[color=red]"He said that Hiems is...won't commit, won't make his feelings known because he doesn't want to become involved with a madwoman. He said that everyone thinks I'm crazy. He did say that I was ten times the wench his tramp was (his words, not mine), though. And that I should spurn my one chance at happiness so that I can be with him like I've always wanted. Then he said that Hiems was with Liliana even as we spoke, because she is stronger, more beautiful than I am. And that I would never be complete without Adorjan's help."
She thinks about her other question. [color=red]"I don't know of any other apprentices that he had taken the way he did me."
Cygna slows to a stop when see sees the carnage, then says a quick prayer for the dead and crosses herself Eastern-style. [color=red]"Lord, have mercy! What happened?"
She then starts looking around for any survivors. Especially any blue-haired ones.
Leona listens intently, then stands up and draws a wide circle around the glade, and casts a Muto Mentem spell with an Imaginem requisite. "If Adorjan's shade is here, this would render him visible, if it penetrates. It is sixth magnitude, though, and Imaginem is not my forte." She frowns, then casts an Intellego Mentem, and looks about her very carefully. "If there was a ghost, or any other being with a sentient mind, I would perceive it now. I cast this spell with ten magnitudes of penetration, and the only mind I see glowing here, is yours."
Then again, Cygna neither sees nor hears Adorjan right now, so he could simply be off committing mischief...
"He was a busy man, even for a magus. He fostered Maximianus' apprentice for a year, and was not Deiectus of Flambeau in Adorjan's care after the boy's first pater died, before Quirinus took him in?" (Somebody got a lot of OoH Lore!)
There are no survivors; this was quite thorough.
Adorjan dances about with glee. "You happened, my love. And I couldn't be more proud of you," he declares.
She gives a wry smile. "I pay attention? It doesn't hurt that I was alive when those events occurred, as well. Deiectus comes here for a week every autumn and a few days every spring, celebrating holidays with Josef and Chayyim. His wife is Josef's..." she pauses a moment in thought, "Well, some relation of Josef's, anyway. As for Minima, well, let's just say we've had plenty of reason to keep tabs on Maximianus' doings." She frowns at that last statement.
"Are you certain of that?" he asks. "You lost your temper, girl. I'm not the one who lashed out at a soldier who was just doing his job, trying not to get whipped by his commanding officer."
Georges is looking at Cygna with a horrified expression.
[color=red]"His 'job' should not include physically abusing a lady from whom he's trying to get information!" she yells. [color=red]"And don't you think that immolating the entire village is a rather extreme punishment for one man breaking my bloody nose?
"And besides, there's no possible way that I could have done this! You know quite well that ignem isn't my forte!"
She then turns and storms away. [color=red]"What are you looking at?" she snaps at Georges.
She then starts looking for bodies she can interrogate. Preferably anyone who looks like a soldier. She will also head toward the remains of the manor house.
"Yes, I quite do find it extreme. That's not to say I'm criticising you, dear-- no no, indeed I am quite pleased at how quickly you're learning to overcome your limitations, under my tutelage."
Everyone who perished here no longer looks like anything but charred ash. There were likely many people who died here, but nothing recognizable as bodies. "Oh how sweet! Are you looking for survivors, child? I've taught you to be too thorough for that. No evidence, no crime." He positively beams as he looks upon Cygna in her full wrath. "My little girl's all grown up."
Cygna is so furious that she's practically in tears. She keeps looking at Adorjan as she searches, unable to wholly ignore his taunts...they're striking too close to her fears.[color=red]"'No evidence, no crime,' eh? How'd that work out for you? I have an idea. Unless you have something constructive to say, stay the bloody hell out of my way! And I'm not your 'little girl'!"
She is still absolutely stunned at the carnage, but refuses to accept that she did this...she, who can light a candle if she's got a good aura. After a few minutes, she will start to make her way to where she was taken by the guards, to see if she can find the hidden chamber again.
((She's actually looking for a corpse that she can cast Whispers Through the Black Gate on. The spell description doesn't say how much of a corpse she needs, merely that it "has not yet decayed into a skeleton." Ideally more than one.))
"It had been working just fine for me, until I was blinded by emotion-- for you. I regret nothing, though. Together we will achieve so much more than I ever could have alone."
His shade continues to follow Cygna about-- he's not smirking or patronising, he seems genuinely pleased and proud. "Especially nice touch, using Mentem to make yourself forget. Now, when the Quaesitores snoop about, you can truthfully tell them you believe you had nothing to do with it. Unfortunate that you can't fully appreciate your own thoroughness, your painstaking and loving attention to detail--" He points at what seems to be a jawbone next to a mound of ash crushed in the middle-- "But then, that's what I'm here for. You could even tell the Quaesitores no no, it wasn't me, it was the ghost of the diabolist who haunts me, that spirit that no magic can ever sense, the voices in my head only talk to me because I'm special, no really Trutina, I'm not crazy, I didn't do it, really, it was Adorjan who did the exact thing I wanted to do but thought I couldn't accomplish."
