RP:Gospel and Lanlan Strike a Deal

Part of the The God of Undeath Arc

Summary: Gevurah and Lanlan travel to Cenril on a mission an ocean-bound mission to get close to Gospel, the demonic-sword-turned-leviathan that prowls the ocean’s depths. The risky mission demands that Gevurah and Lanlan trust each other completely, but their trust breaks down quickly as a paranoid matron begins to wonder if Lanlan betrayed her weakness to Quintessa (he didn’t, but that matters not to a mind in the grips of irrational fear). In the midst of this feud, they commune into the spirit world and quickly lose each other. Gospel seizes on this opportunity to pull Lanlan away from Gevurah and make a deal: Bring me Kasyr’s heart, and I’ll give you Sacred (Gospel’s kindred demonic sword).

Cenrili Coastline

Finding Gospel was easy. A gargantuan leviathan is bound to make a splash. A couple weeks after Lanlan disturbed Kasyr’s dream and became obsessed with finding Gospel (and its rumored sibling), a Rynvalian pirate crew returned to shore with blanched faces and a long yarn of an aquatic dragon that radiated evil. Then the seas were quiet again. Even a leviathan can hide in the ocean’s mysterious depths. But Gospel was not content to sink into the solitary, ascetic life of the deep sea. Fifteen days later, a Cenrili fishing boat was dragged halfway to Rynvale by the net as a beast toyed with its prey before sinking the boat and swallowing the crew whole. Two survivors were found by the Rynvale coast guard. Three days later, several Cenrili residents claimed to have seen the horizon crest like a boil. A fin lanced that boil from below, then the horizon flattened again. That was a week ago. There’s been no news since. The gaps in information were immense, and the ocean even more enormous still. The boundless ocean, the gargantuan beast, the profound silence, the enormity of the problem all humbled High Priestess Gevurah. Her city, her power, her quarrels, her desires seemed so petty. And yet here she was trying to bottle a demon, to give it to her lover so that he could kill a god. The risks of the mission were too much to bear. The risks of not completing the mission were larger still. She has slept little since she agreed to this plot. At night, she leaves the bed often and disappears deep in the estate, only to return on some mornings. Here’s the plan: They will go out to sea and astral project to the spirit plane. Using a spirit stone (a variant of a lode stone) and the ocean water as a conduit, they will find Gospel’s spirit and search for connections he may have, such as a sibling. Spirits tend to flicker in and out of existence near other spirits for which they have an affinity. Gevurah will take Lanlan into the spirit world as a passenger, but there are risks. He must completely trust her at all times and focus on her so that their spirits remain tuned to each other and she can always find him. If he pulls away at all, she could lose him and he would become stuck, his body will become an empty vessel open for possession by bad entities (actually, they risk that whenever they visit the spirit realm, but you know, just trust her, ok?). Even if he isn’t possessed, there is no guarantee that she will ever find him again. Worse yet, she may find him but by then he’ll have gone insane. But he must go into the spirit realm with her, because he is the only one of the two of them who has seen Gospel and knows of the sibling, so he’s the only one who can recognize Gospel’s spirit. They’ve spent the past week in deep training. Everyday Gevurah takes Lanlan into the spirit world. Her instructions: Sit down (among divinely arranged candles), meditate, slow your breath, hold my hand, eat this shroom, recite this prayer, find your third eye, look at me through it. Gevurah holds an idol of Vakmatharas, she recites a second prayer to which Lanlan must respond with a different incantation. He is now her passenger. The world begins to melt away. They’re in the spirit world. Time moves differently here. An hour in the spirit world could be a day in the real world, or ten seconds in the real world. There is no exact conversion of time. Gevurah uses a metronome. It sits in her lap. They can hear the metronome from the real world in the spirit world so long as she doesn’t fully close the portal behind them. Sometimes it closes by accident. Sometimes they simply lose it like children lost in the woods. Do not panic. This is normal. There’s no sense of direction in the spirit world. There’s no light or darkness, just an absence of both. The spirits only appear wraithlike in your mind. No one knows what a spirit actually looks like. The mortal brain creates the wraithen illusion. If you see a flash of color, if you see a table, or a tree, that’s all in your head, but it is also valid. The illusion was created by your spirit to guide you, it is instinctual. Your brain is creating a tableau in real time that it can interact with in order to give order to something that has no order. Does that make sense? Of course not. None of this makes sense. How can one even know whether or not they’re even in the spirit world or if they’re just tripping balls and sharing in the same hysteria? Have faith in her. On the 8th day, she announces that he is ready. On the 10th, they leave for Cenril. They book into the hotel on Beloy. They are given the room in which they first made love. Did Gevurah request that room or is this a coincidence? She doesn’t say anything about it either way. In fact, it’s unclear whether or not she remembers this is the room when they first found each other’s mouths. “Tell me about the boat.” The task of hiring a boat and coordinating the trip fell to Lanlan. Her only instructions were to keep it small, and that they need a perfectly still, cloudless night.

