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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilex" data-source="post: 5050182" data-attributes="member: 82687">8x06The Alirrian priestess looked down and focused her gaze on Savina.  "Why do you do this to us, Sister?" the shape demanded.Though the sight of the ghostly woman sent a shiver through her, Savina straightened her back and told herself again that this was her duty.  She had to do her best."Honored Mother, a generation has passed," she told the spirit.  "Those who desecrated your temple died long ago.  Your presence here is – is creating death, doing harm.  Please, it's time to let the temple find the peace of our Lady again."Tavi gave Savina a quick, reassuring pat and then stepped back to Twiggy, adding his voice to hers as Twiggy began to chant quietly and chalk a symbol on the floor.  The woman's figure wavered, then grew stronger.  She glared down at Savina."We are all that is left," said the figure.  She seemed to lean closer, to loom menacingly over Savina.  "No one else will protect this home of ours.  No one cares.""I care," whispered Savina.  "We – we care."  "Then why are you weakening our ability to protect this place?""Is Alirria not best protected through life and love?" asked Savina.  "And by keeping everybody out, do you not also keep out those who seek our Lady's grace?"The woman winced and drew back.  "We ache for that more than you know.  But this is all we have done for so long.  We have no choice."Twiggy and Tavi were completing a complicated ring of arcane symbols in chalk on the floor.  Savina kept her focus on the woman."Honored Mother, you know that – that seasons change, that all things have their time.  New shoots can grow in this place.""This land does not feel the change of seasons," said the woman.  Her anger seemed to be fading, but now her voice was full of the pain and sorrow caused by the Sovereignty's harsh oppression."Already the first breath of spring has come, Honored Mother," Savina said, thinking not only of the buds growing outside, but of the Sovereignty's new policies allowing worship of "the godlings," as Nyoko had called them.The woman became still in response to Savina's confident assertion.  Savina sensed that Tavi and Twiggy were still, too.  Everything was silent.  The air was thick with magic.  "Be at peace, Honored Mother," Savina prayed.  "Lady Alirria, let your daughters be at peace."  The woman's shape wavered, weakened by the magic.  She bowed her head and murmured, "I pray that you are right."  Then she looked up sharply and suspiciously one last time, and added, "Remember us when they come again.""May Alirria defend us all from such a fate," answered Savina.  "Please – be at peace."The woman sighed.  The whole room sighed with a sound like spring showers sheeting across fields as the woman shimmered into nothingness, and Savina felt the sorrow and anger ebb away like a rapid tide.  There was a clattering as something fell out of the air to land right in front of her:  an Alirrian holy symbol.  She picked it up carefully and felt a faint residual anger within it, a distant cry for vengeance.  Beyond the tiny symbol, however, the room felt empty.  The spirits that had guarded it for so long were gone.### Twiggy sat back on her heels, feeling the magical tension in the room dissipate as the spirit of the priestess vanished and she, Tavi, and Savina relaxed their concentration.  For the first time, she allowed herself to focus on what a difficult challenge she had just accomplished:  the magic involved was highly advanced, but she and Tavi had pulled it off.Correction, she thought.  I pulled it off and Tavi helped.  I led the chant.  I outlined the ring and filled in the compass points.  She'd learned the theory at the Academy, of course, but now she had put it into practice when the stakes were high, and better yet … I'm not sure they could have done this without me.  For Twiggy, who, back home, was used to feeling either slightly overlooked or vaguely problematic, it was a delicious feeling.  They needed me.  And not just to help Rose lace up her dress.  They needed me for something big.Savina stood up and smiled at Tavi.  "Thank you, Tavi," she said.And what am I? Twiggy thought.  Chopped liver?"Thank you, Chelesta," added Savina."I'm happy to have been of aid," answered Twiggy politely.  ### Mena picked a route among the corpses in the barracks room near the front entrance to the derro warren, forcing herself to look at the carnage she'd helped cause earlier in the night.  It was necessary to look, to be aware, to endure the knowledge of having killed.  