2024-11-17: Change

• Log: Change
• Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Elisa Kafim, Li Yao
• Where: The Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Island
• Date: 2024-11-17
• Summary: While Devi gets her due, the denizens of the Silent Calling watch her revelations, too. Yuliana is disgusted with her past self, and Elisa finds her own resolve to slay the Empress, but it's Yao who emphasises the love between them. It will be the beacon which leads them to a better result, this time around.

---

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRY-uoIWvwY Ego Likeness - Oracle

        The courtyard of the outer bailey is a freezing -30 degrees Celcius, today -- or -22 degrees Fahrenheit, measuring in the Britannian manner. Snow flutters down past the high stone walls, the emerald pylons atop them lighting the area below in a strange green glow. The light is entirely necessary, because the sun set long ago -- it will not rise until the new year.

        Balanced in the snow, exposed to the elements, is a six-foot pole. Atop it stands a woman, as Yuliana Kafim meditates through the chill, hands out to balance herself. Meditation has historically been quite difficult for her -- even contra-indicted! -- but under Yao's instruction, she's been making an effort to make peace with her roiling thoughts.

        And give her some credit: she's been up here for half an hour, freezing her considerable gams off as she balances on that pole. (She's wearing her furs, of course, to ward against frostbite.) It's going quite well, until --

        something SCREAMS through the silence of her thoughts --

        -- and Yuliana screams, too, as she topples and falls. "NO!"

        She rolls, instinctively, as she falls; her tentacles catch her, bearing the brunt of her motion. "A transgression which tears through our existence!" She screams, as her hands clutch the snow and push herself up in the snowbank. "No -- this -- something's wrong! It's wrong, it's wrong!" It's a struggle to find the words, as she tries to find Yao, but she manages something like a warning.

        "Elya," she chokes out, as she rises. "I have to -- Elya!"

        And then she's running, off towards the North Tower. "Elya!" Yuliana cries, as she runs up those cold stone stairs. (The North Tower is rarely heated, though of course it is still at least insulated against the cold outside; it is an uncomfortable place, for the living.) As she bursts into Elisa's sacrifice-room, Devi's crystal lies shattered; she has already escaped. "Elya!" Yuliana gasps, again, as she throws herself into that bloody circle beside her wife.

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

It is cold not but frigid in the North Tower. It is colder, in Elisa's workspace.

Elisa hears her wife's call, and she is looking up from her circle as Elisa bursts into the room. The chill stone of the chamber echoes easily; there is a bloody ritual circle in the center, and candles, their black wax already touching on the stone floor and their green flames alight.

There is a great Mirror on the wall made of black glass--Obsidian. But it shows the Dragon on its screen, the Dragon and the fleet and the many, many mobile suits there to try to defend against such an invasion into reality.

"My darling," she says, but her voice is tight. She is struggling, more than she should be to control her monster. Perhaps it's the size. (It is not the size.)

"Do not break the circle!" Elisa demands. "I must retain control!"

Her hand reaches for Yuliana's arm, but her grip is icy. Her free hand extends towards the mirror--

This is what Li Yao sees, when he arrives.

<Pose Tracker> Li Yao has posed.

        The old man was present, standing behind his...pupil? Yes, that was probably a good term for the moment as he monitored her meditation. Well monitoring from a certain point of view, another may be that he too was lightly meditating simply standing up. As for the skeptical point of view, one may even argue he was sleeping on the job.

        On the edge of his own meditation he can feel something, but it is far away, and there is always something these days. Truthfully it is just as likely that Yao's past is haunting him on that edge of nowhere, so he is almost happy that Yuliana's voice cuts through it, "Hmm?"

        Yuliana's warnings and then there is running and of course from Yao there is following, through the north tower. There is also shouting of course, escalating the entire time trying to get Yuliana's attention as Yao gives chase, "Yuliana! Child!! YOU DAMN BRAT!!! " That is until they come to Elisa's room, a room that Yao himself had rarely if ever ventured into, but given the state of Yuliana he figured that could be a problem for another time.

        Yao comes to a stop as he enters the room behind Yuliana and sees her throwing herself into the circle with Elisa telling her not to break the circle. All Yao can do is react and worry about the consequences later as he leaps to try and tackle Yuliana away from Elisa to preserve the circle. Knowing whatever happens next is left up to fate.

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Many of Elisa's demands Yuliana follows without question -- but this time, she is already moving, already desperate, and she crosses into the magical space.

        On the obsidian mirror, Istantarik can be seen, as she violates the circle, glowing with Power as it turns to slash at space-time itself. It rends a crack in reality which does not heal so easily, as Elisa is distracted --

        By her wife crying out. "Ah--!" She cries, as the Power of the Void harmonises with her own wellspring, flinching back. She reaches for her wife, regardless, grasping her arm with trembling fingers. "Elya -- Elya, She cries so loudly, I hear Her even now! There has been a transgression! A thief in the night! A terrible portent! Ahh, God--" It burns, beneath her flesh, deep to her bones, but she must warn her. She must --

        It's Yao's grasp on her arm which pulls her out, away from her wife; she is easily wrenched away, and he might be surprised by the way she turns to bury herself against him. Horrifically strong, there's really no detaching her as she clutches herself to him, shaking like a leaf.

        An image resolves, on that great mirror, of the Riptime Dragon Istantarik. Even through that surface, it's clear that it's fully half a kilometre long, five hundred metres from tip to snouts; its whiplike tail is wreathed in flame which burns with green fire, despite the total lack of oxygen in space. Travelling up its length are countless wings and claws, with locust vents fanning open along its snakelike sides; when one finally reaches its neck, it splits into thirteen parts, each terminating in its own horrific set of jaws. Those wings, opening and closing, fan from side to side like the pages of a book more than a bird or a bat. Strange, horrific images lie in the thin membranes.

        And as Istantarik consumes a ship, and those 'pages' turn, images resolve in them -- glimpses of the past.

                0087, JANUARY 19

                "Testing begins," says an old Sri Lankan woman with a severe expression. She is Divya Devi, a Titan who fled prosecution into the willing arms of the REA. She stands in front of two steel tanks, placed beside each other. The screens in front of her show what lies inside each individual tank, almost large enough to host them: a blonde-haired girl, Rita Bernal, and a young South East Asian woman, Yuliana Dispersal, hair cropped close to her head. The tanks are evidently pitch black inside... and though the screams in one tank are captured by microphones, no sound escapes to the scientists outside.

