Scene #9608: BINDING BLADE Ch54: Shrine of Seals

Owner	Pose
Marigold	BERN'S NORTHEASTERN MOUNTAINS Former location of the Shrine of Seals. Rutger did end up punching that one-eyed veteran in the general store. It was a blur in the moment and it's more of a blur now. Something was said about 'Bulgar', maybe by her and maybe by him, and then she decked him across the counter quick as blinking, and someone held her back or dragged him to safety. That punch didn't exorcize the ghost of wartime malaise that hung over the village. Catharsis doesn't come so easily; certainly not for the guilty, and not even for the innocent. The wyvern riders weren't going to rouse themselves to send word about an ordinary scuffle, but the town unmistakeably soured towards you as the news of it spread, tolerating your presence only long enough to take your money and send you along with the goods you'd come for. Mind control, if the group deems it necessary, can diffuse hostility but has a harder time restoring sincere warmth. Guinivere can't bring herself to chastise Rutger, but she casts a longing glance back from Merlinus's now-tools-and-supplies-laden wagon as the village recedes out of view up the winding mountain path. It would've been nice, she clearly thinks, if the warm sleepiness could have lasted just a little longer. But . . . "Honestly, what's wrong with you, Rutger?" Clarine, stewing atop her little horse for the last couple of hours, finally breaks her quiet just a little ways from camp. She's more judgemental than the princess. ". . ." "Oh, don't look at me like that! I know Bulgar is your hometown-" "Was." "Was your hometown! But do you really feel any better now?" ". . . Yeah." "Then there wasn't any point at all in-- huh? Wait, you do?" "A little." "Why?! It's not like that achieved anything! All you did was embarrass us!" ". . ." "Lady Clarine," Merlinus calls from the front of the wagon after a long moment of Rutger's silence, "we did get the things for honeyed buns and candied nuts, still." "What, is that supposed to appease me?" Clarine says, trying not to sound appeased. "Ohh, I just... imagine there's all kinds of people who'll be wanting some good cheer, after the digging's done." "Hmph." The mountain path is still pretty, though. Half-composted pine needles crunch underfoot, giving way to ferns and grasses as you branch off of beaten trails towards the hidden meadow-hollow with the Shrine of Seals where no-one local goes. The rest of Roy's army waits there; in the distance, Fae trills something sounding mildly annoyed, and Echidna ribs Dieck indistinctly followed by both of them laughing. Princess Guinivere, on the back of the wagon, rolls the gleaming-red spherical 'ruby' called the "Fire Emblem" around on her palm contemplatively. It looks so small.
Flamel Parsons	"Revenge," Flamel explains briefly. "Is actually really, really good at making you feel better and solving your problems. That's one of the things we usually cover up, you know." He says, drifting in levitation to keep up with the horses and not wear his shoes down too much. "It's bad when it scales up and gets distributed among multi-mind systems, but," He makes an evenhanded gesture. "How would most massively-advantaged systemic forces get by if people knew they could just... act on being wronged, and get results? We're not animals, you know. Anyway, if you can, please keep it on the 'down low' and all. Some of that memory-wiping took a bit of work." He rubs a sore arm, because it meant literal wiping down surfaces at one point. With an array of telekinetic hands at the ready as he approaches, he's eager to help dig! Telekinesis, applied to actual tools suited for the purpose, actually helps tremendously in mass-scaled work. There's a good reason that the Motherlobe was psychic-built and psychic-maintained! He'll get right into helping the camp with the rubble-moving as soon as he can.
Nobunaga	It is a quiet and contemplative Oda Nobunaga who treks back up the mountain, lost in thought or lost in the scenery; or both. Behind her, his pack also filled with little tools for the Nobbu, Nagayoshi Mori follows silently. At around where the group breaks off the beaten path towards the isolated Shrine of Seals, Nobunaga pauses to fix her gaze on a particular shrub. Out of it pops a Nobbu soldier clad in gray hakama and triangle-marked teal-and-white haori like a tiny Shinsengumi officer. All it does is perform a little salute and a quick Nobu! before ducking back into hiding. The warlord seems to take this as an 'all clear' before leaving the road with her retainer in tow. Upon reaching the crater that was once a shrine, Nobunaga stops and gives herself a stretch. From the surrounding forest, Nobbu soldiers emerge; from behind trees, out of shrubs, out from under stones. One tumbles out of a hollow log covered in porcupine spines, pursued by the log's irate occupant. "Make sure they're all equipped. Breaking through the stone layer is our first priority." "Got it," Nagayoshi unslings his wooden-box backpack and swings it down, dropping it at his feet with a metal and wood clatter; Soon, the colossal samurai is mobbed by knee-high familiars who have exchanged their military caps for hard hats with the little + on the front, in proper Japanese style. Soon, they've spread out into groups of three or four, picking and shoveling away at the flame-fused crust. "Now then..." Nobunaga rests one hand on her hip, casting a glance at Rutger, "As for you, I'm surprised!" Bending at the waist, the warlord leans forward a touch; the expression on her face is a smile though, her tone one of good nature, "You could've easily taken his head, and he probably deserved it. So with that in mind, I commend your restraint, Rutger."
Riku Asakura	Riku helped Merlinus get gear onto the back of the wagons and mostly did hard physical labor around the wagons as opposed to actually buying goods. He's good at physical labor, being nice and strong and relatively fast on his feet. Let the others barter for goods; he'll buy snacks for himself and help with the heavy lifting. On the way back, Riku walks alongside the caravan, listening to the various conversations. He feels the need to pipe up for Rutger. "Oh, it's no big deal, it's not like it ruffled that many feathers, and besides, we got the supplies we needed. While I don't like striking people, it can't be helped when they needlessly antagonize others." Riku gives Rutger a big smile from his spot on the trail. Also, Merlinus's indication of honeyed buns and candied nuts gets a bigger smile out of Riku. "We're going to need that, especially with how much work is going to go into this. We're all going to need whatever treats and calories we can get going into this!" Flamel talks about having to mind wipe people, and Riku frowns at this. "Did you really just mess with people's memories just to hide the single punch? That's not ethical!" he says, a bit angry at Flamel. This causes him to hang back a little until he sees Guinivere. He looks at the ruby in her hands and smiles. "That looks beautiful, Princess," he says, pointing at the stone.
