Skip to main content.
Back to actions

Action Id: 3825 Crisis: Participants: Sina(RIP)
Status: Resolved Submitted: Jan. 26, 2020, 11:30 p.m. Public: True GM: Apostate

Economic Resources: 100
Action Points: 13

Action by Sina(RIP)

Sina pulls out Donrai's journals again to take another crack at them, this time by herself. She will lock herself in her rooms in the Rectory, and uncover her mirror on the thirteenth evening of the 9th month. She'll then open the journal and make another attempt at reading the words there. In my last @action (@action 3459), Sina noticed that the words in the journal seemed to change every time she looked at it. Now, she wants to study it in more detail, from an occult perspective.

Her study of the journal has a few different goals:

1. She wants to know if it's been warded. If so, she wants to know how it was warded, if she can possibly figure that out, and whether or not she might be able to recreate such a warding herself, because it seems pretty useful! She suspects that's why the words change on the page, and why no one has been able to decipher them.

2. She will then see if she can see any kind of pattern in the way the words change, and using mage sight, she will attmept to see if there are any glyphs or other markers on the pages that might catch her eye. She wants to know if there's a way to remove the ward, and will experiment around with it a little bit, very carefully, to see if she can figure the journal out. Is it really a journal, or is it the book of charts that Wylla painted into her hands in that one painting? Or maybe a way to find out what those two paintings mean? Or maybe it's just a journal. She wants to study it in full, putting all of her occult knowledge into the effort.

3. Finally, she will ask her Mirrorborn to see if she has any insights about the journal, and how to read it. Or, if she has any other insights in general. She'd really like to know what the Mirrorborn thinks about these recent happenings with the Eye of the Prophet and House Pravus, and whether it might relate to whatever might be hidden in Donrai's journals.


Result

Sina hears the screams first.

When she starts to really try to study the journals, and she thinks she sees a word vanishing, the room is suddenly filled with endless wailing screams of torment that go on and on and on and on. Sina starts to black out, the room begins to spin, and the words on the page dance and change. Some of the letters on the page glisten red, like in blood, and Sina can see her reflection in them. And then her reflection reaches to grab her hand.

The screaming stops, and her mirrorborn is standing besides her.

"A Wailing Ward. Very dangerous." The mirrorborn explains, "It looks like the blood mage sacrificed thirteen thralls bound to serve him and coated the journals with their heartsblood. Their souls are bound, trapped in the journals, kept from reaching the Wheel in endless torment, and that torment nourishes the ward." The mirrorborn runs her hand through the air, and as it passes a bright red sigil of a seaserpent howling with blood red eyes appears in the air, and Sina's tattoo burns in response, "We can avoid it. You just need to move your soul a bit sideways." The mirrorborn purses her lips, "I'm not sure that's the best way to describe it, but it's the closest I can come to. I just gave yours a little tug out of harm's way, since we're bound together."

The journals unravel as Sina reads them, with Donrai's notes to himself. Much are ramblings. Disjointed. Unexplained. "Selendri lives again, in the form of Sina Izetta. Her father was marked by the Gyre, and Leviathan's hunger can be felt near her."

"Fragmented. So very fragmented. Seleni lives, an echo of Selendri. If she fragments further, will the facet rise?"

"Betrayal and Hunger, Ambition and Treachery. Knave and Leviathan twisting and turning together, and Sina comes of their union. Seleni feels her, surely. They are kin of the soul."

"Alaric III has been taken. How much power is in Sina's heartsblood?"

"Create mirrorborn to protect her. It will draw Seleni. There's so much power in betrayals. The Champions know, of course."

"The Gyre will be betrayed by his children. Destiny is dead, but glimpsed fragments of possibilities remain."

"Souls are not necessarily weakened by being split. No. It's like cutting a starfish. Cut Sina, and watch her rise. Selendri, Seleni, Sina... a pity Sina has a core of good in her. The righteous make poor tools. Even her reflection can't change that."

"Leviathan has a hook in her. Or does she have a hook in him? The bottomless hunger is in Seleni, but did Sina only inherit Selendri's need to serve? To help others? Disconcerting. Who is the Lady of Treacherous Ambition? Who is the Princess of Insatiable Betrayal?"

"Obsidian will flay her living, and draw her of every last drop of power from her body and soul. He must, or else Betrayal shall come for him in the end."

"Watch the tattoo. There is much not understood there. There is much not understood about Sina. Her mirrorborn must guard her, or we'll never have answers. Kill all the huntsmen that come for her."

"The Gyre died never knowing how close his salvation truly was. If the Queen had bid him to return, even in a shadow of her soul, he would have built Arx into a coral throne of hunger and want. The tattoo called to him, but he was kept from hearing."

"Sina's mother. Blood of the deeps? It would explain why she calls to the kraken, why the hunger has her marked. The soul of Selendri does not explain it alone. Who was she? Who IS she?"

"You shouldn't be reading this, Sina. You aren't ready to meet your mother."

The final sentence seems to flare on the page, growing bright red, and Sina feels herself pulled backwards protectively by her mirrorborn as the journals suddenly ignite, burning suddenly as if they were covered in oil and a torch was thrown upon them. Nothing else burns, but the journals all turn to ash in a matter of seconds, and the ashes then disintegrate as if carried off by a hidden wind. Leaving nothing at all.