Sagus Cliffs comes by its name honestly, and it's towards the edge of one such cliff that Tahir seems to be leading them. "Ooh, she's actually there, I was about to look like a fool if I was wrong."

It's not a long walk. The woman is obvious, and is looking with red-ringed eyes down at the rocks below. She's muttering to herself, and pacing.

"Was here where I was supposed to wait...? But, no, that doesn't make sense," she murmurs to herself.

Her line of logic is interrupted by someone that only Vetmera can hear.

this isn't real. you don't need to fight me. just let me in, and you won't be lost anymore.

The voice, of course, sounds very familiar. The rush of inherited shame is not, though. Logically, she's not responsible, but emotionally... something in her thinks she is.

"Shut up I'm trying to think," she growls with practiced venom, to the open air. "I don't - was I supposed to go to a bar..? Or was I going back from it..?? Weren't they supposed to fix me? I'm not fixed, so that means I should go, but, wasn't I just there...? Is there even any point to going back when...?"

She turns in her pacing, unconsciously following a path that has been worn into the dirt through practiced repetition. She has walked this path many, many times. Towards the cliff, then away from it, towards the nearby bar, then back to the cliff again, a cruel circuit of her pain carved into the ground.

Spotting the trio causes her to deviate from it, though; she leaps upon the opportunity like a starving man with food.

"You! I need you to talk to me. Talk loud, it's easier to, to, I. I need you to talk over her, she won't ever shut up."

BEING LOUD IS OUR SPECIALTY almost literally

"I can be loud! Hello, who are you, what's your name, why are you here, it's fine if you don't know the answer to those questions."

"I'm, that's a hard question to answer, I don't remember, I'm here because I can't figure out if there's another place I'm supposed to be, and no, I really don't think it's fine, actually!"

"No, no, it's fine because, you see, we can fix it."

you may be overpromising SO WE GOTTA OVERDELIVER rescuing girls from psychic ghosts is not our specialty WE ARE ARGUABLY PSYCHIC GHOSTS OURSELVES we did not know you knew that word WHAT, GHOSTS? arguably WHAT'S ARGUABLY never mind

"...or at least try! But we have a shot!"

"No, but, you can't! It's - people have tried, there's a, a specialist I see that, that peels her off of me every time I go and it's not working, she always comes back, and it's, I think it's, it's happening faster and, can we talk about something else, anything else."

Vetmera will just quietly scootch closer to Aleks. She is absolutely going to help this woman, but also the panic and despair with overtones of a mind being forcibly overwritten by someone who doesn't even want to be killing someone is. It's a lot to perceive. It helps if she... leans on the rock that is her teleporter while she tries to take in what... exactly... is going on here.

(While she feels sick with guilt that isn't hers, thank you.)

Yeah. The CG sucks. ...but also Aleks is not sure letting little golden boy speak will be better for the girl.

"We totally can talk about anything else!"

SO ABOUT GHOSTS what about ghosts OUR GHOST CAPE HASN'T BEEN USED BY THE PLOT YET it is really almost like it's not there THE NARRATION DIDN'T EVEN MENTION IT what narration US we are not the narration

He walks over to her and then past her then drops himself onto the ground, dangling his legs off the cliff and swaying them back and forth. "My name is Tahir! I am a professional hero. I go places and I save people and I solve mysteries and I resolve quests. It's fun! I enjoy myself very much. I get to go many places and meet many people. Do you want me to tell you a story about one of my adventures?"

"... Yeah. Yeah that sounds nice," she says, wistfully. "I don't... think I've gotten to see outside Sagus Cliffs."

I haven't gotten to see anywhere else.

"... Or m-maybe I have, but I've forgotten." She shakes her head. "Go on?"

"Let's see, let's see... Ah, yes. A few years ago..."

AND THEN THE GLORIOUS HERO, SOUL OF ADVENTURE, FOUND OUT THAT HIS GHOST CAPE HELD THE SECRETS TO SOLVING THIS MYSTERY narrating things that you wish would happen will not make them happen DESPITE THE PESSIMISM OF THE HERO'S COMRADES we are not comrades HE REMAINED STALWART AND STEADFAST IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY that is several words we are surprised you know WHAT WORDS never mind

Okay you guys need to actually chill for now, he needs to think.

that was not part of the agreement

It literally was.

we feel like you are trying to pull one over on us PULL WHAT one ONE WHAT one

No, seriously—

IS IT THE GHOST CAPE it is not the ghost cape WE THINK IT'S THE CAPE it's not the cape HE'S ALREADY PULLED THE CAPE ON THOUGH

Will you guys shut the fuck up?

...his glow noticeably diminishes.

Thank you. Now, where was he...

"Right, sorry, got distracted."

A few years ago, Tahir was travelling through Pernth Bay when he heard a rumour about a missing jewel of some rich benefactor of the city's. Most quests start with rumours, in his experience—running directly into a quest hook like they did with the madness dimension of the Dendra O'hur happens relatively infrequently—and so he chased after it. At worst it'd be a little bit of wasted time, and even the loud voices in his head agree that it's better to waste a little time occasionally going after dead ends than it is not taking the opportunities presented to him in the first place.

