>>6003448Their hearts are barely crystallised, there's no burns, chars or scars on their bodies and most of them still have all their hair. When was the last time you saw a proper Empyreal Literalist Theurge who hadn't had their eyebrows or hair scorched off?
And like a man performing his final thesis offensive against an entrenched judgement commitee, Ostomo pulls something form inside his garments and throws it on the floor with a flourish.
( He regrets this a little, as the soft powder from inside the pouch scintilatingly scatter into a gentle purple puff, a cloud, that lingers, until it settles. He winces, then asks the assembled to, uh, breathe carefully )
And what is this, someone asks, a little less well-studied in the arts of chemical analysis by eye.
Ostomo turns, all energy now, and points at one of the prisoners. A young woman, eyes slightly shiny, thin framed, wearing a soft, somewhat confused smile. In some other life, she might be manning a stall or operating a loom. And when Ostomo asks her for her name, she tilts her head one way, then the other, and frowns, and tears swell up in her eyes and she *cannot tell him* because she *does not remember*
