The Fae Wild
A realm unto itself, this wilderness is the source of myths and legends of things that lurk in the woods, preying on the foolish or the unwary. Its character is ever-changing, going from bright and enchanting to dark and foreboding with the turn of ones head. In either case, the fae beings within are equally dangerous.

For Tasha, the forest has stayed dark, responding to her unhinged state. There are dark creatures watching her, stalking her.. but they keep their distance. Ever since leaving the Halfworld she has been lost but isn't in much of a mind to care. Her goal is to ease her existential pain, and that means lashing out in an attempt to share it or transfer it, and the inhabitants know this. The wicked yellow blade is enough to keep them at bay, which is frustrating for Tasha since she wants to fight something. Her weapon has become something jagged to mirror her inner turmoil, becoming far more frightening than just a sword might be.

And so Tasha wanders. The endless frustration of evasive would-be enemies is still a far cry better than that prison. Anywhere is better than the prison. And what happened within, that is something she refuses to touch. Even the shadow of that ultimate suffering is enough to pull her existence in to its thrall. To make it the center of her universe. And as a child learns magnitudes and grades of suffering and pain, finding what once had seemed important, irreplaceable, needful, vital, no longer is, so too is all that she was, all she held dear, and all she believed in rendered gray and small and distant. Her death matters not; the death of all she loves doens't either. Indeed she would be glad for them, having perhaps evaded the ultimate suffering.

Finally, Tasha hears someone getting close enough behind to make a sound; the soft crunch of leaf-litter under feet. The scent of the dragon blood on her still overpowers her own sense of smell, so can't depend on that to tell her anything about her stalker.

Rather than wait, Tasha turns to face the noise. Though she is unhinged and broken, reborn in to what comes of mortals when they have been through more than their title ought to permit, the desire to fight burns bright. She has regained some awareness of the higher concepts of war and stalking; ambushes, tricks, and traps. Although she would not employ them -- such an effort seems wearisome -- she is aware of them and so keeps her eyes and ears sharp of fae tricks from directions other than the source of the noise.

The darkness of the woods is supernatural, as if made to only tease with glimpses. The sound stops when Tasha turns around, and then light in the form of a silver-bright sword pierces through without really illuminating much due to the glare.

Reflexively, Tasha moves to parry. Defense she remembers, too; all that is war and strife remains clear, for it is all that she has that might shield her from the endless suffering that awaits her. As long as she can fight back, she can go on. Or so she wants to believe; in her heart she does not, having seen the truth of her weakness -- or all mortal weakness but her's especially -- and it is all that remains for her to invest in.

The challenger's blade darts forward. It isn't exactly subtle: and straight strike that Tasha could easily parry.

It feels wrong, too easy. Tasha hops back and prepares for some other blow, some fae strike from another direction concealed by art or artifice.

The attacker draws back. Now there's a shield to go with the sword however. Hopefully the blade is magic, otherwise Tasha's own weapon might pass right through it (but, it would also pass through the shield then). Her opponent just seems to wait, as if expecting Tasha to attack next.

Tasha does act, she steps forward to prod at the sword and shield, light thrusts designed to test her adversary's sword and shield, to see how solid they are for her. While death would be fine, she has no desire to simply roll over. She does not know, in truth, whether the dead are truly safe.

The shield is certainly solid to her blade, and then the sword slaps against the yellow one to push it away.

A floating sword and shield. Tasha could believe she is simply fighting just that: a spirit sword and likewise a shield. She knows not why these things have come to her, perhaps they are drawn to her bloodlust, or what remains of her, but she needn't understand their motives to fight. What she does think worth her time is the possibility of an unseen master, some invisible foe wielding these things. Fighting weapons is one thing, but fighting someone's weapons while they themselves remain safe would be a disadvantage for her. She seeks at this possible source, stabbing, slashing and attacking with canny severity to see if the weapons try to shield some being between them, or if they care not.

The opposing shield certain does its best to deflect the strikes, being much more effective then the blade. There's give to the shield that Tasha can feel, so that much seems like it's actually being held by someone who does not want to be hit.

Although Tasha has not used it since before her existence fell as ash before her imprisonment, Tasha has not forgotten her shield. It was, as best she remembers, simply not what she wanted to do at the time. Now that she has wandered, the idea of defense seems more appealing, especially if it might let her succeed in her offense.

Tasha uses her sword to fight for a time, waiting for the best moment to manifest the shield against the enemy's sword, that she might separate the sword from the shield and so gain a clear path to strike at the center.

So far her opponent hasn't actually tried to attack yet, seemingly fixated on intercepting Tasha's blows. The blows themselves are eerily silent, with not sound of impact. But since Tasha's sword is immaterial this probably isn't a surprise. But it means all of the noise comes Tasha's breathing and the movement of unseen footsteps.

A distraction, Tasha decides. She is being delayed by this invisible warrior. She breaks off the attack and attempts to circle so that the noise of the second being and the floating swords are both in her forward arc, not wanting to try and fight two enemies in a pincer around her. She is not, as she knows so well now, not so great a fighter she would survive such a thing.

The glaring sword and shield turn to keep facing Tasha, but when she hasn't attacked for a moment, the sword lunges towards her.

Tasha backs away and defends with her shield, suspecting that now that the first being has chosen to attack the second must be in position to strike at her. She saves her sword to deflect the attack of the second being, should her assumption prove wise.

The current sword is clearing aiming for her shield, but it doesn't let up, striking rapidly.

And so Tasha decides the second attacker must be aiming to overwhelm her sword, some attack that only her shield is suited to deal with. She switches plays and backs away while defending with the sword, saving the shield. This is a risk; she cannot keep track of what surrounds her in all directions, and the sword is ill suited to defense, but she also knows every battle is a risk. Every war, a gamble. You do your best to put the odds in your favor and hope you prevail. She is no longer so hopeful as to believe anything else.

Her opponent is less certain about attacking now that Tasha is mostly parrying. Its shield is up as if expecting a counter attack instead. Or else it thinks you're supposed to take turns attacking and defending.

Tasha begins to suspect this being means to exhaust or frustrate her in to folly; a promising tactic on its part, for her strength is that while the soul crumbles, the body remains largely intact. Rested, even. Her old self might have found that dichotomy amusing. Even rest, she struggled hard and has fought long, and she knows she can't keep this up forever.

"You need to fight," a voice replies, both familiar but also with some sort of 'fuzzy' effect that makes it impossible to actually remember. "And I need to fight you."

"Fine." It is as good an excuse as any to fight, or so Tasha believes. She wonders if she had been mistaken about the second steps, perhaps they are still the first, and this place tangles her mind. And so she refocuses on the fighter before her. Trying something new, she tries to parry the shield with her own even as she parries the sword, and with a beat of wings and thrust of legs, shoulder tackle in to the unseen form.

"Wha.." the opponent goes, clearly not expecting something like that to happen. There is no clatter of metal of course, but the opponent does go down under Tasha's charge.

Anticipating the location of the arms and legs, Tasha follows the being to the ground, trying to get her legs to rest on the arms, using her shield hand to try and restrain the sword hand especially. With her own sword she aims for where she expects the chest would be, and strikes with all her might.

The sword tip hits something that it can't penetrate, and there's a flash of gold when it contacts. "Is this how you got her blood on you?" the voice asks.

Tasha lets the sword scrape and search, she strikes again and again to find some chink or weakness; something. Should she need to, she re-summons her sword to angle it better. As for the question, she finds she understands it, but is also avoiding the answer and the thoughts. Whatever it is, she isn't ready to deal with it.

The sword isn't finding a chink, just flashes of golden light, and then something hits Tasha in the small of the back - probably a knee.

Tasha grunts. Her tail isn't strong enough to help, but it can at least try to cushion blows and tangle limbs. If her sword can't do the job, she doesn't have any other --

No, that isn't right. She has one more weapon, almost forgotten since she picked it up. It was there, on the ground, beneath her. Back then. Almost forgotten amidst everything else.

And so ready to weather another knee to the back, Tasha abandons the Yellow sword and tries what weapon remains to her -- the dagger she found in the that place.

It could be victory or it could be her about to destroy herself. With no other weapon available to her, nowhere to go, and the inevitability of mortal fragility both her end and what cause remains to her, she sees no reason to hold back -- and so Tasha thrusts the dagger down where she thinks the chest is.

This time Tasha finds herself flung into the air before the dagger can strike.. although not very far into the air. Just enough that her opponent can supposedly get away. The silver sword and shield vanish, only to appear a bit further away when Tasha lands.

The red woman grunts, but these little pains mean little and less to her anymore. A mortal woman with immortal pain; there is no greater suffering left to her. It robbed her of everything, by showing her it was all as nothing -- her dignity, her promises, her efforts, all she loved and held dear, all ashes before the wind of inevitability. She has no faith in mortal beliefs; she sees, now, why immortals scoff at her kind so.

Pulling herself back to her feet she keeps the dagger in hand, manifesting the sword in her tail. She's never tried this before, but the sword is weightless and need only touch. For the rest it can at least try to defend her.

"I thought you would be more aggressive," the voice notes. "And less cunning. Put away the dagger, or I will have to be cunning as well."

"You mean to bore me then." Tasha sounds tired, and as she says, genuinely bored. "Be gone, or die, or kill me. Talk if you must. It matters not." The dagger does not vanish; she is not here to play games and indulge anyone. That freedom, at least, remains to her.

"I want you to work out your anger and energy," the voice says, and then the sword lunges again. "I can't help you if you are too worked up."

Tasha's snort is derisive -- what has help gotten her? She can truly say, now, that her allies have hurt her more than her enemies. And where, then were the others? She realized, in hindsight, she did not call out to her loved ones, because they are useless. Harmless, but useless. She always knew, deep down, none of them could or would save her. She kept them around for the idea they could, for family, to turn her quest in to more than it should be. To selfishly and ignorantly walk hand in hand down the road in to hell, knowing.

And what of the others? The Vril'ya? The gods? The gods that came to her are demons, her very enemy; none else heeded her call. That should have told her much if she'd had the mind to listen. They had no faith in her, and rightly so. The demons could use her, as they use all fools. Even Persephone handed her off, to that dragon. That Kainudy. Why had Persephone wanted her to suffer so? She sees now why -- all that awaits for her is a terrible end. It is all that had ever awaited them.

Tasha readies her weapons. She is tired of talking, and tired of reviewing. Win or lose, she would like to return to her wandering.

The silver blade strikes wildly, no longer just trying to hit the shield. Now it's actually trying to knock away the dagger.

Tasha suspects this focus on the dagger is not feigned, after all the figure could have simply used the dagger's ineffectiveness to strike at her or delay her, and even if that is the case here she loses naught but time should she guess wrong. Should she be correct the dagger is everything -- weapon and lure and key to her victory. She baits with the dagger, shields it, brings her tail around to parry what blows it might, all while looking for another opening.

Since all that is visible is the shield and sword, it's impossible to tell the actually position of her opponent, but Tasha has a good feel for the size and shape: human or elf, most likely. The reach seems right. "Where'd you get that thing?" the invisible foe demands.

Tasha's smile is cruel and mocking. "Let me stab you with it, and perhaps you'll see. Come here." Her words do not undermine her stance; they are part of it. She finds it rather easy to focus on warfare and conflict when there is little else left to her. The absence of care in the face of what seems like inevitable misery is surprisingly freeing.

Tasha likes this. It's novel, and it gives her ideas. She tries to step out of its way while attempting to use the sword and shield to deflect the shield in to the ground. She suspects it will vanish, but she's curious to see if she can pin it and rob her enemy of it.

Thinking she's about to experience the 'vanishing sword' trick from the other side, Tasha readies for that. If the shield was a faint, then ...

Tasha hops quickly to the left, as far as she might. Her enemy must follow through on the gap in her defense left by her deflection, must lunge if it is an elf or human, so she moves perpendicular to the forward motion to allow it to pass her so she can strike the being's side. She watches the air, the grass, the foliage, for signs of moment, and listens for impact.