Angela	''Revenge is actually really, really good at making you feel better and solving your problems.'' "Yeah?" Roland is asking. "I mean about the multi-mind systems. In my experience, it's pretty tough finding one particular target for revenge if you dig deep enough. Isn't there always someone behind something behind someone else that ends in some big nigh untouchable system that you can't really revenge yourself on. I guess it makes sense to just hit who you ''can'' but--I'm not saying it's every case, but most times you're wronged it's a bit bigger than one mind, isn't it?" 5rrLove is feeling better because Princess Guinevere cheered her up with talk of kingly hips and Roy's sympathetic words on the topic of change. She believes in Guinivere and her potential to be king or queen or whatever and she's certain her hips (and her heart!!) are up to the task, though she's not entirely sure exactly how all that works . Maybe she should ask Happiness about it sometime, she'd know for sure. "Wow!" Love says as she sees the spherical ruby in Guiniverse's hand. "What's that?" "Aw jeeze, was it in the prep document Angela gave me? I haven't looked at it in ages..." Love, however, has briefly run off while Roland was thinking about that as she when she saw something scurrying off in a bush but shequickly comes back with a little lizard cupped in her hands. "Guin!" She calls out. "Are you hungry?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine hears the quickly-aborted scuffle from outside the shop, but doesn't have anything to say in the moment. When Clarine aims for the moral high ground, however, the huntress finds herself drawn into it at last. "Not speakin' for anyone but myself here," she begins, hedging with a cautious glance in Rutger's direction, "but I've thrown punches like that too. Sometimes it was for myself. A reminder that I can... act on being wronged, like Flamel says." "Other times it's for the person who gets hit. Folks like to think they can take from you and treat it like a free lunch. Reminding 'em that it sure as hell cost you something... it's a darn shame we had to pick that memory outta their brains for safety's sake. Kid woulda thought before talking again like Bulgar always belonged to him." Did the shopkeep do that? Madeleine's assuming he did. Rutger was administering just desserts, surely. "Isn't there always someone behind something behind someone else that ends in some big nigh untouchable system that you can't really revenge yourself on." "Three ways about it," Maddie says to Roland, counting off on her fingers. "Unmake the whole damn thing, learn to live without the closure, or just hit whoever's in your reach and stop there. Dunno which way's right, really." On arrival at the dig site, Madeleine doesn't set to work right away. The early stages of this, the mass indiscriminate clearing of material, are tasks for Ultraman and the Nobbu army. Once there's some idea of where needs digging, and some reason to be more precise, she'll hmph and take up a shovel or pick, but for now she's staying on guard, watching the most likely avenues of approach and keeping one eye turned skyward for Bernish riders.
Flamel Parsons	"In my experience, it's pretty tough finding one particular target for revenge if you dig deep enough." "Exactly." Flamel says. "Too many minds involved, it scales badly. But, one to one, it actually does tend to work." He nods along. "And it's hard to tell how many are involved from inside the wrong. Hence the coverup, you know?"
Odette Raskins	"It'll heal over well enough. Don't drink." Concussion advice is the most Odette's going to give that veteran after hearing about what had happened, and then she's off to join everyone else on the way to the buried shrine. Part of her is glad that she's posing as a laborer this time around instead of a medic as she often does, but some part of her still feels bad about not doing a full treatment and routine on that guy. Only a little. "It wasn't that embarassing. Besides, Mister Flamel handled it, and we can-yeah. Keep our heads down, and look forward to those snacks later. Maybe we can even make some sweet rolls if there's anything extra leftover..." Odette's already in better spirits thinking about what she might be able to help make to bolster the group's spirits after a long day of digging. Before that can happen, though, there's a long day of digging ahead of the army! Although she's visibly outmatched by Flamel, Nagayoshi, Riku, and probably anyone else that decides to pick up a shovel, she's not going to just sit back and relax! "Isn't there always someone behind something behind someone else that ends in some big nigh untouchable system that you can't really revenge yourself on." "Sort of? Um. It's something people in power'll say so that people give up on even thinking about revenge instead of realizing... er. What Mister Flamel said, yes." She comments to Roland while doing another check on the digging gear, being doubly careful to make sure everyone's got their helmets on. She might not be moving the most dirt, but she's definitely putting the elbow grease in to try and uncover plenty of the buried grounds.
Desire Stars	How would most massively-advantaged systemic forces get by if people knew they could just... act on being wronged, and get results? "Once upon a time, when those forces weren't so massively advantaged, people did know that," says Ace. "Or at least, more did then than do now. Even with those massive advantages, they haven't been able to completely erase that knowledge. For example--do you like having days off?" Ace chuckles to himself. "It's healthy for those systems to know that they're not invincible." DESIRE DRIVER! Ace presses the Desire Driver to his waist, the belt spooling around and fastening it to him. The heavy, yellow-black caution-striped Powered Builder buckle, with its substantial red handle and thick bolts, looks like it was snapped off of unattended heavy-duty construction equipment. He slots it into the Desire Driver-- Set! Powered Builder! "Henshin." Ace snaps his fingers and a fabrication floor complete with heavy manipulator arms, support pillars and catwalks rises around him as the base matte-black Rider armor forms over his body. A red holographic advisory beams over the front of the whole apparatus-- ////SAFETY FIRST////--and the manipulator arms press the caution-striped heavy plates of the Powered Builder armor over the top of Ace's armor. The mini-factory disappears, and Kamen Rider Geats lifts the heavy Gigant Blaster, looking like a mix between a man-portable laser cannon and a piece of construction equipment--that rotating chamber could either be some kind of cooling mechanism or a cement mixer, the way it's shaped. Pulling the trigger revs up the mixer, and out from the weapon's emitter spews first molten metal, then liquid rubber. As he said he would beforehand, Geats makes a conveyor assembly, fabricating a series of rollers and belts in a sandwich configuration--one belt above, one below--to carry the irregularly-sized rock chunks up and out of the crater. The piece de resistance is constructed near the boulder itself. An adjustable metal hopper sits on a track above a walled, circular length of conveyor, able to be moved along the track for convenience, tilted towards the boulder or away from it, raised or lowered along a collapsible telescoping column.
