Katalepsis IV: the Other Side of Nowhere (part 3)

Zheng's arm is fully reattached now, and with her robes all torn up Heather can now see that her body is covered in an intricate network of tattoos. Losing her arm appears to have damaged the body-wide glyphs, but it's back in place now. Looks like the head-banging scene really was her fighting for control against Alexander's attempts to reassert himself, and that Alexander was ultimately successful. Pity.

Lozzie tries to get through to Zheng, without success. She does, however, succeed at convincing Heather to not hit Zheng with another force blast. Lozzie continues to insist that Zheng is very nice when Alexander isn't "making her do things," and that factors into Heather's decisionmaking. However, two other factors are more dominant within it. Namely, that 1) the longer she waits before doing another hypermath trick, the more she'll have recovered and thus be more likely to pull it off successfully without killing herself, and 2) it seems like Zheng is going to bring them to Alexander, and you always save your cooldown abilities for the dungeon boss if you can help it.

I'm a little impressed with Heather's thinking here, I won't lie. She's still hopeless at information control, but when it comes to broader tactical thinking it seems like Raine is rubbing off on her. Heather's starting to see herself as a potential agent for change in her surroundings, and proactively making plans for how to make it happen. Even when she's been spurred into action in previous chapters, it was generally a matter of her being spurred into action. Reacting to things in the moment, or making impulsive decisions to try something when faced witth an unexpected problem. She's never been calculating like this before, that I can recall. It's very good progress in her recovery from learned helplessness.

Also, Lozzie explains that Zheng is actually a very old construct. She's been passed down for generations (through the Lilburne family or through the Brotherhood leadership, she doesn't specify. Are those two things one and the same? They might be, but they also might not be), and no one is entirely sure who actually bound that entity to that corpse or when anymore. Interesting. She's definitely not the same creature that they're using to animate the mook zombies, in that case. Anyway!

...

Also, just since it bears mentioning, Lozzie in person is a delight. Like, when Heather tells her about the rest of the party who are hopefully still around here somewhere, and mentions Twil:

Lozzie blinked at me. "Werewolves are real?"

"I know. Stupid, isn't it?"

"Are you kidding? That's so cool, I love it!"

Or, when Heather asks her about that creepy goat skull helmet she was wearing during the nightgaunt theft:

"Um, well, why the goat-skull mask? What was that all about? When I first saw you, I mean."

"It's a skull!" Lozzie giggled. "It looked super cool. Plus nobody can tell where I'm looking when I have it on. I like masks."

Honestly? Best answer she could have given. I respect that. Wish Evelyn would be as honest about that stupid legbone.

So yeah, the author does a good job of getting you invested in Lozzie as more than just a generic damsel, in admirably little time and without being intrusive about it.

...

Zheng brings Heather and Lozzie up to a tower room that has windows, tables, laptops with charging stations, etc. Wonder where they're charging those stations from? Some kind of photovoltaic system that uses whatever the source of light in this realm is? Something that leeches energy out of the organism underfoot? Zombies in hamster wheels? Actually, zombies in hamster wheels would unironically be a reasonable solution, given how zombies appear to work in this story. There's also a bunch of glyphs scrawled on one wall in a doorway-shape, similar to the attack portal that he mind controlled Heather into completing for Evelyn.

And here, along with a couple of his remaining henchmen, is Alexander. They've got a medkit open, and are busy digging Raine's bullet out of Alexander's lung. Alexander reacts in pain to them digging around in his chest, but it's a very muted, very understated pain, more along the lines of a scraped knee than exploratory surgery. And, well...he's himself.

"Ahhhhhh, Lavinia, there you are," said Alexander Lilburne.

A sigh, deep and satisfied, made my skin crawl.

Why does he love her middle name so much? Did he date a Lavinia in college or something?

...nah, doubt that's it. No one would date Alexander Lilburne.

Case in point:

"Bullets won't kill you, will they?" I repeated.

Alexander's trio of cultist underlings found this rather amusing. They laughed silently, shook their heads, and shared sidelong glances. Alexander went through a laborious comedic performance, looking down at himself and acting surprised at the gaping fist-sized rent in his chest.

"Oh, this?" He laughed, a horrible blubbery baby-laugh. "No, no, far from it, indeed. Don't you worry about my health, Lavinia. I will still be up and walking around when the bones of all these fine fellows here have fallen to dust."

