Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Holly Asturias     The UNDEAD FOREST, the region of land immediately around the Sanatorium, probably needs a few more trees before it can really be called a forest. It's forest-y, from a high vantage point, but maybe the undead part of its name rings a bit more true. Especially when you're spiritually inclined.

    Back at the DREAM LAND PARK, there had been hints, already, that something spiritual lingered. The bed of bright azure spider lilies was steeped in something akin to a haunting, surely what Holly had called 'Pathos'. Sadness, unresolved, but not *sourced* there. Whatever had left that spiritual, or emotional, imprint simply wasn't there anymore. It would've been hard for Lilian to miss, even if the flowers had her attention.

    But there were plenty more little feelings like that, if one closed their eyes and looked out from the mountain's cliff, or even from the Sanatorium's roof. Not all negative, but all deeply affecting the land.

    The closest of these feelings is a chaotic mess. It's a hour's walk from the Sanatorium, headed east and eventually following a road through a ruined little village. It's quite likely that your exact heading comes from Lilian, Tamamo, or both, as they try to lock-in on the exact source of feeling like the land itself is haunted somehow. Here, unlike on the mountain, those grim totems and effigies look even more like fully-formed horrors, statues made of stone and gold and looking like horrible fusions of five or six people each, in messes of bones and limbs and heads sticking out screaming. Inert, dried up, transformations that never finished.

    It's a nice sunny late afternoon at least. You can even hear birds chirping. You could almost forget the state of the world seeing it like this.

    There had been Horrors though, along the way. Lesser ones, twisted spiritual dogs, men and women in ragged clothes hanging onto weapons and desperately going for your throats, their skin parched and parted to reveal golden muscles and bones. A bane for unprepared travellers. Nothing at all to you. But the roads are never safe. Those things just... wander, and wander.

    "This village was attacked a few decades ago," Holly explains, as you slowly walk past the broken country houses, occasionally having to steer off the road to avoid holes and broken segments that'd make taking a car here just awful and bumpy, "There were not many people here, but I distinctly recall a church down that way. My mother came here often to offer care."

    'Down that way' meaning, past the village, a narrowing of the road and path, between rising cliffs and hills, with twists and turns that make it hard to tell what's around the corner further ahead.

    And sure enough, it's where the concentration of feelings comes from. An intermingled cacophony of resentment, of unfinished purpose, of pride. Dozens of voices, not just one, arguing, disagreeing. Impossible to make out yet.

    But you aren't alone here.

    Overlooking the pass to (supposedly) the church, an ethereal figure, wispy, light blue, a seven foot tall woman in heavy armor, shield and spear, helmet on, stands atop the rocks and never takes her Revenant-red eyes off of you. She is invisible, incorporeal - lest your senses can perceive ghosts. Real ghosts, not the spiritual Horrors of the forest.

    Holly does not point her out or see her, as she keeps guiding you along that way. "Unless you'd like to stop here for a moment, the church is another fifteen or so minutes away. Perhaps it's what you're looking for?"
Friz     "So, you someone with 'spiritual inclinations' now?"
    "It's a case, I-- I appreciate any case, really." Friz says, to Lilian.
    "Thought I wasn't a ghost."
    "Just because," Friz says, *to Lilian* and not to a *nearby old-timer troublemaker*, "I don't really connect *that often* with spiritual stuff, doesn't mean I can't help! *Any* tracking job is a job for the greatest detective in the galaxy, after all! (...Need the Hopes this month too, mmh.)"

    The double-layered conversation with an invisible person naturally ropes in the people around Friz. Surely she has gotten some old BCC connections spun up to help pay this month's Debt Maintenance Service Obligate Gratuity. She's brought along a cautious habit, and an ability to help subdue the more animalistic foes; dogs and other suchlike will be much less of a threat when she can shout clarifying sounds or at least some distracting lies, and she can treat the lesser humanoid horrors as equivalent to malnourished greytiders who are much riskier up-close.

    ---

    She briefly takes a break to do something...

Grit: You have to let me.
Savvy: I really don't.
Moxie: It's sort of our one and only chance.
Dirt: It's been about ten years, boss.
Savvy: Fine. But I get to scroll tonight before sleep.
Grit: You know that never works.
Savvy: And *you* know you can't stock up on this, it'll just look embarrassing.
Savvy: That's the deal.
Grit: Fine.

    "Hey, um, ignore me doing this next part." Friz says, to Lilian, Tamamo, and Holly. "It's-- hard to explain." She drops to her knees and plunges her hands into some underbrush, to feel plentiful Plant Material and Soil against her fingertips for the first time in about ten years. The movement that wracks her body looks like a starving person finally given a meal.

    "Okay, I'm normal." She says, progressing into the village.

    ---

    Rogers is the one who uneasily grips his gun as he moves toward the church. He paces oddly. Friz tilts her head at his own invisible shape, but he shakes his head. "Can't see anything." He mutters. "Just got shakes." Settling in, he motions to the village surrounding them. "If it's a curse, it's got history. Nobody ever whips that crap up out of nothing. So you look for the history nearest it."

    Friz nods along as she walks, oblivious of one of the two invisible figures. She looks into a dozen old books in her mind... "Typically, the mythological root of the concept of a curse is something that someone casts on someone else or wishes on someone. A wish of the intensity like that has to come from a social consensus. Church is a good start, and the patterns around it. It's old around here, but maybe I can dig up who wished what, and why they'd feel like that..."

    She doesn't slow the group. But as she approaches the church, and once she's in the church as well, she starts to look for signs of the areas' inhabitants' collective and consensus patterns. The desires that would have been empowered by the whole of the population -- which would have been left unfulfilled, enough to create the core wish that a mythological curse has root in. Rogers, too, helps her, trying to lend some of his old reliable gut-feeling. It's more of an anthropological examination than a forensic one, but the two are surprisingly adjacent.

    Based on the tidbits of Detective-Vision Hyperanalysis on this village, and this church, what did the people here *wish* for?
Tamamo     "It is good to see you again, detective. It has been... goodness, quite some time, has it not? When was the last..." Officially, Lampport.

    "I suppose there is not much reason to be repairing the roads, is there?" Tamamo is here in her usual, if decreasingly usual as the years slowly progress, seven-layer robes, both because her duties here will be miko-related, and because this is a kind of battle-wear. While she is leaving much of the defense against ~~low-level~~ weaker horrors to others, she takes exactly three cases for her own experimentation, holding up a hand to signal a wait, and then tossing out one of each of three of her most straightforward cursing talismans.

    Their names aside, she's testing flash-freezing, incineration, and clear-sky lightning strikes on the local population of ravenous, golden-boned beasts. The reference may be useful later. She could do quite a few other things, but today already has a goal.

    "It would be a simple enough matter, if time consuming, to fill the holes with earth." That would be dangerous for some automobiles, but she's not thinking about cargo trucks right now. Also, still not today's goal.

    "Ah, but then... pardon me. I am so used to seeing lands in which it is the land that needs recovery, or the ruins that need improvement, rather than one in which there are simply not such a population about as would find these spaces necessary. To not need 'more space' is a bit rare, no?"" For that, she looks toward... literally everyone apart from Holly, for one reason or another.

    Today is for ghosts, and Tamamo doesn't have specialized ghost-hunting experience, but she does have the tools to check for or ward against them. She's aware that there's been a ghost with them this entire time, but the signs don't fit at all what Holly has suggested they might look for, so she's doing her best to filter out anything but the more dangerous sorts. 'Regret' is largely a freebie, but 'sadness' and 'anger' are the other two feelings to check for, with either having the potential to grant enough strength to act on the world.

    "Hm. We are being observed, entering here. A guardian, perhaps. If there is no immediate challenge, it may be that we are being judged, or that there is more specificity to that which is being guarded."

    'It's old around here, but maybe I can dig up who wished what, and why they'd feel like that...'

    "Bring to me any likely items, and I may perform a reading."
Timekeeper     The thing that drew Vertin here, most of all, was curiosity. The Sanatorium was already on the Timekeeper's radar thanks to Matilda coming over before, so between that and the subject, there's no other reason needed before they simply wander their way out of the warpgate, accompanied by Sonetto. It's not official business, just one of Vertin's whims, so Sonetto has no obligation from her position to join them, but the little joys of exploration can be justified to herself under the guise of defending them if necessary.

    Before the long walk, Vertin offers their non-suitcased hand out to Holly. "Hello. I'm Vertin, of the St. Pavlov Foundation. I have some familiarity with spirits and arcanum, so I hope I'll be able to provide some insight today."

    Sonetto introduces herself as well, equipped in her typical uniform but with the sheathe of her Trideag-granted sword on her hip. She has lots of questions while walking, mostly confirming things that she read in the dossier about the nature of Horrors and Revenants, but one in particular that strikes her when standing on the elevated foothills, looking out on the Frontier spread out in front of them.

    Sonetto looks past that, at the horizon, and upwards as if there's an invisible dome to trace that's centered on the Sealing Spire in the distance. "This world... what is left of it. There are so few people remaining, you have said, that villages are sparsely populated and scattered... does it feel large or small, to you?"

    Another way Sonetto justifies this outing to herself is that she can use it as *training*. She relies on Terra all'Amore more often than her arcanum, interweaving the latter as support or protection rather than direct offense when fighting off the lesser Horrors along the way. This is routine enough-- easily compared to certain varieties of corrupted or mutated critters, as Vertin casually exposits during a random encounter-- that Vertin doesn't need to contribute at all besides keeping an eye out for Sonetto or for a surprise magical attack.

    After fending off some of the dog-like Horrors, Sonetto remarks while wiping away sweat with a cloth, "Ah... it is an entirely different experience to use a sword against a monster rather than a human being. I have not practiced doing it at all."

