S<\/span>okai had warned us that Maemi’s handmaiden\u2014that would make her the handmaiden’s handmaiden, a level of recursion that I can appreciate\u2014was a trained assassin when she was alive. Now that she’s dead, and trapped in here along with Maemi and everyone else, she had little to do but hone her skills. Quoting Sokai again, “Death gives her time to practice.”<\/p>\n Most of that practice seems to be done on hezrous. I base that on how quickly the first two of them died. While this does make our job easier long-term, we were hoping they would contribute more directly to the proceedings.<\/p>\n Not that I should be complaining too much. The erinyes could see those of us who were hiding behind invisibility (which was inconvenient, to say the least), but the handmaiden could not. So, the hezrou were her only obvious targets when the assault began. Sometimes, things just go your way. After she killed the second one with a single blow, we figured out where she was hiding\u2014which was, astonishingly, in plain sight\u2014and I lit her up with some magical glitter. It was an appalling fashion statement, but sometimes you have to go with what works.<\/p>\n The key to defeating an opponent is to play your strengths against their weaknesses. In the assassin’s case, she bet it all on not being seen, and once we deprived her of that advantage her options were limited to which one of us would kill her. She had a few tricks left, sure, but none of them played well against a barrage of arrows. By the time Ivan was done with her she looked like a hawthorn tree.<\/p>\n The third of our hezrou “allies” had administered a severe beating to the remaining erinyes so their defensive line, if you want to call it that, shattered as soon as we hit it. Maemi, herself, seemed to realize early on that she was in trouble, and she tried in vain to strike some bargain that would keep her alive. Sorry, lady. Not interested. Are there any<\/em> scenarios where making a deal with a literal devil works out in your favor?<\/p>\n If I’m being honest here\u2014and what’s the point of writing in this thing if I’m not being honest\u2014I have to admit I don’t understand the whole tizzy around Maemi’s presence in the Well. Amatatsu Onoko played her up as this horrible figure, but really, what did she do? According to Dasi, she struck a bargain with Hell to extend her life. Big fucking deal. Yeah, okay, back when she was on the throne maybe those 200 years were something of a bummer, but even the worst Suishen had to say about her was that she put herself ahead of throne and empire. So what? That just makes her a crappy leader. Compare that to her next-door neighbor, Teikoku Sokai, who instituted a eugenics program and forced the lesser nobles of Minkai into slavery. On that<\/em> scale, Maemi doesn’t even register.<\/p>\n T<\/span><\/p>\n here\u2019s this spell that impairs your mind to the point where you\u2019re not capable of rational thought or reasoning. That spell is basically my worst nightmare since rational thought and reasoning are pretty much all I <\/span>do<\/span><\/i>, and it\u2019s why I\u2019ve been wearing this ring for the past several months. It has that spell inside of it, and if that same spell is cast on me, then the one stored in the ring immediately counters it.<\/span><\/p>\n Today it finally happened, and I have never been so grateful to have planned ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n From that, you might gather that Sokai was less than thrilled with our betrayal. And you would be correct. My only regret is that he didn\u2019t survive long enough to really bask in it.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ve searched everywhere, and there\u2019s no sign of Shigure\u2019s body, and that tells us that it probably washed downstream into the caverns below. What\u2019s down there? No idea. We can see an underground lake and not much else. I\u2019m taking bets, though. Our experience up here was almost literally going through Hell and the Abyss, so I am putting my money on Abaddon to round out the set. Though that does leave us one or two royal families short, assuming that the Well is a whole <\/span>thing<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n I<\/span><\/p>\n nstead of daemons we got undead, though there\u2019s still more to do here so my theory may yet pan out. And undead does seem to fit the theme of \u201cthings that happen to vile people after they die.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And speaking of vile, allow me to introduce Shojinawa Ito. According to Dasi, as emperor he bolstered Minkai\u2019s army by creating undead from the soldiers who died in battle, and then disguised them behind illusions so that they looked like normal people. Eventually, his military commanders noticed that something was off, and he addressed their concerns by giving them the same treatment. The only thing he couldn\u2019t hide was his unnaturally long life, courtesy of becoming a lich. His reign was finally ended by a sovereign dragon who had apparently had enough of his shit.<\/span><\/p>\n If that charming personality wasn\u2019t enough, he was also holding on to Shigure\u2019s corpse because why not. I guess that obsession with death and bodies has really stuck.<\/span><\/p>\n We didn\u2019t even bother talking to him. I mean, what would have been the point? It was already a long morning, and there was no reason to drag it out.<\/span><\/p>\n He also seemed unconcerned about his eventual destruction, going so far as to announce to us that he\u2019d be back. That\u2019s not how this works, ghost or not. On the other hand, he did seem pretty sure of himself, so I don\u2019t think we can rule it out. Assuming the lich story is true, his phylactery must have been destroyed, or he wouldn\u2019t be here at all, but maybe he has something else that ties his spirit to the Well, or to the shrine or island in general.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, that is easy to <\/span>say<\/span><\/i>. The <\/span>real<\/span><\/i> trick would be finding it.<\/span><\/p>\n I<\/span><\/p>\n am lucky to be alive. Extraordinarily lucky.<\/span><\/p>\n There was this moment in Nobinuro\u2019s cave where he did <\/span>something<\/span><\/i>, and I saw a flash of light through the cloud of fog around me. There was this sudden chill, and\u2026I am not sure how to describe this, but it felt like a tug at my <\/span>soul<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n As if it were being ripped from my body.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I didn\u2019t even have time to panic.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Out of sheer instinct, I held on to it with\u2026I don\u2019t even know what. My will? My sense of being? Whatever it is that anchors us to this existence, it held.<\/span><\/p>\n But only just.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Later, we deduced that Nobinoru was a thanadaemon. They trap the souls of others in gemstones, which they can crush to restore their life force. This is when I felt the bottom drop out, and a horrible wave of sickness washed over me. There are some deaths that cannot be undone.<\/span><\/p>\n In life, Nobinoru was the last emperor from the Sugimatu family. So great was his ego that he ordered the end of his family line so that his achievements would never be surpassed. His most loyal samurai set out on this task, exterminating every descendant and relative until almost none remained. Only the intervention of the other four families stopped this senseless slaughter, but so many had been killed that the family line never recovered. And, of course, the Five Storms later finished what he had started.<\/span><\/p>\n But it\u2019s done. We have scoured the Well of every trace of demon, devil, daemon, and undead, and in the process have prevented the worst of the royal families from offering their counsel or blessing to future emperors. Something that the world simply does not need.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarenith 23, 4713 (morning, Well of Demons) Sokai had warned us that Maemi’s handmaiden\u2014that would make her the handmaiden’s handmaiden, a level of recursion that I can appreciate\u2014was a trained assassin when she was alive. Now that she’s dead, and trapped in here along with Maemi and everyone else, she had little to do but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-4348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-kali"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4348"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5739,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions\/5739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sarenith 23 (Well of Demons, Gods It\u2019s Still Morning)<\/h3>\n
Sarenith 23 (Well of Demons, Late Morning Now)<\/h3>\n
Sarenith 23<\/h3>\n