SUNDAY AUGUST 7TH, 2011
(Don't Speak Its True Name VII: Friend)

1:24 AM
"Rael, what are you doing?"
"Why are you playing Paper Mario? Your friends have made it to Dominiere and will be here any minute."
I just.. I needed to get through Chapter 6. Needed to get through that slog, needed to put it behind me. Even though I won't ever return here, it didn't feel right to leave it the way it was.
I'm done now.

1:25 AM
I'm dressed. I'm up. I've got Hackett. I will need to get a new journal somewhere, as this one's running out of pages (and I've reached the end of the surplus that Ginger provided me with), but that's a problem for later.
Are you guys, like.. are you coming with? Do we have space in the car?
"Traveling in a car would be a poor use of our time. We will meet you wherever you are."
"When we are not busy."
So you're not busy now?
…
They looked at each other for a moment and then vanished.
I guess they have godly things to do.
Well, thanks for the help, guys. :)

1:26 AM
Went down the stairs, went into the George.
As usual, it is open. I don't think I've ever seen this place closed.
It's always the same bartender, and a lot of the same regulars.
Because it's not real.
It's as fake as the carnival and the market.
Nobody wants to look at me. They could be all evil and suspicious and they know that I know that they know. Or maybe they're just legitimately busy.

1:27 AM
Waiting around outside. Waiting for a car. Right? They'll be arriving by car? They spent some time yesterday looking for a car.
Yep.
Just gotta stand here. Looking out into the night.
The fresh air is nice. How long have I been stuffed up in a bedroom? It's been.. a few days now.
I do still feel sluggish. Didn't really want to get out of bed, even knowing what sleep is here.
Didn't I dream that? No, the Fentzy thing was before I slept. And my dreams were filled with.. real stuff?

1:28 AM
still some groups of people out walking tonight.
evenin'.
how you doing.

1:29 AM
"There he is."
Oh! They're walking. No car?
donnie "We had to park. Well, I guess we didn't have to, but we couldn't be sure."
danny "We didn't want to pull up, only to find you were still in bed, so we'd need to keep the car idling outside…"
bones "We're not assholes."
danny "Loud fucking cars, with their loud fucking engines, at 1 AM. This street doesn't even have sidewalks."
donnie "Pavements."
danny "Sidewalks. So the cars go right up next to the hotel, and, it's 1 AM, and, seriously, who does that?"
bones "Assholes."
danny "Also we all wanted to stretch our legs."
fentzy "I've gotta shit."
danny "Yeah, that too."
bones "TMI, Rauri."
fentzy "Fuck you guys. Are we children?"

1:31 AM
Donnie went in with Fentzy to ask to use the pub's restroom, not wanting anyone to be alone in there. Just in case.
Now we, The Boys, are all waiting around outside.
Except Bones, who's kind of ambling around all over the place, can't stand still.
Thanks, guys. For coming back.
danny "We weren't gonna leave you. We're pretty sure you weren't gonna leave us either."
Definitely not. Yesterday, I even saved…
...huh, that's not gonna make much sense to say out loud, is it.

1:32 AM
"Derek, what the heck are you doing, can you just stay put, you're wigging me out."
"Sorry. Just keeping an eye out in case something goes wrong."
"If something goes wrong, we'll handle it. That's what we do, we handle shit."
"We couldn't handle getting thrown in fuckin' jail."
"It worked out."
"It took some serious luck for it to work out. We can't count on that. Let me keep an eye out, okay?"
"Okay."
"...so, Jordan."
Hey, Danny.
"Rauri said something about being really sick, and you helping her out. Tell me something: How do you help with being sick?"
It's. A long story.
"I've got time."
I think it'd make more sense to tell all of you guys at once.
"Yeah, but. Who knows how long she'll be? And I'd really like to know the story."
Man. It's inefficient to have to tell it this way, but. Sure. Okay, gather round. Let me tell you how it all went.

