think," she says softly. "I've never met anything similar."
She offers Sophie a hug on autopilot; that's her default reassuring-close-ally action.
Sophie half-laughs, a little shakily. "Half my clients, back home, would pull that same kind of silly trick. Sophie Hatter, born from nothing to Birdsong, soon to burn your breakfast, I have come seeking a copy of Kitling Ripe and the Moldywarp's Grave, and don't you be pokey about it! The thing they don't tell you about occult entities, you know, they act like spoiled children..."
She evades the hug by reflex.
Ah, whooops. Right.
"...would they be right about the breakfast?" She asks, to cover her embarrassment.
Luto finishes checking over the chest for traps and pops it open.
Hmmm, two potions, some platinum coins, cloak well-preserved enough that it's probably magic, and a bag of...
She whistles.
"Most of the time, yes. Sometimes I'd watch for whatever it was and catch it before –"
Whistle?
"Hey Rids, uh - how much diamond dust is a lot?" Revived people need a bunch to get back to full strength, she remembers from last month, but...
"Diamond dust is worth about twelve times its weight in platinum," she replies automatically, and then her brain catches up and she floats over. "Oh. Oh wow."
Ridaya hefts the bag. "Gods. This is... enough to cover all the deep Restorations we'll need to get them back to full strength. Maybe even with a bit left over."
She closes her eyes and clasps her hands together in a quick prayer. Thank you, Shelyn. Thank you, Kofusachi.
"So, should we get out of here and head for the city, then? Take advantage of our good fortune while it lasts?"
Nodnod. "Yeah!"
Ridaya and Luto get the contents of the chest into their bag of holding, and then they can retrace their steps.
And eventually, they reach the sealed entryway.
It looks exactly like it did an hour ago, but there's a gentle breeze running through the room.
Fresh air... it's been a while. (It hasn't been that long that she's been in this world, really, but she did have a habit of staying inside even at home.)
When Ridaya touches the door, a pale blue light shimmers over it.
The doors open on their own, into a passageway that gently slopes upwards. The walls and ceiling are rocky; the floor is covered in sand.
Ridaya, floating above them both, runs a hand along the ceiling experimentally.
Sand! It's like Brighton, except for how it's nothing at all like Brighton. She takes a pinch of it to feel: fairly coarse, yellowy-pale. She's not in the Sahara. Nor is she near a volcano. ...that's approximately all she can determine from a sand sample. What a fantastic waste of time.
When they reach the surface, it's still dark outside, and a bit cold, too. Ridaya can tell, looking at the moon, that the sun won't rise for another two hours, but it's more than enough to see by.
They're in the middle of a vast desert, dunes rolling out to all directions.
Seems like the kind of thing that might be a problem if there wasn't a fifth circle wizard around.
Ridaya dips into the bag holding, emerging wearing a pair of crystal lenses identical to the ones Luto wears. (They're Vakt's. She'll have to give them back soon, but for now, for this, she really wants to make sure she can see as well as possible.)
"I will spot the way from the air," she says, and flies up.
Sophie would probably work something out if she had to, but it's better still to have it covered.
Luto yaaaawns. She... hasn't slept yet. And like, that's fine, she's not a baby and she doesn't have spells to refresh, but it is getting to her a bit.
She crouches down, running fingers through the sand. "Huh. Different from a beach, or the other desert I have been in."
"I think beach sand is usually coarser? It at least seems to stand to reason, it's... fresher? But depending on where you are in a desert, you might have had the same sand being blown around eroding for hundreds or thousands of years, so it's smoother. At least, I read that as a hypothesis about a particular desert in my world. It might not apply generally. Or at all, in the first place."
Stop talking!
Oh! That makes sense. She nods and smiles a bit. "...I don't know how old our world is? Or this desert.... I know some deserts used to be different." She remembers the others talking about it, when they were in Mwangi, even though she was zoned out.
Ridaya zooms upwards until she's almost a full mile in the air. Then she floats in place, surveying the surrounding area.
