[b]Isabelle[/b]

The spirit looks at you with the most incredulous surprise on its face. In this, at least, you have a moment where you feel you’ve done something. It’s a throw to the tempo of the fight, and perhaps also reminded the spirit not to solely focus on Solarel. The ground slopes suddenly and channels cut into it, dropping you away from the lava flow as Solarel finds herself raised up on a small hill where before the cavern floor was flat. 

As an engineer, this is quite interesting. It tells you, for example, that the nanobots do NOT have cooling or heating properties capable of stopping lava, and the fact that they did not contain or siphon it to protect you but only carved it alternate channels suggests some of the limits in the spirit’s shaping work here (either about the structural capacity of the nanobots to manage that level of contained heat or the limitations in how much the spirit can shape the room while distracted, hard to say). 

Crescent’s at your side once you’ve slipped away from Solarel. She’s not fighting, Annika is further away and Crescent is pulling you to the side. It looked like they might have planned an intervention, but with Solarel charging up her power, they’re focusing on separating you from her instead. 

[b]Solarel[/b]

The battlefield is conspiring to give you space. You’re suddenly in a raised area, Isabelle is being pulled away from you by both the floor and Crescent after sacrificing her second shoe in your defense (???), and you’re awash with power as the spirit tries to size up the situation.

Once Isabelle had thrown her shoe and you were aglow with heat, it disappeared and reappeared a few feet away, trying to guess what you were doing. It understood enough about Zaldarians to know that it needed to account for this, but not exactly how, it would seem. 

Time seems like it’s going in slow motion with all this energy. Isabelle’s tumble is measured in a handful of seconds yet it seems as though she falls away forever, and the spirit’s teleport was extremely quick, but you see it as it crackles and disappears again to come at you closer like it's moving through molasses. It’s trying to bait your attack with new energy and then withdraws as its hands crackle with unused electricity because you don’t rise to the feint. It’s made only three moves, yet you still feel that you understand something more of it now. 

The key is really that it wasted a move on Isabelle. That immediately says to you that you’re facing non-lethal action focused on retribution and control of the situation. This is a very intelligent spirit. A quick glance at Annika does indeed show that she’s carrying with her a geist that matches the spirit’s colorations and general energy signature, but she didn’t get authorization because she had the right geist, she got the geist because she had authorization. 

From what you know of Annika’s style, she probably responded to the unknown by very politely asking to be a student and the spirit liked that and let her look around, albeit with a limited offer that did not give her permission to bring guests. 

So, this leaves you with two routes. You can de-escalate, express remorse for your impetuousness and allow it to punish you proportionately and then it will probably give you the same limited authorization as Annika. Or you can escalate until you reach a level of force that either intimidates or impresses it into giving you authorization. 

To emphasize, what you can see in three moves as you hold your strike on a razor’s edge is that this is an intelligent spirit that’s acting like an angry person who thinks themself righteous. It is thus the simplest and most complex thing all at once to push it, impress it, or break it. Drive it to emotion. Bring it to rage, or to thrill, or even to joy. Surprise it, offer it something it did not realize it craved and it will find that its ideals are fleeting, ephemeral things that it needs to re-evaluate. 

Now, strike before your heart boils over!

***

[b]Jade, Dolly, and Mirror[/b]

Well this is something. The feast hall is set with all sorts of food. It’s low roof has a space opened for smoke and there’s a great firepit in the center where something delicious is being roasted by a pair of Zaldarians who don’t much seem to mind standing near the smoke. A Hybrasilian is mixing some cauldron full of soup next to it, and some TC chefs are chopping and crushing some kind of peppers. Already prepared food is available in front of them, the last round of roasted meats and vegetables, and guests are moving, milling, and serving. 

Mirror has to raise her voice to be heard over the general din, and while Angela’s procession turns some heads, the space is too vast and too busy to all turn and gape, leading to your movement through the space being something like a ripple through a crowd until you eventually found a table to set up. 

Mirror’s appearance now feels as though Huitla the trickster has returned to grace Akar II. Huitla was not a goddess, in fact rumors said she wasn’t even a particularly notable huntress originally, just a young forest prowler from ancient times. But she became the bride of a goddess of mist and shadow, and it was said that she could appear somewhere and vanish without a trace. She was known to appear to Hybrasilians who were getting ahead of themselves in fact. There was even a script. A Hybrasilian, usually some local community leader, would get the idea into their heads that they ought to be the most important person there was, and then they’d meet a seductive Hybrasilian, always barely dressed, her clothes disheveled and barely remaining on her body, at once vulnerable and confident. She’d lure them from their community, promise them pleasure within the deep jungles, often even deliver if the stories were to be believed, but then she and her prey would vanish into the mist and they would be taken by her goddess and turned into the harem slaves they were always destined to be. 

And so now, here is Huitla appearing on the table, her clothes alluring, her confidence doubly so, her mannerisms, those swishing hips, speaking of much and more to come. 

Ksharta is awed into silence. Angela squeaks indignantly at being handled by a new stranger. Dolly, you may be the closest, but Jade, you’re the one calling the shots, right?