<Satori> The moment the possessed lands on the red-and-black, checkerboard tiles of the fifty-by-fifty-foot teleportation circle chamber, and all hell breaks loose. The lone, deep crystal door of the room renders itself immovable; overriding it is a tedious process that takes twelve minutes.
<Satori> The walls are sheathed in the nuclear, radioactive flames of the elementally-corrupted primal spirits of the Hell of Blazing Fires; the teleportation circle deactivates, its outermost ring now a space-destabilizing hazard; and the four sets of mosaics in the corners of the chamber brim and thrum with arcane and psionic currents of teleportation and telekinesis.
<Satori> From Uryat emanates a shroud of darkness, rendering the entirety of the room pitch black, save for the dim light that the mosaic tiles now emit. Fortunately, all three of those in the chamber can pierce this veil of night.
 An alarm blares throughout the entirety of the Palace of the Earth Spirits in response to the presence of an il-Lashtavar-aligned quori; its inhabitants assume their battle stations, gathering in defensible points where holographic monitors display the source of the security breach.
<kaiserpingvin> Quite unsure and confused what goes on, yet still afflicted with rage, Yrit focuses on what is constant: His brother. "I'll beat that spirit out of you if I have to."
<Satori> Barely resisting disorientation from a teleport, primal visions of a herd of stampeding, impassioned animals--elephants, rhinoceri, pachycephalosaures--fill Yrit's mind, and so too do they catch the gaze of Satori's third eye. 6"It should be obvious that every inch of this room poses a hazard. I am well-acquainted with them; follow my lead." Satori mentally gestures to the corner of the room that the infidel, Uryat, is closest. 6"If you can, send him into that corner, that he may be scoured by the primal spirits' nuclear fire."
<Satori> Unleashing a battle-cry that echoes with the pride of nature's beasts, Yrit reveals his prowess in both martial talents and primal magic. He rushes towards Uryat and rams his elbow into the possessed's side. Uryat stands strong, refusing to be brought to the ground, yet staggers backwards.
<Satori> His brother seizes the opportunity by stepping behind him, applying a hold against Uryat's abdomen, and lifting with all his strength. Uryat's neck and upper back slam into the ground in this (German) suplex.
<Satori> Yrit still clutches, and shifts his momentum to follow up with a second suplex, and a third, releasing Uryat by the final throw into the corner.
<kaiserpingvin> Lying crumpled against the wall, Uryat raises his one arm instead of getting up. It is as if the skin shatters and falls off, and beneath is  a mass of dark and eye-like shapes and pincers, pincers moving. It stretches out in dark tendrils, losing all similarity to an arm, piercing your skulls - leaving not a single physical blemish.
<kaiserpingvin> "The Dreaming Dark will see you. You will see the Dreaming Dark. And you will break, murderers!"
<kaiserpingvin> Yrit buckles, clutching his head, screaming in abject terror - in his head there are scorpions and they are trying to burst out, in his stomach are worms and they are eating, in his limbs are ants and they are tearing through, behind his eyeballs slither snakes.
<kaiserpingvin> But it is not as vicious as it could be, there is a little grace to it. As if Uryat still cared for his brother enough to hold back a bit.
<Satori> Through the minds of those in the frigid chamber resounds a discordant, low-pitched screech not unlike that of a cornered, fearful, domestic cat. Recollections of thorns, towers, and alien passageways fill Satori's mind, echoes of the agony erode her heart, and a thousand lashes strike her back.
<Satori> Though she frantically scampers into a corner of the room and drops into the fetal position, she then quickly compartmentalizes her thoughts. Satori shuts out these foreign influences, but her mind is left open; we all know the proverb regarding that. Instincts of flight turn to fight, and from her awkward stance, she retaliates.
<Satori> A feeble flame of pain, born from the wrath of battle, licks Uryat's emotional walls. Though no skin or flesh is singed, his concentration is disrupted--perhaps enough to spare her from further assault. Satori turns her thoughts to a former squadmate, Parsee, thanking her for the technique.
<kaiserpingvin> The once-limb grows in size, eyes inspecting every psychological wound and then pouring into them. The world blackens.
<Satori> Satori gathers all of her will in an attempt to shut the door to her psyche. She blocks off some of his malign influence, yet it is not enough. A weak sob and a whimper resonate through the room. Tears emerge from two of the terror-wracked girl's eyes, and all three of her eyes close.
<Satori> The phantasmal tendrils and wings of her second spirit fade into naught in her vision. Her trembling fades into stillness as she loses her senses--almost all of them. Her sight remains, that she may see her doom through to the end.

