Despite the situation, Gavin snorted in amusement at Sid’s greeting, while Myka snickered. “I like this one,” the pirate remarked as they took their places around the table before discussion went to how they could help the people changed by the goddess to control their powers, nodding at the idea of wards. “Yeah, I think I prefer going in that direction for this, especially if you’ve got all these confused folk wanting to worship some Goddess that just popped out of nowhere—well, from your world, but you get what I mean,” Myka said, unconsciously muting the word ‘goddess’ as she spoke. “Maybe that might even be a way to help sever the connection to Her, if She’s really messing not just with their bodies but with their minds.”

Gavin was silent, thinking things over as Sid talked about smaller wards for the Amrian fire-wielders, until Myka made that last remark. “Y’know, at the height of Ikegai and Akuma’s control over me, it’s pretty hard to go against the voices in my head telling me to do as I’m told. It’s like sleepwalking, like I’m watching from a window the things I’m doing with my own two hands, while another part of my mind recalls the spells, says the words.” He swallowed, frowning down at his breakfast, before he looked up again at Ruli and the others. “But there were times the hold was weak. Else, I wouldn’t have helped you or Kire take them down in Cordon. It was something about the dagger Kire left behind, the one I found in Ziad. Like it was a—a beacon. An anchor. I dunno why exactly. But it was a solid reminder that there was someone out there that could end them both, someone who could fight Kartaians and escape. The knife didn’t match up to what Ikegai had been telling me about this monster he said was hunting him, and that kinda cracked the almost total hold of his power over me. So I held onto it. I felt the most awake whenever that knife was in my hands somehow.”

The young mage frowned again, as if trying to remember something that stayed at the edge of memory. His right finger twitched, as if wanting to trace something. A letter—no, a rune ? A shadow of a dream, or a memory, flashed in his mind. His mother, face obscured by a cloak, murmuring something as she bent over him, her thumb brushing over his forehead. Was she writing something? In his dream, she had bent to kiss his forehead, but this image was…different. “I dunno either if the Go—if She is controlling ‘em the same way I was controlled, or maybe she’s just kinda whispering something and triggers that part of a person that wants to believe in somethin’ higher. But maybe, yeah a ward, or an anchor? Enchant something that would remind them of a good memory, or someone they love, or—or something.” 

--

[i]Of course she is everywhere,[/i] Kire wanted to answer back, but she kept her mouth shut, waiting for Zeltzin to finish speaking. Despite her suspicions, she followed the priestess’s lead, careful with the way she moved about in the forest. Still, Kire so badly wanted to snap and ask her what it was, exactly, that she was hearing from Solaralai that gave her such joy. It bothered her still, how the woman kept her composure, kept insisting on Solaralai’s benevolence despite the goddess’s intrusion upon her land, upon her people. And Envy’s absence. Zeltzin had said earlier that the Goddess never was the punishing kind, but Kire didn’t believe it.

Her doubts were confirmed when Zeltzin turned to her with a much different expression. [i]There it is.[/i] Kire preferred that; hostility was much more believable an emotion to her than this feigned benevolence. The Paladin again swallowed back what she really wanted to say: [i]how have MY people offended her? They have done nothing![/i] “My people have, uh, not met Her before today,” Kire said instead. “If there’s anybody at fault here, it would be me. What I asked earlier, about what She would do if her temple had been tampered with—that was me. In my fight against Kartaians some time ago in Ziad, the temple had been damaged.”