It's very quiet. There isn't even the sound of breathing (other than Tasha's) but she's pretty sure the other is wearing some sort of armor if it was able to block the yellow sword. So it's possible that the person is exactly where they were when they threw the shield, and just hid the sword.

Tasha simply backs away, about twenty feet. Then she listens. Her senses are weak here compared to this realm's its denizens and she can barely smell anything, but it's what she has.

There is sound now, but it's from further off. Things stirring now the immediate fighting has finished.

Tasha suspects she's going to get stabbed by an invisible person. Her senses and powers are limited compared to what might roam here. Yet, she has nowhere to go, and only a vague idea of what to do now. If the fight has proven anything to her it's to reinforce her weakness, only with power can she be safer, it is the coin of the universe. She should wander where power dwells, but easier said than done. Wolf, perhaps.

"You should use your wings," the voice suggests. "They have further reach, and you can keep a space clear around you where anything trying to sneak up will be detected."

The strange mix of advice, frustration, and conflict solidify in a moment, merging with the earlier question. There is only one being she knows of that has this pattern. "Galatea."

The woman becomes visible then. She is indeed wearing golden armor. "Please put away that dagger.. or even better, throw it away," Galatea says. "Tell me what happened. I followed you and the faerie to the tree, then waited outside. When you emerged you seemed half mad, and your mind was leaking. And you have dragon blood on you, and were holding your sword."

Tasha considers whether to answer or not, and both seem as good as the other. Fighting an enemy she can only stalemate is unsatisfying, though she admits to having learned something. Perhaps, then, it was worth it.

Looking around, Tasha sniffs for water, or the scent of Wolf, anything that might be familiar. Her wanderlust has lost some of its charm now that she is being pestered, so she may as well get something done. An exchange, then. "Guard me while I bathe and I will answer some of your questions. If you take me where I wish to go, I will answer all of them."

"Bathe?" Galatea asks, clearly surprised. "Alright. Where do wish to go? I'm unfamiliar with this place, but it does seem to respond to your mood somewhat. But your aura is leaking darkness all over the place. I think the smell of the dragon blood has been keeping things at bay though."

"Perhaps I should keep it." Tasha finds a stump to sit on and looks down at herself. For a moment she has double vision, her old self and new, past and present expectations. They're met by older ones still, and she frowns. This, then, must be what became of her sister, Tisiphone. "Leaking darkness. Explain." She has an idea, of course, but the particulars are lost on her.

"Most of it seems to be bound up in that.. dagger," Galatea says. "The densest of it. But you still have too much running loose. You need to put up your mental shields to stabilize yourself."

"My mental shield?" Tasha looks up, and she looks tired. Hard. Worn. Older than she should; older than any mortal should. It occurs to her, that perhaps they should not speak here. "We should go somewhere that is safe to talk."

"I'm not sure if this will work here," Galatea says, and removes a golden ring from her hair. She tosses it into the air where it spins in place and grows larger, until it's over two meters across. Inside it looks blurry, like looking through a waterfall. "It looks stable. We can go to my ship if you like."

"Yes." Tasha stands up and heads for the portal, rolling her shoulders to loosen them after the fight. There is little question whether she should go; obnoxious as she is Galatea is still preferable to an endless array of hostile faeries, and whatever powers she has, she is still mortal and must rest eventually. It irritates her, but she is at least glad to be aware of her weakness, free of self-delusion and ignorance. Without another word she enters the portal.

There is dizzying sense of displacement, and then Tasha finds herself in a round chamber. The walls seems to be covered in padded segments, varying between white, gold, ice-blue and turquoise. Some of them glow, providing an odd mix of diffuse white. A corridor extends forward, with similar walls and ceiling. "The floor is real," Galatea notes as she exits the portal behind Tasha. "You won't have to worry about falling through it."

Tasha accepts this without much reaction. She proceeds deeper in to the ship, deciding this is sufficiently safe to talk, and lacking any other reason not to. It's not the deal she made, but she no fae to need to keep promises as worded, nor devil, no matter whats he may look like. "The dagger is me. I think. I do not remember what happened -- nor do I wish to dwell on part of it. I will not. But I will speak of the rest."

There are some alcoves in the walls but the corridor isn't very long. What is clearly a command deck is ahead, since Tasha can see the stars and part of Ymir. "That does not sound promising," Galatea notes. "But is likely a psychological defense mechanism."

If there is anything a mortal might wish to defend against, it is that, Tasha decides. It then occurs to her that even beings like Samael, angels, anything with a core essence would need it, even if that essence is not a soul.

"Kainudy has teaching me. Most of my teachers ..," ex-teachers?, " ... are reluctant to teach anything concrete, or quickly. I strongly suspect they are using me, which is unsurprising and deserved. We spoke of astral projection. She thought to show me the consequences of losing ... Losing your way and ... And ... " Tasha pauses, the weapons vanishing, her hands clenching open and closed. For a moment the world seems to collapse in on her mind, even distant as the memory is it's as if all else falls in to it the closer she comes to trying to recall it in full. She settles with, "The consequences of failure. Personally." And then she forces herself to keep walking and look around, in as much it helps distract her.

"And she did not teach you how to construct shields first," Galatea fills in the blanks. The bridge is small. There is one command seat which seems molded into the floor, with two armatures that end in gold spheres. That much resembles Galatea herself. There other stations that seem completely random. One is stone with glowing, mystical looking circles and symbols on it, another is black metal and covered in mechanical knobs and switches with blinking lights, yet another is some advanced holographic interface. But it isn't clear what any of them do. The front half is a holographic image of near space, with occasional symbols showing up here and there. "I can temporarily do that for you, but you'll need to learn to maintain it yourself."

"My soul is hardened. It was supposed to protect me. It did." Tasha continues to look around, wandering from place to place and inspecting things, both out of curiosity and for wont of something else to focus on. "She mentioned nothing of other shields."

"She may not have expected it to be as intense as you experienced," Galatea says, and offers the only seat to Tasha. "Do you remember how you got covered in blood?" she asks.

Tasha takes the seat, and for a moment the enormity of what has happened washes over her like a wave. She hunches forward, sitting, and grasps her knees. It takes a great deal of her strength not to shut down then and there. "She was not prepared. I lashed out. At everything. Anything to be free. Anything."

"Sit back," Galatea says, with what might be forced calm. "We can deal with the.. panic.. by abstracting you through the Astraea's brain. It should be something familiar to you."

Tasha does lean back, she'll take anything right now. She'd sleep, but her nerves are so frayed she feels like she'll either never sleep again, or never want to wake. And she dreads the nightmares, what comes from not being able to hold her mind with a vice grip.

Galatea presses part of the seat against the back of Tasha's head, and she can feel contact through her pilot studs. There's a moment of disjointedness, where she is floating in space and her body feels like a bit like her original one: a hybrid, only a bit more patchwork in places. And then she's aware of her body again, but distantly. She can see through it work it like a puppet, something that she wasn't able to do when she and Melchior entered a similar state. But the panic and fear are just things now. There's a mess, certainly, but it can be organized with some effort.

Tasha lifts her hand up and looks at it, turning it in place. "Handy." She looks from her hand to Galatea. "I wonder if I should find a way to abandon my mortality, anymore. There's nothing in it but pain and weakness. I suppose the eventual loss applies to immortals and mortals alike, as does the fragility and ease of torturing a being's essential essence and mind, when you have full access to it. I see now that it was not just the event, but the existential questions and answers it posed, and the realization of our ultimate weakness. I see that I did not call out to my mortals allies and loved ones, because they have never saved me, except to put the pieces together. And they are fragile. More fragile than i; it is what I used to draw them to me." Her head shakes. "I've avoided so many obvious answers. What I have created is a mess, and a trap. There is little left in me to keep it going, which is probably for the best. But I cannot return home as I am. Now the question: do I edit myself to keep going in ignorance or continue on in full awareness?"

"The blessing of mortality is in not being fully aware of things," Galatea offers. "And I do not mean that in the 'ignorance is bliss' sense either. An earlier attempt at... me... was aware of everything around her, and fretted about not being able to experience all of it due to limitations in fundamental information processing. But she learned that others, mortals and immortals, actively ignored most of the information they received, it shook her to the point of existential crisis. But being disconnected from a brain that could process it all, I now understand completely. You can't do both: accept everything and also function as a sapient being. And the longer you go on, the harder it gets. Right now you feel clear and aware, even if what you're aware of is horrible. But you can't maintain that state. You will have to suppress and find a way to move on, knowing that at any point something could trigger a relapse. I remember everything. In perfect detail. So for me the challenge is realizing what is now and what is past, since I can literally relive an event as if it were happening."

"It is not an easy thing to accept. The demon, Samael, once told me to have one's soul devoured is the worst thing that can be done to a being. He is correct, as far as my experience goes. Perhaps there is a greater state of suffering, but I lack the attributes necessary to experience it. And so there is no greater suffering I can experience as I am. That would normally be a blessing to realize, but I cannot dismiss it. It cannot be ignore. It is the most, the absolute. And unlike most mortals, I will not cease to exist if it happens. I will persist, until I am freed. Aware. Forever, perhaps. There is no worse fate I can imagine." And so Tasha spreads her hands. "I would give anything to avoid it. Anything, and anyone. It is beyond my ability to resist; I cannot comprehend a will that could, that is also mortal. It will break me and I will break anything to make it stop. I cannot be trusted; I cannot trust the others. They have no idea what they are up against and, further, they will all break if subject to this. I thought, once, I would never betray them, never hurt Gabriel. I am wrong. We all are."

"That realization is not out of the ordinary," Galatea notes, but raises a finger. "But it is also not inevitable. You know what is at stake personally and universally in your crusade. The real consequence of inaction, or potential consequence of action. And though you still only remember a small part of it, you know it is worse. That is why all of that was condensed into that black dagger. I think it is an escape of last resort. Or a weapon of last resort. I don't know if you were meant to have it, or if it just a side effect of whatever Kainudy was doing to you.." Galatea suddenly stops and goes quiet.

"I see. Being reminded that it is inevitable for us if I do nothing is a kind of comfort; I must continue to act or else the result is likely inevitable. Therefore, I must continue. It is enough to have a cause and a reason to go on. I still do not know what comes after, or why the universe is--" Tasha seems to notice the pause now, studying Galatea, then looking to the displays. "There is a problem?"

"I was going to confront her, which is why I followed you," Galatea admits. "But I didn't have the will to actually do it. That.. isn't the issue right now. I can only focus on the problem in front of me, because that's the one I can try to deal with. Normally, people seem to get past trauma only for something to bring it all back to them. For your trauma, however, that is just too dangerous. So, you're going to have to treat it as a hostile, internal entity. A demon, in effect. You will need to learn how to cage it up and beat it back when and if it makes itself known to you again. I thought that you already knew this when you were able to manifest the shield, but I realize now that that shield isn't really yours, is it? Nor is the sword. They're part of you, but you didn't create them."

"They are manifestations channeled through me of two powers, that of Yellow attached to a being I should not name unless you are prepared to hear it, and the Blue of Eternity, as connected to me by Persephone. I do not believe she intended me to draw upon that power, it is something Kainudy engineered, but it has its origins with her. The only power I possess that is mine is the Seed, which is also the work of Persephone. I am like this ship, cobbled together from pieces to create something that works, refined later and added to. It is good that this is where I was brought. I have always felt connecting to my Titan was relaxing and reassuring, but I see now that its logic and assistance to my mind is what I was appreciating. It is unfortunate the Titan is of so little use and so difficult to move." Tasha frowns, but it's an effect for expression, and Galatea knows this. "There is irony in your suggesting I deal with a absolute problem, while you avoid a lesser one. Hypocrisy, at a level. But you know this. I will hear your suggestion of how to proceed."

"My suggestion is that you use your sword and your shield to fight your truest foe," Galatea says. "The darkness you can't run from and that is smothering your ability to live your life. You can't kill it, and you shouldn't try to. And you can't tame it. But you can confine it, and use it when you have to, and beat it down when it tries to whisper to you through the cracks in the wall you build around it. But also know that you will likely use it to kill something with eventually."

