"...now that we're no longer around them... consider the possibility that they're speaking the truth. There are many ways your sire could choose to fuck with you and one of them is leaving you an unpoisoned gift just so you could poison it yourself."

"...that is surprisingly kind."

"Oh, shut it. Too much paranoia is a weakness, too."

"I know!!!! That's the worst part!!!! Why do you think I was being so nice!!!!" She huffs and rubs the bridge of her nose. "I need to be both kind in case they're just genuinely innocent of all wrongdoing, and yet also on guard in case it's a horrible flaming trap out to destroy me!!! I have no idea how Aleks managed to treat me with any kindness at all!!!!" Huff. "I'd rather err on the side of kindness than caution, but, you know. The dream is to not err at all."

"A childish dream. You err and err again, the best you can do is err more intelligently the next time."

Tahir now has enough self control to not say what he's thinking but he's thinking that it's cute how Theboros seems to be warming up to this surprisingly ruthless kind lady.

"I'm approximately two days old, so if anyone is allowed to still have childish dreams..." she points out, wryly. "But yes. You're right. I'll take it as it comes and do my best and whatnot. Thank you for your help and your perspective, I will absolutely want to get pointers on reverse engineering that mind-isolation thing you do, it's brilliant. But later, I'm tired. Any objection to departing the land of mind fucky bullshit and maybe go wander around in the real world with more tangible problems?"

"If you have no further desire to explore that copy of your sire's lair I believe we are done here."

(She really meant it?? Two days old??? What the fuuuuu-)

She snickers at his expression and the line of his thoughts, but doesn't poke it. Someone thought her earlier comment was hyperbole! Joke's on you, it wasn't!

"Nah, I'd rather poke at it in person. See you on the other side."

And here they are, out of the weird fucky mindspace and in the weird fucky reality.

"You know, all in all, that still went better than I was expecting?" she offers, as she opens her eyes.

Aleks has been babysitting her and Tahir's bodies but he looks somewhat less high strung as he was when they left. He perks up as soon as Vetmera comes to, though, and tries to not so surreptitiously verify that she's still herself and all that.

"Welcome back! What did you learn?"

"That this is definitely castoff business, the girl was hanging out in what looked like a copy of the Changing God's lair, and that the other person who's in there seems to have no idea who they are or why they're there."

THERE WAS ZERO ADVENTURING you said that information-gathering was part of adventuring WE DID? yes THAT DOESN'T SOUND LIKE US

Vetmera does give Aleks a 'yep, still me, and also still super fair to verify it's me, I am comforted by this level of paranoia, not insulted by it,' smile, because of course she does. Whether or not he can read all of that information in her smile is up to him, but either way, it's definitely a fond smile.

Then, back to business.

"My two main theories on the other person is either they're some sort of... something... from sire-dearest, or one of my siblings that, uh. Died. And then got caught in the labyrinth. So. That's fun." She makes a face to show how incredibly not fun it is. "The ghost wants us to go hunting for other ghost girls, see if we can piece the entire puzzle back together again."

"Did she know where they could be?"

"Nope!"

"Nope. It might be sufficiently obvious with me around to be a castoff at stuff? But she wasn't all there or coherent. So the best we've got there is aimless wandering near the general populace."

"We have leads!"

HE SAID WE AGAIN we feel so moved WE COULD GET USED TO THIS

"We were investigating this before and we know of some rumours."

He is once again being useful and it's bizarre.

"Oh! Cool, okay. And I guess you want to go do that first instead of handling the maybe third set of nanites...? Of course you do. Why did I even ask that question out loud, I'm the damn mindreader of our group."

"We have a long time before I'm consumed by nanites but the girls are being eaten right now."

SUCH ROMANCE such romance WE THINK YOU MEAN A DIFFERENT THING THAN WE DO

"Not wrong!" she agrees, brightly. "Then I guess we've concluded our current business in this bar for now? I will want to come back for more psychic lessons but, um, I need some space before more psychic bullshit I think."

"We'll be here," says Dhama with a smile.

finally ADVENTURE we will find the culprit for the girls' deaths and we will end them ADVENTURE ADVENTURE ADVENTURE

"I don't think we can end the Changing God, you know."

ADVENTURE ADVENTURE this defeatist attitude will not serve us well ADVENTURE