Quoted By:
>The Crown
You had heard stories of the Second Crown before, but it really was the stuff of stories— too good to be true. If it existed at all, it had to be lost, and if it was lost, it had to be somewhere nobody had ever looked. If it was found, much less used, the world would <span class="mu-i">know.</span> And what were the odds of it being lost so thoroughly, versus the odds it was a old wives' tale?
That was your thought process just a few weeks back. Or, no. In truth you'd forgotten about the thing <span class="mu-i">in toto,</span> and a few weeks back happened to be reminded. Suffice it to say you had an encounter with a handful of Courtiers, as happens periodically, and they let slip some information you thought sounded relevant to your interests, and one thing led to another. To you, in the Eyrie, in a sauna, in chains.
"Enjoying the hotbox, Mr. Graves?"
"Hello, Dib." He calls it a "hotbox"— they all do— but it's a sauna in effect, a cramped little room with clever corridors surrounding it. They bank a raging fire in the corridors, which boils the water, which floods your room with steam hot enough to torture (but not kill). This is all in addition to fire's usual reality-amplification, which is well in effect. You have water up your nose and down your throat. You could be having a better day. "Am I to say 'we meet again'?"
Dib Blaine smiles tersely and clunks the door shut before more steam can escape. He doesn't seem dressed for the hotbox— short sleeves, no facial protection to speak of— but none of the Courtiers have been. They inure themselves somehow. "If you like. I wish we kept meeting under better circumstances, Mr. Graves, but it does always seem to end up this way. You fail to learn your lesson."
"You keep releasing me," you say.
"You keep <span class="mu-i">escaping.</span>"
"I consider that the same thing. Is there an alternative, Dib?" You twist a bit in your manacles. "I don't see my head rolling off my shoulders yet. When is that happening?"
Dib laces his hands behind his back. "It is not the policy of the Wind Court to execute nonviolent offenders. We are not savages." Says his tone: <span class="mu-i">unfortunately.</span>
"Of course not. That's why I am in an hot room, chained up—"
"You are a <span class="mu-i">repeat</span> nonviolent offender."
"—and stripped down to the skivvies? Was the stripping required, Dib?"
Dib pauses for a long time. "It's standard policy for the hot rooms, Mr. Graves, if that's what you were asking. You were not given special treatment. It allows for enhanced contact of the steam to bare skin."
"You would think they would put more clothes on you," you say. "So you become hotter."
"I didn't write this policy, Mr. Graves."
"But you enforce it?"
"I act within my duties. But it's not as if the idea is meritless." Dib curls his lip. "It does expose the truth of your mutated form."
(1/2)