Tasha cocks her head to the side. "You suggest I use my existential terror and horror to kill someone? Do you mean literally, or figuratively? I take it the dagger is part of it somehow? It certainly fits the asthetic."

"The entities you face tend to attack through the mind," Galatea explains. "So having a moat you can set on fire is good, but having a pit trap filled with poisonous spikes leaves more of an impression. There is a risk of course. That dark part of you won't be able eat you, so it will always be hungry. And letting it feed, even on an attacker, can have consequences. But you keeping your mind is also one of those consequences."

"I would prefer to keep my mind. Other consequences can, hopefully, be managed. Absolute suffering and a loss of the mind cannot." Tasha reaches to her neck, pulling the dagger from around it, and then holding it up to look at it. "Kainudy dropped this when she limped away. I believe she was severely injured, but as the micro-universe did not collapse, she remained alive at leas until my departure. I also now remember considering attacking your tree, but as it was not aggressive I avoided that. I believe she is attempting to create a new seed for you. I hope your assistance goes better than mine did." She inclines her head, then places the dagger across her knees, waiting for the coming responses and explainations.

"If she is alive, she may be very dangerous right now," Galatea says. "Her past rampages have been short-lived, and tended to be very specific. She always held back." She really seems to be saying it convince herself more than Tasha. "I'm not sure how to go about this next step, even though I'm fairly certain it needs to be done. You need to be somewhere where you can face your inner self, and have some control over the environment."

"I can think of several locations, of various values of control and self-contest. My Titan, which can produce digital environments, perhaps like your own vessel, and it uses my neuro-link. This location is complicated by proximity to my friends and family, one of whom is psychic and will likely crumble if she is able to sense my mind. Likewise there are two demons, a Vril'ya, and a quantum-computer civilization present. The Titan also houses a fragment of Horus, which is largely removed my sense of safety and isolation within the Titan. It is hard to relax and feel a space is yours when a progenitor deity is watching you." Tasha's head tilts again; an affectation. "Various extra-planar realms may work, but each has its dangers, and you would know more about these than I. For electronic or electronic-analogues, I am uncertain of the consequences of my inner demon influencing systems not designed to handle such a thing." She spreads her hands; I am sorry I am not of more help.

"Tell me more about the shield that Persephone gave you then," Galatea asks. "The Astraea isn't intelligent, so the ship-mind isn't likely to be of use for this. And I'm not very familiar with the fae and dream realms, or even what might be possible in the halfworld. I haven't met your demon associate either, so I do not know what sort of assistance it could provide. I can create a portable suppressor for your neural interfaces, but it would not put you into the state you're in now, but it would render you 'harmless' instead."

"That sounds like a temporary fix. Out of every option. my Titan appears to be the best choice. However, the current resident may be jeopardized by this effort, and the machine mind is not knowledgeable in these matters." Tasha taps the side of her muzzle. "A suppressor would also not allow me to use the neural studs for any other activity, but there is only the tone, the Titan. As for the shield, it is apparently some element of the soul-key Persephone once possessed, created some time around my death. It was handed over to Kainudy by Persephone as I believe Persephone thought Kainudy would be of more use and closer to my state of existence."

"I thought Persephone had better judgment," Galatea notes. "Do you trust the blue faerie man? Or anyone else in that world?"

"Trust is not something I have a great deal of at the moment. It may be more accurate that I consider each being to come with a certain level of risk. I trust only my family and friends not to do me harm, but they are regrettably powerless in anything beyond the realm and nature of our home reality. And in that sense, I cannot trust them either." Tasha looks at the dagger again, frowns at it, and then covers it with a hand. "I too believed Persephone had better judgment, but her true motives are difficult to know. Perhaps I offended her and she regretted my recreation; perhaps she had believed my then-positivity would incline me to resolve Kainudy's lingering problems."

"Or it was just coincidence," Galatea offers. "Just like her giving you one of my.. one of the ansibles I would be attuned to. But as I said, you cannot remain in this dispassionate state for an extended period of time. You can risk using your Titan which seems to have an artificial intelligence that can aid you, venture back to the halfworld and hope Kainudy is recovered and not currently insane, or attempt to make use of the fae or dream realms. There are seldom ideal solutions, so I suggest going with the one you are most familiar with, and then we can work out how to get you there safely."

Tasha inclines her head; there are no ideal solutions here. "The name escapes me, bu there is another realm beyond the fae. A place where there is a city of cats, and the realm itself is shaped by expectation. I suspect this would be extremely dangerous, but the barrens are uninhabited. The City of Cats is where my soul was armored by an angel. I do not know if that city and that temple and that angel would be of use."

"Fighting a monster in a populated area is generally frowned upon," Galatea notes. "What other experiences have you had there? If there was an angel, were there any useful gods?"

"There was a god named something like Thotep, perhaps another incarnation of Thotep. The City is named Ulthar. I do not know if we could reach it, but it is pleasant as these things go." Tasha taps her chin, indicating thought. "Even reaching it is dangerous, and I am not stable.My demon may well cause instabilities in the region, or destroy us through some malleability of the realm. I admit that each option seems fraught with peril and less than even reasonable, but we must chose." More tapping. "Your ship is in orbit above Ymir. This is useful. You can move unseen. We will acquire my Titan and if possible bring it aboard. This will maximize safety and avoid unnecessary interactions. We can then relocate to a better position, if needed."

"My ship isn't very big, compared to yours," Galatea notes. "I could simply put you into an induced coma and move you much easier."

"Some form of stasis? And do you mean move me to my Titan? We must avoid letting the Human Yue near me. The others will make a fuss and this could delay things, as well." Tasha takes the dagger and returns it around her neck, adjusting her clothes. She then looks at herself and adds, "I also look terrible; this will alarm anyone who sees me."

"So you don't want them to know?" Galatea asks. "I can probably mask your presence again if necessary. Why were you wanting to learn about astral projection, if I may ask?"

"I thought it would be interesting and amusing, and allow for travel and contact with beings I normally require complex methods or aid to reach." Tasha's head shakes, both sad and disapproving. "My method of dealing with the horrors of reality was a mix of bravado, positivity, anger, rage, and perhaps most of all, willful evasion. I was, in a sense, somewhat like the fae, whimsical and airy, though I knew many things better than I let on. That said I fully believed there was a means to overcome anything, and approached things directly, as myself. I was, even after my death, lacking in due caution, as true caution and comprehension were incompatible with my method of enduring. Prior to my death I had also had a significant drive to prove myself and do something I believed meaningful, lacking in the means to legacy, but that ended after my death. Currently I am bereft of both." And so she spreads her hands. "Additionally I had been learning magic, so any new ability seemed potentially useful. I could not quantify -- and still cannot -- what may or may not be useful, ultimately."

"Hmm," Galatea ponders. "If you like, I can investigate this Ulthar and other venues. I should be able to trace your steps. I will need to keep you stasis in the meantime however. Do you wish to leave any messages for your peers, or were they expecting you to be gone for a time?"

"I believe they expected my return by nightfall. I do not know how long I have been gone, if I exited the gate from Kainudy's realm propel, how long I have been in the Fae, or how long I was imprisoned. Please inform them of your name, identification, and that something has gone wrong and I have requested you assist me in dealing with it. That I may be gone for an unknown amount of time; you may adjust the time frame provided according to your best estimates. Also," here Tasha reaches in to her clothes, but she does not remove the dagger, but the ansible, "I believe this is yours."

Galatea takes it, and her hand shakes. Then she offers it back, "Hold onto it for now. I'm not prepared to deal with it just yet. I will contact Thoth, rather than introduce myself to any others. I doubt they want to hear about this from a stranger, and I have never been very good at lying when asked a direct question."

"I know that problem. As you have undoubtedly noted, I have trusted you with far more than I promised, and not received what I requested in fully." Tasha holds her hands up; she has many faults. The anisble is accepted and put away. "I can compsoe the message, if you wish."

"In this state I cannot prepare much. This will be sufficient: "This is Tasha. This message will be limited due to my current state; that is for the best. My training with my mentor has suffered a critical and disabling problem due to unforeseen consequences. As such, I may not be available until this matter is resolved. The entity I am with is currently aiding me. I have asked this entity to contact Thoth and inform you, because the entity prefers privacy and is not suited to direct conversations of this nature. If you are questioning why I do not receive aid there, I cannot be near Yue due to the nature of my problem. It is also unwise that I am near the rest of you, for many reasons. I will now go in to stasis until we are ready to proceed with a possible solution. In the event I do not, or cannot, return, or that I am lost, I turn the ship over to you, but recommend you do not walk the path I did unless you understand it better and accept it. I would provide sentimentality, but at present I cannot, so you will need to fill in for me as you believe I would have spoken. Tasha out." That will do. It will cause some alarm, but I cannot stop that as I am; perhaps not even otherwise."

Emerging from stasis is odd for Tasha. She's done it before, but this time it feels more like sleep-walking, as she can't fully wake up. This is due to whatever Galatea stuck to her interface studs to keep her from having a psychotic break, but with the effect turned up higher. Tasha knows she's being talked to, and is responding, but has no higher sense of what the words mean. She follows the supposed instructions though. There's a circle of light, and a dizzying sense of being somewhere else. Scent is more noticeable in this state. It tells that she's in the woods again, and that there is a wolf nearby.

"You've returned without your pack," a familiar voice says, cutting through the molasses of her thoughts. Then there is the howl, and finally Tasha can think again. Her spirit is free from her body as before, and her mind is clear and disturbingly untroubled by her recent experiences. But she's also not alone, as there's another spirit presence she feels, and it isn't the God of Wolves.

Shadow Eyes, as Woden called her sits in her spiritual form as the ethereal wind stirs her fur. It is a strange sense of being, so far from what had happened. That it doesn't touch her is a concern, but like the faded memory of the end of her as she was -- perhaps the end of her in truth -- it does not bother her. She has a thought to wonder if she is really Tasha at all as the odd lupine-like head turns, and with it, all her eyes.

Another wolf spirit is next to her. At least it has the general shape of a wolf, and there are glimpses of a wolf skeleton within. These glimpses are due to the 'flesh' of the spirit being composed of black flames which burn in reverse, so that smoke seems to coalesce into anti-flame which becomes black flesh which then vanishes as more smoke appears. The face is mostly skull though, with darker-than-black spots in the eye sockets. Black so dark that it shines.

"Quite the mess you have become," notes the Big Bad Wolf. "Do you know what you need to do next?"

Beware, Shadow Eyes has cause to think an old memory and an old warning. She regards this other wolf with the interested detachment that has taken her. Even so, she remembers the instructions put to her, even if so much else exists in a haze.

"We are to fight," Shadow Eyes replies, studying her opponent. Studying herself. Or, she cannot help but wonder, Tasha. That this is Tasha, and she is something else. The remainder. The ruins, put together in to what was. It is an uncomfortable thought to realize, more so for what is to come.

"Fight.. to what end though?" the Wolf asks. "You cannot kill one another. But one will become dominant, and the other subservient. If you wish to return to some functional existence, you must not just defeat your End Wolf, you must make it yours to command. And it will never stop testing your dominance, but can serve you in certain ways. It is still a wolf. It will always bite, and always hunger, and never be content with the leash."

"I am still needed. Galatea said that I know. That because I know, I know what failure means." It was and is the most meaningful reason for her to continue. Her End Wolf is her end, the absolute of mortal suffering and beyond. She, who is the dredges of shattered mortality and ignorance, must somehow defeat what she has become, a being beyond suffering. A being made of it. A demon. Her. Can she even dominate such a thing? If she were not dedicated to continuing her task, she might wonder what right she has to assert control over what might rightly be her real self.

"It would be painless to serve under me," the End Wolf promises. "I know how to spare them all."