The wiry cultist and Lucas both looked uncomfortable at that, but the stocky one tending to Alexander's exit wound merely rolled his eyes, as if he'd heard that one a hundred times before.

This fucking guy.

I was starting to seriously wonder at this point how the hell Alex is even able to maintain control of a cult, when he's this uncharismatic and this bad at choosing his words where his underlings can hear. The answer, it turns out, will be coming by the end of this arc. And, heh, it's probably exactly what you would have guessed.

Heather tries to fence him with verbal barbs to buy time. She figures that if her companions were defeated, then they would probably be in his room (either alive or in the process of being zombified). So, stalling and hoping that they'll make it up here is her best strategy for now. She reasons that she should theoretically be able to kill Alexander and all the henchmen around him with a hypermath blast, but she doesn't know that for sure. As previously noted, defensive magic is the one thing that Alexander is demonstrably very skilled at.

But also, regardless of whether or not Heather can hit hard enough to get through Alex's shields or whatever, can she bring herself to do it? Premeditatedly inflict severe - possibly lethal - injuries on other human beings? Even ones as monstrously evil as the guys hunting homeless people for spare parts and doing Dr. Mengele experiments on orphans? Even ones who are presenting a clear and present threat to Heather and her loved ones? Even blasting the arm off of an unkillable nonhuman in immediate self defence was hard for Heather. Is she up for this?

Will she even have to be? Well, it would sort of be disappointing if she wasn't forced to test herself here and she ended up just getting rescued, at this point. Fortunately, that's not what happens.

"First off," he carried on. "I think some congratulations are in order. Well done, Zheng." Alexander reached over to the table and picked up a small metal cylinder covered with occult runes. A stopper of black wax at the top showed a hole in the middle. He waggled it in her general direction, an amused smile playing across his lips. "I'll just get rid of this, shall I? We won't be needing it, will we? Or perhaps … I'll hold on to it for now. We'll see what happens next."

If Zheng felt anything, she didn't show it. The zombie stared at a point on the far wall. Every now and again, Lozzie twitched or struggled in her grip, eyes glazed over, her breathing hard and ragged.

"Now, sister?" Alexander clicked his fingers twice. "Pay attention now. Lauren," he snapped, and Lozzie's head whipped up as if slapped. She blinked and panted, staring at her brother. He sighed, shook his head, and gave her one of those sickly-warm smiles that turned my stomach. "I am very unimpressed with you. I'm sure you know that already, as I am certain you anticipate punishment. You do deserve punishment, for bringing these people here. You know that too, I hope?" Lozzie's teeth chattered. She tried to shrink back, but Zheng held her fast. "Now, Zheng, if you would bring her here, I—"

Lozzie has been kinda just standing there silently in Zheng's grasp until now. I get the impression she doesn't like being called "Lauren."

...granted, assuming the trans flag isn't just because she liked the colors, I'm surprised that he's bothering to pick a fight with her over her nickname, but he's NOT deadnaming her. Wonder what the story there is, assuming she actually is trans?

Well, anyway. Once again, we see that his whole operation works with him threatening people into threatening people into threatening other people. Really surprised he's managed to last this long, especially with how indelicate he seems to be about this stuff.

And, oh man, speaking of indelicate:

"I'm going to kill you," I blurted out.

I didn't just want to hurt him, I wanted him to know I wanted to hurt him. I told myself I wanted to.

Alexander glanced at me, blinking several times in mock surprise.

"Why isn't she restrained?" the wiry copper-haired cultist asked. "I thought this one was meant to be dangerous?"

"Not here, she ain't," the big one grunted. "Can't do zip, can you, dear?"

"Try it," I squeaked.

Alexander raised his hands, wagging a finger. "Ah-ah-ah-ah. As we have already discovered, Lavinia does not respond well to physical encouragement. In fact, it gives her the courage to defend herself. Isn't that right, Lavinia?"

"Stop calling me that."

"You can't kill me," he said, raising a finger. "In here you can't send me—or anyone—to the beyond, the other side, Outside, whatever you have chosen to call it. You are powerless, exactly as you would be in the real world against somebody of my place and standing and wealth. You must learn to listen, Lavinia, to negotiate, even from a position of weakness. Threats will get you nowhere."

