Injimo laughed - an unhinged, desperate sound. "You think [i]I[/i] am deluded? You think that it is [i]possible [/i]to be [i]more [/i]than a shadow of the Hero of Ages? I set this out as politely as I could -" she shakes tea from her fingertips, "- gave you every opportunity to back down. But I guess you really do need it spelled out for you: If we are in our own hands, we are all doomed, each and every one of us."

She drained her tea in a single gulp, then refilled the cup straight from the hip flask. "So we're not. So we're not! She's coming back - she might be back already. She always has, always will, because she knows as well as we do that if she doesn't this world ends. Ends, burns, dies, gone, [i]forever[/i]. Every time she's so much as late to the party it goes to the brink. You said yourself how close it is to collapse, and that's only going to accelerate. There are terrors you don't even know about rising from the depths. There are monsters you can't imagine crawling out of their holes. We've been pretending Sayanastia is tamed but she's [i]really fucking not[/i] and she's one bad hair day away from bringing about another age of ruin. And you think [i]you [/i]can stop this? You, fucking, skateboard detective and a couple of muscleheads? Of course you can't stop this. Here's where your investigation is going to lead you: to a full and comprehensive understanding of just how impossibly [i]fucked [/i]we are. Something you'd know already if you'd ever had to fight Heron [i]even once[/i]."

She took a deep breath, drained the cup a second time, and then closed her eyes and spread her fingers out to either side.

"So if the alternative is certain death, then there is only one thing left to us. To hold the faith. To hold the line. To make sure there are treasures and histories sealed away in the world's fortresses and temples for when the Hero of Ages chooses to reveal herself again. Anything less is simply accelerating the world's decline."