"This village was attacked a few decades ago,"

    "Attacked by a Horror, was it? Or is this the result of one of the smaller Resurgence-type events that seem to happen on occasion?" Vertin is more discomforted by the totems than Sonetto is, though you'd never be able to tell by her face.

    To note, Vertin's extreme sensitivity to magic is constantly active and filtering the world around her. The Resurgence and the Sealing Spire both are radiant in her perception, like an omnipresent golden sun whose light reflects particularly harshly off of the Horrors and Holly herself as a Revenant. Despite the grotesque harm that the transformation obvious causes, the fact that the totems are dull, inert stone in comparison to that makes them feel somehow more dead than a corpse.

"Perhaps it's what you're looking for?"

    Vertin's eyes find the ghost as easily as they would a living person, staring off into seemingly nothing. Without looking away from the ghost, she says to Holly, "It may be. What is it that would create a Pathos? The collective despair people feel in the moment of tragedy? The wish to protect themselves and their loved ones? Life goals unresolved, as with many ghosts?"
Lilian Rook     Unlike Dreamland Park, the forest is somewhere Lilian volunteered to go in order to accomplish something. Moreover, her beautiful talented always perfect wife volunteered, because what Holly described falls directly into her skillset, and therefore Lilian most be here. Not only because she has to play her part as a knight, but because it's quality time too!

    Having expected more forest and less undead, Lilian has come dressed in a lightweight spring sweater, wine-red wool and off-shoulder (because she is absolutely incorrigible), semi-rugged dark pants fastened below by calf-high lace-up boots and above by her fancy double carry belt, matching gloves that actually reach her wrist, and a properly mounted (high) scabbard actually making use of the esoterically decorated sword-loop on her fashion accessory. Again, expecting more forest than undead, she actually tied up the hair behind her head and moved her pin to anchor it. Yes she still put the lipstick on.

    So, despite pants necessitating thigh carry for Winter Crow strapped over rather than under, she was actually prepared to explore thick brush; for the most part. Walking down an asphalt road under the blue sky of a sunny day makes her frown a little. She's not going to complain, but . . .

    'Ah, but then... pardon me. I am so used to seeing lands in which it is the land that needs recovery, or the ruins that need improvement, rather than one in which there are simply not such a population'

    "Goodness. Isn't that just exactly it? I can never help but look at things like this and think 'I could fix this up'." Lilian gets to enthuse at Tamamo the whole way, so it's actually okay. "Perhaps something happened to my brain after Trídéag and Cinnuint and the Garden and that time out in the wilderness. I swear it's like an addiction to putting a little touch on everything."

    'Hm. We are being observed, entering here. A guardian, perhaps.'

    "Mh. I feel them too." Lilian says, noncommital. She can still switch tracks just fine. "In either case, it isn't an Intruder-class Horror. It isn't attacking us immediately, so our options are 'a Revenant with a Formae skill that allows them to decorporealize', or an ordinary sort of ghost." she says. "Or, as ordinary as an Aobheil type can be, I suppose."

    'It's a case, I-- I appreciate any case, really.'

    Speaking of ghosts, Lilian stares at Friz like she might not be all there. "O . . . kay?" She resolves to try and think the best of it, or nothing at all. Friz has helped her before, even after seing a little of 'Lilian too'.

    'I don't really connect *that often* with spiritual stuff, doesn't mean I can't help!'

    "Oh! I see!" That explains everything! Lilian can rationalize this away just fine. "Even if it's a little spooky, I think it's important do so. If you get bogged down with only one type of work, you'll forget that you're 'in the Multiverse'."

    'Hey, um, ignore me doing this next part.'

    Lilian raises an eyebrow. She is totally not going to ignore it. 'It', however, stuns her into wondering silence for a while, then turns into the lightly furrowed expression of someone trying not to ooze so much pity it could cause offense. "You know." she says, as if it were unrelated, "Seeing Petra take such good care of Norton, I wouldn't mind rehoming a plant or two from my practice garden. Does that interest you?"
Lilian Rook     She's hardly containing the fact that Vertin and Sonetto here are such a pleasant surprise, though. It's a little bit ridiculous how much Lilian brightens up when either of them are around; subtly, sure, but across the board in every metric. Seeing Sonetto carrying her sword makes her smile. Watches the both of them for no particular reason in short lulls.

    'There are so few people remaining, you have said, that villages are sparsely populated and scattered... does it feel large or small, to you?'

    Lilian blinks. "Huh. That wasn't how I was expecting that sentence to end at all." she says. "Large, for now. I think? Every place without people is somewhere that begs one to explore it, so it's as if there's more 'space per space', you know? When it's occupied by people, that's space that wants you to stay out." Lilian says, as if this were an obvious, universal fact.

    The random trash mobs along the road are, of course, trivial. Tamamo and Sonetto both providing support makes it feel trivial. Lilian doesn't even utter a single 'incantation' the entire way, merely moving nine squares for one momentum at whatever enemies look densely packed or have strayed out of view, and hacking it apart into the steep negatives of HP.

    'Ah... it is an entirely different experience to use a sword against a monster rather than a human being. I have not practiced doing it at all.'

    "Isn't it just? It's not a very relevant skillset in the City, but even for highly experienced swordsmen, or really any martial artist for that matter, adapting your training to apply to quadrupedal hostiles, or those in the air, for instance, is a considerable hurdle." Lilian has already defaulted to her enthusiastic-authoritative rambling tone. "In the case of these dog-types, it's much more difficult to predict their movements based off body language, and it's difficult to gauge their actual reach. They're so low to the ground that you have to exaggerate even your low guards, and every cut has to aim down; but attacks from straight above have to travel for so long that they're easily seen and evaded."

    'Attacked by a Horror, was it? Or is this the result of one of the smaller Resurgence-type events that seem to happen on occasion?'
    'It may be. What is it that would create a Pathos?'

    "Both good questions." says Lilian. "I suppose the former depends on whether people feel comfortable moving into a village full of these horrid corpse-totems. The latter likely has something to do with residual stains of powerful mag-- Formae."
Holly Asturias "Okay, I'm normal."

    "Are... are you?" Holly blinks towards Friz, as the out-of-starvation response she's seen entirely too many times in her time and will probably keep seeing for quite some time still. In others. In herself, when she plays with fire, though she tries to ignore it.

    "Do you need us to stop for a bit?" The village was a good chance to, if it was needed at all.

"It's old around here, but maybe I can dig up who wished what, and why they'd feel like that..."

    The village is steeped in something that surely mustn't have belonged to the villagers. You wouldn't normally walk through a village and see dozens and dozens of households haunted by an intense desire to PROTECT, and an equally intense scar caused by BETRAYALS, plural. Whatever the people here wanted, so long ago, was overridden by this bleeding wound, and it's festering outward.

Tamamo's tests.

    Tamamo finds her tricks exactly as useful as they would normally be. In fact, Holly made some jagged ice spikes and shot them at one of the Horrors! It doesn't seem like any one of the elements work 'better' or 'worse' but the lesser ones aren't really sturdy. In a longer fight, with a larger one, maybe it'd be different.

"Goodness. Isn't that just exactly it? I can never help but look at things like this and think 'I could fix this up'."
"To not need 'more space' is a bit rare, no?"

    "One day, I'd like to turn to such matters too. When things have improved enough, when we have the means to keep the roads safe, then, repairing them would be of utmost importance." Holly agrees with Tamamo on that much.

"Hm. We are being observed, entering here."

    "We are?" Holly looks around, and sees nothing, turning then to Tamamo and giving a brief shiver. "You don't mean... ghosts? Not ghost-shaped-Horrors, but actual... ghosts?"

    Is she afraid of ghosts or just uncomfortable that she can't see them?

"Hello. I'm Vertin, of the St. Pavlov Foundation."

    "Vertin, hello!" The Timekeeper got a hug, if they did not deftly work to avoid it. "My I've met some of your colleagues I believe? One Mesmer and the great Matilda? Quite the energy on that one! Radiant, in every meaning of the word. How lucky you must be to work alongside her often!" Chat she doesn't know.

"Does it feel large or small, to you?"

    "In spirit? It feels so small, even though it's all I've ever known. But physically, larger than I could ever cross on foot in a reasonable amount of time. Ah, but by that metric, any large piece of land can be 'large' can't it? It's superficial."

"Attacked by a Horror, was it? Or is this the result of one of the smaller Resurgence-type events that seem to happen on occasion?"

    "I'm afraid I don't know. I could surmise Horrors, from the damage to the buildings, and from that usually being what ends up happening, but having not been witness to it..."

"It may be. What is it that would create a Pathos?"

    "I'm quite unsure. I've only ever heard theories. 'Strong feelings', I believe, though negative ones leave a deeper imprint more easily. I possess no skills to discern them, let alone to diagnose them. This is as new to me as it is bound to be to you. Perhaps more, even!" It's a bit exciting. And a bit scary too. She adds to Lilian's guess: "That may be so. Powerful Formae, especially. Though, to think this would essentially mean that only Revenants can 'haunt' this world..." That bugs her, for some reason.
Holly Asturias "so our options are 'a Revenant with a Formae skill that allows them to decorporealize', or an ordinary sort of ghost."

    "Such Formae... *do* exist, but their use is strictly regulated by the Association of Revenant Hunters. They stake sole claims over 'stealth'-like Formae, past a certain threshold. Something about keeping Revenants from being able to prey on others from the shadows." She doesn't say 'it's illegal' exactly, but she may as well have.
Holly Asturias     As you chat, you keep moving. Past the village, into the winding paths through the pass. Every now and again you turn a corner, only to be greeted by one of those stony effigies, like a Horror ready to pounce but that never attempts it. They've been there a long time. Moss and vines on some of them. No indication they're alive, or contain spirits for that matter.

    They really are just testaments to how messed up the Resurgence must have been, and how even the last bastion of life barely made it out.