Petra Soroka	Petra wasn't at the shop with Rutger and Lilian, since she was occupied with Guinivere and the blacksmith, but the word still spread and encompassed their entire group. Unfortunately, Petra still had to wait for her custom ordered drill bit-- which took several more hours of lingering in the town under the increasingly unpleasant eyes of the populace. She's not going to disavow Rutger's actions of course, or even distance herself from them, but there's an atmosphere of hangdog dejection around her doing chores under the eyes of the townsfolk that doesn't quite manage to grow into resentment. Objectively, it's the Bernish soldiers in the wrong, and the one that Rutger punched did something unforgivable and unimaginable by any normal person. There's no level of individual retribution against them that can't be justified, having seen the results of their actions in Bulgar. Petra will never forgive someone on the basis of 'following orders' or 'being a face in the crowd'-- if anything, that's even more unforgiveable. But getting upset at the town's attitude in response feels like swinging punches at shadows. It brings to mind what Flamel said, about the cognitive dissonance of complicity in atrocity. The townsfolk aren't thinking about the ruins of Bulgar and their treasured veteran's part in it, because they can't. The people are inconsequential, cells in the collective organism of the town, and the town only exists in the temporal context that it does, feeling however it needs to to survive. Right now, the punch was an attack on part of the community by default, in twenty years they'll say they were privately sympathetic. The way to stave off the collective confabulation of eras is documentation, not starting fights, and Petra won't be doing that here, not in a way she'll share. So it just feels pointless. It's hard to think of the village as people, when they look at her like this. She thinks it'd be better if Rutger hadn't punched him; and she thinks that it'd be morally neutral to wipe this town off the map. Or maybe she's just sulky and she's making excuses for not supporting Rutger as much as she should. She walks beside the wagon where Guinivere sits rather than taking a ride herself. The freshly-forged oversized drill bit is held in her arms like a baby, wrapped in rough fabric, and as if she senses what's on Guinivere's mind, she starts talking while walking. "Sometimes I wonder if that's what it means to be a 'common person' at all. Embodying the common collective consciousness and circling the wagons when it's threatened, and living the most comfortable way that you can in the circumstances that exist. I don't even just mean that as a bad thing, but a kind of... neutral thing, I guess." "The place where I was born wasn't really dissimilar, in some ways. Um, not speaking to taste, because I think it was ugly as hell, but my hometown was objectively pretty clean and well-off and taken care of compared to a lot of places, and tons of people had good lives there, but it was built, um, similarly to Bern. Fundamentally, every single person there was benefitting from, um, unimaginable violence and evil done by the state and the corruption of the rulers, and that filtered down into every individual." Oh no! She's synthesizing materialism into Petroidism! "So, to defend the common culture, the common mindset became one that wasn't, like, able to conceieve of those things. Those big ideas and far away problems don't matter, because they threaten our lives here, so don't think, don't empathize, don't change." Petra tilts her head, and Guinivere's fidgeting with the Fire Emblem catches in the corner of her eyes. "So, um, the town was pretty. I hope after this, when you're queen, the cultural consciousness of Bern eventually won't feel like it taints it anymore."
Petra Soroka	Once at the camp, it takes Petra another thirty minutes or so to assemble her silly little jackhammer. Rigging up electronics, pneumatics, fasteners, and scrap metal that she poured out of her compact mirror, the pristine drill bit fits right in to create Elibe's first power tool, which she promptly hands off to a floating mechanical rat instead of using it herself. It's too big for her to hold, and she's just a girl! It takes a lot of strength to use a jackhammer properly! "That's Bill," She introduces the jackhammer-wielding ratbot as. "Dollar Bill." For her own part, she hops into the Beauty of Ash to act like a workhorse, towing unreasonable amounts of rubble with its strength to clear out the digging site.
Riku Asakura	At the dig site, Riku grabs his capsules and Fusion Riser to transform into Ultraman Geed. "You go!" he says, and activates one of the capsules. Beside him, a ghostly image of an Ultraman appears. "I go," he says, activating the second one. This one is a giant of darkness, with claws for hands and the strange eyes that Geed has, but red instead of blue. "Here we go!" he says, sliding both capsules into a holder. He runs the Fusion Riser across the top of each capsule, scanning it. "It's time to get ready!" he says, as he brings the Fusion Riser up in the air, before bringing it down across his chest. "GEEEEEEEEEEED!" he shouts, as he pulls the trigger on the Fusion Riser. What happens next is that blue fire pours out of his body as he seems to brace himself. ULTRAMAN ULTRAMAN BELIAL ULTRAMAN GEED PRIMITIVE What happens next is that Riku grows and changes into the giant of light. From a normal-looking young man to a massive giant. He walks over to the crater and starts heaving large rocks out of the ground to try and dig down to where the temple is. It'll take time, but he's not working alone here!
Lilian Rook	'Why?! It's not like that achieved anything! All you did was embarrass us!' '. . .' Secretly, Lilian agrees with Clarine. She wishes Rutger hadn't. There was no need, no point, and it didn't feel very heroic to watch a partially disabled shopkeep get punched out by someone she would easily consider an Elite peer in the Paladins. Secretly, Lilian agrees with Ruger. She wishes she could do what Rutger did. There was no real consequence, nothing to stop her, and it felt like something she still hasn't put a name to since watching, which she might attempt to describe as secondhand catharsis. "Sometimes doing the thing you know you aren't supposed to is a form of taking back control." Lilian says to Clarine, making an honest stab at explaining something she knows she won't be able to convey anyways. "And there are some things that feel exactly like everyone having control of you, even though they didn't reach for it. It's not a thing you do because you're angry, or even really vengeful. It's more like . . ." 'Revenge is actually really, really good at making you feel better and solving your problems.''I mean about the multi-mind systems. In my experience, it's pretty tough finding one particular target for revenge if you dig deep enough.' 'Hmph.' Trailing off to think was a mistake. Lilian sighs. "Well. It is what it is." she says, rubbing her forehead. People getting political starts to annoy her for reasons unclear even to herself. She speeds up walking. "It's not that complicated. Just think of it like a minor health condition that female swordsmen sometimes get and move on." 'That's Bill. Dollar Bill.' "Just giving it away now aren't we?" Lilian scoffs far too fondly. Once she can hear Dieck and Echidna laughing, she raises her voice a little to say, "I don't know. I still think Dieck has a chance if he really puts his back into it. Certainly, Echidna is more used to hard labour, but a body is a body and muscles are muscles, you know? It's not that I don't see your point, but I just wouldn't be shocked at all if he dug up more by the end of the day." She even tilts it like an ongoing conversation was just being had, and firmly plants Petra as the unconditional supporter of women.
Angela	Roland looks to Madeleine and quirks his head as she gives him advice. "Yeah I mean makes sense those are the options but I was kind of saying that, wasn't I?" He realizes that while that's mostly true he was leaving out one option. "Except the move on without closure part. Which ... I don't know. If you could do that, did you even care enough about your revenge in the first place? Maybe after you've tried for a while and failed, but that doesn't feel real satisfying." Odette says something that reminds him of his talks with Red Dwarf. The way she says it. He stares at her for a while before shaking his head. No way, he likes her and all but he must be mishearing or she heard it from a radio drama or something. She is so not the type to be thinking about this shit. "Days off?" Roland asks. "We don't really have standard days off in my line of work. Usually if we aren't working, we are looking for work or recovering from the last job. Though sometimes a Fixer office will run their people into the ground or throw them to the wolves, but an office that's running properly will consider your body an investment. There's holidays but... Well, that's what I'm asking isn't it? How do you remind them that they're not invincible while... scaling it proper. Making sure you hit the ones you want for the maximum damage you can while ... not being all I don't know... Like Zephiel about it, maybe, I guess." He pauses. "Not that most go this far exactly but you get me right?" He looks at Petra and admits, "I ... even when settling down, I couldn't really shed thoughts about how The City wronged us. I guess cause it was getting in the way of living that normal life. If I was able to get to The Nest maybe I would've been able to stop." He frowns, though, unsure if he'd prefer that or not. Sometimes doing the thing you know you're not supposed to be doing is a form of control, Roland thinks. Is that what he's doing?