<Satori> -----
<Satori> 3"Foolishness, Satori. Foolishness." Sanae eagerly watches the monitors that send a video stream of the one-sided battle. The young Keeper of the Word strains her composure, although her shaky grip on her rod betrays her anxiety.
<Satori> 3"What in the name of the Path were you thinking, endangering Adar and yourself this way?" Her voice, normally as serene and calming as peaceful waters, is laced with miniscule hints of desperation, anger, and panic.
<Satori> 14"She had potential," an emotionless comment comes from behind Sanae. There, Shinki Komeiji stands alongside her mother, Yukari.
<Satori> 14"At least the girl is no longer in my hands... I don't know whether to regret or accept having turned my gaze away from her." Her expression is grim, and her head and eyes turned downward. 14"I don't know what to say," she intones as she lifts her head, exasperated, confused, and lacking in words.
<Satori> 3"Mope and despair later, mother," Sanae snaps back. 3"Grandmother, lend her your aid! You are the only one of us who can breach the barriers of that chamber." She tries to add resolve to her command, yet all she does is produce a desperate-sounding plea.
<Satori> 14"Satori is dead. Accept it," soft and somber. Shinki opens the interface of her shard-grimoire and scrolls to a certain page. Producing her stylus, she draws a diagonal line across one section of it, and another diagonal line over it, forming an X.
<Satori> A yawn unexpectedly sounds throughout the corridor, piercing the blaring alarms. Yukari raises her fan over her mouth. 6"I... believe I am not feeling particularly energetic at the moment," she psychically excuses herself, sincerely coming off as hopeless and disheartened rather than condescending. 6"Awaken me once this ordeal is over." In the blink of an eye, the lady steps into the gap and departs from the scene.
<Satori> Sanae's heart sinks, leaving her staring at the monitor without a word to say.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> No.
<Satori> Satori is a duulora. A noble of the quori, a sentinel, a warlord of Dal Quor. She shall not bow to a lowly tsucora. She shall not bend.
<Satori> Primal spirits of the concentrated breach zone beneath the Palace sear Uryat and Satori with radioactive, nuclear fire. As though a catalyst for the latter, Satori's exalted will reinvigorates her. Her three eyes almost flutter open, yet she keeps them shut, that she may play dead for a little longer. It is not as though closed eyes impede her from viewing the restoration of the smoky tentacles and eye-encrusted wings that only she can perceive.
<Satori> A current of teleporting and telekinetic energies, visible only as ripples in the air, tear through the space near Satori. Noone is caught in their path, for better or for worse.
<Satori> Yrit, undaunted by the faltering Satori if only due to his mind being flayed by fear and focused on his brother, closes the gap and stomps upon Uryat once, twice.
<Satori> "Out, vile fiend!" Stomp. "Out of my..." bringing his foot down hard, "brother!"
<kaiserpingvin> But a storm of eyes and pincerdark buffets him, and throws him to the ground. Uryat dusts off blood and dirt from his fancy dress.
<Satori> Having feigned unconsciousness to avoid Uryat's wrath for long enough, Satori gathers all of her strength, righting her position just enough to manage a kneeling stance.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> Wha... what? Is she getting back up? No, this only happens in those fantastical tales Sanae had viewed as a child in Phiarlan's illusory motion picture shards. No, no... that is the past. This is the present, with she as the venerated Speaker of the Word of Adar's Path of Light. Nothing is strictly impossible; there is always the possibility, no matter how small, of something occurring in this earth.
<Satori> 3"Satori's heart pulses still," she calmly speaks to those behind her, her hope renewed.
<Satori> The gray-haired Shinki perks up, speechless. She steps back towards the monitor and intently resumes her observation of the battle.
<Satori> Sanae's instincts as a sister tell her that she should desire for Satori to live. What kind of sibling would be so callous, so heartless as to pay no heed to the imminent death of her own kin?
<Satori> And yet, she begins to consider what she might gain from Satori's death. One less wild card in the game of maintaining unity in this unorthodox nation, one less idol on a pedestal for the soldiers to divert all of their support into, one less prideful, arrogant child to nominate as the captain of a vessel into Dal Quor.
<Satori> Should her sister live, would she be humbled, or would she be emboldened and rendered even more haughty? Should she wish for Satori to live or die? Inner conflict begins to unsettle her heart and mind.

