#LairsAndLusii #DMPost #PartOneOfTwo 5. I expected 8. But there are 5. This discrepancy should not concern the bulk of you. I certainly will not concern myself with it. An empty place is still a place, and absence has always been a conclusion we could achieve. Five apertures have answered five people, scattered rather rudely across a world which had previously enjoyed the privilege of being an uncongealed fluid. Now, your fates coagulate into one another. The Session has finished noticing you. Callie Bhorne There are many admirable qualities to swearing an oath to yourself. Reliability is not one of them. For one brief instant, you are somewhere else. Nothing as dramatic as moving or teleporting. Rather, the white aperture has presented you with the natural conclusion of everything you have ever promised yourself. A great hall stretches beyond it, broad enough to march an army through shoulder to shoulder. Banners descend from heights the eye cannot quantify. Crowns, teeth, spikes, the idea of Lordship. At the far end sits a throne built for someone much larger than you are now. You cannot see his face. He is wearing your armor. Older. Greater. Crueler. He is improved in every conceivable respect, which is why the sight of him refusing to look at you is tantamount to ridicule. One armored hand rests against the throne, the other holds a familiar shape by one horn. Dangling small and limp beside his knee, your dead hatchmate is rendered indistinct by the distance except for the parts of her you would recognize anywhere. The figure on the throne finally raises his head. He points at the floor before him. An invitation, perhaps. A command, if you are willing to tolerate one. Your future has apparently been expecting you. STRIDER It is difficult to appreciate the novelty of observation when it has been your profession for quite sometime. Your fingers pass through the blood-painted stone and, somewhere inside your armor, the ampoules answer. They do not rattle, or glow, or constrain. Every sample you have collected pulls towards the aperture at once, glass knocking against glass in urgency. Spiritual fuel to your fire, accompanied by the abruptness of discovery. Your shadow enters first, almost forcing you back in its haste. It simply stands, detaches itself from the arrangement of light as though it is walking around a spillage in a market stall, and then walks through. Beyond the opening awaits a chamber equipped with the unmistakable tools of examination. Tables, hooks, glass vessels, writing instruments, anatomical diagrams depicting organisms that do not exist save for the peripheral of one's vision. In the center is a humanoid opened from throat to pelvis. It is shaped like you. Labels have been carefully placed on each impossible detail. One label is not placed. VESSEL. Beneath it, in smaller writing. Incomplete. ASSASSIN BADBITCH The advantage of throwing the magical problem away is that it may return itself. How polite. Slowly, it rises from the chasm. It stops at eye level, revolving around in the air despite your efforts to make the poor thing incapable of ever ringing again. The metal has repaired itself. Every bell in your campsite answers it. Clappers crawl through the dirt. Split shells fold closed. Pieces of your former costume begin hopping, rolling, and dragging themselves toward their appointed places. Then all of them ring. Once. It isn't loud. It is familiar. In your deepest of thoughts, a worship hall answers from somewhere below. For the first time since you've abandoned that particular indignity. You hear the mummery again, in its great silence. Rows of motionless figures appear beneath the earth, faces painted, mouth covered, hands folded in impossible positions. At their center kneels someone in familiar clown garb. She lifts her head. She has your face. But not your history. Her mouth is sewn shut. Behind her stands at an altar containing the sort of miraculous object you'd once tried from those who might have known better. The kneeling woman extends both hands towards it, then towards you. Looking around, Wrathion is gone. How fortunate. You have finally encountered a magical problem that appears to be specifically and professionally yours.