    All this time, the ghostly figure atop the cliffs occasionally disappears when you look away for a second, and appears further ahead, ever watchful. She isn't attacking - Lilian's right - but the closer you get to the church and the more hostile her gaze seems to be. You're trespassing, that much is obvious.

    Finally, the rocky walls cease, opening up to a clearing. The road continues, into a completely collapsed tunnel that originally went through the hills. To the right, off the path, a large ruined church, with a nice little coastline and a river. Past the river, mountainous walls, with roads built on them. On Holly's map, that region was called the 'Corroded Scar', a high-elevated mountainous, circular area that seemingly provides power and mines resources for the rest of the Frontier.

    The church looks a bit pagan in nature, having no discernable cross or other major symbolism to it. Then again, so much of it is just missing. Crumbled stone, overgrown foundations, the occasional creak that makes one wonder if everything's going down the next time it rains.

    And a monstrous Horror tree not far from it. Growing out of the ground like a geyser of giants gushed out of the earth, indistinct people four times your size all trying to reach the top, stepping onto one another, ultimately blooming into the distinct shape of a tree, their outstretched arms acting as branches. No leaves on it; it's all stone and gold, like the effigies along the way. But not as old.

    There's less moss, or cracks. If the effigies surely date a hundred years at least, this... thing... is only 'a few decades' old.

    And wouldn't you know it.
    It's at the epicenter of the spiritual pressure in this area.

    The armored figure shifts with the winds, to be atop the church, tense, possibly even angry.

    There is a WISH, here, still. To honor the work done. To protect what's left. And there's another WISH, too, to seek out retribution against Revenantkind and humankind alike for what was done. Discordant voices that can't agree on which it should be. A rising chorus about 'not giving up the cause', and then rebutal after rebutal, 'but look what they've done' 'we should have just killed them all'.

    The TREE creaks. To Vertin, there is still *some* life left in it, and your proximity is causing the voices to scream louder, and the Ichor to build up in the tree faster. And faster.
Friz     "When was the last..."
    "I suppose (technically,)" Friz rambles at Tamamo. "Another wish-curse situation? Though maybe this was an *independent* curse... Well, either way, no curse exists outside of a cultural context, I know that at least." She continues her rummaging. "There's a few cases of curses being emergent and targeted based on divine hierarchy, but a lot more based on *people* laying curses. The former got exaggerated historically (you know, by something called 'Britain' because they were, I guess they were sort of trying to invent a vaporized peer nation that was going to fight them when they were digging up 'mummies'? I guess I don't know politics well)."

    "Bring to me any likely items, and I may perform a reading."
    "That is to say... Yeah! If there's a 'curse' here, it's statistically likely to be rooted in a personal or collective wish, more than any spiritual hierarchy. (I guess I'm preaching to the choir (or directly to the god) on divine topics, though.)"

    "We are being observed, entering here."
    A glance to Friz's ghostly companion. His shady eyes are darting around. But nothing. Just being a ghost himself doesn't mean he can see them. Still, his gut sense for observation adds up. "She's right. Not me. Trust me, kid, busy enough observing the treeline, not you all. Keep an eye out for when it gets *judgy*."

    ---

    "Does that interest you?"
    "Please. I mean, yes, ah, yeah I'd love that actually! Bit tough to get soil up there, but anything that works well with hydroponics..." Friz is *instant* there, and then trying to roll it back, seem less abnormal with Lilian. She mutters something, something about 'plastic' and 'numb' that sounds slightly resentful about something Lilian is helping with.

    ---

    "The wish to protect themselves and their loved ones?"
    "You know, historically... That actually doesn't show up much. Somehow, the grit, the survival instinct, that's just... separated from the idea of wishing. Like, somehow the machinery of wishing for something is different from the machinery of wanting to continue existing. It always becomes vengeance in stories! Usually twentieth-century ones." She tilts her head a bit, recalling the Timekeeper's voice and seeing how she fares with her own observed technique. "Do you think a person can 'wish' for continuing to live (or for people they love to keep living)? Or is that something different?"
Tamamo     'I swear it's like an addiction to putting a little touch on everything.'

    "It is a thing that may be practiced, perhaps, and is a good thing to be practiced, besides. How many people never have the opportunity to truly make a place in which they reside a home, by changing this or that about it to suit themselves, and not merely as the result of brutishly pushing and pulling items over time? It is more satisfying when there is purpose to it, I think; one may see that which could be changed, and decide to do so." This is clearly somthing they could just keep talking about, if there weren't interruptions, animated and motivated. Interruptions like a ghost, or... a plant?

    'Hey, um, ignore me doing this next part.'
    'I wouldn't mind rehoming a plant or two from my practice garden.'

    Tamamo was going to ignore it, but... "There are certain vines, as I recall, that are so tenacious as to grow nearly anywhere to which they can cling. I have not been growing any by design, of late, however."

    'I have not practiced doing it at all.'

    "I so usually see you relying upon your glasfeder, Ms. Sonetto, I wonder when the last time was that I saw you did not..." It's not coming immediately to mind.

    'You don't mean... ghosts?'

    "There are likely to be ghosts." There's at least one. "Ah, as to discoporealized, but living beings... I did not expect a need to distinguish these, as well."

    '...but their use is strictly regulated...'

    Vaguely, "Yes, I see. It is much as one would regulate such items as weapons that can be hidden easily."

    Passing near a stone effigy, "Is it a sort of fossilization, do you suppose? I cannot detect anything to suggest life within these, as if they were only a memory of shape. Were there more people about, I would suspect them carved statues, like those carved by certain adherents of the Buddha, who believed the act of carving was a part of their path to enlightenment."
Friz     "Do you need us to stop for a bit?"
    "No! No." Friz pauses, embarrassed, red in the ears. "(Maybe on the way out (don't bog down the schedule just for me.))"

    "You don't mean... ghosts? Not ghost-shaped-Horrors, but actual... ghosts?"
    "Whether or not ghosts are real," She carefully dances around her feelings on the topic. "Usually that's a sign to respect a place, I suppose...? In a lot of cases, ghosts are guilt. A personification of the knowledge you have, on your own, that you're an interloper. Or they're memory and wish, something you know you know about the world and the people in it, as a person." A long pause. "Even *if* they're real... it's good to think of them like that? I think it's good to think of them like that. It can't lead you wrong, right?"

    ---

Dirt: That's one hell of a growth.
Hurts. Angry. It's awful.
Savvy: What?
Grit: The tribe's trajectory was severed.
Moxie: I feel it too. They wanted something and it was cut.
Savvy: None of you are making sense.
Dirt: It's spiritualism, boss.
Dirt: Looking at that tree, in the middle of all this...
Savvy: No botanical matches?
Dirt: You joking?
Dirt: Boss, this shares more cultural DNA with Cueva de las Manos.

    "Maybe... 'Árbol de las Manos'?" Friz asks nobody in particular, approaching this. "Careful, most cultural consensus curses, people think those are really incited by disturbing an equilibrium at a site of death or burial." She says, as if that's not a really well-known phenomenon. "There's..."

    Her spiritual sense is nothing. Her investigative sense is everything. The posture of the hands brings up skills she usually only uses to analyze grainy CCTV images for intent of the figures therein. "You..." She whispers, as she approaches. "You don't hate *enough*, do you...?" She almost sounds sympathetic. "You're, you're all torn up because you can't get all the way to hating what hurt you, hard enough to sharpen it. Oh, oh, oh, no, no, what did they do to you... Is there any way you can show us what you're feeling? I don't want to disrupt things, I don't want to step on you."

    What's a good way for a ghostly presence to speak without damaging the equilibrium? She knows, at least, some of the theories. She gets out her notebook, the one she usually takes statements in. "My name-- people call me Friz. I'm with the Debtor Volunteer Security Department and I'm here to help. My job is investigating wrongdoing and finding a way to make sure it doesn't happen again." She presses her pen against the pad, and closes her eyes. Focus. This is a presence of raw feeling. That means it'll take unconventional methods to use her investigation. But there's still ways to interview. So she speaks, and then tries to let her hand flow with whatever comes next.
Friz Savvy: God's sakes. Whatever. At least make them feel like people.
"Could I get, uh, well, whatever you'd like noted as your names?"
"Can you give me an idea of how you've felt the last few days?"

Moxie: We want to know what they 'want', right?
"If there's anything you want preserved, can you describe it?"
"What is a wish that would make you feel happy or peaceful if it was granted?"

Dirt: Ghosts are memories sometimes, remember?
"Are there any important names you remember?"
"What's a direction you remember that was important?"

Grit: When the tribe is killed, vengeance is an honest truth.
"Is there anything you want hurt, damaged, or removed?"
"Is there an amount of pain that someone could feel to make you feel at peace?"

    She doesn't look for answers to everything. She just lets her motor nerves activate whenever that feeling of pressure intensifies enough to do it on impulse, for whatever question might receive an answer.

    Meanwhile, Rogers paces. Nervous. Stressed. Looking around. Waiting, anxiously, for an ambush from that ghost. Guarding Friz, hand on his holster. "No guarantees that ghosts and curses are agreeing here." He mutters. "Can't even guarantee ghosts and other ghosts agree."
Tamamo     'As grotesque as this place is, I don't think this case will be terribly dangerous, relatively speaking.'
    'Oh now it will definitely be...'
    "Not to worry. We shall be warded against misfortune."

    Tamamo not only says so, but acts, letting a tiny draw-string pouch hang from her fingers, hidden in voluminois sleeves, as she walks. The scent of it is nothing obvious, here in the outdoors.

    'Ah?! Was there a curse?!'
    'Warded...? Oh, no, no curse, more superstition.'
    "Well, now, let us see if there is a curse or not. Oh, but we are still being watched. I would say a confrontation is approaching, but it may depend upon how we next step." There's that angry ghost following and watching them. And the closer they get... though she can't yet tell if it's for the church or for the tree. Tamamo slowly approaches the latter.

