[hider=My Hider] When Tauga landed at the well, its previous set of patrons were preparing to leave. The tedar had already filled clay troughs built there long ago, and their flocks had watered. Bits of straw sat in the blue of reflected sky. With no pail to draw, Tauga cupped her hands and drank straight from the trough. There was no shame in this. Anyone raised in Xerxes had seen far greater desperation. She didn't see the approaching goatherds, nor lift her head to face them. They assumed that meant she didn't know they were there. The closer of the two, the one not carrying a heavy crook, made to nudge her with his foot, and she shuffled easily to avoid him. Something unseen brushed his leg and he recoiled. [color=antiquewhite]"Next time say 'hey'."[/color] Still not facing them. A glance was shared with his wife, who still held a ready grip on the crook. Then a glare back at the dark-clad hain. "Your kind. You aren't welcome here." [colour=antiquewhite]"The Cult of Jaan is free to go anywhere in Amestris by order of the Enas,"[/colour] recited Tauga without force. She raised her hands to her unmasked face and took another sip. "The Enas is dead." Something whipped on the air like a dead wind, crawling wildly on the tedar's skin. [colour=antiquewhite]"Liar."[/colour] The hain sat still and the second herder lowered the end of her crook to Tauga's shoulder level, ignoring the queasy sensations that writhed on her hand as she did so. "Folehne speaks true. A masked warband cut through his army. Killed him and all his heirs. There is no Enas now." The sturdy wood tapped against Tauga's neck, and she finally looked up, hand slowly curling around her scabbard. "The Purifiers came from Lysiuh to burn you and all the fae folk and everyone who ever gave you passage. We are free of perversion. You'll find no rest here." [colour=antiquewhite]"Purifiers,"[/colour] she repeated dumbly. "Get out," whispered the tedar. "Leave." Tauga tilted her head, staring at her reflection with her other set of eyes. [colour=antiquewhite]"Alright,"[/colour] she yielded simply. [colour=antiquewhite]"Alright, I'll go."[/colour] She stood and stepped aside, fixing the reaper mask over her face. She was still thirsty. The tedar hadn't moved. They waited for her to finish. Something hidden in a cloud plummeted to earth and came at them with a violin shriek. The Bludgeon buzzed them at an unwise altitude and a ludicrous speed, whipping dust in its wake, scattering their herds. As the goats bolted and the grit smattered back to earth, the herders raised their heads and looked, but the masked hain was gone. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] Cross-legged on a woven mat, the shaman looked neither uncomfortable nor at peace. A low fire warmed the yurt. Long journeys had shown her terrible blizzards of the high mountains, and yet it was age, not those weathered memories, not the stranger in the room, that chilled her. With a will like ancient bone she endured the faint stroking sensations that tapped on her skin when her guest's concentration slipped. Tauga had tried to sit as the shaman did and shortly tired of the stretch. Now she sat with one leg outstretched and an arm leaning on the bent knee of the other. Half-finished beside her was a messy bowl of beans she had been generously served. "It is as in the stories of the south, my daughter. You have been touched by God." An affirmative grunt. [colour=antiquewhite]"Guess which."[/colour] The shaman sighed. Changing course back to the City had taken Tauga through territory she had already passed, where eyewitness retellings had hardened into rumours. Inhuman noises over the plains. Great gleaming spheres hiding in the clouds. Destroyers ([i][color=antiquewhite]Purifiers?[/color][/i]) known by their fallen armour, empty and sliced like fruit. These villages rarely harboured wandering cultists, and this one was miles from the nearest Lens grove. News walked slowly between the tiny subsistence communities, and the name 'Purifier' had yet to make its way here. Tauga guessed she was lucky. No one had thrown rocks. Only the usual sidelong glances and parents ushering hatchlings back indoors when they saw her. Hardly different, speak true, from what she'd lived through in the quarry camp, where the labourers were all hain and no temple stood to hide the work she did with Help. Those stares had upset her then. She'd clawed her joints in the night, though she was far from her next moult. Now she wondered why. But not very hard. "Tauga." With a blink she focused her attention back on the shaman, whose hands were steepled and whose gaze was neutral. "Aye, this will not do, my child. Your heart is hurt beyond what you can bear, and now your shell has grown thick with that grey skin you wear, tough and pliant and without feeling. You must moult, Tauga. You must moult your soul, and become brittle and clean again." Tauga thought about this for a few seconds while she shuffled her sitting position again. [color=antiquewhite]"I'd rather drink,"[/color] she admitted. "If you stare into the wine now, it will never let you go." A shrug. [colour=antiquewhite]"I'll take my chances."