1:33 AM
So first of all. I've been stuck in my own head for some days now.
"I thought I'd picked up on that when we arrived, yeah."
Donnie and I have been through a lot, and I've been used to working as a duo. Having five now is a change, and I had to really.. decide what I wanted. When we got here, Dominiere seemed to me like a good space to take time and find an answer. It definitely took time. But what I didn't know, what you guys all suspected, was that Dominiere is a trap. You got nabbed by the Genera, right?
"I. Yeah. How did you know?"
There's Fears here who had a lot to say to me. Fears who aren't really interested in killing me, or you, or any of us.
"You.. work with the Fears?"
I know. Donnie and I already got a little strained because of this.
"I'll bet you did. You know what they do, right?"
I do. And it's because I know how dangerous they are that, when there's no way around them but through, I'm willing to talk it out.
"Do you.. make deals? Do they ask you to give up innocent people?"
No, jesus, they're not the mafia, they're not a drug cartel. They're.. they're gods. Each one has his own motivations. And some of them think this red sky is a bigger threat than humans like you and me.
"..alright, well. So there's Fears here, in Dominiere. They tell you about the Genera?"
A woman in a mirror did. And the Musicians did too, in their own way. I don't know enough about the woman in the mirror, and I guess I don't really know enough about the Musicians either, but I've at least had enough run-ins with them to recognize that they refuse to do me any physical harm. They were asked by the Archangel to stop me, I think, and they aren't doing that.
"So they're against Archie."
Huh, you call him that too. Yeah, I mean, I know they're definitely not always aligned with him. Archie's kind of a prick.
"He's.. I guess he was my first Fear. He made a fucking impression."
I think our first Fear always does. We're probably not meant to survive long enough to meet more than one, but these are.. definitely circumstances.
"So the Musicians told you about the Genera. You had a talk with them here."
God, it was trippy. It was like a dream that lasted multiple days. ...actually, twice, but I'm still getting to that. The first dream was the Musicians talking to me directly, seeing what I'm made of, arguing with each other, and.. offering to help. And then, when I woke up from that one, Bones was gone.
..bones nodded. he's been listening.
So that'll have been when he was grabbed by the Genera too. And I had a conversation then with the woman in the mirror, and she told me about the Genera, told me in plain terms. Didn't tell me you guys were kidnapped, but instead she made it clear that we should be looking into them. That's what sent Donnie off in search of the trucks, and... hoo, okay, this is where things started happening.
now bones has approached, to listen closer, next to danny.
I was supposed to go with Donnie. But Fentzy was still in her hotel room, she was getting sick, and I recognized that sick, I had been similarly sick when we arrived in Dominiere. So I came back to get her, said I'd meet up with Donnie later.
Did Fentzy.. tell you the state she was in? When I found her?
bones "Just that she was sick."
Dominiere was eating her alive. Tubes coming out of the walls, sucking fluids out of her and pumping strange new fluids in.
It had been doing that to me too whenever I slept. And to Donnie. And to you, Bones.
"..what."
Danny, you're safe because you never slept here.
danny "Man, that's.. I don't care about that, my friends were going through it!"
So. I took my sword and I cut Fentzy free, I got her up, I sent her out. I thought I went with her, but, see, I didn't. Dominiere knocked me out, replaced her with me. Was feeding on me. And the Musicians helped me out by giving me dreams of what you guys were up to, as well as a little.. more information.
I dreamt of you guys in the Genera, in a warehouse owned by the Genera. Kept in a cage, right? Both of you in one cage?
...little nods. keep talking. okay.
The woman keeping you there is named Lilith. And you never met her, did you?
bones "I saw her briefly when I first got there, but she blindfolded me."
danny "Same, blindfolded."
The Musicians made a point of having me dream of all of us breaking you out, then having a long talk with Lilith. And Lilith told me the truth about Dominiere.
It's a baby Fear. A baby.. uh.. Empty City. The Genera calls it an "underscore." It needs people to live in it to keep it going. And these people here, they're not real either. The real ones are being kept in pods in trucks.
....the looks on their faces confirm it. I really did dream the truth.
Those real people, they're zombies. Archie's zombies. Archie made a deal with the Genera to provide fodder for Dominiere, and... god, what was it, it was Indisen somehow. The people here, in town, are Indisen of Archie's zombies. Fed to Dominiere to act as its perfectly happy self-sustaining community, to sleep with the tubes eating them alive, to give life to these buildings until Dominiere can mature and break off and become its own.. floating.. city. Floating in the nether, the void. However it works. I wasn't told everything.
bones "This is an Empty City? This is how one begins?"
Yeah, in my dream you seemed to know about the City too, you have experience with it?
"I told you before that I spent a lot of time in the Doors, right?"
Pretty sure I didn't just dream that part, yeah.
"Some of the Doors in Xanadu took me to a city, more so earlier on. A living city, with a consciousness in the walls. I didn't like to spend much time there, I kinda got creeped out, but in hindsight I feel like I probably could have.. tried talking with it. It didn't feel like it was threatening me. It felt more like it was dying."
A consciousness? What do you mean? How could you tell it was dying?
"There was.. oh man, I don't know if I'm ready to tell that one yet. A voice leading me through a maze. I never met the person the voice belonged to, but I got the impression I never would, that the voice wasn't actually a person."
danny "God, first Jordan admits he talks to Fears, now you too?"
"Well, hang on, is the Empty City a Fear?"
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.
"...well, shit. I guess I did, then."
Oh yeah, and, Bones. You and I talked about the Knights of Xanadu already, right?
"Before we got to Dominiere, yeah. Around the same time we all agreed our goal was to head east, and that's what I told the, uh, the purple faces, that led us here to begin with."
God, then that makes sense. I, uh, dreamed of that whole conversation happening again. Not important.
danny "You guys talked about it because you'd just done a whole obviously weird fuckin' guitar duel. And obviously you'd want to talk about it afterwards, and what it means."
Yeah, I realize that now, look, a lot has happened this week!
"YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN, BITCH"
fentzy clapped me on the back!!