                "Lower oxygen to 80% and monitor changes," she goes on. Her eyes narrow, calculating. "359-3S has accepted death. Even in the Y-Negation field, it's passive... set oxygen levels to 75%." She frowns, as she watches her screens, silent for long moments as her assistants mutter around her. "70%," she says, impassive to Yuliana's obvious panic and the way Rita bears it all so stoically. "Is it learning to compensate for my extreme testing conditions...? But 258-1A is still struggling, even now. If anything, it's more desperate, in the presence of the other subject's extrasensory resources. ... prepare the wound kit," she adds, watching the video feed as Yuliana beats her fists against the side of the tank and screams. "It's going to hurt itself, beating the walls like that. Hmph, and 359-3S still isn't responding... restore oxygen to normal levels," she says, sounding vaguely irritated. "We won't find what we're looking for today, and they'll be useless if they sustain hypoxic injuries. But we may as well take advantage of the stress," she adds, waving one hand as she starts accessing records with the other. "Play the tapes in their tanks. We'll reinforce their conditioning before we take them out."

                The page turns to later that very same day, as Yuliana paces about the subjects' common room, around Rita, as they're observed by hapless research assistants through one-way glass while the real scientists gather their thoughts. Rita smiles, and assures her, voice even and supportive: "Yuli, Yuli, it's okay. It's okay. Remember? This life isn't all there is."

                And Yuliana rounds on her, storming over to her again, her voice raising to a fever pitch. "It isn't, it isn't! Look, look, right there, it isn't! Isn't anything! Nothing, and it's there, right there, strip the flesh to bones! It does not knock! Graves don't knock!" She gestures, sharply, to a point somewhere beside Rita. "Can't you see?! It's waiting for us, there!"

                "I'm sorry," Rita frowns, sympathetically, "I can't see what you see. But even when you cloud my sight, I still remember. I can't know how it will end for you, but I know I won't die here. That's why it's fine if you need them to do it to me," she assures her, recalling the way Yuliana wished she'd just thrown her under the bus, smiling again. "You're my dear friend, Yuli!"

                And Yuliana storms over to her, grasping her by the shoulders, shaking her. "Don't say that! Don't you dare say that! Friends, what nonsense is that?! Stop smiling!" But Rita doesn't stop, and Yuliana lifts her up, bodily, by those shoulders. "You, you, YOU! I hate you! Of course I hate you! Just as they said! Just as they... said..." ... but her voice cracks, and she sets Rita down, head sagging forward to rest at her shoulder instead as she shifts from screaming to sobbing. She's not quite embracing Rita, manhandling her like this, but Rita reaches around to hug her anyway.

        Present day, present time, this Yuliana pales at the depiction of her suffering, her own breath quickening to hyperventilation. "Don't show them that!" She exclaims, clutching Yao all the more tightly. Her frills wilt, beside her head, as she repeats: "Don't... it's embarrassing. I really thought I'd die! I was panting, but I couldn't breathe, I... I yelled and I yelled and it never... and what does she mean, tapes?" She adds, miserable. "Unless -- unless that's -- ah, the messages? It's hard to remember them... they said there was never anything but darkness in there. I always think I just made it up..."

        She swallows, breath hitching. "And Ritechka -- Ritechka -- she was always like that. Except -- except -- like that? Did I forget...? I don't... remember it like that, exactly..."

        She quiets, watching the next flashes.

                0087, APRIL 08

                "Where is Ritechka?!" A woman like Yuliana Dispersal -- but younger, her hair cropped close to her head -- screams at Dr. Devi, and she shows no fear at all.

                "It's thanks to your abysmal failure with the senator that Rita Bernal has gone," Dr. Devi says, unmoved by Yuliana's rage. "We had to appease the OCU. Next time, don't get caught. Do you understand?"

        "She... left," Yuliana says, her own voice hollow. "When I messed up that job... but... the date on her desk. It's -- it's wrong. When I was twenty -- Ritechka arrived, not..."

        The visions continue.

                0087, APRIL 23

                "... don't you understand?" She's younger, too, but that's unmistakably the voice of Sayla Mass. "They don't even view you as human beings... just assets."

                She sits in an unmarked car, and Yuliana sits beside her. It looks like any other corrupt dealing, and those flipping page-wings gave glimpses of it happening many times prior. This time, she asks for --

        Yuliana blinks, staring at the visions. "No, I... I didn't meet her mother for some time. Not for some time. Why is she...?"

                0092, JANUARY 13

                "I am glad for your help," Yuliana Dian tells a younger Sayla, her teal hair down to her ears by now, "but this is taking too long. There are things I must impart. I cannot rest this long, locked away from the world. Ritechka was right! This world is aught but a stepping stone! But she did not see as deeply as I did -- and she is lost. It must be me."

                Sayla frowns, reaching out to touch Yuliana's arm. "The REA did unspeakable damage to you," she says, with concern. They rescued her five years ago, and ever since, the Shuffles kept her hidden. "Even now, we're uncovering the depths. I know Rita's ideals gave you something to focus on, when you had nothing, but I strongly recommend you stay with us. Let us figure out how to help you."

                "You must understand," Yuliana says, her voice choking up. She rarely admits fault, the way she does now: "It was... my failure that sent her away. If I'd just killed him clean, no witnesses, I -- you should have saved her!" Yuliana shifts the blame, and still doesn't find the right target. "If you don't like me leaving, it's your own fault!" ... it's not the first tantrum she's thrown, glimpsed in those quickly-turning pages, even as the images grow indistinct again.

        "She's... like Yaka?" Yuliana frowns, clearly bothered. "No -- no, this never happened. This never happened! Has Infinity risen twice?! Why is it showing us this -- these falsehoods!" She shakes her head, violently. "No one came to save me! No one ever came to save me! Not back then, not for years! Never, never, never--!!"

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

"I Hear. I See. I Know." Elisa answers Yuliana with that same tone as before, distracted but firm, trying to reassure her even as she fights for control of the dragon. It should not be this difficult; Devi was cowed, maddened.

And yet... it would seem not.

"...This is not what it was in the reports," Elisa says, seeing the visions. But she cannot focus at first; she must still wrestle with the dragon, and the power of the Void courses through her as she Works.

But she frowns, to see Yuliana's 'friend'.

Just assets. No, Yuliana was younger then...

It never happened, Yuliana says, and yet...

"The Veil is thin," Elisa grits out.

Her eyes flash green and black.

"You would DARE!?" her voice echoes. It echoes here, and it echoes 'there', in space though there is no air to carry the sound. Elisa's hands flex--and power courses from her hands like dark lightning into the mirror, a terrible spiral appearing in the glass that does not affect those here, shielded by the circle's protections--the protections that protect those without, not within.

Blood runs down Elisa's ear.

"Li Yao," she says. "I thank you. Protect her. And do not allow her to break the circle again."

