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The Sparkspeaker, though his hands are bound, smiles. All smoulder. Retinues clear the room, and Ostomo spins from the young woman after offering her a soothing few platitudes and then - rather before anyone can contrive to stop him - the young research-alchemist curls his hand into a fist and full decks the captive theurge in the fact. He stumbles back in surprise. Ostomo raises his voice.
Why have they been dousing these (presumably) uninvolved people in medically inadvisible quantities of refined Uthani mothflower petals?
That stuff kills dreams. It kills memories. It kills *you*, and leaves a shell. Yeah, it's a fine nooceptic modulator if used with refinement, bu there's a reason the Chemicaes don't keep vast amounts of it *around*! You start inducing that stuff in the water supply and people forget who they are! What good is a painkiller that erodes someone's sense of self? There's (so goes the story) an entire banner of deep plains Uthani that use this stuff in deranged rituals to kill the parts of themselves they don't like, haven't they ever heard about fucking *therapy*, drinking with their friends, having a hobby? These poor people have been marched two hundred miles by you MANIACS, half of them probably don't remember to realize they're half starved, parched, dehydrated and homesick, and --
The Sparkspeaker, from the floor, shaking his head against the sudden intrusion of pain, offers a rejoinder, which somewhat cuts of Ostomo's medical opinion.
How is this such a great crime? If they forget who they are, surely, it is so much easier to remind them of who they could be.
Ostomo glances at the arranged line of Sparkspeaker corpses.
Echo's gaze wanders over the same. Sacerdotessa is already moving.
These people still have most of their hair.
Were they . . . were they theurgically active last month?
Echo sketches out a ward in the air, Sacerdottessa chants a brief prayer, there ways and means to find out. True wards are written in the bones and bound in the flesh so the soul can be free. Lingering manipulation of the Other leaves a resonance, tiny traces of all the things you gift to the Icons for their benign and malign attention to your affairs. This sad little arrangement of dead men have no such protections, barely Tells. Barely any spark in their souls.
Every pair of eyes in the room turn to the Sparkspeaker, still sitting on the floor. His attempts at breaching through the wards that hold him were likewise amateurish. No finesse. Any proper Empyeal Theurge should shake off a trilateral wardline as easy as they blink, it's textbook, and this man struggled.
And then he laughs, a little, short and sharp.
Why would they be able to see across the Threshold last month? They only had their eyes opened by Archtheurge Incindee a few days ago. He spoke to the empty places inside them carved out by the Mothdream, and filled their minds with fire and truth.
