"I will" Giriel smiles and ventures to give Ven a pat on the back after she stands and dusts herself off. Of course it earns the "how dare you peasant" look, but there's no fire in it, and Giri grins as Ven physically appreciates it despite herself. 

She moves them over from the mud, back towards the N'yari camp. She makes a sling what remains of Peregrine's ruined and muddied dress and some branches to carry the brass arm without touching it. Best not, with what it was doing to the grass. Gets the N'yari to help her make a hot firepit full of charcoal. Did you know that a campfire is just barely short of the temperature to melt brass? But if you make a charcoal pit and get it as hot as it can go, it will do the trick. 

It's not that the magic strictly requires a fire hot enough to melt the brass. A magical fire could easily be conjured that would melt regular brass with minimal difficulty. But that's not the point when it comes to an exorcism done right. It's about the nature of the thing, the meaning put into it, not the temperature. Making a fire that everyone knows can't melt brass and then trying to focus some of the magic to enhance it makes the main ritual weaker. If you put in the effort instead, the magic gets stronger.

That was always the way of these things really. It's why Giri was so strong, why she carried a great black sword and not a dagger like many witches. This is not to say that a strong witch always had the better of things, Peregrine was exceptionally gifted and thin as a willow branch after all. It was just that [i]one[/i] way to make your magic strong was to do the busy work properly. Giri sweeped and she chopped wood. She hiked and she picked things by hand. And because she didn't take the shortcuts and she put the care and the time into each bit, the symbolism would turn out right and strong. People always forgot these things because they thought that once they got good at everything else, the time didn't matter. A lot of folks made the mistake of thinking that being skilled meant being fast. Sometimes, sure, it could matter. In a fight, say. But that wasn't the only sort of skill. Sometimes making a good soup means leaving everything to simmer for as long as it takes because if you turn up the heat it will just burn instead. And if there was one lesson, it was that if you were going to make soup for the dead, you ought to make them good soup. 

So, Giriel very carefully kindles the fire. She works with Ven to draw the circle, the two of them together. Their blood mixed in the lines. Same reasoning. Blood magic isn't evil, that's the superstition. Blood is powerful because it fundamentally represents the vitality of a person. Giving it up weakens you until you can rest and eat and rebuild yourself. Giving up too much kills you and yes that was evil if you drew on it for power. But that's because taking someone else's life in the vast majority of circumstances wasn't yours to make. This though, this was Ven's blood given willingly, such as she had left after the loss of her arm. And Giri's blood given gladly. For a friend. 

The black sword, too, makes for the ritual. Giri uses it to draw each line, and when it's done, she lays it across Peregrine's chest. A sacrifice, a magical implement that she has sanctified and blessed and brought before the local gods and ancestors in turn. She will sacrifice it in its entirety for Peregrine. She'll have another sword made, or find one to buy to her heft, but it will take a long time to bring it in line with her black sword. The biggest loss would be that she'd need another way to intimidate people while she was traveling. It was nice to come into an inn and be left alone sometimes without having to make your hands start glowing. 

Giri hums as she works the fire and then carefully, carefully lowers the bronze arm into the firepit. Two sacrifices. One from Ven, one from her for Peregrine. The arm would be doubly effective in that its destruction would be a boon for the Flower Kingdoms, lighten the presence of the demonic, and the symbolism of its destruction matched with the ritual exorcism for Peregrine. 

Lastly, she finished brewing her pot of tea, scalding hot over that same firepit, and poured three cups. One for herself, one for Ven, and one to offer a sip to Peregrine as they started the ritual. She poured the rest out and then pointedly didn't examine the leaves, instead placing Peregrine's cup facedown once she had trickled a few drops into the witch to fortify her. 

Then, finally, there was the part with all the chanting and the screaming and the shrieks of demonic agony. You know that's just the showy part though, right? When you've done the preparations properly, double checked the lines and the tools, and mentally prepared, then the actual doing of the thing was the formality, the theater done to demonstrate that the work was already completed successfully. You knew you could do it, you knew they symbols were right, and that confidence in turn was something that the hells could never understand, could never touch. Because hell was a broken thing, a purveyor of false dreams and pride born of failure. An unwillingness to learn, to do better. What better way, then, to perform the chants than with the quiet surety that comes from a job well done?

Only when they were done completely, Peregrine panting and covered with mud and sweat, the arm melted into a formless puddle amidst the coals and then buried in mud and clay...only then did Giriel let out a breath, remove the tea cup, and look over the leaves. A downward mountain trail, the sign of fresh wind, the setting sun. The signs for the end of a difficult leg of a journey, if one that still required a bit of walking before finding some warm rice and a soft bed.