Lanlan knew Gospel was in the ocean. He could feel the monster's presence in his dreams, but that was on purpose. He'd seek the beast out, projecting one sleepy eye toward the other's consciousness, in hopes he might see a landmark he could remember when we woke up. Or a dreamlike allegory of a landmark he might recognize. He never did. Only the abyssal black and crushing pressure. Once he could sense its joy, it reminded him of his childhood when the elf kids would use fake swords to batter fake drow in their games. It was innocent, for fun. And also practice. Soon after he learned of the Cenrili fishermen. But while he slept, sometimes late, his lover worked, throwing herself into this with a zeal he couldn't anticipate. She was so reluctant! One night she came back to bed with a joke, and he laughed. By himself. When she explained the joke, he knew it was their course of action. He couldn't balk! He followed her into the spirit world. He was sure this would be the easy part. Trusting her, finding his third eye, keeping it open. He prayed this was the hard part, because it was nearly impossible. How could he know he would fail so miserably his first time, and how could he tell her his shame, and how could he know that by not disclosing that shame, he was failing to trust her? Existing in a strange senseless world was something he practiced every day, and more thoroughly every night. He was a natural! He could live here! Which, he might have to do, if he couldn't maintain his connection to his lover. By the sixth day, he was learning how to bring not only himself, but his magic into the spirit world. Then she told him he was ready, and he smirked and said, "I know." Deep down, he wondered what she meant. In Cenril again, in the room where they met. That wasn't true, but it sometimes felt that way to him. For a second he wondered if it was a coincidence, she didn't give any indication that this was meant to be a romantic gesture. He'd find out later, he decided. "There's a fisherman," Lanlan started vaguely. "I've known him for years, he'll let us use a boat. It's a dinghy, but it still has a sail. If we need to, it's small enough to row." Lanlan didn't mention that they'd be driving it, or that the fisherman was an elf. "Three nights from now the weather will be ready for us," he said taking her hand. He took a deep breath and sighed, hoping to release some tension, then smiled sincerely, and grabbed her other hand. "Are you scared?"

Gevurah‘s face twists in a wry expression like curdled bemusement. Was she scared? Of the leviathan that may swim beneath their two-man dinghy? Of losing him in the spirit world when the journey isn’t easy and they’re under pressure? Of Lanlan wielding a hellish weapon he may not be able to control? Of Lanlan drowning, being swallowed whole, being possessed, being lost, being ruined? The risks on her own mind, body and soul were also extreme and frightening, but she knew death intimately. What she didn’t know is how life would feel sans Lanlan, and she was scared to find out. “I want to practice again.” She slips her hand out of his and searches her bag for the candles, the Vakmatharas idol, the shrooms. “Where’s the metronome?” She pulls a skirt, a journal, a pair of gloves out of the bag. Nothing. She starts rifling through Lanlan’s bag without asking. “Did you pack it?” She pulls out a tunic, a winter cap. Nothing. “Dammit, where’s the metronome?” She reaches into her bottomless satchel and pulls out anything vaguely hard and rectangular: a quartz prism, a small glass chest with a dryad heart inside, a gold bar, a silver bar, a copper bar. “Sssshiiit,” she hisses. “Shit.” She turns back to her travel bag and empties it. “This is a bad sign.” She shakes her head fervently. “We shouldn’t do this. It’s a bad omen.”