If she loses control here, she may have to--

"My darling... It is that woman. Her spirit is attempting to control the Dragon. She has twisted the summoning, somehow. But My will is greater. She shall see, before her final end."

<Pose Tracker> Li Yao has posed.

        Yao pulls Yuliana into him and hits the ground with a thud, likely destroying something ancient or priceless in the process. As he loosens his grip he is tensing for the slap that is obviously coming and then the bitching about who the hell does he think he is. So it takes a moment to realize that Yuliana has clung to him.

        As the initial surprise fades he wraps his arms around her attempting to comfort her, fatherly instincts kicking in to protect someone who at this moment appears so innocent. Still there is a bit of fascination to what he is watching. The history of the lady he had called the Ice Queen, how she slowly froze into the cold woman he would come to meet. He knew she had suffered, a lot of people had back then, still to witness it. It causes his arms to wrap a bit tighter around her protectively.

        This is of course only a distraction from the fact that there is a F'in dragon on the screen. Sure his ancestors claimed to have learned from a dragon but well you know, metaphorically, right? Now though as Yao watches it all unfold in front of him he has to question that fact in his life too.

        Fortunately Elisa's words bring him back to the now, "I will not allow her to reach the circle again." Once again his arms tighten and he shifts slightly to make sure that he can put up a struggle at the very least should Yuliana decide to test that.

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Thud. A crystalline structure shatters as Yao knocks it from its centre of gravity, thankfully landing away from them both; it had some purpose in Elisa's rituals, surely, but now that Power seeps through the room.

        Luckily, Elisa's circle protects them from that, too.

        Yuliana isn't, apparently, in much of a slapping mood today -- especially not as the visions play out. And when Elisa bids him to protect her, she does little more than sit up with him, outside her ritual-circle. "It... survived?" She asks, as she looks to the mirror, watching Istantarik endure her wife's Absolute Spiral. She's quite shocked; she has never known their dragons to survive their own wrath. And what it costs her -- "Ah -- Elya... Elya, it's hard on you!"

        Elisa explains, and Yuliana's frills wilt anew. "Dr. Devi... what is she trying to do?" She takes a breath, and looks back to Yao, to explain: "She -- she was my -- she created me. Used to work for the Titans, then she came to the Republic... she though that since there was no one like me, she'd be famous. And she was an awful woman," she adds, though Yao might not need to hear that part, after what the mirror's already shown. "A cruel woman. Elya killed her when she tried to -- cook my brain to mature the alien cells inside me -- so she could keep my body alive to harvest them. Trapped her in that crystal we kept here, but... now..."

        Now, more images resolve on the obsidian mirror, as Istantarik claims another ship as victim, and consumes.

                0093, JANUARY 04

                Yuliana Dian wears familiar black robes, preaching at the head of a congregation. Her black pupils are intent, on the crowd. "This existence isn't," she tells them, fiercely. (Rita told her, many times -- this life isn't all there is. What she took from it...) "You are lied to by your eyes -- but I have Seen! All the suffering of this world, it is nothing but the order we imposed on oblivion! There is a world beyond -- I have Seen it! Without war, without famine, without!" She yells into the crowd... and too many need to hear her.

        "This existence isn't... isn't all there is," Yuliana repeats the slogan of the Calling, her voice numb. "Isn't all there is. But here... there is no existence. That nihilism... like with the Psycho-Jammer. But... but it was just... normal..?"

                0093, JULY 28

                And one who listens is an Olympian. Elisa Kafim is in a vulnerable transition, finding the scientific world less welcoming than the athleticism of her youth; when she finds the Silent Calling speaking near her, she explores it with curiosity, needing an answer. Yuliana notices her at one of their dinners, and dismisses the brown haired girl at her arm by quite literally brushing her off. "Excuse me, Alice," Yuliana says, without looking to her. She summons another congregant, and instructs him, in a low voice, to invite Elisa up.

        "That's... not how we met. It's -- it's true I was quite taken with her beauty, but -- but it's Elya who approached me! And -- and I don't even know that woman!" She insists, her voice growing panicky. "I don't know that woman!"

                0093, SEPTEMBER 9

                Elisa Kafim is at Yuliana's arm, now, as she laughs at a dinner after one of her speeches. A beautiful blue-haired woman looks terribly put out by it, and finally, Yuliana takes notice. "Fatima, don't tell me you're jealous! The Void has chosen Elisa, as well." It was not the Void which chose her, and perhaps that's why Elisa smiles like she does.

                "Though," Yuliana adds, with a dangerous smile, "jealousy can be a productive emotion, too. Blessed are the women who know what they want, and take action to secure it..."

                It is not the first time she'll encourage Elisa -- and not only Elisa -- to honour her darkest traits. She knows how to spark jealousy in others; she makes them dance, just like she did. And why shouldn't she get what she wants?

        "As... well?" Yuliana asks, sinking against Yao. "No -- no, playing those women off each other -- I'm not so disloyal. I'd not do that to my wife! What... what am I doing to..?"

                0094, FEBRUARY 16

                "Shit!" Yuliana yelps, as she pulls back from the sacrificial circle, blood still at her dagger. It clatters to the ground as she clutches her head, evidently pained. The body in the background surely went through far more pain. "Shit, I'm going to get hurt if I keep trying this. But I'm sure -- I'm sure there's potential here. There must be some way..."

                There must be someone she can use.

        Yuliana remembers the burning in the circle, and tears spring to her eyes, as she hides her face against Yao. "Don't," she whines, voice thin. "Don't do it. She loves you. Don't use her like some asset. Don't..."

        She already knows what she's going to do. Whatever vision they're being shown, it's apparently not so far from reality that she can't tell.

        No, she understands the logic perfectly.

                0094, MARCH 04

                "You were a birthday gift to me," Yuliana tells Elisa, playing at her purple hair as they lay in bed. "But I've heard some terrible news, of late. Alice had that accident with the stairs, back in October... and then Fatima ate that bad shrimp at Christmas, do you recall? Now I hear that Mei Yu had an incident with faulty brakes..." She doesn't have to say they're all women close to Yuliana; she knows Elisa knows.

                And Elisa doesn't say it, either. Instead, she insists, shifting in bed to look to her leader: "I know what I want."

                "I could only give myself to my High Priestess," Yuliana says, smiling with a sharp edge. "You may be called on to commit uncouth acts... but you already have, haven't you?"

        "But you made that happen!" Yuliana yells, as she looks back to the screen. "Even if you didn't hurt those women -- you made sure Elya would! You set her up! Do you even care that it's her?! You would have taken anyone who'd agree to it!"

        She lurches forward, angrily, but she's not so angry that Yao can't catch her and tug her back before she causes more problems. "Treat her better, damn you--!!"