"Death and destruction are not preservation. They are elimination. They would resist. We would be another power that threats this universe, and others." Shadow-Eyes can't help but feel like a child lecturing an elder, for this Tasha before her has lived and died, has collapsed and remained, possessed of an existence somehow both mortal and other. "They would be spared, but they would also be gone. And we know that our enemies do not respect linear time. Death alone may not save what was." The spirit-wolf has cause to wonder, then, where they fall upon this field. How strange it is that in fighting her enemy, she has become her enemy, so like the beings she would be rid of.

"They would not fight me, I think," the End Wolf claims. "Not once they've heard my argument." And the anti-spirit makes its argument by howling. And in that howl is everything that was separated from Tasha by the Wolf. And more, hinting that the End Wolf retains what Kainudy removed to form the dagger as well.

Shadow Eyes steps back, afraid of what she should rightly fear. There is no preparation, no mindset, experience will not save you, nor sage wisdom, for the absolute of mortal sundering is mortality and sanity's end. The spirit-wolf knows that her antithesis is right; they would not fight, they would shatter, and crumble, perhaps to join her darkness, perhaps simply gone.

That her her darkness carries what had been sundered from what remained of her wholeness is terror and fear incarnate, it is what a mortal should never know made worse by her capacity to exist with it. Not endure, but suffer so greatly the immortal soul collapses upon itself.

Shadow Eyes might call the dark wolf a shadow, but she knows all too well she is the shadow. It is a difficult position. She has fought herself before, but never has her darkness wielded such ultimate knowledge. It is a power in itself, a black hole of thought, emotion, sentience. She thinks it must be what demons are made of. The greater part of her has become one more.

To say she is in a difficult position is the height of understatement. Her ears flatten. "We did not want it. It wasn't for this, it was to help us fight. A lesson. A lesson! She did not see, the dragon did not see, she cannot see and she cannot know. But we do. We alone. We are what all would become. We must fight ourself, or we have become the enemy in truth, more than the flesh of the enemy."

Shadow Eyes is glad for the separation, because she does not think she could endure that howl otherwise. That which separates them prevents her full comprehension, and so her collapse in to her End.

"You fear me," End Wolf says, after the howl drives Shadow-Eyes back. "Noone should fear me. I am proof of survival. I am certainty. I am.. the truth behind reality. Hastur's dog, or yours. Your enemies are mine, if you prove to me that I should serve you."

The spirit-wolf bows her head. "It is true that you survive. I cannot know you. It is the impossible knowledge that we possess, that has made us something strange." The wolf pads the ground, then ducks on her forelegs. "But it is good we survive. We cannot fight if we are gone. We are the ones who can. We know. And we can stand before them, as they do. Even the fragile ones will fight, even if they do not know, because they cannot and remain themselves. We are not ourself anymore. But we are. We are. We will stand beyond, a demon of mortal suffering. A lesson to mortals and our rage and indignation for all our enemies."

"Don't forget about your other spirits," Blackwings whispers to Shadow-Eyes. "Me, your shadows. You just have to prove yourself worthy."

"Yes, I am not alone. That has been my strength in the past, even if it was not enough; even if you could never save me. I am not alone, not even now when I am gone." And so the spirit wolf pads the ground again, more vehement, pushing up. She rises to try and meet her End. "Do not forget why this happened. We are frivolous and unmindful, but to endure what must be endured. Ignorance as a shield. It had a purpose. Look at what we have been."

And from the shadow's shadow extends the others, Blackwings, her death, the mother who came so close and now has lost so much, her the selves that have fought for supremacy before. It is not the first time she has faced herself. "You are our strength, and I am not. But I am why the others came with us, and that which connects us to our cause. We have always fought against our weakness for the weakness of others. Now I, our weakness, will fight too. Let my weakness guide us to what needs saving, so that we remember. For mortals are weak, and weakness drives us to overcome."

"Overcome your fear of me," End Wolf says, and splays its legs while hunkering down. "Embrace me as you have the others."

"I'm not afraid," the Empress claims. "Fear isn't cowardice, it can make you strong too," Blackwings says. "I've faced non-existence before," Sasha adds.

"Strength beyond mortal ken, and loss beyond knowing. The collapse of self, what comes from compression. Our darkness, alive. What we have become." the spirit-wolf recites, thinking on all that is not with her now, and speaking it. One paw in front of the other, one step at a time. To fight her End is pointless, it is her End, and she has ended. And that, too, is her, for she is a mortal beyond and of the end itself. An impossibility; something new. A paradoxical existence that knows fire and ice may coexist through the power of acceptance and collapse of boundaries.

One paw in front of the other and the shadows follow the shadow. "I am fear. I am weakness, to know why loss matters. I am not enough, to need others. In needing others, I know them, and why they matter. And it is that which matters that we would save, even if we are gone. Gone. Here. The spirit wolf ducks her head in respect and recognition, and does not try to defend herself. Instead she tries to place her forehead to that of her End's, an affection for the soul of her terror, and the terror of her soul.

The body of the End Wolf is freezing cold, made of anti-fire. It wants to suck the life out Shadow-Eyes, but the shadows hold onto her and keep her warm. "Do you fear to use me?" End Wolf asks. "Would you turn me loose, or have me attack a single enemy?"

The spirit wolf shivers, but holds her ground. Even her weakness cannot back down now, and it brings her some measure of comfort to know that even beyond her end, she would still be there, waiting for her. Even within herself, she is not alone. And neither is her End. "We are fighters and warriors all, even if we would not be. Even if we are afraid. Our great and mighty foes are beyond us all, so let them know us, and what we have become. Let them fear and suffer us, we who are the soul of mortal suffering. It is only right they taste us; let them join us as we have joined them. And let the universe hear our howl and know it."

"I am angry," the spirit wolf admits. "I do not want to be angry and powerless."

The End Wolf smiles, a horrible thing. "Let me out, so that I may not gnaw on you instead. Set me loose, because the enemy does not fear us, but their servants will. I will follow your anger. But keep a tight rein on both it and me. And above all.. find me some worthy prey. Justify my existence and sacrifice."

"I will do what I may, for I am weak. It is why you exist, and why I do. Arrogance we can ill-afford, and perhaps, cannot avoid." It is an apologetic thing, but promises before her very destruction are revealed for the meaninglessness they are. She can only do what she can, knowing how easily she had fallen, and how completely. She did not even fall to an enemy, but to the mistake of a flawed would-be friend. There can be no certainty, and no confidence, but there can be effort.

"Is the struggle not grand?" the End Wolf asks. "To exist. To defy entropy, knowing you will lose in the end. But I am the end, and the end only happens once. But I can watch it all. I do not want suffering for ourselves. But I'm hungry. You are hungry. Stay hungry. Stay angry. Fight everything, make the gods bleed. Maybe for naught, but they will remember who hurt them at least. And maybe they will begin to fear."

"We have come this far. We are more than what we were. And less. But the demons fear the Null, who is like ourselves; even at the end we are not alone. As he has, so will we." And so the Shadow pushes in to the End. "Perhaps in the inversion we will find ourself again, on the other side. There is not so much difference be plus and minus, both can be used to count, if one is absolute. We can write ourselves in negatives if we must. And we will fight."

The cold of the End Wolf begins to seep and flow into Shadow-Eyes. The anti-flames begin to flicker behind her many eyes, and lick around her teeth. The cold isn't overwhelming this time, but it settles into the background. The other shadows seem hesitant to rejoin though.

The Eyes of the End in Shadow turn to face their shadow. "We are what we are."

"We are what we are," the combined being repeats. Though she is master, she is also herself. The cold is the core of her, her soul. Broken, sundered, surrounded by its pieces that now provide the warmth it once had. A being writ in negatives; hope eternal. "Watch us. Be with us."

"I wouldn't miss it," Blackwings says, and leads the others in returning, each to one of the many eyes.

And so the being turns to Wolf. "We are whole, for all that that means of and for us. How strange to still exist beyond it all, to be our enemy, who would be savior."

"Most are creatures of contradiction," Wolf claims. "And yet they cobble together functioning minds. Sapience is overrated, if you ask me. I prefer being single-minded."

"A luxury I have never had, even after being destroyed so completely. How vexing for me." It is, it seems, a joke from this ruined creature. "But I will take your thoughts to heart." the spirit-wolf's smile is grimly amused, to say the least. And it soon fades.

"The grave is always cold, but at the time you won't feel it," Wolf claims. He then lifts his head high, and sniffs the air. "Fear walks the land tonight. The fey are scared. They fear the stirring of the Queen of Demise."

The spirit-wolf sniffs as well, curious of this Queen of something as she is. "Does this Queen come, then?" She has not fought a queen before; she wonders if she will be a worth enemy.

"We will see if it is mine." The wolf of eyes and death turns to regard the bones around her, comforting now as they weren't before. Something like kin; something safe in its destructio, though the latter cannot be said to apply to her. "Where to, I wonder. I return from the afterlife once again it seems." And the end comes with her, where once it could not tred.

Like ghosts, Tasha's body and Galatea are there amidst the bones, looking less real in comparison. Frozen in time.

"Back to life, then. Once more ... Forever, perhaps ... " For where does one go, after they are gone? Dead in body, destroyed in mind and spirit, existing beyond all reason and destruction to come back once again. Not undeath, not life, but a living paradox, antithesis returned home for lack anywhere better to be.

"At least your body makes for a pretty casket," Blackwings comments. "You'll probably want to dress warmer though from now on."

This is good advice, for the spirit thinks she will always be cold, deep in the heart of her. Like a sickness, perhaps.

As The Eyes of the End in Shadow come upon her abandoned and frozen body, her flesh to carry her spirit, she thinks it suits her. A broken body, remade, to fit a broken mind and a broken soul, reformed if not remade. Yet she hesitates, for at least here she feels a kinship, a calling. Death is here, here among the bones, and the night, and the cold wind, so much like her now. Life is bright and warm, and in that warmth all that she has lost, the pain of relativity. Here she could dwell forever more, something to haunt the night and give rise to those who stand before the darkness. It is tempting.

It is tempting. She is so tired, and so cold. But the cold makes sleep difficult, and for as much as this place calls to her, she is still born of mortality, and mortality yearns to live.

Slowly, Galatea's eyes turn from Tasha to the Eyes of the End in Shadow. She has one hand still on the back of Tasha's head, as if supporting it.. but that's also where the studs are.

The beast says nothing. It stands there like the moon, like the night, in all its horror and all its shattered glory. It does not hide and it shows no shame. It is what it is; look on it. Look on it.

Galatea just stares, her face blank. "What are you waiting for?" the Shadow hears. "If you aren't coming back can I keep your body?"

No. It is her body; she has sacrificed too much to abandon it now, it is her's. The beast walks past Galatea to what is her's, and ducks down, sliding in to her own skin and back to something like life.

Tasha feels cold. But her head is.. clearer than it was. She no longer feels like she's being crushed. When she opens her eyes, for just a moment there is a Yellow tint to the world, but it fades. "It was not easy finding this place," Galatea tells her. "I dislike dealing with gods."

Tasha blinks once, for living has never felt so strange. Unique. Off. It isn't quite what she remembers, yet other than the cold and the Yellow, she does not know why, or what may be missing. She need not know, to keep going, but perhaps she'll understand in time.

"No true wolf bows to a god," Tasha recites, less an answer as a test of her existence in this fashion, like a bird repeating something it has heard in response to a stimulus. She lifts a hand to flex it, curious. The movements of life. Existence. A state something like what she was; and she is still here. Still here, after it all. Life after death. Death in life.

There is a long pause as Tasha returns to a more general now, and back from the echoes of afterward of eternity. "She said the same thing."

"I wonder." Tasha looks around, arms folding. She will need those clothes after all, it seems. The cold goes through her, from inside out. "She will have to answer, in time, I think. We can go together."

"What's the question?" Galatea asks, and points through the woods. "The way back is that way, unless things have changed again."

"She'll tell us, I think." Tasha begins walking through the dark woods, away from this place that is like her. A place she could have remained, but didn't. "You seem lonely. Will you come with me?"

"I wouldn't want you to get lost," Galatea says, but once they enter the woods she seems troubled.