Lanlan actually felt relieved. She -was- scared. So was he. So when she suggested drilling again, he smiled and helped her set everything up. He cleared a spot on the ground, layered it with cushions, circled the spot with candles. "Oh no, the metronome." Lanlan could easily recall its reliable ticking. It was so important to have something real to count on while they were in the spirit world. He helped search, dumping out his own backpack. A kaleidoscope, some dice, bags of jingling metal (not always money), and a menagerie of different wooden shapes. He knew he wouldn't find her metronome, but he really wanted to. "The metronome..." He worries with her, and it shows on his face. Only for a moment. "It's a crutch anyways, isn't it. Mhm. I think it's a sign we don't need it anymore."

Gevurah inhales to steel herself against Lanlan’s blind optimism. Could his overconfidence be a second sign that he isn’t ready? Or is he right, and they are ready, everything will go well, and they will succeed out there, two small specks bobbing in a trance on a dark expansive sea? As of late, he’s been right more often than not, a distressing pattern that surely cannot hold for long. But perhaps his sudden talent for prescience will last a little longer, because she’d hate to be right about this, hate for the dark sea to open its maw and swallow them whole. She shudders and shakes off his cloying optimism and feigned concern. “Chilly in here,” she explains. It isn’t. From his suitcase she lifts a wooden figure (an elephant, or is she imagining that?) “What is this?”

Lanlan wondered why she was being weird. Temperature was perfect. "These pieces go together. I'll show you." He slid grooved pieces along their deep grooves, then locked them in place with a wooden pin that went through a hole in them. Three pieces formed a cranium shape. Using this method he made a torso, arms, legs. Then with a mallet he smacked limbs into sockets and stood it up. Magic shimmered across it briefly, revealing hundreds of formerly invisible rune inscriptions on every inch. "I encountered an ugly version of this in the forest." What they had was a halfling sized construct made of polished oak. He looked at it with disdain. It was still so far from what he wanted it to be. And its faceless person shape was off putting for some reason. Lanlan muttered some gibberish to it and it marched rigidly into a walk-in closet and closed the door on itself. "Did you think I was going to row?"

Gevurah watches with great interest and a little awe as Lanlan bangs together a wooden automaton. His explanation of the run-in in the forest, however, turns her expression slightly bitter. “When was this.” Lanlan’s mysterious adventures and disappearances were one thing she could just barely tolerate, but now it seemed as though he was keeping secrets, too. “Why did you--” Oh, nevermind. She remembers now. Yes. He did tell her this. Mid-sentence, her tone transmutes (abruptly, schizophrenically) from a loaded accusation to a delighted curiosity, “--you pack this for this trip?” He makes a joke. She snorts and grins, tickled by his zany ingenuity, the very same which seduced her, unexpectedly, some time ago. She kisses him sweetly. Her body follows her kiss until it is flush against his. “Yes. I was hoping you were assembling an oar,” she teases. Something electric passes between them, the source of that current somewhere deep in whatever has been unsettling her. She chases her sweet peck with a deeper kiss that grows hot and invasive. She guides him towards the bed, knocking over two candles that had just been so carefully set up for the spirit walking ritual. The plan was as quickly abandoned and replaced with another, as have her many moods since they left Trist’oth.

Lanlan knew she picked this room for a reason. And he knew she picked that particular moment for a reason. He was ready to inquire about the weird shift in her tone. But she kisses him, and though reluctant, he kisses her back. Then the kiss deepens, and he decides he'll inquire later, and his reluctance vanishes. He loves her passionately, greedily, and she loves him. Suddenly there's no time to practice soul-diving. "Tonight is still the night, isn't it?" She agrees. He takes her to the sandy beach, the construct close behind carrying their supplies. He bought it a tricorn hat and a scarf to give it some personality. On the beach he holds her hand, and accidentally enjoys the long walk. Forgetting to be stressed about their upcoming endeavor. Then they find the dinghy. He sobers up. "Here we are. It doesn't look special. But it is," he insists. The elf he knew was something of a hermit, and worshipper of Selene. It was surprisingly well tasked to deep sea fishing. There was a folded scrap of paper sitting on the floor of it. He read the one word aloud. "Quenya." Nothing happened. "Okay," he said, conceding for now. He put the paper in his pocket and got in the dinghy. When Gevurah did also, he commanded the construct to push them, and it tried. After Lanlan and the construct got the boat three quarters off land, he hopped in, and heaved his mindless minion by its arm to sit in front of them. He put its hands on the attached oars and it started rowing them out to sea.