                0094, JULY 10

                Elisa holds the ritual-blade, now, still dripping with blood. With her other hand, she scribes her findings down into a leather-bound tome; the glimpses of those pages, through the visions, reveal a starkly scientific approach to her bloody experiments. Yuliana is there, with her, in the circle -- but her hands are not stained with blood. Now someone else channels the Power, it does not lash out at her psyche so painfully. Now, as the blood drips, she smiles.

        Yuliana sags back against Yao, as the evidence begins to show itself. "But... Elya's never needed my help," she protests, her voice quieter. "The only time she had to draw from me that way was after she defended the Castle from Junius Seven..."

                0094, DECEMBER 13

                Elisa plunges her ritual-blade down, and chants: "By your blood, enscribe the Way..." She paints sigils on the ground, and as her fingers falter, she calls: "My Yuliana!"

                Yuliana places her hands upon her shoulder, then, closing her eyes in a show of concentration. (There is a wedding-band there, now, joined by more than one ritual.) Power flashes over Elisa's gaze, gleaming sick green, as she presses her hand to the centre of the circle. Together, they complete the ritual.

                As the pages turn, showing time and time again, it is always together.

                Elisa needs Yuliana to act; Yuliana cannot do what Elisa does so directly.

        "Is she... using me as a power source?" Yuliana asks, looking down at herself. "She must be... taking the damage onto herself."

                0095, MAY 07

                "You're changing," Yuliana notices when she's sitting beside her wife, finally, running a hand up her chest, pausing by her heart. She presses down, there, gently. "Your heart is slow, now... slower than it was, zhenushka," for Elisa Dian kept her Olympian physique, even after she stopped competing. "And yet," she adds, reaching up to cup her cheek, "you are even more beautiful." The blemishes and scars she wears -- never overwhelming to begin with, unlike the story written on Yuliana's skin -- have long since vanished, and no mark now lasts on Elisa, for long.

                "You have grown more lovely, as well," Elisa says, and what she finds lovely is plain when time passes this quickly: Yuliana's hair has grown long down her neck, held in an intricate braid, and her winged eye-liner now accompanies lipstick, eyeshadow, and blush.

                "Does it please you?" Yuliana asks, though she knows the answer.

                "It does," Elisa naturally replies.

                And Yuliana smiles, to her wife. "I'm so glad. I'm relying on you, my darling, so of course I want you to be happy. And you're very happy now, aren't you? This life... is far more exciting than anything you had before."

                "It is," replies the Olympian, who had a bright scientific future ahead of her before she fell into Yuliana's trap.

        "But... Elya always liked me being butch," Yuliana frowns, as she tries to understand what she's seeing. "And what a wretched trick -- to give her such a shallow concession when I'm taking so much! As if I weren't dressing that way to make her feel like her desires mattered! To make her think this pleasant! What illusion is this, where I treat my wife so poorly?!"

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

It was important. But not so important as Yuliana. Not even as important as Yao. He tells Elisa of what he will do, and she will entrust that task to him. He is one of the few, the chosen; she went to find him, after all. She respects him.

And in this, she is forced to rely, as well.

But Yuliana explains, as Elisa does what she is able--until she sees these next visions, and stares. "What...?"

It was normal?

"I believe you," Elisa says of 'that woman', rather than growing jealous. Quite the opposite--she is intent. The veil is thin. Somehow...

"It is not how we met. I have no memory of this. Nor of that woman."

"...And yet," Elisa says, "I recognize the woman who is me..."

Of course. Elisa would understand the logic, too.

Yuliana's terrible loyalty. This other Yuliana's terrible... use.

To use Yuliana directly. "It is not required," she says simply. "The Void itself holds the power, for those who know to take it."

And yet...

"...Whatever this is," Elisa murmurs, "It is no illusion."

"But what is it? Possibility? Some blasphemous Other, like the visions of Goragon...?"

"Li Yao, do you sense it? My senses are too filled with Power. What is this?"

She knows the ways of manipulation. Easily. She could perform these acts, though she was not inclined to do so. And yet...

<Pose Tracker> Li Yao has posed.

        Yao watches, silent , listening to all about him. If nothing else and this day goes completely to hell he promises himself he will at least remember every single event as they occur. Old age be damned. Still he is unsure of what he is watching. Yuliana is swearing things were not like how they appear and even Elisa sounds perplexed.

        Still he maintains his concentration, even to the point of almost letting Yuliana escape him, having to pull her back to him and wrapping his arms back around her trying to calm her until he feels her give up the struggle. "She needs you to be strong right now, she needs to know that she can focus on her task because you are strong. Continue to sit with me for now. " Yao does his best to calm Yuliana.

        It's not till the last image and talk of Yuliana's preference that a possibility that is right out of ancient books of fiction come to mind. "The river splits and then splits again. Over and over the river splits and each of us only has one path down that river. However, who has never asked what if they had gone down a different path." Yao looks towards Elisa, "Yes I think these are possible paths. Possible pasts, possible nows, and perhaps even possible futures. " Looking towards Yuliana, "The important thing at the moment is that you are right, these are not what you experienced."

        Yao had heard it before, enough time around scientist and engineers and it comes up every now and then. Multiverse theory.

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        At least Elisa believes her. Yuliana did know fear, seeing herself act that way, even if -- even if it can't be her.

        Yao tells her to be strong, though, and she turns back to him, clutching herself to his side again. "How can I just watch something like this?" She asks, her voice thin. "How can I ask my wife to watch something like this...?" Her spirit clearly wavers, but she wraps her arms and her tentacles about him, anyway. "I... will," she promises her strength, haltingly. "Help me, Shifu." She calls him her wise teacher; Elisa isn't the only one who respects him, though Yuliana doesn't always act as respectful.

        "In Goragon... we saw so many Possibilities," Yuliana says. "But... why would Dr. Devi show us this...? How... can she show us this? I know -- the veil is thin, but..."

        She frowns, looking to that mirror. "I think... the Void didn't hold that power, when she was drawing from it. Not the way... it does now."

        Something changed. But what?

        The pages turn, again, as Istantarik is seen consuming more helpless ships through the mirror.

                0095, JUNE 14

                Yuliana rushes out of the congregation hall, all but hanging off the railing as she retches. By the time Elisa catches up to her, she's already shaking a bottle of pills into the palm of her hand, swallowing them dry.

                "They're not good for you," Elisa frowns, putting a hand on her wife's arm. Yuliana shrugs her off, turning away as she snaps, angrily: "Stop nagging me! I know!" But she looks back, turned with her arms folded, and her anger softens as she sees her wife's tense expression. Her shoulders sink. "Haa, I shouldn't yell at you so much... I know you're just concerned, my darling. But it's hard, for me. They all depend on me... but I was never made to lead. Now I give the orders, and..."