1:44 AM
We are on the way out of town now, walking back to where they'd parked their car.
I had to tell the whole story again for Donnie and Fentzy, but Danny told parts of it himself. Fentzy did not like hearing about the tubes, and Donnie got really worried about me, and I had the damndest sense of deja vu through the whole thing.
Plus now I get to worry about if maybe I'm still dreaming. Maybe I fell back asleep, maybe I shouldn't have played Paper Mario.

2:00 AM
Maybe he shouldn't, maybe he should,
Maybe a baby City knows his bubble's more trouble than he's worth.
As they walk their way towards the wood,
They face no opposition, only double-vision as we see them off.
Good luck on your journey, good luck heading east!
May the music you make together take form!
Good luck with the Harlot, good luck with the Beast!
Each day's hotter than the last... here where the blood is warm.

2:04 AM
There they are, standing dramatically on a rooftop, side by side in their coats and hats, flickering and simmering like in a heatwave.
I waved at them, and they're gone.
...fentzy asked who I was waving to. "are we being followed? are we in danger?"
don't worry about it. I think we're good. I think Dominiere's letting us go, this time.
"Yeah, 'cause together we can't be stopped."
:)
"Now c'mon, come walk up front with me. We've got stuff to talk about."

2:05 AM
the other three are engaged in a timeless discussion of "Which would you rather?" I think Donnie's comparing a million Rapture Ducks to one particularly large Rapture Duck.
up front, idly leading their footfall, is she.
Hi Fentzy.
"Hi, Jordan. You're with us now. You're not.. overwhelmed. Right?"
Honestly, I'm so glad to see all of you. You guys just caught me at a bad time, that's all. I'm good now.
"You don't have to explain that to me. I know what it's like. And I know you. I know what you've been through. Before all this, even."
Yeah. .w. And I know what you've been through.
"I just want to know that you're alright. If I'd have known you were coming to America in the first place, I would have stayed near home, I would have found a way."
You would have, I know, it's okay. We met up regardless. c:
"You, me, and Danny. It's kinda awesome. Now we just need to find Anna, Lizzy, and Zonic, and we'll have everyone, all our chao circle."
What about.. Autumn? And celebi, and Rick--
"No Rick, thanks."
Right, of course. Just, I guess I sorta owe that guy by now. He was the one who invited me onto AIM in the first place. Just by bringing me into that group chat, he.. changed my life. Kept me buoyant throughout a really bad time. Really bad time.
"Yeah. But that's just an incidental thing. We kept you buoyant. He himself is an asshole."
Fair.
....I did, uh, find Anna.
"You did? Seriously? I was kinda just joking, the odds were already dumb. But you didn't bring her with you?"
I couldn't.
"You mean she didn't want to come?"
I mean. ._.
"...for real?" sad voice.
I found her too late. I'm still kinda.. I still feel guilty.
"You don't have to.. talk about it. I promise. God, that sucks. That really pisses me off."
It all sucks. The world is on fire.
"Yeah, but she meant a lot to us. The world is, what does the world matter? When compared to our friends."
>_<
"Well. That just makes me want to stick closer with who I have. I'm not gonna let the same happen to you."
hand on shoulder.