Flamel Parsons	"Once upon a time, when those forces weren't so massively advantaged, people did know that." "Wild. I don't know how humanity got by, back when the precursors and all of that were more lax with coverups. I do love a good day off though!" Flamel's always so friendly and agreeable. "Don't worry, the way I hear it, there's systems to undermine systems and all, you know. They've got a conspiracy for everything, these days."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Sometimes doing the thing you know you aren't supposed to is a form of taking back control. And there are some things that feel exactly like everyone having control of you, even though they didn't reach for it. It's not a thing you do because you're angry, or even really vengeful. It's more like . . ." "Yeah!" says Maddie, immediately in enthusiastic agreement with Lilian's angle. "It's about agency. It's about not letting them get away with thinking you're conforming to the narrative. It's about showing that you're not as beaten as they think you are, as they wish you were." She gives a small but clear fist-pump. Fight the power!
Marigold	"Revenge... is actually really, really good at making you feel better and solving your problems." "Is it, now?" Merlinus is a bit too opinionated of an old man to be entirely a peacemaker. He soft-scoffs in Flamel's direction as he maneuvers the horses into camp. "I've known some people who were big on revenge. Not many of them still alive, these days." "But did the dead ones die happy?" Guinivere can't resist teasing him, from the back of the wagon. "Oh, good point. Suppose I forgot to ask them," he good-naturedly grumbles back. "That looks beautiful, Princess..." "Wow! What's that?" "It is, isn't it," Guinivere tells Riku, with a smile on her lips and distant eyes. "It's called the 'Fire Emblem'. Once part of the great hero Hartmut's sword; then a symbol of the Bernish royal family's descent from him..." It's perfectly spherical, like a marble; not much bigger than one; and its color is, really, closer to fire than any actual ruby has ever been. "I risked a lot, getting it out of this country. It feels strange to be bringing it back," she softly laughs. "Let's all try not to get captured now, okay?" "And there are some things that feel exactly like everyone having control of you" "A reminder that I can... act on being wronged" Clarine's lips squirm into a frown, looking down on Lilian from atop her trusty steed. It isn't clear if she's trying to understand, or even if she wants to. But she does, a little, anyway. "Like being trapped by what you 'ought' and 'oughtn't'," she says, eyes sliding between Lilian, and Madeleine, and Rutger. "'If I go on like this, I'm letting them tame me'. That's it, isn't it?" But Rutger neither agrees nor disagrees, averting her eyes. "for example--do you like having days off?" "Ohh, sure do. What about 'em?" Merlinus asks Ace jovially. "Don't tell me someone tried to take that away." Poor man. If anyone tried to make him answer emails on a Saturday he'd riot, but his avuncular joie de vivre wouldn't survive. "Sometimes I wonder if that's what it means to be a 'common person' at all. Embodying the common collective consciousness and circling the wagons when it's threatened..." "... don't think, don't empathize, don't change." Guinivere is given to sincere, if unhappy, thought about that for a few long moments. Letting the Fire Emblem roll around in her palm no longer feels secure; she shuts her hand around it. "I wouldn't know," she says at last. "I'm not sure that anyone here would," with a glance over her shoulder at Merlinus, who's really the closest present to salt-of-the-earth. "But I have to hope, and think, that that's only a kind of 'common person'." ". . . Most people live in the easy ways to live," Rutger says as she trudges the last little ways, speaking up a little uncharacteristically. "If the easy ways are bad, most people are bad. That's it?" "Well, when you put it like that, it's hard for me to disagree, but... I don't want to accept anything that sounds like they can only be 'dead weight', waiting for a hero to drag them into a better way of life." "Mmm." "You could've easily taken his head... I commend your restraint, Rutger." "Didn't have my sword," Rutger tells Nobunaga, but there's a tiny half-guilty smile on her face that she tries not to let anyone see.
Marigold	. . . "... I just wouldn't be shocked at all if he dug up more by the end of the day." "Hey, and what the hell does that mean?" Echidna scoffs at Lilian while adjusting her tied-back hair, tactically riled. A slightly-sweat-sheened Dieck elbows her bicep. "The Dame Commander's onto something. I've probably got a little muscle on you, y'know." "You're full of it." He's a fair bit wider, but she's a fair bit taller; it's hard to eyeball their weights. "You don't train your lungs enough, won't stick it an hour." "What were you watching my workouts for?" "Now that you ask, beats me." Grinning in her always-lopsided way, Echidna pats Petra's shoulder, taking her for an ally. It's a little sad that the camp is smaller than it used to be, now that Sue is the only one of the Kutolah sticking around, but that does mean fewer animals and more treats to go around. Merlinus busies himself with the cooking, and sets up a sort of umbrella contraption over the campfire when it starts to lightly drizzle- "but be patient! No sweets until we're done digging for the day, one way or another!" In your absence, Fae has been fitted with a big wooden yoke like she's an ox; after Dieck and Echidna have loosened up a chunk of rock with the limited tools given to them, Igrene and Sophia tie ropes around it and then cheer on Fae to waddle-and-strain to pull it out of the pit. It wasn't made comfortable for this heavy work, though! So while she gets rained on and progressively starts looking more and more like a wet weird beast, she needs regular breaks from the strain the ill-fitting yoke puts on her. When she gets her first chance, Damp Fae snuffles inquisitively at Dollar Bill, and makes an "aa--uuaa--ou?" at Petra that she can understand as probably containing the word "friend?".
Marigold	The early digging and the late digging present distinct challenges. Since it seems like Iðunn crunched the whole area into rubble first, and then melted it with flame, the surface layer is mostly a challenge of breaking up the melty-fused-crayon-pile-like lava connections that join the jumble of rocks together. Further down, the rocks are looser and don't demand as much rockbreaking work since Iðunn's breath didn't melt so deeply, but now just hauling them out of the progressively-deeper hole becomes a problem. Past that, water- groundwater or rainwater, it's hard to tell- needs to be pumped out so the work can continue. Roy bravely picks up a bucket after working alongside Odette, but he might not be making much of a dent. Magical divinations or other attempts to precisely locate the Binding Blade can only yield a vague direction of 'down'. Guinivere insists on tying the Fire Emblem to a string and climbing down to use it for dowsing, but it's unclear if that's any more effective. Sophia's ill-fated precognition can tell people where not to dig, but she's only reliable for avoiding dangers like cave-ins; rarely does she get a vision of anything good. Echidna and Dieck continue bickering as they split up rocks and toss them onto Ace's conveyor belt; which soon turns into making a bet; which turns into Larum (as the former's subordinate) and Shanna (as the latter's) trying to sabotage the opposing boss by thieving rocks from one's score-pile into the other's. Their rain-translucent clothes and shining skin goes unremarked-upon, of course. After enough work, there's a grinding-shifting grrrnn from the rocks below, and the uneven rubbly 'floor' of the pit shifts a quarter-inch. Most people freeze. Guinivere looks at Sophia, but Sophia only shrugs; it seems like nothing bad comes of this. Eventually, uneasily, everyone goes back to digging...
