The drapes almost rip from their mounting as Gamila exits her room and stalks through the house's common area.

Her parents are still there, and her sudden emergence interrupts whatever they were saying. They stare at her in silence as she stomps into the pantry and takes up a bread-knife.

Then, meeting their eyes, Gamila flips the knife over and stabs herself in the stomach.

"GAMILA!!!!"

    "STOP WHAT NO-!"

"GAMILAAAA!!!"

(Attack: 6)

She doesn't brace herself for the pain. She needs to feel it, so she can know if she hit her target or not.

She can tell immediately that she missed.

(Attack: 12)

Mido dives for her, grasping at the knife, trying to pull it out of her hands.

(Heal: 25)

Gamila dodges his hands, just barely, and tries again, more carefully this time. She can remember the feeling of Omlar's shaft in her depths, she can remember where that felt like it was. She moves the point of the knife to that spot, and plunges it in.

A choked cry tears itself out of her, because she can feel, she can feel that she hit her target that time. She can feel the blood flooding into her womanhood.

But that's it. It's over.

Gamila rips at one of her new divine spell slots, consuming it and erupting with healing energies. Then she does it again. Then she opens the tap and the knife in her hand suddenly blazes with holy light, flooding the entire room in positive energy. The flash shines out the windows and casts stark shadows into the corners of the Saei house.

There's blood on her underwear and blood on the floor, but her belly is unblemished.

She glares at her parents. "Your move."

Two months later...

Tucked away in an alley on the upper end of Baza's Pool, there is a seemingly nondescript house.

However, etched into the stonework of a pillar there is a symbol: a circle, with three lines radiating out of it. Beyond that pillar is a plain wooden door.

A teenage girl with a seemingly-innocuous bread-knife sheathed at her hip for some reason, peers out from under the hood of her cloak.

This is it. The symbol from her vision.

Gamila heads into the alley, glances around once, then goes to the door and knocks.

After several moments, the shutters on the second-floor window above the door pop open.

A young woman's face, only a few years older than Gamila, peers out with hard eyes and a lock of golden hair among short-cropped raven tresses framing a face that would be beautiful if it wasn't currently bearing the imprinted impressions of having slept on something much less comfortable than a pillow.

"Yeah? Who're you? Lose the hood. Do I know you?"

"We've never met."

Gamila lowers her hood and looks up at the woman as she puts one hand on the handle of her knife.

"I'm looking for someone who knows why I can Channel Positive Energy through this knife, and only this knife."

"...ah. Shit. Hold on."

The shutters fall closed, and after about a minute, the door in front of Gamila unlocks and opens.

"Get in here. Who did you stab?"

"Before I answer that..."

Gamila traces the circle with three radial lines in the air.

"Tell me Who."

"Seriously? You've never heard of Calistria?"

(Knowledge(Religion): 19)

"Of course I've heard of Calistria! This... is Her holy symbol?"

Gamlia huffs a laugh.

"So you're a Calistrian? I'm a Calistrian? Is... anything, they say about Her, actually true?"

"Some of it. Look, we can do you for the whole spiel, but I'm not a cleric and I'm not a priest. For that you want-"

She stops, goes to the narrow staircase at the end of the hall, and calls up, "Hey, Sadiqa! We've got a convert for ya!"

A face pokes out from over the balcony next to the staircase, upside-down.

"Someone new has come to the embrace of our dark Lady of sexy vengeance?! You be welcome and I will be right down!"

She vanishes again.

"I've really got to know, though. Who did you stab? 'cause if you've got the Eyes 'bout to bust down my door..."

"I stabbed myself. I was pregnant, I didn't want to be, and now I'm not. I haven't murdered anyone. Yet."

"Good. That's a relief. And you are definitely our kind of idiot if you've pulled shit like that. Welcome to the Beachhead, I guess."

She leads the newcomer past the staircase and into a sitting room, then faces her.

"I need to see you Channel. I don't think you're lying but I have to make sure."

"Sure."

Gamila pulls the knife out. It glows, and the room is filled with healing power.

A nod.

She reaches under her airy blouse and pulls out a pendant. A disc, with three little swords poking out of it.

"Sorry to make you waste two whole channels, but: One more time, with this."

"Don't worry about it. I get eight a day."

Gamila puts the knife down on an end table and takes the pendant.

This is absolutely the symbol she saw in her vision, yup.

The pendant glows, and a second flood of positive energy fills the room.

"Eight, eh?"

Penelope smiles, and relaxes noticeably.

"You can keep that. I don't use it, I just keep it as a spare for emergencies. I'll get another one later."

She goes over and sprawls onto one of the cheap-but-comfortable-looking chairs.

"Call me Penny, by the way."

"Gamila."

The other one comes clambering down the staircase, then, and rushes over to plop herself onto Penny's lap. Unlike Penny, who is dressed in a fairly plain set of harem pants and a blouse, the smaller young woman is wearing a large black scarf with gold filigree... and nothing else.

She accepts a kiss from an amused Penny, then turns an intense stare on Gamila.

"The faith of Calistria is nothing less than the total rejection of unfairness-caused-by-rules! I, the third-circle cleric Sadiqa Runihotep, shall teach you our ways!"

She takes a breath.

"What do you want to know?"