IFID
3171FD5A-99EA-4F3F-9261-F6C230598531<!-- GAME INFO -->
(set: $game to (dm:
'version', '0.1.0',
'author', 'Lily Ounekeo',
'title', 'Six Hands',
'series', 'VVitching Hour',
'synopsis', 'The Handmaiden takes care of visitors.',
'startPassage', 'startPassage',
'coverArt', '<div class="cover-art"><img src="images/cover/cover.jpg"></div>',
'coverArtHover', '<div class="cover-art hover-opacity"><img src="images/cover/cover.jpg"></div>'
))
<!-- SAVE FILE -->
(set: $savefile to '')
<!-- SET CHARACTERS -->
(display: 'characters')
(display: 'nametags')
<!-- SET LOCATION -->
(display: 'locations')
(set: $startPassageLocation to 'sceneEntranceHall')
<!-- SET GAMEPLAY OBJECTS -->
(display: 'items')
(display: 'entries')
(display: 'notes')
(display: 'observations')
(display: 'score')
<!-- SET VARIABLES -->
(display: 'variablesBase')
(display: 'variablesTrack'){
<div class='game-menu-container oc'>
(display: 'oLoadGame')
(display: 'oStartGame')
</div>
}(link: 'Begin a new story.')[(goto: $game's startPassage)](linkgoto: 'Continue the current story.', $returnLocation){
(if: (saved-games:) contains $savefile)[
(link: 'Load the last saved story.')[(loadgame: $savefile)]
(else:)[(set: $dialogLoadFail to (dialog: "<h1>Load Failed</h1>No saved story could be found.", "Return."))]]
(else:)[<!--do nothing-->]
}{
(replace: ?textReset)[]
(linkrepeat: 'Start the story over.')[(display: 'oStartGameNewConfirm')]
}{
(replace: ?textReset)[
(set: $dialogBoxConfirmStartNew to (confirm: "<h1>Start over?</h1><br>Starting over means the game will reset, and you will lose unsaved progress made in your current game.", "Do not start over.", "Start over."))
(if: $dialogBoxConfirmStartNew)[(reload:)]
(else:)[<!--do nothing-->]
]
}{
(replace: ?textScore)[]
(link: $toggleExpandProgress)[(replace: ?textScoreHeader)[(display: 'oViewScoreClose')$goToAnchorHeader]]
}<!-- END STORY -->
(set: $endStoryEnabled to false)
<!-- MAP -->
(set: $currentLocationName to '')
(set: $currentFloorName to '')
(set: $currentSceneName to '')
(set: $mapURL to '')
(set: $mapImage to '')
(set: $floor1 to 'First Floor - ')
(set: $floorB to 'Basement - ')
(set: $floorG to 'Ground Floor - ')
<!-- PASSAGE LOCATION LINKS -->
(set: $returnLocaton to $startPassageLocation)
(set: $returnName to 'Return.')
(set: $oReturn to "<div class='o'>(linkgoto: $returnName, $returnLocation)</div>")
<!-- SAVE AND LOAD -->
(set: $oSave to 'Save')
(set: $oLoad to 'Load')
(set: $oSaved to '<span class="b-grey">Saved</span>')
(set: $oLoadNoFile to '<span class="b-grey">Load</span>')
(set: $dialogBoxConfirmStartNew to 0)
<!-- MENU -->
(set: $gameCoverImgName to $game's title)
(set: $gameInfo to "(print: $game's series): (print: $game's title)")
(set: $mapName to 'Map')
(set: $inventoryName to 'Inventory')
(set: $noteName to 'Notes')
(set: $observationName to 'Observations')
(set: $observationHidden to "<div class='grey'>—</div>")
<!-- BUTTONS -->
(set: $oClose to "(linkgoto: 'Return', $returnLocation)")
(set: $oTop to "(linkrepeat: $toggleClose)[(gotourl: '#')]")
(set: $optionHidden to "<span class='grey'>—</span>")
<!-- ANCHOR HEADER -->
(set: $anchorHeader to "<a id='anchorHeader'>")
(set: $goToAnchorHeader to "(gotourl: '#anchorHeader')")
<!-- ARROW BUTTONS -->
(set: $toggleClose to "<div class='b-arrow-bottom'><span class='baseline-up'><span class='arrow up'></span></span></div>")
(set: $toggleTagMap to "<span class='toggle-tag'>$mapName</span>")
(set: $toggleTagProgress to "<span class='toggle-tag'>Measurements</span>")
(set: $toggleExpandMap to "<div class='b-arrow-top'>$toggleTagMap<span class='baseline-down'><span class='arrow down'></span></span></div>")
(set: $toggleCloseMap to "<div class='b-arrow-top'>$toggleTagMap<span class='baseline-down'></span></div>")
(set: $toggleExpandProgress to "<div class='b-arrow-top'>$toggleTagProgress<span class='baseline-down'><span class='arrow down'></span></span></div>")
(set: $toggleCloseProgress to "<div class='b-arrow-top'>$toggleTagProgress<span class='baseline-down'></span></div>")
<!-- SCORE DISPLAY -->
(set: $scoreCount to '')
(set: $scoreMax to '')
(set: $scoreItem to "(print: $score's itemCount)/(print: $score's itemMax) (print: $score's itemName)")
(set: $scoreEntry to "(print: $score's entryCount)/(print: $score's entryMax) (print: $score's entryName)")
(set: $scoreNote to "(print: $score's noteCount)/(print: $score's noteMax) (print: $score's noteName)")
(set: $scoreObservation to "(print: $score's observationCount)/(print: $score's observationMax) (print: $score's observationName)")
<!-- GAME SETTINGS -->
(set: $gameThemeDark to false)
(set: $bGameThemeName to 'Theme')
(set: $bGameThemeIcon to '<span class="large">◑</span>')
(set: $gameFontSizeLarge to false)
(set: $bGameFontSizeName to 'Text')
(set: $bGameFontSizeIcon to '<span class="large">◰</span>')<!-- PROGRESSION -->
(set: $dialogueArtrius0Count to 0)
(set: $dialogueArtrius0CountEnd to 3)
(set: $visitDungeonAfterVenom to false)(set: $endStoryEnabled to true)<!-- PLAYER -->
(set: $player to (dm:
'name', 'Handmaiden',
'nameFull', 'Handmaiden of Seht',
'title', 'The Priestess',
'gender', 'female',
'portrait', '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-hood"></div>',
'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-hood small"></div>',
'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-hood decision"></div>',
'portraitH', '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-hood hover-opacity"></div>',
'journal', 'Duties',
'journalLC', 'duties',
'description', "The Priestess is a champion of her god and a warrior honing mind, body, and spirit. Her endless strife for perfection sends her on a mission to safeguard knowledge, the wellspring of development, in all its forms. She bears little hesitation to cutting down obstacles and offering blood sacrifices in order to achieve her goals. With such devotion to her god's truth, and divine authorization to perform sacred rites, she can be aloof and single-minded in her pursuits."
))
<!-- COMPANION -->
(set: $companionParty to (dm:
'companionCount', 0,
'hasCompanion1', false,
'hasCompanion2', false,
'hasCompanionArtrius', false,
'hasCompanionGavril', false
))
(set: $companionSelected to (dm:
'name', 'COMPANION NAME',
'nameFull', 'COMPANION NAME FULL',
'title', 'COMPANION TITLE',
'gender', 'COMPANION GENDER',
'portrait', '<div class="portrait-blank"></div>',
'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-blank small"></div>',
'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-blank decision"></div>',
'portraitH', '<div class="portrait-blank hover-opacity"></div>',
'description', 'COMPANION DESCRIPTION'
))
(set: $companion1 to (dm:
'name', 'COMPANION 1 NAME',
'nameFull', 'COMPANION 1 NAME FULL',
'title', 'COMPANION 1 TITLE',
'gender', 'COMPANION 1 GENDER',
'portrait', '<div class="portrait-blank"></div>',
'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-blank small"></div>',
'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-blank decision"></div>',
'portraitH', '<div class="portrait-blank hover-opacity"></div>',
'description', 'COMPANION 1 DESCRIPTION'
))
(set: $companion2 to (dm:
'name', 'COMPANION 2 NAME',
'nameFull', 'COMPANION 2 NAME FULL',
'title', 'COMPANION 2 TITLE',
'gender', 'COMPANION 2 GENDER',
'portrait', '<div class="portrait-blank"></div>',
'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-blank small"></div>',
'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-blank decision"></div>',
'portraitH', '<div class="portrait-blank hover-opacity"></div>',
'description', 'COMPANION 2 DESCRIPTION'
))
<!-- PRIMARY CHARACTERS -->
(set: $artrius to (dm:
'name', 'Artrius',
'nameFull', 'Artrius Alecsus',
'title', 'The Sage',
'gender', 'male',
'portrait', '<div class="portrait-artrius-scholar"></div>',
'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-artrius-scholar small"></div>',
'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-artrius-scholar decision"></div>',
'portraitH', '<div class="portrait-artrius-scholar hover-opacity"></div>',
'description', "The Sage excels beyond other practitioners in their own fields. Although erudite in peoples and their myths, legends, religions, and ways of life, he remains an outsider without a homeland. Exile guides him into solitude, abstinence, and body mortification. Wisdom is not a battle between good and evil but an aim toward simplicity, adaptation, and perfection, even if blood trails in his wake."
))
(set: $gavril to (dm:
'name', 'Gavril',
'nameFull', 'Gavril Corragain',
'title', 'The Shadow',
'gender', 'male',
'portrait', '<div class="portrait-gavril-shadow"></div>',
'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-gavril-shadow small"></div>',
'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-gavril-shadow decision"></div>',
'portraitH', '<div class="portrait-gavril-shadow hover-opacity"></div>',
'description', "The Shadow is an outlaw, independent, instinctive, and impulsive. He takes advantage of opportunities as they come, shifting identities and wandering unmoored from society's pilings. As a lone wolf of many trades but of little faith, he has no inclination toward witchcraft, religions, or allegiances. His skills and experiences are many and diverse, but anchor in neither aspirations nor order leaves him aimless and adrift."
))
(set: $lorcis to (dm:
'name', 'Lorcis',
'nameFull', 'Lorcis Layeras',
'title', 'The Warlock'
))(set: $ARTRIUS to "<span class='name-tag'>Artrius</span>")
(set: $GAVRIL to "<span class='name-tag'>Gavril</span>")
(set: $HANDMAIDEN to "<span class='name-tag'>Handmaiden</span>")
(set: $LORCIS to "<span class='name-tag'>Lorcis</span>")
(set: $CHILD to "<span class='name-tag'>Child</span>")
(set: $MOTHER to "<span class='name-tag'>Mother</span>")
(set: $FATHER to "<span class='name-tag'>Father</span>")(set: $endStory to (dm:
'name', 'End'
))
(set: $hour to (dm:
'name1', 'Witch Fire',
'name2', 'Witch Fog'
))
(set: $institution to (dm:
'name', 'Hemlock Weald Institution',
'forecourt', 'Forecourt',
'entranceHall', 'Entrance Hall',
'library', 'Library',
'cellblock', 'Cellblock',
'basementHall', 'Basement Hall',
'kitchen', 'Kitchen',
'dungeon', 'Dungeon',
'yard', 'Yard',
'shed', 'Shed',
'stableHouse', 'Stable House',
'wineCellar', 'Wine Cellar'
)){
(set: $currentLocationName to $institution's name)
(if: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'floor1')[(set: $currentFloorName to $floor1)]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'floorB')[(set: $currentFloorName to $floorB)]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'floorG')[(set: $currentFloorName to $floorG)]
(if: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'forecourt')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's forecourt)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-ground-forecourt.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'entranceHall')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's entranceHall)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-ground-entrance-hall.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'library')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's library)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-ground-library.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'cellblock')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's cellblock)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-first-cellblock.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'basementHall')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's basementHall)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-basement-hall.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'kitchen')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's kitchen)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-basement-kitchen.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'dungeon')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's dungeon)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-basement-dungeon.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'yard')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's yard)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-ground-yard.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'stableHouse')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's stableHouse)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-ground-stable-house.jpg")]
(elseif: (passage: $returnLocation)'s tags contains 'shed')[
(set: $currentSceneName to $institution's shed)
(set: $mapURL to "images/maps/institution-ground-shed.jpg")]
(else:)[<!--do nothing-->]
}{
<!-- MAP PLAQUE -->
<div class='map-plaque'>
<h1>(print: $currentLocationName)</h1>
(print: $currentFloorName)(print: $currentSceneName)
</div>
<!-- MAP LINK -->
<div class='small-link'>(linkgoto: 'Expand map >', 'displayMapExpand')</div>
<div class='small-link'>(linkrepeat: 'Open map in new browser tab >')[(openurl: $mapURL)]</div>
<!-- MAP IMAGE -->
(set: $mapImage to "<img src='" + $mapURL + "'>")
<div class='map-container'><div class='map-thumbnail'>$mapImage</div></div>
(link: $toggleClose)[(replace: ?mapThumbnailHeader)[(display: 'oViewMapThumbnail')(gotourl: '#map')]]
<!-- MAP ZOOM SCRIPT -->
(display: 'wheelZoomScript')
}{
(replace: ?mapThumbnail)[]
(link: $toggleExpandMap)[(replace: ?mapThumbnailHeader)[(display: 'oViewMapThumbnailClose')$goToAnchorHeader]]
}{
(replace: ?mapThumbnail)[(display: 'displayMap')]
(link: $toggleCloseMap)[(replace: ?mapThumbnailHeader)[(display: 'oViewMapThumbnail')]]
}{
<script>
/*!
Wheelzoom 4.0.1
license: MIT
http://www.jacklmoore.com/wheelzoom
*/
window.wheelzoom = (function(){
var defaults = {
zoom: 0.3,
maxZoom: 6,
initialZoom: 1.1,
initialX: 0,
initialY: 0.3,
};
var main = function(img, options){
if (!img || !img.nodeName || img.nodeName !== 'IMG') { return; }
var settings = {};
var width;
var height;
var bgWidth;
var bgHeight;
var bgPosX;
var bgPosY;
var previousEvent;
var transparentSpaceFiller;
function setSrcToBackground(img) {
img.style.backgroundRepeat = 'no-repeat';
img.style.backgroundImage = 'url("'+img.src+'")';
transparentSpaceFiller = 'data:image/svg+xml;base64,'+window.btoa('<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="'+img.naturalWidth+'" height="'+img.naturalHeight+'"></svg>');
img.src = transparentSpaceFiller;
}
function updateBgStyle() {
if (bgPosX > 0) {
bgPosX = 0;
} else if (bgPosX < width - bgWidth) {
bgPosX = width - bgWidth;
}
if (bgPosY > 0) {
bgPosY = 0;
} else if (bgPosY < height - bgHeight) {
bgPosY = height - bgHeight;
}
img.style.backgroundSize = bgWidth+'px '+bgHeight+'px';
img.style.backgroundPosition = bgPosX+'px '+bgPosY+'px';
}
function reset() {
bgWidth = width;
bgHeight = height;
bgPosX = bgPosY = 0;
updateBgStyle();
}
function onwheel(e) {
var deltaY = 0;
e.preventDefault();
if (e.deltaY) { // FireFox 17+ (IE9+, Chrome 31+?)
deltaY = e.deltaY;
} else if (e.wheelDelta) {
deltaY = -e.wheelDelta;
}
// As far as I know, there is no good cross-browser way to get the cursor position relative to the event target.
// We have to calculate the target element's position relative to the document, and subtrack that from the
// cursor's position relative to the document.
var rect = img.getBoundingClientRect();
var offsetX = e.pageX - rect.left - window.pageXOffset;
var offsetY = e.pageY - rect.top - window.pageYOffset;
// Record the offset between the bg edge and cursor:
var bgCursorX = offsetX - bgPosX;
var bgCursorY = offsetY - bgPosY;
// Use the previous offset to get the percent offset between the bg edge and cursor:
var bgRatioX = bgCursorX/bgWidth;
var bgRatioY = bgCursorY/bgHeight;
// Update the bg size:
if (deltaY < 0) {
bgWidth += bgWidth*settings.zoom;
bgHeight += bgHeight*settings.zoom;
} else {
bgWidth -= bgWidth*settings.zoom;
bgHeight -= bgHeight*settings.zoom;
}
if (settings.maxZoom) {
bgWidth = Math.min(width*settings.maxZoom, bgWidth);
bgHeight = Math.min(height*settings.maxZoom, bgHeight);
}
// Take the percent offset and apply it to the new size:
bgPosX = offsetX - (bgWidth * bgRatioX);
bgPosY = offsetY - (bgHeight * bgRatioY);
// Prevent zooming out beyond the starting size
if (bgWidth <= width || bgHeight <= height) {
reset();
} else {
updateBgStyle();
}
}
function drag(e) {
e.preventDefault();
bgPosX += (e.pageX - previousEvent.pageX);
bgPosY += (e.pageY - previousEvent.pageY);
previousEvent = e;
updateBgStyle();
}
function removeDrag() {
document.removeEventListener('mouseup', removeDrag);
document.removeEventListener('mousemove', drag);
}
// Make the background draggable
function draggable(e) {
e.preventDefault();
previousEvent = e;
document.addEventListener('mousemove', drag);
document.addEventListener('mouseup', removeDrag);
}
function load() {
var initial = Math.max(settings.initialZoom, 1);
if (img.src === transparentSpaceFiller) return;
var computedStyle = window.getComputedStyle(img, null);
width = parseInt(computedStyle.width, 10);
height = parseInt(computedStyle.height, 10);
bgWidth = width * initial;
bgHeight = height * initial;
bgPosX = -(bgWidth - width) * settings.initialX;
bgPosY = -(bgHeight - height) * settings.initialY;
setSrcToBackground(img);
img.style.backgroundSize = bgWidth+'px '+bgHeight+'px';
img.style.backgroundPosition = bgPosX+'px '+bgPosY+'px';
img.addEventListener('wheelzoom.reset', reset);
img.addEventListener('wheel', onwheel);
img.addEventListener('mousedown', draggable);
}
var destroy = function (originalProperties) {
img.removeEventListener('wheelzoom.destroy', destroy);
img.removeEventListener('wheelzoom.reset', reset);
img.removeEventListener('load', load);
img.removeEventListener('mouseup', removeDrag);
img.removeEventListener('mousemove', drag);
img.removeEventListener('mousedown', draggable);
img.removeEventListener('wheel', onwheel);
img.style.backgroundImage = originalProperties.backgroundImage;
img.style.backgroundRepeat = originalProperties.backgroundRepeat;
img.src = originalProperties.src;
}.bind(null, {
backgroundImage: img.style.backgroundImage,
backgroundRepeat: img.style.backgroundRepeat,
src: img.src
});
img.addEventListener('wheelzoom.destroy', destroy);
options = options || {};
Object.keys(defaults).forEach(function(key){
settings[key] = options[key] !== undefined ? options[key] : defaults[key];
});
if (img.complete) {
load();
}
img.addEventListener('load', load);
};
// Do nothing in IE9 or below
if (typeof window.btoa !== 'function') {
return function(elements) {
return elements;
};
} else {
return function(elements, options) {
if (elements && elements.length) {
Array.prototype.forEach.call(elements, function (node) {
main(node, options);
});
} else if (elements && elements.nodeName) {
main(elements, options);
}
return elements;
};
}
}());
wheelzoom(document.querySelectorAll('img'));
</script>
}(set: $inv to (a:))
(set: $item to (dm:
'name', 'ITEM NAME',
'list', 'ITEM LISTED NAME',
'description', 'ITEM DESCRIPTION'
))
(set: $itemMushrooms to (dm:
'name', 'Little Prophets',
'list', 'Little Prophets',
'description', "The Handmaiden carries mushrooms known as little prophets. The amanitas had been gathered from the Scarsgaran-Caireleonic border, where birch and conifers cover the feet of mountains. Ground into fine powder, the little prophets can be a potent additive to drinks and dishes.
Many traditional Jscethycan rituals require practitioners to partake of flesh of the gods, the cryptic earthen gifts from which the living and the dead rise and fall in cyclical form. The gods, demigods, and demons feast upon mushrooms, sponges, and molds to sustain their immortality. Humans, impure in makeup, gain not immortality from consumption but impressions of it.
The ancient Agnithra mendicants had granted themselves superhuman power by ingesting fungi and alcohol before battle and dance. Varulvkyn berserkers became brothers and sisters to the Agnithra by the flesh shared between the Queen of Beasts Sharvaslava and the Anointed Ithscerah. When the Anointed had sought Scarsgaran knowledge, the Queen of Beasts offered him the little prophets, which gave him eyes like Scarsgaran gods. In return, she asked him for a taste of Jscethycan divinity. By the counsel of the voices, he offered her his tongue, and she took it in her teeth from him."
))
(set: $itemCanteen to (dm:
'name', 'Water Canteen',
'list', 'Water Canteen',
'description', "The Handmaiden had carried this tin drum canteen with her from Jscethyca. The canteen hangs off her belt by rope straps attached to welded brackets. A string knotted around the container's neck and attached to the cork plug ensures the two pieces remain paired throughout any length and distance. The body's face depicts a snake curling in an infinite knot. Its mouth opened at the vessel's lip nourishes the drinker by kiss and regurgitation."
))
(set: $itemWeapons to (dm:
'name', "Artrius's Daggers",
'list', "Artrius's Daggers",
'description', "The Scarsgaran athame--a ritual accessory--and the Cairelic misericorde--military-issued paraphernalia--are two of Artrius's many instruments. The vastness of Harrow Les requires adaptability, utility, and resourcefulness, even within the bounds of the institution, which is no less the territory of the wilderness. Weapons are tools, and tools are weapons. These daggers are sturdy enough to gut and shear beasts for skin, meat, and innards as well as to take the greater part of a thrust into a warm body. While Artrius avoids eating red meat, he is one of the three hunters of the coven alongside the Handmaiden and Gavril. The sage is notorious as the Witch Huntsman, or simply the Huntsman, to the people of Aspencroft, where he sells animal parts to the butcher and tanner to supplement the institution's coffers. The bits unsavory to the villagers, at least in their recognizable forms, remain with the institution, particularly for use in Ivie's potions and cooking.
The Handmaiden had sharpened the athame and misericorde for Artrius during the maintenance of her own blades. She would be a responsible member of the institution by leaving them amongst his belongings in his cell or returning them directly to him."
))
(set: $itemKajal to (dm:
'name', 'Kajal',
'list', 'Kajal',
'description', "Kajal is a cosmetic which is used to contour the eyes, darken eyelids, and coat the eyelashes. The preparation of it consists of ingredients noted for medicinal properties--the creamy, sooty paste of the Euphorbia neriifolia spurge for healing, castor oil for rejuvenation, and ghee for nourishment. Depictions of the Horned Aspis, as well as the Darraga pantheon of antiquity, often accentuate blackened eyes. When the pantheon dissolved, followers began to shape gods into appearances native of the lands to which they emigrated, removing or repainting the darkness surrounding their eyes.
Aruseht remains relatively unchanged from earliest imagery to contemporary representations. Slaves of Seht wear kajal to protect their eyes from blindness so that they may always see truths and possibilities of truths, and the Handmaiden remains consistent in daily application."
))
(set: $itemTools to (dm:
'name', 'Woodworking Handtools',
'list', 'Woodworking Handtools',
'description', "The small satchel containing hand tools for woodworking crafts had been in the Handmaiden's possession since her Third Coil, along with her favored pair of shashkas. The satchel includes a chisel, scratch awl, and carving knife."
))
(set: $itemPlatterGlass to (dm:
'name', 'Platter and Glass',
'list', 'Platter and Glass',
'description', "The wooden platter the Handmaiden had used to carry Lorcis's medicine is a handmade item of her own, whereas the glass is one of a set of commercial items acquired from the Free City of Gallowvalsk by Gavril at Lorcis's behest--not entirely within the warlock's initial intended legal means. The Handmaiden has carved an intricate spray of flowers into the wood platter using her hand tools and the resources found at the instutition shed. The red spider lily is the symbol of her old clan, a flower said to have bloomed where her people set their yurts, for they are harbingers of the ultimate passage. She no longer associates with them, but the artistic flourishes her muscles remember sway like the serpent's weave--death is never long away."
))
(set: $itemVenom to (dm:
'name', 'Vedhak Venom',
'list', 'Vedhak Venom',
'description', "In Sehtian scripture, Aruseht's venom can both destroy and heal. The venom from the vedhak viper, which is native to Jscethyca and produces the loudest hiss of all vipers, acts quickly but spreads slowly. It has been used since ancient times in diluted form to stall the bleeding of open wounds. Coagulation begins nearly instantaneously. An antivenin is often administered after the venom's desired effect in order to prevent the eagerness of Seht's kiss from spreading beyond its intended bounds."
))
(set: $itemAntivenin to (dm:
'name', 'Vedhak Antivenin',
'list', 'Vedhak Antivenin',
'description', "The medicinal usage of the vedhak viper's venom may require the corresponding antivenin to temper its spread, if not to decidedly counteract the whole of its effects. If the venom ointment is of high quality, the antivenin may not be necessary but can be applied in a small dosage as a precaution. Too much antivenin without the presence of venom contains the risk of an allergic reaction or serum shock but is otherwise not usually fatal."
))(set: $entry to (dm:
'title', 'ENTRY TITLE',
'description', 'ENTRY DESCRIPTION',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryMedicateAnointed to (dm:
'description', 'Medicate Lorcis.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryReturnWeapons to (dm:
'description', "Return Artrius's daggers.",
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryCheckMedication to (dm:
'description', "Refill Gavril's medication.",
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryTakePlatterToScullery to (dm:
'description', "Take the platter and glass to the scullery.",
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryCheckCauldron to (dm:
'description', 'Check on the cauldron in the kitchen.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryCordialSupper to (dm:
'description', 'Have a cordial supper with the pilgrims.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryCordialTea to (dm:
'description', 'Gain witch sight by tea ceremony.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryGetVenom to (dm:
'description', 'Retrieve viper venom ointment.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryApplyVenom to (dm:
'description', "Apply viper venom to the child's wound.",
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryLocateArtrius to (dm:
'description', 'Locate Artrius.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryLocateGavril to (dm:
'description', 'Locate Gavril.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))
(set: $entryLocateChild to (dm:
'description', 'Locate the child.',
'owned', false,
'done', false,
'scored', false
))(set: $noteList to (a:))
(set: $note to (dm:
'name', 'NOTE NAME',
'description', "NOTE DESCRIPTION"
))
(set: $noteAnointed to (dm:
'name', 'Anointed',
'description', "Slaves of Seht who displayed extrasensory potential were given the title of Anointed and reared into leadership roles, political or ceremonial. Not all Sehtian leaders could hear the voices of Seht--thus not all were anointed--but a waste it would have been to squander such gifted knowledge that almost all anointed were shamans, high priests, or idols. The anointed heard beyond humanity, saw and spoke with demons, and became gods' messengers.
Lorcis Layeras was the son of a well-regarded Cairelic poet of Seht who had overseen his shamanistic upbringing. Dance, ceremony, and theory were readily infused into the boy, but he insisted he could not understand the voices in his head. Unlike other god-touched who made reasonable conversation with their internal companions, Lorcis elaborated that his voices murmured, sang, and screamed in unintelligible languages. Thus could he not carry out their wishes, nor could he let their wishes be known.
He would have been able to understand them, if he had truly believed in Seht, for the denial of Him was a denial of knowledge to its fullest meaning.
Lorcis's main interest, evinced by Hemlock Weald's library selection, encompassed demonology, the study of spirits such as faeries, revenants, yakshas, shayateen, daevas, or yokai. Theological and mythological expressions were plentiful enough--Lorcis sought to expand the rhetoric. As one might make endeavors into anthropology, demonology was to include subsets such as ethnology and studies on behaviors, cultures, and societies. His writing toyed with analyses on possession, hybridization, and shapeshifting; hierarchies and philosophies; history, folklore, and ritual; and linguistics and paleography. Summarily, he researched them as if they were neighbors, friends. Family. The subject was a personal endeavor. He believed an intimate circle of these people in-between were the voices in his head.
People they were, not gods or demigods, for divinity was a human-manufactured concept to him. While societies could be hierarchical, Lorcis believed hierarchy could not be attributed between species--demons and humans--as one could not subscribe superiority to the poacher who turns his back on a tiger which mauls him, nor of the tiger who falls to a poacher's spear. Without admitting to his Sehtian background, he envisioned a cloud of systems dependent upon other systems, with neither top nor bottom, beginning nor end.
Yet even upon the body of the snake there was a hierarchy. As illuminated by Sehtian scripts, the learned--those discovering and formulating concepts untouchable--were superior to the ignorant, even superior to the skilled or the experienced. Scholars, architects, engineers, and clerics were the leaders of builders, laborers, and drones. Gods were the designers of mortalkind; mortals were the servants and slaves of the divine. Personification and anthropomorphism could initiate forays into demonology, but they could not sustain it. The divine or semi-divine were not humans. It was only by human perception that demons were sentient, deliberate, and covetous beings. A human simply could never fully comprehend something so vastly greater than humankind, for they were creatures small and insignificant.
Lorcis's attempts at discovery and theory on his voices were clumsy and misguided. He had abandoned Seht without cause. He had admitted--almost pridefully, arrogantly--to have never had faith. His intellectualism twisted his perception, and he made reasons for his history and the Old Ways which suited his own desires, rather than the realities Aruseht presented plainly and in poetic form before him.
Yet far from embracing ignorance, Lorcis brought order and structure to discovery. He had taken in the sister witches, the boy thieves, the exile, and the Handmaiden herself by the celestial insight granted to him, which allowed him to chart out each their purpose along the serpent trenches. The Handmaiden found his library limited yet a noble and ongoing effort. The modest load on the shelves comprised texts which were forbidden from public libraries across Caireleon and might have been forgotten or destroyed without his preservation. His collection could not replace the knowledge and wisdom yet to be interpreted from his voices, but he served the Serpent regardless.
Although Lorcis lacked faith in Aruseht, Aruseht had not lost faith in him. The Handmaiden had been sent by the Serpent God to shepherd him toward enlightenment. She allowed him to hold and to provide, leading the crusade to bless others with knowledge. Thus was his place in the coven."
))
(set: $noteArusehtName to (dm:
'name', 'Orphan',
'description', "Calaieans, as well as followers of other religions, referred to Aruseht exclusively in the diminutive, Seht, in a symbolic practice to and as a deterrent against conjuring His full name. To Sehtians--as to Jsceythycan traditions of ages long upheld--the diminutive form of a name held neither negative nor positive connotations by creed. Sethians used Aruseht and Seht interchangeably, fearlessly, for the Serpent God took the form of any and all things.
Unlike the relatively static naming conventions of the Caireleon Empire, where one's name remained unchanged or slightly varied throughout one's life, individuals in Jscethyca could bear many names over the course of their lives. Consistency in usage aided the solidification of one's identity depending on their social surroundings.
Sehtians gave particular precedence to titles and clan names over personal names. During momentous periods, some individuals could undergo Naamagisei, the course in which they forsook their personal names in order to devote their entirety to the Corruptor, Knower of All.
Not often by choice, one might undergo Vaaragisei, losing one's clan name and emblem, or kamon. Treasonous schemers might change allegiance by discarding one kamon for another, if their new allies would have them. Dishonored individuals might give up their kamon and become hermits in order to save their family from association. Most shamefully, the abandonment or forceful ejection of an unwanted member of society stripped one of one's kamon and subsequently turned one into an orphan.
Thus had the Handmaiden become the orphan.
Lorcis had somehow invented and come to believe a revision of her tale of separation, how she had become like a wandering Agnithra mendicant after slaughtering the entirety of her coven and loved ones. She had not found the time or place to come around to explaining the full story to him, then the others in the institution began learning of these tall tales shaping her mysterious history, and there was little point in undoing the young witches' enthusiasm. Additionally, she permitted herself to be somewhat flattered by such high regard of her capabilities. Metaphor gave mortal dreams. The Handmaiden was not above imagination herself. She was not above her past.
Aruseht's reward to those who studied His word was not treasures, good fortune, independence, or freedom. It was acknowledgment of duty. Her sacrifices showed her that with so much influence, a high priestess held so little power. Her duty to Him was not as a high priestess after all. This knowledge, her elders had tried to suppress by carving deeper into their idol's flesh, shaping and reshaping till her bones refused break under their blade. Seht knew she had never liked being held down by the people around her.
The High Priestess abandoned her fledgling name, her coven's colors, and the burden of her kamon. Aruseht saw her fit to be remade. A handmaiden was servant, keeper, and shepherd. She had many responsibilities, but she had one purpose. The hand of Seht was His sword. She was to be His army. The Handmaiden's chronicles were far from flawless--mere mortal she was--and the shape of the coil turned where it willed. Battling through exhaustion proved grit. Aruseht rewarded accumulating history to those who persevered.