Gevurah, unlike Lanlan, feels acutely stressed, but pretends otherwise. If he looks at her, she forces her gaze to remain serene, not unlike a condemned prisoner looking cooly ahead as they approach the gallows. Perhaps under different circumstances the drow could have allowed herself to enjoy a moment as cliche and human as this. But tonight she can only focus on the dangers that lie ahead. Lanlan doesn’t understand the magnitude of the danger they’re facing. Nor does he understand her loss, and how that loss has multiplied into other losses. When Caluss (then Quintessa) nullified her divine powers they also thrashed her confidence to shreds. Yes, it is true that she has other abilities, but nothing compares to Him and what He can do, and has always done, for her. And in this fight against a god and a demon, she needs Him more than ever. Instead she must rely on him, lowercase him. Lan, lan, lowercase lan. She says nothing as Lanlan deals with the boat and the construct. Once they’re several dozen yards out to sea, she says, “Surely we’re not rowing all the way out.” It’s a calm night, and the sound of gentle dark waves lap against her ungentle, noisy mind. After a long period of silence, presumably after the boat’s sail has gone up or Lanlan has found a better way to put some speed on this dump, Gevurah’s gnawing thought breaks through, “You’re loving this, aren’t you? The mission. The weapon. The fact that I had few better options but this. After Calus--” She shakes her head and stares out at the starry horizon. Her tongue clicks and jaw tenses, her tongue pushes against the roof of her mouth, tonguing a dangerous thought, working it like an oyster gnaws on a pebble of sand and polishes it into a black, jagged pearl. “Did you tell Quintessa about Caluss? Did you put her on a path to borrow his power against me? To create your opening for this damned weapon. Did you?”

Lanlan wasn't doing any rowing, it was all the construct. He was monitoring it fairly closely though, mindful of his work and how it would perform. Yes, the hat and scarf did make it easier to look at, but its movements weren't fluid enough. "If we're riding against the wind then of course we're rowing." Lanlan didn't check to see which way the wind was blowing, or figure out how to set up the sail. There didn't seem to be a sail. But he encouraged his minion to row faster, and it did. Unfortunately it made its mechanical flaws even more apparent. Lanlan averted his gaze. Then he was left to focus on what they were doing. Fear and anxiety spawned in his mind, and threatened to dominate his attentions. Luckily Gevurah was there to exacerbate it all. "I don't -love- it," he says. "But I'm glad you're helping me. Even if you only are because you have 'few better options'." He had more to say, but for the moment he decided to try to appear grateful. She -was- doing him an enormous favor and he shouldn't complain how she deals with it. She's not used to doing things for anyone but herself, isn't that right? She can't stop though. "Did I-" Her line of questioning utterly confounds him. "Did I--Okay. Haha to create my opening? I would never do that." He corrected himself. "I would never do that to -you-." He tried to be satisfied with saying only that. But he couldn't be. Her words made waves. "This was -your- opening. When you realized you hadn't a -god- to rely on anymore, and might have to put some faith in me, you reluctantly decided to help. Wait... no. That isn't right either! You're only here because you still think you can't rely on me!"