[/colour] She stretched, and finally stood up. Standing was more comfortable than sitting, these days. [colour=antiquewhite]"Thanks for the, uh, hospitality, mother shaman."[/colour] With that she looked down, resting her hand on her neck awkwardly, and after a moment Tauga left the wise one alone to shake her head slowly at the half-open door in her wake. But when they found her slumped against the storehouse wall with an empty jar of wine and pieces of a broken ladle early the next morning, Tauga stared at her with clear eyes, and turned away without a word. A single drop of unabsorbed ethanol fell from the tip of her beak. Tauga's body had been secured from harm, even by herself. It was not hers to ruin. No rest for the dead. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] From an indistinct speck in the wetly clouded sky to a monstrosity screaming its violin warpath as its shadow raced over the rice paddies, Tauga watched the second Bludgeon fall upon her own from the heavens. With a mildly curious mood she waited for the two cords to collide and snap. That didn't come to pass. Instead, the second Bludgeon simply integrated with the first, its excess velocity dispersed through the system as all four spheres began to orbit a focal point, their eccentric swings too fast to keep track of. Stable though the spinning patterns were, Tauga took control of the cords as they flashed in and out of existence between the Bludgeons, and slowed them to a gentler pace, a square circling above her head. One of her tentacles brushed something that hadn't been there a moment ago and she turned to face it. [colour=antiquewhite]"You,"[/colour] she slipped, almost accidentally, as a way of greeting. [colour=antiquewhite]"I remember you."[/colour] It was all she could say. Tauga still didn't know what, exactly, this particular [i]you[/i] was. The last time she'd seen it was the last day she had stood on Galbar before her fall. The figure was motionless. [colour=antiquewhite]"I guess I've pretty much figured this out, then, hey?"[/colour] [colour=f6989d]"Correct."[/colour] One of those gleaming white legs was carrying a kind of sack in the iridescent claw above its hoof, and the ribbed grey pipes wired through its skin stretched as it held out the parcel. When Tauga didn't collect it, it dropped the elastic sack into the rice with a light splash. Eventually she took the hint and approached the dubious gift. It was rapidly dissolving in the water anyway. When Tauga touched the remains of the bag, it began to move, and a small creature stirred from below. Help had shown her plenty of hearts before, human and otherwise, so the tootling sweetheart that emerged to bob around her was more surprising in the fact that it floated. There was another thing, too, a slit of flickering red in the water. Tauga didn't realise that it was glowing until she reached into the mud and pulled out the sealed tube. [colour=antiquewhite]"Is this what you needed me to carry?"[/colour] [color=f6989d]"Take the canister to Xerxes. Investigate the properties of its contents. The Sweetheart will assist you. More may be provided."[/color] [colour=antiquewhite]"Nnn."[/colour] That was a rather curt list of instructions. Of course, it was all the strange walker believed she needed. [colour=antiquewhite]"And the extra bludgeons? Oh, no, wait, I get it. You only gave me two in the first place so that I could learn faster. Mhm. So how about this. What if I dump the bottle in a well somewhere and never come back for it?"[/colour] [color=f6989d]"Consistently dysfunctional experimental apparatus is to be reconfigured or scrapped."[/color] That sentence had a lot of big words that Tauga didn't really know and it took her a while to puzzle her way through it. Then she closed her eyes and started laughing. It was a quiet, almost tearful laugh, at first. Then her shoulders began to shake and she raised her beak to the sky and started to chuckle out loud, a high, sweet sound, lilting over the fields. Tauga laughed alone with her knees in the mud beneath a birdless sky. God alone knew how long it had been since she'd laughed like this. So long. Months before she'd died. Years. [colour=antiquewhite]"This is perfect, isn't it?"[/colour] breathed she, still quaking, eyes still shut. [colour=antiquewhite]"I can't feel it! I can't even understand it anymore. Every time, every time I found a Destroyer, I fought it just because I didn't want to die. Didn't [i]want[/i] to. I can't feel scared any more. I can't feel guilty and I can't drink. That's you, right?"[/colour] The future was sprawling out before her. She didn't want to die, and nothing else mattered- What better minion could exist, what slave more diligent? It was all so clear, now. Tauga's head drooped and she started laughing again, words coming in breathless batches. [colour=antiquewhite]"I don't feel anything- And you don't care. You're just... [i]We're[/i] just made for each other, aren't we?"[/colour] Heartworm stared motionlessly. [color=f6989d]"No,"[/color] it answered. [color=f6989d]"You're made for me."[/color] It crawled back through the air and left Tauga alone with the whistling sweetheart, laughing at the stupidity of it all, laughing for a life without meaning. [/hider]