A little girl could not run from the gods. She could and would not erase the undercurrents of ancestral blood, but knowledge could be compartmentalized. These streams, she diverted to dark gorges and entombed in history. Aruseht would release them to her as He willed; otherwise, she kept her head high and aimed forward, not low and turned behind. It was her duty, by Aruseht's unfolding eyes, to direct unto her anointed's fellowship the same. Thus was her place in the coven."
))
(set: $noteLiterature to (dm:
'name', 'Sehtian Epic Literature',
'description', "Slaves of Seht were keepers of knowledge otherwise forbidden or forgotten, but they also wrote their own stories or reflections musing upon the plurality of existences. The literature was constantly changing, and paths and contradictions coexisted without the exclusion of the others. One arm of Seht could lie simultaneously where another could lie, spiritually and temporally. The parallel yet intersecting conundrum was so by the many hands of Seht, incarnated by the slaves acting in His name. The body of the snake coiled over and under itself, not a single circle but a layered and infinite cycle. The beginning and the end existed only as they were willed to exist, and did not where they were not, on the endless body of the serpent. Death was another life, and life was another death.
Slaves of Seht recognized His many depictions across Sehtian schisms. As Aruseht was a god of coils or tangles, branches and webs, and poison and venom, he was most commonly given to sight in chimeric form combining human, serpentine, cervine, or arachnoid parts. Along with illustrations as an aspis of corruption, He could appear as a saiga of lore, a markhor of wisdom, an elk of truth, or a goat of defilement. His horns, antlers, or limbs created a web, for rings of the endless protrusions or infinite tangles of the tines indicated discrete existences yet existences of the same body bearing the living, the dead, and the in-between. The bisected god was also a hybrid, acknowledging and encompassing all that was Him and all that was not, for those were one and the same.
Illustrious hermits, gymnosophists, and other ascetics were the main contributors to and keepers of Sehtian epic literature, criticism, and analyses. The Handmaiden herself had written several of her own revelations, but they had been destroyed by interferences inevitable in community and society. She had experienced change herself. With friendship and family had come betrayal."
))
(set: $noteExile to (dm:
'name', 'Exile',
'description', "Artrius Alecsus's self-exile could have been described as a hermitage, had he been pious. Varulvkyn were wanderers, and she suspected the blood of the Sea Wolves reverberated within his veins. The temperament of his ancestors could not be disregarded, as much as he suppressed it.
The Varulvkyn were ancient pagan or heathen Scarsgarans renowned for their ruthless raids and slave economy. They were warriors at sea as on land, much like their contemporaries the Agnithra, Jscethycan mendicants who subjugated populations in the name of their gods. Unlike the Agnithra, Varulvkyn extended into foreign lands out of primal greed, rather than in pursuit of higher purpose and sacred duty. The most fervent of Varulvkyn warriors were the notorious berserkers. Drink and drugs fueled berserkers into frenzied violence, and in their feverish state they were said to have stripped naked in the snow and descended upon their enemies with bare hands and teeth like bears and wolves. Met with the ultimate consequences of their warmongering, or assimilating with the people they conquered, full-blooded Varulvkyn were said to have facilitated their own cultural extinction and dissolved their bloodline.
The Old Ways were neither contradictory to nor destroyed by change. The most recent Scarsgaran-Caireleonic war had stirred the Varulvkyn ancient blood, reawakening berserkers in the midst of carnage, which suggested bloodlines accumulated and not thinned over time. Accounts pieced together from soldiers' letters and formerly confidential or redacted documentation revealed instances of Scarsgaran mercenaries betraying their homeland and pagan roots to serve the empire and the Circle. Like their ancestors, the modern berserkers were mercenaries driven and bought by simple things: money, land, fame, carnality. The ferocity of these mercenary individuals and bands came swiftly and unexpectedly, refusing law and integrity--perhaps even more so than the esoteric and austere Instruments of the Circle. Although their devastation alone could have been said to have tipped the war in favor of the Caireleon Empire, their savagery earned them unpopular sentiments from all. After the war, the Circle erased their contributions to the empire's victory. Witches did not forget. No longer needed, never wanted, the berserker mercenaries dispersed and disappeared into legend as their ancestors had centuries before.
Their blood remained. Although Artrius had not specified his role during the war, artifacts of his exile offered hints. In his isolated hovel, he had owned and employed Cairelic-issued arms, Scarsgaran weapons and traps, and tools of witchcraft. The exile was not simply a scavenger between borders--he was himself a sum and an artifact of them.
Although made up of the history around him, blood ties were severed, rather than spun, by the exile so that he had not a weave of identity but became a new strand, uncontainable and untouchable. The self-exile was not a victim of rejection, as were the scapegoat wolf and bastard child, but was the rejector. He had cast himself from struggles of power within and between nations by giving up his own in them. In doing so, he gained another: objectivity. The power of objectivity allowed insight, but it was a power without direction. Oaths, promises, and allegiance did not move him, who existed literally and logically without metaphor or allegory. He remained stagnant within his own musings, disconnected and lost to history.
Yet an exile could return to his society. In fact, one could profess he had not completely left, not under the eyes of the gods.
The night Lorcis had introduced Artrius to the institution, the Handmaiden had felt the second librarian before she had seen him. A disembodied voice, Artrius appeared to her first as a suspicion--a concept and not a person--who had the ability to touch her by neither gaze nor limb. His unseen presence foreshadowed a formidable individual, but when she came to face him, he could not look her in the eye. He spoke quietly and slowly in heavily accented Alaisean. She had underestimated him then, realizing later, then little by little, how manipulative he could be with the information he shared or withheld. The Handmaiden needed not to play his games, for rather than reduce him to parts, she only needed to add to his whole.
Artrius did have enviable ability. His polylingual proficiency exceeded Lorcis's repertoire, and the Handmaiden conversed with him in her own language, convenient as it was even as he spoke formally and ploddingly. His historical and cultural lessons for the young witches were detailed and patient, yet dry and monotone. He could reproduce Calaiean hymns, Saracielean classics, and Sehtian war songs in their unique timbres, but he exhibited no adulation of musical and lyrical wonders. He had demonstrated various traditional dances, gymnastic feats, and battle forms but applied motions technically, mechanically, and efficiently. He had once countered the Handmaiden in a sparring match by employing Sehtian philosophy against her. At the time, even as she knew him to suppress extravagances, he seemed to indulge cruelly in her humiliation. She might have accepted and relished the few times Artrius appeared to enjoy pain as giver or as receiver, but his imitations of culture limited the respect she could allow him.
His forays into religions led her to question the meaning behind his extensive learning, for although skillful and erudite, he possessed no devotion to any god. This lack of faith revealed he had learned techniques, not art--not ways. He was more dangerous in such a manner without divine moral guidance, for without an established standard, conviction came not from his own will but the fickle wills shifting around him.
She had concluded that Artrius was too defined in his diversity to become a thrall. Not that she was unable to turn him into a thrall, he was more useful to her and to the Horned Aspis by bearing his own mind. The mind did need refinement yet. Heathenism made beauty and idols of ignorance and blasphemy. The heathen did not know as much as he let on.
Aruseht did not forsake nonbelievers. He encircled them. In an attempt toward independence, Artrius had made himself a mercenary to circumstance. He did as commanded without question, for he operated not by faith nor by loyalty but by necessity. However, faith was necessity. Blood was an inevitability. One who did not belong could not help but perform rituals of belonging. The exile was still--despite his heathenism, the rejection of his ancestry, and desire for invisibility--a functioning servant of the Master who controlled him. Artrius fulfilled his role as an unseen, unheard, will-less machine of the gods. Thus was his place in the coven."
))
(set: $noteBastard to (dm:
'name', 'Bastard',
'description', "The Handmaiden found herself resigning to Lorcis's projects one after another, whether it was a spontaneous conception or a long term experiment presented with sudden and immediate pertinence. One of his interests was his thrall, a Duskman of unknown but most likely illegal, immoral, and impure parentage who had been given up to a Calaiean orphanage as an infant. A rough child, he had been eventually discharged from the adoption game not by winning a new set of parents in the appropriate timeframe, but by failing to.
Like in most parts of Jscethyca, religion made law in Caireleon, but Jsceythycans were more forgiving of baseborn and half-bloods than their northern neighbors, for purity was not an intrinsic virtue to be venerated to the scorn of impurity. Nonetheless, one could not simply bleed away the ways of their ancestors. Children conceived out of law were expected to function within the system while ostracized from it. Children produced by two different ethnicities were compelled to choose allegiance to one over the other.
Although cast away by one's origins, a hybrid needed not to reject them. While neither homeland fully accepted them, hybrids inherited the whole of both worlds. Pride in one's mixed blood, along with risks of shame and pretense ingrained in it, formed one's identity--one's independence. Ambitious hybrids measured and defined their own place in the liminal space between two worlds. They created a third one.
Hemlock Weald was its own world at times, and it was these ruins' rotten hollow into which Gavril had crawled. The coven shared him. Maintenance of the building and grounds, ingredient and supply acquisition, and transportation were among the labor designated to him. On occasion, he might produce musical entertainment by bow or tenor, or he danced a reel and tempted the weaker witches into his arms. He was useful in rituals. In none of these did he command an expertise, merely flirted an adequacy. Seht be affirmed, he was more often a liability than not. He wandered for extended periods, cavorted in various states of undress, and pleasured himself with outside company as if his master did not provide enough. From red hair to red marrow, Gavril Corragain was a thoroughbred bastard.
Lorcis had been attempting to conjure out of the thrall an ambition to grasp one's unique significance in the time and space allotted one's mortality, but with crudeness in his tongue and insolence in his smirk, Gavril resisted excellence. He was receptive only to a degree, such as learning to somewhat retain a sense of his duties by mental lists yet being unable to read and follow instructions given on paper. When the pet did make the smallest gains, Lorcis permitted them together into overindulgent celebrations plenty enough, for which he knew the rogue all too inclined.
The Handmaiden did not dream as wistfully as the Anointed and understood his thrall to be more suited to subjugation. Gavril fell into the grasps of demons and gods by an inconsistent consciousness, sometimes by paroxysms and sometimes by sleepwalking. Their first encounter had transpired upon his wandering in a sleepbound state directly into her campsite, urinating into her cooking fire and spit, then leading her to Hemlock Weald Institution without one reviving wink. It was a true sign of Aruseht if ever there was one.
After joining with the Anointed, the Handmaiden continued to guide Gavril during her midnight vigils along the institution perimeters. He had little to no recollection of sinking or drifting, nor of vague confessions made to her in limbo: indelible fears, parasitic desires, the demon dog, the one-eyed goat. While he was asleep, she began testing his susceptibility to thralldom through inquiries, then by narration, then by increasing suggestions to imperatives. Gradually his warm blood would turn cold, and he would be able to carry out--and be absent of resistances to carrying out--the greater demands of Seht without question, hesitation, or thought.
However in his present waking hours, he remained shattered and scattered, uncertain and dependent, even as he deceived himself into an illusion of autonomy. Bearing knowledge was not sufficient for freedom and transformation, nor was the application of it. Devotion changed worlds. The rogue lacked faith. He lacked pride. He lacked shame. Without shame, without dignity. The thrall needed none. He was no more than--as Cairelics were fond to quip--a witch's bitch. Thus was his place in the coven."
))
(set: $noteAruseht to (dm:
'name', 'Aruseht the Honest',
'description', "Ancient Jscethycan polytheistic traditions centered on the Darraga pantheon. Creation came both from dispersion to concentration, and from center to perimeter, where the concentration or center was always changing and infinite, and the outer spread or perimeter was boundless and likewise limitless. Gods of Darraga began as low forms from the core of the earth--animals, humans, and demons. Those most worshipped and nourished from the sacrifices made to them ascended into godhood. So was the rise of the demon Casha, the brother-traitor of Darradin, God of Life and Death.
Casha was a gentle judge under his brother's kingdom. His judgment upon those who wronged Darradin was lenient--too much so, some believed. Whispers told of dissatisfaction between the brothers, and the counselor-generals of Darradin defamed Casha for treachery and disloyalty. Counselor-General Aruseht, however, advised both brothers on the matter, visiting them each in their own private chambers. His serpent tongues entered their ears and painted their brains thoughts upon the preservation of their relationship and their people. Yet they each heard only words they wanted to hear, which reinforced their own dispositions. Darradin, believing his brother to be plotting against him, dismembered Casha in sixths and then consumed his heart.
Against the dissuasion of the other counselor-generals, who celebrated Casha's death and the death of dissonance, Aruseht presented perspectives to his commander once again. Darradin returned life to Casha but could not return the heart. The judge Casha saw his own brother-father guilty and unrepentant, and with no heart could he no longer love him. From his judgment came likeminded revolutionaries, armies, and worshippers. He slew his brother-father in the same manner of his own murder and found that both hearts inside had shriveled. As he ascended, he nominated himself Calaiel, the true God of Life and Death. Darradin's end and Calaiel's hence-pronounced independence ushered the exodus of other counselor-generals, as wars continued to stir them apart and fostered the dissolution of the Darraga conglomerate. Aruseht, all said, had said too much.
The polytheistic civilizations of Jscethyca, from the Jsana peaks to the Cashlhi coast, crumbled as people scattered into smaller monotheistic societies, then flourished again from these forsaken cults into newfound dominant religions. In each religion, their own truths were formulated to the exclusion, and the provocation, of others. They chose and fashioned their own enemies. To Calaiel, people without faith in his judgments were heretics and heathens. To others, Calaiel became the Traitor, the Forgiven, and the Heartless.
Of the Darraga counselor-generals, it was only Aruseht who saw all, believed all, and accepted all. And by this, to all, was he the enemy: the Traitor as well, the Devil, the Whisperer, the Manipulator, the Knowing, the Corruptor. His shrouded followers became Slaves of Seht, keepers of records otherwise censored and destroyed by aggressors. The forbidden history of the Darraga pantheon, its convolutions, and its imperfect, inconvenient truths threatened the fundamental beliefs of younger established religions. Knowledge and education rotted their worshippers through the temptation and indulgence of possibilities outside their manufactured boundaries.
Those who could not accept another truth could not face Aruseht the Honest, God of Knowledge, of Wisdom, of Corruption. They covered their eyes so that they could not behold His, and they covered their ears so that His tongues could not twist them with powerful words. Those who feared Aruseht the Honest feared most the truths of themselves."
))
(set: $noteAmbassador to (dm:
'name', 'Ambassador',
'description', "While forest witches in Caireleon were illustrated as a sordid and wicked variety, field witches were depicted as gruesome beneath their idyllic beauty and kindness. They were pastel in sunlight, surrounded by peaceful animals and mystic elements such as mossy runic stones, carved linden trees, or welcoming fairy doors. Their braided hair was bedecked in wildflowers and herbs, and they glided barefoot along paths beside groves, grottos, streams, or farmland fields.
Many field witches, including the coven Ivie Fragaria had been born into in Daley, Caireleon, observed festivals which celebrated or encouraged communing with demonkind. Independent field witch communities lived alongside demons, who were to them immortal forces of nature much like Scarsgaran elemental and bestial spirits, as several witchcraft practices in Caireleon had originated from Scarsgar. Sethian scholars likened the field witches' demons to yokai of provincial Jscethycan pagan religions, as the demons were not gods themselves but were manifestations of transcendental truths worshipped and delivered offerings and sacrifices in return for favors.
For the field witches, the cyclic nature of demons' harmony moved with day and night, the seasons, emotions, and generations. This cyclical nature meant demons showed a variety of emotions and growth. They could be appeased, predicted, and conversed with. Cordial and honest communication--not trickery--was paramount to a healthy relationship with the demons living in and around one's community. Communication was through rituals and ceremonies celebrating them, honoring their contributions and the relationship with the community. Fire, tears, blood, and sex fueled their rituals, which opened arms to all.
Ivie devoted herself to these ceremonies. She was a servant to the Dark Lord, otherwise known as the Twilight Knight or the Pumpkin Prince, a representation of the earth, land, and elements who ruled over the demons around her hamlet. She described her prince as tall, dark, and commanding; collared cloak billowing; whip at corseted waist; and spurred boots to the thigh. It was no surprise that her idealized champion was a stereotype of villains in Cairelic fairy tales: warlocks, vampire lords, liches, and the mastermind sort. This was the outfit of the scarecrow she kept in the institution conservatory. The scarecrow had been dressed by her mothers from the garments stripped off a passing highwayman, whom they had sacrificed and then planted off the road before Ivie had been born. He had since then been growing into a yew.
The Handmaiden suspected Ivie's naïvety had much to do with her unattainable idealist endeavors and failed rituals. A deep, old scar crossed Ivie's cheek from eye to chin. Although she had dismissed its significance, the Handmaiden knew it was a mark of failure. The field witches were fatalistically optimistic in the face of failure, believing demons to be changeable as humans, beings which could be fixed or healed. The Handmaiden could accept creatures as they were and could respect the divine unfathomable. Ivie could not and hoped to see the best in each and every one. If not a redeeming trait in someone, she wanted at least some use out of a person. Everyone was a resource. Or a tree.
Ivie exhibited curiosity in others' interests and matched their enthusiasm when she needed attention or favors from them. She played childish games with the young witches. She allowed the thrall to bind her. She shared Lorcis's forays in demonology. The witch and the warlock encouraged one another's romps into folklore and history in a careless manner. They humanized demons. Nevertheless, they sought harmony above all. Ivie sought harmony above all.
The Handmaiden was not immune to the potency of the witch's gestures. In one case, Ivie's enthusiasm for Jscethycan cuisine opened common ground for them. The Great Serpent knew the Handmaiden could never serve Him as a gymnosophist, for she so much enjoyed tailoring dishes toward her own perfection. More than operate a kitchen without misstep, she and Ivie could share the same cauldron.
The witch's deliberate, honest friendliness invited collaboration and conspiracy, allowing her to shape others through their own desires. To humans or demons, was she confidant, mother, sister, and lover. To Aruseht, was she a carving knife with many heads. Thus was her place in the coven."
))
(set: $noteJanitor to (dm:
'name', 'Janitor',
'description', "Animism gave foundation to folklore and religions across Jscethyca. Animate and inanimate objects, including concepts and fears, were bestowed their essence by the inhabitation of yokai: the alluring in-between ones. Yokai could claim responsibility for many strange and seemingly impossible or unexplainable happenings in the human realm. The attribution of phenomena to apparitions worldwide across separate, independent cultures was a phenomenon itself. In contemporary times, the Handmaiden found the preservation of animism stronger at home than in the younger lands she walked.
Ancient Jscethycan yokai's variance in culture, needs, and interactions reflected a mutual experience gained by the relationships formed between demon and human. Humans could learn from demons, and demons from humans. Several yokai expressed their peaceful side as equally as their angry, vengeful side, for they shifted along gradients as readily as humans.
Likewise, Old Cairelic and Scarsgaran tales were inundated with monsters, faeries, or spirits tricking, tempting, or aiding humans. Calaielism hegemony, however, shriveled the two countries' folkloric roots and replaced them with myths and legends which promoted their creed. The Circle's manipulation of a mass ignorant population ensured demons were reduced into one entity malevolent to victimized humans. Calaieans narrowed the definition of demon so as to relinquish responsibility of their pains to an outside force--it was not they who were inherently false or unlearned, but the temptation of demons and the demons' master which led them astray. The greatest of all evils was Seht the Corruptor, the Devil, first traitor to Calaiel's court of angels, whose sins were curiosity, introspection, and the audacity to question decreed judgment and to seek objective knowledge.
Begot by their master, demons were less sentient spirits and more sources of pure harm and evil, a moral threat requiring shepherding and eradication. An old Calaielean purification ritual was to carve into a goat's head the brimstone brand--to make it carry the sins of the people--then cast the lamed goat out into the wilderness. The convenience of a scapegoat gave them the power to apply to themselves the purest grace of the Judge: innocence. Other cleansing rituals were to lay hands directly upon the stubbornly afflicted. Demons might be compelled to release a victim through repeated physical impact upon the host, application of sustained mental distress or fatigue, or a combination of the banishments collectively known as exorcisms, till good prevailed over evil. Calaieans sought not balance but dominance, not harmonization but one sustained note. Yet value could not exist without a counter. It was a self-destructive path toward dominance without a domain.
The Handmaiden thanked Seht that modern academics around the world were not defeated by the shortsightedness imposed by the Circle, imaginative as they were. Studies on demonology serving Lorcis's foundation identified the reprisal of intercultural structures remarking upon the diversity of demons: 1) the classification of demons into courts bringing of fortune and bringing of misfortune; 2) the existence of more or less neutral spirits of nature, which denied neither good nor bad; and 3) undead, goblins, trolls, and ogres often malevolent or having had been maligned, thus begetting their current state of unrest, needing of aid, or trouble-making. The categories were societal, for demons--like humans and other animals--were two-faced, well-rounded, and capricious.
Jscethycan witches were held in high regard, a standing enjoyed by shamans, high priestesses, war witches, and the Agnithra mendicants--all venerated for their precognition and ability to communicate with local yokai on behalf of their communities. Many aligned themselves with the most common demons with which they communed, creating such categories as soothsayers, enchanters, druids, necromancers, anthropomancers, and thaumaturgists. Like the diversification of demons, witch classifications were open to reimagining, evolution, and conversation.
Witches in Caireleon were less fortunate. By Calaiean standards similarly applicable to demons, they were a homogenous, stagnant evil challenging the righteous judgment of Calaiel. Much less tolerated, they were hunted throughout the empire's history up to the present day. Harrow Les, the forest obscuring the center of the empire, concealed the independent and fugitive witches, and it was behind the darkest brambles of the forest where the deepest witches were hidden.
Throughout the Caireleon Empire, the deep witches were called babushkyn, from the Scarsk word for grandmother, although elderly women were not the only scapegoats. Babushkyn were witches who had become so dedicated to and experienced in their craft that they were like demons themselves, able to pass between and exist within different worlds. Having remained amongst demons for extended and sustained periods, many babushkyn had forgotten--or had chosen to discard--their own human relationships, human language, and human memories. Their habits deviated from Cairelic and Calaiean sensibilities, which eventually outlawed their activities and practices as well as imposed upon them an outsider status. The babushkyn's Old Ways made them marks upon which Cairelics could lay blame for the woes of their civilization.
All this, the Handmaiden had recovered from her studies in order to begin comprehending Calberus, the man in the basement.
Calberus seemed to perceive things others could not, but others did not understand this. Though an insect had done naught but alight upon a doorway to groom its grotesque antennae and mandibles, it was the inclination of a wary servant to smash the creature too appalling to his mind's eye. While Calberus's monstrous stature and appetite invited a villager's fear and subsequently a champion's attempt at glory, to them, he was not a magnificent beast but a lesser creature--blind, deaf, dumb, deformed, and dangerous; antithesis to good, beautiful, virginal, and symmetrical humanity. He bore scars of a man once bound and tortured, groomed to self administration and to gory expression in kind.
Fear of him was not unwarranted. He ate people. Humans were prey as any other, especially amongst their own species. Although Calberus could employ no human spoken language with which he might defend himself from encounters, physical prowess had sufficed. The blade and projectile scars upon Calberus's back suggested he had been aggressed by consequence of a presumptuous warrior's opportunistic ploy or an aspiring paragon's eagerness. The Handmaiden had examined his form in full but had lost count of the scars dividing his body, some crinkled closed and others like parasites trapped beneath his skin. She had once entertained the thought of, too, piercing him through the breast to test his immortality. Evidence of previous attempts at vanquishing him indicated how unwise such a maneuver would have been.
The Handmaiden could not make of him babushkyn or demon, or something yet to be defined. Even with questionable mortality, Calberus above all appeared to be a simple man confined by his own mind. He kept to the basement most times, and he cleaned carcasses and corpses, like a janitor of the institution. Thus was his place in the coven."
))
(set: $noteLetters to (dm:
'name', 'Letters',
'description', "The child had seemed curious of the logographic characters etched down Gavril’s lower back. He had recently been employed as secret correspondence between accomplices who knew enough of the Jscethycan language to mangle the letter onto his skin. It was an elementary note and rhyme of the licentious sort, ripe with incorrectly written characters asking for rendezvous at a certain time and place in the city.
Writing letters on the body of a thrall was a practice by Jscethycan nobles, warriors, or poets who expressed their learned thoughts or art through flesh sacrifice. Throughout history, nobles and commanders would post their cherished thralls bearing diplomatic messages to their counterparts, signifying honor, trust, and respect. A thrall's body could contain multiple exchanges, as depicted by the piece of skin on display at the Gallowvalsk Museum of World History of the young boy delivered between General Yashagara Aserahn and General Asaiko Jsarath during their wartime rivalry. Poets might also carve verse onto their thralls to be read following a specific order upon the body as a puzzle or experience, such as echoing waterfalls from the scapulas, or as a coastal wave encircling the torso from nipple to nipple. The skins of captured thralls bearing literature and philosophy were sometimes preserved by conquering forces, that advanced enemy arts, technology, and wisdom were not obliterated but absorbed. Such was how Scholar-Witness Rezaiel's teachings survived the Nagani clan's insurrection and domination.
No story nearly as elaborate had been set upon Gavril's backside. The message he bore was crude and trivial, but it was a job no less. The Handmaiden suspected sheltered but wealthy Cairelics were at play. How much they had paid him to be a pawn in their game most likely did not corroborate."
))
(set: $noteBloodsoul to (dm:
'name', 'Bloodsoul',
'description', "The Handmaiden did not seek memories, for they were behind her while she could only march onward. Only by Seht's grace did memories come to revisit her when she was most vulnerable.
She and her brother had been born into the coven like entwined snakelets--she, crushing his throat in her hands and he, silent and purple--from the sacrificial womb of their mother, the High Priestess of Seht. Their father welcomed them by his own hand and knife, then disappeared from the coven and clan forever.
Their childhood was fleeting. Her brother had been sickly, weak in body but, as the Serpent willed, strengthened in mind and spirit by His voices. Among her tasks not as high priestess but as sister, she had combed his long black hair, dressed him in loose gowns so that he would not be pained by leather and bone armor, and held him in her bed so that he would be sheltered from the storms. In their growing years, she saw him only when the coven or the Horned Aspis allowed: during conferences, rituals and hunts, and the nights when the Serpent wrapped them within His own writhing body. During forms, she had once bruised him with a taunting jab for which she had been scolded. She wondered were she to cry, would she look like him, her frail brother?
They studied their respective duties apart for many days, weeks, months, and years. His voices would seek or make up excuses to have him see her: a meeting concerning teahouse fuel efficiency during the most bountiful season, a joint survey on the size of tribute boxes, or surprise nameday gifting of trivial items the voices said she would enjoy. She had.
On the eve of their Third Coil, he as the Yet-Anointed raised a gem-ringing horned headdress and crowned her High Priestess. He swore to serve her and Aruseht. She as the High Priestess cut her finger upon her sword and smeared her blood onto his forehead, anointing him with the power of Seht granted her as high priestess. She swore to protect him. They forsook their names and ended their childish games.
Time crept upon her as the snake in the reeds. Their children--two girls--grew without her. She had once looked out her office window to spy the children and their hunting partners in a game, chasing or being chased by her brother-consort during the time allotted for lectures. A few of the ministers joined the pursuit in an effort to end the madness. The scene displeased her. She could not remember frolicking like a fool during her own childhood lessons--lectures, forms, or hunts.
Her duties became increasingly isolating. Although the shaman and the council ministers were devoted kanashibari, they were as equally faceless, passing, and absent. Ceremonies, rituals, and hunts collected the community together, but she was sat upon throne or destrier in blood-laced finery above them, distant from their Sehtian fluids. Her brother had requested private summons frequently, which she declined, for he had been abusing his access for personal, trivial gain. The shaman gave her the necessary reports on the coven which concerned her--she needed none of her brother's distractions. She could not remember speaking much to him in the years of her reign. The last time he spoke to her directly was the night their daughter was to die.
The Ophanim of Seht had come for the younger child. She had been bound and gagged in bed, frothing from the mouth and thrashing in the Anointed's embrace. Previously, the Handmaiden was told, the wound she had received from a lone wolf during a hunt had been sealed by red metal. When she could not drink, she had been held underwater in a deep tub till her fingernails snapped off into the wood. When she lashed out and attempted to bite others, she had been made to swallow a madstone. Although the High Priestess gave regular lessons to the coven about Aruseht's firstbound slave and left hand, the Dog of Death, and knew of rabies and lycanthropy, the shaman explained again to current company that the girl's suffering could not be cured--she had gained the sight of the beast and was returning to the Old Ways. Her eyes were wild and anticipatory, detecting none in the human realm but wisdom beyond. She bore knowledge of a different kind now--this was His plan for her.
Paper lanterns tied with red ribbons and marked with death verses of Seht illuminated the yurt. The moth-veil tickled their dim light, wings shattering the boundaries between realms. The council had prepared the ritual to allow the girl to pass, for they operated as the High Priestess's will with and without her. As she was an emissary of the Horned Aspis, so were they hers. As the dancers joined shadows within the yurt and clinked like Death's saliva upon the platter, her brother protested the ritual in passion. His cries, she found suddenly repulsive. To speak against the God of Knowledge without pause for logic, for introspection, or for simple thought--this had always been her brother's way. He had always revered the single mortal life over infinite divinity.
The High Priestess looked upon the small body gripped in His coils. He denied the girl’s dignity. She was an offering, a sacrifice, as so many before her who had been sewn into garb, hewn into instruments and weapons, or enchanted with gems and writ upon with invitations to demon guardians. She was, as were all fleshes, an implement toward enlightenment.
The shaman asked the Handmaiden how she would like to proceed. She chose the girl's path of departure to be the blade. She offered the tanto to her brother, hilt first.
Realization paled his face and widen his eyes, but something more emerged from the depths of his pupils. Change. It was change--any change--which she had sought for him, he who had spent his entire life in the comfort of mortal company. He would know now greater things. This pleased her. She believed it would, in time, come to please him.
He bent over the thrashing child, and his long hair slipped over his shoulders. The drapery concealed the faces of the sacrifice and the condemned. The High Priestess allowed this intimacy, for Aruseht was not heartless. The girl's bloodsoul reddened the bed, and the drum and dancers beat for her heart till it beat no more. The Anointed and his voices, it seemed, fell as quiet as the dead he rocked in his arms.
It was then in the silence that the High Priestess saw from the shadows still in the corner, where light barely breathed, the darkening eyes of the other child."
))
(set: $noteAscended to (dm:
'name', 'The Ascended',
'description', "A memory the Handmaiden had given to Aruseht for safekeeping, He returned in part. This fragment was of the Ascended, the embodiment of fear and the understanding of fear--wisdom. She had known him previously as the Anointed. She had known him as her brother-consort.
He was a vessel for his voices. Nothing he did was done without their consultation, and they were capricious. He spoke with them aloud, sometimes whispering and sometimes screaming. When he and she were children, the Handmaiden had been confused by dialogue she had mistaken to be between them, for it was not her advice or her opinions which concerned him. He could be hesitant or defiant of her requests. Instead of asking him to act, she would have to make him, that the Horned Aspis were invited to enter him, and through him, to enter her.
With the grace of Seht, they produced two children, both girls. The shaman, a woman of many generations and experiences who had counseled their high priestess mother as well, saw promise in the younger girl as the successor. As the shaman's servant, the Anointed agreed. After all, the little one was much like the current High Priestess when she was her age, hearty and fearless. The High Priestess herself was inconclusive--the girl was impetuous and, by the Serpent's fang, uncouth--but she deferred to the council for matters of succession.
All children of the coven received interdisciplinary education and training. Verse, crafts, forms, and hunting supplied them with practical skills for survival amongst society and the wilderness. The younger daughter had been hunting with her sister when they crossed a lone wolf. They overcame the beast but not before it had scraped the younger's shoulder with its teeth. Not wanting to show incompetence, she had hidden the laceration for days.
The Left Hand of Seht, the Dog of Death, came for her. She had not even been near her Third Coil, marked only by the wolf and not the serpent. Her ceremony was modest, kept to the Anointed's yurt where he had refused to release her to Aruseht. The High Priestess remembered his passion, his blindness, mirrored by the frenzied girl in his arms. She did as she always had to do. She had to make him.
After their youngest daughter had returned to the Old Ways and to Seht, the ministers of the council began tutoring the elder child in the powers of the high priestess. They complained to the High Priestess of the girl's shyness and her stupidity. She would not make an effective leader without more effort, but she refused to cooperate even when her dead sister's name was invoked. The Anointed had become useless as well. He had become incapable of conversation with anyone, screaming and throwing vases at ministers who might try to rouse him from his misery. He spoke only to the voices now.
The High Priestess had been concerned with another encroaching threat at this time, a clan reviving an old grudge against her own. Her coven demanded her. The ministers hounded her. Her brother-consort and her daughter were ghosts at the corners of her eyes. She was to be one and yet all, and she became the indifferent storm which carried them all. Her reflections manifested through brush and paper. She entertained ideas about the hypocrisy of religions and the injustice members of ecclesiastical communities faced by one another, one neighbor against the other. Seht had granted her sight beyond self-preservation the way the council ministers scrambled for their stations, backstabbing one another or scheming behind hides without consulting the high priestess or anointed. A slave to oneself could not be a slave to Seht. Most of her writing had been produced in confusion, she was aware. Aruseht lay wrapped around her shoulders, guiding her hand in her quiet nights of madness.