Nobunaga	> "Didn't have my sword." Nobunaga laughs, then leans a bit closer, "You expect me to believe that could stop you?" Her tone is, again, jovial and good-natured, gassing Rutger up a bit on the heels of all that's happened. Ace gets a conveyor belt going to help shift rubble out and a contingent of Nobbu shift from picking at the fused stone to loading broken rock onto the belt he's provided; while the diggers continue to work. With looser material under the initial layer, the soldiers slow down; handing stones between each other to the conveyor in long chains. This soon also becomes a chain of buckets; with the one at the end pouring it out and throwing it back down. The entire operation gains a background noise of their chanting with each pass, No- Bu- No- Bu- No- Bu- When she isn't playfully ribbing Rutger, Nobunaga positions herself at the edge of the pit; more of an overseer than a digger, though Nagayoshi needs little convincing to join Dieck and Echidna on the row of smashing larger rubble down for transport by the Nobbu or Fae or whoever else gets their hands on it. Distinctly, Nagayoshi isn't interested in competing. One might see him as more of a judge, at least guessing by the glower he shoots at Shanna when he catches her cheating in Dieck's favor-- and a second later, at Larum for the same. Something cracks, the earth shifts, there's a straining-grinding noise, and all the digging Nobbu freeze. The one deepest in throws its little arms out to hold the others back and the digging gang's work chant gives way to disconnected Nobbu? Nobbu? noises. The leader shoots a look up towards Nobunaga; Nobunaga gauges Sophia and Guinivere's reactions. When there's no obvious warning, Nobunaga gestures. Cautiously, perhaps motivated by the lure of worker's comp, the Nobbu resume digging.
Riku Asakura	Before growing giant. 'It's called the 'Fire Emblem'. Once part of the great hero Hartmut's sword; then a symbol of the Bernish royal family's descent from him...' "Oh wow, that sounds important. That's the key to the whole reason we're here, right? It must feel very heavy to hold that relic..." Riku says to Guinivere. "I know you risked a lot getting it here, so I'm happy that you're willing to be a hero to try and prevent the world from being destroyed!" It doesn't take someone with a sword to be a hero; it just takes someone brave enough to stand up. 'Let's all try not to get captured now, okay?' Riku hopes this isn't subtle foreshadowing. However, the Ultraman nods to Guinivere. "Don't worry about me, I'll make sure that I won't get captured, and I am sure the rest of us here won't get captured either. Roy is pretty smart, so I doubt he'll let us fall into a trap," he gives the Princess a large smile, trying to make sure to convey confidence in his allies. After Riku's embiggening. The top layer requires Geed to punch the ground, to help break up the rock layer from where Idunn had melted it all with her firebreath. It's hard work, and Geed keeps up with it. As he's not fighting a monster that's damaging him, he seems to be able to go on longer than normal in this. They can make short work of this layer and get down to the loose rock layer. From here, Geed lifts heavy rocks and attempts to focus on ones that are too heavy for Fae to oxen out. However, eventually Geed's gem, the one that sits on his chest, starts flashing red and making a soft alarmed sound the longer he stays in Geed's form. He tries to get one more large rock out before dispersing the Giant of light form, and returning to Riku. He takes time to rest, drink water, and eat something because it's going to take a bit to be able to turn into Ultraman again. This leaves Riku a damn mess, sitting down and resting while others can put their back into it. Eventually, he stands up and grabs a pickaxe to help break up rocks and use Geets' conveyor belt system to get rocks out of there. Unlike before, he's not a giant, so no giant rock removal, but he does show above-average strength when doing jobs. When the shifting occurs, Riku waits with bated breath. Nothing seems to happen, so he gets back to work cracking rocks with his pickaxe.
Desire Stars	Don't tell me someone tried to take that away. Kamen Rider Geats hefts the Gigant Blaster over one shoulder, nodding towards the conveyor belts he made. "When things like this became commonplace, they sure did," he says. "By the time that happened, things like 'the king's mill' were quaint memories. It became more about who owned what--and the people who owned machines like this one had an unprecedented amount of power." He gestures towards the horizon with his free hand. "A cooper here in Elibe is limited in how many barrels he can make, but the merchants who need them put up with that because he has the know-how and they don't. If someone invented a machine that made barrels at scale, though, two things happen. One," he says, lifting his index, "The value of the cooper's work goes down. All the owner needs to run it is bodies. And two," he continues, lifting the next finger, "The value of those people's labor goes down, too, because they don't need any special expertise to run the machine. And because they don't--because they're that replaceable, they lose out on individual bargaining power." "So the factory owners tried to capitalize on that, but the workers weren't stupid. The time of 'the king's mill' is gone, but the early days of machines like this brought back the 'guild,' in a way--collective bargaining power--which the factory owners tolerate," Geats notes with amusement, "Because the alternative is a return to the days of mobs outside their homes." You don't train your lungs enough, won't stick it an hour. "I could always offer some private instruction." Geats pantomimes a fox's head with his thumb, middle and ring fingers pressed together, index and pinky lifted.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"'If I go on like this, I'm letting them tame me'. That's it, isn't it?" "Yeah, exactly. And that's... the last thing some of us want." Arriving back at camp, Maddie sees Fae's yoke apparatus and winces a little. "Oh, that doesn't look comfortable. Let's make a couple improvements, eh?" If Fae and the others allow, Madeleine conducts a close examination of Fae's neck and shoulders, and of the yoke itself. "Lift your right leg like you're taking a step, yeah? Great, like that," she says, feeling for the motion of muscle groups under all that fluff. She's no doctor, so there's bound to be tweaks she doesn't think to make. Nonetheless, years of backpacking expertise show their worth when in short order she's carved away strips of wood from the yoke where it was weighing most sharply on Fae's shoulders, and has opportunistically cut her tunic up to pad the modified woodform in remaining trouble spots. She removes her chainmail while she's at it, preparing for her shift of hard labor in just a gambeson and tights. This is bad news for Maddie when the first droplets of rain start to fall. "Just my luck," she mutters. "By the time I'm called in to dig it'll be a mud pit." She gazes forlornly at her cut-and-repurposed tunic and shivers in sympathy for her future self. Rather than catch some kind of fungus by standing under a tree all the while, she helps Roy as best she can with the bucket-works. If there's more buckets than there are hands to drain with she takes advantage of the conveyor belt to cart water beyond the perimeter of the dig site. The earth rumbles and shifts, and Madeleine jumps a little. "Yowza," she says, "what'd we hit?" Even when it turns out to be possibly-nothing, she has a suggestion. "Fae's been at this a while, I don't think she should push too hard." She's also worried about some kind of rockfall injuring the sodden dragon, but leaves that only implied. "You've done great, Fae, but it might be time for a break, yeah?" She looks to Igrene for confirmation, hoping the unstated message got across.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's ability to dig for a long time is great. Flamel's ability to sit in the rain and maintain morale is... about equal to a camp counselor, which means it's long enough to make children miserable but not long enough to get anything useful done. He tries to consider why they decided to work in all this at all. It's not going anywhere fast! All it seems to be doing is getting Echidna and Dieck extra-wet... what's all that! In the end, the morale is a huge impediment to Flamel using a dozen psychic hands to help move things. Without some kind of PK umbrella, it'll be a huge problem! But the soft grind-shifting groan gets his attention. He stops, dispells his telekinesis for a bit... and starts to walk in the rubble for a moment. No clear alerts from Geats, from Nobunaga's workforce, from Madeleine, from Roy's team... "It's got to be..." He mutters. "Hang on..." He sort of absentmindedly wanders along one of Ace's treadmills for a moment, before levitating once he realizes he's not moving. A spinny many-dished many-antennae'd scanner goes out in one hand, two fingers go to his temple... A heavy pulse. Psychometric clairvoyance rushes out of him in a big wave, aiming directly at the column of space above the origin of that groaning. With this temple having been smashed and sunken into the ground, if something's still moving there, then it stands to reason it'll have been above the rubble not too long ago. And if it had the ability to move much, it could have been psychically substantial. A psychometric scan of the space where it previously was ought to give a hint. Perhaps some guidance for the dig! Not like he's doing well, discouraged by the rain as he is.