"That is not what I meant." Tasha feels it too, but her state keeps her from reacting. Threat and danger are felt relatively; for Tasha, all suffering and all danger now weigh against the absolute. She wonders if somewhere, she might be considered holy.

"What did you mean then?" the pale woman asks, looking up into the forest canopy one moment, then down at the ground the next.

"For a life boat, you live even less than I do. You wander and you search, and even when offered what you have lost, you won't take it. I would not want you to get lost." Tasha unfolds her arms to press a finger to her chest, where her heart is; she knows something of loss, and of being lost.

"Oh, you're asking me to come with you?" Galatea asks. "To fight the things that killed me before?"

"You will fight them some day. They are inevitable. And you are alone." It's not exactly an answer, spoken in the distant and distracted tone Tasha has taken on since her return. Like a sick woman who sees something beyond the fever, or someone trying to navigate through a blizzard.

Galatea is quiet for a moment as they walk. "I'm not a fighter," she says. "You've seen how clumsy I am with a sword. Conflict seems endemic though to most species. All of the ones I've dealt with at least. Even gods. And my own kin. There was a time I would have fought... but the means of fighting was taken from me, leaving me defenseless. I don't like being defenseless. What use would I be to your crusade?"

"An army does not exist on battles alone; the smith need not be a swordsman, the teacher, an archer. We are all weak and all fragile, as we are, and more so before their power. Let us gather together." Tasha stops walking, but keeps looking forward, searching for something. "I am a monster and a corpse within a living body. You are the darkened seed of a tree of ashes. We are still here. Let us suffer together." She blinks. "Let our suffering drive us onward, together in pain. You need not hold the sword to direct it. A steed carries the warrior; the cook feeds her hunger. Let us stand together. All are defenseless. Let it drive us on."

"You're the blood and I'll be the bone?" Galatea asks, alluding to their dominant colors. "I have to be very careful, Tasha. There are some things I will.. avoid. My mothers were crippled by the guilt of their own actions for 'the greater good' and I don't want to end up like that."

"It is inevitable. To face war is to face imperfection; to cower is to face imperfection. There may be no perfect being, no ideal that is immune. To face that which opposes you is to shine brightly upon all your weakness. Strength is to overcome that weakness; death is the price of failure. Or worse." Tasha turns now, to stare at Galatea. "If you do not fight, other will. You will use their blood, and their flesh, and all that they are, their very soul, as a shield for your own. Or you will fight and you will die. Freedom exists only in absolute victory. There is nothing else. For all else, there is suffering."

Rather than reply, Galatea looks around at the surrounding woods again. "I can't promise anything yet," she says. "Something is wrong. Nothing is stalking us. There are no sounds. Everything is hiding or has fled."

"The Queen of Demise comes." Tasha turns away and stares in to the forest, though she does not know whence this being comes, or when. But there is more to her now, or less, and is a hunter. So she scents the wind, and opens her eyes, to see, and to smell, and to know if the time has come again to fight.

There's a sense of dread coming from one direction. The only sense of anything in the woods where nothing else moves. "What.. what does that mean?" Galatea asks, actually sounding worried.

"I do not know. We shall find out." Tasha searches the woods, showing no outward concern, which is not true of how she feels. She feels concern, and fear, and so much else, yet the balance of the relativity of suffering allow for no expression, for there is so much more that could happen, that mere worry and fear cannot compete nor find movement in her. " I wonder if I will die again." Where, then, for her?

"This way," Galatea says, moving towards the sense of dread with a determination that seems at odds with her earlier attitudes about conflict.

"A decision, then?" Tasha follows after, wrapping her arms back around her torso.

"Maybe if you survive," Galatea says in a very non-threatening manner, more of a worried tone if anything. "They're up ahead.. at least two, maybe more."

Tasha's smile is not welcoming, but it is also not directed at Galatea. "If I survive, then." And she walks towards the figures.

There are voices now. The language is lyrical, which doesn't have quite the proper effect when being shouted. Galatea comes to a stop before they get close enough to be noticed. There are two groups of armed fey set apart by their attire: one group (the shoutiest) is wearing silver armor. The other is dressed in clothing that seems to be improvised from plants and animals, even though the vines and branches seem to still be alive and flowering. The latter group also sports more distinctive looking head adornment, whether or not the horns and antlers are growing from them or not. A short distance away are two large dragons, also wearing armor, and the fourth point of the gathering seems to be a swirling black vortex with bursts of yellow lightning within it. And at the very center of it all stands an angry Mollymauk and a stoic Thoth.

"Oh." Tasha's remark is almost casual in its realization, yet some echo of detached frost remains to it. She can speculate on what has happened, this result seems almost obvious to her in hindsight. Still, she choses to listen for a while longer, though she also knows her presence may be detected by those who seek her, and are wiser still.

"I have never seen a dragon wear armor before." The remark is so at odds, and so distant, it might well startle for all its non sequitur.

"How could you let this happen!" the shoutiest shiny elf accuses Molly. "You were supposed to watch out for trouble! You know these barbarians were trying to push her over the edge!" Before Molly can respond, one of the horned set says, "Oh dear, can't have that happening to your weapon, right Lucien? Feeding her is all you managed to accomplish."

"And what have you been feeding her? Assassins?" the shiny one fires back. The dragons haven't said anything so far.

The sense of dread is even stronger here, and is clearly coming from the vortex.

"And so in feeding her the ultimate in pain of the soul did the student feed her the sword of madness in kind, and did wthey sup on pain and suffer then together, that they might learn in their mutual destruction," Tasha murmurs, as if she were part of the conversation and responding to it. She turns to the vortex, and wonder if the vortex turns to her.

"What?" Galatea asks, turning on Tasha. "Your sword shouldn't have drawn blood. Where were you when it happened? Why is she holed up in a pocket reality?"

"One prison to another, and deeper still. I was there for an eterni--" But Tasha can't complete the sentence, immediately sucking in a deep breath as the cold within her sharpens to agony, or perhaps her agony sharpens to cold. There are places she must not go, within herself, or risk that they come to her. They cannot be touched; to think them is to remember too well, and to remember too well invites the End.

"Start with why she's in the Halfworld. Has she been there since she failed to save me?" Galatea asks.

Tasha can't answer for a moment, clutching her chest as if she were suffering a heart attack, silent and close-eyed until she manages to forget long enough to turn her mind's eye away completely. There is a ragged breath, and her countenance is, for a moment, sickly. "A crumbling soul needs glue. As I am, so too is she, but differently. Her powers and others, they hold her together." Another sharp breath; the pain does not fade so quickly. "Part prison, part memorial, regret and and life and pain. I did not know she could travel so. Is it my demise she seeks? She is late, but perhaps not too late."

"No," is all Galatea can say, stunned. "She had no shields, and you stabbed her." Then she turns and starts marching towards the crowd. "They don't get to have their Queen," she says.

Tasha follows along, even as she clutches her chest. In her ruined clothes covered in blood and worse, she is unsightly even as she is young and beautiful. A waif of a girl carrying the weight of mortal horror upon her. She says nothing as she follows along, but she is smiling and empty smile that even she doesn't understand.

The dragons notice them coming first, and silently watch. "She could be building an army of her soulless monster children in there!" Lucien rants. "Open the way right now, Molly, so we can strike before it's too late!"

"We would have to stop you, of course," the other woodsy elf says. "So you had better bring an army. And.. well, deal with them," he adds, gesturing to the dragons. They are sort of dragons Tasha would expect, big and dangerous looking. Why would dragons like that need armor?

Tasha waits in the wings, walking slowly. A stranger and a wolf, stalking with slow interest not yet touching on impatience. Her right hand flexes now and then, the memory of the sword still in her mind. She wonders how well the dragons can fight.

Other than the dragons, nobody else notices them, even when Galatea passes between the bickering elves to talk to Thoth. "What's happening?" she asks him.

"In any case, it can't be opened," Molly insists. "It's locked, so anyone who wants to get in has to either force it or wait until it's opened from the other side."

Seeing she's gone largely unnoticed, Tasha stalks closer to examine this and that person, and the dragons, with all the interest of a curious but dangerously shy mutt, and equally dirty.

The dragons are really focused on Tasha now, probably because she's still covered in dragon blood.

"Leftover issues and fears from the Steel Dragon War, with a pinch of prophecy and an extreme distrust of your mother," Thoth says. "And of you, if they could see you. Is Tasha with you?"

Tasha's smile is knowing. "I did it," she admits, eyes a little wide, flush with the proximity -- and thus memory -- of her doom. It rattles her, awakens a mania that begins to touch on something like desperation. "I did it. Ask me why. ASK ME WHY."

Thoth notices Tasha now. "What did you do, Tasha?" he asks. "Is that her blood or yours?"

"It's all our blood in the end." Tasha holds up a hand, and the Yellow sword erupts there. "She taught me something. I taught her something back. I--" Another of those gasps, yet despite her sudden and apparent weakness, the sword only glows brighter. "W-what did you think would happen, w-w-why did you--"

"So these.. idiots.. are here expecting the next Vorgulremik to walk out of that portal and devour everyone, is that it?" Galatea asks. "And which ones are hoping for that?"

"I'm not sure about the dragons," Thoth admits. "But could she actually be dead in there?"

Galatea turns back to Tasha, and asks, "You stabbed her in the chest. Did you pierce her heart?"

Meanwhile Tasha shows herself to a nearby tree stump where she drops herself down, clutches her chest, and pulls her wings around herself against a cold that radiates more from within than without. She had not expected to return here so soon; it is so close, so close. A desperate madness claws inside of her, subdued, but struggling.

Too distracted by her own struggle, she pauses long enough to uncoil a have to swing in the air ai one of the dragons, approximating as best she can remember what happened, and how. The gesture clearly costs her, because she retracts the arm quickly enough and hunches over.

"Get up," Galatea tells Tasha. "We're going in. Kainudy left a lot of impressions on me, but one of the big ones is that you can't escape the consequences of your actions. Maybe you're raw right now, but you need to push through it regardless, or it's going to keep striking you down."

"Mmph," goes Tasha, who does rise. She holds her chest with an arm, and she's hunching forward like she might pitch forward, but she's up. She even starts walking right towards the portal at a steady pace that stands at odds with her posture.

"Good," Galatea says, and heads for the portal. Some of the yellow lightning strikes her while she waits for Tasha, but it doesn't seem to do any harm.. at least none she reacts to. "Now is the time to impress me," she tells the struggling Tasha.

This makes Tasha chuckle, then laugh with something between bitterness and genuine, if dark, amusement. "Save the ... The woman who ruined me ... " She sounds breathless, but does straighten and push her wings out. She shivers against the chill and her hands shake, but she steps forward with her arms out towards the port. "L-let me in ... let me i-in ... LET ME IN!"

Galatea touches the portal. "She won't answer, but I can feel the rest of me in there," she says, and takes Tasha's free hand with hers. "So this shouldn't destroy us." Then she goes into the vortex and Tasha enters with her.

There's more laughter at the mention of further destruction, but Tasha doesn't flee or otherwise pull away as she's dragged beyond the gate.

It's terribly cold, and filled with screams. But Tasha's hooves do touch solid ground after falling for a time. It's like stepping into a blizzard, with black ice swirling and battering her. Roaring that could be the storm or something else. She sees the swirling mass of her demon in there, fighting with the dark dragon and others that must have been in the prison with them. The ones who didn't offer themselves to be Tasha's devourers.

Tasha's shivering and cold are so universally present she is unable to source them, and indeed, tell one apart from another. It's blinding, and with the horror, somehow consuming. Bedlam, not like what she left at all, comforting, overwhelming, and confusing at the same time.

The red woman's eyes watch the dark dragon hungrily, the only part of her that doesn't look cold and shakey. She fights the urge to help herself crush it from existence. not trusting her decisions now, she asks, "W-what do we d-do?"

"This is what she always kept hidden from me," Galatea says quietly, but still easily heard over the storm. "She must be at the center," she insists, and starts marching forward. "Where would she go? Her spot to.. punish herself?"