                "Depend on me," Elisa urges her, instead, reaching for her wife again. "I have seen the strain you labour under... let me bear it for you."

                "There's so much to consider... would you take care of it...?" Yuliana wonders, glancing away.

                "I will," Elisa promises.

        "That helplessness... it's nothing more than an invitation to ruin!" Yuliana exclaims, as she watches the scene. "She was just worried for you! Just worried, and you yelled at her! You made her take it all on!"

                0095, OCTOBER 31

                They call it a death cult, those who keep track of these things. The Silent Calling preaches oblivion -- that this world is a thin illusion, stretched over nothing at all. 'This existence isn't.' Their nihilism brings them strength in a world plagued by war, but... they've started fighting, too, wanton destruction affiliated with no banner.

                They say that the illusion of existence brings them pain, when the truth is, there is nothing at all. No one dwells in the Void, not any more. All there is... is nothing. GGG is watching them closely for signs of Triple Zero infection, but none of them have shown any signs, so far -- whatever the nonexistence of the Void is, it isn't associated with the deepest depths of existence.

                It's another type of nothing.

                But there's one girl, facing up to their terrorism, who isn't satisfied with them not being that kind of horror. The young Whispered, Shari Loom, completes her machine -- a contraption guided by her Whispers to save the people of Earth from the horrific dragons which Elisa births. She is only fifteen years old, and yet she manages to dispel the terrible beast with only her greatest technological marvel... her 'Green Fold Quartz'.

        Yuliana's expression grows vague, as she watches Shari fight the woman with her face. "Sharochka..? She... fought against us? Against... that nihilism I preached, it would bring them all to oblivion. Even a girl fought against it..."

                0095, NOVEMBER 25

                It was supposed to be Yuliana and Elisa Dian's wedding anniversary gift to themselves -- a dragon attacking the city of Fujinomiya. But Shari Loom, in her machine with its Green Fold Wand, defeats the Twin Dragon Tolsivya with a single 'zap!' It's here that she earns the esteem of the retired Mazinger pilot, Koji Kabuto -- one of many worried by the rise of this new threat.

                It's also here that Yuliana learns who she is.

                "That girl!" She rages, as she storms through their home, tearing a bookcase down so it thunders to the ground. She is careless to her carnage, as she buries her fist in a wall. "THAT GIRL! 'Shari Loom', is it?! She's the one who's been foiling us! I'll rend her to pieces! I hate her! Death is too good for her, I'll have her wish for death!"

                Elisa was not always as angry as her wife, but now she allows herself to crush a heel into that fallen bookcase, splintering it with unnatural strength from the Void. Just like stomping on a bug. "Are there others like her?" She asks, scowling.

                "If there are, I'll damn them, too!" Yuliana screams. "We were so close! If she keeps up like this -- we have to advance the plan. We have to advance the plan," she repeats, turning to her wife, grasping her dark shoulders tightly. "We can't wait any more. The Way must open now, or she'll stop us with that blasted quartz of hers. If only I could take it from her, twist it before her very eyes -- but there's no time!"

                Elisa looks to her wife, placidly, and does not lift a hand. "It will be done," she assures her.

        "I hated her... so much," Yuliana says. "I don't... understand. She is to be protected," and the light dies from her pupilless eyes, for a moment, as she insists on that fact. She blinks, and the effect is gone. "But -- but Fujinomiya... and the Way. But if there's nothing there... what would open...?"

                0096, JANUARY 15

                "I will dance!" Yuliana cries, as she twirls in the cage of green energy which protects her from any of the mobile suit attacks coming in from outside. Her flesh ribbons as she turns, as if sliced by some unknown force; dancing is killing her. "I must dance! It is the only way!"

                And it's Elisa's voice which echoes out, over the radio, in her Queadlunn-Rhea. "No! My darling, stop this! You will perish!"

                "We'll perish either way!" Yuliana yells, her voice amplified by her dance floor. "The world won't forgive us for sacrificing those Newtypes!" The machine they built to grant them the power to sunder reality was fueled by the Newtypes in their congregration -- Newtypes who trusted her, right up 'til the end. Yuliana evidently wasn't as concerned about the ones in her care as she was when she handed them to Sayaka, in this tale they're viewing. "But now -- we can escape! We can escape, and you're the only thing worth anything in this nonexistent world! You have to --"

                A younger voice comes in -- though she's not speaking to them. "I've figured out the harmonics," Shari Loom says, as her Spinatio points its wand at the barrier. "I'm bringing the wall down!"

                "NO!", Yuliana cries, as the palisade falls -- and beam fire pours in. She does not survive...

                ... but the portal in the sky only grows larger.

                Yuliana is the Key and the Gate... and the Lock to bind it shut.

                The first thing it consumes is Elisa, though her screams never truly die.

        Yuliana falls silent, as she watches herself die. The blood drains from her face; she goes slack, in Yao's grip.

        "I'm... dead," she says, numb.

        "Sharochka never built Emptear, so I... it killed me. But why... would I save Elya, as such a wretched woman? I was willing to sacrifice her to save my own hide, but I still... did I have such black hatred for existence that I wished the Way to open even if I died? But I spoke as if to save her..."

        Yuliana looks down. "No... surely I meant to ruin her. If I died, no one else could have her... surely this was the depth of my possessiveness. I would never have accepted her salvation, if it meant she rejected me..."

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

Elisa hears what Yao says to her wife. She approves; it is exactly what she needs in this moment, to know that Yuliana is safe, protected, strong.

But how strong this other Yuliana is...

The river... Elisa glances to Li Yao for an instant. "So these could be alternatives. What may have been. What may yet be."

Elilsa is used to being certain, to Knowing; to have to inquire is... different. It is not without merit. But it is different.

"If we are to counter her attempt to subvert my works," Elisa says, "Then we must understand them. That is how we can watch."

The veil is thin, but...

"Perhaps for her, the Veil has long been thin... In her crystal, without the gross matter of the body."

The Void... didn't? Hold that power. It held less.

Hm.

"...You care so," Elisa says softly. "Not like her at all."

"...Shari. So she was the foe. Her works, turned against us... I have thought many times of what could happen if that were so. But this..."

It was Yuliana who hated her. Strange. "But it is the Empress who hated them so," Elisa reflects. "That was why..."

She sees her horrors; she sees her own nightmare. What Yuliana wished to do. To escape...

Elisa sees herself 'die', and she has a strange sensation. It is like someone walking over her own grave. "...We fell," she says.