    "I cannot say I like the appearance of this, nor what it could represent. Was there no one who witnessed its creation, who could explain its origin and meaning? For what is it that these figures reach, and for what reason do they climb upon one another, but only so high?" With her magically attuned senses, and her preparations for that pimrary work of a miko, 'intercession between mortalkind and spirits,' the vibes-reading becomes more specific as she gets closer, forming feelings closer to words. "Ah? These are... in conflict? Not 'a regret,' but 'an argument'? We would need more than understand each facet of... what 'cause' could it be... Dr. Asturias, does this seem to you a more recent construction than those--"

    The TREE creaks.

    Tamamo steps quickly away, and behind Lilian. Keeping roughly the same tone despite entirely different body language, "Oh, dear. They seem rather too impatient to allow us a full understanding of their issues."
Timekeeper "Vertin, hello!"

    Vertin DOES NOT avoid a hug! What a win for Holly! She just sort of stands there holding her suitcase while her face is pressed right into Holly's boobs, with her expression completely unchanged afterwards besides needing to take a deep breath.

    Pleasantly neutral, "Not just colleagues, but friends of mine. I'm glad Matilda's left such a positive impression." Conspicuously, she does not say anything about the other one.

"I swear it's like an addiction to putting a little touch on everything."

    "I know the feeling." Perhaps one of the only people who rivals Lilian in territory-building, Vertin looks out on the forest with a similar eye.

    "I've begun expanding within the wilderness, though only small scale efforts so far. Once you begin, it becomes so easy to look at these sorts of things with a director's eye."

"When it's occupied by people, that's space that wants you to stay out."
"In spirit? It feels so small, even though it's all I've ever known."

    To Lilian, Sonetto nods, accepting that this must be common wisdom. Right now at this moment, they're exploring hours and hours of territory without any person in them to say that the land's already been explored before. It's sort of artistic, in a way!

    To Holly, though, Sonetto hums quietly, looking backwards over her shoulder to try and gauge how much ground the entire Foundation campus would take up comparatively. "Small... is it only because of knowing what came before, and what used to be outside? Or would it be small even if you never knew? As you say... there will be corners of even this world that you will never know."

"'Strong feelings', I believe, though negative ones leave a deeper imprint more easily."

    Vertin nods shortly. The cloud of magically-suspended feelings is plain enough to her already, so that just means they'll be working together without any difference in knowledge.
Timekeeper     When Vertin's eyes meet the ghost's, a certain sourceless voice that intrudes on her senses. Not either of the ghosts present, whose forms are clearly visible to her, but a third, that shouts at her from nowhere. Gravelly, near-ceaselessly shouting from the chest, like a cartoonish football coach-- Vertin twitches in surprise at the unfamiliar voice, but quickly adjusts when she glances around to see no one else reacting.

HEY! Eyes up, brat! Shouldn't you be paying closer attention?

    Vertin's eyes drop away from the Revenant ghost, and her lips move almost soundlessly to respond. "Should I, now? To what?"

This world's got the same disease, kid. Same as your own. Can't you feel it in the air?
Befriending the enemy of your enemy's a great plan, it sounds great, when your enemy is total annihilation, but haven't you given a single thought to what comes after? Golly gee, won't those bonds of cameraderie last forever, you say, in your thick little skull?

"You mean the Foundation?"

Yes, yes, your Foundation, your Storm. Our heroes, our Resurgence. Take the hint: the moment that Spire went up, the humans and the revenants were right back at each other's throats.
The humans decided that one Revanant among the heroes was one too many, and they wouldn't owe their lives to the freaks. The Revenants thought they should take care of themselves, and not cater to the parasites anymore.

"So they allied for a time, and turned on each other afterwards."

That's one of 'em. A real damned hero. But by the time she and the others saved the world, they turned right back around to see it betray them. Probably got torn limb from limb by one of the rabid humans she saved in the first place, optimistic fool that she was.
So take the hint, little witch. What allies would you still have if the world stopped ending?

    Vertin's lips purse into a small frown, and she looks back up at the ghost. Rather than the bitter Voice, she feels a twinge of sympathy for the twice-shy heroic ghost watching them. "I see. So you're worried that you've learned the nature of the world too late."

"We are being observed, entering here."

    Vertin watches her for a little while longer, before turning away with a small sigh. "We are. We won't have to worry about any unprovoked attacks, I believe, as long as we remain cooperative. She's guarded and wary, for good reason."

"Please. I mean, yes, ah, yeah I'd love that actually!"

    Someone talking in that kind of tone always draws Vertin's attention, no matter what the topic is. She slides over to Friz, silently justifying a slower pace for them to mess around in the dirt longer by sitting down on a nearby collapsed porch.

    "You live somewhere primarily indoors, then? It's simply healthy to go on walks on occasion, I believe." Meaning, 'I know you don't get that chance, but I'll launder your need to touch the grass through myself by claiming consensus'.

"Do you think a person can 'wish' for continuing to live"

    "Yes," Unhesitatingly, one specific person comes to mind.

    "But not always, I suppose. Everyone wants to, and deserves to, live, but few orient every mechanism of their mind around it."
Friz     EARLIER...
    "You live somewhere primarily indoors, then?"
    "Space." Friz says, absentmindedly. "That is, if I go outside, I die (also, not much soil and plant life, it's complicated). So, just get sort of... dry-handed? Does that make sense?" She scrunches her eyes shut a moment. "I can't really afford to use the Refresh Room any more this month, I'm already *way* over quota..."
Tamamo     'Do you think a person can 'wish' for continuing to live (or for people they love to keep living)? Or is that something different?'
    'Yes. But not always, I suppose. Everyone wants to, and deserves to, live, but few orient every mechanism of their mind around it.'}

    "In the sense of a regret being an unfulfilled wish, it is a common finding. Being so common, however, it is easier to distinguish those wishes that are for something else, and... among many, as well, there is, even at death's door, a moment of bargaining. It is the time in which one says, 'at least, let my comrades escape.' 'At least, let my child live.' 'At least, let this mean something.'"
Lilian Rook     'We are?'

    Lilian jerks her head in the vague direction of the immaterial figure. It's not as precise as Vertin could perhaps get, but it's fairly close. "You really are a doctor and not a fighter. Even without extrasensory perception, you'd be able to feel that gaze."

    'Though, to think this would essentially mean that only Revenants can 'haunt' this world...'

    "Let's not then." says Lilian, a little tersely.

    'Such Formae... *do* exist, but their use is strictly regulated by the Association of Revenant Hunters. They stake sole claims over 'stealth'-like Formae, past a certain threshold.'

    Lilian turns her head to squint at Holly with a half-disbelieving expression. Only half-disbelieving because the issue isn't whether someone would do that or not, but the rule itself. "Are you serious?" she says. "They have a monopoly on camouflage? That's obsurd. What else do they claim as theirs alone?"

    Meandering along the way, each time a totem jumpscares the group around the corner, Lilian feels grateful to herself for not startling, then front kicks it like a disobedient door in a fire. After a few, she's gotten used to the phenomenon, and just cracks them with the hilt of her gothic-coded sword instead; frankly more likely to crumble them to pieces.

    'Another wish-curse situation?'

    "Funny enough, that wasn't out of the ordinary at all." says Lilian. "Lampport was always taking random people and ripping out their Jungian shadow to cause problems. It was only sort of odd that it happened to--" Unfortunately, Mesmer has rattled her badly enough on this topic that she can't help but carefully glance at Vertin. "--her in particular. You normally wouldn't think it's possible."

    'Please. I mean, yes, ah, yeah I'd love that actually!'

    Lilian widens her eyes and stiffens up by ten to fifteen percent at that desperate tone. Jesus. "I can offer a couple of sprouts pre-potted." she says. "The succulent varieties are extremely easy to take care of, and can handle you being busy or away for a while, once they're grown. Just make certain you have some fairly powerful grow-lamps. Sans sun and all."

    She doesn't fail to catch that note of bitterness. Lilian tightens up her expression again. This always happens, so don't be surprised.

    'How many people never have the opportunity to truly make a place in which they reside a home, by changing this or that about it to suit themselves'

    Lilian, who essentially owns a storied family manor now, and also has a room on a space station, and also a room on a weird mega-ship, and also a private office in Trídéag headquarters, who decorates and personalizes all of them even when she only stays once a week or month, tries to comprehend the idea of renting with an HOA by another name.

    She shudders, repulsed. "There should be a law." she says, cluelessly.

    'Is it a sort of fossilization, do you suppose?'

    "Strictly speaking?" Lilian tilts her chin at fingertip and looks up and away, because the question is oddly funny. "Fossilization is really just mineralization, so I suppose it'd be the same thing, wouldn't it? Now I'm wondering if a cockatrice or something actually has 'fossilizing' venom."

    'I know the feeling.'

    Lilian smiles almost immediately. "The Suitcase, right? Practically all of that is your hand." she says, warmly. "And it's lovely too. Honestly, the Foundation should just let you renovate the whole campus. It's all so sterile I feel like I've walked through a decontamination shower just passing through."
Tamamo     Possibly EARLIER:

    'I've begun expanding within the wilderness, though only small scale efforts so far.'

    "It is a fascinating and, of course, mysterious opportunity that your handheld world presents you," says the one whose mystic tradition centers heavily around manipulating bounded spaces, "and I should love another opportunity to visit. I trust La Source has been well?"

    NOW:

    Friz is interviewing. Tamamo is focusing on the movement of energy. She doesn't know 'ichor,' specifically, but she knows 'danger' as a visible thing, moving through time and space.
Lilian Rook     Once the church is in view, Lilian says "You know, I think I'd actually love to go touring around a place like this one day. Less the monsters, I suppose." She oddly beelines for the nearest ruined building rather than the focal one, mentally somewhat setting aside the hostile gaze prickling on her neck so that she can trace the jagged edges of the ruin.