There are no corpses; this was a very thorough operation. All that's left are bits of bone that were too big to be completely incinerated, and even those, as Adorjan has pointed out, were physically crushed after the fact.
The manor is a worse mess than the inn-- the interior walls were all wooden, and are completely gone but for a few pillars of ash which were once the largest timbers; these collapse into piles of ash upon the slightest touch, or a stiff breeze. All that's left of the manor are the outer walls and pieces of the stone ovens in what was once a kitchen.
Adorjan seems alarmed. "You'll have to kill Georges," he warns. "He knows too much and can link this all back to you. Don't let him become to you what you were to me, Katerina. You were worth everything I lost; today proves that. But he is nothing, only a pretty face, a friendly ear. He will betray you if you don't prevent it." Cygna feels a tug at her waist, and suddenly Adorjan is holding her wand, his wand, THE wand. "You'll need to get rid of this too. If the Quaesitores find it, they'll have the motive AND the method on you-- you'll be done."
Georges is wandering through the ruins in a daze, pausing occasionally to retch violently.
Cygna stares in open-mouthed dismay at the wand that she thought had been destroyed in Phoenix when it was discovered to have been enchanted with Infernal vis. [color=red]"What? How? Where?" she stammers, at a loss for words before she finally collapses in the ashes of the manor, her legs suddenly too weak to support her weight. She doesn't even question anymore that Adorjan can now affect the physical world.
She feels the world spinning around her. This is impossible, she thinks. There's no way I could have done this, no way I could have made myself forget something this horrific. Could I? She lays back as she tries to think,to calculate if she is powerful enough to do that. After a couple of minutes, she comes to the shocking realization that it is indeed possible...not easy, but possible. ((PeMe base 15 is "Remove a major or long memory from a person's mind," while base 10 is "remove a minor or short memory from a person's mind." Something like this would likely be 15. To spont a PeMe, her CT is Int 4 + Per 4 + Me 18 = 26 + a die roll, ÷ 2. She would need at least an 8 on the dice to pull it off – a 30% chance.))
Is he right? she wonders. Could...did I do this? What do I do next? Do I want to spend the rest of my life a murderous monster, with no regard for human life? There's no way Hiems will ever love me, now.
She breaks down crying for a few minutes before she finally regains enough of her composure to make it to her feet.
She approaches Georges, a little unsteadily. She looks him in the eye and sings Posing the Silent Question without gestures (which drops her casting total to +19). Q: "After I rejoined you on the road, was I ever gone for a considerable length of time?"
Regardless of his answer, she says, [color=red]"Let's go home," her voice flat and emotionless.
edit - before she leaves, she's going to try to spont an InHe on some of the ashes to determine how long ago the manor was destroyed. ((Looks like base 3 to learn a single specific fact about a plant or an item made from plant products, and Herbam works equally well on living or dead plant stuff. +1 Touch, Momentary, Individual, should be a target spell level of 4. Her CT is Int 4 + Intellego 6 + He 5 = 15, before die and halving.))
I stopped tracking the time you would slip away from camp once I realized you would never love me, his mind replies. It made no difference to me, since it was not to invite my attention. The longest you were away in the first three days of our journey, was about two hours. I followed you, thinking that was your intent, but you were just alone in the woods, crying.
"What did you just cast on me?" he asks aloud, suspiciously.
She casts the spell, but receives no information from it. (Once it becomes ash, it is no longer Herbam, but Ignem.)
Adorjan makes a tsking sound. "Surely I taught you better magic theory than that, Katerina. Try the first magnitude Intellego Ignem spell, Tale of the Ashes," he suggests.
(If she does just that, her total is 4Int+6In+0Ig+3?+7die=20, halved for deficient ignem is 10, halved again for the spont is 5, which is exactly what she needs to cast the spell successfully; she will then realize she has acquired the Puissant Ignem virtue. She would learn that the place was burned down by Balls of Abysmal Flame, two days prior.)
[color=red]"I'm trying to determine when this," she says with a vague wave to all the carnage surrounding them, [color=red]"happened, if what I saw just as I was leaving was possible."
She casts the spell that Adorjan suggests. And is puzzled. If it were, indeed, two days ago, that means that she didn't do it, as she was back at the covenant then. But if not her, then who? It's a pity she couldn't find the tunnel leading down to the hidden chamber so she could retrieve the casting tablet. It's too bad her Mentem is not yet strong enough to summon any one of the dozens of ghosts she's sure is to be found here.