"T-the tree the- ... N-no not there the ... I can't say it ... But not there. The tree. To the tree." Tasha looks upand searches the winter for anything like a landmark, concerned that this place may have changed itself utterly.

The statues of the memorial garden are still glimpsed through the maelstrom of demonic energy. "The tree?" Galatea asks. "My tree?"

"M-maybe." Tasha turns herself and begins trudging through the frost and gale as she does what she can to fight down her own, inner, ice. That this place is ruined and tumultuous is at least a small blessing, for she can draw some satisfaction from that and, so, satiate the part of her that raged here once.

"Take me to it then," Galatea insists. "And stop stammering. You've got a shield don't you?"

"DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO," Tasha growls, having had quite enough of being pushed around, coming in a moment of pique and clarity. "And y-yes." She sniffs, still holding her chest but with somewhat less effort; anger does much to warm the spirit when real warmth is in short supply. "You're really b-bossy for someone who has been cowering from Kainudy for millions of years. A last m-minute rescue does not absolve you."

"It's only been a thousand years, and I didn't know where she was," Galatea counters. "Now, please take me to the.. tree.."

"Only a t-thousand? The Stel'y- The Waymakers are a lot older than that, unless ... our temporarily is m-missmatched," Tasha mumbles, possibly to herself, but she does take the lead. The shield comes out, held in her right hand while her left massages her chest, and the cold. "And you said you d-didn't forgive her. Are you going to kill her..?"

"Why would I.." Galatea says as the storm gets thicker. Tasha can tell the dark pointy dragon from the dungeon is fighting the whatever-it-was-demon that tried to eat her. There are others fighting too, but it isn't clear what they're fighting over.. just that they haven't noticed the intruders yet. "She's still my mother," Galatea concludes.

"Mommy issues." It's said matter-of-factly, and summarily. Tasha scans the horizon and eventually notices the demons, which cause her to side-track and start giving them a wide berth. The cloud-of-spheres demon is given particular attention, and once her eyes fix on it, the sword appears in her hand without warning or preamble.

"She took away my only means of defense and.." Galatea starts to say, then scowls at Tasha. "Just lead the way. I'll warn you if one of the monsters notices us."

"And she left to go make a cannon out of folded space-time, t-then the demons came and broke the planet. T-temporality issues." Tasha keeps going, but still doesn't stop watching the cloud until it is well out of sight. Even once she can no longer see it, she watches where it vanished in the distance.

Something else with too many wings and mouths and eyes grapples with another monstrosity.. or else it's just one big one fighting itself, since it seems to very tangled up. But they aren't directly in the way, even if they aren't moving from their spot.

"Watch for patches of mist," Galatea warns. "I'm pretty sure there were gaki in her menagerie. They look like dark fog, but eat flesh and souls."

Like before, Tasha goes around the long way. Part of her would like to fight them, but another part of her, the part that's had a chance to get back on its feet and assess, thinks that neither her, now Kainudy, can afford much more mental damage. She would prefer not to be here when the pocket plane collapses.

At the warning, Tasha adds 'mist' to her things to want to kill and to avoid. "Not t-to far now. Through the maze, near the graves."

"My grave?" Galatea asks, sounding upset. Something long and sinuous is draped across the path, like a scale-less snake. It's twitching.

Tasha pauses. "M-many graves. Maybe mine too, now." That would be nice, she decides. A nice long rest in her grave would be nice. She can get up later. For now, she has to deal with whatever this is. The sword is pointed. "P-problem."

Tasha does one better and just throws her sword at it, ready to recall it to her hand after she hits or misses.

It manages to scratch it, which is enough make it slither off.. or be dragged off.

The Yellow sword boils back out of Tasha after vanishing. "Your mom sure is filled with t-tentacles," she remarks as she resumes her trudging through the midnight storm. "She's a lot different than P-Persephone."

"These things were forced on her, a long time ago," Galatea says. There are less demonic abominations in their way now, but more ghostly presences instead. Tasha recognizes some of them from their statues.

"Memory-ghosts, unless they're n-not," the red woman remarks of the statutes. She gestures to them as they pass them by, "From the graveyard, the statues."

"She kept statues.." Galatea says, sounding a bit sad. "It's just her guilty conscience. I don't think they can hurt us."

"Guilt can hurt you without need for a sword," Tasha may or may not have agreed; her tone certainly suggests a complexity to her feelings on the matter. They keep going, but Tasha watches the ghosts, just in case.

"I swore I wouldn't become like her," Galatea says as they get closer to the center of the garden. "How are you with your own mother?"

"Which one? I have o-one birth mother, a ghost that made my existence happen, then there's Persephone who put my soul back t-together." Tasha squints, and not just from the cold air. "My soul's becoming y-your family's heirloom."

"I still have difficulty seeing Persephone as a mother figure," Galatea admits. "Let's go with your birth mother, presuming she's the one that raised you."

"We get along fine. I'm successful and in a relationship with a wonderful, successful older man. That's a lot to achieve for a drover and a b-bar maid," Tasha answers, sounding somewhere between wistful and self-deprecatingly reflective. "Small world mothers from small places d-don't expect that much."

"You sound like you have a chill," Galatea notes. "Is it that cold here, I.." she then stops in the middle of her statement and also in the middle of the path as if frozen.

"I'm cold inside and o-ou-" Tasha then also pauses, suddenly very alert, seeking whatever it is that has caused her companion to stop.

Galatea is staring at one of the ghosts. It's an apparently female kirin-oid with brown fur and scales, and is looking forward along the path. "I knew this one," Galatea says. "She was the first person I ever spoke to. I'd kept my ability to talk a secret up until then. I could have saved her if Kraken hadn't been taken. I could have saved all of them.."

"You tried," Tasha offers, trying to sound reassuring but sounding just as cold as everything else around here. She stands there, awkwardly, too keenly aware that this could all be her, on top of being mangled inside and out. She just doesn't have the were-with-all to comfort. "W-we should go or you won't be able to save Kainudy, either."

"Yes," Galatea agrees, but seems subdued. "Let's hurry, please. I'm starting to feel cold."

"I know how you feel." It's obvious, of course, but that's now why tasha said it. She hurries along. "We should be close now. Look for a w-white tree. If she's not here we can try the study, or ... I don't know. Not the dungeon."

They pass the memorial to Cythrawl, and then reach the area with the tree and the shadow-sands. And there's a collapsed dragon between them in pool of dark blood, with what looks like a pair of bat wings with no body couched over her and pulling white mist up from her mouth.

"No!" Galatea yells and rushes forward, waving her arms as if trying to scare off a regular bird, not something that's huge and just wings.

Tasha stands there, a shadow surrounded by snow. Only her shield and her sword alight the darkness. She watches the display for a long moment, judging, weighing, searching her own feelings. Deciding if Kainudy and Galatea would be better off out of her misery.

And then Tasha steps forward. Whatever happened, she at least believes Kainudy hadn't intended the result. There will be time to judge whether she was indelicate, even sacrificial, of her life and soul, but she'll never know if she dies here. And, just as problematic, if this place collapses there may be no answers for any of them, or anything else for that matter.

The sword flashes through the darkness to embed itself in the avian's hide. "Get Kainudy away from it. I can d-deal with this. Hi," the last addressed to the demonic bird as she gives it a lackluster wave, just before the sword snaps back to the hand, "I'll b-be your executioner. Sorry to keep you waiting."

"Let me out," End Wolf whispers to Tasha. The sword certainly gets the thing's attention though, and it starts drifting towards Tasha. There doesn't even seem to be anything connecting the wings together, but the insides have eyes scattered across them.

Tasha pulls in a deep breath, looking lazy, even bored about the coming fight. She's very tired, after all, but she's nowhere near as unaware or uninterested as she appears. "Take Kainudy and run. Do not return to me. Do not try to stop me. I will come to you when I'm ready. This is your and her only warning." The young woman sniffs, hesitating, feeling the snow and the air and the cold, the nagging reminder of something put off grows in her mind until she breathes a simple, "Okay," as if pestered but too tired to resist much.

"Okay. Lets go." And with that she closes her eyes and surrenders control to the other her, to the End.

The coldness doesn't go away, but it's her coldness. And while Tasha doesn't seem to change, her shield and sword sprout.. well, claws and teeth, each tipped with the End Wolf's black flame. Tasha doesn't feel tired or afraid though. Or really much of anything save the chilling numbness, even as the wings of doom swoop towards her.

"Pain's fun isn't it," Tasha remarks as she raises her shield and waits for the thing to crash in to it, to meet the claws and the fangs and the cold, cold fire. She readies the sword as well, up and ready to strike.

And the thing does crash into the shield, and try to wrap itself around Tasha (it's wings are even bigger than hers). It makes a hissing sound, like steam from a kettle when it gets stuck on the shield spikes.

The teeth and claws of the shield bite and tear and hold, giving Tasha some measure of control over the beast, a bridle by which to control it's movements and keep its head at bay. And a, as comes in sharp and violent focus, a ulcrum in which to maneuver that head for her own offense. She brings her sword around in an effort to end the thing decisively now that its head is trapped.

The jagged sword tears through the wing, leaving billowing smoke behind. Then the entire entity turns to smoke and returns to the swirling miasma of the demon storm. It isn't clear if that was its way of retreating or if it was actually wounded. Either way, it's gone. Galatea has not been able to move Kainudy in that short time. She's crying and beating her fists down on the dragon's shoulder, demanding that she get up and fix herself.

Tasha is standing around, looking in all directions, searching, and still seemingly bored with it all. "Disappointing. This isn't some trick is it? Why not come out and die? Anyone else? All of you?" She pays no mind to Galatea's suffering, she just waits there like a gladiator whose opponent is late.

"If you like," a gravelly voice responds, and the dark dragon is there before her. It's a lot bigger looking now. "Not long now, and I will claim a new body, so I can spare some time to play with you."

"An here I thought I was going to be bored. I can only endure so much pathetic crying," Tasha commiserate with the demon dragon. "Nice wings though; I think I want them."

And so Tasha drops in to her ready stance, shield up and sword ready. "Hero and a dragon. You remember how these stories go, don't you?"

"All I see is a little girl," the dragon claims. "And once I eat Kainudy, I'll know the key to unlock your soul. I'll remake you.. or eat you.. as I see fit." And then it tries to sweep Tasha off of her feet with its tail.

Tasha learned from Yue how to keep her balance from a larger opponent, and Tasha is not tall. She keeps her center of balance low, stepping closer to the dragon and looking for just the right fulcrum point before jamming her sword in to the dirt and bracing, using the dragon's momentum and energy against it. If she's right, the tail will sever itself with its own force.

There's still a decent force behind the strike, despite the damage caused by the sword. But the feel of it is physical: it hits the End Wolf, which pulls Tasha along. The escaped monsters are still just spirits at the moment. And only that part of Tasha closest in nature to them is touchable.

Tasha grunts still, if just out of habit. "Oh ho, got'cher tail," she says, as if being especially obnoxious about teasing a child. With the tail nearby she takes the opportunity to stab it repeatedly until the dragon has thought to move it away. "First time I've got some dragon tail. You always remember your first."

While stabbing the tail, Tasha loses track of the other end, and finds jaws biting down on her wings. It hurts.. sort of. End Wolf feels it, where it would have ignored merely physical pain.

Tasha hisses, swinging her shield back in a shield-back against the dragon's face, trying to get a hold of it with the newly offensive defense. "B-biting. I like it."

The head is repelled, but there's a laugh from the dragon as well. "So there's something in there to get a grip on after all," it says. "Kainudy didn't pull it all out. Let's see if I can swallow you next."

"And here I thought I might swallow you," Tasha remarks, rolling the bitten wing. The pain is good for her, it helps her focus. Even the talk is welcome, it brightens all this cold and crying in to something that, at the very least, entertains her. Life is never so alive as when you're fighting for it, and she'd been itching for something to destroy. She winks at the intentionally rough mock-innuendo, blowing a kiss off the tip of her sword. "But maybe my sword will be too much for you. May we both be delicious." And so she readies herself again.

