"Eek! I'm sorry, that's a horrible way to find out that there are no safeguards. This is better, just. I'll need to get used to it."

"My apologies," he repeats. "Anyhow, ready whenever you are."

"Apology accepted." Deep breath. "Okay, yeah, let's go. Order of Truth is where?"

"That building," he says, leading the way to said building, the one behind the bust of a person holding a glowing orb.

The inside is... interesting, to say the least. Computers, synthetics, energetics, all sorts of -ers and -etics, abound, but probably what will draw her attention immediately is the star-seeker they ran into earlier, the man by the name of Qorro. And he looks... very, very miserable.

    "When I told you to retrieve the falling star, I wonder if you heard 'return to me with empty hands and excuses'," sighs the woman talking to him. "I no longer need your services, Qorro. Collect your things and go."

        "What? No, Salimeri, I—there was a, a vanometric power cell, it was unstable, we, we needed to disable it, but everything was long gone by the time we got there!"

    "And that is why you are unsuited for this work," says, apparently, Salimeri, massaging her eyes. "Honestly, I don't know what I expected. I saw promise in you, but also the flaws. And I ignored them." She finally notices the two arrivals, and her eyes turn enormous when she sees the castoff. "Adahn! I haven't seen you in ten years. Ten. Years. I cannot begin to imagine what your excuse might be." Especially after their last night together. It was... incredible. Or so Salimeri thought?

"... Um!" says the castoff, raising her eyebrows and turning slightly pink. She was not prepared to be confronted with memories of that nature. Um. Um. "... N-no, um, I'm. Not. Adahn."

    She blinks twice in momentary confusion but then understanding dawns. "You're a castoff," she breathes, eyes turning downright gleeful as she studies the castoff from head to toe. "Remarkable. This is rather like visiting a house you once owned, and seeing new tenants through the windows."

She's not even trying to pretend, here, that's the Salimeri he knows and loves kind of despises.

    "And don't think I don't see you, there, Aleks dear," she adds. "What a coincidence that you would be travelling with her. Especially given how you and Adahn parted, when they were still wearing her body."

"Please do pretend I am not here, it will be best for all of us."

"Um," she stammers, and then carefully steps between Aleks and Salimeri because Aleks should not have to deal with this person he kind of despises. Words, she should words. She should words instead of trying to figure out how one does that with their tongue.

"I-I wanted to come here," oh no wrong phrasing! "to ask about something called a resonance chamber? I have some memories from, uh, Adahn about it and I'm curious."

    "Do you? Fascinating. Yes, I can probably help—for a price."

"Say it's a monetary one."

    "You know it's not, dear."

She squints at Salimeri.

"Oh. You were the one they were working with. Between the. Um. Yes. You could probably actually help. What's the price?"

"Straight to the point! I like that." She crooks her finger to motion them to come closer to a screen she projects a holographic map to—a map of the Reef of Fallen Worlds. She taps a gilded, ornate structure, not far from the dome containing the resonance chamber. "This is the Anechoic Lazaret. It had been hopelessly sealed since the dawn of the Ninth World. Until, that is, I decided to spend a week or two on it." She smiles. "It was quite simple once I figured out the trick. I've been slipping in and out at nights, investigating, taking notes." Then she frowns. "Until the structure got sealed again while I was away."

"... Okay?" she says, not hearing anything that sounds like an actual price yet.

    "So," she continues, "I believe someone tramped inside with no regard for dangers and managed to trigger a failsafe that resealed the structure. I need someone to reopen the Lazaret and," she waves a vague hand, "handle whatever nonsense the trespassers have stirred up in their wake."

"Send him," says Aleks, gesturing in Qorro's direction with his head, arms folded.

    "I suppose I could do that," she says, and Qorro looks up from his feet with a hopeful expression on his face, "if I wanted him dead by sundown and the entire structure looted by strangers. Or aflame." She raises an eyebrow. "Or I could hire someone that's actually competent." And Qorro sags again at that.

This doesn't make sense. She looks at Salimeri and tries to figure out the puzzle in front of her.

"But you're not hiring me. You're trying to leverage me." She furrows her brow. "And I think that actually I'll call your bluff."

"...I beg your pardon?"

"You were dying to know what my sire was up to. Half of your relationship with them was trying to get information about what sort of weird puzzle that they were working on, because you didn't know and that drove you up the wall. And now here I am, castoff with knowledge and key to anything they might have made to only respond to themselves, and you... want me to go tramping down to solve your problem for you? No you don't.

"You want to see what you can extract from the little baby castoff before she gives you what you want. Well, I'm not playing. I don't need you. You will save me time. That's it. But if you're inclined to waste it, then I will go elsewhere."

...instead of focusing on the part of his emotions that is reacting to the castoff he will focus on the part of his emotions that is directed at Salimeri. That sounds safer.

    And Salimeri, for her part, looks—taken aback, shocked, and more than a little aroused. This castoff is indeed one of Adahn's, of that there can be no doubt. "No one else would know as much as I do about your little project," she says, which is true enough, for all the good it does.

"Not by themselves, no, but I bet I could ask around. Besides, I could say the same about myself, and you know it. Do we want to keep stating the obvious or do we want to work together?"

Salimeri laughs, at that. "Very well. I fibbed. I don't know much. Adahn said the chamber was built with living crystals from a world called the Ascension. They were remarkably resistant to telling me what it was for, though, regardless of the interrogation methods I employed." At least the interrogations were... exciting. "They said that it would stop the Sorrow, and that none of the castoffs could know about it. Which seems odd to me, but they were ever the odd one." She snaps her fingers. "Seek out the castoff who helped them build it, that surly artificer whose name escapes me at the moment. He has machines and circuits embedded in his flesh, those little cultists in Circus Minor might know him."

“None of the castoffs could know about it…” she muses, frowning. That sounds nice and ominous. “All right. Thank you. And here is a sample from the resonance chamber. Which I broke. By falling on it.” She hands over her shard of crystal, then glances at Qorro. “… Sorry. Self defense.”

Qorro splutters and opens and shuts his mouth many times like a fish out of water while Salimeri laughs even harder and accepts the crystal. "You really are your parent's daughter."

Eugh. Now she feels dirty, and wants to do something her sire wouldn’t ever do, just out of principle. Oh, she has a idea.

“Well, if you mean that, then surely that’s not enough reason to remove Qorro from your payroll. It wasn’t a fair fight. Though, for the record, Qorro, I think you deserve better.”

She scoffs. "This was just another in a string of failures. ...but maybe, if he was up against one of Adahn's." She eyes Qorro appraisingly and says, "You're on your last chance. You had better impress me next time."

    "I will, you won't be disappointed, I promise!" he says, to which she scoffs again.

She kind of wants to help him, but she doesn’t think it would actually fix anything. Sort of like trying to save a drowning man, except he keeps diving back into the water every time she pulls him out. It’s not really her problem, and she has enough on her plate already. Besides, Qorro’s go to method of inviting her to talk to Salimeri was going to be intimidation, followed by violence if she refused, so. Maybe these two actually deserve each other.

“Let me know if you figure anything out from the crystal sample, and Qorro knows where what remains of the resonance chamber is. And I’ll go ask the cult for details about the sibling in question.”

"Good luck with your project, little castoff," she says, already focusing on the crystal and no longer looking at them.

"You too," she replies, dryly.

And then they can leave! Hooray. Though, she still feels like she could use a bath, again, from being favorably compared to her sire, and certain memories that she is conflicted about having.

"So, back to the cult. Yaaaaaay."