Quoted By:
Throughout this little game which you have been playing, you have learned most of what you wished to learn from the girl behind the screen... along with a few things you wish you did not learn.
A rhizome of strife and foolishness has spread across Daedalium, to a point where foolish noblemen who live in the shadow of Giskonis think they can use the Blighted as pawns in their game of crowns. The girl behind the screen is far from the mountain monastery that she calls home, and further still from anyone whom she can trust with her life. Her fiance is a student of the Golden Intellect, who has her fingers in the pie of Daedalian politics - a fact that makes you wonder if you might not be better served turning around now and making your way to the Hill Kingdoms.
It's a difficult scale to balance, as you cherish your freedom to move as you please. Yet you would almost rather be gang-raped by bandits and then sold into sexual slavery to some lustful, obese beast of a nobleman than encounter the Embodiment of Reason. The worst such a man might make you do is fuck his dogs and drink his bodily fluids, maybe give you to his men as a reward for a job well done. Unlike many of your peers, you are not the delicate sort whose mind would break under a few fleeting moments of depravity - the Daughters of Irminsul trained you for such things.
If he did not fall for your charms and give you the keys to his castle after a decade or two, a Rod, Ring, and Ranger would eventually arrive to give him a swift and brutal end.
The same could not be said for Dianoia Chrysafenios, even if she decides to make you one of her test subjects. If a Rod, a Ring, and a Ranger were all that it took to deal with her, she would have been removed like a weed from the garden centuries before you were born. Nor are you important enough to warrant a greater response, at least against another Child of Yggdrasil - however wayward she may be. Plus... having your organs used as seedlings or grafts for the experiments of the Golden Intellect is a slightly more permanent state of affairs (and far less fun) than being used as a public meat urinal.
All of that said, you do not think you will turn away now. The chances of you actually running into the Golden Intellect are astronomically low, unless she sought you out specifically. Nor do you want to waste all the effort that the girl behind the screen and her retainers have expended to put together a map of the Imperial Ministry for you. Indeed, you wish to express your gratitude to her, for her aid.
After a moment's pause to think over everything you've learned, you ask her the very first question that she asked you.
"I suppose I have been rather rude, playing this game without so much as asking for your name," you say. Your eyes drift down to the sweet and bitter tea that Marianna has served, same as yesterday, a smile on your face. "What are the names and titles of the young lady who is hidden behind the screen that divides this tent?"
