The walk through the faerie woods did not entail odd whispers or disturbing songs and images this time. Mainly it involved black, red-maned unicorns watching from deeper in the trees. Watching very intently. "So," Mollymauk says to Tasha, "who was your pale friend earlier?" His tone is suspiciously casual.
"Someone you probably know about but are pretending not to, because you were spying on me but did not report it to her. Suspicious." And speaking of suspicious, Tasha watches the very suspicious unicorns be suspicious of her, if that is the emotion she thinks they're displaying. Tasha knows about unicorns, it's what Terrans call horses with horns on their head. There are a few of them on her home world, but they're bipedal.
"Actually I just found it interesting when you both vanished in the middle of your conversation," the blue devil claims. "That was a very nice trick. How was it done?"
"A very interesting question. I did call for you, but apparently I was too busy being invisible to everyone. You could say she was another being looking to push me in to doing something I didn't want to and I was resisting her," Tasha explains, hands out in a 'what can you do' sort of way. "I suspect it's some sort of magic, but the means of it are beyond me. And you."
"But you just let slip that this encounter is something of interest to your other blue friend," Molly says with a too-pleased grin. "That makes it much more interesting. Did one of the many people displeased with her find out about your relationship?"
"Well, yes, bu the same happened to me with one of your displeased friends. I assume some of my enemies will try to harass you both sooner or later, too -- for balance of course." Tasha smiles, then smiles off at the unicorn and gives a group of them a finger-wiggle wave. "But the rest of what happened is mine to know, since you let slip you could no longer track us hear us."
"Ah, you are learning," Molly notes. "A terrible character flaw, t'be sure." He stops at a large tree with would looks a drippy, damp maw between it's roots. "Well, in you go!" he tells Tasha.
Tasha gives Molly a 'is this going to be a revenge thing for not telling you more' look before turning, shrugging, and stepping inside.
It's not a slimy as it looks once Tasha is sliding down to eventually land in the atrium of the Temple of Danu. There's a very strong scent of blood in the air.
Tasha gives the snuffles to the air. "How familiar," she remarks as she wanders deeper in to the structure. "Are you deeeaaad, Kainudy? That would be very inconvenient for both of us, you know!"
The first chamber is.. sticky. There is a lot of blood on the floor, and the walls, and dripping down from the ceiling. "Tasha?" a draconic voice calls out from the direction of the office, but sounds far more distant. "Did Molly bring a mop?"
"Mollymop did not. He sent me in and left." Tasha cranes her neck to take in all the blood, finding the experience a little too familiar, in the bad way. She's glad it's not her blood this time, at least. "Is this your blood or did you contact the blood dimension or something?"
"Yes and no," the voice replies. "Try not to step in it though."
"You don't have to tell me twice." Tasha does indeed enjoy the blood. She only enjoys bathing in blood under rare occasions, and usually only with beings she hates passionately -- and their blood. Otherwise it's a smelly, sticky affair, and not in the fun way. Usually. "Are you in here?" She peeks in to the office.
The office is vacant when Tasha gets there. "I'm cleaning up," Kainudy's voice explains. It seems to be coming from behind a bookcase.
"I smell a secret chammmbeeer," Tasha sing-songs as she walks over. "Which is weird since this is a tiny universe made out of you. Personal inner secrets chamber? Avoided inner demons chamber? Things you don't want to face chamber?"
"Dungeon," the voice replies. "Something I 'inherited', full of monsters."
"All I inherited was a wolf head and fur." Tasha looks for the entrance, sniffing and feeling around. She looks for looose books, having a strange impulse pulling on one may help somehow.
Most of the books have spines with foreign symbols (some of which change while Tasha is looking at them). There isn't even any dust or marks on the stone floor to indicate that the bookcase might move on hinges.
And so Tasha just goes to have a seat on one of the chairs, settling back and fluffing up her mane because it does so tend to get flattened by her clothes. "I'll just wait out here until you're ready."
"I'm ready," Kainudy says from right behind the chair. "Were you poking at the bookcase?"
"That seemed like a good spot to search," Tasha admits. She leans backwards so that she's looking behind herself, albeit with everything upside-down.