<Satori> -----


<Satori> 6"Return to whence you came, tsucora, that you may learn your place before a resplendent duulora such as I." Satori opens a purple gap of ephemeral eyes underneath Uryat.
<kaiserpingvin> Unceremoniously, he vanishes - and just like that, in a blink, the tendrils vanish. He doesn't even have time to look surprised.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> 7"That was our mother's technique wasn't it?" Ran asks in the tone of a mother proud of her talented child. Having accompanied him to Sanae's group are the Bright Net in the Dark Cavern, Yamame Kurodani, and her own daughter, Daraci."
<Satori> 5"'The Curse of Dreams and Reality, 'twas called," Yamame responds, her voice a raspy, slithering, loud whisper. 5"I have had the privilege to view how its original wielder manifested the discipline. Like grandmother, like daughter," the gaunt, long-limbed Keeper of Plagues adds. She crawls onto a wall, then a ceiling, skittering across and hanging from a cluster of web strands to gain a better view from a monitor.
<kaiserpingvin> "Reeeeally hope she doesn't break the quori too much. Theeeere's a deficit of mindsubjects for me to cutup and mix." Daraci nods to herself.
<Satori> 14"That is not a quori, child, but a possessed," Shinki interjects immediately after she undoes the X on her shard-grimoire. It seems that her spirits have been lifted by Satori's comeback. 14"The possessed's body and brain should be available for you to dissect after this battle; its quori spirit should be sealed." She has little to say as a mother, but as a fellow biologist, she can be quite the pedant.
<kaiserpingvin> "Soooouls are more intriguing to cut than flesh, Shinki."
<Satori> 5"We may not be able to spare you this one, my daughter," Yamame breaks it to her daughter. 5"The strength of the Shroud has been waning," oh gee, I wonder who has been holding back on giving sealed quori to satisfy her addiction, 5"and we must indulge it with a meal," idly knitting a miniature web in her hands.
<Satori> 14"I am astounded," Shinki's tone of voice having returned to a dull intonation, 14"by how this lowly tsucora-possessed has attained such a tremendous level of power. It rivals the psychic prowess of some of the finer specimens of duulora- and kalaraq-possessed we have seen." As a kalaraq herself, seeing a powerful foe of a common caste is a minor blow to her pride.
<Satori> 7"Just as we had sent our most capable field operatives across the waters," Ran comments with a hint of worry in his voice, 7"so too have the most fearsome templars of il-Lashtavar been tasked with converting Khorvaire into a second Riedra."