They didn't know.

Lozzie hadn't known I could do anything with brain-math except teleporting, dimension-hopping, Slipping. They must have remembered I could turn away a bullet, but I had a wrecking ball in my mind and they didn't know.

Was that an advantage? I had no idea what to do with this secret. I needed to use it, somehow.

Alexander must have taken my quiet hesitation as acquiescence.

If this were anyone besides Alexander, I'd be sure that he was trying to bait Heather into revealing more of her powers, or giving her a false sense of security, or something. But nope. He actually just gave Heather a gigantic freebie by telling her up front that he doesn't know about her other abilities that do work in this dimension. No trick or ploy here, just a hilarious unforced error.

One thing I'll criticise the story rather than the character for, though, is the "you'd be helpless against a man of my social position without magic too" line. That doesn't sound like something he'd actually say. Feels like the author reaching into the story and banging us over the head with an already very, very obvious piece of social commentary.

...then again, he apparently doesn't have a million pounds to bribe Heather with. So maybe he's not actually an example of the untouchable elite after all. :/

Alexander takes a second to emotionally abuse Lozzie for a minute, before going back to being a work of comedy gold in Heather's direction.

"Now, now," Alexander said to her. "There was no need for any of your earlier behaviour, was there? No need for all that tantrum and nastiness. You're such a sweet girl when you simply relax and allow yourself to be." He reached out and cupped her bruised cheek—the bruise he'd put on her. His bloody hand left a crimson smear on her skin. Lozzie shivered, her eyes downcast. I'd never felt such indignant disgust. "I know what you really want, what you really crave, and I will give it to you. You will have as many playmates as you desire—in time. Now, sit at my side. No, not on the blood, no need to get messy. Just there, there we go."

Lozzie folded herself cross-legged on the floor by his side, hunched over with arms folded to protect her belly, eyes lowered in shadow.

In the last moment as she sat down, in the split second that Alexander's eyes left her and began to move back to me, Lozzie's hand darted out and palmed something glinting and sharp out of the open first aid kit on the table. She slid it up her sleeve.

I froze inside and out, expecting one of the trio of cultists to raise a warning, or tackle her, or for Alexander himself to notice what she'd done.

None did. They'd been looking away, embarrassed by the exchange of false affection. I'd seen, and Zheng must have too, but the zombie didn't react. Relief flooded my heart.

We were still on.

His own men are literally too busy cringing at him to notice what the good guys are doing. Absolutely incredible.

Equal parts disgust and hope fought in my chest—the ingredients for pretend courage. I forced my trembling fingers to pull out the brain-math notebook from my hoodie's front pocket. I felt the glow stick in there too, but what use could that be?

"Ahh? What is this?" Alexander asked. "Are you going to take minutes on our meeting?" He reached down and stroked Lozzie's hair without taking his eyes from me, leaving another bloody streak on her.

"This is what I'm going to use to kill you," I said, and forced my chin up. Defiant, confident, unafraid. I was none of those things, but I pretended.

He sighed. "And I suppose that's how you managed to do serious damage to Zheng? You hit her with a book?"

"Yes, I hit her with a book." Completely straight-faced.

Alexander's amusement dimmed. "You understand it is very important to me that I learn how you and your associates managed to inflict real damage to a mature revenant. I assume the same method was used to kill the two men I sent with her? You can answer me now or I can find out in other ways, but I will know, all in good time. I will know everything, all details, relevant or otherwise. Nothing can hide from me, not for long."

Even more unforced errors here. Showing his entire hand, complete with blind spots, with zero provocation.

Alexander is unironically worse at information control than Heather.

"I did it," I said, flush for one wonderful moment with power over this man.

Very quickly, I wished I hadn't spoken. Alexander stared for a moment—then a shrewd fascination lit up his features, staring at me with something akin to awe. I felt a terrible shiver.

"You are telling the truth," he breathed. "Tell me."

I swallowed and tried to hold on to that moment of confidence. "I can kill everyone in this room with a thought." A bluff? I didn't know. As I glanced at the other three cultists, they certainly seemed to share their master's belief, faces clouded with concern. "That's how I hurt your zombie."