Gevurah holds Lanlan’s stare coolly when he explains his embittered gratitude for her help. His self-pity does not move her. Who is more pitiable? Is it the arcane steward and former Patron of little renown, infamy and power who has been given an unprecedented opportunity? Or a Matron and High Priestess who has been knocked so low that she has few better options than an illusionist with ambitions that stretch beyond his reach? In her wisdom, Gevurah does not vocalize the cruel truth of her opinion on the matter. Or perhaps wisdom has nothing to do with it, and she is motivated to silence by something softer, more fragile and private between them. The same thing that motivates Lanlan to declare that he could never do ‘that’ to ‘her’. Gevurah frowns and tears her gaze away from him to look towards the southern celestial skies. What exactly could he never do to her? Endanger her for his personal benefit? Gamble with her life? Lie to her? Betray her secrets? As he continues to roar his displeasure, she stares at the stars. There’s Caoh and Brei, the lovers constellation, embracing each other beneath the watchful stare of Cluhlat, the judge. Gevurah does not reply to her own lover. She lets his accusation die on the briney wind. At the construct’s slow rowing pace, they’ll never get deep enough into the ocean for her plan to work. After several minutes of silence, she says, “We need to go faster.” She still doesn’t look at him.

Lanlan takes her silence as an admission of guilt. Which hurts. He didn't know what he was saying until it was said, and then he wished for her to contradict him. Why would she? He fills the emptiness his despair creates with more verbal battery. "You wish that was my plan," he stops his minion from working the oars and takes one of them, "because then you would have someone to blame because obviously that turd couldn't outsmart you, and obviously that turd-god couldn't outsmart Vakmatharas, no, no, It had to be me, haha but really, you need it to be me, and why? To get a weapon." The boat's come to a stop, but he's been haphazardly chipping and carving splinters into an oar. "Because I don't have any -real- power, that's why you won't marry me, that's why you did marry Daath," he spins the oar before him and appraises it, there's an asymmetrical swirl of grooves snaking around two simple runes. At the top of the oar's handle, are two inch long splinters he purposely left in place. "Okay, we'll go faster," he says as he peels a glove off and slaps a hand up into the splinters. Then he dips the newly runed/ruined oar into the sea and eddies form all around them as the current directly behind their boat changes direction and pushes them forward.

Gevurah grimaces at the second wave of verbal battery. Ah so he does think that she was made a fool, that she is weaker, less than she was before. He is ashamed of her. She knew it. “Stop it,” she hisses just as he speeds up the boat by sacrificing his magical blood to whatever arcane force demands it. “You don’t even want to marry me. Drow don’t marry for,” she waves a hand between them to indicate whatever ‘this’ is. “Don’t pretend you’re a jilted lover. Your hang up with my marriage has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the fact that you feel less powerful than Daath. No,” she corrects, “That you -are- less powerful than Daath. It’s a fact.” Her voice rises with her agitation. “Live with it!” She glares at him. “Live with it the way I live with the fact that Caluss has robbed me of my power! That my statue was destroyed! You’re embarrassed? Tough shit!” she roars. Her body trembles as she seethes with frustration. “And you think I’m not--?” Suddenly made a coward by the truth, she cuts herself off from confessing what embarrasses her. “We can’t fight like this before the ritual,” she huffs as angrily as ever.

Lanlan finally gets her to speak, and while she does, he faces the wake, grips the oar tighter. He hurts. "I don't care why drow marry or don't marry," he said turning while she dismisses her own thought. "I'm not -embarrassed- about it," he says sourly, realizing he admitted Daath was more powerful than him. "Fine! You're right." Then he was silent.

Gevurah can hear the wound in Lanlan’s voice. It cuts her deeply. “Lan…” she beseeches him but what else can she say? This rift between them feels familiar. It felt like this the day of that horrendous fight in the inn, after he was no longer possessed by an entity and was instead possessed by resentments against her. She reaches out to touch him but stops short of resting her hand on his arm. Would that even help? “Lan, you have done incredible things. You’re… I just- With this specific problem-- Look, it’s not just you. I’m also-” She sighs in exasperation. She cannot do this now. Maybe she won’t be able to do this later. “We can talk about this after the ritual. We need to focus on the mission.” He’s still looking away. Impulsively she places an affectionate hand on his arm and implores him to forgive her with a look. “This is all new to me too.”