The season changed as a wick warmed. The winter sun was bright. The Anointed had become quiet, the girl was learning, and the High Priestess's diplomatic ventures ensured alliances by blood sacrifice and bonds. It was in this time of peace when the High Priestess's writings were uncovered. The council found heresy. She found exhaustion.
In her internment, she learned her brother had also been imprisoned. He had finally spoken. He had confessed to having written half of the papers. Despite the violence brewed by the voices, he had always been a softhearted man. Guilt hurt him, but love, more.
The sister and brother were set before the council. Not once did he look upon her, nor of the people around him. The writings were a pretext. The coven had been scheming under her very hands. She could not look at a single set of their eyes without seeing in them greed and treachery.
And there, sat upon the throne of skin and bone, was their daughter. The girl smiled a smug curve of her lips that mirrored the arc upon her dead sister's throat. It was not only justice. It was poetic.
The shaman and the other council ministers had fed the child poison. She had misunderstood, finding in her position the power to make decisions and to determine outcomes, but a high priestess's administration was not her decision alone. She would learn this, the former High Priestess thought. She would learn and then regret.
Through the shaman's voice, the young High Priestess determined the prisoners could choose to undergo Vaaragisei--they could give up their clan name.
To lose one's honor was to forsake His Knowledge. Yet rather than face shame, one could transcend by water, loop, or blade. The blade demonstrated the gain of the highest wisdom at the acknowledgment and acceptance of a fear. Spilling not simply blood but one's bloodsoul proved dedication to the Serpent's circles of life and death.
In the formal ritual of choosing, the forsaken individual would be presented with one of two tools: a leather mask to the shameful, or a polished tanto to the wise.
The prisoners were returned to their separate cells. The ritual was set and given a time, the Anointed having made his choice, and the former high priestess having made hers.
On the determined night, they walked paths lined with paper lanterns, red ribbons, and thralls enraptured in dance. They entered the ceremonial hall by opposite entrances and knelt upon tasseled zabutons, facing the torchlit people and the spectral mountains beyond, a golden-threaded screen between them. The instruments of their choosing lay before them on a silk pillow. The former high priestess's mask had been lain so that she beheld not the face but the leather containment inside and the twisted cords sprawled like rent entrails.
The drums and the shaman led the ritual. Voices she had known growing up sounded foreign then. The shaman and a beat instructed them to raise their implements. The next beat commanded them to use them. With steady hands, the former high priestess aligned the mask to her face and knotted the straps around her head to the guttural squeal and groan of her brother's ascension.
Blood crept beneath the gold screen toward her knee. She had known, and Seht had always known, that her path would be one alone. She could rely on none but Him. The shaman and the council ministers served themselves. Her mother and her father had been only stories. One daughter was dead; the other, behind her. A young, doe-eyed thrall's sweet voice tread upon her introspection. The thrall held up a looking glass to her face.
Under the mask of human leather and bone, she could not see if she looked like him, her once-frail brother."
))(set: $observation to (dm:
'artriusReading', false,
'artriusGavril', false,
'artriusDoor', false,
'artriusWeapons', false,
'studyArtrius', false,
'studyMother', false,
'studyFather', false,
'studyChild', false,
'studyGavril', false,
'studyCalberus', false,
'gavrilMedicine', false,
'platterGlass', false,
'supperTendHearth', false,
'supperMoreDrink', false,
'afterTeaArtrius', false,
'afterTeaGavril', false,
'afterTeaMother', false,
'afterTeaFather', false,
'afterTeaChild', false,
'afterTeaLorcis', false,
'afterTeaCalberus', false,
'antivenin', false,
'witchSightCalberus', false,
'witchSightLorcis', false,
'witchSightArtrius', false,
'witchSightGavril', false
))
<!-- OBSERVATION DESCRIPTION -->
(set: $obsArtriusReading to "<div class='bullet'>Found Artrius reading a book and avoiding the pilgrims at the door.</div>")
(set: $obsArtriusGavril to "<div class='bullet'>Talked with Artrius about Gavril.</div>")
(set: $obsArtriusDoor to "<div class='bullet'>Learned that Artrius ignored the pilgrims because he believed they would give up and leave.</div>")
(set: $obsStudyArtrius to "<div class='bullet'>Studied Artrius.</div>")
(set: $obsStudyMother to "<div class='bullet'>Studied the mother.</div>")
(set: $obsStudyFather to "<div class='bullet'>Studied the father.</div>")
(set: $obsStudyChild to "<div class='bullet'>Studied the child.</div>")
(set: $obsStudyGavril to "<div class='bullet'>Studied Gavril.</div>")
(set: $obsStudyCalberus to "<div class='bullet'>Studied Calberus.</div>")
(set: $obsArtriusWeapons to "<div class='bullet'>Returned Artrius's Scarsgaran athame and Cairelic misericorde.</div>")
(set: $obsGavrilMedicine to "<div class='bullet'>Replaced Gavril's medicine with water.</div>")
(set: $obsPlatterGlass to "<div class='bullet'>Set the platter and glass in the scullery to be washed.</div>")
(set: $obsSupperTendHearth to "<div class='bullet'>Learned that the pilgrim man is the orphan child's uncle, the pilgrim woman is a nun from the Sacred School of the Mother Revenant, and the child will be sent to live at the sacred school.</div>")
(set: $obsSupperMoreDrink to "<div class='bullet'>Learned that the visitors are on a pilgrimage to the Amphitheatre of Angels in County Daley.</div>")
(set: $obsAfterTeaArtrius to "<div class='bullet'>After tea, Artrius warned the Handmaiden to not approach him.</div>")
(set: $obsAfterTeaGavril to "<div class='bullet'>Observed Gavril weeping in a corner of the kitchen after tea.</div>")
(set: $obsAfterTeaMother to "<div class='bullet'>Listened to the mother's concerns about Artrius.</div>")
(set: $obsAfterTeaFather to "<div class='bullet'>Listened to the father lamenting about Parish and the child.</div>")
(set: $obsAfterTeaChild to "<div class='bullet'>Spoke with the child about her father, Artrius, and Gavril.</div>")
(set: $obsAfterTeaCalberus to "<div class='bullet'>Observed Calberus's project moving within the dungeon.</div>")
(set: $obsAfterTeaLorcis to "<div class='bullet'>Checked on Lorcis after tea.</div>")
(set: $obsAntivenin to "<div class='bullet'>Remembered to retrieve antivenin for the viper's venom.</div>")
(set: $obsWitchSightCalberus to "<div class='bullet'>Detected signs of Calberus in witch sight.</div>")
(set: $obsWitchSightLorcis to "<div class='bullet'>Beheld Lorcis in witch sight.</div>")
(set: $obsWitchSightArtrius to "<div class='bullet'>Beheld Artrius in witch sight.</div>")
(set: $obsWitchSightGavril to "<div class='bullet'>Beheld Gavril in witch sight.</div>")(set: $score to (dm:
'itemName', 'Items',
'entryName', 'Entries',
'noteName', '$noteName',
'observationName', '$observationName',
'itemCount', 0,
'entryCount', 0,
'noteCount', 0,
'observationCount', 0,
'itemMax', 8,
'entryMax', 12,
'noteMax', 11,
'observationMax', 26
))(set: $score's itemCount to it + 1)(set: $score's entryCount to it + 1)(set: $score's noteCount to it + 1)(set: $score's observationCount to it + 1)(print: "<progress value='" + (text: $scoreCount) + "' max='" + (text: $scoreMax) + "'></progress>"){
<div class='score-option'>
(set: $scoreCount to $score's itemCount)
(set: $scoreMax to $score's itemMax)
(if: $scoreCount is $scoreMax)[
<div class='col-score-name score-done'>$scoreItem</div>
<div class='col-score-bar score-done'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
(else:)[
<div class='col-score-name'>$scoreItem</div>
<div class='col-score-bar'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
</div>
}{
<div class='score-option'>
(set: $scoreCount to $score's entryCount)
(set: $scoreMax to $score's entryMax)
(if: $scoreCount is $scoreMax)[
<div class='col-score-name score-done'>$scoreEntry</div>
<div class='col-score-bar score-done'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
(else:)[
<div class='col-score-name'>$scoreEntry</div>
<div class='col-score-bar'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
</div>
}{
<div class='score-option'>
(set: $scoreCount to $score's noteCount)
(set: $scoreMax to $score's noteMax)
(if: $scoreCount is $scoreMax)[
<div class='col-score-name score-done'>$scoreNote</div>
<div class='col-score-bar score-done'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
(else:)[
<div class='col-score-name'>$scoreNote</div>
<div class='col-score-bar'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
</div>
}{
<div class='score-option'>
(set: $scoreCount to $score's observationCount)
(set: $scoreMax to $score's observationMax)
(if: $scoreCount is $scoreMax)[
<div class='col-score-name score-done'>$scoreObservation</div>
<div class='col-score-bar score-done'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
(else:)[
<div class='col-score-name'>$scoreObservation</div>
<div class='col-score-bar'>(display: 'scoreBar')</div>]
</div>
}{
$anchorHeader
<!-- DISPLAY SCORE -->
<div class='grid-score'>
(display: 'scoreTitle')<br>
<div class='score-option'>(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionScoreInventory')</div>",'inventoryMenu')</div>
<div class='score-option'>(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionScoreJournal')",'journalMenu')</div>
<div class='score-option'>(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionScoreNotes')",'noteMenu')</div>
<div class='score-option'>(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionScoreObservation')",'observationMenu')</div>
</div>
(link: $toggleClose)[(replace: ?textScoreHeader)[(display: 'oViewScore')]]
}{
(replace: ?textScore)[(display: 'displayScore')]
(link: $toggleCloseProgress)[(replace: ?textScoreHeader)[(display: 'oViewScore')]]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $game's title)</h1>
<h2>(print: $game's series)</h2>
<h3>(print: $game's author) - (print: $game's version)</h3>
</div>
}
{
<div class='game-menu-container'>
(display: 'synopsis')
(link: "(print: $game's coverArtHover)")[(goto: $returnLocation)]
<div class='oc'>
(display: 'oContinueGame')
(display: 'oLoadGame')
(display: 'oStartGameNew')
</div>
|textScoreHeader>[](display: 'oViewScore')|textScore>[]
</div>
|textReset>[]
}- Header includes main navigation menu.
- Footer includes game menu, save menu, and return link/close button.{
<!-- PASSAGE HISTORY -->
(unless: (passage:)'s tags contains 'menu' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'event')[(set: $returnLocation to (passage:)'s name)]
<!-- MAIN HEADER -->
(unless: (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'event' or (passage:)'s name contains 'gameInfo' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'endStory' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'title')[(display: 'navMenu')]
}{
<!-- RETURN LINK -->
(if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn')[<br>$oReturn]
(if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'endStory')[
<div class='oc'><br><br>(link: 'END')[(reload:)]</div>
|textScoreHeader>[](display: 'oViewScore')|textScore>[]
]
}{
<!-- MAIN FOOTER -->
(if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'event' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'endStory')[<!--do nothing-->](else:)[(display: 'gameMenu')]
}{<span class='b'>$oClose</span>}{
<nav>
<div class='col-nav-left'><div class='b'>
(display: 'bInventory')
(display: 'bJournal')
(display: 'bNotes')
(display: 'bObservations')
</div></div>
<div class='col-nav-right'>
(display: 'cardMenu')
</div>
</nav>
}{
(if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'game-menu')[
<footer><div class='grid-footer'>
<div class='col-footer-left'>(display: 'bGameInfo')</div>
<div class='col-footer-right'>(display: 'bChangeGameTheme')(display: 'bChangeFontSize')(display: 'bClose')</div>
</footer>
]
(elseif: (passage:)'s tags contains 'title')[
<footer><div class='grid-footer'>
<div class='col-footer-left'></div>
<div class='col-footer-right'>(display: 'bChangeGameTheme')(display: 'bChangeFontSize')</div>
</footer>
]
(elseif: (passage:)'s tags contains 'menu')[
<footer><div class='grid-footer'>
<div class='col-footer-left'>(display: 'bGameInfo')</div>
<div class='col-footer-right'>(display: 'bClose')</div>
</div></footer>]
(else:)[
<!-- MAP -->
$anchorHeader
(display: 'map')
|mapThumbnailHeader>[](display: 'oViewMapThumbnail')|mapThumbnail>[]
<!-- FOOTER -->
<footer><div class='grid-footer'>
<div class='col-footer-left'>(display: 'bGameInfo')</div>
<div class='col-footer-right'>(display: 'bSave')(display: 'bLoad')</div>
</div></footer>
]
}{
<span class='b'>
(unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'gameInfo')[(linkgoto: '$gameInfo', 'gameInfo')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$gameInfo</span>", '$returnLocation')]
</span>
}{
<span class='b'>
(link: $oSave)[
(if: (savegame: $savefile))[$oSaved]
(else:)[(set: $dialogSaveFail to (dialog: "<h1>Save Failed</h1>The game could not be saved.", "Return."))]
]</span>
}{
<span class='b'>
(if: (saved-games:) contains $savefile)[
(link: $oLoad)[(loadgame: $savefile)]
(else:)[(set: $dialogLoadFail to (dialog: "<h1>Load Failed</h1>No saved story could be found.", "Return."))]]
(else:)[$oLoadNoFile]</span>
}Character card portraits.{
(display: 'bPortraitCardPlayer')
(if: $companionParty's companionCount > 0)[
(if: $companionParty's hasCompanion1)[(display: 'bPortraitCardCompanion1')]
(if: $companionParty's hasCompanion2)[(display: 'bPortraitCardCompanion2')]
]
}<div class='card'>(print: $player's portrait)<div class='card-name'><h1>(print: $player's title)</h1>(print: $player's nameFull)</div></div><div class='card-small hover-opacity'>(print: $player's portraitS)</div><div class='card-small opacity-highlight'>(print: $player's portraitS)</div><div class='card-decision'>(print: $player's portraitD)</div>(unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'portraitPlayer')[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCardPlayerHover')", 'portraitPlayer')](else:)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCardPlayerHoverHighlight')", $returnLocation)]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>Portrait of (print: $player's title)</h1>
<h2>(print: $player's nameFull)</h2>
</div>
}
{
<div class='grid-card'>
<div class='col-card'>(link: "(print: $player's portraitH)")[(goto: $returnLocation)]</div>
<div class='col-info-card'>(print: $player's description)</div>
</div>
}
$oTop{
(if: $entryCheckCauldron's done and not $entryGetVenom's owned)[
(set: $player's portrait to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitS to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training small"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitD to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training decision"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitH to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training hover-opacity"></div>')
]
(elseif: $entryLocateArtrius's owned and not $endStoryEnabled)[
(set: $player's portrait to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-witch-sight"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitS to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-witch-sight small"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitD to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-witch-sight decision"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitH to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-witch-sight hover-opacity"></div>')
]
(else:)[
(set: $player's portrait to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-topless"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitS to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-topless small"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitD to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-topless decision"></div>')
(set: $player's portraitH to '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training-topless hover-opacity"></div>')
]
}- Game themes
- Font size<span class='b'>(linkrepeat: $bGameThemeName)[(if: not $gameThemeDark)[(display: 'gameThemeSetDark')](else:)[(display: 'gameThemeSetLight')]]</span>{
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-bg', '#f5f6f7')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-bg-semi-transparent', '#f5f6f7CC')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-bg-light', '#fafbfc')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-font-body', '#606162')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-font-light', '#969798')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-font-disabled', '#b4b5b6')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-link', '#728296')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-link-hover', '#425160')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-border', '#dcddde')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-border-transparent', '#f5f6f700')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-border-dialogue', '#c8c9ca')</script>")
(set: $gameThemeDark to false)
}{
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-bg', '#202122')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-bg-semi-transparent', '#202122CC')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-bg-light', '#404142')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-font-body', '#b4b5b6')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-font-light', '#b4b5b6')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-font-disabled', '#717273')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-link', '#aeb6c3')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-link-hover', '#c8c9ca')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-border', '#606162')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-border-transparent', '#60616200')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--color-border-dialogue', '#606162')</script>")
(set: $gameThemeDark to true)
}<span class='b'>(linkrepeat: $bGameFontSizeName)[(if: not $gameFontSizeLarge)[(display: 'gameFontSizeSetLarge')](else:)[(display: 'gameFontSizeSetDefault')]]</span>{
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--value-font-size-default', '0.93em')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--value-line-height-default', '1.7em')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--value-font-size-header', '150%')</script>")
(set: $gameFontSizeLarge to false)
}{
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--value-font-size-default', '1.2em')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--value-line-height-default', '2.0em')</script>")
(print: "<script>document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--value-font-size-header', '155%')</script>")
(set: $gameFontSizeLarge to true)
}Messages using <div class='m'></div>{<div class='m'>(print: $item's name) added to inventory.</div>}{<div class='m'>(print: $item's name) removed from inventory.</div>}{<div class='m'>(if: $player's gender is 'male')[(print: $player's name) updated his (print: $player's journalLC).](elseif: $player's gender is 'female')[(print: $player's name) updated her (print: $player's journalLC).](else:)[(print: $player's name) updated their (print: $player's journalLC).]</div>}{<div class='m'>(print: $player's name) noted (print: $note's name).</div>}{<div class='m'>(print: $companion1's name) and (print: $companion2's name) have joined (print: $player's name).</div>}{<div class='m'>(print: $companion1's name) and (print: $companion2's name) have left (print: $player's name).</div>}Manage companions.{
(set: $companion1 to $artrius)
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanion1 to true)
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanionArtrius to true)
(set: $companion2 to $gavril)
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanion2 to true)
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanionGavril to true)
(set: $companionParty's companionCount to it + 2)
(display: 'messageCompanionAddAll')
}{
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanion1 to false)
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanion2 to false)
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanionArtrius to false)
(set: $companionParty's hasCompanionGavril to false)
(set: $companionParty's companionCount to 0)
(display: 'messageCompanionRemoveAll')
}<div class='card'>(print: $companion1's portrait)<div class='card-name'><h1>(print: $companion1's title)</h1>(print: $companion1's nameFull)</div></div><div class='card-small hover-opacity'>(print: $companion1's portraitS)</div><div class='card-small hover-opacity'>(print: $companion1's portraitS)</div><div class='card-decision'>(print: $companion1's portraitD)</div>(unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'portraitCompanion1')[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCardCompanion1Hover')", 'portraitCompanion1')](else:)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCardCompanion1HoverHighlight')", $returnLocation)]{
<div class='header-main'>
#Portrait of (print: $companion1's title)
##(print: $companion1's nameFull)
</div>
}
{
<div class='grid-card'>
<div class='col-card'>(link: "(print: $companion1's portraitH)")[(goto: $returnLocation)]</div>
<div class='col-info-card'>(print: $companion1's description)</div>
</div>
}
$oTop<div class='card'>(print: $companion2's portrait)<div class='card-name'><h1>(print: $companion2's title)</h1>(print: $companion2's nameFull)</div></div><div class='card-small hover-opacity'>(print: $companion2's portraitS)</div><div class='card-small opacity-highlight'>(print: $companion2's portraitS)</div><div class='card-decision'>(print: $companion2's portraitD)</div>(unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'portraitCompanion2')[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCardCompanion2Hover')", 'portraitCompanion2')](else:)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCardCompanion2HoverHighlight')", $returnLocation)]{
<div class='header-main'>
#Portrait of (print: $companion2's title)
##(print: $companion2's nameFull)
</div>
}
{
<div class='grid-card'>
<div class='col-card'>(link: "(print: $companion2's portraitH)")[(goto: $returnLocation)]</div>
<div class='col-info-card'>(print: $companion2's description)</div>
</div>
}
$oTopMain game menus.(unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'inventoryMenu')[(linkgoto: $inventoryName, 'inventoryMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$inventoryName</span>", '$returnLocation')](unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'journalMenu')[(linkgoto: "(print: $player's journal)", 'journalMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>(print: $player's journal)</span>", '$returnLocation')](unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'noteMenu')[(linkgoto: $noteName, 'noteMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$noteName</span>", '$returnLocation')](unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'observationMenu')[(linkgoto: $observationName, 'observationMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$observationName</span>", '$returnLocation')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $player's name)'s $inventoryName</h1>
</div>
}
{
<div class='grid-menu'>
<div class='col-list'>(display: 'itemList')</div>
<div class='col-info'>|textInfo>[]</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $player's name)'s (print: $player's journal)</h1>
</div>
}
{
(display: 'entryMedicateAnointed')
(display: 'entryReturnWeapons')
(display: 'entryCheckMedication')
(display: 'entryTakePlatterToScullery')
(display: 'entryCheckCauldron')
(display: 'entryCordialSupper')
(display: 'entryCordialTea')
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'entryGetVenom')]
(if: $entryApplyVenom's owned)[(display: 'entryApplyVenom')]
(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'entryLocateArtrius')]
(if: $entryLocateGavril's owned)[(display: 'entryLocateGavril')]
(if: $entryLocateChild's owned)[(display: 'entryLocateChild')]
}
$oTop{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $player's name)'s $noteName</h1>
</div>
}
{
<div class='grid-menu'>
<div class='col-list'>(display: 'noteList')</div>
<div class='col-info'>|textInfo>[]</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $player's name)'s $observationName</h1>
</div>
}
{
(if: $observation's artriusReading)[$obsArtriusReading](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's artriusGavril)[$obsArtriusGavril](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's artriusDoor)[$obsArtriusDoor](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's studyArtrius)[$obsStudyArtrius](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's studyMother)[$obsStudyMother](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's studyFather)[$obsStudyFather](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's studyChild)[$obsStudyChild](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's studyGavril)[$obsStudyGavril](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's studyCalberus)[$obsStudyCalberus](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's artriusWeapons)[$obsArtriusWeapons](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's gavrilMedicine)[$obsGavrilMedicine](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's platterGlass)[$obsPlatterGlass](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's supperTendHearth)[$obsSupperTendHearth](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's supperMoreDrink)[$obsSupperMoreDrink](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's afterTeaMother)[$obsAfterTeaMother](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's afterTeaFather)[$obsAfterTeaFather](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's afterTeaChild)[$obsAfterTeaChild](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's afterTeaArtrius)[$obsAfterTeaArtrius](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's afterTeaGavril)[$obsAfterTeaGavril](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's afterTeaCalberus)[$obsAfterTeaCalberus](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's afterTeaLorcis)[$obsAfterTeaLorcis](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's antivenin)[$obsAntivenin](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's witchSightCalberus)[$obsWitchSightCalberus](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's witchSightLorcis)[$obsWitchSightLorcis](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's witchSightArtrius)[$obsWitchSightArtrius](else:)[$observationHidden]
(if: $observation's witchSightGavril)[$obsWitchSightGavril](else:)[$observationHidden]
}
$oTop{
<div class='o'>
(for: each _item, ...$inv)[(linkrepeat: _item's list)[(replace: ?textInfo)[(set: $item to _item)(display: 'itemDescription')$goToAnchorHeader]]]
</div>
}
$anchorHeader#(print: $item's name)
(print: $item's description)
$oTop{
(if: $noteList's length is 0)[$observationHidden](else:)[
<div class='o'>
(for: each _item, ...$noteList)[(linkrepeat: _item's name)[(replace: ?textInfo)[(set: $note to _item)(display: 'noteDescription')$goToAnchorHeader]]]
</div>]
}
$anchorHeader#(print: $note's name)
(print: $note's description)
$oTopManage items.{
(set: $inv to it + (a: $item))
(display: 'addScoreItem')
(display: 'messageItemAdd')
}{
(set: $inv to it + (a: $item))
(display: 'addScoreItem')
}{
(if: $inv contains $item)[
(set: $inv to it - (a: $item))
(display: 'messageItemRemove')]
}{
(if: $inv contains $item)[
(set: $inv to it - (a: $item))]
}{
(set: $item to $itemMushrooms)
(display: 'invAddNoMessage')
}{
(set: $item to $itemMushrooms)
(display: 'invRemove')
}{
(set: $item to $itemCanteen)
(display: 'invAddNoMessage')
}{
(set: $item to $itemWeapons)
(display: 'invAddNoMessage')
}{
(set: $item to $itemWeapons)
(display: 'invRemove')
}{
(set: $item to $itemKajal)
(display: 'invAddNoMessage')
}{
(set: $item to $itemTools)
(display: 'invAddNoMessage')
}{
(set: $item to $itemVenom)
(display: 'invAdd')
}{
(set: $item to $itemVenom)
(display: 'invRemove')
}{
(set: $item to $itemAntivenin)
(display: 'invAdd')
}{
(set: $item to $itemAntivenin)
(display: 'invRemove')
}Manage journal entries.{(if: $entryMedicateAnointed's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryMedicateAnointed's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryMedicateAnointed's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryMedicateAnointed's owned)[(set: $entryMedicateAnointed's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryMedicateAnointed's done)[
(set: $entryMedicateAnointed's done to true)
(if: not $entryMedicateAnointed's scored)[
(set: $entryMedicateAnointed's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryCheckCauldron's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryCheckCauldron's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryCheckCauldron's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryCheckCauldron's owned)[(set: $entryCheckCauldron's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryCheckCauldron's done)[
(set: $entryCheckCauldron's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryCheckCauldron's scored)[
(set: $entryCheckCauldron's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryCheckMedication's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryCheckMedication's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryCheckMedication's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryCheckMedication's owned)[(set: $entryCheckMedication's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryCheckMedication's done)[
(set: $entryCheckMedication's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryCheckMedication's scored)[
(set: $entryCheckMedication's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryReturnWeapons's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryReturnWeapons's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryReturnWeapons's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryReturnWeapons's owned)[(set: $entryReturnWeapons's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryReturnWeapons's done)[
(set: $entryReturnWeapons's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryReturnWeapons's scored)[
(set: $entryReturnWeapons's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryCordialSupper's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryCordialSupper's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryCordialSupper's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryCordialSupper's owned)[(set: $entryCordialSupper's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryCordialSupper's done)[
(set: $entryCordialSupper's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryCordialSupper's scored)[
(set: $entryCordialSupper's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryCordialTea's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryCordialTea's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryCordialTea's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryCordialTea's owned)[(set: $entryCordialTea's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryCordialTea's done)[
(set: $entryCordialTea's done to true)
(if: not $entryCordialTea's scored)[
(set: $entryCordialTea's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryGetVenom's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryGetVenom's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryGetVenom's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryGetVenom's owned)[(set: $entryGetVenom's owned to true)(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')]}{
(if: not $entryGetVenom's done)[
(set: $entryGetVenom's done to true)
(display: 'addEntryApplyVenom')
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryGetVenom's scored)[
(set: $entryGetVenom's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryApplyVenom's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryApplyVenom's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryApplyVenom's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryApplyVenom's owned)[(set: $entryApplyVenom's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryApplyVenom's done)[
(set: $entryApplyVenom's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryApplyVenom's scored)[
(set: $entryApplyVenom's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryLocateArtrius's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryLocateArtrius's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryLocateArtrius's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(set: $entryLocateArtrius's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryLocateArtrius's done)[
(set: $entryLocateArtrius's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryLocateArtrius's scored)[
(set: $entryLocateArtrius's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryLocateGavril's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryLocateGavril's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryLocateGavril's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryLocateGavril's owned)[(set: $entryLocateGavril's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryLocateGavril's done)[
(set: $entryLocateGavril's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryLocateGavril's scored)[
(set: $entryLocateGavril's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{(if: $entryLocateChild's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryLocateChild's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryLocateChild's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryLocateChild's owned)[(set: $entryLocateChild's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryLocateChild's done)[
(set: $entryLocateChild's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryLocateChild's scored)[
(set: $entryLocateChild's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}Manage notes.{
(set: $noteList to it + (a: $note))
(display: 'addScoreNote')
(display: 'messageNoteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteAnointed)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteLiterature)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteAruseht)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteArusehtName)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteOldCult)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteExile)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteBastard)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteAmbassador)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteJanitor)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteLetters)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteBloodsoul)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}{
(set: $note to $noteAscended)
(display: 'noteAdd')
}Manage observations.{
(set: $observation's artriusReading to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's artriusDoor to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's artriusGavril to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's studyArtrius to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's studyMother to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's studyFather to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's studyChild to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's studyGavril to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's studyCalberus to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's artriusWeapons to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's gavrilMedicine to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's supperTendHearth to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's supperMoreDrink to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's antivenin to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's afterTeaArtrius to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's afterTeaGavril to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's afterTeaMother to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's afterTeaFather to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's afterTeaChild to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's afterTeaLorcis to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's afterTeaCalberus to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's witchSightCalberus to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's witchSightLorcis to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's witchSightArtrius to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}{
(set: $observation's witchSightGavril to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}Game title, shown on startup. "Start Story Here" on "title" passage.{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $game's title)</h1>
<h2>(print: $game's series)</h2>
</div>
}
{
<div class='game-menu-container'>
(display: 'synopsis')
(link: "(print: $game's coverArtHover)")[(goto: $game's startPassage)]
(display: 'displayTitleOptions')
</div>
}<div class='synopsis'>(print: $game's synopsis)</div>{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's entranceHall)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
They had begun speaking to the Handmaiden in a gracious manner. The mother at the door advanced from greeting to story, sharing her grimness through the netted veil of her wide-brimmed bonnet. The father stood stiffly beside flat-top trunks which had been deposited on the portico. They had placed a child in front of them, and the mother's gloved fingers wrinkled the crimson shawl draped over her shoulders. The girl was gangly and slightly hunched, not kin to them but a token of innocence and a device for charity. So convenient it was, this family of the Circle.
Twilight had urged the traveling family to encroach upon the institution grounds, uncovered by the diligence of their forest guide. Wise they were to have hired a bodyguard who comprised advantages deficient in their party.
Alas, their escort was the rogue.
Gavril stood off the road and out of the light, one hand tapping the pommel of his sword and the other hung over a coach gun sling--insurances against interlopers as the bow and quiver on his back were for game, wherever his allegiances lay. The mother had introduced him by a nod over her shoulder as "our man, Parish." He feigned ignorance of Hemlock Weald Institution even as he had buried seeds in the earth surrounding. Nearest alternatives were not so distant, he knew. The Handmaiden doubted his effort to dissuade the visitors from approaching.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Have we accommodations then?</div>
They had invited themselves to the Handmaiden's duties, having spied her shade in the hall through the windows. Her garments concealed the marks of her faith. The visitors had mistaken the old institution for harborage. In distant history it had once belonged to their people. The Handmaiden shut the door and started up the stairs, balancing on the tips of her fingers a platter bearing a glass of feverfew elixir. The mother rapped again, the windows rattled, and dust fell.
A drape darkened the anointed's room. Lorcis lay in bed, thumb and knuckle kneading into his eyelids. Moments earlier the Handmaiden had found him on the floor, moaning under an oppressive yet otherwise invisible pain. His attempt to compose a contemporaneous record of a lifelong ailment had been thwarted by the very subject of his research.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS What is that insufferable racket?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Pilgrims.</div>
She extended his medication, and he proceeded in obedience and desperation. A frailty had come over his common pallor, but the pink of his lips pursed in drink hinted a stable condition. The Handmaiden replaced the glass on the platter. He lulled into meditation, then reclined, hand over brow.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS My gratitude, Handmaiden. But these pilgrims--won't you have a proper conversation with them? Tea and the like?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I shouldn't need to. Our thrall sold himself to them.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS The scoundrel. I suppose he's sniffing for a handout from us as well.</div>
Lorcis laughed to himself, then groaned. Platter and glass still in hand, the Handmaiden knelt and gathered the beginnings of his report off the floor and aligned them on his desk. He had described the pain abstractly, poetically, and in deteriorating script: singing lights prodding the eyeballs, searing heat burgeoning from the brain, fantasized division and expulsion of viscera pressured by imminent dread, and an overwhelming yearning for oblivion. He wrote nothing of the voices in his head. The pilgrims's calls compounded his distress.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Not much help now, is he then? Please show the visitors courtesy, if only for a night, and then let them on their way.
You may wish to seek out Artrius for assistance. Unfortunately, I've not the constitution for receiving guests this evening. It is said that a virtuosic mind must be restrained by the laws of man, if not by nature, else catastrophic progress endanger the working masses and collapse a functioning society as we know it. Damn sayers.</div>
Lorcis permitted himself another complaint, rolled over toward the wall, and pressed his head onto it. The knocking continued. He returned to his former position, landing rueful eyes upon the Handmaiden.
She descended the stairs. The family had remained in their arrangement on the portico, and another tapping, lighter yet no less urgent, acknowledged that they could again spy her in the hall. She placed the platter and glass on a table by the entryway, then swung the door open.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The stable house.</div>
The family looked toward the stable house and the fallen witheroak which had crushed it. Gavril had drifted there and had propped himself against the remnants of the tree trunk. The father called him by whistle and name, then indicated the luggage. The rogue's hips tipped in swagger.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Calaiel will judge you dearly, sister. And shall we look forward to supper presently, or--</div>
The Handmaiden shut the door on the saccharine teeth dull behind the veil. She turned down the hall, where firelight from the library hearth revealed the basement stairs. An aroma of mushrooms and spices arose through the decayed floorboards. Supper would be soon ready, but the pilgrims could wait. Other duties beckoned.
