Hell,

[20:45] <VoxPVoxD>
[20:45] <VoxPVoxD>
[20:45] <VoxPVoxD>
[20:45] <VoxPVoxD>
[20:45] <VoxPVoxD>
[20:47] <VoxPVoxD> With the matter at old Jiewei settled, the Prolix & Terse pulls away from the island. It's the height of the rainy season, which would force most ships in Creation to cower in their harbors, but the jadeclad is made of sterner stuff (jade), so it slices through a stormy night barely visible against the black sea.
[20:48] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi beelined right for bed after getting back from the excavation slash betrayal site slash gateway to Hell. She doesn't wake until Daizo enters. When is that?
[20:54] <cbass2> A little before midnight. Initially sorting through and stowing the notes and miscellaneous detritus he claimed from the excavation site took a couple hours.
[20:56] <cbass2> Nothing like honest work for getting your mind off wanting to grab your hearthmate and shake her like a misbehaving cat.
[20:57] <VoxPVoxD> Then she doesn't make any noise; her eyes flutter open and she watches him from the nest of folded arms she fell asleep on. "Long day?"
[21:00] <cbass2> Daizo: "Yeah. It's all over and done with. Suris is off to the Nail. Dryas has some damn-fool plan to spring her before she gets there, turn her into an asset." A resigned sigh. "She's welcome to try, anyway."
[21:02] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi pushes herself into a sitting position, and makes a cursory effort to brush some of the wrinkles out of the robe she collapsed into bed in. "She's so young. Doesn't want to give up any of her toys, even the ones she doesn't intend to play with."
[21:03] <cbass2> He yawns and stretches, wings spreading to full. "The important part is that we managed to placate Garnet and keep her from blowing her cover. Not that I have anything against the Red-Pissers, but if she's going to reveal herself it had better be worth something."
[21:04] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Speaking of people who need to learn when to chill out."
[21:07] <cbass2> Daizo: "At least she's got a better excuse. She's lost and alone and wants to exert some kind of control over her situation. And who hasn't been there?"
[21:08] <VoxPVoxD> Now Caxi breaks eye contact to look down at the floor.
[21:11] <VoxPVoxD> Finally: "...so what's on your mind?"
[21:14] <cbass2> Feeling like a damn fool, Daizo sits on the side of the bed next to her. "Business tonight, rather than pleasure, I'm afraid."
[21:14] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Right."
[21:14] <cbass2> He makes a wry expression but his heart's not quite there.
[21:15] <VoxPVoxD> Now Caxi's all business. "What do you want to know?"
[21:20] <cbass2> Daizo: "The things you said down in the gateway. About our ancestors. The blighted, doomed world. They don't teach that at the Heptagram, do they?"
[21:21] <VoxPVoxD> A rueful smile. "I wouldn't know what they teach at the Heptagram. I didn't last three months."
[21:21] <VoxPVoxD> "But if it's that... they hide it well."
[21:22] <cbass2> Daizo: "I'd suspected that was the case. And your medical training with, what was the name, I can't even recall—that's a cover story as well, right?"
[21:24] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "So Dryas's mother would claim. I really did apprentice under Umara. I just wasn't any good at it."
[21:29] <VoxPVoxD> "I was never very good at much. Not by the standards the daughters of the dragons are meant to hold themselves to. Which means, to my House, I only really had one use."
[21:29] <cbass2> Daizo nods, slowly. "It must have been excruciating. To be expelled, to wash out…"
[21:31] <cbass2> Daizo: "Yeah. The noblest of all callings—to continue the Bloodline."
[21:31] <cbass2> Heavy, heavy sarcasm.
[21:32] <cbass2> "They started treating you like a man."
[21:33] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "I tried just about every job I could to forestall the inevitable. I worked in the Scales, I worked with the Merchant Fleet, I worked for Umara... and it'd be good, for a month or two. But every day took something from me, and gave a little bit less back. The ledger tipped by ilms towards debt and deficit. And then I'd just collapse. Pull back."
[21:34] <VoxPVoxD> "And then I'd need to try something else."
[21:37] <VoxPVoxD> "I started avoiding people. Everyone. Siblings, suitors, servants. Once there's one person you can't look in the eye, it becomes another, and then another... because you start seeing all the others in each new person's face."
[21:39] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "At first, she came to me."
[21:39] <cbass2> Daizo: "I felt like that sometimes while I was recovering from my injuries. But at least I knew I was going to recover."
