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<span class="mu-i">Well, that too.</span> He traces a square on your abdomen. <span class="mu-i">I meant the alteration. It's nothing special, it just looks scary. You've had worse.</span>
You realize that the body you are inside is unfamiliar to you. It is taller than yours, by proportion slender and sinuous, and dappled with fine white scales. It contains too many teeth for the size of your mouth. It is cold and terrifying and flexes in unnatural ways as you begin to thrash against the altar and Jesse's steadying hand. <span class="mu-i">Charlie—</span> he says.
In return you scream at him to help you, to hurry and cut you open, if he doesn't cut you open you're going to die inside of here. He finds your too-thin hand and squeezes it and shuts his eyes and stabs you in the abdomen. You scream. He withdraws and stabs you again there, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, jerkily, his face warped in pain, even as you scream your throat out of you, until you can't scream any longer and can only hiss and gargle and growl the worst things you can think of. Finally Jesse lifts the red knife and apologetically takes it to your neck, allowing you a handful of seconds to watch him get to work on the rest of you before everything gives way.
When you return to awareness, you are standing over a stone altar. The Sword is in your hand. Jesse lies supine and shirtless before you.
You are interrupted before you can even formulate a line of thought. <span class="mu-i">Herald,</span> says the man kneeling before the altar. He is clad in red and unfamiliar to you. <span class="mu-i">Herald,</span> says the woman kneeling next to him. <span class="mu-i">We have brung offerings.</span>
<span class="mu-i">Brought. Brought offerings.</span>
<span class="mu-i">Shut up. We have brought offerings. Also they have too.</span> The woman nods to the other person next to her, who is clad in a spiraling mask and full-body red robes.
You look down at them and see the offerings: a chunk of crystal, a knife (not tortoiseshell), a clod of earth. You <span class="mu-r">k</span>now only one is suitable.
Which?
>[1] The crystal. The WYRM knows that humanity is inherently flawed; consequently it asks for us to build ourselves up, piece by piece, into superior beings. Only by the doctrine of ADDITION may we approach perfection.
>[2] The knife. The WYRM knows that humanity is inherently flawed; consequently it asks us to find the flaws within ourselves and excise them, by force if necessary. Only by the doctrine of SUBTRACTION may we approach perfection.
>[3] The earth. The WYRM knows that humanity is inherently and *irrevocably* flawed. Nothing we do to ourselves will save us. It is best to remain calm, steady, and work to get things over with as fast as possible, so our suffering is not prolonged. This is the doctrine of EQUATION.
>[4] Write-in? (Subject to heavy-handed veto, but on the off-chance somebody has a fitting and lore-friendly idea I'm not going to completely lock out write-ins.)