(display: 'setPlayer')
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Go finish duties.', $startPassageLocation)</div>End story.{
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Face Lorcis.', 'endStory')</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $endStory's name)</h1>
</div>
}
Power could not be constant, and the Handmaiden and the Anointed were complementary as they were contradictory. She plucked a leaf out of her hair, awaiting his move.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS I'm fairly positive you understood that when I asked you to take care of the pilgrims, what I had in mind wasn't a massacre.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What have Calaieans to do here but to die?</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS I can think of plenty of engaging activities. According to your old ways, I suppose not much.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN My old ways are my current ways.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS You lived by the will of your elders and their god. I understand from my own formative years how a child of reverence can be condemned to adoration, kept and not loved. They made the child believe to want what they wanted.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Our experiences are not alike.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Perhaps we don't share the same experiences, but emotions can be relatable. I didn't intend empathy to be a challenge.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Too much honey in one's mouth rots the teeth. Get to the point before you lose your bite.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Understanding people <em>is</em> my point. Were they not people to you?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN <em>We</em> are not people to <em>them</em>. Had you listened to their moaning, you would have agreed.(if: (history:) contains 'selectedSitArtrius')[ Artrius agrees.]</div>
Lorcis let a devious chuckle break his lips.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Come now, Handmaiden. You know I'm far from advocating we consort with conscientious mortal hawks content in a membership to uniform civilization! Enemies can be useful, if not peaceful. Zealots, not so much. Hypocrites, hardly.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN They were hypocrites, as are all humans. Convenience is easily suited to the hypocrite, and all are guilty of coveting the hypocrite's freedom.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Might you not mistake a reformed individual for a hypocrite? Anyway, a potential opportunity turned into an inconvenience. We'll need to look into identification and possibly family trees, secure our perimeters and trails, reacquaint ourselves with backstairs personnel, fill out some paperwork, and so on in order to ensure those pilgrims were never here.</div>
He thought he was the only one in the coven who made plans. The Handmaiden could only hold patience with him for so long.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The work will be done for us by the newspapers. The family was deceived by a low-bred Duskain who lured them into the forest, murdered them, and disposed of their corpses by way of the fog. The greater population will be satiated.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Is that so?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I follow the serpent trail with confidence.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS I suppose you won't be changed. Can you not grant one kindness?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You are under the impression I can grant you anything. Kindness is selfish, and selfishness is survival. It was your privilege to be ignorant of such. You know now as I tell you and as the Serpent whispers. It is Aruseht who determines for us what we are able to know, and to know, to control.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Please do not forget I know what Sehtians do with control. The pilgrims were slaughtered.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The pilgrims were sacrificed. If not their blood to Seht, then ours. We are done here, Anointed. Leave.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS (if: (history:) contains 'selectedSitArtrius')[Gavril suspected the tea](else:)[Artrius told me about the tea]. Did you see what you wanted to see?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Aruseht does not show what we want to see but what we need to see. Leave.</div>
Swept by the wind, the butterflies abandoned the dead and frolicked too near Lorcis, and he blinked away their light battering. One last scrutiny of her held him in place, but before he started toward the building, another thought halted him.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS The pilgrim child. (if: (history:) contains 'selectedSitArtrius')[Emylon](else:)[Millie].</div>
The butterflies returned, and he smiled at them, or in amusement at the voices in his head, which were perhaps warning him to choose his next words with extreme care. The Anointed had never heeded them, those voices he could not understand.
(if: $observation's antivenin and (history:) contains 'selectedMarkNo')[
<div class='d'>$LORCIS You did look after her, didn't you?</div>
He glanced after the fleeing insects toward the forest and its twisting, mourning branches.
]
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal found her.</div>
The harvestman hauled the dray and its load toward the wilder southern wall of the institution, the burrowed ingress of the dungeon. When the cart was nothing but a distant growl, Lorcis again started toward the postern, hands pushed into his coat pockets, butterflies playing in his wake. He was displeased, but his moods always passed.
She was not upset with him, although he might have believed her belligerent. She had never coveted a friend. Friendship was a salve for those who lacked love. A handmaiden was not in want of love, for Aruseht fulfilled her. Aruseht had given her His body to walk upon, and wherever she tread, it was His pulse carrying her forward, always forward.
So was it His will that she pursue remembrance and yet not regret. She had no regrets. She could not have one. Into winter fell the sun, and out of winter rose the body anew, and the child was a child no more.
She ran cold fingers into her hair and pulled knotted tendrils free. She felt the small cut on her throat. In the morning light, surrounded by damp mist and clarity from the dying bonfire, her thoughts drifted to wherever Ivie and the young witches had gone--somewhere not too far, after all--and she wondered what the little imps were up to.Hemlock Weald Institution{
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneEntranceHall')[
<div class='o'>
(if: not $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'toLibrary')]
(display: 'toCellblock')
(display: 'toBasementHall')
(display: 'toYard')
(unless: $entryGetVenom's owned and not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'toInstitution')]
</div>]
(else:)[<div class='o'>(display: 'toEntranceHall')</div>]
}{
(if: $endStoryEnabled)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the forecourt.', 'locationInstitutionEnd')]
(else:)[
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneEntranceHall')[(linkgoto: 'Exit to the forecourt.', 'locationInstitution')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the forecourt.', 'locationInstitution')]]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's forecourt)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'institution1')](else:)[(display: 'institution0')]
{
<div class='o'>
(display: 'toStableHouse')
(display: 'toYard')
(display: 'toEntranceHall')
</div>
}Hemlock Weald Institution harbored the dead, and among the dead lay the witches. At once vacuous and vigorous, the forest soothed them by obscurity, but they were not so far away from others.
Sunlight faded quickly, and a glow in the fog marked the stable house down the path. Travelers did cross ways with the institution in moments few and ephemeral.(if: $observation's artriusDoor)[ They would have been on their way soon enough, the sage had said. Perhaps, the Handmaiden thought, but more yet would follow.]
The forest crept around the Handmaiden, shifting in place as if new and old waters overlapping and devouring one another. The blazed trail from the front door around the building corner to a glade, and past the glade to the yard, undulated side to side like a stalking river snake. The stables loomed over the crest of rubble, a crucified body jutted with spikes by its own broken skeleton.
The Handmaiden's cartography became less certain down the main road, where uprising witheroak roots had oveturned the setts. The more she thought of the land outside the institution, the faster the night and shadows moved in. The void in her memory materialized beyond the road and in the thicket as a black hole, which was surrounded by heavy mossy branches curling inward, beckoning her into the serpent's maw.
<div class='o'>(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(linkgoto: 'Climb into the hole in the forest.','locateChild')]</div>{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>Harrow Les</h1>
<h2>Thicket</h2>
<h3>Undone Cloth</h3>
</div>
}
Time to piss, the Handmaiden thought. Her skin broke brambles and needles in search of a suitable incline. When she gathered her sarong about her thighs, the coldness crawling along the ground latched onto her feet and began climbing up her ankles. She heard crunching in the foliage. Childish laughter strewed the fragile moonlight spearing through elderoak, warlock spruce, and hemlock. The Handmaiden realigned her garments and walked further into the narrow way, till she found another hole in the forest alighted by mist.
The Calaiean child stood under the moonlight, stretching her arm outward. Instead of bandages the limb was dressed in a feathery swarm which shook dust plumes into the air. The sallow moths had descended upon her.
<div class='d'>$CHILD They tickle.</div>
The effervescence had made snags in her shawl and white-gold plaits, pulling her free from Calaiean swathes. She laughed at the bloated insects melting in her blood, then pitied them as she had pitied (if: (history:) contains 'supperTendHearth')[Artrius and ]Gavril. The Handmaiden recognized the solidification of guilt, the regret of power.
The child held out a hand. Although the Handmaiden had tended to the child's arm, she was uncertain about the gesture, for it cut into her like no blade or word could. Her hesitation invited the girl's approach, and a yawn brought the child to lean on her shoulder. The touch seemed still foreign and now heavier. The girl was falling asleep. The Handmaiden laid her on the forest floor, and when dizzied by drink and slumber herself, joined the child on the cold leaves there.
The Handmaiden stared at the sleeping girl, listening to forest demons' whispers in the soft winds. The tranquility calmed her body and mind as did meditation before the hunt. Unlike her companions, serenity came to her in the thicket away from the gluttonous night.(if: $observation's witchSightArtrius)[ Although she had indulged in the harbinger's feast, she had not lost her own sight as he had.](if: $observation's witchSightGavril)[ Much pleasure had come from the rape of the thrall, but sweetness came in endings as well.] A warrior's path needed not to be heated, nor a poet's path heady.
The pain of the first bite was embellished by a fire in the darkness, the reverberation of a solemn drum, and the divine fear--the fear of the unknown. Her first marking ritual in the year of her Second Coil had been this way, as recorded in the celestial tome containing her old home, her old clan, and her old name. Fingers had woven through her hair, pinched into her wrists and ankles, and kept her still. Aruseht in the form of the aspis roamed her body, cold at first then warm by the blood of hers. The first incision seemed the deepest, and the solitude of the altar, as profound as the night sky. At that age, she had not understood the significance of His love. She remembered wanting to crush the people surrounding her, but she could only turn her fingernails into her own palms.
She remained faithful and now, the hands binding her became her own. She gave in to the images she could only see in a feral state, the rabid wolf cub or the self-immolating moths. On the forest floor, she saw again the haunting eyes which were like her own, closed and unawakened.
The bite wound on the girl's arm radiated through the moth dust. The Handmaiden reached into her satchel for the venom and bandages but scraped her knuckle against a leather heft. Could not a mar could become a mark, she thought. A mistake could become momentum. Pestilence could incubate wisdom. The nurikabe could allow passage.
A Calaiean could turn Sehtian.
She nudged the vial of venom aside and (if: $inv contains $itemWeapons)[gripped the Scarsgaran athame, which](else:)[unfurled her woodworking roll bag, and the metal tools] nipped the tips of her fingers.
(display: 'decisionMark'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's forecourt)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
(if: $entryLocateChild's done)[The Handmaiden could not remember imbibing so much, nor being so horrendously affected by the combination of drink and mushrooms. Her foremost desire was to bring her mind to attention by the shock of cold water at the stream behind the building.
](else:)[The Handmaiden awakened with a snort by a crash, not a sound but her body jerking by impact with the forest floor. Yet she had not fallen--she was already on the ground. And she was alone.
Morning came in grey rays flickering through the canopy, bleary in the fog. Harrow Les, the creeping forest, moved in waves. She held a tree to steady herself and still the forest. Its majesty was now mundane, filled with a light breeze and common creatures chattering. The wind whistled into her neck where a dull pain throbbed.
She blinked but could not much clear her vision, even as she thought all had been so clear the night previous. There had been a fire-fueled dance among her, the boys, and yokai who had smelled the moths. She believed at one point, she had sat them all around the bonfire and had recited her greatest haiku, but the poetry was now lost to her, as they were in the recovery from witch sight. The yokai had perhaps taken them for safekeeping. Other fragments, less blithe, lingered. She did know a splash from the stream behind the institution could shake faster the sluggish mind.
(display: 'doneEntryLocateChild')(display: 'changePortraitCompanions')]
{
<div class='o'>
(display: 'toStableHouse')
(display: 'toEntranceHall')
</div>
}{
(if: $endStoryEnabled)[
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[(linkgoto: 'Go into the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHallEnd')]
(elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'locationInstitution')[(linkgoto: 'Go into the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHallEnd')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHallEnd')]
]
(else:)[
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneCellblock')[(linkgoto: 'Go downstairs to the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')]
(elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneBasementHall')[(linkgoto: 'Go upstairs to the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')]
(elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[(linkgoto: 'Go into the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')]
(elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'locationInstitution')[(linkgoto: 'Go into the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')]
]
}The transferrence of the family from portico to stable house put a great peaceful distance between the institution building and din. Gentler sounds filled the entrance hall now: wild calls from the forest, small settlers inside the walls, and hearthfire from the library.
The fire in the library hearth had tucked away beneath a blanket of ember, leaving the hallway a tunnel of murmuring darkness. The Handmaiden's footsteps bent shadows, which creaked and set off an expedition of several smaller feet inside the walls.
{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's entranceHall)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden usually trusted her body in dextrous feats, but by consequences of the previous night, she could not rely on her stomach and feet to cooperate in changes in elevation. The stairs to the first floor seemed to be a tower to the clouds, and the basement stairs, a cliffside. By the diligence of Seht, the building's hall was a flat, straight path to the yard, where she could refresh herself at the stream across the plot.
{
<div class='o'>
(display: 'toYard')
(display: 'toInstitution')
</div>
}{(linkgoto: 'Go to the library.', 'sceneLibrary')}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's library)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(display: 'library0')
}
(display: 'dialogueArtrius')
(display: 'toInstitutionScenesEntranceHall')Lorcis's great project and pride was the library of Hemlock Weald. A few bookcases supporting a meager scattering of papers and trinkets constituted his collection. He had spent his childhood in libraries--in the city, in universities, and in his father's manor--trapped, he had said. Yet when exiled to the institution, he remained confined by will. He adhered to a familiar structure in the libraries of his past, classifying works by history, language, literature, and subject matter so forth by provisional signage, and he imitated from those institutions a lending policy to instill responsibility in the young witches.
Additionally, Lorcis had directed the acquisition of oil painting supplies, the latest innovations in photographic ventures, and musical instruments, which were heaped into one end of the room and were to be further enrichment for his pupils. It was in an anointed's blood to be a caretaker of knowledge, and of knowledge, the people formed by it. This one denied his blood, though he showed its color.
Among the library's frequent habitants, and its custodian as well, was the sage. Artrius was reading a book in one of the armchairs before the fireplace. He appeared to have remained undisturbed throughout the pilgrims' earlier commotion.
{
(if: $endStoryEnabled)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the stable house.', 'sceneStableHouseEnd')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the stable house.', 'sceneStableHouse')]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's stableHouse)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $observation's witchSightGavril)[(display: 'stableHouse2')](elseif: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'stableHouse1')](else:)[(display: 'stableHouse0')]
}
(display: 'searchStableHouse')
<div class='o'>(display: 'toInstitution')</div>The Handmaiden remained distant from the stable house. The fallen witheroak had claimed part of the building's walls and roof, and thick branches splayed from the trunk like a sunken web containing the ruins. A fire had been nursed in the fireplace, itself not untouched by erosion.
The family of the Circle had designated their camp at the hearth and had anchored a blanket from the partial ceiling to the tree branches which had clawed through a wall. An oil lamp illuminated darker corners of the ruins where wind shied, and there, the luggage trunks were opened. From them an assortment had been retrieved and passed around: other blankets, toiletries, envelopes and letters, and a Calaiean knot ring laid upon a stack of books covered by a red handkerchief. Gathered around the altar, their forms were dark huddles outlined by the fire hue(if: not $observation's studyGavril)[, and the rogue tarried outside the house, hidden from the orange glow within].
The Handmaiden crept nearer to the dimming firelight emanating from the stable house. A rustling inside, like vermin burrowing or scavenging, brought her to the open door.
In the far corner of the house, shadows reared up as the rogue's naked form astride the father's corpse. Corpse it was, for the low embers from the fireplace highlighted the scatter of each shard and giblet which remained of his face.
Witch sight could be sought and obtained by order, but it could not be governed completely. The Handmaiden was not immune to moments where her history, immediacy, and future collided; thus could she understand the sight of Gavril's state. Witch sight blinded him with horrors from history. As the rogue used a ghost of his past, so did it use him. The only sounds made between them were his quiet frights and their bodies sliding and sticking.
(if: not $entryLocateGavril's done)[
(display: 'doneEntryLocateGavril')](if: $entryCheckMedication's done)[All was quiet at the stable house, still between Gavril and the corpse but for the snake curling in his belly and the moths falling out of the ceiling.](else:)[The Handmaiden watched but did not disturb. Used beyond sanity, snakes oozing from his slackened jaw, Gavril was kept in throes by the Serpent's coils unending. In their trance they crushed the moths falling between them.]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's stableHouse)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
Blood and stale vomit had hardened personal effects strewn about the ruins--blankets, envelopes, and a red altar cloth which bore a single bronze ring. A dried pool streaked out of the doorway and into the dirt, disappearing at the two wheel grooves depressing the forest ground.
<div class='o'>(display: 'toInstitution')</div>{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's entranceHall)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'hall1')]
(else:)[(display: 'hall0')(display: 'searchEntranceHall')]
}
(display: 'toInstitutionScenesEntranceHall'){(linkgoto: 'Go upstairs to the first floor.', 'sceneCellblock')}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'cellblock1')]
(else:)[(display: 'cellblock0')]
}
(display: 'searchCellblock')
<div class='o'>(display: 'toEntranceHall')</div>Handmaiden had set ajar all doors of unoccupied bedrooms for the evening, allowing demons to roam spaces freely across thresholds. Amidst their travels, drafts from the collapsed portion of the floor chilled the cellblock. Lorcis's room at the end of the corridor was better preserved and sheltered than the others, as required of him. His ailments were few yet of great magnitude.
Creak and claw scratched from inside out the floorboards. The Handmaiden amended the weight of her footfalls, for the building trembled from the disturbance.
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneBasementHall')[<div class='o'>{
(display: 'toDungeon')
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned and not $entryLocateArtrius's owned) [(display: 'toWineCellar')]
</div>}
{
<div class='o'>
(display: 'toKitchen')
(display: 'toEntranceHall')
</div>
}](elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneKitchen')[{
<div class='o'>
(display: 'toBasementHall')
(display: 'toYard')
</div>
}](else:)[<div class='o'>(display: 'toBasementHall')</div>]{
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneDungeon')[(linkgoto: $returnName, 'sceneBasementHall')]
(elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneKitchen')[(linkgoto: 'Go to the basement hall.', 'sceneBasementHall')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go downstairs to the basement.', 'sceneBasementHall')]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's basementHall)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'basement1')](else:)[(display: 'basement0')]
}
(display: 'toInstitutionScenesBasement')Cold walls beneath the ground silenced the wind and were filled with a tomblike air. From hopper windows and the kitchen hearth, moon and fire painted the basement corridor.
The basement hall was ablaze by the incinerating light from the kitchen, contained by solid black space cold to the Handmaiden's bare hands and feet. Her own footsteps, or the scraping of demons awakened, echoed behind her.
{
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[(linkgoto: 'Go into the kitchen.', 'sceneKitchen')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the kitchen.', 'sceneKitchen')]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'kitchen2')]
(elseif: $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'kitchen1')]
(else:)[(display: 'kitchen0')]
}
(display: 'searchKitchen')
(display: 'toInstitutionScenesBasement')Before she had established her old coven in the Jsana Mountains, the Handmaiden had trained on the steppes at the foothills. She had traversed lands high and low, dark and light. The journey between contrasts illuminated them, and balance was enlightenment.
Labor and leisure gave meaning to the institution kitchen. "Add love to that," Ivie had once said, and she had been correct. A mixture of hot and cold, and bitter and sweet, merged into a memory distant yet close: sky and ground lost to white, smoke curling from the crown of a yurt, familiar scents beckoning between hanging hides, snow shaken off furs, and a shallow bowl and dagger's blaze. Present or past, the cooking fire warmed souls by food and companionship, inviting ghosts of time.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteAmbassador)[
(display: 'addNoteAmbassador')]Time seemed hesitant in the kitchen. The child had not moved her arm. Gavril had not moved from the corner.
Artrius's cello lay at rest on a chair in front of the hearth, a snow of porcelain beneath it. The hole in the wall was a living memory, a timid creature eluding detection. It would not remain long in one location.{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>The Judge's Mercy</h3>
</div>
}
The family entered from the hall, peering through the kitchen windows at the modest meal prepared for them as they shed their coats. Without much a look, the father passed their garments to Artrius. He hung them on the hooks mounted on the wall. Gavril lowered his coach gun beside the pile after the family proceeded in a line into the kitchen. The Handmaiden directed them to their designated positions at the table.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Sit.</div>
She remained standing with Artrius, whom she nodded toward the tureen. A perturbance crushed the father's forehead as he realized the inclusion of the help at--and not beside--the table, but he voiced no comment upon it. Rather, he turned up his nose and grimaced at the mixed aromas in the air.
The child stared at Artrius as he turned broth and hearty chunks of vegetables and meat into her bowl.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Thanks very much.</div>
A rope of blonde hair had come loose from beneath her shawl, and she flipped it behind her ear and raised green eyes upon him. He acknowledged neither her nor her gratitude.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Sister, I must beg your forgiveness. Your man here informed us that the institution is no longer in operation. If we had known this was a private house of the Judge, we wouldn't have been so forward. We are ever so grateful for your hospitality. Calaiel grants only what is deserved to those deserving.</div>
The Handmaiden had not intended to mislead the pilgrims, yet their presumptions had dismissed concepts outside their comfort. She would have been more explicit than the sage when explaining their residency within the old institution, perhaps to frighten them off, but it was Lorcis's wish that she treat the visitors warmly. Seht and the cooking fire far from discouraged courtesy.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You'll be served well.</div>
The mother shook her head, and Artrius measured his approach around her hat.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER You've been so kind already, my dear. There was a Saracielean house just this past evening. They were the loveliest people to stay with, but by the Judge, were they particular. Mind you, they were fanatics about their possessions. Stingy people. You could not sit on their imported chairs. They'd fuss over them the entire night. I say, you could sit on the chairs but not directly. They draped them with patterned silk, real silk furniture dresses from Jscethyca, because that's where the hostess had gone on holiday with her family the winter before, and they tied them with thick sashes, like little Jscethycans in kimonos.
You know there is money there nowadays, I hear--in the sciences--but money makes misers. The entire family was in the sciences. She was an alienist, our hostess. They only say what they think you want them to say, simply to flatter their way into your purse. Deceivers. Real swindlers.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Right a caddie, you.</div>
As Artrius continued serving in order, Gavril transferred his smirk from the sage to the girl, then to the father, who strained to pay him no mind and instead glared at the bottle of wine.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER This alienist had the audacity to demand we pay a boarding fee. We were only there for half a night, hardly a bother, I would think. Charity is unknown to beggars. That's why I like to find fellow Followers of the Circle to stay with. Who says Calaieans can't be caretakers? A Calaiean household wouldn't have made a fuss. We are without fuss.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD This whole trip has been nothing but a fuss.</div>
The mother tutted at the girl.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER The Judge gave us lips for song not for sorrow. Be mindful of how you use them.</div>
Artrius served the Handmaiden, then made another round about the table to pour the wine. At the slightest tilt of the bottle for the child, the mother pulled back her shoulders so sharply, her chair screeched beneath her.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Only water for her! She needs to remain pure for her trials. You know what they say: clear is dear, but amber will damn her.</div>
Artrius complied with the mother's request, and the child frowned into her goblet.
<div class='d'>$FATHER I believe the saying is as thus: clear, she's a dear, but amber... well then, damn her!</div>
The mother clucked at the father, who drew long from his goblet.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER We needn't be invoking His judgment so carelessly. Now come, all ye of good faith, the Judge's mercy.</div>
The mother folded her hands over her heart and waited patiently for someone to take up the task of reciting the prayer. Calaieans made their devotion a public ritual, for many mistook pride for piety and depended upon the loudness and visibility of their deeds. A scratch upon a gilded chalice revealed bone beneath the skin. To preserve the veneer, the Handmaiden needed only to rub, not to scrape.
(display: 'decisionPrayer'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Gathering</h3>
</div>
}
The pheasant mushroom soup was served by hearth and candle light with dark rye bread and Wellswan red wine in carved goblets. A button held the mother's veil to the brim of her hat, which itself was secured to her hair bun by a bronze hatpin with a Calaiean knot ornament. She pulled her shoulders back and held her head high while dining. Beside her Gavril guarded his serving, elbows on the table, arms wound about the bowl.
Across the table, the father mirrored the mother, back straight and motions reserved. Artrius stood against the wall to the side of the table. He would refill goblets as they neared empty or, in the case of the rogue's, fully drained.
The child surveyed all those at the gathering. The Handmaiden, overlooking the dominion as well, crossed the child's gaze, but the girl did not challenge her. Talk faded in the quiet field stretched between the ward of the Circle and the priestess of the Coil.
{
<div class='o'>
(if: not $observation's supperTendHearth)[(linkgoto: 'Instruct Artrius to tend to the hearth.','supperTendHearth')]
(if: not $observation's supperMoreDrink)[(linkgoto: 'Instruct Artrius to retrieve more wine.','supperMoreDrink')]
(linkgoto: 'Finish supper and prepare tea.','supperTea1')
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Good Family of the Circle</h3>
</div>
}
The kitchen fireplace was one of the larger hearths in the institution. The cooking spit and cauldron were seated within its cavern. Still, the Handmaiden could not much feel near enough to a fire in a box. An open blaze in the center of a yurt or a bonfire in awe of the stars reached toward the celestial bodies. A box crowded wisps and limited who could reach.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The hearth needs tending to. The kitchen could use more firewood as well.</div>
Artrius departed on the mission at once--eagerly, the Handmaiden would have liked to imagine, although he permitted no hint of it to show. When the postern shut, the father scraped his spoon on the edge of his bowl.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Parish, you might as well assist.</div>
Gavril sat back in his chair, sucking on a bone. Artrius had seen it fit to treat the dog.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Go on.</div>
The rogue reached for his goblet and made incorrigible gulps of wine, throat bulging under the mother's glare and child's stare.
<div class='d'>$FATHER I do hope for your own sake you remember the legally binding contract you agreed to, with these two here and the Lord Judge as my witnesses.</div>
He made a slight nod toward the other pilgrims. Laws by creed honed the soul beyond secular regulations, especially for heathens who needed containing. Above utilitarian concerns, religious laws introduced moral questions and answers as well as ontological and epistemological castigation, intricacies beyond the thrall's capacity to comprehend. Gavril seemed to dwell upon consequences particular to the threat the father had lain upon him. Rather, as the Handmaiden rejected answering his glance upon her, his thoughts darkened to instinct and violence. He heaved himself from the chair without care for the floorboards, followed Artrius's path out the postern, and slammed the door shut behind him. The father shook his head.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Calaiel has gifted you quite an obedient scrape. I considered one myself. Solid workers, not like the duckies. Yet I've not come across one Scarsman who wasn't a bit of a savage. Where did you pick up yours?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He came from the forest. He's a bit of a savage.</div>
A conspiratorial grin stretched across the father's face so slowly, the transformation came about like a rising tide. Only after the full crescent of his teeth did the Handmaiden confirm she had gained his favor.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Good on you for taking him in. He's a testament to Calaiel's mercy.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD Is he a berserker?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Perhaps.</div>
A shy yet scampish interest, along with a hint of skepticism, lifted the girl's feathery brows. She seemed to have expected a reply in the negative, but a possible positive had provoked her imagination.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Parish is an antagonistic lad. We'd sooner be in Daley if he'd less umbrage. You tell him to do his job, and he complains about doing it. He still expects full pay, no doubt. That's a real ducky for you.</div>
The father continued without hearing the mother's hum of agreement.
<div class='d'>$FATHER It's not even difficult, if you think about it. That's the problem, isn't it? They don't think. You have to be willing to put in effort, or of course things won't work out for you. Everyone has the same twenty-four hours in a day, and look how wasteful those people are with it. They spend their money on this or that instead of saving and investing. You can't complain if you buy trinkets, make bets at the club, or get your shoes polished day after day instead of tucking that little bit into the bank or an enterprise.</div>
His chair creaked and he hooked a leg around the corner of the table and lifted the hem of his trousers to show the Handmaiden his forest-encrusted boot.
<div class='d'>$FATHER See now? Dull as a beaten cat. You can't judge a man's character by the state of his footwear but by his footprint on society. I find that the most selfish, greedy, and unwise are the poorest. Why, they'd waste time and money on gadgets and fads instead of, like I said, investing in the greater picture, the stable infrastructures that keep civilization running. Without civil systems, organizations, and religion, all of society might as well go to the pits.</div>
The Handmaiden gave half a breath to the Great Aspis. A dirty foot was not to be presented to any other than a servant or thrall. Such a transgression was how scramblers came to be known as One-Legged or One-Footed. By Aruseht's foresight, she had retired her shashkas for the evening.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Put your foot away.</div>
The father's brow arched in an instant. He appeared confounded, stunned. He retracted his leg rather sheepishly, then surged into another speech so as to hide the embarrassment.
<div class='d'>$FATHER You know what's worse than a lazy bastard is a delusional one. You know the type, activists that demand change with no concept of the calamitous consequences they'd bring about to others--the DFA and the like. Goddamn the DFA. Think bombing and murdering are the way forward--progress, if you will. In reality, the only thing they're doing is committing crimes against humanity--genocide. Progress isn't upending centuries-old formulas for the sake of settling musty grudges they can't get past. That's quite selfish, isn't it? Think about all the people who depend on that security built up over generations, the people who know how to cooperate and let old bones stay buried. We don't need hoodlums and anarchists stealing the name of progress from workers whose livelihoods rely on a stable functioning system.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Progress is good. I always thought we should have the trains run straight through the forest from Gallowvalsk to the Amphitheatre of Angels. Wouldn't that be nice, not having to ride the roundabout way along coast? There isn't even a decent, well-lit highway anywhere in Harrow Les, and why not? It's about time, I say.</div>
The father set his goblet upon the table almost aggressively and rumpled his jowls at the mother.(if: $entryCordialSupper's done)[(display: 'topicTransportation')]
<div class='d'>$FATHER That's what I'm talking about. We need government oversight for planning and implementing large-scale projects, like cross-county public transportation. Can't let just anyone go tramping paths or raising shacks in the forest. That's how you get ghettos. And witches.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Of course we need transportation, but the government needs to leave it to the people, the church and the private sector. Your colleagues are so burdensome and--sorry to say--corrupt. You can't trust them to do anything with any efficiency. Leave it to the people to handle what the people themselves need.
Let me tell you, there are these shady carriage companies that cut your purse wide open, and city officials simply look the other way. You see it already, those people who run those scams. They pretend to drive you on your way but instead take you to a dead-end alley or out to the middle of nowhere, and that's when they rob or murder you. Or worse. It's true. It happened to one of my nieces, Judge be right. She was short a penny, and the driver demanded payment of the sordid sort. But the courts did nothing for her, and now she's got another mouth to feed, and that company is still in business! There's too much paperwork impeding an honest life.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER When the train tracks were sabotaged by those meddling DFA blackguards, the private coach companies--with the government's funding, mind you--kept supply chains intact, and you can't win a war without supply chains. Why, that's in fact how the witches lost. No dedicated central government. No organized, impenetrable supply lines.
See, bureaucracy is exactly what you need. I will say, the illegals come over here, pushing out real, registered local businesses with cheap practices and inferior quality. They're skirting the whole system. They're as bad as witches, only worse because they're walking out in the open masquerading as legitimate citizens. They ignore safety regulations by lying on inspection certificates--they forge them or bribe officials. Maybe that's how businesses are run back in the Duskair, but not here in the empire.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER How should we say it now? Duskair, not "the Duskair." Every layman knows it's an imperial county in its own right.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD It used to be a country.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Like I always say, why sneak around if you haven't a thing to hide? Me, I'd take a Cairelic-owned coach over a cheap Duskain wagon any day. No, no--Caireleon all the way for me.</div>
He almost toasted the empire and took an emphasized swig from his goblet. The child dropped her spoon into her soup. The sound seemed to be a sign only for the Handmaiden, for the father and mother could not hear over the cannibalism of their own conversation.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Come to think of it, Parish has that crafty look of a layabout who thinks he's smarter than he is, cheating his way through life instead of doing things properly. I know he can't help it, but I've half the mind to let him go as soon as we cross the county line. We can do without him once we've a foot in Daley.</div>
The mother wrinkled her face at the suggestion.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Oh no, an evil heart can still be salvaged. At least the boy is trying, not running wild on the streets like the rest of them, caught up in gangs or... you know. Substances. Fornification. Devilry.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Who says he isn't? It's in his eyes. Desperation, the curse of an addict.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER It is our duty to help the underserved--the underprivileged--strive to become upstanding citizens of our community. It's what any good Calaiean would do. One must be patient with the Duskains, guide their hand into Calaiel's.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Like children.</div>
The girl turned her spoon around the full circumference of her soup bowl.