2:06 AM
"..so, Donnie, huh?"
Yeah. .w.
"Got you a nice British girl."
Yeah!!! .w.
"Is she.. right for you? Is she dominant? ;)"
Um!!!! >w<
"She is cute. I'm kinda jealous. I mean, envious. Wish I had her."
Well!!! I don't know how this works. Maybe if you asked?
"Whoa, I'm only joking! You deserve her, and she deserves you."
Well.. thanks. :)
..you and her have spoken a bit, right?
"We have. Yeah. I like her."
She told me that she, uh, told you.. that I had a crush on you.
"You.. don't need to bring that up. It's okay."
You sure? o:
"Yeah. You and I are best friends. We've, y'know, talked about things that only the best of friends can. No need to put a word to it."
...you... you sure? o_o
"Donnie might just be a little.. confused about our friendship. That's all."
...I think I'm starting to get confused here too.
"I won't let anything happen to you, or to Donnie. But I also am not going to give you up. Like.. ha! Like that song. Never going to.. give you up."
oh christ. yeah. that.
"Yeah. So, we're friends. You, me, and Donnie. Okay?"
Okay. c:
"And I'll help you deal with the Fears. And you'll help me save my sister. Deal?"
Oh! Your sister! o: Are you.. ready to talk about that?
"Yes. I just am not ready to talk about it with people who might, like... think she's a lost cause. Because she's not. She's still around. She's so strong, she can handle it. She's just.. she's.. she's with the Beast right now."
Oh…
"Do you know about him?"
Some? He's the original slender man. And he's trapped in the deepest darkness of Xanadu.
"So that's where she is. So, you and me, you know what we have to do."
I.. think I see, yeah.
"We're headed east, we're following the rabbit holes anyway. We want to find one that takes us into darkness. But we want to be prepared. Ready for a fight. And we want to go down there and find the Beast, and make him give us my sister back."
Sure, but, Fentzy... I mean, are you sure about this plan? Donnie and I have already been to the world where the Beast is being kept, I mean I think. It's.. a bit of a big deal, to go down there all the way... and what if we just make a huge enemy?
"Well, then we just have to keep planning. That's what's good about being together, you can tell me these important things."
So we don't have to do it right away. o: Okay. We can talk this through, figure it out.

2:10 AM
Car park. Parking lot. Canada, right. So. Car park. I think.
The five of us are squeezing in that thing? That little tiny silver car?
Fentzy wants to drive. And she wants me in the passenger seat. I won't be sleeping any time soon, so, I can do that.
Back in a car again. Finally leaving Dominiere. Finally up and going, me and my friends.
Splendor sine occasu, motherfucker!

2:17 AM
already hit the woods.
the town is behind us.
am I awake? rest my head, close my eyes, feel my body, try to see if I can feel anything draining.
... u_u

2:19 AM
donnie's passing around bottles of water. she's got some squash to go with it, picked it up from a gas station they passed on the way here.
blackcurrent. not bad. knock-off ribena.
she's looking at me with a bright smile. she's so glad to see me.
I.. yeah. >w<
yeah.
kinda wish it was still just me and her.
because I don't know how this is going to go.
but. I can't worry about that right now.
instead, right now, I think I've gotta say. to everyone.

2:20 AM
Hey, uh. Thank you, all of you, for coming back for me. I know I wasn't there for you this last week. I know I've been in my head, talking to the villains, but. You guys still came back for me.
I want to apologize for not being more present.
Each one of you matters to me.
Danny, holy shit dude. In some ways you understand me more than anyone else. You get what's important. Your trust doesn't come easily, and that's gonna be a huge asset. And, at the end of the day, you're one of my chao friends.
Derek. Been wanting to hang out with you again for an entire year now, wanting nothing more than that. We're band buddies. We're Rock Band buddies. We're everything. Want to wander the Earth with you, and that's what we're gonna get to do. And you brought our groups together. You friend magnet.
Rauri. I got you into Dream Theater. Hell, is there anyone in this car right now who I didn't get into Dream Theater? Danny. Well, Danny, it's a matter of "when." But, okay, Rauri, you're a goddamn gamer. What do you want me to say. It's unreal to get to see you.
And Donnie... you and me are zig-zagging everywhere as it is. No Fear has managed to tear us apart. No asshole with a gun has taken you away from me. My gratitude to you is.. bigger than the Earth.
All of you, I'm gonna make things right. I've got your backs. I..
danny "yo, man, it's all good. you know you didn't even need to apologize, yeah? not for nothing."
I.. yeah. Okay. I guess not. But someone told me I probably should have. And if there's anything that you've gotta know about me…
fentzy "there's a million things to know about you."
..it's that I make my words good, and I make good on my word.