Odette Raskins	"It's healthy for those systems to know that they're not invincible." "Don't tell me someone tried to take that away." Nodding slowly at Ace, Odette pauses briefly at Merlinus' comment before giving Ace a bewildered look. "Wait. Did people back then really try to do that? I mean, mine are kind of all over the place, and sometimes I have to fill in on a day off just because emergencies come up, but... But I still get them pretty regularly." Unfortunately for Roland, she's totally into thinking about all of that specifically, both because of who she works for and who she (thinks she) heard all that from. She catches the tail end of his staring and raises an eyebrow cluelessly, then looks back down at her shovel. "Was I digging funny...?" "Dollar Bill..." Odette murmurs to herself while watching that ratbot go, inhaling deeply and muttering a quiet "go go go" to enocurage it somehow. She also starts backing off whenever anyone starts digging anywhere near her, giving an especially wide berth to just about everyone working on the dig site considering their outsized digging capabilities. She does start to feel a little silly worrying about helmets and shovels as much as she had back in town, but keeping herself busy helping with the dig is nostalgic enough to keep her from worrying too much about that. "but a body is a body and muscles are muscles, you know?" Hearing Lilian say that helps keep Odette motivated, too, since now she knows for sure she can't slack off while everyone else is working hard. So what if she doesn't have powers or gear like theirs? Roy's working just as hard without those kinds of powers, too, and he's not complaining one bit! Distractions from watching Dieck and Echidna notwithstanding (unremarked upon, of course), Odette does manage to do her fair share of digging between punching holes into the melted stone with a pickaxe alongside them. She permits herself the occasional break of Fae-cheering alongside Igrene and Sophia, too, but keeps herself on task so as to not inadvertently lead Roy astray. Surely he's counting on her if he's working right here in particular, after all! "Thanks, Roy... Ah. Make sure to lift with your legs and not your back, okay? We're gonna be scooping this out for a while." Odette comments as she pries another chunk of broken stone loose, all while fighting her first instinct to try getting Roy to stop. She can easily imagine/project how someone in his position might feel just being next to everyone else, so instead... She purses her lips slightly at the sheer amount of water still present before them. "Too bad we can't just suck it all out with a big straw or something." She comments, then sighs dramatically before shaking her head. "Too bad... Ah. Anyway. What do you think of Lady Guinivere's plan to use-" She drops to a lower whisper. "-the Fire Emblem? I think it might work, but it does sound a little risky." And then back to normal volume. "Oh! A-and are you feeling okay? Back, hands, all that? It might not feel too rough at first, but this kind of work can really sneak up on you." And right on cue, that grinding noise from below sounds out, drawing a startled yelp out of the medic. Jerking sideways, she hastily reaches over to Roy in preparation to pull him away from whatever's causing that shift. It's not until everyone else starts to move and get back to working that she finally looks back up at him again, although she's still stealing glances towards the floor. "Y... You good to keep going? I-I won't blame you if you want to step out for a bit." She half asks, half hopes Roy will give her an excuse not to be so close to all that water leading to who knows where.
Petra Soroka	"But I have to hope, and think, that that's only a kind of 'common person'." Heretra really wants to agree with Guinivere, but she makes an uncertain noise to buy time. She'd rather not blurt out her surface-level thoughts in response to that, both because Petra's default misanthropy would make Guinivere sad, and because she isn't even entirely certain she believes in it herself, but while she's thinking, Rutger provides a better jumping off point to elaborate. "I don't think there's really any helping that most people want to live easily, and even if I could never do it myself, I don't think it's worth condemning that either. I think, the way to change the type of person is to change what's easy. And I think that as things get worse and worse, more people are forced to choose what's not easy." Petra doesn't know any 'common Bernish heroes'. She's met people that would fit that description from every other nation in the world, but there haven't been Bernish defectors peeling off to join them, or deserters living in exile out of disgust for their nation, or anything along those lines. Melady is the closest, sort of, but... the most charitable interpretation Petra can have for the moral quality of the Bernish people is that they're comfortable waiting for a hero. "Even nobility has a collective culture that makes living is either easy or hard. You and Zephiel both chose to break away from it. I don't know if anyone else did." Petra lets that rest, before adding as awkward mollification, "I hope we'll find some actual rebels here before we have to manufacture our own, though." "Just giving it away now aren't we?" "Look! I got away with Pence and Twopence for years!" Petra carefully supervises her construction ratbot at first, to make sure that the jackhammer doesn't just rattle the little guy apart or something. If White was here, she'd ask for a tiny little hard hat... but lacking resources, she just has to hope that the other ratbots won't report her to OSHA. She tries to whalesong back an enthusiastic 'yes!' at Fae, but the low notes catch in her throat and force her into a coughing fit. Catching her breath again, "Ack-- yeah! That's a friend! Be careful and don't get too close when he's moving, though, or else one of your claws might get clipped by accident!" "Certainly, Echidna is more used to hard labour, but a body is a body and muscles are muscles, you know?" Petra is too in-tune with Lilian's intentions to get taken by surprise by a fake retroactive conversation where she's used as a prop. Even with an exasperated roll of her eyes, Petra bravely latches on to the performance, to fight for the sake of Lilian's joy and enrichment. It helps that Lilian intuitively set her up on the side that she'd believe in anyways. For women. "Come on, it's obvious that Echnidna's got more experience doing real work. Men only ever get muscles to show them off." "You don't train your lungs enough, won't stick it an hour." "See!" It's no longer a bit by the time Petra's preening when Echidna claps her on the shoulder. When it was hypothetical, she was dismissive of the entire operation because of the idea of Dieck being shirtless. Now, Echnidna's in front of her, so she's invested.