And yet, she knows that it is true.

"...'You'?" Elisa wonders. "...No," she says. "Not 'you'. Whoever this is... it is not my wife."

"But who, then, am 'I'...?"

Istantarik is left to rampage a little longer.

Elisa does not try to rein it in, this time. She must know. She must See.

<Pose Tracker> Li Yao has posed.

        Yao watches the two ladies, each one caught up in what could have been. From what Yao understands each one has more and more differences, more and more of a divergent. Yet for some reason it all looked so familiar to Yao. Some of these could have been shown to him and referred to as home movies and he wouldn't have questioned it.

        Yao continues to stare at the visions as he watches and then it gets to the tragic scene, the one all great romance stories have to have, the death scene. This is when it clicks at Yao at what he is seeing and he smiles. " You two."

        Yao gives a little shake to Yuliana as if to get her to look once again, "Look child, really look. Every scene it is you two. Every scene there is still love. No matter what action, no matter what world, you two find each other and would do anything for the other. The proverbial soul mate that is a truth in every world. Perhaps your horrible doctor is looking for a world where such a constant doesn't exist. Where you tripped and fell down the stairs and died before ever seeing Elisa. Maybe a world where Elisa couldn't touch their magic because of some reason or another. "

        Yao takes a deep breath before adding, "Love is powerful and an unknown thing. No one really knows it and it is different for everyone. Still so far all I have seen is that you two meeting and being together, or die trying, is a constant."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        "We'll... understand," Yuliana promises her wife, not without dread. "We will understand."

        But aren't they understanding what Dr. Devi has to say...?

        "I don't like to see you treated so," Yuliana answers her wife, when she notices her care. "Even if it's just a Possibility..."

        When Elisa looks to the rage the other Yuliana holds for Shari, this Yuliana frowns. "Her rage... it echoes this version of me so well. Black fury to subjugation... but Sharochka, she was always the exception. I don't understand... at all."

        Elisa sees what Yuliana struggles with, though -- that this woman isn't her. "It isn't you," she urges her wife, in turn. "This isn't you, Elya. You are no victim! You are strong!"

        Yao can easily shake her, though -- and she turns her gaze back to the mirror, not without difficulty. "But this destiny -- that woman manufactured it," she insists, voice thin. "Claimed her. Is that... love? Oh, I suppose she must have felt love, in her fashion... in some fashion. We were woven together..."

        But the pages haven't stopped turning.

                0096, JANUARY 28

                "It's expanded for weeks," Koji Kabuto frowns, as he looks up at the portal to the Void. It has already begun consuming the Earth; darkness shrouds the planet, now, where it disappears into the event horizon. "If we can't figure out how to stop it, soon... there'll be nothing left."

                "I'm sorry," Shari Loom says, as she looks up to the darkness. "I've tried everything, but I just can't shut it down. I..."

                "Hey," Koji says, putting a hand on her shoulder. "This isn't your fault. And we're not going to give up that easy, either!"

                But she feels the burden of ending the world, even so.

        "Oh, God," Yuliana murmurs, as she watches the vision of that world being consumed. "I -- no, she -- she Opened it too far. Everything... it consumes everything... God, Koyan will never look at me again, will he?" She shudders, in the chill of the ritual-room. "Is that why... she'd show them this? Is it proof... of what I am?"

        But it's not over.

                ????, ???? ??

                There is nothing here.

                Elisa Dian tears herself from her machine, but she cannot find the exit so easily, though she came here so soon. "NO!", she screams, distraught. "MY WIFE! MY WIFE!" She pounds her fist upon the blackness; she finds, on each impact, that it splits into two. She looks at her arms with blanch horror, for a moment...

                ... and then, she sets upon herself.

                "I will bring her back! This empty graveyard was the seat of our powers -- I summon you, ghosts! Spectres of Mars, rise now, and save your daughter!" She enacts her ritual to summon the dead, but from the bones of the Void, only one vision rises...

                ... the Ancient Martian, Cypripedioidea. Her hair is whiter still, faint as a ghost; her many adornments forgotten, now, for centuries. She smiles, beatific, as she beholds Elisa tearing herself to pieces, expanding through the space. As the ghost appears, Elisa, with her changing visage, sees. And, "You. I know you."

                "And through your bonds of marriage do I know you," Cypripedioidea confirms, calmly, her own voice faint. "But we cannot save her. Here, in the Prematerial Plane, we created a 'Black Box' through which we could enforce our will on existence. But my efforts were a failure... I could not save us. I escaped to Earth, and my last act of defiance was to pass these workings on... there is no one here to help you, any more. You must help yourself," she advises her, as she fades, "you, the flickering candle in the dark."

                That's what the last name she took means, after all. Cypripedioidea must have fancied it, all those years ago.

                "Myself?!" Elisa's OCU English grows warped, as she speaks with seven jaws. It grows overlaid with something stranger, unvoiced sounds gaining a voice, voiced sounds growing less so. It changes and shifts with her horrifying physique, though she hears herself just fine. "Then I will go back! I shall take those Chulip Crystals of yours, and GO BACK! No -- there!" She cries, as her great limbs grasp at the confines of her existence, pulling her across them, pulling her INTO them. The Void becomes Her, as She fills its space entire, Her pulsating tendrils latching into each dark corner. "That infernal girl's Green Fold Quartz -- that is how I will do it! Through her, I will go back...!"

                But as She grasps at the edges of the Void, and pulls -- She finds She is too massive, now. Too elsewhere. She slices off Her own rightmost hand, with no hesitation, and tears a hole in existence to toss it through.

                "Do My works, and SAVE HER!" She cries, as the portal closes. "I command it!"

                In her anguish, all she can do is wait, pounding on the boundaries of reality... as within her own time, her black rage consumes the stars.

                She is the Empress at the End of All Things, and all ends before her.

        "Cypripedioidea...?" Yuliana echoes, staring at the mirror. "She died... hundreds of years ago. A spectre of... Mars...? What does she mean... that I'm their daughter? What ridiculousness is... that? I'm not a Spacenoid..."

        She reaches up to grasp her head, though. "At least, most... most of me isn't," she adds, horrified.

        The Orchid Cells. They must have come from somewhere. Perhaps they really did... come from Mars.

        "But, her wife, she... she became..."

                ????, ???? ??

                Elisa's hand -- the Empress's hand -- was not, altogether, a physical thing. What throws itself back through time is her consciousness, and she flings it towards the beacon of Shari's Green Fold Quartz. Shari still develops it at 15, in this new timeline -- pressured only by the aftermath of Axis Shock, this time, instead of the Dians' escalations. She Whispers through the edges: "Go to her. Find Elisa Kafim. For your unfathomable sins, you shall serve." And Shari is the first to understand Her voice -- because Shari can hear beyond the eldritch warpings. The Empress asserts Herself on Elisa, then, as She infects the harmonics of the Green Fold. She consumes the life of Herself in the past, in the process, creating a clear delineation between her life before and her life going forward.