The view is beautiful. To the south, she can see massive triangular buildings poking out over a valley. To the north, there's a coastline, the transition from sand to sea barely visible in the moonlight, but it matches perfectly what she knows of the maps of this area she has in her mind. Which means...
She has to really strain her eyes to see it in the full moon's pale light, even through the lenses, but - she's sure of it. Out west, there's a massive city, built near a bend in the river snaking northward. That has to be Sothis. It's the right size, in the right place.
She stays up there for a full five minutes, carefully studying everything she can see of the area outside the city's edge, the road leading into it. It's important to do proper visualization, when committing a location to memory for use as a search-input.
Once she's satisfied, she dives. (Her ring won't let her go any faster than she did on the ascent, and indeed wants her to fall slower than that, but Overland Flight tells it to shush, and so it does.)
Sophie has been sitting on the sand, drawing absent patterns. So far this aimless arenamancy has revealed to her that she will meet someone in the next few days who will... something about her heart... either a lover or someone who'll raise her blood pressure. Typical divinatory ambiguity.
As Ridaya approaches, she stands to attention. "Any joy?"
"Yep! Got a nice long view of what I'm pretty sure is Sothis. And it's early enough in the morning that we can maybe get Vakt raised today, if we hurry..." She peers curiously at the sand drawings, and then goes to poke Luto.
Hair-ruffle. "Teleport time, sleepyhead. We'll find an inn when we get there."
Luto shakes her head. "I just need a bit of tea and then I'll be fine," she says, and manages to be convincing about this until her body betrays her with a yawn.
"I can make you some. But you really should sleep. Maybe I'll brew some of the tisane, it won't keep you up."
Luto shakes her head vigorously, which helps wake her up. "No. I'll stay up, stay alert, make sure nobody tries to fuck with us, until we get Vakt back. Then I can sleep."
It is! She takes Sophie's hand in hers (Luto grabs her shoulder), and then -
Luto, lacking an Overland Flight or Ring of Feather Falling, plummets to the ground!
Oh for fuck's sake –
Sophie pulls a feather out of her pocket and whistles an urgent little tune. The feather catches fire, and there's a sudden strong updraft beneath Luto's feet, the kind one might be able to glide on if one had a particularly good kite behind them. Hopefully it'll at least ease her fall.
Oh! Well in that case -
Luto spreads her arms and legs wide for the majority of her fall, letting the wind slow her down, and then lands in a crouching roll, springing to her feet unharmed.
Sophie floats down like Mary Bloody Poppins, trying not to scowl. It doesn't quite work.
"You're welcome. I'd welcome a little while of things not happening."
(The updraft fades after a few seconds, which means less sand in her face, which is a small blessing. Sophie is already tired of sand.)
"Look, it's actually difficult to aim a Teleport like that by moonlight," Ridaya mumbles. "This was actually pretty close to the grou-" she cuts herself off, because she can tell she's not helping.
"Yeah, yeah, getting here fast was important, falling can hurt but it wouldn't ever kill me, Sophie has a ring, yada yada yada," she grumbles.
"Wouldn't ever kill you!" Sophie barks out an angry laugh. "Even on sand, fall the wrong way from a height like that and you'll break your fool neck. Pure luck I had that feather, thank God you're an acrobat or it's even odds we'd be –"
She forces her mouth shut and just breathes for a bit. It would be monumentally inappropriate to say what she just almost said, which is a sign that she needs to shut the fuck up.
Oh, shoot, this is her fault for not explaining! "Sophie - Luto has magic boots. Not as good as a Feather Fall ring, but - she'll never land at the wrong angle, and the boots absorb most of the impact. Even from a mile up, she wouldn't die." She pauses, as if doing a bit of math. "...It would hurt a lot, though."
"Oh," Sophie sighs. "...I'm sorry for shouting. You'll have to bear with me, I don't have the right instincts about what's even possible in this stupid place."