"Then do it, please, show me." Alexander leaned forward, dripping gore from his chest wound, deep desire written on his face. "Show me! I have waited so long for my sister to show the slightest ability of true control, of manipulation, of understanding. Show me!" I just stared.

Last time, it was "I'll give you whatever you want." "I want X." "Okay, but what do you REALLY want?" "I want Y." "Okay, but what do you REALLY want?"

This time, it's "How did you do it?" "I did it with X." "Okay, but how did you REALLY do it?"

Why does this guy even bother asking questions lmao.

" … no? Lavinia, I know you are not lying, but … ahhh." He frowned. "I see. You can't do it."

"I can."

"No." He raised a finger. "You can, that is the truth—but you can't. How odd. You do perplex me, Lavinia."

"Good."

"You tell impossible truths, at least ones that you yourself believe, and then, lo and behold, I discover that some of them are rooted in fact." Alexander raised his chin, that shrewd, questioning exterior crust over a barely concealed ocean of self-assurance.

Oh my god he's actually going to try to...no, no, not even he could be that high on his own supply...

"Is this conversation going how you imagined it would?" I managed to say. "Why do this whole megalomania act? Because you get off on it? Does it make you feel big and powerful? Why not just take what you want from me?"

He didn't take my bait—it was weak, I was scrambling for time, playing catch-up; hoping my friends would turn up, that Raine would rescue me. The longer this went on, that clean, clear impulse felt further and further away. I had a plan, I just couldn't do it, not without the protection of that soul-numbness I'd felt earlier. Not without the need for self-defence. I wasn't Raine.

"You see," he continued. "It is entirely my fault we are at these unfortunate loggerheads with each other. I misunderstood you. Your desires, your drives—your personal history. If I had known, I would have taken a very different approach to you, Lavinia. And now that I know you have gained some measure of real control, well, I would have told you what we are doing here, the importance of our work, what it means."

Alexander: "If only I'd understood you this well from the beginning, I would have taken a completely different approach with you."
Heather: "Great! So, about those million pounds..."
Alexander: *nervous sweating*

Pity she didn't go there. Still, I'm at least proud of her for asking what the hell is up with this weird Bargain Bin Bond Villain performance he's always struggling to put on. She didn't phrase it sharply enough to actually get it under his skin, but baby steps.

"You mean the importance of dead children in cages?" I asked, and finally felt clean anger again—that was better. "I saw your dirty secret down there."

"The ends justify the means, Lavinia. I'm sure you, of all people, will agree, once you understand those ends."

"I don't want to know what this place is for. I can guess."

"Ahh?" Alexander still seemed genuinely fascinated. "And what is your guess?"

"You've been forcing people to talk with that thing you have underground."

"Thing? Thing. A very precise word, Lavinia. That thing is a yoked god. Caught, drawn here by my—our—trap, twenty years ago now. To learn from it, to take all that Outside knowledge for our own. But I am getting ahead of myself."

Even he is afraid of getting called out for taking credit for trapping the leviathan. We already knew that it happened twenty years ago when he would have been a young child, but still, confirmation that it wasn't him and that he's sore about it not having been him. Just as he's sore about the leviathan empowering Lozzie rather than himself.

But this next part, oh my god...

"It's a scab," Lozzie muttered.

"Yes, yes," he said. "A favourite word of our little Lauren. More like an impact crater than a scab. All this, this place, this dimensional pocket, is like … misaimed camouflage. A wounded chameleon with misfiring neurons, trying to hide itself."

"I don't want to know," I repeated.

"It is important you understand. You see, I have done a little more research into you, Lavinia." A sickening smile crested his lips. A triumph, a trump card flourished from a rhetorical sleeve. He paused, savouring the moment.

I stared. Said nothing. Didn't give him the satisfaction. Considered spitting on the floor, but nineteen years of being a good girl sort of ruled that out, even here.

"You see," he said eventually, "I have asked relevant questions of those entities correctly placed to know. I assumed—ah, so wrongly, such arrogance on my part—that you were mentally ill, or misled, or had constructed an elaborate interior life that never really was. But then I discovered."

"Discovered what?" I hissed, to cover the pounding of my heart.

"You do have a twin sister. Or, did."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HE ACTUALLY IS TRYING THIS I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT! XD

Yeah, right, Alex. Right. You "discovered" the thing that Heather told you, to your face, in your last conversation with her.

