"You won't go wrong thinking of it that way."

Wei Ying is SO CURIOUS but she WILL NOT ASK. 

"D'you wanna talk to Wen Ning before or after we talk to the Empress?"

"Before."

"Cool, don't kick me out next time I teleport into you," Rhonda says, and grabs Wei Ying and Lan Zhan's elbows and teleports off. 

She returns after a few minutes, now herding three people, one of whom appears to be an old, cracked china doll wearing blue jeans and a black tank top.

The doll bows. "Hello." 

"Hello.

Can you do any magic?"

"I made my barrier go away. I could bring it back. I can direct my familiars. I haven't tried to do any normal magic yet." 

"Just your familiars, or other features of the barrier?" The flower curtain rustles.

"...I think I could change other things about my barrier. I haven't tried." 

"But you do not have a soul gem?"

"No, I don't." 

"Seeds?"

She hesitates, then nods. 

"Where?"

She holds out an empty hand, palm up, closes it and opens it again, revealing a seed, then closes it and opens it again, empty. 

"Is it just the one? There were dozens of active Dolls of Bedlam, and they're gone now, but it's unlikely no one had one of the seeds."

"I don't have anything to hold that many in. I don't want to let them spill all over the floor." 

"- but if you have them, then whoever's been holding the seeds in reserve - doesn't."

"Oh." 

"None of us need seeds anymore," Wei Ying says firmly. "We can find out who had the seeds, or at least try, and give them ones we already had."

"I don't suppose you remember?" Xie Lian asks Wen Ning.

Headshake. "I remember...bits and pieces. Not details, not context." 

"It's unlikely anyone was able to defeat a seed-bearing Dolls of Bedlam and is also relying on that seed as the difference between life and death right now. But if Wei Ying means to scale this up..."

"Before I scale it up we can warn people. Have a way to get people uninvolved seeds before it gets far enough and a way to get them to awakened witches who will eat the dinge out of their seeds once it has. And--and if I do scale it up, then the consequences of running out of charge aren't actually death."

"It may be she can't keep serving as a brightener forever. Or that not all of them will be able to."