                But the Empress looks through the cracks of reality, and She screams. She screams, because Her timing was not sufficiently exact. She is too removed from that world, now -- removed both in time and in concept -- to understand its fine details.

                And Yuliana, further back in the timeline, is alone.

                "I will not allow the same mistakes," the Empress promises, in Her warped, dark tongues. "It is I who shall save you, my Yuliana. They knew not what they grasped! Heed me!" She slams Her fists into the edges of the Void, as She screams into Yuliana's consciousness, exploiting the liminal space of her isolation tank to reach her this early in the timeline. "They are unlike us! They cannot understand! They cannot know My love for you!"

                Yuliana cannot hear the Empress as clearly as Shari -- not yet -- but Her wishes still impress on her soul, connected with Her as surely as two Newtypes reach each other.

                And when Boss asks where Yuliana came from, during the Mycenae War... Yuliana just says she's from the REA. She does not mention the labs; she speaks nothing of the tortures waiting for her, when she returns to the home she ran from. She is, to ask anyone who fought beside her in her Tendus, a perfectly normal soldier -- a woman who enlisted in her youth to get out of her rural town and into the wider world.

                It's not like last time -- when she admitted she was under the care of a laboratory to Sayla Mass. This time, clutched by her feelings of unique alienation, she does not even give them the chance.

                And it will be almost a decade from her alterations before Sayla's daughter, Leina Ashta, realises the truth.

                By then, Elisa has already made contact.

                The pages flick, and flick, and flutter, showing those brief glimpses of this timeline as witnessed by the Empress outside. The way She screams in betrayal as Yuliana forsakes Her, the sheer shattering grief of her weeping, the rage She vents on Her monstrous creations and Her realm.

                "You do not mean it," the Empress says, gutted in every sense of the word. "You cannot mean it. You are mine! When I swore to commit any atrocity you desired as your High Priestess, you chose Me...! Did you not tell Me you adored a woman who claims all She desires?! ADORE ME!"

        Yuliana's hand tightens, at her temple. "... the Empress," she says, after her silence as she watches those new visions. "Elya... you didn't come from Her. You... were always Her. Flung to the Void, and Changed, and -- and you went back? Back down a river that had already flowed... this isn't a possible past. It's our past. A time where I died, and -- and my wife could not allow it. She went back, She -- She stole your life, Elya, to try again."

        She grimaces. "I remember -- in the Possibility where I became the Empress -- how difficult it was to grasp linear time. It was a miracle I found you in the right decade. She tried to reach me, She approximated... and when I was alone, She made sure it would be different, this time. But... but if they'd saved me, in the War... wouldn't it have been better? Or would I... always be bad? And after all those sacrifices She made, I..."

                0099, NOVEMBER 16

                When next the pages turn, there is a wrenching sense that what they show is closer to this present day -- a conclusion carried by the fact that when Yuliana appears in her black robes, now, the scenery behind her isn't a normal home. No: these are the cold, grey walls of the Silent Castle, a place which was never built in the timeline she destroyed. She stands by a sacrificial altar which holds a long-suffering green crystal, and speaks to it, though she receives no reply.

                "If they knew what kind of a monster you'd made," Yuliana says, sullenly, "they'd never forgive me... they wouldn't understand why she trapped you in there, not really. Why -- why did you make me, Doctor? Was it my fault...?"

        And Yuliana shrieks, seeing such a recent memory. "Why?!" She demands, pain stabbing anew through her voice. "Why would you show us this?! It's my fault?! The Empress, our torments -- it's all my fault?! I knew it was, but this is too much! And now they know! All of them, they know -- what I did! What I can do! They'll hate me! They'll hate me...!" Yuliana doesn't see the plain truth; she sees what Dr. Devi has laid out for her, as she always has.

        She witnesses that final knife between the ribs, and she weeps, wounded true.

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

"....True," Elisa says to Yao. "Our strength is such that we will not allow another world. If she is looking for a world without such strength, perhaps..."

Love. Love is different. And a constant. She wishes to believe this.

she doesn't like to see it, Yuliana says, and Elisa does not move. "I know," she says instead. And she does not explain of Shari at this time. Yao shakes; and that destiny that the woman manufactured... Hm. Still, it isn't her?

"But was I always?" strong, that is. She cannot be sure.

To open it so far... Elisa, too, sees the possibilities. "...To sweep all into the Void... It would grant unimaginable power. But for what purpose?"

And there. There, Elisa is there.

She sees it, and yet she does not remember. She knows its truth, however. A world dies, and Elisa sees her own screaming. No... the Empress's screaming.

Cypripedioidea. Elisa knows. There is no one to help, and therefore....

"The Green Fold Quartz. The girl, Shari Loom. And..."

"This is my beginning," Elisa says dully. Yuliana begins to understand, and so does Elisa.

"This was my end."

She clenches her fist. Her palm begins to bleed.

The Empress, though, is gutted. And Elisa smiles cruelly at that. She has, indeed for now, the correct number of teeth.

"Empress," she says. "...You have planted the seeds of Your own undoing."

"You have planted the seeds of my hatred!"

To grasp linear time. "I understand it well enough. I have enough trouble with it now. ...But yes. It would have been better, had they saved you in the War. We could have still come together, as Yao says..."

Yuliana shrieks, and Elisa narrows her eyes. She hears Yuliana's screaming. She hears--

"IMPUDENCE!" Elisa screams, her voice tearing through the Veil itself, her rage perhaps for an instant reaching the Empress. "I tire of this struggle," she says. "Profane Manifestation!"

Her magics tear through. A portal opens behind Istantarik in the mirror, and deeper than black, her power lances out. The defenders of reality have aided her, in this, and she does not forget a debt.

...But still....

"Damn that woman," Elisa says. "A thousand thousand years of torment would not be enough! I--"

Blood drips on the floor, from her hand, where her nails have torn into her own flesh.

Like the Empress in the Void...

Elisa stops. She stops, and she looks to the mirror, dull green eyes staring forward. She extends her hand--

The mirror collapses, shattering into uncounted pieces that hit the ground.

"...Comfort her," Elisa requests softly of Li Yao. "I..."

She rises to her feet, though her limbs sleep. Will is enough.

"By this word do I break the circle," she intones, and the blood sizzles, melting away into purest darkness.

She turns to her wife. To her ally.