(Attached: "We travelled, then, for 13 hours by car, having an uneventful if peaceful day, each making conversation with the other. Danny and I spoke about anime, mostly. I know you were just dying to hear that.
After Jordan's heartfelt little speech, which came out of left field for us but makes.. somewhat more sense when actually reading his journals, I interjected to inform him that I had failed to make good on my own word. It wasn't anything serious, and it was no promise I had made to him specifically, but I had promised myself that, when we arrived back in Dominiere and busted into his hotel, fighting off tons of Indisen goons guarding the sleeping prize, I would have kicked his door down myself, stared those draining tentacles right in the eye, put on my sunglasses, and said,
---Can Jordan come out to play?
Of course when we got there, he was already awake and waiting for us, and the town gave him up like a bad piece of cheese.
What a fucking disappointment.
But for once this is not all I have to say.
I have two things, reader.
First-the-most:
After those 13 hours, when time zones had taken us an hour further still, we stopped in a place called Lethbridge. Made me think of memory loss, made me wonder why Dominiere hadn't been called that. Jordan picked up his journal here and wrote something.")

4:32 PM
Long drive. The others can sleep, but I'm gonna stretch my legs.
Where the hell is this, where did we park? Looks like a fucking casino.

4:33 PM
I hear gunshots in the distance. Might be a backfiring car, or something else electric out there. Either way it's people.
Think we're safe right now. But if we have to move, we have to move.
I'm having more of that squash. Kinda like this stuff. Anything's good when you have to drink it.

4:34 PM
Yeah.
Yeah, I kinda like being on my own.
I always had trouble sleeping, for as long as I can remember. I have early memories of being a little kid, in a crib, just staring at the ceiling, calling for mum or dad late in the night, until they just don't want to come anymore.
Then getting older, and just.. being awake at night, in the darkness, having a moment away from my brothers, a moment undisturbed, a moment to give the social shit a rest and just.. think to myself.
And when I finally had a bedroom to myself, a TV to myself, a computer to myself, even on a school night I'd still be awake late at night, because I had.. time.
Time to myself. Time to think things through. Time to form opinions, time to decide.
It got to the point where, when a day with family got bad, I didn't need much convincing to just stay in my room.
Not like staying in the bathroom. Hiding in the bathroom has much worse memories. Hiding in the bathroom is just temporary, knowing I still have to leave and face that knife again, face those fists again, face...
Bedroom is permanent. Solitude, permanent.
I did.. want friends. Of course I did.
But that solitude conditioning buries itself deep. And my school experiences had been lonely for way too long, so my life had just been one long oscillation between different types of solitude.
Because I was..
wait

4:37 PM
Who's there?
Who's that, I can see your shadow.
Listen, I want no trouble.
..around the corner, a head peeking out. Wide eyes scanning me. Someone with blue hair.
..it might be, it might not. got my sword ready.
...they went around the corner again.
sticking a hand out. waving, to come.
o_o

4:38 PM
This isn't, like. Any more discreet a place than the car park where we just were. This is out on the street.
"I am not trying to hide you from the world; I am trying to hide myself from your friends."
Well. They're asleep.
"And we are going to speak aloud."
I feel like they'd probably prefer it if we made our little talks open with them, actually.
"We can do that later. You are here now. Unless you do not want to speak to me? Do you want to speak to me?"
Oh, of course I do, Salmacis. :)
"Am I still your favorite Fear?"
By far.
"Excellent." said with the same blank face, same blank tone. "May I read your journals?"