"Why?" the dragon asks, looking down into Tasha's face.
"Some old Terran memory about secret passages. I have a lot of old memories from my original creator, Nora, and from things I've seen since then. Terrans like to repeat story elements." And so Tasha shrugs. "And it seemed more interesting than the walls."
"There's a special book on ventriloquism on it," Kainudy says. "I use that to make it sound like my voice is coming from behind the bookcase so nobody looks for the real secret door."
"Oh. Well. I'm not going to go poking around your sanctuary unless you give me a good reason to," Tasha insists. She leans forward, scootches around to lay on her side, and peers up at Kainudy so that she's not upside down. "So what's the scholastic adventure for today?"
"Well, you wanted to learn about astral travel, didn't you?" Kainudy asks. "So I'm going to teach you the most important lesson about it first."
"Is this going to be a easy to remember but dire warning about one or a couple of things to never, not, or always remember to, do?" Tasha wiggles her fingers. "The kind of things I end up having to do anyway now and then?"
"First, I'm going to start with a story," Kainudy says. "My mate and my daughter had their souls destroyed while he was teaching her astral travel. That's the end of the story. Everything I teach is going to stem from that."
Tasha frowns at this. "I feel like every light hearted joke I'm going to make or thing I'm going to bite will come with a reveal of a tragic story and then I'll feel bad and awkward and you'll feel bad and other things. Should I stop?" Tasha perks her ears forward, expression sliding in to the serious and the business-like.
"That is always a risk when dealing with very old people who don't have the benefits of memory loss," Kainudy says. "Now.. you are familiar with entities that eat souls. That's why I had yours 'hardened', but that doesn't mean you can't be eaten. Just that you would be very very hard to digest. So to make sure you take that lesson to heart, I'm going to eat you."
Tasha squints at this. "Is that a 'yes' or a 'no' to making jokes? I can be very serious, I swear." And so Tasha puts a hand over her heart. "I'd like that answered before you eat me," Tasha adds, leaning back and holding up a hand.
"You can make jokes," the dragon says, and gives a head-bob. "I do have a sense of humor. I've even been known to be playful. But it has been a very long time since I was, so I may be out of practice."
"Then I will." Tasha reaches up and tries to pay Kainudy on the nose. "Thaaank yooou grandma racing dragon. I looove yooou."
"I'm tempted to use ketchup on you now," Kainudy says. "So, ready? That's a trick question by the way."
"Considering even the Shadow that ate me didn't really eat me, I'd recommend against it. Remember I have Yellow and Blue attached to my soul. I am quite likely very poisonous, and I don't just mean my sense of humor."
Sensing being eaten is imminent, and her soul at that, Tasha sits back down in anticipation of her body falling over once the 'pilot' is forcefully ejected in to a dragon's mouth. She gives a double thumbs-up. "I can't say I'm looking forward to this after what happened, but fine, if we have to do it, then do it. I'm your fish tac-- no wait that sound weird in hindsight don--"
"Right.. it's going to happen out here," Kainudy then explains. "I'm taking you to the dungeon first." She then turns and heads for.. the bookcase opposite the one Tasha was investigating originally. And walks right through it. "Follow me," her voice says, coming from the other bookcase again.
"Ohhh, we have these on the ship." Tasha hops up and walks along after, reaching through first and then stepping inside. "Hey Kainudy? I was wondering about the ... anisble was it? What does 'anisble' mean? And why do they grow on a tree if they were part of someone? And how'd you get the tree, was it during the last-ditch raid to that planet?"
The other side of the bookcase is dark and damp. "I think 'ansible' means.. uh.. instantaneous communication," Kainudy says from a little ways ahead. "It's a form of entangled timestone though. I don't know how they're grown." She walks a bit farther along the stone corridor, then stops and sits quietly for a moment.
"Charon said they contain a little universe and access to the Waymaker's collective knowledge, but that he didn't want to use it. It must be why eating the remotes gave Luk'thu-hem access to Charon's 'systems.'" Tasha looks around; she has some acuity in darkness, but not much. Perhaps a little above Human average, thanks to being part wolf. Her eyes are those of a Vartan, however, and meant for use in daylight from great heights, not underground and zero heights. "And the tree is tied to one Waymaker, so they're probably not interchangeable, and also, linked to their owners. I thought maybe I could use it to return here quickly."