Lanlan is tempted into feeling an emotion he recognized, but couldn't name. One that left him dejected in a way no one could, because no one knew how. At the same time, he could feel her prickles round and recede. He didn't want them to! "Be silent." He doesn't turn. He's more interested in the tiny ripples he creates in the water with hardly moving the oar. And now she was trying to pacify him! Being merciful? She thought she was being a gracious winner. It was repulsive. The notion grated against his sanity, made him lose control of the oar, shove the blade out to the side, turn it over. The currents followed his influence and a tiny briny jet arced over Gevurah and fell on her while she spoke. Lanlan corrected the oar. "Oops."

Gevurah glares at Lanlan when he tells her to be silent. “Watch your tone,” she warns. Perhaps showing him kindness was a mistake. She isn’t sure when she first made that mistake. Tonight did not feel like the first time. Lanlan can never let anything go, can never let anything just be, and sprays her with a jet of water. Growling, Gevurah blasts a fireball right past Lanlan’s nose, close enough so he can feel the heat, and aims the flame at the wooden automaton’s tri-corner hat. The flaming hat blasts right off the wooden skull and lands in the dark water. The matron says nothing else and tries instead to focus on the task at hand. They need to reach the deep ocean, and then she can begin.

Lanlan gasps and clamps shut his eyes as a blindlingly bright fireball flies past him and scalps his wooden minion. He leans back cupping his hands over his nose and mouth while he glares at his lover. He had it coming, he knows, but it was only a jolt. So he mellows and returns to the swirling wake, and the new hat sizzling and spinning away. When he thinks she isn't watching, he smiles and stifles a laugh. The real victim was the construct, who lost its fashion and almost simultaneously receives new work orders. It sat holding the oar rigidly in place while its master relaxed and bandaged his hand and sighed. For a while it was silent. Every once in a while Lanlan would shift his gaze from his minion, to the sky, to the front of the boat. He curiously looked past Gevurah, as an excuse to occasionally steal a glance at her to see if he could glean her mood. Then he'd lay back, horizontal on the boat's bench. This time when he looked up, the star he was tracking was directly above him. So he sits up and taps his minion. Ease vanished, suddenly. Now, they were deep into nowhere. Now they were about to go immeasurably deeper. He taps his minion again harder, and it pulls its paddle out of the water. Lanlan stares at Gevurah expectantly while the boat slows and begins to list lazily in a ponderous circle. He wouldn't know. He couldn't know if she trusted him. True, if she didn't and they did this, he might be lost in the spirit world. Forced abandon a beautiful gray husk of man-elf. He'd spend eternity trying to find his body until he went insane. Yet this was consequence was mild compared to working out their issues.

A chill coursed down Gevurah’s spine as the boat slowed to a bobbing stop. The drow do not explore the seas. The physics of boats elude the matron who prefers the complexity of magic, or city planning, or political theater. The anchored boat’s bobbing flips her stomach as she unfolds a tray and begins to arrange the votive candles, grave dirt, bronze bowl, and other accoutrements of the dark faith. The creeping sea sickness makes her lethargic. She swallows often and tries to power through the discomfort. Suddenly, just as she’s finishing the grave-dirt silhouette of a scythe, she flings herself against the side of the boat and hurls into the sea. The bright bile and partially dissolved dinner sink into the black waters. Gevurah cups cleaner water to wash her mouth. She then recites a rudimentary healing spell and cures her own nausea without expending much energy at all. Why didn’t she think to do that sooner? She’s off her game. Should she admit this to Lanlan? After that fight? Hah. She’d rather get swallowed whole by Gospel. Without looking at the illusionist, she finishes preparing for the ritual and hands him a psychedelic mushroom. Before he can protest or question her or second guess the mission, she eats her shroom. Bottoms up.