Now, Tahir got suspicious as soon as he saw the guy. Call it a hunch, but something didn't sit right with him. Something about that benefactor felt... off. But Tahir didn't feel like he'd have a better chance to find out what, exactly, was off about the guy without investigating, and he wouldn't be able to investigate if he immediately showed his suspicions, so he just agreed to be hired and go find the jewel.

(Despite Tahir's earlier claims about not having had any thoughts in years, Vetmera will be able to catch that that's not really quite true, from the tenor of his thoughts. A lot of that decisionmaking happened subverbally, subconsciously, because his consciousness would be hijacked by the demons possessing him and so he learned how to keep things from them pretty early on. They still felt in control, but he was the one calling most of the shots that mattered.)

He's loud and obnoxious and he bumbles through life like an elephant tripping into a china shop, which makes people get annoyed with him but also makes them really underestimate him. They think he's just an idiot who ran into some numenera that gave him superhuman abilities, which is, you know, true as far as it goes, but that's not all he is. And he often uses that to his advantage. So people were more loose-lipped around him than they probably should have been, and he heard more than he should have.

You see, Pernth Bay is an interesting place. There's this way all places are alike and lots of ways every place is unique. Pernth Bay is similar to Sagus, in that they also have an Underbelly—they call it The Cove, because it's really a very pretentious place overall—but it's not quite like Sagus, in that it's not the poor and downtrodden who go there, or not mostly them. Pernth Bay's underworld is more of a den of vice for the rich and powerful, a place where they can indulge in their wicked pleasures. And that's in sharp contrast with the surface view of the city, which has one of the most functional and competent governments Tahir's run into, and he's run into a fair share of them.

But, well, obviously it's corrupt, right? What story of adventure would have such an extended sidebar about a place's government if it were just purely good?

Well, actually! As far as Tahir could determine, the government was pretty decent! The way this story goes, instead, is that they're locked in a sort of mutually assured destruction situation with the crime lords in their Cove. And some people transit between both spaces like the difference is immaterial to them, and if you guessed that the rich benefactor who lost his jewel is one such person, you guessed right.

(Tahir's whole demeanour and body language changes, as he's telling that story. He's still animated and excitable, but it seems a lot more purposeful, the way he weaves the story into something that feels almost alive. He's doing something, there, he's paying attention to the girl's reactions, what seems to interest her and what she doesn't care about, he's capturing her attention when it starts to drift and he's countering the voice of the ghost trying to possess her almost as if he can hear her, even though it's just cold reading.)

Not to get too bogged down in details about the political situation in Pernth Bay, the most important bit is that it turns out that that rich man's "jewel" was a person. A boy, quiet and apathetic and somehow incredibly charming. Lots of people seemed to like him even though whenever they talked to Tahir about this boy they didn't seem to quite understand what they liked about that boy. What everyone could agree on, though, was that the boy was an incredibly talented painter.

And his paintings were special, too. Not only were they beautiful, but looking at them could transport you somewhere. Not physically, you were still there, but your mind went elsewhere, you could feel everything the boy was trying to convey, you could see more colours and images than were actually on the canvas, they were all around you and in you. Tahir himself got to experience one such painting and it's like nothing he can describe.

IT WAS VERY UNCOMFORTABLE we felt as if the painting was looking directly at us WE'RE NOT MEANT TO BE PERCEIVED especially by inanimate objects

The boy couldn't paint on command, though. He only painted when he was inspired, when the muse struck him, and more precisely when he found a "model" that fit his very specific criteria. But still, that rich man liked to display the boy's paintings, and he paid for all of the boy's living expenses even when the boy could be months between paintings. There was something else there, too, it wasn't just the artistic appreciation, but Tahir couldn't figure out what it was.

So, the boy had vanished. It wasn't too uncommon for him to go a couple of weeks without being seen but it had been far too long and the man was afraid something must've happened to the boy, or one of his enemies must've kidnapped the boy to get to him. Except no one had demanded ransom or made any threats, and by the time Tahir got there the man was grasping at straws, desperate.

Tahir is loud and obnoxious and everyone underestimates him, and so he can get places by just looking sufficiently incompetent. And he found the boy, almost by accident.

The boy had been kidnapped, but not by any enemies of the rich man; he had been kidnapped by people who wanted to use his painting talents for nefarious ends. What ends, exactly, Tahir never found out. There was clearly some strange numenera at work, but the boy himself didn't seem to know what it was, he'd just always been able to paint like that. He said he'd heard his kidnappers talk about getting somewhere, reaching someplace, but in real life, unlike in stories, villains don't often monologue in front of their victims and explain their plans in detail. And since they clearly were the villains, well, Tahir dealt with them.

And then he asked the boy,

"Now that I've rescued you, do you want to be rescued again?"

The boy looked confused and said,