    "I've never considered myself much of a hiker or an explorer, and especially not an anthropologist, but there keeps being something strangely irresistible about wandering around these things when everyone is gone." Lilian tils her head, thinks at the sky, and mused aloud. "Somehow it's as though they're more special for being damaged."

    Lilian is having a good day, so she isn't reading anyone's mind. She typically filters it all out unless she's working and someone is in danger, even. When she catches Vertin talking to herself by sight alone, or rather when Vertin starts pausing between near-silent mutterings, she feels sorely tempted to start.

    But what comes to mind is the tape. That fucking tape that she never should have watched. For a split second, Lilian wonders how many people present have this exact sort of thing wrong with their brain, knowing or not. The skin-crawling association with having her internal privacy so casually invaded by her least favourite medical professional puts her off being nosy at Vertin; at least secretly.

    "You're going to elevate your cortisol if you don't try and set a place and time." Lilian says, non-sequitur. "Well, elevate it even more."

    'We are. We won't have to worry about any unprovoked attacks, I believe, as long as we remain cooperative. She's guarded and wary, for good reason.'

    "We'll have to deal with it sooner or later." Lilian sighs. "Whatever happened at the church." She probably only clarified so that nobody thinks she would call a ghost an 'it', which is a little bizarre. "I doubt considerably that she's the issue at hand. It'd be terribly odd if it were her presence that kept relitigating the issue of dying with a spectral replacement for whoever it is she hates." Meaning the phenomenon of absurd numbers of spectral Horrors cropping up here. "She doesn't seem to want company."

    Lilian finally tracks her gaze up to the church, admitting she can hazily see the stranger between them. "Given this world's history, she either intends to kill myself and Detective Friz, or Doctor Asturias, depending on whether she sides against humans or Revenants." Because, you see, clearly a ghost should be able to tell what an arcanist is.

    'Do you think a person can 'wish' for continuing to live'
    'Yes.'
    'Everyone wants to, and deserves to, live, but few orient every mechanism of their mind around it.'

    Lilian very quickly turns her attention back to her currently favourite ruin, and pretends to be extremely interested in some piece of the architecture. Something she once said about 'the zeroeth code' has come back to haunt her, and it makes her want to squirm.
Holly Asturias "Is it a sort of fossilization, do you suppose? I cannot detect anything to suggest life within these, as if they were only a memory of shape.

    "I believe these are corpses. During Resurgence-like events, and so, surely, during the Resurgence itself, it isn't uncommon for madness to seize people, and for them to... merge, into larger Horrors. I've always held the guess that these are such mergings that failed for whatever reason. Lack of Ichor, perhaps? Or an overabundance of Horrors already. Or... maybe some people simply aren't suited to the transformation? Seven or eight billion humans on Earth at the time. If they had all been stricken equally..."

    Evidently they weren't.
    "I've never seen one come alive though."

"You don't hate *enough*, do you...?"

    The tree rumbles. One of the stony limbs cracks, shifts, moves ever slightly. Tightens, like around a throat.

"My name-- people call me Friz.
Tamamo's readings.

    Too many names. Not enough names. Friz listens to the overlapped voice of a dozen would-be heroes all screaming different answers at her, answers none of them are even sure of. A name comes out as a scribbled mess of twelve different names, that may as well be a black redacted bar. They've felt happysadbetrayedproudangry, overlapped, without order. They want to preserve life, but some say 'their own', some say 'all'. Peace... the very concept offends the gathering.

    The tree cracks louder. More of the limbs shift, like a game of hangman tallying up your wrong answers.

    Who do they want to hurt? Others. All others. Themselves, before they hurt others. Themselves, especially. No one at all. They want people to suffer. They want NO ONE to suffer. They can't agree. Not on this. Kill all Horrors. No, kill the humans who hurt us. No, kill the Revenants. No, kill them ALL. No, STOP fighting. We've done enough. NO, never enough.

"Dr. Asturias, does this seem to you a more recent construction than those--"

    "It was not here when I last visited as a child, unlike the other... totems, or statues, whatever name you prefer for them. It isn't... UNusual for these sorts of... no, no, it IS unusual here. Something this large, normally, would be a result of the Resurgence, or of such an event, but... one could not possibly have happened here. There would be more traces. A massive Horror born of it." It would've left... footsteps, surely? It might have broken something. They'd have SEEN it, in the last decades.

"Or would it be small even if you never knew?"

    "Had I not opened history and geography books I might well believe this is all there is to the world. Then I might think it large! But who's to say. I did open those books."

"You really are a doctor and not a fighter."

    "I'm afraid so. I've taught myself quite well, but I lack the... instincts, I suppose? Of a born warrior. Consider me glad twice-over to have you all here."

"They have a monopoly on camouflage? That's absurd. What else do they claim as theirs alone?"

    "Mostly that, besides the obvious. Enforcement of the law, for example. One would be expected to call for a magistrate to arbitrate disputes rather than act. But in terms of 'things only they are allowed to do' and not 'things no one is allowed to do', I do believe it mostly comes down to that."

"Somehow it's as though they're more special for being damaged."

    "No, I think I understand. They have stories. Not just sad ones, though... their last one, surely, must always be sad. A little proof that there was life here, before, and there's marks of it left. One day there might even be more of it. You're left to imagine what the story was like, walking through the page after the ending."
Holly Asturias "I see. So you're worried that you've learned the nature of the world too late."

    The armored woman dissipates in the wind.
    Then appears in front of Vertin, idle - her spear and shield aren't raised, and her gaze stares down, from her seven feet of height, right at the Timekeeper's own eyes.

    No words. No growls, or breaths.

    Without a sound, her eyes shift to look back towards the tree instead.

    One single feeling hangs in the air.
    'Not like this.'
    It's unfair. They didn't deserve any of it, but they deserve *this* even less. For this to be all that's left.

    Lilian can probably relax that she intends to murder neither her, Friz, nor Holly, at least not right this second.

    The tree, though, is starting to shudder. Even Holly backs away, producing her golden rifle out of blood that gushes out of her arms to aim at it, warily. This... does not please the ghost, whose glare shifts from the tree to the doctor, like she's about to walk through Vertin to take care of a problem.

    Another feeling in the air, that cuts through the last one.

    That neither kinship nor blood mean anything.
Timekeeper "It's not a very relevant skillset in the City, but even for highly experienced swordsmen, or really any martial artist for that matter, adapting your training to apply to quadrupedal hostiles, or those in the air, for instance, is a considerable hurdle."

    Brightly happy to be the Good Student even when there is zero other students around, Sonetto waits for her blade to cool from activing the heated core before sheathing it again. "Mm! I would like to expand my skillset such that I am able to rely on multiple vectors of attack in any situation, which is why I am practicing outside of the Association."

    "The matter of reach is one that I especially would like to train my instincts to account for, because few critters or Manus Vindictae monsters utilize handheld weapons as humans do, but the breadth of different shapes or threats they may pose varies wildly. That is, I cannot rely on familiarizing myself with only one form of enemy, and rather must have a basis of intuition wide enough to not be caught by surprise."

    This could be the entire trip, actually. Sonetto will eagerly soak up everything Lilian has to say, in what's *basically* a private tutoring session, which is one of her favorite things! "When it comes to the dogs, is it more efficient to respond to a lunge as if it were a thrust, or attempt to guard and parry and then reposition? I discovered that the extra weight behind a 'bite' as compared to a 'thrust' threw off my guard, and losing too much ground can introduce the threat of claws, which . . ."

"I so usually see you relying upon your glasfeder, Ms. Sonetto, I wonder when the last time was that I saw you did not..."

    Sonetto has found that orbiting near Lilian and Tamamo in a conversation is soothing and invigorating like few others. Like a dog napping on the couch between them, letting the pleasant babble between the two float over her head until she's addressed usually means receiving either praise or physical affection, and so she's been conditioned to drift into their vicinity even before they call for her.

    Upon Tamamo's indication, Sonetto lays the type-13 out across her palms to show her, with the fuller gradually turning brighter orange as the heated charge refills. "That is because, until joining the Trideag Association, I was not trained in any physical weaponry. Human field agents nearly always have weapons provided from Laplace and are trained in their use, but it is much rarer for arcanists. This... I have named it Terra all'Amore, and I want to become more skilled in using it."

"Whether or not ghosts are real,"

    "What?"

    Vertin blinks and stares at Friz, with Rogers right beside her, for a few seconds, eyes wide. Then she decides that isn't really her problem right now. The explanation, at least, isn't too objectionable.

"Space."

    "I see. I've never been." Britishness perfectly blurs the line between Vertin making a dry joke, and expressing sympathy. "So it's acknowledged that it's a psychological necessity enough that you're provided support, but not so much that you don't have to pay for it?"

    Vertin taps on her cheek thoughtfully. "You know, there's quite a lot I'm still unclear about with the nature of my wilderness. A spinning wheel, in particular."
Timekeeper "It's all so sterile I feel like I've walked through a decontamination shower just passing through."

    Vertin smiles faintly. "The best way to ensure universal appeal, isn't it?"

    Sonetto tilts her head, confused. "But I think it's rather beautiful, in a certain way?"

"I trust La Source has been well?"

    "You're welcome anytime; just say the word. Perhaps I'll show you the renovations sometime soon?" It's really phenomenally simple to visit the wilderness-- Vertin could drop the suitcase on the ground right now and have everyone pile in. Just, not when they're busy.

    "La Source is well. She's had some scuffles with the, contractors," There's no way in hell Vertin would ever have a bunch of normal guys in safety vests and hard hats in her suitcase. 'Contractors' must mean something magical and stupid. "But she's getting along much better with the other kids now."

"You're going to elevate your cortisol if you don't try and set a place and time."

    "What's that?"

    Vertin turns to Lilian in confusion, just before startling again when the ghost manifests right in front of her. She adjusts her hat to slant the brim as it should be, and tilts her chin up to meet the ghost's gaze. She murmurs quietly, "Ah. I understand."