So the dragon charges, jaws gaping and claws spread. It also reforms the parts that Tasha has cut, the smoke returning to fill in the damage.

Tasha knows full well she's not going to halt a dragon in its place, no matter how steady her shield. She's as like to break her legs as halt it -- so instead she waits until the dragon is committed and then hurls herself to the side, and a bit forward, shield ready for stray fang, claw, or tail, sword flashing to make use of their mutual momentum.

The results are mixed. A swath of smoke it gouged out along the monster's jaw and neck, but Tasha feels the blow of slamming into its shoulder.

This leaves Tasha grunting, shaking out the very physical pain, now. "Looks like we're equally incompetent. I'm quasi-mortal, so that must be very embarrassing for you." She straightens, albeit wobbly. Not fast enough to evade the dragon; she'll remember that.

The red woman tries a few swipes of opportunity as she regains her defense and begins trying to circle the beast, deciding its size makes turning harder, and its flank is more vulnerable that its rear (and tail) or its head (and jaws).

"Not long now," the dragon claims. "Her last defense is failing, and I'll be free. I've already beaten the others. Well.. eaten the others. I'm about to become a god, all thanks to you." Then it breaths.. well not fire but something dark and nasty at Tasha. It looks like the orb-and-smoke demon being blasted at her.

Tasha barks a laugh, a genuine laugh. Gods and would-be gods almost never thank her, it's almost refreshing. But she hasn't time to dwell on it as the smoke comes. She can't really evade it, Kainudy's own breath had range and speed, and there's precious little room for retreat, she can't flee. So she does what she's wanted to, ever since that nasty smoke came at her. A chance for revenge, even if it's against a dead thing that she'd killed once herself.

Tasha braces the shield and the sword, and opens their jaws wide. If the demon draws its power from its feast, then she'll do the same. If she can't meet it as a mortal, she'll just have to meet it as a demon.

It's like being caught in a storm of razor blades. Or teeth. The familiar scraping around the edges of her soul. And while End Wolf is a wolf, it's not the predator in this case.. and it remembers being the prey.

Without that option either, Tasha does what she hopes the dragon won't expect, because she doens't have anything else and is too tired to for further cleverness -- she charges. Through the cloud and through the storm at the dragon, to jam her sword up in to its throat and through its brain. If this fails, there's only one choice left.

It's like running into a very strong wind (full of shards of broken glass) but at least the shield protects most of her. It's impossible to tell where she is in it all though. It's hard to feel what's solid and what isn't. But she isn't feeling any teeth biting down on her.

Tasha has her third eye, but then this is a demon fog. She swings to locate something to hit, but can't help but think she's doomed. She considers turning the sword on herself, or this place, and ending it all with herself.

The flow begins to slow.. and then reverse. Not it feels like it's being sucked away from Tasha. There's even a roar of pain from the dragon. Which didn't happen while she was slicing into it.

The roar, at least, gives her a target. She pushes towards that and swings away, hoping sound still works in this place.

The sucking is getting stronger, seemingly pulling the roar with it. But Tasha also feels it pulling at her as well, if not as strongly. Then she can see again as the smoke clears. The storm is swirling tightly overhead, and forming an actual funnel. The dragon is being pulled apart as it gets drawn into it, despite trying to claw at the ground.

Glad for random death funnels, Tasha scoots to grab something to secure herself, then begins throwing her sword at the dragon in an effort to ruin its grip and send it up to ... whatever that is.

The sword manages to nick one of the talons, but at that point it doesn't do much to effect the inevitable. "I will not.. be.. eaten.." the dragons says as it's torn away. The flames on the sword are also snuffed out. With the bulk of the dragon now gone, Tasha can see that Kainudy is floating in the air, head turned upwards as the tornado funnels into her throat. She doesn't look aware or even awake though, and is still bleeding from the stab wounds in her chest. Galatea is on her knees on the ground, looking worried.

Tasha just sighs. End or not, it never feels like she can win, or really accomplish much. It's this thought that drives her to say, "Well you found her. Time for me to get going ..," as she looks around, then turns to walk off. Maybe it really is time to retire.

Except she's being pulled back still. Or the End Wolf is. "This is bad," Galatea says. "She's eating them. Really eating them."

"And me," Tasha complains, jamming her sword in to the ground and then reaching to hook her hand on a root. "She's your mother, you do something, or I'm going to try and kill her."

"She hasn't woken up," Galatea says. The last of the storm is consumed, and Kainudy bursts into black flame that forms a much, much larger dragon. And then she roars. It's many times worse than the End Wolf's howl. And this time it is very much a predatory one. So maybe this is the Queen of Demise the Wolf was talking about.

"What do you want me to do? I could barely handle that dragon, my soul was ripped apart, now my mentor is going to eat me if I don't kill myself first. I am out of options. I regret ever come here or putting my faith in any of you. Thoth! if you're here, get me out of here. Persephone? do something. And you." Tasha eyes Galatea. "She's your mother. I just sliced her up after the last time she ripped my soul apart for her emotional problems. You're the one who wanted to talk to her, so talk to her. Wake her up. Do. Do-" And then it hits Tasha.

Letting the sword vanish, she reaches in to her bloodied clothes and pulls out the anisble. It's this she puts down, and retrieving that strange stiletto, stabs with all her might.

If her own daughter's cry of anguish, the pain of her soul so close, won't wake Kainudy, noting she has will. All that's left is to hope Thoth followed her in and can get her out.

The pull stops at least, and Galatea screams, even though the tormented looking stiletto doesn't penetrate into the ansible. But Tasha is free to move now at least.

Tasha stands, and remembering where the exit is, retreats with all speed. She stopped the pull at least, for the rest she and Galatea will have to work it out, or not, but she's spent and she doubts her presence will lighten the mood. She's done what she can for their whole family, but she won't give her existence. Not again.

The exit is still a dark vortex. And something is coming through it as Tasha gets near. Another dragon head pokes through, looking a bit like Kainudy but in red and gold this time. The rest of the dragon steps through behind it. "Hello," it says, sounding male.

"Hi," Tasha replies, neutrally. "Kainudy's back there," she nods behind herself, "Along with her daughter. Maybe you can do something. I'm leaving. Step aside."

"Not yet," the dragon says, "I need to deal with you still, I think. You're a mess."

"You can thank my mentor and her 'I'll just chew on your soul' strategy for teaching." Tasha backs up, uncertain which variant of 'deal with' she's about to get. Her weapon and shield remain right where they are. Her eyes are wary, cold, and without much in the way of trust.

"Did she personally chew on your soul?" the dragon asks. "Was it forced on you?" Then it looks past Tasha. "Don't answer yet," he says, and then they're both back in the garden again. "I need to fix this."

Tasha's eyes roll, but she's seen how her fights have gone lately to know better than to pick one now. "Stabbing her daughter's soul-ball works okay," she tries instead, feeling it to be suitably vindictive.

"The Queen of Demise," the new dragon says. "I suppose you stopped her from completing the Hymn of the Black Chorus." He looks at the passed out Galatea as well. The Queen is also looking at the white form, and not doing anything else.

Tasha shrugs her hands in a 'I don't know what I'm doing or what that is' sort of way, then nods the dragon to the other dragon before walking over to Galatea.

"Sacrifices," Tasha states, matter of factly. Then she kneels down, scoots Galatea around to face Kainudy, and picks up the woman's hands to wave them in the air at the hovering Queen of Demise. "HI I BROUGHT YOUR DAUGHTER BACK. REMEMBER WHEN I LIED ABOUT SOMETHING? THIS IS IT! I WAS GOING TO MAKE IT REALLY NICE AND TRIED NOT TO HURT YOU BUT WOW BEST INTENTIONS AND GOOD DEEDS RIGHT?" The hands get waived some more. "SO WAKE THE FUCK UP."

"Hmmm," the red dragon notes of the performance. The Queen of Demise does not react at all. "Mind if I try?" the dragon asks.

"FEEL FRE--" Tasha coughs, drops the hands, and just sits beside Galatea, idly wrapping her arms around the other woman's upper torso. "Feel free. If she tries to kill me, it's more ball stabbing time. Just a warning."

The dragon clears his voice, then whispers, "Kainudy." The flames of the Queen are blown away like dead leaves, and the wounded dragoness that was in the middle of it all drifts down to the ground. "Stab wounds," he notes, glancing to Tasha's sword.

"Yeah, that was 100% me," the red woman replies, shrugging in a 'what can you do' sort of way. Having another idea, Tasha scoops of Galatea -- after sheathing both sword and shield -- and turns towards the tree, which seems safer and more Galatea-specific than everywhere else around here. "We can fight later if you want!" It's called back over her shoulder.

"I don't fight," the dragon says, and goes over to the still unconscious Kainudy. Galatea at least isn't heavy, probably even lighter than expected for a human. There are gouges in the tree that weren't there before and one of the golden ansibles has turned black and looks like rotting fruit now.

"Mortality sucks doesn it?" Tasha lays Galatea beside the tree, then tries to pull off the black ansible. "I never was very good with plants, flowers. Cooking either. Or people. Or fighting. I'm beginning to think a her and a savior is just some fool more qualified people lump their hopes on, because they're dumb enough to believe in hope and possibility. It's catchy, you see? Like disease. Hey, you think that's how Mr. Yellow works?" The young woman pauses in a 'huh' manner, but then resumes trying to prune the tree.

The blackened orb comes free, and moulders in Tasha's hand.. which also makes her hand feel strange. For moment it's like it doesn't remember which version of her hand it is.

"I like this fruit. I can relate to it." Tasha stares at her hand in rapt attention, the self-destruction is soothing in a way. She doesn't want to suffer, but sometimes breaking apart is its own kind of salve. She does spare enough of a glance to do what she intended to, however, and tries to get the ansible she was given to fit on the tree where she pulled the bad one from.

It doesn't go back into place. The 'stem' is gone from it. "Did you try to kill me?" Galatea asks softly, as if talking in her sleep. "That hurt."

Tasha frowns at the tree. She really doesn't have a way with plants, possibly not with anything. She begins walking around the tree looking for a solution until Galatea chimes in.

"You know I should have. I'm sure the death of her daughter would really put Kainudy in a wake up and face the sunshine mood. Or, I don't know? Face the raging winter night? The less gray, gray sky? Use your imagination." And so Tasha keeps walking until she's back to Galatea, who gets the non-ruined anisble placed squarely on her forehead. She then gets frowned at while Tasha switches between her, her hand, and back again.

"What happened after you stabbed my.. ansible?" Galatea asks, watching the odd ritual in confusion. "I'm assuming that the world didn't come to an end. Unless she got loose and it's about to."

"I used the eternal weakness of 'caring' to get her to stop sucking." Tasha replies. The anisble gets adjusted, then pushed on, as if she's trying to make it go through Galatea's head. "As for what happened well, I tried leave feeling if that didn't work then nothing will, and overall just not feeling really confident about my abilities at the time, but then the tin can dragon over there showed up," she thumbs at the man, " ... and now Kainudy's stopped raging. Weather's still shit, though."

Tasha grabs the ainsible in her non-fruited hand and hooks the arm around to scoot Kainudy to watch the two dragons do whatever it is they're doing. "One of the two that were outside when the tall pointy eared Humans were arguing about which of them was more stupid. The answer is all of us."

Galatea looks. "That isn't one of the dragons from outside," she says. "That's.. a ghost. Sort of."

"Well he looks like one of the ones from outside to me." Tasha drags Galatea closer to the tree, feeling it as safe a shelter as anywhere, and lays her against it. The anisble is put in her lap. "Whoever he, he seems to have things under control. Good luck with whatever happens." Galatea gets patted on the shoulder. "I'm leaving. We probably won't meet again."

"Tasha.." Galatea starts to say, and then everything is gone. Tasha finds herself floating in a black void, so dark that what appear to dying embers scattered around like starts seem bright after a moment. "Argentine," the red dragon finishes, floating before her.