Petra Soroka	"I could always offer some private instruction." Well hold on now. Now this is interesting. The way Petra's fingers press together in front of her mouth as her eyes flick between Ace and Dieck is the least subtle thing in the world. Dollar Bill's job is frankly done with fairly quickly. A Silver half-bubble hangs over the ratbot to shield the slapdash jackhammer from the rain, and while it's a modern marvel at breaking up the melted rock, there's really only a couple hours of use before it's rendered helpless by the rubble. There's no reason to break up the larger rocks either-- the Beauty of Ash, scampering around like a hydrophobic Fae, can carry them in its own arms. Reaching down into the rubble, Petra selects for the largest chunks, and then the Beauty of Ash's arms shatter into a network of iridescent shards. Laced together in front like a net made of disparate weave, the disconnected shards still move anchored with the mech's main body, so slipping it under the rubble lets her drag them out of the pit and bipedally away. At the grinding noise, the Beauty of Ash stops in its tracks, and the car-sized stone levitating in its arms slips through to thud on the ground. Its translucent chest bursts open in a geyser of glass when Petra hops down out of it, scurrying to the edge of the pit and looking down. She frowns. She couldn't feel the shift, anyways. "Oh. I thought that was a door-sound."
Lilian Rook	'Yeah!' tLilian squints angrily Madeleine's way. There aren't even enough words spoken yet for her to get angry about, so she's probably just being petty. 'It's about agency. It's about not letting them get away with thinking you're conforming to the narrative. It's about showing that you're not as beaten as they think you are' "Oh my god I said move on." Lilian rolls her eyes at the concept of personal rebellion against systemic power like it's cringe now. "It's like catching a cold. It was that time of the month. She asked for no shrimp. Don't act weird." Girl come on. 'Let's all try not to get captured now, okay?' "Oh, god forbid, no." Lilian waves her hand in Guinivere's direction next, trying to play for some levity instead. "I've no plans at all. I know perfectly well what happens to--" Lilian pauses midway through her joke about 'being a cop', spends two seconds thinking about the obvious other angles, then twists up her lips and makes a 'Mmh.' sound. "Well, no need to worry. Capturing is thrice as hard as killing and I've no intent on letting you or mmmmost of the rest of you die." ''If I go on like this, I'm letting them tame me'. That's it, isn't it?' Lilian reflexively clenches her fist. She forces her fingers apart and disguises it as adjusting her belt, but it isn't subtle. "Something like that. Wartime is when people circle beneath you and hope you'll lose balance and fall into their jaws more obviously than usual." '. . . Most people live in the easy ways to live' Lilian sighs again. The tone is audibly different. Hearing Rutger cleave so closely to her own position, more nakedly than she herself would be willing to in front of Guinivere, is slightly sobering, though somehow almost encouraging at the same time. 'I don't want to accept anything that sounds like they can only be 'dead weight', waiting for a hero to drag them into a better way of life.' "You could try thinking of it the other way around. Elibe did keep the peace for a thousand years, after all." says Lilian. "People work that way because helping each other is supposed to be the easiest way to live; whether because God designed it that way or because it's obviously the case when you live outside a big city. It's supposed to make them resilient to shocks and disturbances that might force them out of living good lives and being good to one another. So when something is so severe as this, where it forces even 'the average person' out of alignment completely, it's a lot of work to set it back straight." Lilian glances at her sword for unclear reasons, then decides to be a little lame. "We make swords and armour out of metal because it's tough and durable and likes to keep its shape. It's only natural that once it dents or twists, you can't just bend it right back into shape with your hands." 'Hey, and what the hell does that mean?' Lilian smirks at Echidna. "Hm? Oh I was just having an intellectual conversation with Petra." she gays, gesturing her way. "About the feasibility of our excavation timeline. I think she's being ungenerous. There are plenty of able bodies here." 'The Dame Commander's onto something' Snare baited.
Lilian Rook	'Men only ever get muscles to show them off.' 'What were you watching my workouts for?' "Be that as it may, she must not be watching closely enough." says Lilian, rolling her eyes. "A proper fitness routine should efficiently roll cardio into its exercises by nature. Perhaps you two should try exchanging notes?" The coup de grâce is the point at which Lilian takes her newly purchased 'local' outfits to Petra, shrugs off her travel cloak, and then starts stripping down to just one step short of her bra, leaving her gloves on with clear provocation intent. She isn't even in the running for height or total muscle mass with those two, so she may as well be screaming 'but of course, I'm sure to win; my technical skills are superor' with her bare arms and waist out like that. Once the two of them are digging in earnest, Lilian actually goes off to the side to mix her promised cure-all: miraculous alkahest, of which she has a pitifully small amount of given the grand scale of the depression. Moving away from the others is a consideration for the fact it reeks like ethanol-soaked wood ash poured into a cast iron pot. Once she has it, she takes advantage of Sofia's divination rather than anyone else's menacing the stonework with solvent in first a wide circle, then a contracting spiral, to play hot-cold with 'where this is going to cause a disastrous collapse'. Once she has a point furthest from all of them, she starts catching up on the competition she'd actually forgotten about already. By alternating dribbles of pearl-coloured oil with the pickaxe, the former 'converts' heat-fused stone into a homogenized mass with its own cataclysmic byproducts, turning the troublesome shell of slag around everything into brittle internal impurities in the rubble, and the latter substitutes for dragon decapitation practice until Lilian learns how hard she can actually swing it without damaging it; with a little guidance from someone more experienced, starts doing much better at shocking apart wedge-shaped depths of solid debris. Her objective isn't actually to dig up as much as possible-- Geed would beat her to that even if Flamel or Fae didn't-- but rather to drill down until she reaches the point the last fifth of her Magic Goo is sliding through sufficiently numerous and angled-enough fault lines that it starts dripping through to any hollow spaces that exist below. Then, once she can map those, she can intentionally bring them down to widen and loosen the main pit by caving points in the walls into slides. Just that much effort is a workout. Having to do it on her own for the first stretch makes it equivalent to intense anaerobic exercise, which Lilian is frankly much better adapted to than the alternative, but that means being sweaty an hot enough to make loose rainwater steam and harsh enough on her elbows and shoulders to start needing regular stretches and grumbling dips into spare healing talismans. Once she does get to that point however-- Lilian freezes along with everyone else when the ground rumbles. Her first instinct is to keep her balance and her second instinct is to find an enemy. The third is looking around, and her fourth is feeling sort of embarrassed.
Lilian Rook	'Oh. I thought that was a door-sound.' "Who knows. Perhaps it was." says Lilian, staring down at the ground as if it'd obligingly become see-through. "It'd be very funny if one were still standing." --Then her job involves dropping her careful select of aquatic and semi-aquatic seeds into the sludge where natural dirt mixes with fresh excavation dust, and accelerate the growth of a horrid little swamp of ecologically-beloved-and-nowhere-else plants that suck up enormous amounts of rainwater and convert it into biomass that further displaces more and more rubble. With the use of magical sunlight, she can even get up to 'actual trees' before getting low on gas, which even have the nice effect of recycling air underground.