Come on big boy, let's hear you volunteer some information about this subject that Heather didn't already give you. Just one detail. Any detail. Her name. The circumstances it happened in. The entity that did it. Anything.

Violation.

Maisie's place in my heart, my greatest source of strength, the one thing this horrible man hadn't known about me, hadn't torn bleeding from my past, now lay open for all to hear.

My head felt hot, tight, a pinching pain in the back of my mind.

The other three cultists, they knew as well now, they'd heard those words, and it meant nothing to them. The big man was too busy fussing over the exit wound in Alexander's back. Violation, my most secret thing casually exposed without so much as a fanfare.

"What was her name, Lavinia?" Alexander asked.

Anyway, this segues into the climax of arcs 3-4. Same scene, but with an ever-narrowing focus, even as it draws on more minor foreshadowed threads for the resolution. As much fun as Alexander is to dunk on, I'll go back to summary rather than quotation in the interest of making progress.

Alexander - carefully changing the subject before he ends up being forced to reveal that he's got literally nothing about Maisie - explains the Brotherhood of the New Sun's raison d'etat. He doesn't appear to be lying, here. I think he legitimately believes what he's telling her, even if that belief requires a great deal of cognitive dissonance on his part.

Heather losing her twin to an extradimensional force is just one of many examples of how helpless humans are in a cosmic environment that they can't even see, let alone understand. Aliens can prey on humanity at will, and it is statistically likely that one will someday cause human extinction, probably without warning. The New Suns believe that humanity must evolve itself into a state of being that will enable it to survive and spread throughout the realities. Their experiments are all meant to further the goal of magical transhumanism, and given the stakes there are very few sacrifices that aren't worth it.

Heather rightly points out that people like Alexander aren't any different from entities like the Eye, from the perspective of their victims. Alexander readily grants her that, but insists that the ends justify the means in this case. After all, with our entire species stuck on one planet in one 3D plane, an alien force could potentially subject every human being that exists to this sort of suffering and death, possibly without even meaning to. Isn't doing that to a few people now better than enabling it to happen to many more people later?

Furthermore, says Alexander, look at the normal state of affairs for human life. The actions of governments and corporations, causing more suffering and death than the New Suns ever could for such ignoble reasons as "national pride" or "line go up." If she's comfortable living in that social framework, why should she have such objections to living in this one?

...

Alexander does make a few decent points in his speech here. However, while they might be decent points, they still aren't quite good ones.

For instance, doesn't this reckless experimentation increase the chances of something dangerous being attracted to Earth? Like, luring this leviathan into this dimensional crash-landing. Did they know for a fact that doing this wouldn't bring others of its kind looking for it, and that they wouldn't hold all of humanity responsible for the trap? That its injuries wouldn't attract a feeding frenzy of interdimensional shark-analogues that would then spread into earthspace as well? That bringing down such a large, powerful creature wouldn't alert the civilization of paranoiacs three dimensions over that we could become a threat, and that they should therefore take action first?

Odds are, if humanity gets wiped out by an eldritch catastrophe, it will be activities like those of the New Sun that trigger it.

For another, trying to call out Heather's "hypocrisy" for accepting the cruelty and greed of the normal world working in its normal way is just vapid. She doesn't have the billionaires and the politicians in front of her right now. Even if she did, she wouldn't have any idea how to get rid of them without just leaving the conditions in place that would allow other people to take their place.

The Order of the New Sun is a small number of people, causing a distinct type of evil, and there'd be no blind idiot engines of sociology pushing others into their place if they were to vanish.

Most importantly of all though, the party line is undermined by the very messenger delivering it. If the Order of the New Sun is motivated by the desire to protect humanity, why are they letting this petty, self-serving, megalomaniacal little child-tyrant into a leadership position?

The answer, here, is that there's an unspoken "and" after their mission statement of "ensuring human survival." It's really "ensuring human survival and the supremacy of the Brotherhood of the New Sun."