"It wasn't a last ditch raid," Kainudy says quietly. "It was returning home. Lothrhyn was a T'spyra-rhyan, not a Stelya-rhyan. She as sedentary, and not as powerful. I never got to see what she'd grown into while I was off fighting.."
"I grew her from a seed, and.. that was about all I was able to recover," she explains. "I've been growing her for a thousand years, and that tree is all I've been able to manage."
"So she was a tree. That makes more sense." But Tasha lags behind, not wanting Kainudy to see her expression in the dark. Despite what Kainudy said, Tasha can lie, and very well. More importantly, she knows how to use her apparently irreverent and simplistic behavior cover her other intentions, because she learned to use underestimation, from experience. And, for a good cause. "A sentient tree. One of your daughters." She says it with the tone of someone repeating to remember. "If she did grow back, what would you say to her? What was she like? Did she care about anything?"
"She was curious about everything, and wanted to be a planet someday," Kainudy says. "She wasn't a tree originally. She was just my home, an ivory tower. But she kept evolving. I tried to hide a lot of things from her. I hide a lot of things from everybody, really. Like where we are going now. And if she could grow again, she would be different. I've wanted to make a new seed for her, but this place isn't conducive to creating life."
"I've thought now and then I'd be interesting to be a spacecraft. Charon let me see what it's like to be a space monster, and that wasn't bad at all," Tasha admits, trying to keep things light. She tucks her hands behind her back and resumes looking around, casually. "And I've felt like that about Mel, except he can't evolve and tells me I'm being silly. That I shouldn't let him, because then he'll become a Berserker. But I never liked or wanted to be anyone's master, I've found. It's hard, in many ways. And then there's all the secrets I've had to keep, because to tell them would be worse, but I used to be so open and direct. People liked that. Now, I'm just a hunter in the dark." She sniffs in a breath. "So what would conduct life? Is there a seed or something I could, I don't know, carry around with me and find a good spot?"
"I'm missing a key ingredient for growing a seed," Kainudy says. There's dim light ahead, and Tasha can feel hotter air as well. "And I'm not.. I can't leave this place. I'm not eager to fail and lose her all over again. I'm tired of losing my loved ones."
"You'll never get them back if you don't try, though. And you already lost them, all you can do is try to find them again. And failing that, keep going. Find something or someone new to love." But Tasha spreads her hands. "But then I've never lost anyone. I know this only second-hand, from the times I've experienced death through other people, and from what I've been told. And, because I refuse to give up and accept loss. I was created from a wish and a refusal to give in to loss and accept what is unreachable is impossible. I still believe in that."
The corridor ends in a stone bridge.. or very long ledge. It reaches out into a spherical chamber, the inner stone surface littered with pits. Noxious fumes and heat emanate from them.. and things half-seen lurk in their depths. "I gave up my hope a long time ago," Kainudy says. "I carved it out of my soul and used it to defeat a monster. The one who created this place gave me the knowledge to do it. And these are monsters he kept captive. All steps on his way to mastering the lost art of soul magic."
"To learn magic you have to give your soul. How, um, ironic? Coincidental. Self-defeating? It's like one of those old tales my mother used to tell me about doing something but losing your way as you do it, except they were about Vartans and mostly involved airship duties and falling to your death." Tasha stops to look around, peering at the various holes. "It reminds me a bit of the places The Ogdoad like to lurk, except less, um, decorative and more functional. And you don't have any hope? I can see how that would make things difficult to hope. It sounds like you need an indirect method."
"It wasn't about learning magic," Kainudy says. "During our crusade, he fell in battle and rather than let his knowledge be taken by the enemy - which would have ended our crusade very quickly - he decided to graft it all onto my soul. Without asking. So now I have to deal with the inmates, and they are always trying to escape. Pick one."