Lanlan watches her keenly. It's obvious what she's feeling, and that he shouldn't try to salve her in any way. Rather, he apparently tires of her careful, worrisome moves and hijacks the arrangement to speed things up. No point in hesitating now. Because he isn't polite anymore, he even watches while she barfs into the sea, with eyes that judge. With eyes that he hopes she thinks judge. Because he isn't weak. So of course he doesn't balk when she gives him his smelly little fungus. His hands do briefly bobble it, he didn't notice they were shaking. But he gets the little preparation into his mouth and grimaces at the foulness, chews, and swallows. Then he leans over and whispers to his minion. It starts tapping a finger-like appendage against its torso, rhythmically. Lanlan continues to watch Gevurah, waiting for her spirit to leave her. He never saw it happen before, it was a little morbid. Like watching her die. Her form slumped. Lanlan rises to a crouch and puts the tray in his spot, taking a seat on her bench. He wraps his arm around her and cuddles up. He's almost ready to give in to the spell. He kisses her on the cheek and nods anxiously. Thinking again, he flicks her on the forehead. No, that wasn't right either. One more kiss, this time on her lips. Then he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he's in a windy world of whites and grays, and she's there. He can still hear his construct tapping itself in time. Far away, perhaps infinitely far, he believes he can see their quarry. An enormous black smoky tendril. But the wind blows so loudly and so strong, it seems to blow dark wisps of its corrupted essence against them. Sometimes he believes he can see a winding path paved with gravel, wide enough for one, snaking all the way to Gospel. But it looks precarious, he can see the path is paved with a single layer of gravel, and underneath it is nothing. Behind it is nothing. "Do you see the path!" He shouts over the vortex of wind. He prays that she does, because it appears to be the only one he can walk on.

Gevurah, in her hallucino-ritualistic trance, cannot feel Lanlan’s flick on her forehead, but she can feel the animosity that fueled that flick. It rubs over her like sandpaper, sets her spirit against him like an amoeba recoiling from an electric shock, dumbly and quickly. His kisses have the opposite effect, and draw her towards him in the spirit realm when he appears. “What path?,” she asks. “I don’t see anything there. Look, there is a bridge.” She points in the opposite direction of Lanlan’s gravel path towards an arched bridge made of snakeskin the spans for hundreds of miles into the horizon. It’s impossible to see where it leads. “Do you see the snake bridge?” As soon as she names it ‘the snake bridge’ the reptilian facade morphs into millions upon millions of writhing snakes bound together in the shape of that arched bridge. Gevurah steps onto the writhing serpents without flinching. “Trust me, it’s this way.” She looks over her shoulder at Lanlan, but her face is blank to him. Her features are gone, replaced by a black void. “Lan?”

Lanlan turns around and sees Gevurah begin to step in the opposite direction. "What? Don't just leave!" Somehow, in the time it took her to lift up one foot and put it back down, she managed to get...very far away from him. It seemed. But he could see the bridge now. The snakes seem to strike at her as she steps on them, yet she does not notice. "Doesn't that hurt you?" She must not hear him. He takes one more look at the gravel path and then steps on the snakes after her. They do bite him. And they do hurt. But he doesn't bleed, and he doesn't stop walking until he catches up to her. He grabs her hand so she can't get away from him again, and then he sees her face. "It's not you!" He says as he steps back, the giant knot of snakes begins to untangle itself, and his foot sinks through the loosening coils while snakes bite him. He pushes against them to heave himself back to the surface, but they shift and fall away into nothingness. Anyway he doesn't know which way is to the top.

Gevurah doesn’t hesitate. Lanlan sinks into the snakes as though they were quicksand, and Gevurah lunges in after him. Ebon hands tear through mottled green, brown and black snakes that bite at her flesh and tear her robe. She claws her way deeper and deeper into the thicket of snakes in a desperate attempt to grab hold of Lanlan before he’s pulled away. A glowing red eye flashes through a knot of snakes and Gevurah dives after what she presumes must be Lanlan’s eye. The red glow sinks slowly, struggling, occasionally blinking. She wriggles through the slithering bodies towards that sinking red eye, utterly clueless to the fact that Gospel has already found them, he is already here, and that red eye does not belong to Lanlan but instead is a false lure set in motion by the leviathan. By the time Gevurah sees through the decoy, it’s too late. Gospel has successfully separated the matron from the illusionist. She’s lost Lanlan completely. Panic quickens in her heart, not for herself but for her lover who may be lost to this spirit realm forever, as she had feared from the moment they concocted this risky plan. She closes her eyes, calms her mind and prays. Through meditation she transport herself within the realm. The bridge of snakes yanks away from her like thread pulling on a spool. When she opens her eyes again, she’s utterly alone in a gray, choppy sea that stretches to the horizon in all directions. She sits on the water with her legs folded in the lotus position. There is no boat. She floats by some buoyancy granted to her by some other foreign power. As the panic thickens in her chest, she reacts as she has been trained to act: meditation, prayer. She shuts her eyes again. The scenery around her runs away from her as if yanked on a line. Now she is back in a ghostly version of the sandy beach. The environment yanks in the opposite direction. She is back out at sea. The sea yanks again, this time upwards, and she is under the sea, though she can breath. Again and again she searches for the snake bridge, pulling herself along the leylines of the spirit world in search of her love, but each search turns up nothing. Finally she feels her grip on the spirit world weaken, and she is forced to return to her body or risk getting stuck here herself. Back on the boat in the mortal plane, she shakes Lanlan’s body gently. “Lan, can you hear me?” Why does love make people ask such stupid questions? Of course he can’t. He is gone. She knows.