    "This is a tangle of the worst of the world. Whatever it is about this world that embeds negative feelings as Pathos more easily than the positive, it's created a sort of blockage here, where so many souls have caught on the jagged edges of each other's bitterness. They're now all defined only by what beliefs and resentment grate up against each other."
Friz     Friz starts to pace around this, much like her ghostly afterimage partner. "Alright, guessing time. Hands are action. They're manipulation of the world, they're... *Moxie*. If the event that happened here was transformative, and the pseudo-fossilizations we saw were people who didn't have a 'knack' for becoming a horror, then this similar growth..."

Savvy: Now you finally need my art appreciation skills.
Dirt: Can you please just help, boss!

    "Raw action. Just intention. Just, whatever was left behind that normally creates only *one* fossilization, over time making more? Held in equilibrium? Geologically-paced? What are you talking about. This isn't abstract art, this is people, don't say that." She shakes her head hard, grunting with mind-clearing effort.

    "Ugh, stop. Focus! That sound, the pressure-sensation, shifting, we've already disrupted the equilibrium, which means according to most 20th-century myth, the curse enters a second stage based on what gets disrupted and how. So how do we direct and channel the disruption?"

    "Hands. Hands! Hands reach for things. Abstract or not, hands place fingers, thumbs, palm, onto something to move it. To engage with it *as it is*, find what's reached for and grasp. Get the hands onto desires, or tools, or..." She grinds her teeth, adjusting her glasses, shivering at the next creak. "What does a hand do? If all you had was a hand, what would you do with it?"

    She turns away, to seemingly nothing at all, speaking urgently to someone. "You're dead, a disaster has destroyed you and everything you love and all you have is a hand. What do you do? What do you reach for?"
    "What?"
    "..."
    "Me, kid? No expert on the curse-psych here." A slow pause from the detective. A scent of cheap cigarettes fills the air nearby for a moment. "But if I had to guess... Hell. Another hand, kid. Like the lady said. Someone to pull you upright."

Savvy: Can we teach a curse Querying?
Grit: We'll probably be dead or cursed before we get partway through.
Moxie: I want to, though. It'd help.
Dirt: That shuddering is getting worse. Even I'm feeling it.
Grit: Kinship and blood mean nothing.
Savvy: Then let's give something some meaning.

    Friz reaches out for a hand-leaf-branch. To try to hold it. "I'm of--" She starts. "I have a lot of conflict in me too. Lots of feelings and aspects. You don't have to talk, don't have to scream. I know ways to be well, even when you're lots of parts. I really want to help."

    But she was advised to stand back. So she quickly has to take some steps back. Though she doesn't draw a weapon.
Lilian Rook     'Mm! I would like to expand my skillset such that I am able to rely on multiple vectors of attack in any situation, which is why I am practicing outside of the Association.'

    Lilian clasps her hands together, stares up at the sky, and makes a gesture not unlike she is showing gratitude to God for once. "Finally." she says under her breath.

    'few critters or Manus Vindictae monsters utilize handheld weapons as humans do, but the breadth of different shapes or threats they may pose varies wildly'

    "You have a surprisingly good sense for this." says Lilian. "Or unsurprising, given your top performance that I've heard all about. Or perhaps it's actually that you have a passion for getting a sense of things?" She squints, then shakes her head. "That sounded less weird in my head" she says.

    'I discovered that the extra weight behind a 'bite' as compared to a 'thrust' threw off my guard, and losing too much ground can introduce the threat of claws, which . . .'

    Unfortunately for everyone else, swords are kind of Lilian's Thing. Even if it's only the dry practicals, conveying it to someone, rather than just explaining it; sharing it as a joint experience that lives in two inner narratives instead of just one, is so very different from 'training' to her that it indefatigably buouys her mood into floatiness. "The main advantage of thrusting attacks are that the human eye, like most creatures, gauges speed and distance much less quickly when it's oncoming directly. They also present a smaller contact area to intercept, and require moving either the enemy weapon or your entire body out of the way with very little margin of safety."

    "In the former sense, a lunging attack like that is similar, but a low-to-the-ground, four-legged enemy has a trick to them." Lilian taps the hilt of Night Mist as though it were her temple. "They'll always lunge either directly ahead, at your legs, to take you down to ground, or they'll lunge upwards to get your throat; that's how they're designed and also the sensible thing to do with their body frame. If you can judge which it will be by their posture, they lose both advantages of a thrusting attack, and render themselves wide open. It takes considerable confidence to take advantage of it to kill them, but practicing just getting out of the way first is good training."

    "Ideally you shouldn't actively parry them. Instead, tighten up your grip and angle your sword to protect the side of your body that you're dodging away from, so they don't catch your arm or your clothes. If you're not quick enough, all they can do is knock your sword down to your side, which isn't very disadvantageous when the enemy can't attack high to your unguarded torso."

    'That is because, until joining the Trideag Association, I was not trained in any physical weaponry. Human field agents nearly always have weapons provided from Laplace and are trained in their use, but it is much rarer for arcanists.'

    Lilian is certain she's heard something like this before, but with the context she has now, it bothers her much more. "Why is that?" she first asks. "Surely even amongst field agents, not every arcane skill is suitable for combat. I can't imagine the humans are being trained martially to 'catch up' with the arcanists." She pauses. "I still love that name, by the way."

    'The best way to ensure universal appeal, isn't it?'

    Lilian sticks the tip of her tongue out in distaste, and says like it's a slur, "Neutralizing." She cleans up her expression just for Sonetto. "It's pretty, in an artistic sense, but people have to live there."

    'What's that?'

    Lilian stares at Vertin, analyzing, then second-guessing, then withdrawing the feeling from her face. "Never mind." she says. "My mistake.
Tamamo     'Somehow it's as though they're more special for being damaged.'

    "When there are cracks, it becomes your choice, whether or not you will mix silver or gold into the lacquer. Even before having done so, there is that feeling of 'I can fix this,' no?" Returning briefly to that topic, from a direction other than history, but familiar to both Tamamo and Lilian.

    'This... I have named it Terra all'Amore, and I want to become more skilled in using it.'

    "Oh, so, it was because of Trideag," said with that 'I see!' tone, Tamamo nods. Having no real grasp of Italian, "'Land of Love'? No, that is not quite it, is it..."

    'She's had some scuffles with the, contractors,'

    "Contractors," Tamamo repeats, and tries to imagine what this could mean, in context, "handling your... renovations?"

> Friz focused, emphatic, "You're dead, a disaster has destroyed you and everything you love and all you have is a hand. What do you do? What do you reach for?"
> Tamamo answers, "Anything with which to pull yourself upright." Then, "As to what we must do with this..."
> Tamamo says, "There is no alignment. The impossibility of appeasing such a spirit is in there being no agreement upon its desires, and conflict between any stated. They are held together as an unwilling collective. There are two paths with which to deal with this, the first being encouraging alignment, and the second being dissolution."
> Tamamo says, "My inclination is toward the latter answer. Any encouragement we might give them to work toward some common goal would be a temporary reprieve from only the worst of what they feel. Unfortunately, any attempt toward such a solution runs a risk of violent unbalancing."

    If they try to get the ghosts to face a single direction, to agree on anything at all, it will help, but only for a little bit, and they'll still be stuck with each other in an amalgam nobody asked for. To avoid that unjust suffering is why she'd like to separate them, that they could be addressed by their individual needs, but doing that runs into practical issues concerning the delicate balance held by their present form.

    Tamamo sighs. She knows-- "I know a method that would orient them in a single feeling and direction."

    It doesn't avoid the problem with that solution. It's just something she can do. However-- "However, I must use myself as the focal point of such a technique." And that's not extremely comfortable, considering everything else about this situation. It's not like these are familiar ghosts. "It is not difficult for me to accomplish, but it presents only a temporary means of enforcing agreement upon 'something,' through which they be addressed without great risk of unbalancing."
Lilian Rook     'When there are cracks, it becomes your choice, whether or not you will mix silver or gold into the lacquer.'

    Lilian laughs under her breath, at some private thought for two. "God give me the bravery to make it gold and the good sense to know when to use it." she says, roughly half-serious. "If something's going to be pristine, it should be because someone fastidiously takes perfect care of it, or because they lovingly restored it. Who cares about something that's clean just because nothing's happened yet?"

    'I'm afraid so. I've taught myself quite well, but I lack the... instincts, I suppose? Of a born warrior.'

    "Nobody is born a warrior." says Lilian. "They're only born into the role. Or stupid enough to choose it for themselves."

    'No, I think I understand. They have stories. Not just sad ones, though...'

    Lilian isn't a psychometry girlie, but she nods along with Holly's conclusion all the same. Silent agreement is total agreement with her. "Walking through a bustling city, you'd never think of of that." she says. "You seldom think of your surroundings at all."

    'Alright, guessing time. Hands are action. They're manipulation of the world, they're--'

    Lilian is so sick of bright red-magenta keywords today already. God.

    'Hands. Hands! Hands reach for things. Abstract or not, hands place fingers, thumbs, palm, onto something to move it. To engage with it *as it is*'

    Sadly, Lilian is very 'well-adjusted' to abrupt, unverifiable freak statements. One could charitably assume it has to do with military drilling on split-second information about enemy powers, before they can be explained in detail. One could uncharitably assume that she trusts someone yelling spooky bullshit more than someone who refuses to say that ghosts are real.

    Of course it's her sword. Why would she reach for something in the environment, like a sensible person? The first word that comes mind after hand is sword. The fact that everyone is dealing with a ghost makes it easier to draw it without a sense of hostility, and more so to direct her immediate reflex after doing so into flipping a greatsword into reverse like a butterfly knife and plant it point-down into the dirt.