Alexander claims (very dubiously, considering the type of experiments we know they're doing) to have subjected himself to as many dangerous experiments as he's inflicted on any unwilling test subject, that he's not a hypocrite about necessary sacrifice. The thing is, even if he really is telling the truth about this detail, the very fact that he HAS a choice in undergoing these experiments changes the entire nature of the act and his relationship with it. If he chooses to subject himself to these horrific experiments, then it will have been a noble act of self-sacrifice that he can feel proud of. It would be a sacrifice for the sake of his self-image as much as for the sake of humanity. If the experiment ended up killing him, he would get to be a martyr, his memory honored and his name worshipped by likeminded people for all time forward. The future he's working toward becomes no less hierarchical and self-serving for his superficial nobility.

And again, that's assuming he's actually as blase with his own life as he is with those of his captive test subjects or his nonwizard underlings. Something which I very, very much doubt. Hell, he said in as many words, earlier in this very chapter, that he expects to continue living long after the mook cultists surrounding him have died. Even interpreting that statement in the most charitable possible light, he's admitting that the gains of the Brotherhood's transhumanism research are not being shared outside of its leadership.

...

Heather's reply summarizes many of my above thoughts in five elegant words.

"The means determine the ends."

I know I've read that in some anarchist literature somewhere. Googling it gives me Alduous Huxley, so it's possible that whoever I got it from got it in turn from him. That said, it's pretty much the same logic as Marx's thing about the base and the superstructure, so I imagine quite a few philosophers might have independently come up with this wording. In any case, Raine making Heather read theory seems to be having some practical results.

And so too does Raine being a living example for Heather to live up to, when she follows that sentence with a hypermath reaction that crushes Alexander's body to a pulp.

Her Huxley(?) quote has a double meaning here. On one hand, the point that I made before; building an authoritarian, exploitative, human-immiserating organization will result in an authoritarian, exploitative, human-immiserating future no matter what your intentions might be. On the other hand, the point that Heather illustrates a second later; by operating the way that it does, the Brotherhood of the New Sun ensures that it will make enemies, and having enemies who want to kill you is generally anathema to the pursuit of one's goals. Alexander’s means antagonized all his neighbours, and the ends were them ganging up and rendering his sacrifices for naught.

Alex's crushed remains go flying over the battlements. Very, very doubtful that he was able to survive that, and even if he was I doubt he'll ever be the same again. Zheng...dives over the edge after him. We don't see her again for the rest of this arc.

The sounds of battle had already been getting closer during this conversation. Heather blacks out for a moment after using her literal brain-blast, and wakes up with a nasty bump from her head hitting the floor. However, she also wakes up being carried back to Earth by Raine, all the others still alive and with only minor injuries, Lozzie now with them. Bringing both Praem instances seems to have paid off; they're down a Praem, it presumably having been used as a meat shield (wood shield?) for the rest of the group. Mission successful.

Heather experienced much less backlash from imploding Alexander than she did from any previous use of her hypermath powers; at this point, she's actually more hurt by the fall than she is by the thing that made her faint in the first place. Talking it over with Evelyn, she determines that precision and control are the actual hard parts of her powers. Uncontrolled, undirected high energy output is actually the simplest trick from her end. Smashing buildings and throwing cars might be easier for her than deflecting bullets or plane shifting discrete objects.

Interesting. Her powerset actually lends itself more readily to violent applications than anything else; I wonder if this is by design, on the Eye's part, or just a coincidental quirk of the human brain's ability to process different bits of hypermath?

Once they're back in Sharrowford, some decisions have to be made. For one thing, Praem apparently has been dragging a captive New Sun cultist along with them. Evelyn wants to kill her, obviously. Twil isn't sure. Raine and Heather are both inclined to be merciful. Lozzie is apathetic, but does volunteer that this particular cultist wasn't directly involved in any atrocities as far as she knows. In the end, they decide to just let her go and hope for the best. A moral victory, but hopefully one that won't come back to bite them.

Twil has to go back to her clan and inform them of recent developments. Whether or not she'll patch things up with her mother and/or Hewrewdtdqgqeljgf, will remain to be seen. She may or may not have to come limping back again by tomorrow, depending on how she feels about her family all having brain symbionts and how they feel about her not liking that.

Lozzie, unfortunately, also will not be staying. Not because she has anyone to go back to. Quite the opposite. Whatever the leviathan did, it changed her composition to the point where her body can't survive in Earthspace for very long at a time. She's a creature of the interdimensional mists, now, and she needs to keep herself there to remain healthy. She will remain in contact with Heather, in their dreams. She might even figure out a way to say hi to the others eventually. She'll probably come to visit physically at some point in the future, but not too often, and not for too long at a time.