Marigold	"Something like that. Wartime is when people circle beneath you..." Clarine frowns a little deeper, before retiring to the dry comfort of the parked wagon. "People have been greedy about you, huh." 'Greedy'? What a word. "It became more about who owned what..." Merlinus takes Ace's history (futurity?) lesson with bushy eyebrows raised in half-disbelief, while poking at the cooking fire. "What, and each of the owners has a king's army to stop people from just taking it back? You can't say 'this belongs to me' and have the words be magic, you know!" But Ace gets to that part, and he settles down into a soft grumbling acceptance. "Well. No wonder they mobbed to get back their holidays, then." "Thank you, Riku," Guinivere says, while continuing her precious-gem-on-a-string dowsing. Melady stands by to shelter her with a little umbrella, naturally. "It's been a troublesome thing for certain, but it saved me from a life of guilty indolence by giving me something to take a risk for... I suppose I can't resent it." "... as things get worse and worse, more people are forced to choose what's not easy." "People work that way because helping each other is supposed to be the easiest way to live..." "That's me; forced into it," she sighs warmly at Petra and Lilian. "That is... a much more pleasant way to think about it. Both of you. Thank you. The world is mostly good; people are mostly good; it's just... things happen to have aligned in a poor way, right now." "Perhaps you two should try exchanging notes?" "Mmm. I mostly do body-weight stuff," Echidna says, sizing Dieck up skeptically. "It doesn't give you as much of a workout unless you've got some length of bone." "Yeah? I've got some weights you can borrow, too. I'd have to supervise 'til you've got the form down, of course." "Ha." "Haha~." Wow they can be catty. Lilian, with them standing behind her as she takes off her shirt, gets the satisfaction of hearing their little dispute clam up the moment she does. There's an eye-contact-sized pause. Then she hears them knowingly shake hands. "You don't train your lungs enough..." "I could always offer some private instruction." Dieck clucks his tongue good-naturedly at the insinuation, while shouldering an impressively heavy chunk of rock that Riku's just smashed up. "Well, I could use it," he says, with a feigned thoughtfulness, and then chucks it onto the conveyor. "Hup. Now, who'd you study under? You practice what you preach, too? That's important to me."
Marigold	In the background, Larum and Shanna are sorting their mentors' rocks from the belt into distinct piles, and swiping from one-another when they think the other isn't looking. Miraculously, lines-of-sight conspire to keep them both from catching each other. Echidna notices, frown-smiles, and decides not to say a thing. "You've got a lot of breath to spare for somebody who's gonna lose," she tells Dieck, punctuated by another pickaxe-strike. "Sure do," he answers. ... It's a bold call. For the first hour Dieck was keeping ahead of her, maybe because he's determined to show off for Ace and Lilian; but if nothing else he isn't as familiar with the rhythm of hard labor. By hour two his breath is fogging in the rain-cooled air, and he keeps adjusting his grip on his pickaxe between swings, like it's wearing against his hands. Echidna miscalculated, though. She thought she'd have all day to wear him out, but that grinding crunch-drop tells her instincts they're near the end; for the last hour she pushes herself to eat up his early lead, and squares up against Dollar Bill to pace herself against, John Henry-style. The rain spares her having to sweat, but it does make her clothes hug the defined tension of her back as she slouches into the blows. "You're, hahhh, dead on your feet, Dieck. Give it a rest." "Khhh. You'd like that, huh." "Matter of fact I would. Get out of my light." "Hahaha..." "Thanks, Roy... Ah. Make sure to lift with your legs and not your back, okay?" Roy lifts his eyebrows at Odette, baffled. "Lift with my...? But my back's easier. I don't think my legs are very strong." Oh... poor, young, dumb Roy. He tries what she asks, though, with a grunt of effort and a little teeter. "What do you think of Lady Guinivere's plan to use the Fire Emblem?" "I don't think it's telling her anything," Roy murmurs back, without really knowing why Odette's whispering! "But, you know, we might as well try it. At the very least, it's letting her feel useful." He glances down at the tiny bucket in his arms, and at the vast, vast hole everyone else has been digging. Hm. Maybe he shouldn't throw stones in that glass house. After melodically giggling at Petra's introduction and nod-nodding at Dollar Bill from a respectful distance, Fae goes to lie down and look all soggily pathetic under Madeleine's tenderly concerned care. The yoke is hugely improved, but she lifts a wing to wetly-eyed beg for a little massage of her poor marshmallow-fluff shoulder muscles too... . . . Flamel reaches down with his senses. For a while there's "nothing", like inert rock. Then there's "nothing", almost like the kind of void he's come to associate with the Demon Dragon. Then there's Flamel. "Come down," his own voice tells him. It's ten minutes after the first grinding crunch that Roy, wading down into the wet to get another bucket-full of the water, finds a little whirlpool in the shallows like a bathtub emptying out. "... Oh! Odette. Look. It's aaaaaaa--!!" Grrrr-crk. That sentence doesn't finish because the bottom falls out of the pit, and Roy and all the water vanish without a sound into a black that doesn't yield to light.
Marigold	"Lord Roy?!" "Ahhh-- someone get me a rope!!" "Lucius! Lucius had the warp staff! Where's--" A moment later, a hooded figure halfway emerges from the black pool (is it liquid? it doesn't ripple or seem thick) as if walking up unseen stairs. Their face and voice is your own. They say "Please, come with me," or "Don't keep me waiting," or "We need to talk," or "C'mon," whichever you'd be most likely to say. And then they turn and walk back down the stairs, vanishing lazily from view. Guinivere looks from the Fire Emblem on her string, to Sophia who's still frozen with eyes wide. "Nothing bad happens, does it?" she asks. "I don't... think so..." the seer says. "Well then--" "My lady, please!" Melady protests, but Guinivere is already gathering up her skirt and doing a little jump, and instinctively Sophia tries to snag her, but pitches forward into the black too. There is no sound of them landing.
Desire Stars	Now, who'd you study under? You practice what you preach, too? That's important to me. "Hooooh?" Geats' fox-themed helmet has never seemed so smug as in this moment. "Turn your back towards me in just the right way, and I might consider answering." But of course, this is everything that he'd wanted, and so Dieck doesn't go without his answer for long. Not for too long. Hahaha... "It'd be shorter to say who I haven't learned from," Geats airily declares. "Not to outshine the both of you, but it's just a matter of experience and keeping an open mind." Realizing that he has the chance to do something phenominally evil towards Buffa, especially with Petra present to fan the flames later after drooling about it in the present, "There's a certain bullheaded fellow who reminded me that you can always learn from the people around you." ... Lord Roy?! "Crap--" He levels the Gigant Blaster, the manipulator arm on the shoulder of his armor swiveling outwards to aid in the construction of-- You foolish man. You can't help yourself, can you?