    She immediately begins stimming on the hilt with her fingernails. Her eyes wander down to a particular spot, and draw a particular line, as she reflects on the archaic dedication so finely engraved on the weapon that you'd rarely ever see it. Just thinking about it directs a trickle of magic-energy through the blade, dully luminescing the sum of the patterns like lukewarm coals.

    "I know that feeling well enough." she says to nobody in particular. "However intense, it's useless unless you can use it to divide the world in two. If it can't split a singular subject into things you can sort to either side, you may as well not bother feeling it." She glances at the spear, reminsces on something, and slowly breathes out. "The Horrors go on one side. 'They're wrong, so kill them'. Nothing about a Horror deserves mercy nor restraint. It's in the name. Your own kin go on the other. 'They mean no harm, spare them'. That's equally obvious, isn't it?"

    "You have to sort through it." Lilian says, begging the question of who the fuck she's talking to and why it sounds not-dissimilar to how she chats with Conetto. "Trying to identify how you feel about each and every thing and person will tear you to pieces; it's pointless and stupid and self-harming like this. And you can't ever act on feelings while you hold a blade, only the moment before."
Lilian Rook     She rests one hand over the pommel, then the other, halfway lacing her fingers over the sides. "Roving Revenants looking to feed. Wrong. Strangers staying a while who took up arms against. Well. Self-professed Hunters, loveless and obsessed with the race war instead. Wrong. Traveling nobodies who only pass through. Well."

    "You work inwards from both sides of the gradient. Pick two extremes, then get slightly less extreme, and a little less and a little less, until it meets in the middle. Sharpen it down until there's nothing stuck on the edge." Okay. But is that for Tamamo? Friz? Vertin? Holly? The ghost? The tree?

    'However, I must use myself as the focal point of such a technique.'

    "We don't have to make them happy. We only have to make this place safe." Lilian says. Her voice dips soft, just north of worry. "Exorcism is still an option. We'll have to perform purifications at a few points around here anyways, won't we?" She pauses, and settles on "If you're certain."
Holly Asturias "You seldom think of your surroundings at all."

    "I barely think of the Sanatorium's own stories, having spent almost my entire life there. And yet it is so full of them. Perhaps especially the patients' rooms." ... hopefully, not full of ghosts, too.
    Oh God now she's worried about *that*.

"However, I must use myself as the focal point of such a technique."

    "I have no objection?" Holly answers, in the way you do when you have no idea what's going on but you elect to let the expert figure it out.

"What do you do? What do you reach for?"

    Friz, briefly, holds one of the tree's massive stone/gold hands. It's big! She's less 'holding it' and more 'wrapping her own around a finger' realistically. But the intent is conveyed nonetheless.

    The cacophony of voices... briefly...
    It's thankful?

    Recognized. Honored.
    Like faces and names painted back onto their forms, for an instant.
    Not something they should care about. Not something they cared about, in life. Something they find themselves yearning for in death, in these circumstances.

    A tombstone. A name. A story.

    But as Friz pulls away, Holly heeds the warning too and follows suit, lowering her weapon. She is so, completely, out of her depth here. Which means the ghostly Revenant stops in her tracks, no longer perceiving the threat, but still alarmingly on-edge.
Holly Asturias "I know that feeling well enough."

    Lilian has the ghost's attention now.

"And you can't ever act on feelings while you hold a blade, only the moment before."

    The armored woman glances down at her spear. It isn't as though it's a fancy one. It's not ornate. Functional. Battle-worn but cared for. There's a moment as she thinks, and then changes her gaze to Lilian's blade.

"Roving Revenants looking to feed. Wrong."

    Red eyes look back towards Lilian. There's a resonance in the air, like agreement. Bitter, angry agreement.

"Strangers staying a while who took up arms against. Well."

    She looks towards the tree. She looks towards the church. Past the church, behind the church. A little graveyard, desecrated by fighting.

"Self-professed Hunters, loveless and obsessed with the race war instead. Wrong."

    She looks back at the tree. Back to Vertin.

"Traveling nobodies who only pass through. Well."

    She looks at Friz. At Holly, who can't perceive her, then Tamamo. Then the village, or rather the pass that leads back there.

"You work inwards from both sides of the gradient."

    The spectral Revenant looks at her spear one last time, and then opens her hand. It falls to the ground, to disappear like mist. And she sits down, on the ground, her large shield a bit awkward for this but that's strapped on.

    'We were just doing our best.'

    A feeling like hurt. But not her own.
    Responsibility, to safeguard the other heroes here.
    Responsibility to end what they've become.
    Contrasted by guilt for becoming the same.
    And paranoia, like the whole world beyond this place is her enemy. The whole world she fought to protect, a hostile place that took, and took, and took, until she was the last one. And then it took that, too.
    Are you here to take, too?
    She still seems to think you could be.
Tamamo     'We don't have to make them happy. We only have to make this place safe. Exorcism is still an option.'

    "As you say. This would only be a kindness given to strangers, and not to those who have sought it, nor earned it of us. Still, it... appears to be possible. You can feel it, there, yes? They came together, for a moment. This may be..." Tamamo, distracted, looks toward the spear-wielder. The impression isn't perfectly clear, but it doesn't really need to be, either. She's looking for particular feelings, and picking them up. "...less dangerous than considered a moment ago, to approach slowly."

    "To reach out for a hand -- or for anything else. A sword may also lift one, but we will make do with what we have."

    Carefully, like she said, Tamamo approaches the tree once more, and makes a few, subtle gestures, passes of her fingertips leaving burnt trails in the air for that just-perceptible time. Analyzing more carefully, while slowly walking around its perimeter, Tamamo completes a full circle, and then repeats the same path while scattering fine dust from a second pouch secreted from within her sleeves.

    "As best as we are able." It's a chaotic joining, but not a true mixture. With her craft, she can identify the extent to which there are seams, too delicate for her to cut, herself, but possible to work through an order imposed by the array she's setting up. A third pass of the circle completes before she sits on the grass and takes out her calligraphy utensils, a cleared patch serving as a table, and draws something very like a tree.

    "Finer aim than my arm can hold would be needed, to help with this. Lilian, if it appears necessary, I will show you the places that require it. Ms. Sonetto, please follow her lead. Detective, it would be well if you would hold each hand offered, or at least, project your willingness to do so. It is enough, at times, to reach out. To bring someone upright requires more than reaching, but to change someone's thoughts, if only for a moment, is the easier task."

    When it activates, it's with a golden radiance, intricate geometry sliding and rotating into place across the ground, then raising into the air -- but that's noticeable for only a moment before it's Tamamo who holds the source of light, as if behind her, yet also suffusing her image. "Please, all of you, look this way. Reach for my hand, and be known. I am Tamamo-no-mae, and I offer you the chance to be known."

    A wresting of attention, hands outstretched, just as the array begins highlighting and unraveling the tree at its seams, so that all could be focused in one direction before being given their individual chances for acknowledgement.
Lilian Rook     'We were just doing our best.'

    hose are the words that crack Lilian. Even if it's just a hairline. Neither the eerie ones with Vertin nor the jarringly prophetic ones from Friz nor the accidentally close to home ones from Holly had done more than make her a little startled or thoughtful or uncomfortable.

    It's these. The simpliest words.
    The only words she didn't expect to hear.
    The words she would never, ever say herself.

    "Yeah." Lilian closes her eyes, hangs her head, and then breathes in, raspy and bracing. "I know." She raises her head. She opens her eyes. She levels her eyes. "Nobody can tell from the outside, but I know. You're not weak or pathetic; you're strong, and burdened with something so heavy you feel like you are."

    'Finer aim than my arm can hold would be needed, to help with this. Lilian, if it appears necessary, I will show you the places that require it.'

    Lilian sighs, her hands twitch to lift from Night Mist, then delay a beat. "Declaring war on the whole wide world is fine too. So long as it's because everyone is on one side and only you can be on the other." Only then does she pick up her sword, and walk towards Tamamo.

    "I'm nothing if not perfect." Lilian says when she gets there; again, half-joking. Despite the absurdity of using a sword that's already a bit too big for her to do it, she casually chokes up on the hilt with one hand on the blade, and raises it to eye level so she can sight down the fuller. She cautions "It might sting." because she doesn't know; Night Mist treats the absurdities of the Otherworld and its incompatibilites with natural law as gentle suggestions at best. What she has confidence in is her absolute physical precision; something she's grown tired of describing as 'ironically clockwork' years ago. As long as Tamamo can draw them out and make them visible, there's no line she can't trace. Applying one of her own (Tamamo's) talismans to her sword makes it even easier.

    'Please, all of you, look this way. Reach for my hand, and be known. I am Tamamo-no-mae, and I offer you the chance to be known'.'

    "You can do it. Do your best, like you've always done, one last time."
Timekeeper "Surely even amongst field agents, not every arcane skill is suitable for combat."

    "Ah..." Sonetto has to take some time to think about that, before uncertainly coming up with, "I believe most are? Or can be trained to be."

    "But the School for the Primary Defense of Mankind also teaches simple combat incantations for any arcanist to use. Even Timekeeper is able to use them." She was confused there for a moment, but now she's reminded herself of the way that the world works. "These, along with ritual disks or implements from Laplace, serve for basic combat functionality. All field agents must meet certain benchmarks, human or arcanist."

"'Land of Love'? No, that is not quite it, is it..."

    Sonetto bashfully lowers her eyes, but being a little shy doesn't prevent her from being painfully heartfelt in her response. "It is... 'love for the world', more accurately. A phrase taken from a work of one of my favorite poets."

"Contractors,"

    "Giant stuffed teddies," Vertin explains completely unhelpfully for her own amusement, though Lilian might coincidentally have seen them before. "I'm constructing new buildings aside from the manor itself. A dock, for one."