"My sister's name. I must be in trouble." Tasha shrugs with her hands. "I don't have much left to fight with; even the worst of me and my broken, hungering soul isn't enough. I get it it. I'll save you the hassle -- I'm going to go end it. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find a nice way to die." And so she makes a shooing gesture.

"Sorry, but this is one of the few things I'm allowed some freedom with," the dragon says. "There's still your mess. I see what happened now. You interrupted her while she was trying to pull out the damage. So you've still got a bit of.. hmm.. spiritual cancer, let's call it. Nothing like the tumor Kainudy has been left with though. But I think I can extend my purview here to fix that, if you want."

Tasha shakes her head. "Save it for Kainudy and Galatea. They'll outlive me, whether I die, or don't."

"You sound as if you don't want to work for me anymore," the dragon says. "You were managing fairly well. Three ogdru-hem, as they're called in your reality. And another in your sights, if I read the probabilities correctly."

Tasha's muzzle wrinkles, the brow on the same side going up. "Work for who now?" She squints, leaning in. "I think I'd remember a red dragon. There was the dead one, the fake one, then Charon and Persephone. Kainudy. I don't think Galatea counts. The two outside, and then you." She sniffs a bit. "Are you some sort alternate reality personality? I have a few of those, myself."

"I was Kainudy's mate a long time ago. Co-creator of the Stelya'rhian," the dragon says. "Then my soul got destroyed, so now you can call me a herald. Or a mouthpiece. Sock puppet? Doesn't really matter. I'm how Null communicates, basically. Sometimes I think it's really me, but since Null is thinking with my mind as a model.. well, it gets very solipsistic to be honest."

"Oh." Tasha inhales a very deep, ragged breath, then just sits herself down on, as it seems, nowhere. "Wow," she breathes in that overwhelmed, but too tired to seem overwhelmed, manner. "Here you are. I was wondering if you were even paying attention. You or you, whichever one you are." She pauses, thinking on everything that's happened, then lays back with her hands on her head. "Awkward."

"It was not easy getting permission to intervene," the dragon notes. "Now, I can finish cleansing you, except for the part you've managed to incorporate, or I can send you back as you are to never feel alive again. But, that would just give Kainudy one more thing to be guilty about. A drop in the ocean, but I've seen smaller drops break her. Assuming I can fix her this time. I can't repair things, just.. burn bits out. Maybe Persephone will step in again. Or Kainudy will finally fix herself, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Do you have a preference?"

"Help me understand something," is Tasha's non-answer. She takes her hands off her head and holds them up, spreading them out as if to encompass the stars, and, perhaps, forever, "Is there any point to to? I think, okay, you can fix me, but I'm 'broken' because I know. Knowledge, you see? Knowledge about what I'm doing, the real deal. And here we have these things who are just made of this misery, endless, overwhelming power. Then there's just us. Just us. And me. And I think, what exactly is there? Where's the bright future past it all? Where's the end-" Tasha pauses, then give a self-deprecating smile, "Sorry, insensitive. For both of us, I guess? Maybe the end's right here?"

"What makes you think that anything ends on it's own?" the dragon asks. "Left to itself, life begets life until the universe runs down. Then another universe starts and it all goes on again. It takes on outside effort to end things. Really end things. So, knowledge.. information is hard to destroy. It's not like things can just be rewound to unmake an experience. So decide, Tasha. If it is something that keeps you from moving forward, I can burn it out. But.. it will still be like a lost tooth. You'll know something was there, and feel dread if you poke at the hole, but nothing that happens to you can trigger it again. You'll always know that the most horrible thing happened to you, but that's really all you'll know about it. I can't do it like Kainudy was, where it is extracted from you and put into something else. You'll still have your End Wolf. You'll still know it's there. And know why it's there. But you won't remember the actual pain and trauma. There will be a scar."

He gestures to the dim embers. "Each of those lights is a fragment of a soul. So, this trauma would join them. A piece of you as another piece of myself."

"It seems like you've suffered enough. Why volunteer for more? Haven't you suffered more than any of us? All of us, combined?" It's said very conversationally as Tasha looks out at all the not-stars, the emptiness. "Is it because I'm useful? Did I really make that much of a difference? Maybe for Kainudy?"

"I won't lie that giving her something, anything, to pull her out of her nightmare is part of the reason," the dragon says. "But also because it will reduce my pain slightly in the future. It may seem like a very small thing. A single person. But look at all the events that can fan out, across all realities that person can exist in. I don't have anything akin to hope, but I know that it's important. I can't give it to you. I can just take away something that will leave a scar. But surgery leaves scars, and they're usually easier to live with than the tumor that was removed."

"No answers, then. I feel like I'm going to have to go any make my own answer, you're all pretty useless," Tasha declares, though there's n rancor this time. Indeed, there's an edge of humor. "Plus your sad-sack girlfriend made me hug her, so I guess she's probably not that bad. I did put all that work to getting Galatea back to her, not that Kainudy made that easier. Sometimes I think she breaks herself as punishment, and ends up going nowhere."

Tasha pauses for a moment, then does that "huh" again. "Maybe there's a lesson there. One more thing?"

"I really do attract a lot of broken people. No wonder Persephone wanted me to get lost." Tasha sniffs, indignantly. But then she sits up abruptly and pokes the dragon. "So you're the Null. or the voice piece, at least. Which means nothingness itself is rooting for me. Takes offense at the demons. So reality, at least one part of it, really doesn't like them. That's something. What about the other one, uh, if you're the End then the Beginning. And if you can poke holes in my soul, can you make more than one? Because I've had this idea and you've reminded me of it. I know that's more than one question, I'm brainstorming."

"It isn't exactly poking holes," the dragon says. "And you can call me Khryss. But I'm not able to work with souls like Kainudy or Persephone can. I'm limited in my actions. I can erase them, or remove pieces of them."

"See I was thinking," Tasha goes on as if the dragon had agreed with everything she said, "The demons prey on suffering, on souls, on life itself. They're not eating rocks. When I thought I'd been through everything, that I was somehow post-dead, anti-alive if you will, made of negativity, at first I felt empty."

But then Tasha holds up a finger. "But then I felt at ease. It was over. The worst thing was over. And here I was, past life, past death, past the End. And it was good. And it gave me ideas I didn't have time to think about before Galatea showed up. So!" The held up finger gets pointed at the dragon. "You can't eat a nothing right? Can't kill something that's not alive? Can't end the ended, can't eat the inedible. The shadows rely upon certain states to attack. They can't eat you. But you can write in negatives. You, alone, can make it happen."

And so Tasha points at herself. "I've died and I've seen my soul ruined. And I'll probably die again, and again, and the soul eating, maybe that, too. But what if I could be more? Something new. Or, well, less. What if my mistaken interpretation became the reality? I'd be free, I can have my death and my afterlife and finally have moved on, and still be here. A paradox. Impossibility. All the appearance of life and living, but made from the inversion. Eating me would be like chewing on an anti-soul. Poison. Burn me out of existence until my negative is singed in to reality itself."

"Nothing has happened to your soul, other than it being armored, though, whatever your experience suggests otherwise," Khryss explains. "You already can't be eaten. Just chewed on. As for soul poison, that does exist.. you carry an example in your Yellow sword. The issue is with the creatures you face. The ogdru-hem are not demons. And demons are.. not exactly what you may think." He tilts his head to one side in thought. "Names and labels are not very efficient. Your foes have no souls to poison. Demons and angels and your Vril-ya likewise do not have souls, because their existence is independent from the universe. Even many fey or other supernatural creatures lack them. You can't have the power to manipulate reality at will while still existing within it. At least not to the extent some of these entities can. There are certain cheats.. I used those myself.. but there needs to be a separation of mind and body for a soul to grow."

"I'm taking that as a 'no'." Tasha scoots to face the dragon more fully, head resting on her hands. She doens't look put off, at least. "So they're reality bubbles. That's what I knew about Sam and a few others. That makes sense. It's not like people are rushing out to hand me details, I'm frankly offended after all this that you had to tell me, as if you don't have better things to do. It's this bullshit that drives me up a wall." She sniffs; a huff. "As for my soul not being wounded, it's more accurate to say that I realized how weak and fragile we are. Me. Them. All of us. I'd have sold my family, my friend, anything and everything, just to get out of that prison. Once you've seen that, it's hard to have faith in anything mortal, especially yourself. That's what did it. That's what broke me. Kainudy didn't realize I as running on, well, emptiness of realization. Intentional ignorance. Call it whatever you want. It's also what gave me the idea that nothingness is the only real defense, the only way to do it. We mortals need it to act at all." Another sniff. "Wow, I guess that wasn't so hard to admit after all. Nothing like being near oblivion to make everything easy to talk about, right?"

"You can get used to dying," Khryss claims. "And your adversaries still have mortals serving them. Just as fragile as you believe yourself to be. They need servants, of one form or other. The Ogdoad need the Ogdru-hem. The Ogdru-hem need servants. Sometimes the servants rebel, or get the better of their masters. But they're always corrupted. Power by association. And the notion that controlling something powerful makes you powerful. But most power exists because people believe in it."

"So now that I don't believe in much of anything I'm powerless?" Tasha interprets, head tilting to the side. "Because I feel powerless. My big End Wolf didn't amount to much, and neither do I."

"Against monsters that it has taken armies of demi-gods to defeat?" Khryss asks. "It isn't about power, Tasha. If you think of things by that measure, then you shouldn't have had any success at all. It's about influence, and precision. Knowing just where to strike. Just where to apply leverage to cause a chain reaction, like an avalanche. Power blinds you to your weaknesses, and that means having little power is to your advantage. You are more powerful than a mosquito, but a bite from one can poison and kill you. Having power didn't save me or mine."

"So it's about trickiness," Tasha further interprets, pointing a finger at the dragon again. "I shouldn't look for raw power, but the capacity for cunning and tricks. That's very fae. And you're right, I fall back to who is bigger and stronger whenever i'm overwhelmed; it's how I grew up."

"And you probably had to follow the orders of whoever held the purse strings, I'm guessing," Khryss says. "And they'd always be smaller and weaker."

"Well, they were actually bigger than me. And more powerful, at least in terms of money and people and ... I see your point." Tasha rubs her nose, looks around, and then exhales again. "I can't say that I'm feeling very positive, but at least you'e making sense. It's hard to want to drag the others out when I know full well I'd sell them out. I used to think I'd never do that, that at leats in that they could put their faith in me. Now all I can offer -- all any of us can -- is a few favors and some action. It's bleak."

"So, what is your decision?" the dragon asks. "Keep the cancer, or live with a scar?"

"I guess this is where you get tired of listening to me." Tasha looks around, stretching, and then lets her arms drop, shoulders rolling. "If I've understood anything, it's the it's not about raw power. And I thought that was a non-answer to my problem, but it actually turns out to be the answer and maybe we're both about to understand it. Mortals aren't powerful individually; we know that. But neither are mortal souls, nor mind, nor bodies. They're reliant on everything you said: trickery, networking, deception, poison, and all the rest, So that's the answer, then. I'll live with the scar. I'll trick even me -- but I'd like to remember why I did it. What the logic was; why I made that choice." She perks her ears. "Is that enough?"

"Yes," Khryss says.. and then Tasha is in her bed aboard Dark Horse. She's got the ansible in her hand, and remembers what she was willing to offer up to make the pain stop, but.. not the pain. There's hole where that was. And a chill when she tries to remember and finds something else there. The End Wolf.

"My life is really weird," Tasha observes to an empty room. More importantly, like with many nightmares, the best remedy in her experience has been to just go back to sleep. Time heals all wounds, and all that, and she's surprisingly tired.

Faith in deception, in evasion, lies, and nothings. It's not exactly the answer she expected -- and certainly not the one she wanted -- but it is an answer. It'll have to do for now. And for now now, she could use some rest. Fixing everything can begin when she doesn't feel like garbage. Perhaps she'll even recommend to Yue a means to find ways to remove memories form the crew, so that this need not happen to anyone else.