<div class='d'>$CHILD If we're all children of the Judge, then why do they bury some outside the Amphitheatre instead of inside with the others?</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Those youths were unfortunate enough to not have good mothers, so they couldn't receive His blessings.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD Because they all died. And some were born dead, so they never had a chance.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER The wicked cannot be persecuted, for persecution is a woe of the wronged. The Lord's judgment is just.</div>
The mother turned to the Handmaiden, one hand atop the other upon the table.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Please pardon her outbursts. Her mother was never present in her life. You know it would've done good if she'd been, but the poor thing walked off the quay and, well, went to the Judge's chambers that way. She'd at least the sense to have her baby's first cleansing before going. Her father had recently passed away as well--an accident at the foundry, and no one could stop the bleeding, Judge speaketh. So you see, without a moral guide the girl's been picking up silly ideas all around her.</div>
She passed a squinted eye at the postern, then nearly jumped from her seat when a scuffle and grunts roughed up the other side of the door. Gavril's knavish laugh provoked the elder pilgrims, then the door flung open, and he tramped down the stairs with an armful of firewood, face mirthless. Artrius followed, equally grim, and the two unburdened themselves at the hearth. A quietness passed gently over the table, and the child stared at the workers, then into the fire.
The mother nodded toward the father.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Her uncle supports our decision to welcome her into the Sacred School of the Mother Revenant after her trials at the Amphitheatre. She'll love it there, and be loved.</div>
She looked upon the Handmaiden as if she were passing along a kitchen knife, then lowered her eyes to her folded hands.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER She will be saved.</div>
Gavril slumped into his chair as Artrius presided over the fire, the wood and earth fragrant off their clothes. The girl shivered from the draft let in, but it soon dispersed in the light.
(display: 'addObservationSupperTendHearth')(if: not $entryCordialSupper's done)[
(display: 'doneEntryCordialSupper')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Pilgrimage to the Graves</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden lifted a wine bottle toward Artrius.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN More wine would do.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Yes, that's quite agreeable. Parish, do assist.</div>
Artrius headed for the wine cellar down the hall, shadowed by the rogue.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Very generous of you, sister.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER I should say, we'd spend all our prayers here than at the Amphitheatre of Angels.</div>
The mother almost laughed but made no allowance for herself, and a light swathe of dust wisped through the air. The child pushed the mushrooms around in her bowl of soup. She glanced up at the Handmaiden only long enough to be caught in the act.
Artrius returned with a single wine bottle. A jostling behind him produced the rogue with a booty of brandy and whiskey. Hemlock Weald's wine cellar housed a great variety and selection befitting the previous clergy administration of the institution. One might have wondered, then, why they had abandoned their trove in such haste, or from what--or whom--they had fled.
The father eyed the brandy. Artrius poured it, and the father tugged at his neck-tie and cleared his throat, blushing.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Have you been to the Amphitheatre?</div>
The girl raised her emptied goblet to draw Artrius nearer, although the water carafe was within arm's reach. A lure, the Handmaiden thought. He had been unaware of, or had ignored, her question till then.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Say, have you been?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Yes.</div>
She had been slouching but wiggled to the edge of her seat at his reply. She offered him the cup directly, seeking out his gaze with hopeful lodestones of her own. Although she had offered him the vessel, she did not relinquish it, and together they balanced its replenishment.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Are there lots of graves?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Yes.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD Have you seen the big angel statues?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Yes.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD Well, those aren't real angels. Real angels have tentacles. It says so in the Old Writ. "From the divine flesh of the heavens, the winged ones with opal eyes burning and undulating arms a thousand descended upon the earth."</div>
She undulated her bony shoulders. Artrius released the goblet into her sole possession.
<div class='d'>$FATHER For the Judge's sake, leave the poor man alone and finish your soup.</div>
He gave Artrius a cross glare, then Gavril as well for good measure. The child turned her bright green eyes up once more toward the Handmaiden. Patterns signified purpose, and from reading the alignment of the pieces could one draw meaning. The child wanted something from them, the witches of the weald. She poked at the wasp's nest instead of batting it down, but cotton could not dull their stingers.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Lord, I should've hired that doddering scrape at the general store instead. We would've been in Daley by now, decrepit as the old infirm was. She had only one eye, and it was hard to understand what she was saying--you know how they mumble everything--but apparently she was on her way to visit her daughter in Daley.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Oh no, it wasn't her daughter. It was her late daughter's friend. Truly, she explained it three times for you, and you still can't get it right.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER You would think in this day and age that the empire'd have coach lines straight through forest.</div>
The mother clicked her tongue in a criticizing manner.(if: $entryCordialSupper's done)[(display: 'topicTransportation')]
<div class='d'>$MOTHER You can barely lead horses between the trees--and those seedy coach companies, the ones run by... well, you know. Let me just say it's very dangerous for a young woman to be riding in a coach alone, and that should tell you the character of many of these drivers. Aside from taking the obscenely overpriced Imperial Overland Carrier Company, you never know what sort of driver you'll get. What we should have are rails.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Why not both? Coaches and the train. Chop down the trees, use the wood for building the infrastructure necessary for roads and rails. Erect onsite housing where they'll be building transportation and supply lines, and before you know it, you've got a village here, a town there, and commerce between. It'll take time and investment, but it's not that hard.
Additionally by populating the forest with honest folk and the Garde, you drive out witches and other primitive tendencies, and civilization expands. We'd oust those drivers you're so worried about. That way, Mutti Marin from some backwoods hovel in Scarsgar can visit her Dotti Darla all the way in Daley, coach or train, no risks, no worries.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Her daughter's friend.</div>
The troubles wrinkling the father's face fell away.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Now, your man's been to Daley. What do you say we take him for a jaunt? Three thousand. It's a rather fair price, considering. We'll return him within a week's time with the payment. How about it?</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER It would be more like a fortnight. We wouldn't want to rush or make a fuss at the Amphitheatre, you see. We might have to wait until the girl's ready.</div>
Leaning in front of the rogue, the mother had directed her words across the table toward Artrius. The Handmaiden topped off the goblets around her.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Your present man?</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Let the rot fester in the pits for all I care. He's the one who got us into this situation in the first place.</div>
That he had, the Handmaiden thought. Gavril became alert at mention of "the rot," nearly nosed the mother's clothes and stayed for a moment, then sank once again into his whiskey.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Look, your man's a hearty scrape. He can handle a job as simple as walking. Why, it would be a stroll in the park for him, like getting paid for going on holiday.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Six thousand and a down payment of fifty percent would ensure this home remains stable during my man's absence.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER A model Jscethycan haggler, I see. It's been a while since I've played this game! Four thousand, twelve percent down.</div>
The Handmaiden had not been haggling, but the father's childish excitement and arrogance insulted her.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I stand at six, no less. Forty-five down.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Well then, fifteen down.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Forty.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Seventeen.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD What if he doesn't want to go?</div>
The girl's question wedged into the cluster that the interested parties had become. The Handmaiden looked over the sage, who returned neither gaze nor inclination one way or the other.
The smell of alcohol wallowed upon the father and mother's breaths. The Handmaiden leaned back in her seat and gained a wider view of the table. No matter the amount promised to the institution coffers, the thought of extending association with the pilgrims displeased her. Only one night, the Anointed had asked for, and only one night it would be.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I have reconsidered. There will be no deal.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER And why is that?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The declaration itself is enough.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER It would only be for one week, and he won't have to do anything much at all. The deal, I would say, is greatly in your favor. Look here, I can write you the note now--a round twenty straight away.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER We'd be lost in the forest without a reliable man. I'm already going to miss St. Gavraiel's Day at the abbey, and her uncle's had to let down his good men at The Wainscoting.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER The Weinsceilg, a gentleman's club. I'm certain you've heard. It'll be Sir Auguris Rheas the Third's birthday. A pity I'll not be there. Good fellow's got naval rank.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER People are expecting us at the Amphitheatre, you know. They're waiting to meet the child, and who would wish ill upon a child?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I will say no more on the matter.</div>
The caretakers lost the eagerness in their postures. A pity, they seemed to think. The girl's spoon clattered into her bowl, and the father shut his eyes.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Mind yourself.</div>
She let the spoon fall against the bowl once more.
(display: 'addObservationSupperMoreDrink')(if: not $entryCordialSupper's done)[
(display: 'doneEntryCordialSupper')]{
<div class='header-main'>
#(print: $institution's kitchen)
##(print: $institution's name)
###Hole in the Wall
</div>
}
Since dawn the Handmaiden had planned to end the night within Seht's wondrous weave, for the moon was gaining and the Old Ways were calling. She had been beseeching Aruseht's guidance more often since leaving Jscethyca, and her supply of glass dancers, mushrooms favored by the Agnithra mendicants, had been depleted before her integration into Lorcis's coven. In Harrow Les, she collected, dried, and ground to powder the native little prophets, amanitas prized by the Varulvkyn berserkers of Scarsgar.
Because the Handmaiden used the little prophets exclusively in tea, she had preemptively mixed the mushrooms in green tea powder in suitable proportions. A spoon of little prophets in a bowl of tea was sufficient for full spiritual immersion into witch sight. The Calaiean family's intrusion was of no consequence to this plan.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Artrius, bring the cello. Entertain us while I prepare the tea ceremony.</div>
A modest smile lifted the mother's eyes, and the firelight glittered in them.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Oh? Isn't that wonderful?</div>
Artrius left the room--with a grunt, the Handmaiden did not hear yet imagined--and the mother looked after him, glowing in the face.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I require assistance in the scullery.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Certainly. It would be right for us to earn our keep, after all. Giveth to the giver, and in plenitude prosper.</div>
The mother's nod designated Gavril as scullion, and thereafter she turned to scold the child for twirling her hair around a finger. The mother and father overestimated their attempt at speaking low amongst themselves--chastising the child for another trifle, complaining about Parish and the broken wagon, or murmuring about the hard road they had left to cover--for they seemed strained to hear themselves over the Handmaiden and Gavril's work.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER It's the sister I'm concerned for. It's good her people embrace the Judge's cloth, but the state of our lodgings! They're stingy people, the Jscethycans.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Quite. That half of the roof that isn't simply gone is just about to collapse over our heads. (if: $observation's supperMoreDrink)[ Why, with all the admittedly expensive drink we've been offered, you've got to wonder what decent rooms could be upstairs.]</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER I wouldn't have to wonder with all that creaking and clacking in the walls. It sounds like we're trapped in a vermin-infested clock factory! The woodenware, too. I suppose we're not good enough for guest cutlery? Even isolated monasteries in the mountains show better etiquette than this. (if: $observation's supperTendHearth)[ And have you noticed her man has been more attentive than she? That's just how it is. A true Calaiean should do anything to make brothers and sisters on pilgrimages as comfortable as possible, but there are always conditions with her people.]</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Right you are there.(if: $observation's supperMoreDrink)[ Can you believe it? Fifty percent down! What goddamn idiot does she take me for? No decent fellow worth a toast carries that much money across the forest. No, an upstanding citizen knows how to handle his own banknotes, thank you very much.]</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER The soup was good, though.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER They do have that going for them, their cuisine. Now, I have nothing against them as a culture but, Judge, that smell. Don't you smell it? There's always something a bit off with the way Jscethycans and their cooking smell.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Bitter, like. You know, like licorice. I detest licorice.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER No, no. It's more like something sour. Like meat gone bad, and they try to cover it up with all these exotic spices.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Now that I think of it, the soup was a tad too tart for me.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER No, not tart. Sour. Like rotten meat.</div>
The fowl had been fresh. In the purple hours of the morn, the Handmaiden had shot the pheasant and then, seated on a milking stool outside the shed, dressed it to Sehtian chants thrumming quietly in her chest. Her mornings and evenings were meditative. To the learned, life and death always were.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Why, I wouldn't be surprised if you told me she'd dumped a baby in the soup.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER A baby what?</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER A baby!</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD I don't much like mushrooms.</div>
The child pushed her bowl away, and Artrius returned with the cello and drew a chair nearer the hearthlight. The Handmaiden had anticipated the appropriateness of his knowledge--he began to play a hymn of the Circle. The mother called Gavril from the sink to move her chair closer to the hearth, which he did with wet hands, and she sat at the edge of her seat, eyes twinkling. The father and child soon followed with the rogue's assistance, then he took an unfinished bottle of wine from the table and retreated again to the scullery.
The Handmaiden collected the tea pot, tea bowls, and tea with slices of bright lemon on a wide wooden tray. The Jscethycan tea ceremony was usually performed with participants seated on the floor around a sunken hearth, feet tucked under their haunches. The institution's floor remained dirty no matter how many times the Handmaiden swept, and the fire's position against the wall left little room for people to gather beside it. She missed the seamless scenery between hearth and bonfire, where humans could walk across boundaries from inside to outside like demons passing between worlds.
Observing the enraptured gathering around the cellist, she was reminded of many bonfires before, many lands away. These images were vague, but she remembered smells of red cedar burning beneath the fulgent citrus dew from another time. She remembered a little girl as a silhouette before the flames, walking toward the mountains between two columns of people. The people surrounding her were tall shadows, unfriendly trees bowing and picking at her long, wild hair.
It was this foggy memory the Corruptor implanted in the Handmaiden which granted her inspiration. She would not protest to having company along her journey.
The Handmaiden served the ceramic bowls of tea with Ivie's porcelain teapot. The items did not match, but the pilgrims were too distracted by Artrius to notice. The mother's face appeared plumper in light and music, free from the shroud. The father and child were equally lulled by the cello and observant of the ritual, following the Handmaiden's direction. Gavril returned from the scullery and stayed at the table to have his tea with smoke, and to scavenge stronger drink. Artrius sipped his own tea in interludes.
The pilgrims were too content in comforting, manufactured ignorance yet had demanded more to satisfy their desires. They had spoken like masters of the house but wielded no staves. It was Parish who was armed, and Parish was Gavril, slave to evil. Artrius had tuned their own faith against them and weakened them where they thought themselves strong. The Handmaiden considered narrating a folktale or a Sehtian epic poem to prepare her fellow travelers for the Corruptor's tongues, but the mournful strings, though of Calaiean origin, dissuaded her from disrupting a serenity pervading the atmosphere. She realized she had utterly nothing to say to the visitors--she had to show them.
Sehtian hospitality did not exclude the ignorant and the vain, for with sufficiently developed devotion, ignorance and vanity were surmountable. Heathens could be enlightened. If anything would come of the experience for the Calaiean pilgrims, they could appreciate the insight they were to gain by the guidance of Aruseht's hand. Witch sight did not come without sacrifice, and insufferable deserved to suffer. The pilgrims were defenseless in the witches' den.
A single tone, a deep rumble like a low voice, rose beneath her feet like fire and water, wrapping her toes and licking the skin between them. Her quickening heartbeat bulged the wall beside the fireplace till it peeled open.
Inside the hole was flesh and blood turning black into the night. The walls breathed in glowing drum beats like a heart faintly alight. Deep inside the body, the Handmaiden found the wild-haired girl of her memory at the bonfire. The girl raised a closed hand, then splayed her fingers. Nothing was in her palm. The other hand, she repeated the same motion. Then she held them outward, empty, toward her approacher.
The Handmaiden took them in her own and lay beside her shadow friend. Their hair swirled and became a tangled cushion beneath their heads. They watched falling stars pouring music over the mountains. Peace was passage to another state, another era. Peace was turbulence. The Handmaiden looked at the girl, who looked at her--like her--and then knew the other was no friend. She was war.
The other squeezed her hand, pinching so hard seeds slipped out of her flesh in a spray of citrus blood. Out of the slit made in her left hand, the Handmaiden drew a tanto, a simple blade streaked with stars, and dragged it across the throat of the child in her grasp. The voice extinguished, but the drum beat on, patient as the vulture wing over the cadaver.
{
(display: 'removeCompanionAll')
(display: 'doneEntryCordialTea')
}
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Breathe with the walls.', 'supperTea2')</div>{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Bite</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden emerged from Aruseht's vision-gift in the wake of the cry, which had come from behind her. Gavril had leapt up from his chair and had bumped bottles off the table. He stood among glass shards in a splatter, arms folded to his chest, hands floating in front of his face as if he had been struck and would be again. The crackling in the air picked at his skin and tormented him into flinches.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Judge, behold the sinner!</div>
She beamed at Artrius as if he were her own. The mother set her tea bowl on the floor and then made a polite applause, flapping fingers of one hand into the palm of the other.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER For how can a poor soul turn her head from this beauty before her? Glorious! Absolutely glorious!</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Admittedly, your man does have fine talent. The techniques applied were quite... unconventional. A moving rendition, certainly.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER I've never in my life felt so elated--so at peace--after the joys of His songs. It was truly divine music.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN More tea, anyone?</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER I would like, if it's of no burden you, more of the table's offerings.</div>
He surveyed the table. Gavril had begun to tremble.
<div class='d'>$FATHER I suppose it needs replenishing. May I?</div>
The Handmaiden pointed down the hall.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Wine cellar's that way.</div>
<div class='d'>$FATHER Say, which way?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN That way.</div>
The father had not moved, and the Handmaiden realized she was holding her tea bowl in both her hands, not pointing. She set the bowl down and gave the father the indication he had been asking for.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Many thanks, sister. What a generous soul you are. Calaiel will judge you dearly.</div>
He hopped up from his chair--startling the child, who had been asleep against his arm--and marched into the hall in the direction of the wine cellar. The girl breathed deeply, sucking in the shadows, and exhaled them into the fire. She opened her eyes to Gavril. He held his head up, gasping for breath. The pitch of his voice had risen high and tremulous. Music had not comforted him as it had the others. Aruseht had determined the night would be hard on him.
<div class='d'>$CHILD What's wrong, Cuaidhri?</div>
Gavril did not appear to hear her and cowered against the windowed wall. He crossed and uncrossed his wrists, caressed his face and neck with the back of his hands, and swung his head as if he had forgotten the functions and range of the human body.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Leave him. He bites.</div>
The Handmaiden poured herself more tea. Another bowl would do little harm. She asked Artrius if he would like another as well, but he had disappeared, leaving the cello in the lap of the chair. He had gone to war, she thought, without a proper sendoff. Farewell, fool. It appeared the mother had followed him to the front. They had not shut the door after their departure. Without an outlook on the end, the Handmaiden crossed the kitchen and closed it. The cold stuck to her. When she returned to the hearth, she found the child's chair vacant. The girl was approaching Gavril, light yet unsteady on her feet so that she seemed to be floating, not a sound supporting her.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Didn't you hear me?</div>
Younglings were moths, enraptured by the promise of their own demise in the pursuit of enlightenment. The girl's face brightened by intelligence as readily as impertinence. If she drew back the crimson shawl, she might have revealed herself to be a juvenile Lorcis. She did share with him the haughty Highlander's Alaisean, the tongue of the idle Cairelic elite obsessed with world domination.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Might I have a fizzy? Cuaidhri said when we got here, he'd give me dolls and fizzies. I don't care for dolls anymore, but Papka'd never let me have them when I did. And I don't even know what fizzies are.</div>
The Handmaiden pulled off her gloves, shed her outer garment, and slipped off her juttis. The girl stared at her--her bared arms and the Mark of Seht inscribed upon them from chest to shoulders to the tips of her fingers. She had been about the child's age when she had been marked over the breasts, much less naïve.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Cuaidhri, could I have a fizzy now? Come on, don't you back out on your word, you clever rot.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN A fizzy is a carbonated beverage. Or ejaculate.</div>
The Handmaiden sipped her tea. The fire reached out to her. She could not find the hole in the wall where the shadows had been. Perhaps music, Artrius's melody, was the only key to opening the portal. The screaming certainly was not.
Gavril had the girl's arm in his teeth. They were moths--the children--beating one another with their wings, fluttering to death. The Handmaiden finished her tea and set aside the bowl.
She seized Gavril by the collar and thrust his head against the windowed wall. The girl was shaken by the assault but, hugging her arm, scrambled beneath the table to the other side, placing the solid wood between her and the combatants. Gavril screeched in the Handmaiden's clutch, and she let him flail free. He knocked himself against furniture and overturned the tea platter. The ceramic bowls split, and the teapot shattered. He scuttled into the scullery corner, wormed his way behind the wash basin, and roared hoarsely into the mold between the walls.
The girl rounded the table, not letting her back to him even in his incapacity. She rolled up her sleeve. Blood beads wriggled out of the bite on her arm.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Something should be done about that, no?</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD Yes, I should think so.</div>
The girl sat at the table and dumped her arm flat upon it. The droplets were small and patient without much discoloration yet surrounding them.
<div class='d'>$CHILD I'm supposed to not move, or it'll make more blood come out, and it doesn't stop. You have to go get a doctor.</div>
By the forethought of Seht, the Handmaiden did possess a specific ointment to promote blood coagulation. Sehtians kept in stock venom of the vedhak viper for usage in less fatal bloodletting rituals. True blood sacrifices were to be prepared with intention and precision. Gavril's bite was with neither purpose nor care, more a warning bruise than lusting blood.
The child chewed on her lower lip. The Handmaiden filled a flagon with beer from the tap in the kitchen.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Aren't you getting a doctor?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I'll mend it.</div>
The girl raised an eyebrow, almost her arm as well.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I'm a witch.</div>
She deposited the flagon by the girl's elbow. The viper's venom would have to be collected from a medicine cabinet in her bedroom. The kitchen walls would hold the children in the meantime.
{
(display: 'addEntryGetVenom')
(display: 'changePortraitPlayer')
}
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Go get the venom for the child.', 'sceneBasementHall')</div>{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>The Orphan Witches</h3>
</div>
}
The girl had not moved from the table, and rivulets swirling her arm had begun to pool into the wood grain. She stared at Gavril crouching in the corner of the scullery. He had discarded most of his clothing, and she appeared to be marveling at the spine slithering beneath its marred sheath.
The Handmaiden filled a bowl with soapy water and carried her chair to sit beside the child. From her satchel, she laid out rags and dressings, turmeric powder, and the viper venom(if: $inv contains $itemAntivenin)[ and antivenin]. The girl's arm jerked when the Handmaiden patted it with a cold damp cloth.
<div class='d'>$CHILD What did you do to Cuaidhri? You witched him?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He belongs to us.</div>
No sooner had the cleansing left the child's arm smoothly polished did vibrant blood bloom from the wound anew. The Handmaiden made another sweep with the cloth, then applied the viper venom. About twenty seconds to its application, the blood flow all but halted(if: $inv contains $itemAntivenin)[. The Handmaiden injected a light dose of the antivenin, and the child observed the syringe the entire time it was in hand].
The Handmaiden went into the scullery for another shallow bowl and began whipping the turmeric into a paste. Returning to her seat, she caught the girl scrutinizing her. She did have critical eyes.
<div class='d'>$CHILD I'm not allowed to wear makeup.</div>
She held her arm steady as the Handmaiden gilded it with turmeric paste and then wrapped it in bandages. With the procedure done, the Handmaiden fed the remaining items into her satchel. She continued putting things into her satchel. Porcelain shards. Glass. Duties were never finished.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Can I have eyes like yours?</div>
The child was not a beggar, and her question came more as a suggestion than as a request for permission. She cradled her mended arm in her lap as if it were another body.
The Handmaiden knew of things from which children of the Circle were prohibited: dolls, dancing, cosmetics. Dolls were preambles to effigies, witchcraft totems. Dancing bore similarities to wild rituals and tempted participants into unwholesome behavior. Makeup was akin to tattoos, piercings, and jewelry--all vanity. The Circle was an unstable religion not founded on beliefs but on the opposition of beliefs. It was not giving but taking away, denying, and refusing.
The Handmaiden rose off the floor, for she had been kneeling in front of the cello. She opened the bag and extracted a palm-sized canister of kajal and a small brush. Children of Seht were encouraged to play with dolls, to dance, and to mark their bodies in temporary and permanent sacred ways. They were expanded, not limited. The Handmaiden once had many dolls, still many dances, and many piercings of her own granting her ceremonial flourish. The kajal she wore daily kept her sight aligned with the Serpent's. Now, the Great Aspis had deemed her worthy of tutelage. The girl had asked for the knowledge kept from her. It was Aruseht who would answer, for the Corruptor denied none. The Handmaiden sat beside the child, and the child moved closer.
<div class='d'>$CHILD He'll be all right, won't he?</div>
She yawned, and the Handmaiden touched her cheek to steady the blackened brush at the eye's waterline. Interest in the rogue was misplaced through no fault of the girl's own. Gavril embodied superficial things--vanity upon his body, attention, money, idle words. The naïve could be misled by such immediacy, for he crafted comfort behind lies. Yet one look into the corner of the scullery revealed the shallowness of his character, the emptiness of his heart. There was nothing beneath his skin yet for Aruseht to touch, only to fill. An ideal vessel for dreams, for nightmares.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He promised you toys and drinks, did he? Why is that, do you think?</div>
The Handmaiden lifted the brush as the girl nodded.
<div class='d'>$CHILD We're both orphans. I'm supposed to pray over the dead babies in the Amphitheatre, then go live at the sacred school. He said the sacred school's where children get taught the oldest trade. I imagine that means carpentry or blacksmithing. Something to do with the hands and getting dirty.</div>
She had been quite protected, the Handmaiden could see. The firelight shone through her skin, illuminating her like candle wax. The Handmaiden had not felt a child in years. It seemed unlifelike, the radiance, the pliancy. A creature that was not a person but a bulb of another time, awaiting the nourishment--or the devastation--it needed to blossom.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You'll find out when you get there.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD Oh no, I'm not going. Cuaidhri said there was someplace better, and he'd take me. He said we'd make fast friends.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He can have no friends.</div>
<div class='d'>$CHILD He meant us. Me and you. The orphan witches.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Eyes up.</div>
The child looked up but slouched, making her shoulders heavy for a stringy frame.
<div class='d'>$CHILD I'm not supposed to talk to witches.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It's done.</div>
She brought the child to the cracked mirror above the scullery sink. Gavril had been scraping the walls with his fingernails and tongue, but as the Handmaiden and child's shadows overwhelmed him, he tucked his head into his shoulder and gnawed at his white-pink knuckles.
The child stared at her reflection and the Handmaiden behind her. The kajal did refine her eyes into jadestone embroidered among freckled cushions. She turned the gems upon the snakes and beasts tattooed across the Handmaiden's arms.
The snakes were recursive. Out of one mouth was another, shaping the triad of body, mind, and spirit in hypnotic knots. A Calaiean neophyte would have notice the pattern--the Calaiean knot, she would have called it. The designs on the Handmaiden's arm writhed. A tickle from the child's eye had rolled through them.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Did it hurt?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Pain is a messenger, the Right Hand. One need not fear the messenger.</div>
The child stayed close to her, small shoulders softened against the inked spider clutching the right hand. Her own hand rose in the mirror, and the reflection laid tiny fingers upon the Handmaiden's arm, like maggots searching her skin. The Marks of Seht roved under the surface of her skin, rippling out from the reflection's contact. The girl had not moved, but the mirror did not lie.
<div class='d'>$CHILD What's the left hand? A wolf?</div>
The creak of a limp body cracked the glass. A shade of a hanged man, face smeared vague, swung in mirror. He floated nearer, bloodshot eyes and substantial body sharpening into the shape of the father. Shaking were his lips, red were his widened eyes. He was dazed not by the child's transformation but by something else he had seen. Unearthly horror.
<div class='d'>$FATHER We have to leave. Now.</div>
All that shifted of the child was her reflection, which gripped the Handmaiden's arm a little tighter. The father wrenched her from none but his own imagined fetters, and the force broke both from their spectres. The child tumbled to the floor. Gavril vaulted from the corner at her. The Handmaiden caught him, but he snapped around and sank his teeth into her arm. She pressed her arm further into his jaw, till she rammed him against the wall and knocked the air out of him.
He twisted and then his skin rived under the Handmaiden's fingernails, and he slipped through her hands and sprang off surfaces and walls in a fright. Pans and jars tumbled and shattered around the girl, who guarded her bandaged arm close to her chest, eyes shut. Gavril slid against the wall beside her and began to beat his head upon it. The child did not understand the controlled chaos Aruseht set upon his slaves, and her shrieks fed the wretch's delirium.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Stop it, Cuaidhri! Stop it!</div>
Her words were a command. The Handmaiden seized the rogue, and he writhed till he fell a distance from her, then scampered away up the hall stairs.
The father had watched through watery eyes, bewildered. A few blinks broke him from his stupor, and he rushed into his frock coat. He dragged the girl up and tried to pack her arms into her coat sleeves, then halted upon the sight of her bandages. She swatted him away and flew up the stairs.
He was left agape, broken in belief, perhaps in heart. A shadow filling his eyes restored him. He snatched the coach gun in both hands and made determined strides after the moths.
<div class='d'>$FATHER May the Judge have mercy on our souls!</div>
The Handmaiden was finally left to peace. She had not gone unscathed, but woods sprang abundant after the flames. Gavril's bite on her arm was not the first. He loved too much, still not enough, and kissed anyone and anything that could bleed. She did not feel it and reached for a wine bottle on the table. She stood in front of the hearth to stare at the wall where the hole should have been. The floorboards tremored by faint music. The cello was humming in the chair.
She thought how odd it was that she heard not Sehtian music but Calaiean. It was not odd, after all, for Artrius had been playing their hymns throughout the night. The vibrating lament morphed from string to plainsong in his voice, rising like the erhu's wail, till the hole began to appear not agape but pustulating. Someone diligent and meticulous had sewn shut the opening in the wall in perfectly crooked sutures. The Handmaiden remembered there was a dark-haired girl inside, beating and screaming against the python skin.
She inserted her fingers between the threads and tried to pry the flesh apart. She rent a suture. What sputtered from the wound was not euphony but the burst of a gunshot, a distant echo outside.
The Handmaiden was the one who had been on the inside.
{
(display: 'doneEntryApplyVenom')
(display: 'addEntryLocateArtrius')
(display: 'addEntryLocateGavril')
(display: 'addEntryLocateChild')
(display: 'changePortraitPlayer')
}
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Climb out of the hole.', 'sceneYard')</div> The topic of transportation set them off once again. The Handmaiden leaned back in her chair and took a long drink from her goblet. The child--perhaps unintentionally--imitated her.{
(if: $visitDungeonAfterVenom)[(linkgoto: 'Look in the dungeon again.', 'sceneDungeon')](else:)[(linkgoto: 'Look in the dungeon.', 'sceneDungeon')]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's dungeon)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $visitDungeonAfterVenom)[(display: 'dungeon3')]
(elseif: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'dungeon2')]
(elseif: $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'dungeon1')]
(else:)[(display: 'dungeon0')]
}
(display: 'toInstitutionScenesBasement')The man in the basement stood before an easel, making motions in correspondence to the act of inscription upon a leather canvas. The notation produced would have been unreadable. It was dark, and an eyeless potato sack covered his head.
Lorcis had aptly named the man Calberus after an ogre in a Cairelic tale. In the legend, the creature was at once educated and savage, a golem remaining animated by the consumption of human flesh and blood. The institution ogre likewise bore a towering stature, an unfathomable mind, and a taste for succulent bodies.
More than a connoisseur, he was an artist, clockmaker, scientist, or surgeon of some measure. A taxidermist, a mechanist. Sprawled across the dungeon in discordant congregation were charades of a population born after life. Despite no supporting documentation or account which might have defined him within a reasonable timeline, Calberus seemed to have always existed in the institution, and with him, the society of creaking death he had fashioned. So ingrained in the walls were the bodies, they had become the literal and metaphorical darkness surrounding their creator.
His current taxidermy project stood in front of the operation table in the center of the dungeon. The composition's verticality was like that of an obelisk, tapered from a hoofed, cross-legged repose up to a conical mass of what might have been a head, three times a human torso stacked and sewn between. The totem was without face or arms but raw empty sockets promising completion.
The God of Knowledge gave individuals their own knowing. He decreed no requirement for others to decipher them. As such, the Handmaiden expended little energy to analyzing Calberus's imagination. The madman appeared content in his work, and she let him be.
(display: 'searchDungeon')The gregarious darkness crawled in a horde, a massive clump that reached across all corners and slopes of the room as it crashed back into itself, split its belly, and spread again.
The man in the basement did not appear to be present within the tempest. The shadows were getting darker around the Handmaiden, bleeding through the door. It occurred to her that Calberus was not visible in the darkness because he <em>was</em> the darkness. One could not see the shape of the swarm, being but a single insect in the machine. She backed away from the dungeon door so as to not suffocate the ogre.
(if: not $observation's afterTeaCalberus)[(display: 'addObservationAfterTeaCalberus')]The Handmaiden looked through the dungeon window and met a carcass of supple skin on the other side. It was skin shaped and sewn in the likeness of a faceless head, butted up against the door as if it had sought escape. She closed the window and heard behind it scraping and ticking, like cogs biting into sand. Then the dragging of the body and its struggle, whacking and breaking.
(set: $visitDungeonAfterVenom to true)The faceless head was gone, and darkness replaced it in gulping waves, pulsating so that change was not visible but constant and audible. The Handmaiden recognized the sounds, the shushing and cracking of bodies worming against one another, their separation and amalgamation part by part. Among creation and destruction were the grunts of their begetter and destructor, the lover to the labor.