"The darkness can be just as relentless and positive as the light. It's kind of inspiring, really." Tasha steps forward and looks around, hands behind her back, leaning in. "HELLO. Would you all mind setting forward so I may judge you based on a shallow review of your physical characteristics while I bore my mentor with my frivolous actions?"
There's a raucous roaring response. It might be laughter, or something else. "Come out so we can get a better look at you," one voice seems to whisper into Tasha's ear. The finger of stone reaches out to the center of the chamber, where it is rather narrow, but does give the best view for all interested parties.
"Oh and why not, what could possibly go wrong!" Tasha walks with excessively jaunty steps, wide arm swings, and tail wagging. "I, for one, have never had any bad experiences with the demonic!" She stops at the end and holds her arms out. "And I'd like to say I've never met inner demons before, but, well, that would be a lie. And I know how you all hate that kind of thing."
Several things comes to the edges of their pits. Straight ahead of Tasha in one of the larger ones is swirling mass of dark smoke, with orbs of ultraviolet light floating within to make it luminesce. To her left a bolder inmate extends its entire head out.. which is the only part that could fit through its hole. It's another dragon, but one more in line with 'covered in sharp bits and not remotely cute' traditional aesthetic. To her right is a mass of tentacles covered in toothy suckers (which might feel a bit too familiar). She can feel the gaze or other odd senses focused on her from the other pits, but those prisoners aren't bold enough to expose themselves.
"I guess you're the 'alpha' choices; or want to be, anyway. Have to put on a strong front." Tasha plants ehr hands on her hips and takes on a reviewing air, studying each in turn. Sge starts with what she calls inwardly, "Orbsy." "Smoke and orbs. That's a new aesthetic, not even remotely humanoid or bestial. Very exotic. I like it." The next she'd call "Rocky," but she doens't want to risk connections to Rock, who does not deserve being associated with this. She call it "Stoneyarse". "Rocks. Hmm. I don't want to be rude but it's a bit plain. I'm sure you have many exciting characteristics but I'm in a rush here before she shoves me off a cliff or just picks one for me, so no." She shrugs apologetically; it is what it is. On to whom she calls "Spike." "Another dragon! And a lot more conventional. I always liked the 'spikes' aesthetic, although I feel like it'd make sex and cuddling difficult. And you'd get stuck to things. Is that true?"
"My kind burrows out of our mother's womb, killing her," the dragon claims. "They are not thinking about cuddliness when they mate."
"Past tense," Kainudy notes. "You're extinct."
"I'll have to remind my kids not to do that, and not to have spikes. That is very good advice." Tasha then looks back and nods to Kainudy. "Also, I don't want to go extinct. This have been a valuable lesson. Okay, so, I'm going to pick to get things moving along."
And so Tasha spins around and points a finger at the smoke and orbs. "You're new and exciting. You're it."
Kainudy steps back to the entrance of the corridor. The bizarre entity that Tasha has chosen flows outward to surround her in its dark vapor, the orbs cluster around her, making odd sounds. She begins to feel very cold, chilling from the inside outward. Her other senses begin to distort as well, as if the entities presence is somehow corrupting the natural order of things.
"I-I'm getting 'Sam' vibes from this -- write this down! This is valuable reeeee-- ugh." And that's about all Tasha can manage to say before the distortion becomes too much. It's not at all a pleasant experience, even if it is educational. She credits her long experience with strange situations, pain, and death to why she's not panicking. The yelling and trying to make it all very useful does seem to help, too. If she's pushing to remember and learn, being eaten almost feels productive.
And then it feels worse. Being physically torn apart could only last so long, but souls are stretchy. And Tasha feels twisted, pulled, knotted and above all chewed. Hard. Whatever treatment she went through doesn't let it actually do any damage, but that is little comfort compared to the pain. And bruising. Each injury brings up memories of Tasha's worst moments. Cruelty both dished out and received, and then makes them seem all-consuming as she relives them without realizing they are memories. The sense of being burned alive that comes afterward at least puts an end to that however. She goes from being stretched to being crushed, compressing smaller and smaller. Whatever demons use for stomach acid is powerful stuff.