[21:39] <cbass2> Daizo: "Your patron?"
[21:40] <VoxPVoxD> "You healed up good."
[21:40] <VoxPVoxD> "Yeah."
[21:42] <VoxPVoxD> "I'd started having dreams. Wandering through a forest at night, looking for a boundary and never finding it. Every night there was something new and horrible. The chattering of beasts in the dark. Thorns that would rip my clothes and skin. The shadows of lonely suicides hanging from the heavy branches."
[21:48] <VoxPVoxD> "One night, I dreamt I'd awakened in an amphitheatre, the same dark trees huddled all around. People were holding me down, wielding sponges and oils. I'd never been in so much pain, my whole body seizing up... I don't know if you've ever seen a childbirth in person. They made all my sisters watch one as soon as we'd taken the Second Breath."
[21:50] <cbass2> Daizo recalls the entirely new universe of pains which opened up to him while exploring Garnet's memories, and just says "I have."
[21:51] <cbass2> "I would rather go toe-to-toe with another Anathema."
[21:51] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "When it was over, I felt such relief. And then the midwives whose face I couldn't see brought the child up to me. A massive, fat, wriggling white maggot. I woke up screaming."
[21:51] <VoxPVoxD> "The next night she was there."
[21:52] <VoxPVoxD> "A hand on my shoulder, a voice on my ear. There is another way."
[21:53] <cbass2> Daizo: "The drowning sailor, thrown a line."
[21:55] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "She took me into her arms and whispered to me. Everything made sense. I felt stronger, happier, more focused than I ever had before. And in exchange, she only asked for what I was willing to give her freely."
[21:55] <VoxPVoxD> "In retrospect, she taught me very little. But she showed me that the world was full of all the things I was looking for... if I had the will to take them."
[21:56] <VoxPVoxD> "Even the things that blood and station said were beneath me, or beyond me, or behind me."
[21:56] <VoxPVoxD> Deadpan: "Pretty good deal."
[21:58] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "So that's how I know what I know. It's what I was told, and it's what I've found since I was given the resolve to seek it."
[21:58] <VoxPVoxD> "But it doesn't actually answer any of your questions, I imagine."
[22:03] <cbass2> Daizo: "Perhaps not. But without knowing why, every other question I asked would have been meaningless."
[22:06] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi inclines her head in his direction. "I don't know what you'll make of any of this. But I'm not in a position to keep secrets from you. And I don't want to."
[22:06] <VoxPVoxD> "So ask."
[22:08] <cbass2> Daizo: "Will you face any kind of retribution for slaying Takoye and collapsing that gate? Does Hell have a goal, or is it every demon for themselves?"
[22:08] <cbass2> *helping to slay
[22:13] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "There's no one answer to that question. Every demon is an embodied mass of idiosyncrasies, emotions, allegiances, memories...  even two souls of the same greater demon may find themselves at mortal odds. Hell has a legal system, but it is entirely incomprehensible to me. The only one I'd trust to know the answer to that question is her. My patron, as you so gently put it."
[22:17] <cbass2> Daizo: "As above, so below. But to call up the lesser demons, there's no negotiating—they have to come when they're called for."
[22:18] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Assuming you've crossed the Emerald Arc, that's right. Thaumaturges and folk magicians can still undertake riskier summonings... but you're a VIP now."
[22:23] <cbass2> Daizo: "Reliable. I like it. I am familiar with some of the more common types—the blood-apes, the neomah, a handful of others usually popular with those same folk magicians. But are there lesser demons who can provide counsel? Artificers? The skilled tradesmen of demonkind?"
[22:25] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Oh yes. If you want handiwork, you summon a heranhal. Hell's fervid smiths."
[22:30] <VoxPVoxD> "If you want a vizier or a majordomo, you can summon an aalu. If you want a guide, you can summon a gallmau."
[22:30] <VoxPVoxD> "The nanake are loremasters, the gethin are thieves..."
[22:31] <VoxPVoxD> "I have a bestiary you can look at."
[22:31] <cbass2> Daizo: "It almost sounds like there's demons custom-built for every purpose."
[22:32] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Every purpose a greater demon can think of. Every purpose a true demon finds within themselves. Every errant thought that occurs to a Yozi."
[22:32] <VoxPVoxD> "Hell is pure imagination."
[22:33] <cbass2> Daizo: "The only thing they can't do is leave."
[22:34] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Not without bargain or bondage."
[22:34] <cbass2> "Have you traveled there in the flesh?"