Alright. Looks like Lozzie's going to essentially be playing mission control in the subsequent adventures. The Cortana to Heather's Master Chief, hilariously unfitting of a comparison as that might be.

Before she steps away from them and vanishes under a swarm of lovingly caressing pneumo-somatic fauna, Lozzie does bestow some important pieces of information on the party.

First, Tenny is in fact an artificial construct. She claims to have created her "from spare parts," whatever that means. About what I figured, but good to have that confirmed. Anyway, Lozzie has little use for her in the void, so Heather is welcome to keep making use of her as long as she treats her well.

Second, Alexander was not the leader of the Brotherhood of the New Sun. Their uncle, Edward, is. The Sharrowford chapter of the cult is just one of several branches.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you all saw that one coming. I definitely did. Alexander isn't an unworthy heir struggling to keep things together, he's a nepo-baby still inside of his living uncle's organization. He looked like an embarrassing failson who's been granted a middle-management position out of sheer nepotism. He acted like an embarrassing failson who's been granted a middle-management position out of sheer nepotism. He was an embarrassing failson who's been granted a middle-management position out of sheer nepotism.

This recontextualizes his parallels with Evelyn and Twil a bit. He wasn't dealing with the legacy of his predecessor. He was still under the thumb of that predecessor.

Third, Uncle Edward is actually already known to some of them. He was the elderly man poking at the nightgaunt alongside his niece and nephew, back in the parking garage encounter. The good news is that he's unlikely to care that much about them killing Alexander, as he'd more or less resigned himself to Alex getting his dumb ass killed sooner rather than later. The bad news is that the Brotherhood of the New Sun's core leadership is unchanged, and it will be continuing its atrocities. Edward isn't someone they want to tangle with if they can avoid it; he is, after all, the wizard who lured the leviathan to its doom, and he has far more resources at his ready disposal in addition to being smarter and more magically powerful.

So, he's probably going to become a problem eventually. They can do their best to stay out of his way, but - even if he doesn't care about what they did to his nephew - considering that he's also the one who proactively yoinked Maisie's nightgaunt there's no guarantee that he won't try to steal the next interesting thing they get their hands on too. They need to grind like their lives depend on it, because Edward is a waaaay higher CR encounter.

Hmm. And he probably still has Zheng under his own control, come to think of it.

...

A few days pass. Everyone recovers. Heather decides to dedicate a bit of time to actually doing her schoolwork, even though she needs to get to grinding again soon. I still feel like she should quit school to focus on rescuing Maisie until Maisie has been rescued, but I've already made that opinion known. Then, Heather and Raine are approached while in the school library.

First she notices one of those creepy Baphomet statues sitting on a nearby bookshelf while she works on her essay. Then, Amy Stack the skinhead sniper shows up. Her arm is still fucked up, but that doesn't seem to have changed her attitude.

The meeting is tense, but somewhat productive. Amy is mostly here to make sure that there isn't an ongoing state of war between their little coven and the greater Brotherhood of the New Sun. She's told that they're not planning to pick a fight with Edward, but they absolutely don't want to be friends with him either, and that the Brotherhood had best avoid Sharrowford if they want to keep things from going hot again. Amy isn't thrilled to hear this, but she seems to have expected as much.

Additionally, they do a little bit of intelligence exchange. They truthfully tell Amy that they don't know where Lozzie went, just that she's left Earthspace again. In return, Amy tells them (probably truthfully?) that Zheng has not come back to them; Alexander's death seems to have allowed her to slip the noose long enough for Edward to loose her as well.

Amy and Raine do a bit of posturing at each other before the former finally leaves. Probably about as well as that meeting could have possibly gone.

...

The arc ends with winter break approaching. With Heather having recovered from all that brain-blasting and gotten her schoolwork more or less under control, they decide to go to Evelyn's family home (somewhere else in England, I think?) and try and use an old scrying device of her mother's. With Heather having now proven her dimensional navigation ability, there's a chance she might be able to use it to narrow down the Eye's home reality. That'll be our next story arc.


With this major arc closed, I think I have enough more to say about Katalepsis overall to merit its own analysis post. I'll be doing that later this week, and probably doing the monthly Fast Lane item after that.