"Uh huh."

"A-anyway! You should go inside," she says, pressing the button that opens the secret door on the wall behind the reception desk that leads downstairs.

He laughs again. "Sure. I'll see you later," he says, walking in.

"Bye!"

James is jumping to conclusions.

Is he? And what conclusions is he jumping to, pray tell? Because, of course, if anyone else has guessed what conclusions James might be jumping to, doesn't that mean that other person also jumped to those conclusions? Doesn't that maybe mean those conclusions are the ones one ought to jump to, because they're obvious?

James is a little bit of a dick, did he know that?

Yep. He knew that.

Anyway, now that he went and jumped to that conclusion, well...

...James has a friend who used to be an angel of the Thief Pathway. And James seems to recall that Empyreans of the Thief Pathway are able to steal dreams.

Are they, perchance, able to seal memories?

Is he serious?

Maybe, maybe not. How hard would it be to do?

It would be pretty hard!!!! Used to be an angel of the Error Pathway, past tense!

Hey, there's no harm in asking! If it can't be done it can't be done.

Isn't this a bit overkill? Why exactly does James want this?

James promised not to pressure Elaine to become a Diviner. He means to keep this promise, and he trusts his acting ability, but... it could, instead, not be an act. Especially if it's not that expensive.

So. Is it?

Fine. Fine, alright. It won't be sealed sealed, Daly or someone could very easily nudge it loose. It'll just be... out of the way. Alright? Does that work?

That works!

This is definitely increasing the tally of how much James owes him.

Oh, who's keeping track, even.

No one manages to talk her out of applying to become a Diviner before she gets her hands on the proper requisition form to fill out and hand to the Captain. Actually, if anything, the arguments they make about her safety, sanity, and lifespan get her to dig her heels in further. It's obvious to her that this world is not safe, even if you are an ordinary person. If it is not safe, then she will be firmly on the side of making it safer. Sure, she could do that without imbibing any potions that will affect her mental state, but; clearly someone has to do this work. Why not her? She feels she has a pretty good grip on reality.

This application is sent in early because she expects it'll take months before they accept it; from what it sounded like, there needs to be a level of trust before they make someone an Empyrean. This is fine by her, she's got a lot of library to pry free from the alchemy lab, and organization to do besides. She would just rather make her plans clear in advance, instead of suddenly blindsiding anyone. They don't even have the potion ingredients for it, anyway, and probably those take time to scrounge up even if she does get quickly approved.

The Holy Cathedral of Serenity, headquarters of the Church of the Evernight Goddess, is located in the Amantha mountain region, in the kingdom of Loen. It's not in a big city, such as Backlund, for numerous reasons, such as being more defensible, and also farther from civilisation in case any of the many dangerous things behind its Chanis Gate decide to make trouble. But they do have the ability to receive telegrams, they're not barbarians, so they soon receive one such telegram from the Tingen diocese requesting approval for promoting one of their new hires, going by Elaine Moretti, to Sequence 9 of the Diviner Pathway.

Unlike the Sleepless Pathway, which is controlled by their goddess and therefore pretty centrally their problem, no one knows who, if anyone, controls the Diviner Pathway. In a certain sense, by allowing their Nightwatch to walk that Pathway, they are at best asserting more of their (and the goddess's) own control over it, and at worst remaining in the same position they're currently in. This is a big part of why they generally prefer to hand out potions of Pathways other than Sleepless.

But still, this is a very recent hire. Tingen Captain Dunn Smith's main arguments in favour of it are that she seems resourceful, driven, highly ethical, and likely to get into supernatural trouble anyway so she might as well do this under supervision. Furthermore, it seems like the supernatural trouble targetting her involves the Secret Order, which is suspected to have many Empyreans of the Diviner Pathway, and specifically a powerful artefact associated with the Antigonus family, which, well...

...the Church has experience with that family, let's put it that way.

Typically, they would still want to deliberate for a while, but if this helped them get the Antigonus Family Notebook out of circulation and properly sealed...

But one of the nine high-ranking deacons of the Church,

Sleepless Pathway, Sequence 5 Shaman
Evernight Goddess's Nightwatch
Crestet Cesimir

also known as the Goddess's Sword, gets... an intuition. He intuits that he should commune with the Evernight Goddess about this.

Crestet Cesimir is not in the habit of ignoring his intuition, so he goes to a secluded prayer room in the Cathedral, lights some incense, and incants the goddess's honorific name.

"The Evernight Goddess who is more exalted than the cosmos and more enduring than eternity,
Lady of Crimson,
Mother of Concealment,
Empress of Calamity and Fear,
Mistress of Repose and Silence."