4:51 PM
"You have seen many things since we last spoke. Yet you are still standing, and you have increased your number."
Yes! Yes, we're.. I mean, I don't actually know if we're making much progress?
"How would you define 'progress' in this case?"
Doing some damage to Rapture? o:
"Hm. No, perhaps not. But you have won the support of the Musicians, and you continue to survive."
Yeah. And I made it out of Dominiere!
"Yes. The.. underscore."
Yeah!!! ..I did make it out, right? Do you know if I'm asleep right now?
"You seem awake to me."
Wait. You prey on underscores, don't you.
"Maybe."
That's a.. frighteningly coy answer.
"You were having a soliloquy about experiences before I approached you. I have much more experience being frightening than I do being sweet. I can relate to your familiarity with solitude because of this."
I.. huh. Y'know, I guess I'm even kinda used to that too. Like, what I was gonna say, I was starting to talk about school. And, like, people weren't afraid of me... wait, no, I guess they kinda were, because of the anger problems. I don't really think about that? Because I didn't.. like getting angry, it's not like I was trying to be a bully, and I usually just got angry at the adults, not the other kids…
"Does that have something to do with your experience in police custody?"
Yes. No. Kind of. There were a few of those, and the time I got thrown in a police car was because I literally did break the law, I trespassed on school property after dark. I was just taking a late-night walk and thought it'd be a cool place to be, but, uh, then I was stupid and came back later in the same night. I was with someone else, but I'm not gonna rat them out. Anyway that's not important.
I don't even really want to talk about the anger problems. It had more to do with problems at home that affected me throughout the schoolday. But, I mean, that did make people wary around me, and it made it even harder to make friends.
But, goddammit, it was going to be an uphill struggle even without that.
Because I was the stinky kid.
"Oh."
Could you tell?
"No. I just was not expecting the anticlimax."
You. You couldn't tell? o_o
"No, Rael. I suppose you do not smell like my expectation of a more socially-adapted human, but it is the middle of summer, and humanity as a whole has given up showering for months."
Damn.
"So you are saying you are used to solitude because you did not practice adequate hygiene, resulting in alienation from your peers."
I didn't know adequate hygiene! Or, man, maybe I did, but I never showered all that much, even as a little kid. I guess I got away with it. But then my clothes were dirty even when I did shower.
"Was your family insistent on the children washing their own clothes?"
God, no. My parents were just dysfunctional. They assumed we were just okay, a lot of the time. They assumed we showered. They assumed we just had clean clothes somewhere. They assumed we were fed.
Usually it was mum's job. And that's a lot to put on one person. We learned quick that it was best not to tell dad if mum was failing, because dad got really angry at her, and it was a far bigger duty of ours that we just not make dad angry, especially not at mum.
"I.. see."
So, like. I just had to take the hit. I had to go to school stinky, and just keep my distance from people and hope they wouldn't notice. But they did. And, at school, it was my fault.
So. So.
Solitude!
End result was, I felt better when I was on my own. I felt something like peace.
And that's what I'm used to, because that was the.. status quo, for a very very long time.
"Yes. But you have peers with you now, and you are struggling with anxiety."
I am. I'm afraid this isn't going to last long. That they'll leave me, or that I'll make them leave me by.. turning out to be really bad?

4:54 PM
thank you for the hug.
"I am still learning how to respond. You need something like a therapist."
yeah. ._.;;
"I wonder if it is relevant that Victoria has not left you in all this time. You have not 'turned out to be' really bad from her perspective."
Victoria. Donnie, right. Yeah. That's.. that is something. But it's also just been me and her, a one-on-one thing. That's more manageable.
"Regardless, it answers your anxiety. It is not, in fact, a mystery if you will become really bad, not from first principles. As long as you stay true to this... Rael that you have been, you will not become something with drastic new morals."
this Rael that I have been…
and that's. that's a good person. right?
"I don't…"
from your perspective, as an outside observer, a being of knowledge. to the best of your abilities, and you have so many.
speaking to you as a human to his god...
Salmacis, have I been a good person?

(Attached: "Now that Salmacis knew about another underscore, it sent a squad of Camper, with blunt weapons and claws, to tear the place apart.
First it took the Indisen, taping their mouths shut and carrying them limb-by-limb to a private location to find out how they tick. Knowing full well by now that none of them can become Camper, Salmacis elected to 'question' them the old-fashioned way: by moving their organs outside of their bodies and asking them questions in that state. Drugs can keep a body alive, awake, alert. Drugs can anaesthetize, and drugs can heighten feeling too.
It learned a lot from those Indisen. This wasn't her first underscore, so it knew better questions to ask. Maybe you'll find some of those answers later.
Second it brought hammers and shovels to Dominiere and took it brick-by-brick, ripping up the floorboards, smashing the windows to boost her reserves of broken glass, taking rusty nails, taking splintered 2x4s…
All to get into the walls, and get under the streets, get at the network of pipes and snakelike suction tubes, get at the fluids they carried.
And Salmacis absolutely did. Dominiere died, drained of blood, feeling its organs empty, calling out with its groaning architecture-- listen to those floorboards squeak, hear those pipes settle-- crying for its lost citizens to come and defend it, wondering where its mother City was, completely ignorant to the fact that it, Dominiere, was now going to a similar place to where its mother lay: in a bigger god's stomach.
EAT ate well that day.
It did think it strange that the blacksmith's armoury had no weapons in it. These Indisen did not have the means to fight back against an organized enemy. They simply did not expect Jordan to have an ally like this. They honestly believed that letting him go would cause less trouble.")