<Satori> -----

<Satori> Another blast of spatial distortion rips through a side of the room, while Yrit is sent across the horizontal axis towards the other side. Satori rejuvenates his ailing mind, calming the triggered pain receptors in his body and allowing his martial fury and indignation against the odious spirit to suppress his fears.
<Satori> 6"Your brother should return soon," her monotone phrenic voice quivering after having manifested such a taxing power under duress, 6"Ambush and continue to subdue him once he enters your field of vision."
<Satori> As he nods and gives off a pained grunt in affirmative, a gout of nuclear fire burns off the skin of his shoulder.
<kaiserpingvin> Silence takes hold. Dal Quor does not yet give up its temporary prisoner.
<Satori> Satori glides, levitating two inches or five centimeters off the ground, towards the center of the chamber, atop the edge of the teleportation circle. Her third eye shifts, hovering above the center of her torso, and she cups the underside of the appendage with both of her hands. The wings and tendrils of her second spirit settle down as well, and the invisible smoke pools around her feet. In this serene pose, she is replenished.
<Satori> Cold, calculating wrath in the bedlam of battle. That is the way of the duulora.
<Satori> An imperceptible, space-rending beam soars between the two allied combatants; their choice of positioning is fortuitous. Yrit continues to ready to throw himself against his brother the moment Uryat is in sight.
<kaiserpingvin> But the dimensions refused to change.
<Satori> Satori and Yrit negotiate the haphazard teleportations of the dormant teleportation circle as they patiently await the return of the object of their wrath. Satori cleverly wards herself from further spatial repositioning by directing a normally offensive discipline, another one taken from the repertoire of Parsee Mizuhashi, towards herself. The latent envy within herself weighs her down.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> 5"My, my, the Keeper of Boundaries would be proud of how her granddaughter has so puissantly spun this insectile tsucora into her oneiric web," Yamame comments, her voice roughly creaking out of her mouth.
<Satori> 7"Indeed, she would be," Ran's tone of speech having returned to proud "mother" mode. He then turns his attention towards the other man in the chamber. 7"That is not the new tool that Satori had mentioned recruiting, is it now? He is no Tashanan. Who might this pugilist be, then?"
<Satori> 3"I shall demand a thorough report on the circumstances that led to this skirmish after all is said and done," Sanae morosely replies, her mind still a tad uneasy.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> While Satori is safely anchored to her current location, Yrit is less fortuitous, having been slammed against a wall shrouded in radioactive flames by the odd space in the room. Clutching his side, he resumes his ideal position, ready to pounce on his brother.
<Satori> Flames surround them, space rebels against their bodies, and sporadic blasts of unstable spatial reorientation surround yem, yet they keep their vigil.
<Satori> The two soldiers of the Path, one if only inadvertently, fall upon their quarry with a series of heart-inflaming barrages and strikes of fisticuffs. Yet only their combination attack spurred by a pain- and confusion-sowing discipline taken from the mind of another former squadmate of Satori, Hina Kagiyama, manages to stagger Uryat. His time in Dal Quor has caused him to redouble his efforts.
<kaiserpingvin> Still busy tearing back into reality, a swathe of deep purple psychic emanation follows him out from Ddal Quor, swallowing all minds near. He chants short verses in the Quori tongue, now meaningless, incantations from an old age when they battled giants. The words seem to wrap themselves into spikes.
<kaiserpingvin> Yet, he still shows some kind of leniency to his kin.
<Satori> Those loathsome visions return, flooding Satori's senses. Familiar faces, routine torment, sadistic atrocities, and thorns and flowers rip apart her composure. In the end, she stands, her willpower carrying through this encore of consternation.
<Satori> Satori gathers what focus she has left within her and, after offering gratitude to the Keeper of Plagues, Yamame Kurodani, entangles Uryat in a psychic lattice of disabling agony.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> Outside of the chamber, an elemental spider of the earth and the plague instinctively intuits the nature of this method, seeing her own, pest-restraining webs in Satori's unseen rendition.

<Satori> -----

<kaiserpingvin> Through the purple hazes, Yrit can see his brother, and knows him to be on his last legs. There is an evil spirit in him... But he is still kin. "Satori," he yells. Let's stop now. We cannot kill him. We must extract his spirit elsewise."
<Satori> 6"Subdue him. Render him unconscious, but do not slay him." Her telepathic voice is shaky, as she begins to succumb to the lingering fear.
<Satori> The currents of harmful spatial energies continue to tear through the room, not a single one having managed to harm any of the combatants.
<kaiserpingvin> "Brother! Do not listen to that monstrosity. It is true I harbour a spirit, but it is benevolent. It is good. She, on the other hand, is a callous warmongerer. She wars for nothing. She and all like her are going to murder more living things than you could expect to exist. Look at her! A mere child, and yet she fights a war without remorse. That's what these things do to you, Yrit. They make you weapons."
<kaiserpingvin> "/My/ spirit wishes for peace. They are building stable nations which last forever, ending all strife within."
<Satori> 6"If that spirit was truly 'benevolent,' it would allow you to speak with your brother himself," Satori struggles to make a counterargument. 6"Consider that for a moment."
<kaiserpingvin> Yet Yrit is still taken with wrath, and what Satori says, is not unreasonable. If Uryat is telling the truth... Well, that's that.
<Satori> Yrit hurls himself at his brother, taking care to strike gingerly so as to knock unconscious.
<kaiserpingvin> Yet he hesitates. The blow does not follow through.
<kaiserpingvin> The horrorshow continues, diminishing in intensity... But that's all that is needed. Flames lick Uryat, and he's horribly burned, about to perish.
<Satori> Satori releases a more weary, half-hearted, lower-pitched telepathic screech as her consciousness fades away and she curls up tighter into a fetal position. All three of her eyes weakly close, the skin across her back feels as though it is being ripped away, and her tear ducts have all but dried.
<Satori> No. How. How can this lowly tsucora defy and trounce a general of Dal Quor not once, but twice? This is an outrage. This is madness. Satori shall not have it.
<Satori> The alien appendages of her second spirit flutter back to life, poised for one last strike against this audacious quori of the common castes, yet she stills her body. Once again, she feigns the motionless state of death.
<Satori> It was bound to happen sooner or later. Caught between two sets of mosaic tiles, an invisible beam of arcane and psionic energies of teleportation and telekinesis rearrange Satori's molecules in a minor, yet deleterious, fashion. She struggles to maintain consciousness.
<Satori> Reeling in pain, with scarabs ravaging his innards and pythons injecting venom in his eyes and ears in his senses, Yrit draws a club from the remnants of his suit, takes aim, and desperately hurls it at his brother. But alas, the future refused to change, and his shot goes wild.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> "Satori... do not die on me," Sanae speaks aloud.