(if: not $observation's witchSightCalberus)[(display: 'addObservationWitchSightCalberus')]{(linkgoto: 'Check on the father in the wine cellar.', 'sceneWineCellar')}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's wineCellar)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
(if: $observation's afterTeaFather is 0)[<h3>Drowning</h3>]
</div>
}
(if: $observation's afterTeaFather)[(display: 'wineCellar1')](else:)[(display: 'wineCellar0')]The father had settled on the floor against the wine racks, his neck-tie undone and his legs sprawled across the aisle. A bottle lay upon his belly, secured by both his hands. He beckoned to the Handmaiden by raising the glass comfort. She remained at the doorway.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Are you here alone, sister?
The life of a hermit is lonely, but I daresay it must be quiet. I do sometimes wonder what getting away from it all would be like. You'd think the Judge would allow reprieve for people who work so hard and generously to help others, but no. I highly doubt there are many people who can muster the intelligence, endurance, or intuition necessary for my position. No, me--I need the city, all its beauty, all its ugliness. My Lord Judge, are people ugly.</div>
He thumped his chest with the butt of the bottle.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Take me, for instance. She doesn't like me, my niece. Apparently, I scare her. You'd think I'm sending her to prison the way she sulks about the Amphitheatre and the convent. It's in her best interests to go. She doesn't know it yet, but it is. But that look she gives! Utter disgust. Can a child dislike so much? I don't really know her.
You know who her father was? A bloody ducky, that's what he was. Bastard killed my sister. It may not have been murder in the eyes of the law, but the Judge knows ill within the walls of His court.
My sister used to send me depressing correspondence--awfully depressing--and I wrote back, begged her to leave that slurry bastard. It's not that difficult to take a coach across the city, pretend she's visiting me, but she always had an excuse. The snow was coming down too much, he wouldn't give her the fare money, or the baby was sick again. In the end, she drowned herself, damn him.</div>
He put the bottle down and searched for another one over his shoulder, made a selection, and then shouted after the Handmaiden.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Goddamn Cory Parish, the blackguard!</div>
The Handmaiden stepped into the hallway. She had not much tolerance for maudlin drunks, although his frustrations were familiar. Like her, he craved neither to be understood nor loved but to be obeyed. Unlike her, he respected not the limits of the mortal grasp and squeezed hard and harder into his own empty palms.
<div class='d'>$FATHER Goddamn ducky, conniving gutter rat! Bastard's turned the girl against me, spewing lies about this and that. The unrepentant dirt-dressing, scum-licking, false-naming, high-noon-noose-swinging miscreant will get what's coming to him. Aren't we all stood before the Judge? And to the Executioner's scaffold we'll all go. It's only right. It's only just, Lord Judge of Mine.</div>
He continued cursing till his words became unintelligible mumble, a deflating sigh, then silence.
(display: 'addObservationAfterTeaFather')The father stirred the wine in the glass bottle, losing himself in the swirls. He murmured a name or two, and sometimes the sputtering of "Cory Parish" reignited his choler. Limited interest in another tirade kept the Handmaiden from testing his attention.
{
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[
<div class='o'>
(unless: $entryGetVenom's owned and not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[
(display: 'toShed')
(display: 'toInstitution')
]
(display: 'toKitchen')
(display: 'toEntranceHall')
</div>]
(else:)[<div class='o'>(display: 'toYard')</div>]
}{
(if: $endStoryEnabled)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the yard.', 'sceneYardEnd')]
(else:)[
(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneEntranceHall' or (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneKitchen')[(linkgoto: 'Exit to the yard.', 'sceneYard')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the yard.', 'sceneYard')]
]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'yard2')]
(elseif: $entryGetVenom's owned)[(display: 'yard1')]
(else:)[(display: 'yard0')]
}
(display: 'toInstitutionScenesYard')The sunlight in Harrow Les was grey, needles and sap weighed the wind, and fog and mist clouded pathways. The yard--the ritual ground--was a small wound in the forest, open and flat as the steppes where the Handmaiden had spent her childhood in forms. Among her instruction as a priestess, she developed handicraft skills in woodworking, carving chests, tobacco boxes, and coffins for trade. The institution provided her not only a training yard but a workshop shed, which stood within the thicket beyond a stream.
Immersed within the same moonlight between them, the mother and Artrius were nonetheless a respectable distance apart.(if: not $observation's afterTeaMother)[ He had taken up the self-admininistered task of constructing a bonfire in the center of the yard, pausing now and then to soothe his neck, hardened fingers rolling the skin of his throat, as if he were parched](else:)[ He sat upon the ground before the bonfire, eyes closed as if the flickering lights had rent his mind and spirit from his body]. Scarsgarans shared the innate desire for towering fires as Jscethycans, and the little prophets' effect appeared to have deepened the sage's primal yearning.
The mother spied upon him from beneath a witheroak's boughs at the fence, where his jacket was draped over the gatepost. An undone collar and shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his forearms stirred an imminent imagination. Imagination allowed the unseen to be seen. The mother was not as dull as she initially seemed. Her fingers rubbed along the tree bark so as to prick the cloth of her glove.
(display: 'searchYard')The stream was made of moonlight, silver and ghostly, illuminated by faces in the current, which soared in open-mouthed, hollow-eyed streaks like souls of the dead. The same faces, the Handmaiden could find in flames, in smoke, and in shadows. As well, could she find those faces on the living.
{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
A bonfire's residue remained in the center of the yard, its last exhales coloring the sky grey. The fog rested so thickly over the yard that the trees beyond the stone fence were black smears like mistakes on the canvas. The Handmaiden caught small movements among them, which were morning cardinals twitching off branches, squirrels boring into the ground, and the sage and the rogue recovering from the night.
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Wash at the stream.', 'yardEndStream')</div>
{
<div class='o'>
(display: 'toEntranceHall')
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
#(print: $institution's yard)
##(print: $institution's name)
###Wraiths in the Fog
</div>
}
The cloud in the Handmaiden's head rolled not as a storm but as an avalanche. She anchored herself to the forest by aiming for the gate, then laying claim to the expanse of the stream directly in line of it.
She crept to the bank. Her hair crunched in her hand, then expanded and shimmied like seaweed upon immersion. She combed out tangles, needles, and leaves in the waterflow. A history seemed to form piece by piece with each droplet rolling down her neck, yet the moment a vision almost solidified, it was washed away in whole. While her memories remained blurred, the pain in her head ebbed with the current, and the contents of her stomach stagnated.
She flipped her hair out of the stream, letting the sheet it had become slap her shoulders and back. The forest sounded drowned behind the wet drapery, but she became aware of a heavy rumbling, squealing and creaking, along the outskirts of the stone fence.
He emerged from the fog, the man of the basement. Calberus had come to harvest the dead.
The potato sack drooping over his head and the ragged skirt fabric rippling over his bare feet bestowed his immensity a wraithlike aspect, as if he had escaped a collective dream to walk the conscious world and dare sanity. A body, stripped of clothing and of a face, had been loaded upon the old dray drawn behind him.
The Handmaiden remembered the pilgrims.
She picked out the last of the residue from the corners of her eyes. Of the night after dinner, she recalled not all events but some sensations. Her fingers rubbed together, recreating the child's small touch, soft yet firm like a lizard's. The girl had fled, she was certain. Perhaps the sage or the thrall could elaborate on the other two.
Under a tree by the stream, Gavril had wrapped himself in a frock coat too large, locking the collar around his neck by nursing a cigarette at his lips with both hands. Breath and smoke mixed in the air. He had a blank expression, most likely also a blank mind. His long, naked legs were spread in front of him, limp and pale as fresh butcher cuts.
Artrius had positioned himself beneath a woodland cathedral's arches down the stream from the rogue, softened by the witheroak's drapery and his own exposed flesh. Like the Handmaiden and the rogue, he had lost half his clothing to the whims of their nocturnal revelry. His scourge, the thorned iron chain, pressed in loops round his hand. The trunk's alcoves sheltered much of him from the cold breeze as well as from the Handmaiden, but he was not hiding, only thinking.
(display: 'decisionSit'){(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'searchShedLoft')[(linkgoto: 'Go down the ladder.', 'sceneShed')](else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the shed.', 'sceneShed')]}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's shed)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
</div>
}
{
(if: $observation's witchSightArtrius)[(display: 'shed2')]
(elseif: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(display: 'shed1')]
(else:)[(display: 'shed0')]
}
(display: 'searchShed')
(display: 'toInstitutionScenesYard')No fire burned in the cast iron stove near the back of the shed, leaving navigation by faint moonlight from the windows. The rogue's nest was the loft, but the Handmaiden's concerns were commonly on ground level.
Heavy tables, a variety of instruments, and a lathe provided for the production of handicrafts. The woodworking bench stood freely beside a cabinet and drawers containing tools not purloined in the interim between the Circle's abandonment and Lorcis's occupation. The Handmaiden's work included intricately carved bowls, cups, and utensils for the institution's use as well as for the market. While well-to-do Cairelics preferred porcelain or glass vessels, the Handmaiden's more profitable wares were durable containers: family coffers, trinket and jewelry cases, toy chests, tobacco boxes, and coffins.
Creatures were covetous, and materials embodied ideas which would otherwise evaporate out of the scope of history. Wisdom and knowledge were forgotten without phylacteries to preserve them. Demons inhabited items--a scrap of paper, an inscribed ring, a lock of hair, a broken toy--and could tell their stories. Cherished secrets were safe within containers, secure enough to survive generations, if not aeons, by their immortal caretakers. The Handmaiden provided lids, key latches, and puzzle combinations to allow her customers ownership of their treasures and to put in tidy order their memories and desires. A sense of power and control did come to those whose thoughts could be so neatly tucked away.
The woodenwares were carved in the botanical flourishes the Handmaiden had learned as a child. Lorcis and Artrius had determined her clan from her handiwork, but it was no secret within the institution that she had forsaken her kamon.
The Handmaiden spied Artrius seated within an arching shelter of brambles and thorns. The mother lay across his arms, head and feet dangling over the tips of the grasses. Her hat had fallen, and her long hair had become caught in the low brambles. Their breasts were free to the cold air--his, expanding by the quiet hymn he had played on the cello, and hers, awaiting.
His voice reverberated in the inhuman polyphony of the gods not meant for mortal ears. The music was unsettling, haunting. The meaning of the Ancient Servecant language he sang was lost to the Handmaiden, but the mournful song seemed self-persecuting, a celebration of guilt or regret gnawing deep within him. The mother lay without a word in his embrace, and the faint smile, too, turned with a kind of discomfort.
(if: $observation's afterTeaArtrius)[
The Handmaiden recalled Artrius's warning to not approach or touch him during the mushrooms' spell. He knew not her armor of Seht and the lucidity granted her by her command of consciousness, which was now a dearth of his. It seemed Calaiean music had swayed not only the pilgrims.
](if: not $entryLocateArtrius's done)[
(display: 'doneEntryLocateArtrius')]The Ophanim of Seht was swaddled within the orb of his own arm-wings, which pulsated with piling rivers and ripening pustules. Between their branches and webbing inundated with tangled spiderlings, the Handmaiden pieced together shredded images of Artrius's glowing eight eyes and his fangs embedded in the bolus. He moaned and lurched with the body, wrung by euphoria too quickly and painfully gained. The (if: $entryReturnWeapons's done)[misericorde](else:)[hatpin] was but a glint in the grass, plastered with moths which had drowned in their blood.{
<div class='o'>
<!-- LORCIS'S ROOM -->
(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned and not $observation's witchSightLorcis)[(linkgoto: 'Visit Lorcis.', 'searchCellLorcis2')]
(elseif: $entryGetVenom's owned and not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(linkgoto: 'Check on Lorcis.', 'searchCellLorcis1')]
(elseif: not $entryGetVenom's owned)[(linkgoto: 'Check on Lorcis.', 'searchCellLorcis0')]
<!-- ARTRIUS'S ROOM -->
(if: not $entryGetVenom's owned)[
(if: not $observation's artriusWeapons)[(linkgoto: "Return Artrius's daggers to his room.", 'returnWeaponsRoom')]
(else:)[(linkgoto: "Enter Artrius's room.",'searchCellArtrius1')]
]
(elseif: $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(linkgoto: "Enter Artrius's room.",'searchCellArtrius2')]
<!-- HANDMAIDEN'S ROOM -->
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned and not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[
(if: not $entryGetVenom's done)[(linkgoto: "Get venom from the Handmaiden's room.", 'getVenom')]
(elseif: $entryGetVenom's done and not $observation's antivenin)[(linkgoto: "Get antivenin from the Handmaiden's room.", 'getAntivenin')]
]
(elseif: not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[(linkgoto: "Enter the Handmaiden's room.", 'searchCellHandmaiden0')]
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Lorcis's Room</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden listened at the door to Lorcis's restlessness. He turned and groaned in his bed, and he murmured. She could not understand his words, and neither could he.
He was an anointed, a Sehtian individual gifted precognition, illumination in madness, and insight into phenomena by the auditory manifestations within his ears, inside his head. The undercurrents to thought for many anointeds were repetitive scratches or screeches akin to trapped animals; conversations, lectures, admonishments, imperatives, or threats; or music profound and deafening. Some individuals were manipulated by their voices to self-harm, to kill, or to take regrettable actions without comprehension, but self-inflicted wounds, murders, and decisive gains could be made by pact between the chosen and the gods.
Of the voices in his head, Lorcis could neither clarify their words nor carry out their wishes. However, he would mumble in his sleep an equal garble of which the multilingual Handmaiden or Artrius could make no definite conclusions. Sleep gave him a new language he could not yet grasp awakening.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteAnointed)[
(display: 'addNoteAnointed')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Lorcis's Room</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden turned an ear toward Lorcis's door and heard nothing through it. Sleep, the mortal burden, had finally come for him.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteAnointed)[
(display: 'addNoteAnointed')](if: not $observation's afterTeaLorcis)[(display: 'addObservationAfterTeaLorcis')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Eyes of the Serpent</h3>
</div>
}
Although now still and fast asleep, Lorcis had struggled with his migraine. The warmer wool blanket and quilt were tossed off the bed. At some point he had attempted to go somewhere, for his dressing gown had been taken from its hanger and discarded in the same bundle on the floor. The Handmaiden moved to pick up the bedding and robe and to cover the body of her anointed.
Lorcis lifted a limp hand. It rose slowly toward the ceiling as if on an invisible string; his soul floated, beckoned by the dust in the moonlight and the gods above, as if he were hypnotized like the albino cobra summoned from its basket. He murmured in his indecipherable languages the susurrations of sleep. He spoke with the voices inside his head. So he had done many a night, as the Handmaiden had known attending his bedside. She seemed to have known him in childhood, when they were intertwined in whispers beneath their hides.
Their intimacy in witch sight had always been shared by the demons parading through his mind. Aruseht lured His slaves into companionship. In some ways, in some times, she felt she had spoken through the Anointed and his body to the Horned Aspis Himself, not by words but by surges of ecstasy. When answers to existential questions eluded them like rainworm ringlets swept away by streams, they--she, the Anointed, and his voices--could bind themselves together into a swelling coil indivisible. During intercourse he was not always aware, her Anointed, the vessel.
A sallow moth had strayed into the room. The Handmaiden watched its circular fall till it spiraled onto the tip of Lorcis's finger. They both twitched, and the moth withered to red ash and dust. The hand turned, palm and veins vulnerable. Blood trickled down his wrist.
He had not moved his head or eyes to her. As she had known, he was asleep yet awakened. No anointed could deny servitude as the Great Serpent Incarnate. The Embodiment of Aruseht waited patiently for her. She obeyed Him, knelt beside the sleeping sacrifice, and kissed the hand of her master.
Aromas of Jscethycan medicine were strong in the chosen's hair, behind his ears, and upon his neck: peppermint for clarity, camphor for revitalization, and clove for grounded reality. She began to rub his skin and lick the fragrances.
The Mark of Seht upon his left eye curled. She could not grasp if his eyes were closed or opened, human or another. The white glaze or brille cast over them was scored by pupils cut vertically through the clouds. The slits dilated and contracted in unnerving rhythm, searching through the moonlight for her. The vagueness was strange, threatening. She could not read them. She could not find Him in them.
This was another poison. A childlike abstraction overcame her, and she felt as if she were not supposed to be doing what she was doing. She had once been deceived by the datura. Hot and then cold, she left him and the room. Never before had there been dread as dreadful as she had felt when gazing into the diamond eyes of the Anointed.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteAscended)[
(display: 'addNoteAscended')](display: 'addObservationWitchSightLorcis'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Scourge</h3>
</div>
}
(display: 'weaponsDescription')
The Handmaiden placed the knives on Artrius's bed, for he had neither desk nor table. Artrius spent little time in his room, as the disheveled bed and few scattered items revealed. The room appeared designated for sleep alone, rather than as a sanctuary where one might read, write, meditate, or repose in reverie. When he did reflect upon his thoughts, it was to scourge himself by the waterfall, which drowned articulations produced by the flaying.
The instrument of the deed hung upon the end of his clothes rack. The scourge was a chain of iron links, each bearing hooked thorns thickened for bludgeoning, penetrating, and ripping. Self-flagellation broke one's body as it built one's character, a practice serving as prevention from vice, repentence for sins committed by body or thought, protest on moral and spiritual grounds, or ascendence toward enlightement. Calaieans bled for forgiveness, and Slaves of Seht offered blood in exchange for knowledge. Yet from the assortment of his eclectic paraphernalia, Artrius's intentions and spiritual path remained unclear to the Handmaiden.
{
(display: 'addObservationArtriusWeapons')
(display: 'removeItemWeapons')
(display: 'doneEntryReturnWeapons')
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Artrius's Room</h3>
</div>
}
Artrius had brought with him out of exile several weapons and tools used for hunting, gathering, and defense. One particular item, a scourge, possessed a spiritual purpose.
The scourge was a chain of iron links, each bearing hooked thorns thickened for bludgeoning, penetrating, and ripping. Self-flagellation broke one's body as it built one's character, a practice serving as prevention from vice, repentence for sins committed by body or thought, protest on moral and spiritual grounds, or an ascendency toward enlightement. Calaieans bled for forgiveness, and Slaves of Seht offered blood in exchange for knowledge. Artrius followed a heretical, selfish path the Handmaiden could not yet fathom. She suspected he required a corporal reminder to his ascetic way of life. Pleasurable it would have been for her to know what sins he considered grievous enough for bodily censure.
{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Artrius's Room</h3>
</div>
}
Artrius's room appeared as stark and unwelcoming since the Handmaiden had last visited, hardly a line unsharpened.(if: (history:) contains 'returnWeaponsRoom')[ However, the knives she had lain upon his pillow were gone.] His iron chain was gone.
{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Handmaiden's Room</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden's window opened eastward, where her small shrine to Aruseht, seated on the sill, would be carved in black against the dawn light. A lift-top desk, taken from a Calaiean monastery it seemed, contained paper and writing utensils for her evening reflections and calligraphy. Shelving and hooks displayed her weapons and ceremonial paraphernalia, and she had installed a cabinet for salves, ointments, and specialized medicines rare in Caireleon. Several of the vials contained toxins to which she had built immunity.
She had eluded proper shelter since leaving Jscethyca, till Aruseht led her to Hemlock Weald. Lorcis's generosity did not go unappreciated, although he had not always realized her contributions. Humility was not foreign to her. Perhaps sweeter than knowledge forbidden was knowledge made hidden.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteArusehtName)[
(display: 'addNoteArusehtName')]{
<div class='o'>
(linkgoto: 'Study Calberus.', 'studyCalberus')
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's dungeon)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Calberus, the Man in the Basement</h3>
</div>
}
The witch Ivie belauded beauty in the grotesque. The Handmaiden accepted her simplification for the monolithic man in the basement. Although not inhuman, he seemed to be another kind of being. Lorcis lovingly called him an ogre. Myths and legends idealized fairies, demons, and angels in the likeness of humanity. Anomalies, aberrations, and abominations were cast aside in relation to human sensibilities. Monster and man, the ogre at once satisfied definition and yet rejected it. Madness, or the human inability to comprehend his mind, was his consistency.
Calberus's arm, whitened by the moon, extended toward the canvas with the grace of a mountainous landscape. The potato sack hood concealed his head, yet sight appeared unnecessary for his composition. A butcher apron hung over his otherwise bared breasts and a long white sheet wrapped around his waist. The skirt elongated his silhouette as if fused into the translucent skin spanning his musculature. Deep purple veins snaked across scars and sutures like the shadow weave of branches, transforming into fabric folds crooked and trained along the ground in tatters. Beneath the column of moonlight, the ogre's spectral pallor radiated a presence ethereal and portentous.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteJanitor)[
(display: 'addNoteJanitor')](if: not $observation's studyCalberus)[(display: 'addObservationStudyCalberus')]{
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned and not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[
<div class='o'>
(if: $inv contains $itemVenom)[(linkgoto: "Apply the venom to the child's wound.", 'applyVenom')]
(if: $observation's afterTeaChild)[(linkgoto: "Observe the child.", 'observeChild1')](else:)[(linkgoto: "Observe the child.", 'observeChild0')]
(linkgoto: "Observe Gavril.", 'observeGavril')
</div>
]
(elseif: not $entryGetVenom's owned)[
<div class='o'>
(if: $inv contains $itemPlatterGlass and $observation's platterGlass is false)[(linkgoto: 'Leave the platter and glass in the scullery.', 'leavePlatterGlass')]
(linkgoto: 'Check the cauldron and prepare supper.', 'checkCauldron')
</div>
]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Hands of Seht</h3>
</div>
}
Domed mushroom caps and flayed tomatoes tumbled in the cauldron soup, which the Handmaiden had replenished with pheasant after good venison and bones the previous week. She whirled the clear broth into a ladle and tested its potency. Lorcis enjoyed a tart broth, agreeable to her own preferences, although he would have to take his meal another time. The opiate she had given him would encourage deep sleep and the voices' lullabies.
She assumed position of authority on the institution grounds during his absences or retreats, a duty not by official appointment but by Ivie's compliance or Artrius's indifference. For the evening, she recalculated the arrangement. The Anointed's place at the head was now hers, and Artrius would replace her as the Left Hand of Seht. The Right would be filled by Gavril. The father would sit with his back to Artrius; beside the rogue would stay the mother. In the last place, the girl would bring the tail to its end and close the coil.
To complete her satisfaction in planning, the Handmaiden dusted ground black pepper and dill weed into the cauldron, then stirred and tasted the soup once more. A draft cut through the air under her nose. The postern had been opened, the rogue's coach gun leaned against the frame, and the rogue himself was seated on the steps. Gavril's propensity to moving among shadows came by an affinity for dirt and gutter, not much by conscious design. He happened to blend in with the kitchen's earthen surroundings, and if not for the cold wind and the light glimmering upon the beer bottle in his hand, the Handmaiden might have not known he had been there, watching her.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Why did you bring them here?</div>
Gavril lessened his expanse upon the stairs as if shrinking from her attention, despite having teased it.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Heyo to you too, Handy-o-mine. Aye nah, they'd their own furrow dug.</div>
He drank and then let the bottle dangle between his fingers, between his knees. The Handmaiden could believe impaired judgment prevented him the foresight necessary for maintaining long-term fraud. The family had perhaps spied the lights, smelled the soup, and determined the source to be their destination. That he may have warned them mattered not. For servants like their man, Parish, contributions to their enterprises were to be, above all, of an agreeable nature.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Do you not bear a burden as well, Parish? Vanity is to seek the love of your oppressor.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL A coin's no duller from hand, nor teeth, nor heart. Bled for it all the same, I've so.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The Anointed provides you more than enough. What is it you want now?</div>
He lowered his head and tucked his legs closer to his body, unable to formulate a reply. Gloom rimmed his eyes, though fire glistened amber in them.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Set five places. The woodenwares.</div>
Gavril raised a brow at the gesture of homeliness extended toward the pilgrims--his density prevented him from believing the Handmaiden capable of hospitality--but went about as told with neither eagerness nor complaint. She retrieved a loaf of rye from the bread box and a cutting board for the table.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Licky's a nod by.</div>
The rogue had beseiged the coven with unfortunate nicknames, including variations. The Handmaiden tolerated his language because Lorcis seemed disinclined toward proper titles. Forgoing formal address was one of many allowances of the thrall's, which he took for granted. Each time he called her Handy, Made, or Madey, he could have been one limb lost if not for the protection of the Anointed, otherwise known to him as Licky or Sissy, colloquial Duskain terminology for snakes.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The Anointed needs the rest. I take it you have not disturbed him.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL A cry he made was all, and me, down neath the sill.</div>
The Handmaiden scrutinized the rogue's placement of the plates and bowls. He avoided her gaze, but the Handmaiden's will, which was the will of the Serpent Himself, compelled him into the correct formation by her presence alone. Gavril's enslavement had begun before he could have recognized it, for each time he did not spit discontent was another bend before the Corruptor. She might have noticed a glimpse of potential which Lorcis saw in him--in all of them of the Anointed's coven. As an anointed, he would teach them to recognize one another's worth as well.
Thinking of them, the Handmaiden perceived Artrius standing beside her, also overlooking the rogue and the table.
Although possessing enough brawn to arrest attention, the sage navigated spaces with a lightfooted covertness honed by his years in exile. It seemed to the Handmaiden that some kind of formal training in espionage put intention in his step. As with the rogue and the Handmaiden herself, positioning, movement, and timing were crucial during exercises, pursuit of game, or plans gone awry. Artrius seemed to be invariably vigilant, and this deliberate stealth stifled any charisma or communal responsibility he might have once commanded. (if: (history:) contains 'sceneLibrary')[He had finished his book in time to have avoided meeting the family at the door, despite the extended duration of their desperate summons.](else:)[The Handmaiden knew him to have been reading in the library during the family's arrival, ignoring their summons while no less aware of their desperation.]
Now, having made some assessment of the situtation, the sage brought out the soup tureen, an ornamented porcelain of Ivie's which was painted with pastel roses, strawberries, and hooded skeletons. As he filled it from the cauldron source, the Handmaiden paired linens and cutlery to each place. Gavril sidled further from the table.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It is the Anointed's wish that we--the three of us--take our meal with the pilgrims. He is unable to join us, so it becomes our duty to dispense the cordiality customarily in his realm of expertise. Thus move six hands of the Serpent.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL My hands are to no licky but my own.</div>
His vulgarities were simple and infantile. A smirk accompanied the quip, but he was not as clever as he liked to believe, less a fox skillful in misdirection than a hare skittering in panic.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL By of it, a lizzie-lick with hands's a leggie-lo, isn't it? Perhaps a gannie-go.</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS The Rhashkaden Mandala stylizes Aruseht, God of Knowledge, as a hybrid comprising a human upper body and a serpent's lower body. Horns extend from his head, his tongue forks into further tongues, and his torso flowers by a thousand arms, encircled by the serpentine body in knots. In this form, Aruseht is known as the Horned Aspis, the Webbed Naga, the Sinuous Kirin, the Spider Dragon, or simply the Serpent. Members of the predominant Sehtian religion, the Slaves of Seht, consider themselves to be incarnations of his hands; thus may the serpent bear hands.</div>
Artrius placed the soup tureen at the center of the table. Gavril retained the small smirk of his, which was falling into the shadows. Unlike Lorcis and Ivie, the Handmaiden did not reward his crassness or elementary musings with attention. Artrius had yet to learn the limits of the rogue's appetite for lecture, or he persisted in futile attempts to educate a fellow heathen who resisted higher meaning to life.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN An accurate recitation, Artrius. Apply the same monotonous rigor to entertaining the visitors during supper, and perhaps they'll be put out of our way before long.</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS My fast continues throughout the night.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Fasting doesn't prohibit you from the table, and you don't object to tea.</div>
The truth did snare him. He had retrieved from the hutch a porcelain teapot matching the soup tureen's macabre gaiety. It occurred to the Handmaiden that the teapot had been Artrius's primary reason for rousing himself out of the library, and the unequivocal excuse for his return to it. One book's end was another's beginning. In his mind, creating tasks within the archives was a reasonable alternative to amusing strangers. The Handmaiden could make better use of him.
She held out her hand, and he relinquished the teapot to her. Although one of the taller in the institution, he had adopted a posture where his head tilted downward, requiring his eyes to turn up if he looked at someone in what could have been interpreted as a menacing promise or a coy solicitation. Both, if the observer were Ivie. For the Handmaiden, it was a clear acknowledgment of submission. He was not convinced into pleasing her, she knew, but by the needs of the institution.
The underlying illegality of the coven's residence, as well as certain deeds performed in particular by the ogre or the rogue, prompted the Anointed to instruct the coven toward fewer notable activities. Knowing the importance of such discretion, Artrius could oversee parts of the night's operation himself, ensuring a desirable outcome. By his logic, the visitors from the Circle should be served quietly, vaguely, and uneventfully so that they might depart in the same manner. It was a speciality of his to be forgotten.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN We'll have our tea in time. The pilgrims are in the stable house. You may use this opportunity to deliver them for supper.</div>
Artrius exited up the hall stairs, gone as quietly as he had arrived.
The Handmaiden had intended to send Gavril for wine from the cellar while she lit candles, but the rogue had since flown as well, leaving the postern open and his half-empty beer bottle on a step. He needed not have obtained a bottle, for the institution had its own supply in kegs, including a tap in the kitchen. Alas, Lorcis had chosen birds for his coven, but he had not a cage to hold them. The Handmaiden would build one for him. She shut the door and finished the beer.
{
(display: 'addCompanionAll')
(display: 'doneEntryCheckCauldron')
(display: 'changePortraitPlayer')
}
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Complete preparations for supper.', 'sceneKitchenSupperStart')</div>{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Fizzy</h3>
</div>
}
The child had grimaced at the initial taste of beer, and she sopped off her lips with the sleeve of her good arm after each sip. Throughout her trials drinking the beverage, she kept her injured arm steady. She watched Gavril, seemingly to distract herself from the Handmaiden's attention.
<div class='d'>$CHILD My papka never let me into the drink cabinet. His name was Cuaidhri, too. He spelt it simple on official papers, like on promissory notes, but I saw the letters my mother'd written him. That was when they were young, and it was sappy stuff, to be honest.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Is it no coincidence he bears the same name?</div>
The Handmaiden knew the rogue's tricks well enough that when the girl had first mentioned her father to him, he had taken the opportunity to adopt the same name, perhaps as convenience to fully form his persona, to build commonality with her for further gains, or by impulse without scheme as habitual liars were cursed to do. The girl shrugged, then glanced from Gavril to her arm. There was no reason to hurry.
<div class='d'>$CHILD It's a common Duskain name with lots of elaborate ways to spell. I think the original is the loveliest. It can be very confusing to pronounce when you see it.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Not to you.</div>
Sly pride puffed the child's cheeks.
<div class='d'>$CHILD I know Duskain. Papka was adamant. He talked a lot about Duskain independence. And the Judge. But he wasn't a member of the DFA or anything as awful as that, simply a patriotic, god-fearing drunkard. We were supposed to be thankful to Calaiel that we'd eat biscuit crumbs while the Murfields and the Bowens down the street had turkey or steak every week, and then we'd get out the doilies, crystals, and good wine for them whenever they visited. Papka was a hypocrite like the rest of them, but at least I learnt a beautiful language out of it all. Even Cuaidhri can't speak it. Artrius can.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN So he can.</div>
The child squinted and sipped.
<div class='d'>$CHILD When he came to get us, I tripped and accidentally made an oath like my papka used to--in Duskain--and then Artrius started telling a story in Duskain. It was about trees and peeling bark, long grey hair, and--I didn't quite understand it all. At least he wasn't short with me. Quite an odd fellow. I must have a proper chat with him sometime, musn't I?</div>
Sometime. She spoke as if she were going to be a regular occurrence at the institution.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Was there really a baby in the soup?</div>
The girl leveled her eyes on the Handmaiden, and her flushed cheeks made her seem angry. She wanted a serious answer.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Perhaps next time.</div>
The answer put the girl into thought. She looked down at her arm once again, eyes heavy and lips slackened.
<div class='d'>$CHILD Weren't you going to help me?</div>
The Handmaiden left the table. The child yawned into the beer, then took a deeper swig.
(display: 'addObservationAfterTeaChild'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>The Judged and the Just</h3>
</div>
}
The child waited for treatment by turning her eyes from the bite wound to the applicator of it. He must have appeared broken himself, coiled in the corner of the scullery, that the girl might have been tempted to absolve him of full fault of his assault. A privilege it was to romanticize or idealize suffering, which eased not sufferers but those looking down upon them.
She had dreams of the people she wanted to leave and new company she hoped to find. Yet what she knew of Gavril--and of all in the institution--was dangerously incomplete. The Handmaiden could not be certain if the girl could accept a world without her kind of justice.