    While Vertin has been communicating with the ghost and contemplating the tree, Sonetto's been unsure of how to contribute or even approach. Sonetto's world is sliced in two as naturally as Lilian's is, and far more effortlessly-- the monstrous tangle of limbs and bodies is an enemy, because the Foundation would call it an enemy, and that's all the reasoning there is to it. It's only Vertin that singlehandedly counterbalances that and muddies the waters, body language saying 'stay' when her instincts say 'attack'.

    So she's extremely grateful when Tamamo gives her an alternative task. She even intuits the purpose of the array before it's done, so she won't be blindly jumping to Lilian's aid when she's called for.

    Vertin, meanwhile, follows the ghost's lead and sits cross-legged on the ground, but much closer to the tree itself. One of its giant hands is laid out on the ground like a corpse's, and Vertin sits next to it to speak to the upraised palm. She's entirely unable to project any threat like this, and sitting beside the hand, she has the posture of a doctor beside a deathbed, or an anchor for a drowning hand to grab. Her sitting that close makes Sonetto *very* nervous.

    "The world isn't over, you know. It's still here, moving forwards. And that means there's always a chance for it to improve and grow."

    They sigh, and think back on what the Voice told them, as bitterly entrenched as it was. "I don't believe it's peace that reignites those conflicts. Feeling trapped and hurt, grieving the losses that the Resurgence brought upon each individual person; what came after was still a symptom of that stress, not a return to nature. It's not inevitable."

    She gently runs a hand down the limp, stony index finger, then again, eyelids fluttering low. Like soothing an injured child to sleep, her voice softens even further. "I'm so sorry. Even after working so hard, you were still hurt. But hurt isn't forever, not as long as you can still move forwards. Please trust in the future, okay?"
Friz     Friz pulls back, arms up a bit to block her face... But nothing happens.

    The feelings hitting her are familiar. Or, not exactly--

Dirt: Not exactly familiar.
Savvy: Give me the explanation.
Dirt: It's communicating the way we used to.
Dirt: We used to just send vague signals.
Grit: I used to use the heart-rate to send signals.
Grit: And I was so upset you couldn't reply in turn.
Savvy: ...I do remember that.
Moxie: I do want to teach them.
Moxie: Nobody should feel like that.
Grit: How do we communicate without the guardian or the tree hurting us?

    "Kid." A voice near her whispers, in the shining supernatural tension. The man puts a hand on her shoulder. "Gotta take a few breaths before you square up for this. You know how ghosts and spirits and stuff are. Even if you say they're fake. We always know how you're *really* feeling."

Savvy: Ghosts always...
Savvy: ...
Savvy: Wait.
Savvy: What if it's...

    "...Not just a way of speaking." She whispers. Her eyes go a bit wide, her gaze trembling... "It could be a way of listening too. Like Lilian said. 'Trying to identify how you feel about each and every thing and person will tear you to pieces'. The more you speak, the sharper things are, the more complicated they get, the more you have to solve problems for each and every possibility. A hundred hands and no motion. It's indecision. Because nobody engages with you where you are..."

    She exhales, and goes silent.

Savvy: Nobody speaks to you where you are.
Savvy: Ghost and tree... You can both 'know' the feelings we have.
Savvy: That's a total understanding of soul *and* biology.
Savvy: *Why* did I forget that there's no such thing as the inexplicably supernatural?
Savvy: We spent all this time dancing around the fact that this being has a *method* to detect things!!

Moxie: Wait, hey, huh?? Savvy, you gotta speak! We can't go quiet!
Savvy: We're not.
Savvy: Moxie!
Savvy: 60% teeth clench, prep a half-tension on each arm and on the spine.
Moxie: Huh? I-- I'll do it but--
Savvy: Dirt, queue local memory. Horrors and foliage.
Dirt: Hard to forget them, boss.
Savvy: Grit, I want immersive responsiveness, coordinate expression with Moxie.
Grit: I'll trust you.
Savvy: Let's teach them to talk to each other.
Friz     Friz's body posture shifts completely. The energy of it is almost a spiritual peace. She can't use the animal communication she demonstrated before, but she has something else. Her hands reach out. "<No words.>" She does not say. "<Hold my hand and I will tell you about grains of soil in the forest of your home. Hold my hand and I will tell you about the gentle twitch of anxious animals in the woods. And I won't *tell* you how I feel. The words are getting in the way. You can just know.>"

    Spiritual influences have an understanding of the tone and posture of an interloper. A ghost can tell if you're scared, hostile, disrespectful, or well-intentioned. They can even, often, reach a memory. But *how* do they do it? *What* does that mean? Simple: They must have, on some level, a total understanding of every reaction of the body and soul. So, for Friz, someone whose mind is so deeply tied to her body, she moderates, modulates, and pulses each feeling. Arm-clench and back-straightness and heart-rate and breathing. Posture and feeling. The exact angle of her head to indicate certain areas and actions. And, yes, even the voice to express certain words.

    It's a Rosetta Stone of emotional regulation. By citing specific elements of the familiar forest, things that probably haven't changed in a hundred years, it's a way of re-centering more abstract feeling. Teaching the component segments of the tree to feel each other's heart-rates and tensions and memories, rather than just screaming at each other.

    She's trying to use that, to teach them a language of internal resolution, similar to the four aspects of herself. Can't really unify them, but giving them the tools to not have to scream over each other, to not have to perpetually escalate and sharpen their feelings...

    Are you here to take, too?
    "I really want to give. I just don't have much to give you. But I hope I can give you this. A few moments with a hand in yours. I could pull you up, if you want. Or I could squeeze. Or I could let you go. But I don't want to take. They wouldn't let me keep anything anyway."
Holly Asturias     Tamamo unravels the tree.

    Or, it'd be more accurate to say that she reaches in and untangles the spirits in it. Though it sounded like a lot more, eleven in all can be pried from the strange union. The tree, itself, neither moves nor changes - there are far more than eleven or twelve bodies in that mess, and the reason for that is soon obvious.

    The spirits line up, faceless. They're not as defined, not as manifested, as the woman who would be their 'leader', but each is armored, armed - six of them have a hollow back, like an implant their armor accounts for, which puts a big round cavity behind where their heart would be. Jails, which must make them Revenant Hunters.

    It's no coincidence they number six humans and six Revenants.

    Their feelings separated are now infinitely easier to read and interpret. Nameless heroes who fought for the Frontier -

The first human was killed by a hungry Revenant.
The first Revenant died fighting a Horror.
The second human took a mortal blow for the second Revenant.
The second Revenant died finishing that fight.
The third human was executed for fighting alongside Revenants.
The third Revenant died defending those very people from Horrors.
The fourth human took his own life out of grief at the world's state.
The fourth Revenant did so alongside their partner.
The fifth human died stopping Revenant Hunters from killing young Revenants.
The fifth Revenant died attacking the Revenant Hunters' castle in response.
The sixth human died fighting Horrors.
And the sixth Revenant...

    She looks up, from her sitting position, at her 'squad'.

    'The world isn't fair, but we tried to be until we couldn't anymore.'

    She rises back up, and points at the tree.

    A ghostly scene plays out. Silent, wispy, ethereal and blue, along the base of the tree. Holly gasps, at being able to perceive anything at all. The tree, the ghostly projected one from the scene, grows and grows. Those bodies aren't just the heroes', which were buried here. That's most of the village, afflicted by the Horrors' blight after an attack, assembling into one Horror. The sixth Revenant expends the last of her energy to strike the tree down with her spear, but one of the limbs juts through her chest in reprisal, and shreds her heart out.

    The ghostly Revenant lowers her hand. She sits back down.

"Declaring war on the whole wide world is fine too. So long as it's because everyone is on one side and only you can be on the other."
"<No words.>"

    It's so much more obvious now which of the heroes have fallen on the side of 'we didn't do enough' and which have despaired 'we did too much'. Easy to pick them apart, to hold their hands, to calm them. Easy to make them look at each other as individuals again, and not as a nebulous unified front that needs to change the world. Because they can't anymore. Their time for that has come and gone, and other people are on it.

    Some of them, Friz finds, are understandably a bit more bitter than others. But freed from the constant conflicting imprints of their minds haunting the same place, they can think again, they can hear the arguments. They can concede, one after the other.

    It's so easy, by referencing the forest. By focusing on what they have in common, instead of apart. By calling back to their memories - of fights won together in the north, of the theme park once or twice, of the Sanatorium, though last they visited Holly was still three feet tall at most, and it took them this long to recognize her. She can't, and that makes her a bit sad. Their faces, their identities, are just long gone. The spirits are too formless.

    And the armored woman, gladly, takes Friz's hand, without a word.
Holly Asturias "Please trust in the future, okay?"

    With Vertin by the tree, along the line of extracted spirits, and the sitting armored Revenant, they calm even more. Friz is hard at work; Tamamo and Lilian too. It's undeniably a group effort, but Vertin seems poised to take this one home. The woman's helmeted face turns to stare at the Timekeeper again, red gaze softer, body giving the impression of a completely silent decompressing sigh.

    The tree has all but stopped moving. It isn't alive; it isn't a Horror. Not in the proper sense. Not anymore. It's been dead for years. But the conflict of the twelve heroes would've animated it nonetheless, if left as-is.

    'We can give it another chance.'
    The feeling of cautiously forgiving the friend who wronged you.

    "My, all of you..." Holly chirps, watching the proceedings, with a slight crack to her voice. She looks for compliments, and struggles with picking the right one. She's just stuck in silent awe.

    The armored Revenant finally stands back up, letting go of Friz's hand, heading towards her companions (the sixth human, in particular).

    After long moments of communion and rest, they each bow to the group, one hand tapping their chest, and then dissipate.

    Should anyone investigate the back of the church, they'll find eleven unmarked graves, damaged by time, by fighting, the bodies that were in them long since gone when the tree initially formed.
Holly Asturias THE NAMELESS HEROES' PATHOS IS STIRRING.
You sense the Undead Forest has gotten a little bit more normal.