[b]Zhaojun![/b]

That is too far. You realize it almost at once. The malevolence of the Green Sun is almost palpable. He will tell you things. [i]Such[/i] things. He will reveal secrets which will ruin you. He will sing to you of the glory of the dawn of the world and you will stumble, blinded by its wonders, through a world that you no longer recognize. What will it be like? Perhaps it will be a blessing.

[i]In a hidden forest in a cleft in the earth in a ruined pleasure-garden in a ruined kingdom in a ruined age there is a lake and the name of the lake is Mnemosyne and those that bathe themselves in the waters of Mnemosyne pass through into a world whole in a kingdom whole in a pleasure-garden whole in a grand mountain in an egg of meaning and they that enter into this world dress themselves in it and make of it a blindfold and they eat the dust of the earth and think it a feast and do not starve and they drink the rain and think it casks of wine and they do not thirst and all around them is a beauty and a shining and a story in which they are important and beloved and perfect forever and ever so here is the question Zhaojun which is the real world of those who bathe in the waters of Mnemosyne?[/i]

This is what the Green Sun means to do to you. His words will make themselves your Mnemosyne and erase all understanding of what is because you will know only what was; you will see the King stride from horizon to horizon, you will see the Judge write the laws of being into the souls of all who live, you will see the River ring round the world with its seven torments which barred the fair folk from entry. You will know the world to be right, because the hierarchy is upheld; you will know the world to be right because you are ruled by the creators.

And the little pink foxes in your blood grab at your spine and your nerves and your ankles and they make you run because they fear oblivion even more than you do, and you flail helplessly but you can't get away, your feet slide on the polished black stone as you draw closer to the Green Sun, and you can feel the heat that radiates off of him begin to suffuse you--

"Master!"

Some demon, some imp, some creature of the palace of the Green Sun bounds into the room, and for a moment, just that barest moment, his attention is not on you. It lifts from your shoulders like a shroud and you are gone, your mind a blind white-hot panic, witch abandoned, answers forgotten, the seething unreality in your blood urging you on. There is no cohesion in what you see; colors spin and sway and the connections between object and meaning, motion and result, name and being break down. Run, run, run! No good to us like that! Run, run, run! Your story doesn't end here!

You throw open a door and tumble down a flight of stairs that goes on forever and ever and ever and you're never going to reach the end of it.

Reality comes back to you slowly. You're being rained on. You're back where you started, and your disguise is gone, and it's starting to rain hard. (No, harder than that. Harder than rain should be able to fall. Hard enough to sting and turn the world into shimmering silver in all directions.) The witch is gone. You're full of jitters, for some reason, a brain full of sparks and a nervous energy that isn't abating. Everything that just happened is a whirlwind of impressions, like paint smeared over canvas by a child.

Tell us of the state that Kalaya finds you in, and how you draw her in, even in the midst of the driving rain.

***

[b]Giriel![/b]

The sky opens up. The gods, too, have come to the conclusion that they were embarrassed by what happened, and are settling it by spurring the clouds harder and harder. Right after Kalaya slipped out, unnoticed until this new (and bedraggled) girl pointed her out, that's when the deluge began. A famous can't-see-your-hands-in-front-of-your-face deluge, a Flower Kingdom special. If she's thinking clearly, she'll duck inside somewhere else-- but she's not, is she? And little use running out after her, not when it's pouring this hard.

Petony does not care about this. Petony is up to her feet and charging out after her charge, and-- well, now it's twice as awkward, because her retinue's not going out into that weather. That's [i]knightly[/i] business, it is. So that means that you're, well, essentially in charge of this situation. What do you take from this news of demon-summoning? Do you carry out a divination to see the path forward?