>>5140491>1You are so focused on protecting and diverting attacks from Bianchi that you fail to defend yourself. Perhaps you’ve just gotten sued to easily healing your injuries? However, as the demon’s fist smashes into your torso and pins you to the wall, you know that there will be no easy regeneration of this. You feel a dozen oblong spikes across Siz-Gamid’s knuckles perforate you—magical weapons, for al intents and purposes. Your bones crack, your guts are crushed and punctures, and you are helplessly pinned.
“I won’t go back!” Siz-Gamidd protests, its human voice breaking into a dual-toned bellow and shriek. “Not to the Hells, not to the lab! I’m free! I will REMAIN free!”
You attempt to speak—a negotiation tactic, a soothing word, a snarky reply, a threat?—but nothing more than a squeak and some bubbling blood emerge.
>18Luckily, it is then that Bianchi finds his nerve, or at least the correct page. He begins a stammering chant, punctuated by a familiar name—a True Name—‘Siz-Gamid’. The demon recognizes what is about to happen, dropping you to fall to a heap on the stone floor of the converted wine cellar. You narrowly avoid a tumbling bookcase—
‘Heheheee, oh, that woulda’ been ironic, huh?’ notes Irinnile weakly, in what you hope isn’t quite GALLOWS humour.
—while the demon fails to avoid an allegorical bookcase of irony all its own: it is banished, reduced to foul blue-green mist inches away from utterly crushing Bianchi with its many limbs. Siz-Gamid is sent away by the same summoner who saved it from saintly slaughter.
“We never got thossse other True Namesss,’ you note, your voice a whisper that nealy dies before you can finish.
‘Babe,’ Irinnile says grimly, ‘we have bigger shit to worry about.’
“Bi…anchi… To me…” you weakly implore.
“I… I almost….” Bianchi murmurs, appearing stunned, not moving. Is it temporary, or did the near-death experience break your non-ectoplasmic control of him? No matter—it seems you must heal yourself.
<WANT: 18>
You begin the process of demonically-aided regeneration, but it is slow-going. You hope—and it can ONLY be hope, not certainty—that the Paladins didn’t catch Siz’s scent before you returned the devil to the Hell from whence it came. The longer you linger, the more time they have to, at the very least, destroy or capture the other demons you freed.
What do you do?
>Rest in the Bianchi estate until you can mend yourself—a process that could take hours>Feed upon Bianchi to speed up your recovery—and hope you can control Irinnile despite your weakened state>Ask Bianchi to send for help at this late hour [Felman? Edwin? The Incubus? Specify.]>Move, damnit, MOVE! You can recover on the go, but you cannot remain HERE.>Write-in 