{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Descent</h3>
</div>
}
Gavril buried his head between the walls. He was twisted on the floor, heaving or weeping, sometimes silent and picking at his arms and peeling scabs. He had strayed from the group early in the journey and had become lost to a darkening storm. When the Handmaiden thought him in his lowest depths, Gavril found trenches to sink lower. She left him to find his own foothold in the abyss, for it was not in her interest to cross unsteady waters. She had chosen the unyielding, enlightening path.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteLetters)[
(display: 'addNoteLetters')](if: not $observation's afterTeaGavril)[(display: 'addObservationAfterTeaGavril')]{
(if: $entryGetVenom's owned and not $entryLocateArtrius's owned)[
<div class='o'>
(if: $observation's afterTeaMother)[(linkgoto: "Observe the mother.", 'observeMother1')](else:)[(linkgoto: "Observe the mother.", 'observeMother0')]
(if: $observation's afterTeaArtrius)[(linkgoto: "Observe Artrius.", 'observeArtrius1')](else:)[(linkgoto: "Observe Artrius.", 'observeArtrius0')]
</div>
]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Moths and Mother</h3>
</div>
}
The mother did not turn to the Handmaiden but sighed when they were near enough for whispers. She seemed unsurprised by the splendor of the Slave's marks wrapping the Handmaiden's arms. Instead, the woman rested almost defeatedly upon Artrius's jacket on the gate post. Her voice rumbled low and throaty as if she were lulling a child to sleep.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER The Judge understands passion and indulgence--He did once have a heart--but His judgment must be above the vices of His mortal children. Sister, how long have you been here by yourself?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I'm not alone.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER I was afraid to hear that. Of course, it's only natural to be lonely and to seek company beyond the Judge. We cannot escape His eyes, His ears, or His scorn. He sees the secrets between pages, between friends and enemies, a lady and a servant... a woman and a man.</div>
Artrius had begun crafting a torch, wrapping a dirty cloth around a hefty stick in a slow and meditative pace. He seemed at once enraptured by yet unable to concentrate upon such a simple task. A similar intensity weighed upon the Handmaiden. The mushrooms made a cloud around her head. She breached the fog that was the mother's sentence, saw the Scarsman reflected in her eyes, and discerned the implication and contrivance in the mother's own mind. A laugh escaped her, a contemptuous anomaly. She had never been lonely, nor so desperate.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN An overly cautious cat attacks its own tail.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Don't worry about me selling your secrets. I forsake no individual, for the Judge can still show mercy to those who forsake <em>Him</em>. Oh yes, you wouldn't think so, and many of my colleagues don't, but He can. Let me tell you about this Scarswoman I once reared like my own, a poor thing, barely any Alaisean, immoral character, and in desperate need of help. You see, this child was herself with child. The father, I'm sure the Judge set him on his own path to redemption--I never once saw the fellow.
The others wanted to turn her away, but the Lord Judge knows it's not within me to turn away wretched souls. I took her in, bathed her, trimmed her nails and combed her hair, and gave her a clean gown. I taught her proper grammar, etiquette, and the formal conduct of the cloth. You can see now she is the most devoted nun at the school. She leads the gardenening therapy sessions and is famous with all the novitiates. You wouldn't have thought a Scarswoman would be a wonder with tropical plants.</div>
The Handmaiden felt a twitch at her elbow as if someone had pulled it, and the wind shook the hair on her arms. Memory came like the breeze, in waves and sometimes too lightly or fleetingly. Vague limbed monuments loomed around her--their hands had always been on her, guiding, pushing, and pulling. The mother's hat tilted in the breeze, and the Handmaiden found the mother smiling at her. It was a patient smile.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Most unfortunately, the baby didn't survive. This was the Judge's decree, and the trial only strengthened her. She came to know that a path without a burden is a path to another, so she sought a higher purpose here with us.
Allow me to pass on good advice. Someone's potential is either realized or limited by those around them. Be the one to support another, and the Judge sees that you both are met with due justice.
You see the success of our Scarswoman at the school. You, likewise, can do the same with him.</div>
Artrius waved the torch from target to target, setting the kindling alight. The mother let her attention be swept by the gaining fire, which had set aglow the sage's golden skin.
Diversified by independent groups and individuals, the Slaves of Seht religion was unlike the Circle's tailored purpose administered by the few elite. Sometimes, Slaves became confused by their power and lost focus of their purpose to the Horned Serpent. A higher purpose for the Handmaiden was to serve Him in her own path, in all His changing directions and interrupted flows, till to Him she gave her bloodsoul to be reimagined. This, those within her old coven could not have understood of her.
The higher purpose for the Calaiean mother was to make others into likenesses of herself, to irreversibly transform larvae into moths of the same wing. Perhaps the Handmaiden's revulsion had become discernable, for the mother met her again with the ever-solidifying smile.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Think it through. Here in the middle of the forest, he's unable to much contribute to the service of Calaiel. You can see his potential is being wasted.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What is his potential?</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Can you not envision him in a clean suit and polished shoes? Imagine him performing in a grand music hall or at the altar, perhaps even with the Cardinals themselves in attendance. Think of the example he will be to other aspiring young Scarsgarans. You know they need someone like themselves to look up to. They could grow up to be just like him.</div>
The Handmaiden turned her back to the mother, who despite showing fangs was no tiger in the grass, only a chattering sacktoy.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He gets damn well enough praise.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER You asked, my dear. I'm simply answering your question, and you must be humble when making demands. What right have you to ask, when you yourself have not given, only taken? Yes, you didn't know I knew, did you? I will not interfere with what you are or who you pretend to be. I do not fear you or your kind.
But I see in him goodness, and if you have any humanity left in your heart, you will let him out of your darkened grasp. Let me rephrase. I'm giving you the chance to begin righting your path with the Judge by allowing your man to enter the Sacred School. I'm aware it's most unconventional for someone like me to be speaking to someone like you in such a civil manner, but you and I are women of faith. The lost and strayed are our children to love, and we are all children of Calaiel, even if some of us have forsaken Him. Besides, I find it never hurts to ask.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Ask him yourself.</div>
Artrius thrust the torch into the body of the nest, and the sparks put a glint in his eyes. Lorcis would not like to lose his resources, not to the Circle. Although the Handmaiden was responsible for the institution's defenses and organization, the bodies within were free to move as the Serpent directed them. If Artrius wanted to leave Hemlock Weald Institution, with the mother or otherwise, he could do so. The Handmaiden would not miss him. She had never needed to mourn a mortal soul.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteBloodsoul)[
(display: 'addNoteBloodsoul')](display: 'addObservationAfterTeaMother'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Blindness</h3>
</div>
}
Gods kept secrets, yet all the earth lay beneath the eyes of mortals for them to see. The mother attached herself to Artrius by gaze, swaying as if upon a precipice. She clung to the post bearing his jacket, lest the breeze carry her away.
{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Gathered and Beloved</h3>
</div>
}
Old boards, fencing, and furniture made up the bonfire. The Handmaiden had not realized how much had cluttered the institution grounds till they took shape in pyramidal magnificence. (if: $observation's afterTeaMother)[The fire seemed to absorb Artrius, for he did not respond to her footfalls till she stood so near to him that she heard his even yet constrained breaths, as if he refused respite otherwise.](else:)[Artrius loosened his collar another button, rested a hand upon his lower back, and measured the balance of the construction through low-lidded eyes.] Although he had not imbibed, the mushrooms were not alone in feeding his turbulent meditative state. The Handmaiden recognized the cloak of ghosts and demons swathing distressed mortals, the comforts of despair. When he spoke, he spoke like the vestiges of the forest, more a low murmur around the heart than a sound in the sky.
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS We are succumbing to an altered state. For the fullest of its duration, it is in your mortal interest to cross not my path.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It's fitting you fear me more than you fear the Calaieans. Your worry is unfounded. You know we won't strike one another down, or else you wouldn't have accepted the tea.</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS I ask that you do not approach me. Lay no hand upon me.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN When the Anointed Ithscerah was taken to Scarsgar, he was welcomed by the Varulvkyn Queen Sharvaslava in the midst of her rage and bloodlust, for even in her shapeshifted form, she recognized the prophet to be kin of another skin. They hunted side-by-side, flesh-by-flesh, blood-with-blood. From mountain to sea, the Sehtian pilgrims and their Varulvkyn guards ran together, shared fire and bed, and fed from the hand of the other, brothers and sisters bound to the same pyre. Are we not kin, gathered and beloved by the Anointed? Are you not blood of my blood?</div>
He had turned from her, although she could not remember seeing him move.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN In your mortal interest, pray that you are.</div>
She glanced at the mother by the tree afar, who watched them steadily without ears for their words.
(if: not $observation's afterTeaArtrius)[(display: 'addObservationAfterTeaArtrius')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Fire</h3>
</div>
}
(if: $observation's afterTeaMother is 0)[Artrius constructed the bonfire with intention and precision. He would place hand pressure upon areas along the mound to test its structural integrity, prop up weak points with a table leg or a chair, realign the placement of his limited resources, and stand back, hands on hips, to reassess changes. The Handmaiden remained a distance apart, as she had nothing more to say to him.](else:)[Artrius had seated himself on the dusty ground within the circle of light, one knee up and an arm slung over it. His head hung low, and his eyes were, in contrast to the countless ember eyes before him, lightly closed. The Handmaiden circled the fire, but not an eyelid or finger twitched.]
{
(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned and not $observation's witchSightArtrius)[<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Approach Artrius.', 'locateArtrius')</div>]
(elseif: not $entryGetVenom's owned)[
<div class='o'>
(linkgoto: "Examine the caskets stacked by the workbench.", 'searchShedCaskets')
(if: not $observation's gavrilMedicine)[(linkgoto: "Refill Gavril's medication.", 'replaceMedicine')]
</div>
]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's shed)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Caskets</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden fulfilled commissions for caskets of varying sizes, although they were unwieldy from workshop to patron, and she gained no particular pleasure from traveling with the thrall, who drew the cart carrying the merchandise.
During one such journey, she had educated him on a spring trap devised to maim acquisitive relatives and grave robbers who underestimated the prudence of the dead. Other traps might have terminated many a purloiner, but her blueprints were not always in defense against intrusions. Some designs defended against death itself. Over the course of her settlement in Caireleon, the Handmaiden had taken requests for the installation of safety bells, which a misdiagnosed deceased trapped within the coffin could ring to alert passers-by of the current predicament. Another insurance against premature burial was a hatch that could be opened independent of a nailed lid. The hatch would have been of little advantage if the coffin were cradled in the earth, but there, she left her patrons to their own devices.
Not long on the road during this exposition, she knew herself to be orating to none who could appreciate the information. Although brash and loose among others in the coven, Gavril reserved himself in her presence and, thus returned little by way of conversation. This was desirable, for when he did speak, he was often juvenile and mistaken.
{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's shed)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Another Knowing</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden climbed an upright ladder to Gavril's loft. Lorcis's thrall lived in the shed apart from the coven and would watch days pass from his perch, hunched behind the railing or at the window like a bird in a cage. He was free to walk and sleep where he willed, when he willed, with whom he willed. He could speak his mind--rather, was encouraged to do so. He was given allowance to seek employment outside the institution, as the case in the present. The loose lead was unconventional amongst Sehtian traditions. Gavril retained a personhood of his own, yet despite his unreliable availability, the pet seemed bonded to the master well enough. The Handmaiden left Lorcis to his own training methods.
She did oversee the thrall's spiritual evolution, which the Anointed neglected. Gavril was subjected to a habitual loss of conciousness and paroxysms. For those of this condition, medical researchers concluded a fractured constitution, psychoses and hysteria, or unrestrained masturbation taxed the brain, causing disturbances within the body. Clergies recognized demonic possession. Citizens whispered witchcraft. Conversely, rather than invoke the spells, the witch Ivie had prescribed a solution of potassium bromide, a clear and tasteless liquid, to suppress the rogue's inclinations and habits. Daily doses sedated him. They forbade him his unique knowledge.
Fits or attacks, as so called, were interventions. The shifts in the rogue's consciousness and states of being brought him closer to divinity than any other strife, short of birth or death. Much like Lorcis's voices or the Calberus's madness, Gavril's convulsions were a gift from the gods.
The bottle of bromide was huddled upon a wooden crate among other vessels, a tin plate of cigarette butts, and unclean rags. The Handmaiden swirled the solution and then turned the bottle upside down out the casement. She refilled the bottle with water from her canteen and returned it to its sty, questioning the coven's commitment to honoring the Old Ways.
(if: $observation's studyGavril)[
The tree branches creaked, as did the floorboards beneath her, as if another life had sprung from them. She climbed down the ladder to none but her own shadow, although she had suspected to find another. Wherever Gavril had wandered from the stable house, he had not come by the shed after her, and the Handmaiden's revision remained unknown to any but the All-seeing Corruptor.
]
{
(display: 'addObservationGavrilMedicine')
(display: 'doneEntryCheckMedication')
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's shed)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Serpent's Needle</h3>
</div>
}
The silent hesitation following Artrius's song was not a breath long. In that moment the mother's eyes widened, and she scraped her bare heels in the dirt. Artrius raised a hand, and shining in its grasp was (if: $entryReturnWeapons's done)[the Caerelic misericorde,](else:)[the hatpin off the mother's headdress,] and with it he pierced the mother through the heart.
Blood trickled smoothly from the hole. Too, did blood run down his hand, his arm. Irregular streams parted from sense, and the Handmaiden discerned the legs on them. Thousands of legs. Blood-limbed spiderlings were spinning and scattering over him from his eyes and ears. They burst from his back where the thorny branches were embedded, effused with the musk of newborns and death.
The brambles at her feet quaked. She fell a step away, realizing the branches' roots originated not from the ground but from his body. The undergrowth trembled and arched, then screeched as they broke through the forest surface. He, too, cried.
He seemed overcome by a sorrowful fervor. The Handmaiden shielded herself from the branches and the flying dirt muddied by blood. When she saw him again, he was revealed to have six more eyes, each as beady as the original two which had become washed white. She knew then what he was. The eyes and the webbed branches of thorns were the hunter's aim and the encircling arm-wings of an Ophanim of Seht, the wondrous vision of the Anointed Ithscerah before his final joy.
The spindles of Artrius's thousand arm-wings unfolded like spider legs independently precise, joined by the webbed blood membrane between them. When his fingers slid together, another screech sounding of discordant strings raked down his bones. He hunched over the woman draped in his arms and inserted his tongue into her punctured breast. The Handmaiden then heard them, his fangs lusting through the bolus's skin and meat.
His indulgent slurping reminded her of hot bestial viscera after the hunt. Drawn, she could not help but touch one of the spider arms. A thorn stretched out to meet her finger, and her blood melted into his. Artrius seemed to taste it through his limb as the spiderlings scurried out from the crevices between the bone branches and swarmed the drenched. The arm-wings bowed and quivered, raining down another strained whine. The Ophanim's iridescent eyes darted and rolled within their sockets, seeking and then locating her, memorizing each of her organs inside and out.
Aruseht's vision-gift granted the Handmaiden the beauty of dread, for accompanying fear came awe. Although she stroked his arm, she shuddered at his warm red wetness. Harbingers of the Serpent bore a volatile kinship with mortals. They were harbingers, ministers, and omens. They were neither malignant nor benevolent. The one beneath her hand, she could not read but for his torment. From the highest demons to the lowest humans, true slaves of Seht endured the shared pain of knowledge. The Handmaiden entered the sphere of death's stench, where the spiderlings frenzied over the disintegrating corpse, and let her finger alight upon Artrius's temple.
The harbinger's wings opened, talons drawn back. He took her by the roots of her hair, dragged her into the crook of his muscular human arm, and sank his fangs into her throat. His venom surged into her. He suckled upon the bite, and her blood swirled by poison and his drawing force. Intoxicated, she began to dream of his thousand hands soothing her, snakes slithering in her veins, and the Serpent's rise swelling through her body. Limp and falling numb, she let her bloodsoul flow into the devil of Seht's embrace.
The Handmaiden's sacrifice did not complete. The Ophanim spit her out. His wings folded in, shutting her from death's allure. Hand upon the remnants of drowned spiderlings on her neck, she staggered away from the magnificent creature who drank blood and wept spiders.
Seht's infinite generosity had determined her path would continue in this world, not in oblivion but as the bringer of oblivion. The Handmaiden had always known she and the Ophanim were the same kin and kind. Even in his altered form Artrius had come to recognize her. As well, could she see, he had already acquired refection for the night.
(if: not $observation's witchSightArtrius)[(display: 'addObservationWitchSightArtrius')]{
(if: $entryLocateArtrius's owned and not $observation's witchSightGavril)[<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Approach Gavril.', 'locateGavril')</div>](elseif: not $entryGetVenom's owned)[
<div class='o'>
(linkgoto: 'Study the mother.', 'studyMother')
(linkgoto: 'Study the father.', 'studyFather')
(linkgoto: 'Study the child.', 'studyChild')
(if: not $observation's studyGavril)[(linkgoto: 'Study Gavril.', 'studyGavril')]
</div>
]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's stableHouse)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>The Mother</h3>
</div>
}
The mother presented herself as a principled citizen of Gallowvalsk and a proper woman of Calaiel. A high-collared long dress and gloves beyond the wrist spared her the forest's touch. She was writing in a small black book, and the prudent scratches were no more of a disturbance in the forest than rats scurrying inside brittle walls.
The moment the Handmaiden had answered the family's summons on the portico, the mother had explained much. Very much. They were traveling to County Daley to pray at the Amphitheatre of Angels for the girl's future and health. The previous month, they had discovered the child had inherited the curse of unbound blood. She had always been of fragile heart, and scrapes and cuts required special attention to mend.
The father had hired their man, Parish--a Duskman--to draw the family's wagon and guide them through the forest, for their previous servant had been incapacitated by vicious means. Well on the uneven road bisecting the forest, and despite the mother's caution against such manuevers, a steep climb and drop chipped a wheel off their wagon. Faith kept the party from despair.
The Judge made his will known when their armed Duskman ushered them into the thicket not to demand their valuables, decency, or lives but to deliver them to Calaiel's hearth. They requested only one night's rest, for Parish would be sent to repair the wheel and axle by the earliest light.
All this, the mother had disclosed in a breath as hasty as refinement could allow, perhaps to temper the family's appeal for lodgings. Good citizens could well make their own concerns the concern of others.
(if: not $observation's studyMother)[(display: 'addObservationStudyMother')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's stableHouse)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>The Father</h3>
</div>
}
The father made his presence by heft and austerity, a thickset body fitted within a bespoke frock coat and a face framed by rigid sideburns. He was breaking wax with a letter knife, reading the envelopes' contents, and occasionally annotating them before returning them to their casings. Once or twice, he passed to the mother or child a small demand of some sort, which interrupted their own activities.(if: (history:) contains 'artrius0')[ The father's demeanor recalled Artrius's, who did conduct himself by a bearing like rigorous piety yet without, but whereas the sage made little of his desires known, the father seemed determined to forge others into roles ideal for his own gains.]
The father had also addressed their hired Duskman with short patience. That the family's previous wagon-hauling servant's usefulness had since elapsed did not defy the Handmaiden's expectations. The father had found a replacement in the rogue, at least till he had worn him down to brittle bone. Then, would he trample through ravens and warm remains to purchase a fresher body.
Although the Handmaiden could have admired his ambitions of ownership and control, an annoyance akin to indignation stirred within her. A command of riches did lure the fortunate into fantasies of intelligence, possession, authority, and esteem. The transactional relationship of a servant indebted to his master for the honor to serve disregarded the responsibility of the master and the contributions of the servent. The father shirked accountability, as if the cycle of servants coming and going one after another was due to each their own incompetency, rather than his faulty capacity to lead. Slaves of Aruseht understood order existed not by a single directional flow of power--a master alone was no master at all. As the Calaiean servant was bought and consumed, the Sehtian slave was cultivated and nourished. Ownership and control were undone by a refusal of responsibility and a wastefulness. It seemed to the Handmaiden that Lorcis's thrall was, in the hands of the vain, being wasted.
(if: not $observation's studyFather)[(display: 'addObservationStudyFather')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's stableHouse)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>The Child</h3>
</div>
}
The girl hunched in front of the fireplace closer to the flames than her guardians. Wiry limbs folded in sharp angles and frayed braids white against her red shawl condemned her to the likeness of an altricial chick. Her paleness captured the light of the fire and made her freckles like ants.
On the doorstep during the initial encounter, the mother had described the girl's blood illness as an evil besieging an innocent. The Circle, the dominant religion of Calaiel within the empire, catechized virtues through binary opposition: good against evil, right against wrong, and light against darkness. Diseases, afflictions, and defects were adversaries to overcome--many times believed to be set upon a person of wicked behavior if not a target of demons' jealousy--for they made one ugly, unproductive, needy, and burdensome. Those who could not undo or otherwise rise above aberrations had not enough faith in Calaiel to shatter the curses set upon them, and were hidden or removed from society. Unsound men, unwed mothers, and unseemly newborns were among the discarded. The girl's incompleteness had not been detected till she was safe enough from mortal censure, for she could be used by others in their own quest for goodness and propriety.
The Calaiean circle was not as pliable a shape as the Sehtian coil, which embraced irregularities, reconfigurements, and ambiguious design. The acceptance of deviations allowed evolution. From evolution came individuals. From individuals, survival, and from survival, dominance. The only curses were those of self-inflicted ignorance and denial in the face of evidence contrary. While humans were habitual deniers, the choice of enlightenment was never forbidden to them. Sometimes, insight came not in the form of quests and missions but in diseases--battles within. Sehtians allowed, while Calaieans punished, an imperfect existence.
Blood was one of the finest fluids one could offer Aruseht in return for learning, education, and the revelation of secrets. One's own blood, even more so. Bloodgiving needed not to be fatal, nor needed it a knife. Sacrifice required no enemy; salvation, no hero. The girl was not cursed. She was blessed.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteAruseht)[
(display: 'addNoteAruseht')(display: 'addObservationStudyChild')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's stableHouse)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Gavril Corragain, now by the name of Parish</h3>
</div>
}
Gavril sat by the ruin's entrance, distributing attention between the forest canopy and a vague distance. He had set aside his weapons for a cigarette, and the wall separating him from the family was solid enough that his free hand also routed out absentminded occupation.
The auburn shade of the rogue's hair--rather, the superstitions and beliefs behind the color--compounded a quarrelsome impression along with dialect and origins. Caireleon's history with Duskair documented the moorland population as being particularly susceptible to perversions. As many Duskains were of sanguine strands, conclusions had been made. To Calaieans of the empire, red hair had become a mark of Seht the Corruptor, a sign of vanity, depravity, inferiority, or impurity.
Impure blood did course many a Duskain's vessels. If the people's ancestors had not been diluted by Scarsgaran stock during the Varulvkyn invasions, their lineage had been sacrificed to Cairelic heritage during the Circle's hegemony. Jscethycan conquerors, too, once harvested carbuncles from the moors to warm their gem-laced pillows. Generation after generation of Duskain partisans, resistances, and revolutionaries were suppressed, coerced, or sterilized by greater forces. It was said of these eras that any breathing Duskain found was a bleeding Duskain bound.
Like many Duskains before him, Gavril had learned to skulk in the shadows, to read them, and to become one of them. The weight of the Handmaiden's gaze appeared palpable, as he discerned her from the surroundings and, absent of clear sentiments, removed his hand from his trousers and winked at her. The Handmaiden returned no satisfaction. He stood, made himself busy with the cigarette for another while, then slung up his coach gun and turned away into the thicket fog.
(display: 'addNoteBastard')(display: 'addObservationStudyGavril'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's stableHouse)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Serpent Knot</h3>
</div>
}
Gavril had turned open the father's trousers and invited inside himself, through the lowliest orifice, the worm of the dead. The boy was so scarce, the infinite vertebrae tunneling through his viscera molded onto his belly the ever-shifting serpent knots. The Serpent stirred inside of him till strains of snakelets climbed his throat and slung themselves from his mouth into wild tangles in the air.
The Handmaiden reached for the demons of Seht surging out of him, which hovered and curled like nematodes escaped from their host. They flicked their tongues at her fingertips, wrapped around her arm as the cold wind's ribbons, and pulled her closer to him. Blue and green erased from his eyes, he cried wordlessly from the thrashing which deformed his guts and lungs. He could not call for a mother, for he had none. The Handmaiden placed her hands on his cheeks and tears.
He lunged at her, teeth bared, and the snakes snapped. She dipped back then moved forward into the attack with her own offensive, a strike which dissolved the spittle sprays and sent him to the ground. Her hand reverberated with power spent as if she echoed her touch again and again, and he withered beneath her. The snakes' knots held onto him strong--he was not disconnected but seemed to awaken and beheld the hold upon him. He tried to escape drowning, arms and legs wild, and began to scratch the splinters from the decayed floorboards. His cries turned to rasps like the breaking wood.
(if: $entryCheckMedication's done)[The thrusting shook him till he lost his grip on the splints and his sanity, shrieked, and then stiffened and shuddered. His convulsions flung him crooked about the floor. The Handmaiden stood nearer, drawn to this other violence beset upon his mind and body, a vessel seized by the cancerous limbs of the Ophanim of Seht.
Veins caged his temples and squeezed his face purple. His teeth severed the neonates frothing now in parts from his mouth. Strings of snakelets wiggled out from his wet white eyes. She had once beheld a child such. A child with the sight of beasts.
The milky froth at his lips and the shimmer in his eyes faded. The contortions subsided. The halved snakelets and tears flopped and slithered into the furthest reaches of the shadows, leaving their parasitic vestiges in pools beneath his unconscious form. The demons which remained inside scavenged what they had left of him, churning thoroughly within his abdomen their abysmal circles.](else:)[He was unable to untangle himself from the abyss. The struggle then was not to escape but to return. To sink. Desperate and incomplete, he found his old moorings and descended again upon the corpse. His grip pierced the flesh as if hooks upon rotted fish, tearing the pallor and coating his fingers in a shiny film. The Serpent burrowed into him harder and deeper, unending, and he met the jutting with bursts of tears and laughter. Then he laughed a banshee wail, and the worms shimmered in their wetness.]
The Handmaiden would not intervene in the intimacy between god and child. Watching the miracle was privilege enough. If he had a mother he would not have cried for her. But if he did she would not have come. She would have damned him, and he, her. Only demons or angels possessed the mercy and cruelty insistent to take and love the wretched soul.
(if: not $observation's witchSightGavril)[(display: 'addObservationWitchSightGavril')]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Handmaiden's Room</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden stared into her medicine cabinet, traveling between the vials and lidded containers on the shelves. The landscape mutated from glass to ceramic to clay, dyed, glazed, and painted in colors muted by moonlight. She took the paths leisurely and surely, familiar with the village and led by colorful ribbons, paper labels, and characters carved in columns, till she arrived at the banner for the viper's den.
{
(display: 'addItemVenom')
(display: 'doneEntryGetVenom')
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's cellblock)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Handmaiden's Room</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden opened the cupboard to follow the banners to the viper's den. For the worthy, Aruseht did kiss the bites He had given.
{
(display: 'addItemAntivenin')
(display: 'addObservationAntivenin')
}Player makes a choice from a selection of cards.{
<div class='grid-decision-option-hidden center-v'>
<div class='col-option-info'>$optionHidden</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision'>
(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionPrayerHandmaiden')", 'selectedPrayerHandmaiden')
(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionPrayerArtrius')", 'selectedPrayerArtrius')
(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionPrayerGavril')", 'selectedPrayerGavril')
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision-option'>
<div class='col-option-image'>(display: 'portraitCardPlayerDecision')</div>
<div class='col-option-info'>Do not pray.</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision-option'>
<div class='col-option-image'>(if: $companion1's name is $artrius's name)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion1Decision')](else:)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion2Decision')]</div>
<div class='col-option-info'>Invite Artrius to recite the Calaiean prayer.</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision-option'>
<div class='col-option-image'>(if: $companion1's name is $gavril's name)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion1Decision')](else:)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion2Decision')]</div>
<div class='col-option-info'>Invite "Parish" to recite the Calaiean prayer.</div>
</div>
}The prayer was for no god. The caretakers did not perceive this. They refused to see that the child had a mind of her own.
The girl opened one eye at Gavril, who returned a devilish smile. The father also permitted himself a peek in time to witness the exchange, then frowned so deeply at the rogue that he missed the mother's glance upon Artrius. Foolish significance was beginning to stir among them, and the Handmaiden thanked Seht she was not stewing in the same pot.
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Dine.', 'sceneKitchenSupperConversations')</div>{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Obligated Words</h3>
</div>
}
The Circle's prayer of mercy demonstrated the underlying philosophy of their Calaieanism: castigation. Public punishment preceeding potential transgression prevented its members from those very sins, and punishment after the committed acts absolved them. They were witnessed by their congregation, so reminding one another to adhere to the will of Calaiel.
In Sehtian rituals, to punish was to bestow knowledge moreover correcting behavior, and knowledge was an intimate affair. Knowledge permitted one the choice to continue one's current path or to walk another. Prayers to Aruseht were not to beg for His permission or forgiveness but to seek options, alternatives, and adaptation. Punishment was left to mortals, between mortals.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN At Hemlock Weald, our prayers are made in silence.</div>
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Oh, it would be no trouble at all.</div>
The mother tapped the tip of her fingers upon the tabletop nearer the child.
<div class='d'>$MOTHER Please do go on, my dear.</div>
Disregarding a Sehtian host in her own domain did grant a right to corporal example. The transgressor was human and subject to human justice, after all, woman of cloth or otherwise. The Handmaiden began a warning but stopped, more intrigued by the rising at the opposite end of the table.
The child had pulled herself to the edge of her seat. She appeared smaller yet and older than her early adolescence, for the prayer to her was not devotion but obligation. The Handmaiden recognized this visage of insincerity, as did, it seemed, the child's caretakers, who bound her to her assignment with steady gazes till she began the recitation and they closed their eyes.
(display: 'prayerEnd'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Calaiean Scarsgaran</h3>
</div>
}
Scarsgarans were predominantly a pagan, athiest, or agnostic people. Although many lands apart, Jscethycan and Scarsgarans shared spiritual blood by their similar martial traditions and prowess. It was the Anointed Ithscerah's teachings which bestowed Scarsgaran tribes new sciences, mathematics, arts, and technology. Many Scarsgarans converted to Slaves of Seht while still practicing their pagan rituals, for in the Sehtian religion, there was no contradiction.
The Circle could not sever the blood bond between these warrior poets. To Calaieans, the Circle's repeated failure to establish influential representation in Scarsgar revealed not their own impotence but Sehtian interference, and the indigenous pagans' fervent determination toward savagery. Centuries of conflict between Calaieans and witches concentrated in the Scarsgaran-Caireleonic border region within Harrow Les continued to the present day against official declarations of peace. The existence of a Calaiean Scargaran--a token--was a conquest affirming the Circle's ability against overwhelming forces.
So convenient it was, then, that Artrius was familiar with Calaiean practices.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Artrius will lead.</div>
The father cleared his throat into a fist to redefine the troubled knit of his brows. A servant's participation in a meal's company seemed to confound him, but decorum stayed him from complaining aloud.
The mother's veil could not shroud a puzzled delight which gleamed in her beady eyes. Witnessing the evidence of Calaiel's power pleased her, as the Handmaiden could understand. However, the mother needed not to know that the heathen was merely a rather adept mimic, no more. She did allow herself a nod of approval as Artrius began to recite the prayer.
Beside his deep murmur, a small whisper arose. The child's voice seemed not timid but supportive, lifting his with her higher notes.
(display: 'prayerEnd'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Compassion</h3>
</div>
}
Lorcis had informed the Handmaiden, along with numerous insights into all of the coven, that Gavril had been reared in a Calaiean orphanage under the domain of the Circle. Indoctrination would have been severe and pervasive, for children of the Circle were to be industrious, not indolent. Attendants molded children through punitive measures. If they had conditioned Gavril correctly, he would have been able to recite the prayer of mercy, if only by the stickiness of trauma.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Parish will lead.</div>
Gavril met expectations with a stupefied stare. An accumulating anticipation around the table stalled him further the heavier the burden, till the father cleared his throat to introduce his incompatibility with a preposterous proposal. Servants were not to be so visible or audible. As he raised his head to voice such, the child pushed herself to the edge of her chair.
<div class='d'>$CHILD I'll say it.</div>
Her offering placated her caretakers.
The Handmaiden held no objection, for Gavril had been given his lesson, remaining occupied by the barrage of his childhood memories. He required these reminders, till he was perfected. The Circle kneaded their children dense, but in the hands of the Corruptor, they were allowed to rest and to proof. With patience, the mistake could be corrected.
The girl seemed to have wriggled out of a battering while she was still soft, before her bruises became scars. Her generosity came not from obligation but from compassion, for she had taken pity upon the rogue.
(display: 'prayerEnd'){
<div class='grid-decision'>
(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionMarkYes')", 'selectedMarkYes')
(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionMarkNo')", 'selectedMarkNo')
</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision-option center-v'>
<div class='col-option-info'>Mark the child.</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision-option center-v'>
<div class='col-option-info'>Mend the wound.</div>
</div>
}She could have stopped the stream. Venom stagnated blood.(if: $inv contains $itemAntivenin)[ Antivenin stagnated venom.] To end motion was to end literacy. The end of literacy was the end of living. It was the privilege of mortals to test their decisiveness by crashing against peaked currents, faces wetted by death so that they might breathe life. It was a mortal's burden to bleed for blood.
Yet it seemed she had become, at the sight of the running girl, weary of the hunt.