(She sang at him in Latin-- and it either featured the words "Intellego Mentem" or was one of her trademark verses. He may not have Magic Theory, but he was married to a maga, after all.)
"Why would you think I'd know anything about it?" He seems growingly wary, and Cygna can't help but notice his sword hand twitches.
Two days ago, she was a short flight across the estuary from the manor-- she could easily have made it here and then back again without anyone noticing. Especially if she didn't remember doing it.
[color=red]"Because Adorjan claims that I caused all this, and then magicked myself to make me forget. I was trying to determine if I had had time to come here to do this."
((True, but that's a long way to fly with a wand in your mouth...I would think that would make it harder to breathe. And swan feet don't really look designed for grasping and holding like a crow's or a falcon's are. The more she sees, the more she's starting to think she didn't do it...and that makes her wonder who did, and why Adorjan is trying to convince her that she did.))
Georges eyes Cygna warily. "...Adorjan. Oh, aye. It must have been him," he says, in a voice which clearly says you don't really expect me to believe that, do you? His sword hand twitches again reflexively, as he clearly expects Cygna to attack him.
"Do it, my girl. He will bring the Quaesitores down on you. Even if we can escape charges, the scandal will ruin Gallus Florensis, and then we'll be without a home. You must protect your nest, my girl; even Grus would not hesitate to eliminate anyone poised to destroy her home, as this insignificant pest is," Adorjan whispers in Cygna's ear.
[color=red]"Well, who else could it have been?" Cygna snaps. [color=red]"This obviously didn't happen by itself!"
She will mount up (or try to), and start to head back to Gallus Florensis, feeling more than a little jittery and keeping a wary eye on Georges...and ready to draw her wand if she has to.
Cygna tries to ignore him, and will recite the Pater Noster most of the way.
Leona has always spoken in Cygna's mind, so she has at least enough to cast something akin to Friendly Voices with at least 25 Penetration. She recently said she'd cast an Intellego Mentem spell of unknown magnitude with 50 Penetration, and she's probably mentioned she's not great with Intellego, at some point.
True. So she can probably easily pull of a Peering into the Mortal Mind, especially if Cygna suppresses her parma for the occasion.
She honestly doesn't believe that she's directly responsible for what happened...or even indirectly. She had thought at first that it might have been something to do with the casting tablet, but then realized that was absolutely mental.
It is conceivable, theoretically, that she did fly back with the wand somehow and just razed everything in sight, for some inexplicable reason. She can't believe that she's capable of it...but there's just that sliver of doubt. Or that she may have been possessed, which she also doesn't want to believe. But she's not sure.
So, she's going to go to Leona and ask a favour. She will tell her that the manor, the village, everything has been burned completely to the ground a couple of days ago, and that she fears that she may have been responsible. She doesn't remember doing it, and in fact isn't aware of any holes in her memory ((which I think is true)), but that it's possible that she may have destroyed or altered her memories to avoid prosecution. She would like Leona to determine if her mind, her memory has been altered in any way.
Leona frowns. [i]The mind is a tricky thing. To find anomalies made by Mentem, any gaps that can't be explained naturally, or altered memories that just don't quite fit... I would have to comb through your mind so thoroughly that I would know you better than you know yourself. Even if you are comfortable with that, I don't think I can take on the responsibility of whatever demons you have within, literally or figuratively. Intellego Vim could determine if magic had been used on your mind, but I am not strong with Intellego and my Vim is barely sufficient to teach an apprentice. It is too bad that Justinius is lost to us...
I am not without ideas, however. Why not speak to Sir Guillaume? It was his sword that struck down Adorjan. Perhaps he knows something of the spirit that plagues you?[/i]
[color=red]"Where is Justinius? I haven't seen him since my return, which isn't unusual, and I remember Sophronia saying that she was going to look for him, but I didn't realize that he had gone missing."
[color=red]"I will do that...thank you." And Cygna will do so, after a little bit, to give herself time to figure out what to say, and how much to tell him.
Justinius left on an assignment directly from Magvillus, taking only Aislinn with him. He told Stefan they planned to be gone for a fortnight. That was years ago, is Leona's silent reply.
Sir Guillaume can usually be found in the training yard at this time of morning, when he is not away on duty.
Adorjan will caution her as she makes her way to him: "Tell him nothing, Katerina. He is a ruthless and bloodthirsty killer. He would strike you down the moment he has reason to suspect you, and use his charm and influence to get away with it-- just as he did to me," the shade seems genuinely worried. "Do not let the Crusader know of the marks you bear, or he will murder you."