[22:34] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Once."
[22:40] <VoxPVoxD> "It's a journey of five days across the vasty dunes of Cecelyne, to a city of brass and screaming. The sun never sets. The weather never changes."
[22:41] <VoxPVoxD> "It does smell better than Nexus. I will give it that."
[22:41] <cbass2> Daizo: "Cecelyne. That's a place?"
[22:43] <cbass2> The name has occasionally shown up in some ancient texts, as a metaphor for wastelands, or vast emptiness.
[22:43] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "A place, a body, a queen. Cecelyne the Infinite, whose silver sands encircle the broken king Malfeas. Her body is the bordermarch between earth and Hell. She must be crossed, in either direction. And the trip takes five days each time. No more, no less, no matter who you are."
[22:44] <VoxPVoxD> "If we were to go out in the storm and summon a demon tonight, that would mean it had left five days ago."
[22:44] <cbass2> Daizo: "That's impossible. But it happens."
[22:45] <cbass2> Daizo: "Fantastic."
[22:46] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "I assume it's Heaven's doing. The Regulators of the Nail."
[22:49] <cbass2> Daizo: "The Nail and half Creation besides, it seems."
[22:49] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "That is their job, or so they say."
[22:49] <VoxPVoxD> "May I ask you a question now?"
[22:50] <cbass2> Daizo: "Of course."
[22:53] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "What are your aims? Do you see the power to protect yourself from Hell? To command it?"
[23:00] <cbass2> Daizo closes his eyes, and sighs deeply. "Is there a difference? When you wish to protect yourself from a sword, you put on armor—but you also pick up a sword."
[23:00] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "You could command it without protecting yourself from it."
[23:00] <VoxPVoxD> "Take my word for that."
[23:01] <cbass2> Daizo: "As Takoye was kind enough to demonstrate for us."
[23:01] <cbass2> "And others, I'm sure."
[23:02] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "What a stupid prick he was. I wonder if Suris had even told him about the Devil-Body Transformation."
[23:04] <cbass2> Daizo: "Probably only in the vaguest terms. And probably nothing at all about what happens afterwards."
[23:06] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Awful people."
[23:07] <VoxPVoxD> She looks up at Daizo, with a 'what else you got' kind of expression.
[23:07] <cbass2> Daizo: "That is what you're doing when you perform your strongest workings, correct?" It's not really a question. "And it's practically left you comatose."
[23:09] <cbass2> "You can kick my ass for asking you to save Sho, if you want. He did turn out to be instrumental in getting rid of Suris."
[23:10] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "A Devil-Body Transformation is the embodiment of your deepest desire, whatever it is you find most lacking in yourself. Whatever you most desire to beat the world into providing for you."
[23:10] <VoxPVoxD> "For me, it was focus. Willpower. Energy. Ambition. The ability and willingness to pour myself into something."
[23:12] <VoxPVoxD> "Healing Sho took a lot out of me because I put a lot into it. Same with fighting out of the sinking Defiance with our important things. If I could make do with less effort, I wouldn't be so exhausted afterwards."
[23:12] <VoxPVoxD> "But once you've tasted the ability to throw yourself completely into something... it's quite addictive."
[23:13] <VoxPVoxD> "My only regret is that Dryas saw it."
[23:13] <VoxPVoxD> "I'm sure she's thinking about the best way to leverage it even now."
[23:14] <cbass2> Daizo: "Shit."
[23:15] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi, neutrally: "It is what it is."
[23:15] <VoxPVoxD> "Anyway, she's only my cousin. She's your sister."
[23:18] <cbass2> Daizo: "The family you pick…"
[23:18] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "I never had the stomach for a hearth-oath. I want as little family as possible."
[23:19] <VoxPVoxD> "It seems to have done alright by you, though."
[23:21] <cbass2> Daizo: "Without it, I think I'd become unmoored. And what family doesn't have a squabble now and then? I'll figure out some way to handle Dryas."
[23:22] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi: "Do you want to learn the rite of the First Circle?"
[23:25] <cbass2> Daizo flops backwards on the bed. "It's been a long day. Let me look at that bestiary of yours in the morning. I think I know just what I want to start with."
[23:26] <VoxPVoxD> Caxi nestles herself in the crook of one of his arms. She still sounds pretty tired. "Happily, darling."
[23:28] <cbass2> Daizo: "After all, this is a Kimbery-class ship. Maybe what we need to get this thing's weapons working is a demon sailor."