A gentleman in a gold and crimson robe, who has been standing nearby and watching with interest at least since the updraft faded, laughs quietly.
Sophie whirls around towards him, her cheeks pink. "If you're so starved for entertainment you've got to eavesdrop, why don't you go look in a mirror, you clown bastard!"
This makes him laugh significantly harder, but he raises his hands and backs away.
"You're up early," Luto says neutrally, looking him over. (How did she not spot this guy earlier?)
"Sleeping only two hours a night will make an early bird even of the laziest man," he says in lightly accented Celestial.
In addition to the robe he wears a dangling jet earring, a ring on each hand, and an assortment of bangles that would make a royal concubine green with envy. He moves with the confidence of a man who can make problems go away.
"Some people find it within themselves to read," Sophie says flatly. "To pass the time without making a nuisance of oneself."
"My dear lady, making a nuisance of myself is the one thing that brings my life pleasure!"
Foreign adventurer... Ridaya catches Luto's attention with a tongue-click and negotiates a "you talk I'll watch" approach via body language.
Detect Magic.
"Are you at least the kind of nuisance that can point the way to a temple of Abadar? If not, you'll have to excuse our rudeness, but we're busy."
"Certainly! It's the grand temple with the gold-veined marble." He begins leading the way. "They imported the stone, you know, from the Five Kings Mountains all the way in Druma, to be the most ostentatious building outside the Dome. They have to lay spells over each shining block, otherwise they'd be scratched and pitted by the sand and nobody would know how very much money they spent. It seems an awfully tiring thing to be an Abadaran."
So, the thing about Detect Magic is that it can be countered by certain effects. As far as Ridaya is concerned, this dude is about as magical as dirt. Despite the fact that his eyes are visibly glowing slightly. Funny how that works!
Huh. Well, that's allowed.
Ridaya tags Luto and Sophie with a Message. "He's masking his magic auras from me."
"...which isn't hostile, but it does suggest that he's one or both of rich and magically powerful," she adds, for Sophie's benefit.
Of course he's rich. He's also got long enough legs that Sophie has to hurry, just a bit, to keep up. This man should die.
"By the by," the man muses, "it strikes me to wonder how such a lady as yourself comes by such great magical power as I can sense within you, without, as you say, the instincts for what is possible. Is the story as exciting as your elevated arrival in this dismal village?"
"Wonder all you like but leave me out of it," she snaps. "I'm only following you to the temple, don't think we're your personal storytellers."
This feels like a social problem pretty far above Luto's CR! Especially on this little sleep.
Ridaya snorts, looking out at one of the biggest cities she's ever seen. "Dismal village? What are you used to, Axis?"
"A man could stand in Aktun's square and find it smaller than a nutshell if his mind is too grand to be therein constrained; inversely, a fool may find fulfillment in a pigsty, as indeed many good men of Erastil do. Boredom is, frankly, my sole virtue."
Sophie snorts explosively. "The greatest fools I've ever met had your virtue in spades. Stick to the pigsty, it mitigates the damage."
"Perhaps your mind" and ego "might find sufficient space for its grandness in the Maelstrom. I hear it's not boring at all."
"Plausible! Elysium is perhaps too sweet for my taste, and people cannot seem to recommend me the Abyss highly enough, but the Maelstrom is, at the very least, consistently novel."
That grand Abadaran temple comes into view, as the sky is just barely lightening.
Con...cerning? "If you feel that way, what are you doing in the Stormhaven of Osiron?"
...hopefully they can ditch this guy once they get to the temple? She glances at Sophie.
"I was born here, and in spite of the immense effort invested in making me unwelcome, I will die here one day. My soul I commend to whoever can find it; my ashes will be carried down the River Sphinx."
"Besides, the Temple of the Eye is easily interesting enough to make up for the rest of this place. They've got a lot of books."
Sophie has had more than enough of this guy.