The worse thing is that it makes Tasha wish for it to end, as what she can still manage to realize is that this would go on forever. And at that point it's hard to think that this wouldn't.. until it abruptly stops. It still takes time for her to reassemble her awareness, and the unfortunate first flicker of thought when the pain stops is that she no longer exists. Which takes some effort to overcome.
What Kainudy experiences is the shrill, animal scream of a mind pushed beyond its limits. Tasha thought she was ready; but as she found out the hardest way, there really isn't any way to prepare yourself for the worst thing that could ever happen to someone. She knew, later, that Samael was right -- in as much as a mortal can experience anything, it is the worst thing that can be done to them. It is not something experience or preparation can deflect; even the mightiest fortress falls eventually if it is not somehow saved, and Tasha is far from the mightiest of mental fortresses. Though she is much battered, her walls stronger than they ever have been, there are cracks and many run deep.
And now, they shatter.
As Kainudy reaches out to stem the tide, Tasha's eyes flash open; dilated, frantic, searching but never fixing on anything -- until they see something reach for her. As the hand reaches out, Tasha's hand reaches back in an arc, and do the Yellow sword comes and falls. One nightmare become another, madness sharpened beyond all reason and restraint. Hastur's sword. And Kainudy can feel others behind it, line lines stretching out from Tasha's soul, reaching, flailing at anything, any shred of power known and unknown to her, but most of all to the familiar: --
To Nyarlathotep, the madness of the universe. A pure song it knows well; a clarion call. Mortal madness. The hunger for power. The will to destroy.
To Hastur, the will behind the sword, viral madness beyond all barriers. Tasha's patron. The strongest connection, through the sword, and through her soul. Another one with the key.
To Thoth, Horus, to her Titan, to He-Who-Moves, to deliver her from here, to anywhere, anywhere away from the endless nightmare.
To her Titan, who came once to her in a moment of madness. As strong as she ever could have called, the time has come again. Deliver her, and deliver all.
The dragon's hand comes down and presses on Tasha's chest, and then through it. Not physically, though. While Tasha had her soul 'encrypted' Kainudy still has the key, extracted from Persephone's marker. And now she's using it. That concentrated panic-rage flowing through her is taken hold of, and it hurts. This time it's physical, as if molten metal was being pumped through her veins and arteries before being drawn back out. It does not leave Tasha calm, but things feel like waking from a nightmare. The details are fuzzy and faded, but the terror is still there. The hand is withdrawn, now a fist, and Tasha feels the tug as something leaves her. The cracks in the ice are still there, she knows. "This is why I did this in a prison," the dragon notes. "No outgoing calls allowed. I've never gone through what you just did," Kainudy says calmly against the screams. "I wouldn't survive. But this part. This I've done many times. You should never perform surgery on yourself like I've had to do." She doesn't even try to dodge or black Hastur's sword though.. she can't do that and perform what she needs to. In this place, it does draw blood, and the dragon's face twists in pain.
The inmates begin to rattle their cages.
The blade continues to push and push as Tasha struggles and screams, bites, claws, and kicks. For something that looks so harmless, perhaps even cute, she is vicious in her fury. Her eyes are full of an unfocused hate, not for any one thing, but everything, lacking the clarity of reason to differentiate at first. The blows become more precise, the sword chops down, and everything gains clarity as the blob of something is removed from Tasha. First comes the directed rage, and then uncertainty and fear. Finally she kicks off as hard as she can, nearly shoving herself off the edge to just get away from Kainudy. Away from anything. Even the stone beneath her gets clawed in to, as if it, too, existed to torment her.
Tasha breathes raggedly, eyes darting. She doesn't attack, but she looks far from safe to be near.
Something drops and clatters onto the stone as Kainudy unclenches her fist. She moves backwards a bit, then falls to her side with one hand covering her new chest wound.
The chamber shakes, with bits of stone and dust dropping from above, but it doesn't shake for long.
Kainudy can hear Tasha vomiting in the distance, wretched heaving on to the space in front of her, not even enough presence to use the ledge. Tasha is on her knees, something she has admitted hurts thanks to her digigrade legs, hands pressed to the stone floor as she drools, and heaves, and she would sweat if only she could. She smells like urine, vomit, and blood, the latter which trickles out of her mouth from a tongue bitten in the throws of madness.