Lanlan sinks further into the rapidly unraveling bridge and finds nothing under his feet except a slick black snake, tethered by its teeth into his ankle, scales shimmering light blue against the glow of an unseen light. He kicks it off, and in one last burst of effort, he rapidly throws hand over hand, each time gripping and pulling a different limbless monster. "Gevurah, don't let me fall. Please don't let me fall!" He sees her hand fishing through the writhing mass, and it spurs him on. He can reach it! He claws against the falling ground, pulling himself up as he sinks, gaining inches every time, while snakes tumble from above onto his face and fall into the nothingness under him. At last he grabs her wrist! It holds him steady. Then when the last of the avalanche of scales has rolled off his back, he sees his anchor bend, arch in on him. It's surprisingly free from attachment and bares two venom dripping fangs. "No!" The lying serpent betrays him, snaps against his wrist, and he falls. He falls and falls, and he knows: this is what she warned him against. He falls for so long, into a windless, bottomless void, that it becomes meaningless. There was no bottom! He wasn't falling, he was just drifting. Only the bridge above him could provide a clue how fast and how far he fell, but after a minute he couldn't see it. He couldn't see anything. Closed or open, his eyes seemed useless. When did the blank white nothingness become an endless black sky? At least the stars were out this side of limbo. A million twinkling lights offering him solace. He imagined the stars were like him, souls cast adrift. And he imagined he was one of them. He was wrong. He knew when the shimmering lights began to shift all at once and wrap around him. A ubiquitous and unfamiliar voice. "How do you like it? My meditation realm." Scales the color of the midnight sky wound around Lanlan until a portal seemed to open up. A massive yellow burning ellipse, with a black scratch down the middle. "I thought you'd be here sooner," the voice says. Smooth, but clearly indicating mild disappointment. "And I didn't think you'd bring a friend. It's alright I took care of her." Lanlan was slowly being returned to his mind, he thought he'd lost it. "Anyway I know why you're here. Does that go without saying? I can't tell how much credit is due. You're after my spawn, Sacred. I can get it for you." Lanlan wasn't here to talk. He couldn't remember how, or else Gospel wouldn't let him. "Don't be scared," Gospel says, almost coddling. Amazingly, Lanlan feels his anxieties almost melt away. "Listen to me now." Lanlan becomes alert and attentive. "Kasyr's heart. Do you hear me? Kasyr's heart. Cut it out. Then you will have what you want." The burning yellow portal, or the sun, or the leviathan's eye closes and opens. Suddenly the black sky, or the black coils disappear. Once again Lanlan is shown a picture, a revelation. It's Lanlan on a mountain, peerless. Lanlan at the top of a tower, without equal. Lanlan bringing monsters to life because he can. Lanlan accomplishing what no one else can! The pictures and the feelings flash, then he's again in the void. "Wake up. And bring me Kasyr's heart." In a tiny vessel, rocking over an almost endless black pool, Lanlan opens his eyes. "Stop, stop, stop!" He huffs through his nostrils and glowers at Gevurah. "Why are you shaking me like that?" Lanlan emerges into confusion. "Hello?" He yawns. "How long was I asleep? Oh and I spoke to Gospel. We only have to get Kasyr's heart."