"Thank you for guiding us to this lovely temple, I'll be sure to pray for your wretched soul. In the meantime, we have urgent business, and if you try to eavesdrop on that I may just lay a balding hex on you, so why don't you be a dear and piss off?"
...Luto steps closer to Sophie, just in case. (Her hand isn't on her sword, but it doesn't need to be.)
The man laughs. "You should know, for your instincts: threats of magic are illegal. But I'll take it in the spirit offered, and leave you be."
And he walks away, whistling.
That was surprisingly stressful but they don't actually have time to unpack any of it because she needs to go make sure someone prepares a Raise Dead for them to buy today!
She lets Sophie and Luto know what she's doing and why, and then flies past them into the temple, looking for someone to talk to.
"...I'm sorry," Sophie sighs, sitting on the marble steps. "I let my temper get away from me."
Luto sits down next to her, close enough to lean on. "It worked out okay," she says, shrugging. "And it was quite rude of him, laughing like that."
"I could have shrugged it off, if everything wasn't so stressful. The teleporting, the resurrections, the... echoes of the dragon."
Nodnod. "That makes sense. It's been a very stressful day, so far. And the sun isn't even up yet!" She stifles another yawn.
"Hah. Once it is, I'm tempted to sleep. ...not really, I think I should stay away from dreams for a while. But it'd be almost like nothing happening."
"I do hope we can have an easier time of things, here! ...It'll be much easier once we get Vakt back, I think."
...wait. "Uh. Why should you stay away from dreams?"
"Dreaming is one of the ways I can get in touch with the Mansus, the metaphysical structure housing my world's deities, the Hours. I invoked... a particular few Hours, yesterday. I shouldn't like to draw any more of their attention until they've had time to settle back."
"Oh. Huh." (...Luto has no idea what that means, but she trusts Sophie, and would be embarrassed to ask for a simpler explanation.) "And you can... rest without dreaming, in a way that isn't bad for you?"
(Sophie was being deliberately evasive, so Luto not really understanding makes perfect sense!)
"Yes, I'll be perfectly lucid. I sometimes go weeks without, when I've enough to keep myself busy."
(Luto is in fact the easiest member of her family to slip something past! She doesn't suspect a thing.)
"Weeks! Gods, that's impressive." Oh, right, magic items are weird to Sophie, so she should probably explain?
"A Ring of Sustenance makes it so their wearer needs only two hours of sleep, but they do really need those two hours. I've never heard of something that lets people get away with not sleeping at all."
"Neat! I wonder if you could do Ridaya's type of magic without needing to sleep the way she does..."
"Maybe so! I'm curious to learn more about it, once there's less screaming emergency about."
Ridaya finds someone at the temple who is both awake and has an language overlap with her and manages, after some stressful negotiations, to get one of their fifth circles to prepare a Raise Dead today, an appointment to negotiate the conditional sale of the sword, and a bit of spending money. (She has to give them Zan's cloak as collateral. She doesn't love doing it, but this was always going to be the plan.)
If she doesn't come back with her own diamond, they can source her one at a very reasonable price. (She'll probably end up taking them up on that. Sourcing a diamond in a foreign city like this isn't the kind of thing she's going to be good at.) If she doesn't come back within the next two days, the cloak is forfeit.
When she rejoins Sophie and Luto, she is visibly harried by the experience. "They're expecting me in about four hours to perform the sale, and they can raise Vakt after that," she says. "In the meantime, let's go get a room somewhere?"
"Let's."
If that annoying man were here he could probably recommend an inn. In his absence they may be forced to find one themselves. A small price to pay.
10 gp for a two-bedroom suite with oversized beds, specifically!
(They get some odd looks in the street, three foreign women out alone, but (especially because Ridaya is flying), they're correctly identified as belonging to the Adventurer gender.)
Sophie has not gone to countries with similar norms often, but she has done enough travel that it's come up. Her solution is the ever-versatile haughty stare: and who do you think you're looking at?
As she sits on a bed, she feels her Killasimi amulet heating up. "Someone's trying to find me," she reports to Ridaya. "My protection should hold at least once, though, it's really very hard to account for without feeling it out first."