When it doesn't look like Tasha is going to throw herself to her death at just that moment, Kainudy struggles to feet and limps back towards the corridor. The thing she dropped looks like a small sculpture, but indistinct from a distance.
Tasha is there for longer than she ever could remember. It felt like forever. It all felt like forever. She could have been told it was forever, and she'd have believed it. That she died, that she more than died. Death, as she remembers, was mercifully quick. She would liked to have died again, instead. The faded aspect of the memories only lend to a sense of eternity, as if it happened long ago and she, too, had been one more demon trapped in this prison.
And as Tasha lays still the sword glimmers in her hand, the only light not provided by the pit or the prisoners themselves.
"Unsatisfying," the original voice whispers to Tasha once more. "Too chewy."
Although with their jailer absent, the inmates feel bolder. Some try to reach out towards Tasha.
The woman goes from statue-still, looking for all the world to have simply died there in a pool of her own fluids to snapping up and hurling the sword with all her might and latent fury at the cage the spheres and the smoke are bound to. Hit or miss, again and again she hurls the sword, the blade blinking out embedded in wall or flesh, or smoke, only to be hurled again. As creatures reach out she only switches from throwing to cleaving, two-handed strikes with the Shield absent. Her roar echoes with the swings, in defiance of everything and more. Happy, on some deep and broken level, to have a target.
The monsters respect the blade, and draw back into their holes. Those that get struck burn, which discourages further probing.
Their fear makes Tasha laugh, because it's not her fear. Even beings that can do the worst to her can still fear. And so she stands up laughing, laughing and laughing in what feels like the first time in forever. The first time ever. Like being reborn darkly unto the unadulterated joy of making something else suffer. Had she the mind for reflection, she might have drawn a parallel.
The chamber echoes with the laughter, reflecting it back as something even uglier. But Tasha is alone now, the only monster active, as the others have retreated deeper into their holes.
Like everything in this place, Tasha has no idea how long she was there laughing. Even the concept of time seemed like something she didn't need or want anymore; just one more way to have measured her suffering, one more road that brings her back to the memory. A ragged suffer runs through her at even abutting it, the impossible memory, the wound that will never heal. No injury greater. Samael, as it turns out, really was telling the truth.
Maybe she'll kill him.
In time, she would leave. There was no thought to it but wandering. An unsatisfying lack of targets for her dull, burning ire. Cowardice and fear, though rewarding, were a coin quickly spent. And then even that grated, and so with nothing more to do, she wandered. The object is picked up because it is there.
It looks like Tasha in miniature, but split down the middle. One half is melted looking, grimacing in pain and reaching out a hand for succor. The other half is twisted in rage, one hand reaching out to grasp. The face has a lot of goatish features. The lower part of the figure is fused into a stiletto like blade, with no hilt, so there is a chance that using it would just as likely cut the wielder. The corridor ahead is lit by drops of yellow flame burning in puddles of blood that lead back to the exit.
It all feels dreamlike, in as much as everything is a welcome dream compared to what had passed. And, still is. A forever fear at the heart of her, to which all else is beautiful, blood, death, misery, and life. Death, perhaps most of all.
The object appeals. It feels so familiar; it understands. She shreds part of her clothing to wrap it and string it around her neck. That it cuts reminds her she's alive, even if she isn't sure she wants to be. Her mind is somewhere beyond it all, life and death, somewhere else, she doesn't know. Beyond life and and beyond death, beyond the heart of suffering. Or away from it. It all orbits around her like planets and starts. She doesn't know what it means, or what it makes her.
And Tasha wanders. This place is close to the memory. She wonders what else there is; she is afraid to believe there could be better, afraid it will betray her. Scared to hold the goodness to the dark, that she might see how small it is, how easily broken.
For everything can be broken. Tasha knows this now.
But she also knows she cannot remain here, if not exactly why. At one point she think she stood at the strange tree and held her sword to sunder it, but it felt unsatisfying, empty. It won't fight back; it was too distant and abstract a pain. In time, she would find the exit.