Long ago in the winter hours of the twilight between worlds, the Handmaiden had rent the flesh of nonbelievers, had made drums and cloaks of their skins, and had drunk poison from their skulls. The consecrated blood of poison survivors gave her strength, too, to be a survivor. Rituals were not only slaughter and feast. They were poetry and performance. They were fellowship and survival.
The child she had been in the old days had not understood the significance.
A handmaiden was servant, keeper, and shepherd. She had many hands and many responsibilities, but she had one purpose: to attend her master. The Handmaiden's chronicles were far from flawless--mere mortal she was--and the shape of the coil turned where it willed. Battling through exhaustion proved grit. Aruseht rewarded accumulating history to those who persevered.
The sight granted to her by the Horned Serpent, she determined, was this reminder. She found her satchel on the ground, then the vial within, and drank the venom to the final drop. She closed her eyes and let the venom settle in her belly. A drum pounded in her head, in her heart.
She opened her eyes to the circle of fire, where slithering from the thicket revealed a thousand shadowed arms flashing around the thundering blaze. The child had gone, but the Handmaiden turned toward the arms reaching to embrace her.{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $hour's name1)</h1>
</div>
}
The girl's bite wound had grown, swallowed within a tender bruise near bursting. With the (if: $inv contains $itemWeapons)[Scarsgaran athame](else:)[carving knife], the Handmaiden pricked the child's skin. Blood ran.
The mark she carved was a crescent following the wild wound. An unfinished circle was a circle yet, an infant and a promise, a sliver of the future. The Handmaiden spent some time adoring her handiwork, the crying moon. She had not forgotten the art of the Mark of Seht. She turned her fingers in the Calaiean child's blood, coated her fingernails, and offered Aruseht to taste through her own tongue. His recognition was to be shared. With the Corruptor's blessing, the Handmaiden squeezed the girl's arm and touched upon her lips the red knowledge of her Sehtian initiation.
The child stirred with a grunt of discomfort and confusion. Only when she met the Handmaiden's dark eyes did she fully awaken. She seemed to see something wrong, a visage she could not comprehend. The Handmaiden pulled the girl up and set the warmed blade against her own throat. She shook the child to keep her eyes on her. The cut stung, and a warm rush trickled down the Handmaiden's neck.
The child made a small cry. The Handmaiden released her, and she stumbled arising and lurching across the yard. She grasped her bleeding arm and fled to the trees and the midnight demons there.
The Handmaiden could have stopped the stream. Venom stagnated blood.(if: $inv contains $itemAntivenin)[ Antivenin stagnated venom.] To end motion was to end literacy. The end of literacy was the end of living. It was the privilege of mortals to test their decisiveness by crashing against peaked currents, faces wetted by death so that they might breathe life. It was a mortal's burden to bleed for blood.
Yet it seemed she had become, at the sight of the fleeing girl, weary of the hunt.
(display: 'descriptionPast')
The blood warmed her breast. She found her satchel on the ground, then the vial within, and let her neck suck the venom to the final drop. A drum pounded in her head, in her heart. If only a severed throat could close as easily as the small bite upon hers, she thought. Aruseht's patience crawled low and steady.
(display: 'descriptionDance')The Handmaiden moved to the arms reaching to embrace her. She too wanted to rush, to fly. So was the warrior's path: toward the unknown, undaunted.
{
(display: 'enableEndStory')
(display: 'changePortraitPlayer')
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Dance.', 'locationInstitutionEnd')</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $hour's name2)</h1>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden released the blade. She braced the girl against herself, then once again cleaned and dressed the wound. The child stirred, eyelashes fluttering, and breathed lightly onto her skin and over her heart.
With the arm once again neat, the moths moved on, leaving downward drafts beneath their wings. The child closed her eyes.
The Handmaiden returned the child to the earth, for the lull had sealed her in slumber. The forest tranquility she herself desired, she found bedded on the leaves, facing the mortals' burden.
She turned over the muddied moths in her palms. In such a profound quietude, the Handmaiden's heart swelled so that she could not remain down, although her body had become a stone ingrained in the forest floor. Her spirit arose, light and scattered, and began to wander. She left the child behind her.
Between the trees, she found a patch of moonlight, a snake's glowing nest. She spun--the simplest of her battle forms--unsheathed (if: $inv contains $itemWeapons)[the Scarsgaran athame](else:)[her carving knife], spun and spun, and in the whirlwind her arms sprang like vipers alive and slit her own throat.
It was a minor wound.
(display: 'descriptionPast')
The institution, Hemlock Weald, appeared through the fog and trees. It was there she dwelled, not in a past now too distant to be her own, where childhood faded behind the fog. Here, was she the Handmaiden.
(display: 'descriptionDance')She joined the shadows and reached up high with them, arms entwined in light. So was the poet's path: toward the heavens and beyond.
{
(display: 'enableEndStory')
(display: 'changePortraitPlayer')
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Dance.', 'locationInstitutionEnd')</div>
}Long ago in the winter hours of the twilight between worlds, the Handmaiden had rent the flesh of nonbelievers, had made drums and cloaks of their skins, and had drunk poison from their skulls. The consecrated blood of poison survivors gave her strength, too, to be a survivor. She had cut before, many times, others and herself. She remembered one small throat opened deeply and thoroughly by her own hand. She remembered another throat in the mirror, her own face stiff under the blade. In the stupor of witch sight, she knew these were false memories.She returned to the circle of fire where slithering from the thicket revealed a thousand shadowed arms flashing around the blaze. Vague people, faceless and rubbery. Peace was an age of transition not for contentment but for transformation. There was something painful in peace--an anticipation, a hunger for its end. One feast ended was another to begin. {
<div class='grid-decision'>
(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionSitArtrius')", 'selectedSitArtrius')
(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionSitGavril')", 'selectedSitGavril')
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision-option'>
<div class='col-option-image'>(if: $companion1's name is $artrius's name)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion1Decision')](else:)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion2Decision')]</div>
<div class='col-option-info'>Approach Artrius.</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='grid-decision-option'>
<div class='col-option-image'>(if: $companion1's name is $gavril's name)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion1Decision')](else:)[(display: 'portraitCardCompanion2Decision')]</div>
<div class='col-option-info'>Approach Gavril.</div>
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Lofty Arches</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden touched the witheroak's skin and traced her finger into the snaking crevices as she walked the circumference, till she came to the alcove where Artrius rested. Wisps from the bonfire's smoke flecked his bare shoulders and the scourge scars across his broad back. She leaned on the entrance of the shelter, bedding down on her long damp hair.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You played your part well.</div>
He bowed his head, roused from silence that had come after the night's crescendo.
(if: $observation's witchSightArtrius)[(if: $observation's afterTeaArtrius)[<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS I asked that you not approach me.</div>
His voice came out coarsely. Unprepared. The Handmaiden smiled.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN So that I might not witness the deed?</div>](else:)[<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS You come to gloat.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Together, I imagine.</div>]
He stared at her. Not her, she discerned, but a part of her.
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS She would have talked. They were condemned the moment you opened the door.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I'll take the honor, but don't be so conclusive. Was the ink not set when they signed a contract with the rogue? When they crossed the forest threshold? When they broke their wagon and took the ill-fated detour to our home?</div>
She pulled herself from the tree to stand nearer beside him and inhale the smoke and sweat out of his pores.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I see now. When I invited them to stay, they became your problem as well. Yowl into the night all you want. I gave you a chance to shoo the pests. Instead, you followed the instructions given you. You obeyed.</div>
Seht knew the Handmaiden did not disagree with his methods. She remembered the way the mother had fought. At first willing, then regretting, then dead. The Corruptor basked in well-timed confusion, for the swift sting of knowledge made mortals the delicacies which they were.](else:)[Sometimes he stared at people, sometimes at the ground. The Handmaiden found weariness beneath his gaze, and thus was it directed downward. As flying shadows harrassed the wanderer's path, did the Corruptor allow the wanderer comfort in his own.]
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN They thought you were a rather quality piece of meat. Obedient, diligent, talented. Alluring.</div>
He appeared to ponder the assessment, perhaps its significance to him as well.
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS I have laid claim to none.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Your silence had been their affirmation.</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS They permitted themselves unto others by the word of their god, the idealized proxy of their alignment. Having welcomed a separate entity which could both take and assign blame on their behalf, they enabled their own freedom to assign all other bodies as extensions of themselves, automatons to serve out their lives for them in the qualities, abilities, and labor which they lacked or refused to cultivate yet professed to accomplishing.
Yet they had placed enough faith in ephemeral forces outside of their own being that when these forces changed--for change is inevitable--their world fell apart, and they retreated to the sweetness of memory in defense of their honor.</div>
The Handmaiden sensed an accusatory tone in his words, the look in his eye, and the low tilt of his head.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Memories are not always sweet.</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Memories make confirmations where senses and belief leave one wanting.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN If they are false?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Falsity is a salve to uncertainty.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You see, we are in agreement.</div>
Artrius denied none of their exchange but turned away from her toward the stream, finished. The All-Knowing Serpent knew the Handmaiden did admire this odd mortal, as much as she disliked admitting to his qualities and abilities. He, too, must have shared the same sentiments. They worked well in partnership.
A movement sprouted from around Artrius's neck. Legs. A young pale spider had begun running across his skin. He raised his hand not to crush the tickle but to let it alight gently upon his fingertips. He stretched out his arm and the spider stumbled across his knuckles to his little finger, where it spun its own release and rappelled toward some other perch somewhere along the breeze, tipping its forelegs as if to bid farewell to the tamed hand of a trained killer.
(display: 'sitCalberusBridge')
Not too far from the bridge, Gavril too had spied the ogre and the cart. He stood but not because of the sight upon the dray. Lorcis was approaching.
One hand locked upon his coach gun, the rogue entrapped with the other Lorcis in a deep embrace and kiss. Lorcis himself faltered by the abrupt detention but did surrender. Gavril raised an eye upon the Handmaiden, that he might bask in the effect of his taunt. The Anointed was his, not hers, he seemed in want of saying. She returned him no satisfaction(if: $observation's studyGavril)[ yet again], for the Anointed, too, could see through his superficial attempts at affection and devotion.
Lorcis gently loosened himself within Gavril's clutches, and they exchanged intimate dialogue, forehead upon forehead, till the Anointed said something which gave the rogue permission to scurry into the thicket. When Gavril disappeared into the fog, Lorcis straightened his coat and conducted himself in a regained civil manner toward the Handmaiden and Artrius.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Good morning. The pilgrims--I see they were taken care of.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN They were, evidently.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS And what were their names?</div>
The Handmaiden remembered the mother at the door, her lips moving, and sound; the father behind; the child betrayed. Artrius answered in her place.
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Lord Nedrek Brougham the Third, Baron of Eldhegory. Sister Anfisana Riveney of the Gallowvalsk Sacred School of the Mother Revenant. Emylon Kinn, niece of the baron, ward of the Circle.</div>
Lorcis narrowed his eyes upon the Handmaiden.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Thank you, Artrius. That will be all.</div>
Artrius took his leave along the stream's gentle bend toward the waterfall, iron chain relaxed and clinking around his wrist. The scars of the scourge upon his back would be reawakened. The Handmaiden no longer needed nor wanted him to share the visions he had received from the Corruptor, nor did he need to reveal the things they had done in the night. Aruseht would allow her to know in time, if at all, what He allowed the sage. Of the three dancers around the bonfire, his mind had been the least contaminated by alcohol and the little prophets. Clarity damned him to being an undeniable active participant in their nocturnal revelry. She saw now that more than knowing, he had been willing. The war had never ended for him. Good soldiers saw not their adversaries as fellow humans, and Artrius was a good soldier.
(display: 'sitEnd'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's yard)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Conditioning</h3>
</div>
}
Gavril turned the collar of the father's frock coat higher up his chin at the Handmaiden's shadow. He did not conceal in time the smears of blood coloring this chin and throat. The morning light washed away shadows and made raw his youth, a ferality beaten down by the consequences of its own capriciousness in the night previous. Eyes red and watery scanned the tree line, and cloudy breaths trembled over a swollen lip.
(display: 'sitCalberusBridge')
The Handmaiden leaned back on the wall, bedding on her long damp hair against the cold stone. She saw the coach gun nestled between Gavril's legs. Dried streaks of blood ran down their calves. Her own face and body felt the way his looked--battered. Her bare feet were muddy, slashed by hedonistic ventures she could not remember. They had walked the night blind and dumb, faith and mind entrusted to the Corruptor. Now, they watched the ogre's cart flickering between the trees, vanishing clop by clop, sliver by sliver.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Right night, weren't it? Grand.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Was it.</div>
His voice came out gritty, and so did hers. She tasted blood between the cracks in her lips, a tang distinct from her own.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Tri had a time of it, think? The cunt.</div>
He nodded toward Artrius at the stream.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Perhaps.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Don't recollect?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Don't you?</div>
(if: $observation's witchSightGavril)[He stared at her blankly. Such was the Horned Serpent's way, granting and revoking passage to the Old Ways as befitted His will. The Handmaiden suspected Gavril had yet to be ready to appreciate the wisdom he had gained through intercourse with the god. Aruseht's dialgue needed not to linger in his waking conscious. ]Gavril turned his gaze across the stream after the trail leading toward the shed. The ogre and cart were now invisible, inaudible. The Handmaiden breathed in the cigarette smoke lingering between them. More fragrant than his usual dust, the aroma was ladened by a single brazen note. It was a city aristocrat's product, sumptuous, lacking subtlety. Thinking of her bamboo pipe and the finely shredded tobacco hairs which funneled a delicate weave through one's core, more nuanced flavors arose in the back of her throat, earthen and savory.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Bags and rags to wags it is. Not a rattle in the cage.</div>
Shaking, he snubbed the cigarette out in damp moss near her shoulder. She noticed an arced bruise on her arm.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You bit me.</div>
He looked at the wound, dumbfounded.(if: (history:) contains 'selectedPrayerGavril')[ Shortly, a boyish impudence overtook his countenance.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL You'd the spate on me--"Parish will lead," and all peat's burs. Fucking madwoman.</div>]
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What were you thinking, bringing them here?</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL What're you after then? Wasn't it enough, what they said? What I said? It's my confession you're asking after, so? No, not mine--yours. You wish of me words right to you, to quiet your thunderous conscience with the storm of mine. Hear only what you're the liking to hear. Like them, so isn't it?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Deflection directs to guilt. It was your actions which had turned an orderly night chaotic.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL You've the tallytails, all right. I've got just as much to me here than you. Was denned here before you, I was. Then were me and Sissy. Before the whole lot of you.</div>
Gavril's anger rose quickly yet dully. So it was the neutral tone of a man waiting for death, although he knew not the oblivion he yearned for loomed near. The Handmaiden frowned at his attempt to claim the institution--and the Anointed--as his own. Words to him were always accusatory and challenging, but the snake's convolutions were a natural, chaotic order.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Don't be vain. You, a scavenger, know that arriving first is no hallowed attainment. No glory is as complete as the glory of a conqueror.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL No star you are, a whore lapping up slip now twice wetted. So's the bought, murderer's a murderer always and for all. What difference makes it to the rotter mopped before his time? Sure's his time, so isn't it then? Vain it is to think your kill's not like mine, and mine, not like yours.</div>
Sethian song and dance echoed in the depths of her mind. The wind carried light wisps from the bonfire ashes in the yard, memories decayed as the corpse in the ogre's dray, and their distance grew by bounds.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Do not speak. Do not think. Do as we say and you need never to want or to weep. You are part of the Anointed's plan.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Plan? All's I've done was what were asked of me. "Guide us," said she, and did I. "Press on," said he, and did I. And she--the collie, the little one--said she to me, "Show me," and did I. All I've done. And for what? There's yours, where's mine?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I see as much as we have allowed for your existence to accommodate freedom, you still think like them. Like a Calaiean. A transactional expectation is the telling of a whore. You should know--a whore's mouth is good for one thing, and that isn't talk.</div>
Dark delight lifted the corner of his lips.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL It's the slut's honesty, what riles the preacher.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What is honesty to you, Gavril Corragain? Cuaidhri Parish? Loyalty to any is loyalty to none.</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Fuck off with your loyalty. Matters not where I'll go or how I'll go, for there's to be not a nail to nail upon me.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Oh, but it does matter. You will be loyal. Without us, you have nowhere to go but to the heretic's noose.</div>
He was looking at the trees concealing the shed, and he chewed at the tip of his thumb. He did bite, but he could never hold long. He did not yet know that the ultimate freedom he craved was to become no-one, no thing. To be nothing was the privilege of a thrall.
He did not seem to realize he had turned his eyes into hers, then flinched and averted his gaze. Lorcis was speaking to Artrius at the waterside, a hand upon his shoulder. The sage bent so that the Anointed's lips could reach his ear. After their exchange, Artrius took his leave toward the waterfall, the iron chain biting a loop around his wrist. Lorcis walked along the fence in the opposite direction and then leaned on the gate as he surveyed the stream. Gavril sprang to his feet, lurched as if startled by his own movement, and dove for the thicket. Lorcis's hail halted him.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS Good morning. Rather a chill in the air, isn't there?</div>
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Nah aye, nippy, so. Yeah.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS So the guests--</div>
Gavril arched his back, broken by sniveling laughter.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Madey, it were. Made me--in the name, it is, the Handmade. Said to set the table, to cut and quench, and I did, so I did. Did all what was asked of me. Madey said it all, made me all.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Sold off before the purse has opened. A craven's words are made in desperation, not with reason. Were you not just crowing about your own free will?</div>
The rogue pushed his nose and mouth into her hair and breathed a song into her neck.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Aye, and it's I've the will to sell myself off to any pissing pit, pike, or pot what fucking pleases me.</div>
Lorcis cleared his throat, which softened the hackles on the rogue. The aforementioned chill in the air pressed upon the back of the Handmaiden's neck. Her blood, too, had been rising.
<div class='d'>$LORCIS And what were their names?</div>
The Handmaiden had almost forgotten about the pilgrims, so distracting was the rogue's discombobulation. Yet it was he who again answered--and lowliness suitable to that of a slave's surrender prostrated him.
<div class='d'>$GAVRIL Millie.</div>
<div class='d'>$LORCIS All right, Gavril. That'll do.</div>
The thrall made a shallow bend to sweep his gun off the ground and staggered into the thicket, giggling and singing. The Handmaiden realized blood from him had been more effusive than she had earlier perceived. The remnants of the night had dried, but their effect remained ripe in his gait.
(display: 'sitEnd')The ogre's dray crept into the corner of the Handmaiden's eye. The cart wheels thumped across the bridge toward the shed. The father's body rocked on the bed, turning back and forth the dull brown mashes where his face and genitals had been.Lorcis's gaze remained steadfast on her. He could command Artrius or Gavril as a jewel wasp to a cockroach, whereas she had oft wrestled with vermins' persistence. The Anointed demonstrated his dominance over her in this way, a subtle show of his power without direct command over her but through an exhibition with another tool of his choice. He derived pleasure from his elaborate maneuvers. She was not so easily swayed by a magician's artfulness.
A rumble shook the bridge once more. Calberus hauled the dray alongside the stream, passing the Handmaiden and Lorcis without acknowledging them. He carried his burden as if bound to labor away at a duty never to be completed: no joy, no sorrow, no hope. He merely served the decomposer's function, this presence whose muscles surged beneath scars like individual organisms, and whose calloused feet prowled over stone and moss like vultures' talons.
Behind the ogre came the cart. The mother's body had been lain over the father's, the vicious wound upon her breast opened to the butterflies in air. Her arm dangled over the edge of the cart, and her hand bounced over the rocky path as if begging for alms, palm up and fingernails dirty.
Gazing after the ghost of the institution, Lorcis appeared overtaken by a piteous calmness. Reason did not come without sentimentality for the Anointed.
(display: 'toEndStory')Character interaction.{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $artrius's nameFull)</h1>
<h2>(print: $artrius's title)</h2>
</div>
}
In the firelight and shadows holding him, the sage appeared not out of place yet distant, not a character but a shade of the setting. His stature made him as intimidating as the cliff or the storm, likewise as deadly. The young witches had admired his many skills, referred to him in awe, and crafted stories of his history and exploits, as he did not offer them much satisfaction himself. He was both a warmth and a coldness when suitable for their assessments--a severe absolute in one temperature or the other--and dispassionate. Anyone could fall to his wrath but he, not to theirs.
The young witches were imaginative. The Handmaiden had perceived to Artrius's rationality an absurdity, to his obduracy an insecurity, to his reservation a timidity, and to his detachment a longing. She suspected in him a fear of humans. Neither did he devote himself to higher beings. Foregoing purpose beyond his own breath, he had made himself contrary to a sealed vessel and into, rather, an amphora to be carried, filled, and emptied by any and all.
{
<div class='o'>
(if: not $observation's artriusReading)[(linkgoto: 'Ask Artrius about the book he is reading.', 'artrius0Reading')]
(if: not $observation's artriusGavril)[(linkgoto: 'Inform Artrius of Gavril and the pilgrims.', 'artrius0Gavril')]
(if: not $observation's artriusDoor)[(linkgoto: "Ask Artrius why he did not answer the pilgrims at the door.", 'artrius0Door')]
(if: $inv contains $itemWeapons)[(linkgoto: "Return Artrius's daggers to him.", 'artrius0ReturnWeapons')]
</div>
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $artrius's nameFull)</h1>
<h2>(print: $artrius's title)</h2>
</div>
}
Artrius's black eyes and hair marked his ancestry with coastal Scarsgaran blood. Unlike many of the fairer folk settled along mountain peaks or gorges, coastal Scarsgarans were more readily able to disperse to lands beyond their home by permission of the seas. Their expeditions and conquests diversified their stock generation by generation. In documents around the world, violent or short-tempered corsairs, smugglers, and plunderers were depicted as dark Scarsgarans, for they made up much of the population of the notorious Varulvkyn, the Sea Wolves of the North.
Although Artrius's blood might have raged like the storms stirred up by Varulvkyn longships, his outward mildness belied it, inviting speculation and invention. He was not so imposing as he could be appreciated once studied. Emotions needed neither to be admonished nor banished. They were a conduit for information, and the rejection of them was manipulation in the basest of persuasions--of others, and of the self. The Scarsman calculated the truths made of his self, and for that, the Handmaiden had determined his suitability to the coven. Moreover, Lorcis did enjoy the companionship of a fellow librarian.
(unless: $noteList contains $noteExile)[
(display: 'addNoteExile')(display: 'addObservationStudyArtrius')]{
<div class='o'>(if: $dialogueArtrius0Count >= $dialogueArtrius0CountEnd)[
(linkgoto: 'Study Artrius.', 'artrius1')
(if: $inv contains $itemWeapons)[(linkgoto: "Return Artrius's daggers to him.", 'artrius0ReturnWeapons')]
]
(else:)[(linkgoto: 'Speak with Artrius.', 'artrius0')]
</div>
}{
(if: $dialogueArtrius0Count >= $dialogueArtrius0CountEnd)[$oReturn]
(elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'artrius0')[<div class='o'>(linkgoto: $returnName, 'artrius0')</div>]
(else:)[$oReturn]
}{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $artrius's nameFull)</h1>
<h2>(print: $artrius's title)</h2>
<h3>Reading</h3>
</div>
}
The sage was of solemn demeanor, much more pronounced with a chapbook--perhaps an almanac, manifesto, or collection of verse--delicate in his hands.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I see you have been utterly absorbed by the text.</div>
He turned a page. Statements did not require replies.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN And what is it that swallows your time now? An epic, an analysis on an obscure history, or an article of rhetoric? Perhaps a simple encyclopedic reference?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS A comedy.</div>
The hearthlight made sepulchral the lines on his face. The Handmaiden recalled a dark yurt faraway in land and time, where a ritual of fire painted hide and skin and laid bare the bodies echoing between shadows. After silence, the wind had filled with songs of mirth, for passage through it was a celebration, and the dead did laugh.
{
(set: $dialogueArtrius0Count to it + 1)
(display: 'addNoteLiterature')
(display: 'addObservationArtriusReading')
}
(display: 'returnArtrius'){
<div class='header-main'>
#(print: $artrius's nameFull)
##(print: $artrius's title)
###Shards
</div>
}
The Handmaiden was not a particularly garrulous individual, yet conversations with the sage made anyone sound the chatterer. She suspected he harbored precise opinions on those inhabiting Hemlock Weald, but he saved that information for his own ruminations.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The pilgrims have hired our thrall.</div>
The sage remained silent but for a turn of a page. Statements rarely coerced sentiments out of him, but the topic had begun brewing.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What do you make of him, our Anointed's thrall, a sellsoul to witch persecutors?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Corragain's affairs affect you.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Corragain, is it? It's Parish now.</div>
She had been unable to draw his eyes off the book, but they seemed to see beyond text and inward into mind.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He licks one hand then bites the other. He comes only when the name suits him. A mirror is worthless in a thousand shards.</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS Perhaps worthiness is no concern of his.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN His worth is not for him to determine.</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS You are not invested in him?</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I am invested in the Anointed.</div>
The Handmaiden had initially believed the sage's silence meant concession, but weeks of observation led her to understand it did not. Speaking wearied him. Others speaking, more so. There would be other opportunities to pry open the barricades around him. A gentle yet persistent rain could loosen a stone embedded in soil.
{
(set: $dialogueArtrius0Count to it + 1)
(display: 'addObservationArtriusGavril')
}
(display: 'returnArtrius'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $artrius's nameFull)</h1>
<h2>(print: $artrius's title)</h2>
<h3>Shyness</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden watched Artrius reading before she realized what an odd thing that was to do. His tranquility could have been lauded, had it not been out of complacency. The pilgrims would not have been able to see him from the portico, but he had been, no doubt, subjected to their noise.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The entire time they were tearing the house down, you were seated here, not twenty paces from the door.</div>
She received no reply. He listened, and he thought, but he did not often speak.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Why didn't you quell them?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS They were in time to be on their way.</div>
So it was how he remained in a hovel in the forest, evading the confrontation of human companionship by concealing himself among shadows and waiting out the curiosity of intruders. For years, all did eventually desert their expedition into territory unwittingly shared with him. All but Lorcis.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The Anointed was disturbed.</div>
The sage appeared unaffected by relationships. He was not much use with people as he was around them. Forsaking himself had deteriorated his persuasive speech and had made him ill-equipped for community. Additionally, he bore--but had never admitted to--something of a shyness. The Handmaiden herself did not need him to be sociable, only governable.
{
(set: $dialogueArtrius0Count to it + 1)
(display: 'addObservationArtriusDoor')
}
(display: 'returnArtrius'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $artrius's nameFull)</h1>
<h2>(print: $artrius's title)</h2>
<h3>Gratitude</h3>
</div>
}
(display: 'weaponsDescription')
The Handmaiden presented the weapon to its latest owner hilt first. He began acceptance, but a twirl of the dagger repelled his hand.
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Indulge my curiosity. Were you for or against the Circle during the war?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS You have specific interest in a war you have stated to be not your own.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It isn't the war which interests me. It's you. How did you come into possession of a Cairelic officer's dagger?</div>
<div class='d'>$ARTRIUS It is a matter of no concern.</div>
<div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Very well. There won't be an inquisition. Know that when you yearn to release memories too long festered, the Anointed and I shall be here to listen and help lift you of your burdens.</div>
He stared at her without passion and remained silent. Brute force was not his way, the Handmaiden had long determined, and Lorcis had been helping her out of the habit which she had borne down upon her old coven. She could change, as could the sage.
She left the athame and misericorde on the end table beside his elbow. At the library doors, she paused to allow him one more opportunity. He had retreated into his book, and the daggers, he had not touched.
{
(display: 'addObservationArtriusWeapons')
(display: 'removeItemWeapons')
(display: 'doneEntryReturnWeapons')
}
{
(if: $dialogueArtrius0Count >= $dialogueArtrius0CountEnd)[$oReturn](else:)[(display: 'returnArtrius')]
}The Handmaiden weighed the two daggers in her satchel, knowing the distinct textures of the athame's sheath and the misericorde's grip before she needed to withdraw them. The Scarsgaran athame was a primitive yet artistic tool carved from twinned obsidian and bone, nothing unexpected in the sage's armory. In Scarsgaran traditions, light and dark embraced as enemies as readily as lovers, and fire--or life--could be made or put out by the single blade. The misericorde, however, was a weapon of Cairelic mercy which would have belonged to an imperial soldier of some rank.
The misericorde's hilt was fashioned into a crooked rood known to Calaieans as the brimstone cross, a symbol both of heathenism and of protection from temptations laid out by infidels. The brimstone cross forming the dagger might have signified its use in banishment or deliverance. It was a tool not of survival but of judgment.{
(set: $companion1's portraitD to '<div class="portrait-artrius-scholar-shirtless decision"></div>')
(set: $companion2's portraitD to '<div class="portrait-gavril-nude decision"></div>')
}{
(set: $scoreItemPer to ($score's itemCount/$score's itemMax))
(set: $scoreEntryPer to ($score's entryCount/$score's entryMax))
(set: $scoreNotePer to ($score's noteCount/$score's noteMax))
(set: $scoreObservationPer to ($score's observationCount/$score's observationMax))
(if: $score's itemCount >= $score's itemMax and $score's entryCount >= $score's entryMax and $score's noteCount >= $score's noteMax and $score's observationCount >= $score's observationMax)[(print: 'LOREKEEPER')]
(elseif: $scoreObservationPer >= $scoreItemPer and $scoreObservationPer >= $scoreNotePer and $scoreObservationPer >= $scoreEntryPer)[(print: 'INVESTIGATOR')]
(elseif: $scoreNotePer >= $scoreItemPer and $scoreNotePer >= $scoreEntryPer and $scoreNotePer >= $scoreObservationPer)[(print: 'SCHOLAR')]
(elseif: $scoreEntryPer >= $scoreItemPer and $scoreEntryPer >= $scoreNotePer and $scoreEntryPer >= $scoreObservationPer)[(print: 'ARCHIVIST')]
(elseif: $scoreItemPer >= $scoreEntryPer and $scoreItemPer >= $scoreNotePer and $scoreItemPer >= $scoreObservationPer)[(print: 'COLLECTOR')]
(else:)[(print: 'READER')]
}{
<!-- MAP PLAQUE -->
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $currentLocationName)</h1>
<h2'>(print: $currentFloorName)(print: $currentSceneName)</h2>
</div>
</left>
}
{
<!-- MAP IMAGE -->
(linkgoto: "<div class='map-container'><div class='map-expand'>$mapImage</div></div>", '$returnLocation')
}{
(display: 'addItemMushrooms')
(display: 'addItemKajal')
(display: 'addItemTools')
(display: 'addItemCanteen')
(display: 'addItemWeapons')
(display: 'addEntryMedicateAnointed')
(display: 'doneEntryMedicateAnointed')
(display: 'addEntryReturnWeapons')
(display: 'addEntryCheckMedication')
(display: 'addEntryCheckCauldron')
(display: 'addEntryCordialSupper')
(display: 'addEntryCordialTea')
}{
(set: $item to $itemPlatterGlass)
(display: 'invAdd')
}{
(set: $item to $itemPlatterGlass)
(display: 'invRemove')
}{(if: $entryTakePlatterToScullery's done)[(print: "<div class='duty strike'>" + $entryTakePlatterToScullery's description + "</div>")]
(else:)[(print: "<div class='duty'>" + $entryTakePlatterToScullery's description + "</div>")]}{(if: not $entryTakePlatterToScullery's owned)[(set: $entryTakePlatterToScullery's owned to true)]}{
(if: not $entryTakePlatterToScullery's done)[
(set: $entryTakePlatterToScullery's done to true)
(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')
(if: not $entryTakePlatterToScullery's scored)[
(set: $entryTakePlatterToScullery's scored to true)
(display: 'addScoreEntry')]
]
}{
(set: $observation's platterGlass to true)
(display: 'addScoreObservation')
}(unless: $observation's platterGlass or $inv contains $itemPlatterGlass)[
<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Take the platter and glass from the table by the entrance doors.', 'searchEntranceHall0')</div>]{
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's entranceHall)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Table Manners</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden collected the wooden platter and the glass which she had set down upon answering the pilgrims at the door. They had served their purpose for the day, and she would need to take them to the scullery to be washed after supper, along with the deluge of additional dinnerware soon to be a courtesy. She gazed out the windows on the doors at the darkening sky. The visitors seemed to have lacked the perception to appreciate their contribution to her duties.
(display: 'addItemPlatterGlass'){
<div class='header-main'>
<h1>(print: $institution's kitchen)</h1>
<h2>(print: $institution's name)</h2>
<h3>Other Hands</h3>
</div>
}
The Handmaiden set the platter and glass on the counter by the wash basin. Lorcis had usually the young witches assigned to timely scullery duties, building agreeable habits into their forming characters. Their absence did not stall the chore completely, but the Handmaiden had more compelling duties needing her personal attention. Moreover, the dishes could be done all at once after supper, and by then, other hands could be made available for the task.
{
(display: 'removeItemPlatterGlass')
(display: 'doneEntryTakePlatterToScullery')
(display: 'addObservationPlatterGlass')
}