Otherwise, killing might become painless … and if that happens, She wins.Ahead of Mena, who was bringing up the rear, most of the others in the group were trying not to look.  Twiggy looked slightly dazed, and Savina practically had her eyes closed.  Mena could allow that, for now.  For most of them, it was their first time.They were almost back to their starting point.  After Tavi, Twiggy, and Savina had reported success at laying the Alirrian spirits to rest and opening up the back door, the group had set off back through the warren's tunnels to seek Mirtal.  They were able to travel fast because they had left the family of dwarves at the small side tunnel that, according to Nyoko, ran many miles through the mountains to the main derro warren.  The dwarves were hard at work using all their stonecraft to block the tunnel and delay the reinforcements the derro were surely sending.  As she made her way down the last corridor and emerged into the entrance chamber – the room where they had fought a few derro guards and dodged bolts of electricity from the eerie green moss – Mena nearly ran into Arden.  The woman had paused and was staring up the original entrance tunnel to the unmistakable daylight filtering down from above.  "I still hate this place," Mena murmured to Arden.Arden answered, softly, "I was just thinking … you're all going to lead me from entrance to entrance for the rest of my life, but I'm never going to get out.""Kindly don't joke about it," answered Mena.  "I wouldn't put anything past the Bitch.""Dame Mena, may I tell you how I feel about this place?  Just for the record?""Do.""I hate it.""Slave!" called Kormick.  "If you don't open this door and get eaten alive by whatever the derro are keeping in their kitchen, who will?"Mena bristled on Arden's behalf, but Arden was unperturbed.  She crossed quickly to the door opposite the entrance – the door they'd briefly opened but never passed through.As she had at the beginning, Arden opened it silently and peered in.  A tunnel sloped down into darkness.  At a nod from Kormick, Arden vanished into the darkness beyond.  Kormick followed on her heels, and the rest of them came after that, Mena once more at the back, willing her armor not to make too much noise."This place looks familiar," muttered Kormick, as they reached the bottom of the tunnel and peered into a vast, dark cavern.  In the faint light from a few patches of moss, they could make out huge, twisted shapes:  grotesque mushrooms taller than a man, some looming and bulbous, some adorned with strange, moist frills.  The smell of fungi hung in the air.  It was the room Kormick had reported seeing when they'd lowered him from one of the pits upstairs, and indeed, in the ceiling, Mena could make out two dim gaps:  the two pits between which they'd fought a pitched battle.  She remembered, uneasily, the screams of a derro which had fallen down here during the fight.  Terrible screams.  How impractical does a race of creatures have to be to put its kitchen down here? she wondered irritably.Arden and Kormick started forward, sticking to the left wall, easing their way past the nearest mushrooms.  The fungi grew right up against the stone, so that Arden had to flatten her body to slip past one, while Kormick went around its trunk on the other side, stepping between it and the next mushroom with surprising grace.  Nyoko leaped through the narrow gap like a dancer.Twiggy still seemed preoccupied – Mena recognized the signs of her student being lost in thought, processing new experiences – and stumbled as she made her way through the narrow gap.  She brushed against one of the mushrooms.  It twitched spasmodically and suddenly a cloud of spores enveloped Twiggy.  The half-elf girl was almost lost to sight, and when the spores cleared, she was lying on the ground, frighteningly still.Tavi, Mena, and Savina all started to rush forward to help her, but Kormick got there first and raised a hand to them.  "No sudden movements, I think," he whispered.  "Wouldn't want to disturb these monstrosities."  Carefully avoiding contact with the mushrooms, he picked up Twiggy in his arms.  "She's just asleep," he told them.  Mena breathed a sigh of relief.  She put a guiding hand on Rose's back and moved forward with Tavi and Savina.  Which one of them touched a mushroom she was never sure, but suddenly the air was black and foul.  She braced herself for a wave of unnatural sleepiness, but that didn't happen.  Instead, she simply couldn't see.  The spores had blinded her.</blockquote>

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