<Satori> -----

<kaiserpingvin> "It would hurt me to kill you, so I will not. But you are obviously not in your clearest state of mind. Rest." The purple mist encloses Yrit and enters through nostril and mouth. The victim collapses.
<kaiserpingvin> "Now... Where the blight am I?" he muses, quite possibly his last words.
<Satori> A sickening crunch is barely audible in the room. Uryat crumples to the checkerboard floor as his right knee is unnaturally bent by a stomp from Satori's boot. In a burst of flagging adrenaline, he rolls, recovers, and rights himself on his left leg, but its knee is fractured even more gruesomely as Satori finishes the job.
<Satori> She kneels on the floor, situated that she faces the prone and writhing Uryat upside-down from her perspective. Then, she grasps his head, secures her fingers around his skull, and funneling all of the remaining psionic momentum in her body, presses down on his eyes with her thumbs.
<Satori> Satori repeats her battle-tested method of extracting critical information from the conscious mind of a possessed via brute force, which she had last employed against Sathariel. Eyes are truly the window to the soul.

<Satori> -----

<Satori> 14"How brutal and macabre," Shinki comments on the eye-gouging in a sterile monotone. 14"And yet, it is what the eyes of the quori deserve."
<Satori> Ran, having seen this during his missions alongside Satori in Khorvaire, delineates what is happening. 7"Her third eye lays bare the hearts and minds of all before her, yet the corrupted, deranged, disordered thoughts of both the possessed are troublesome to reap substantial information out of," his tone calm, pragmatic, 7"Then, she discovered how to clear the chaff via the windows to the soul..."
<Satori> It is no wonder that she is praised as a soldier and as a "missionary" here, yet distrusted as a person, so Shinki thinks to herself. She is free to ponder without the paranoia that the presence of a known mind-reader induces.
<kaiserpingvin> "Hooow weird, very weird, what is that she does, a fellow cutter? Sheeee spared its life, will have to hurry there so I can take the heart and the thinking life before it perishes, place it in a soulbottle. Yuuukari, wake, please open?" Turning to exit the room, Daraci hums. She swings her arms and legs wildly but strictly in some kind of child's impression of a march.
<Satori> 5"Pardon the child," Yamame gives a raspy remark from her hanging position. 5"Her eccentricities have yet to give way to the calm of the earth."
<Satori> Sanae gazes intently at the monitor. The troublesome child's arrogance and hubris would only grow, so she gauges, disappointed with Satori. 3"Satori Komeiji is to be placed under house arrest for a minimum of six hours following this event," she solemnly commands all around her through her authority as Speaker of the Word. 3"The circumstances surrounding this battle are to be comprehensively investigated and deliberated upon by the council members of the Palace of the Earth Spirits."

<Satori> -----

<Satori> 6"Linger a while longer, tsucora" her telepathic monotone corrupted by prominent, psychotic arrogance, 6"and tell me of the part you were to play." Her third eye fixes its gaze on the gore, summoning and deciphering the possessed's scrambled thoughts.