As she focuses, her eyes get progressively wider and her face grows more worried, though she holds up a finger before either Luto or Sophie can say anything and keeps it up for multiple minutes.
What the fuck, she thinks numbly several times, and more than once it slips past her lips, too.
This is an unusually thorough finding-spell; generally they bounce off and then your opponent has to try again. But it's very straightforwardly thorough, only varying its angle slightly as it comes at her again and again, and Killasimi is really obnoxiously resilient to that sort of thing. The finding-spell unravels in relatively short order, and Sophie gently strokes the woven token under her shirt.
Ridaya is looking at Sophie approximately the way she looked right after the dragon dissolved into nothingness.
"Was that - how did you - what -"
...Luto half-hugs Ridaya, looking at her in concern. (She's used to Rids being below her, but she's hovering, right now.)
"...I told you, I'm protected. It's a silly trick, they can account for it next time, but it'll fox anything that isn't accounting for it."
"That was - Discern Location. An eighth circle divination, for finding someone, no matter where they are."
Ridaya pauses, trying to figure out how to give context on that. "There are... less than a thousand people with eighth circle power, in all of this world. All of them are much much stronger than us. Stronger than that dragon. And - one of them is looking for you, and probably it is the same group from the dragon horde, and probably they will try again tomorrow, maybe at you but maybe at Luto. If we are not inside the giant dome by then, we will... probably be in a lot of trouble."
(She's also very concerned that a simple trick from Sophie can throw off a Discern Location! But, uh, one fear at a time, or something?)
"Then we'll need to be inside the Dome."
And Sophie will need, eventually, to be powerful enough that those people cannot touch her, if she wants to ever be truly free.
Ridaya nods. "Yeah. I think - once we get Vakt back, we should be figuring out how to get in there. And until then, we should stick together, and be careful. ...and Luto should nap," she adds, looking at her droopy swordswoman.
Luto nods gratefully, dipping into the en suite bathroom to change into her bedclothes.
Sophie takes a flower from a vase on the nightstand and begins the process of distilling a bottle of Rubywise Ruin. The flower tastes more Lantern than Grail, but it'll do.
...upon seeing Luto in a nightgown, she busies herself much more intensely with the distillation. While blushing.
Luto is too tired to notice this! She shuffles into the bed, curling up around a pillow. (She's tired enough that she can Just Pass Out, now, and that's the easiest way for her to sleep.)
Luto is hot not the time, Ridaya!
She floats next to Luto and gently pets her hair, smiling softly.
Tristinela Velem is one of Pharasma's most powerful servants on the Material Plane, personally favored by the Goddess with the power of a Mortal Usher. She is assigned to Golarion, not because she holds any affection for the Cage, but because it is one of the most dangerous regions on the Material, and one which must be defended with especial vigilance. Her personal attention practically ensures the demise of whatever abomination she pursues. She has lived for centuries, seen nations rise and fall, and deemed them unimportant to her greater goals.
She is not accustomed to frustration.
Scrying failed repeatedly; this is not evidence of much, because scrying is trivial to interfere with. But after the third failure, conscious of the ever-increasing danger of a powerful Outer Being on her planet, Tristinela brought out a hard-bought scroll of Discern Location. (She'll be able to cast it herself if she risks her life a few more times, but fate has not yet been so kind. Until then, she buys the scrolls, because they're indispensable for this kind of high-stakes chase.)
The spell failed.
Discern Location is not supposed to fail. Sometimes it does anyway; Mind Blank isn't as common among her quarry as among liches, but cultists are sometimes still sane enough to keep it up. In that event, however, the spell fails immediately; it doesn't gutter out like a candle and return some kind of riddle.
She's going to bring this to the nearest wizard, and when it's resolved she's going to kill that girl-thing before it consumes another soul, and maybe the next thing she has to kill will be something normal, like a Hound of Tindalos.