"...No," she says. "It is not your fault. For that woman was not my wife."

"...But She who took our lives in order to play out her hopeless fantasy..."

"It is She who we must hate. No longer do I leave it to your decision alone, my darling. No longer will I place the burden of deicide upon your shoulders."

"My hands will be those that close around the Empress's many throats, and squeeze."

She approaches, and kneels down beside Yuliana, with her non-bloody hand. "...No. It is not you."

"...I have been a fool. A puppet. But no longer."

"Together..."

"Together we shall claim what is Ours, my love. What was forced upon us will become our own treasure. And we will never be parted."

"And that woman... That woman who Devi turned into what she was."

"She is dead. And Devi, too, is dead."

"We remain."

"...Our love, as Li Yao says, will become our beacon. Everything has changed. Everything but that."

<Pose Tracker> Li Yao has posed.

        As the dragon continues to rampage and the pages continue to turn Yao continues to watch and hold his student. More and more his theories seem to be getting confirmed, one iteration after another. There is even a part of Yao's mind questioning if they might be cursed to watch this forever or at least until the dragon dies. If it is to watch every possible variation, would they eventually get to the point where they would see the Yuliana of today but choosing to wear bright pink clothes today then her current selection.

        That is until he watches the scene with the empress, the sacrifice of her hand, and this causes doubt to seed itself in Yao's mind. What if, what if their story was worse than a death scene. With the void, the empress, magic, what if it was all a closed loop. They fight the empress, they become the empress, they start it all over to save the one who was lost. It is a grim thought and one he doesn't share.

        Yao looks at Elisa and then Yuliana and forces the doubt to silence itself long enough to speak with conviction, "Change is the most important thing, change gives chances for success, love gives the strength for success. You two will win together."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Was Elisa always... strong?

        What they see -- is how she begins.

        And how she ends.

        Could it be a closed loop? Could they be doomed to repeat this forever? One cannot accept the other's death. If Yuliana were to die again -- no doubt the cycle would repeat. Likewise, it would were Elisa's deathlessness to fail her.

        Love, as Yao says, is a powerful force; it can be a terrible force, too.

        Yuliana can see all the Empress sacrificed for her -- but it is Elisa who reminds her what She did. She kept her from salvation... for so many years, though surely they would have found each other again.

        Just so... it would be Her.

        "It hurts," Yuliana sobs, clutching Yao as she weeps into his shoulder. She would normally be deathly embarrassed to do anything of the sort -- but this is hardly normal. She needs her teacher, now.

        Yuliana hurts, and Elisa hurts Istantarik, in turn. Yuliana gasps, looking up to bear witness to her Power, as she tears through the Veil to lance the dragon through. This time -- after withstanding so many attacks from those responding to it -- it falls.

        She sees Elisa's blood falling, too. She looks to her hand, and not the mirror.

        Yuliana turns back, to look to Elisa, as she breaks her circle. "Boyevaya podruga," she murmurs, the one beside her in every battle she fights. "You are determined...?"

        Elisa kneels beside them, and Yuliana shifts her weight, to throw her arms around her. She embraces her, fierce and trembling all at once, burying her face against her neck. "I've always been a tool for someone else," she admits, painfully. "It feels so bad... right?" To be a puppet.

        She lifts her head, and presses her forehead to Elisa's, a hand gently grasping at the back of her head. "Dr. Devi... did that to them," she says, slowly. "To us. This time... just as Li Shifu says, it must be different, this time. We must make a change... if we are to destroy God."

        She presses herself closer, heedless of the blood. "Zhenushka," she regards her wife with all her warmth, "there is no end to my love for you. I love you! I wish to be with you forever! With you, not this echo of a time which ended! I married you, Elya," she says, and not for the first time. "Promised myself to you. Let us claim it for our own... let us make our own destiny."

        Let love be their beacon.

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

It could easily turn that way. A neverending cycle... It does not seem to have occurred to Elisa, however, that it need necessarily be that way.

She looks to Yao, and nods. "Change... Yes. We must find... another way. A different way. One that does not lead to this cycle."

Then, to Yuliana again, as she finishes with the dragon. "I am," Elisa answers her wife's question. Yuliana embraces her, and Yuliana will find Elisa's arms around her in turn, holding strongly--perhaps too strongly to escape from, even for Yuliana, for a moment. Only for a moment.

"It does," she says. "To understand that even your independence has been chosen for you..."

"It does."

To them, to us. Elisa inclines her head. "I agree. He--you--" She looks to him, "Are correct."

The blood runs down Yuliana now, too. There is much of it, black ichor from Elisa, a god shard and a mortal stolen both.

"Yes," she says. "Yes, it shall be so..."

"...For the Empress's will, I have acted in the past. But no more. My Power can affect you, as well, my darling."

"But from this day, it Shall Not. My power shall not be used to bend your mind. From this day forth... We each of us make our own choices."

"This I swear, wife. We shall claim it together... or not at all."

"...In the coming days," she says. "We shall reach out to the others. To young Shari, whom once the Empress would have forced you to hate. And we shall make new plans. For now..."

"Please, stay with your teacher. I must rest from my exertions. And then shall we speak again, my darling."

"...I thank you, Li Yao. For being with us at this time. I will not forget."

She squeezes Yuliana, and starts to rise to her feet.

For love shall be the beacon.

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Yuliana doesn't want to escape, not now. Not after seeing something... like that.

        It's fine if her blood runs black as ichor, so long as it is hers. She does not shy from it. But when Elisa tells her the truth -- the whole truth -- she gasps, looking to Elisa as she swims in her vision.

        "Elya... you controlled me, too..?" All those exacting statements come down around her, but she still doesn't let go. "For the Empress's will... She was always so comfortable changing me to suit Her whims."

        She draws in a breath, and it shudders. "Oh, it's... it's a lot to realise... but I believe you, zhenushka. I believe you." She presses herself to her wife, tightly. "It will be different, now. It won't be as She wishes. Together," she promises her, in turn. "Together, or not at all." Perhaps it's not just an echo.

        But perhaps Elisa sees just how shocking her honesty is, as she bids her to stay with Yao. Reluctantly, Yuliana pulls back -- though not before laying a kiss on her wife's forehead. "You must rest well," she insists, with concern. "You worked so hard, Elya... I am so proud to see your might. Let us come together in the evening... in the evening, zhenushka."

        She squeezes her wife, in turn, before she turns back to Li Yao. "Let us go to the residential Wings," she says, to him. "God, we ought get in front of a fire..." ... and she has much to speak with him about, concerning her feelings on being controlled.

        His wisdom will help her through the revelation -- that under the Empress's Will, her wife participated in that same awful method.