"Do let me know if I can help; I've some practical experience with alchemy, especially after the whole Cairn debacle."

"'The Stonemelter', right? All the stories I heard were garbled but it did sound impressive."

"A catapult's worth of strong acid.  Wasn't quite enough to do anything but hurt."  Her fist is clenched around her staff, which she's leaning on for support.  "Should have had more things like that ready.  Didn't.  Wasn't time, wasn't stuff; couldn't even prepare to blow him up, he'd see that coming when he saw a pit.  Or just blow the damn thing up in a quake, apparently.  Verse's sister Seeking-Sheath landed a spear in the back of his throat; I keep beating myself up about not getting some acid-phial javelins.  Or figuring something out to do Atrophy-touched weapons.  I did not want to read that Edict.  And looking at the results...

"I can't say I think it was a good idea in hindsight, either, because look at who benefitted and who got hurt.  It wasn't Cairn's allies.  And I don't think Cairn cared about dying himself; he was - a caged beast, and if he wasn't going to fight, he was quite ready to die swinging.

"I should have taken a better approach to him.  But he thought he'd be able to track me down and kill me before I got the Edict to where it needed to be read, and if I had been a heavier sleeper...

"Maybe his assassin would have.

"So I guess I can't gainsay his confidence, after all."

"The only Archon I ever heard of who seemed harder to kill than Cairn was Icarix, and he could rewind his personal history to avoid any injury unless you killed him instantly. Nothing wrong with high standards for yourself, but I think the one you're judging against is impossible."

"It would have worked, had I had enough acid.  I'm - pretty sure of that.  And I could have, I think, if I'd started preparing to fight him seriously, sooner.  Or fucking hit him before he got worse.  He got noticeably bigger as he approached Plainsgate, and I feel like that may have been a contributing factor to his not dying when there was acid burning holes in his face.  Then again - I couldn't have deployed that catapult further out, because it would have been even less likely to be somewhere we could have hit him with it.  If there'd been enough for a second strike, though - I really do think it would have worked.

"So, no.  It's not impossible to kill an Archon, even if you're not Bleden Mark.  It's just, ha, really fucking difficult.  Because the evidence shows - I hurt him.  I hurt him, we hurt him, multiple times.  He had to care about being hurt, I think.  It didn't work in the end, but I don't think 'impossible' is a measure of how hard even Cairn, whose myth is of indomitability, is to kill, even with the way the Edict turned out to only petrify him.  Icarix would definitely be even harder to kill, though.  Especially if poisoning them in their sleep was off the table for whatever reason; that's where I'd start from, not knowing how they died off the top of my head.  But I digress.

"I wish Kyros had specified the Edict of Stone ought to do other things to the land than what happened, though.  That's really my biggest regret about this whole thing.  Azure - Viridian - didn't deserve that."

"He's still not dead, which makes me doubt melting his flinty guts would even have been enough. It would probably still have come to a battle. And if it hadn't been Azure, or Viridian if we're calling it that, it would have been some other province."

"He was fleshy on the inside.  Before.  And then he became one with the stone.  Which - seems to have been a direct consequence of the Edict, albeit possibly also because of whatever Cairn was up to in the time leading up to said Edict, because there's surely something up with the increased presence of weird crystals."

"They were definitely rarer and subtler elsewhere and in the past, not the cascades of bright purple I hear the Stone Sea has now. If I recall correctly, Beasts guard the sites and won't let anyone approach, even their own. Well, what Beasts are left."

"Well.  We'll have to find out what's up with that at some point; I'm not just going to not fix it.  But that's a problem for spans from now, not this fist."

"I think that's all we have for today, except for making sure that we're all clear on the thing where if I'm expecting violence to erupt in a worst-case scenario I do actually want everyone to be ready for that.  Which, in your case, Lantry, means having all your inks at the ready, and in your case, Verse, means - not being in the conference, I'm not going to make you sit through my blather, but, well, I'd like you to be closer, should this sort of situation come up in the future.

"I mean, I hope we're never going to be dealing with someone as powerful as an Archon that is also as unstable and violent as Nerat in the future, but I know what my luck's like."

"I'll certainly want to keep sepia on my throwing quills from here out. Nearly as good as poppy-syrup."

Verse looks up from spinning a knife in the air and catching it. "Yeah, might be good. I mean, this time probably wasn't too dangerous, Nerat wasn't going to actually fight when they didn't have numbers or surprise, they're the dangerous kind of coward. But there's not enough of us that I can safely be far."

"Thank you, both of you.

"I think I am going to get an early start on my well-deserved rest.  Wake me if something catches fire."

Lantry nods, and heads out to speak to the suppliers like he mentioned.

And she sleeps, perchance to dream.

When she awakens, there is one word on her lips: "Shackles.  ...I'm sure I could have come up with that one while perfectly lucid, honestly, but - if the stasis ritual is going to work in the first place it needs a binding component, in the second place they have rather a lot of thematic resonance, and in the third place - ...drat; I've lost the thought I was having.  I'm sure it will recur if necessary."

"I can see how that might work, as an anchor for perceiving the connection as a vulnerability. Not nearly enough to hang a ritual on, but a piece, perhaps."

"Did your quest for ink supplies go well?"

"The cerulean I'll need to gather everything, but the other two I have enough to make a little now and most of the ingredients for making large batches. Can probably have all of it ready tonight."

She nods, and heads to the rookery to check her mail.

For once, there isn't any.

There is, however, an Iron Marshal who notices she's up as she leaves the dovecote.

"Fatebinder! I found some additional escorts for you, when you're planning on leaving the camp."

"Oh, good morning, Marshal Erenyos."  She seems to be finding herself surprisingly relaxed, given the circumstances.  "I do believe I plan to do so in the near future - the missing Earthshakers need finding, still - so I'm glad you've thought about it and found some people; I'd hazard that myself, Verse, Barik, and Lantry could be quite a thorn in a platoon's side all on our lonesome, but it would certainly be chancy to try with just the four of us.  If they're available right now, I'd love to meet them?"

"They are," she says, and starts leading the way, "I don't doubt your effectiveness on the offensive; my main concern is keeping you out of ambushes. We have so few Oath-Bound that I could count them on my fingers, so I can't spare them, but Colus and his squad are unofficially tagged as future Oath-Bound. Four Crescent Runners, and all have refused the usual promotion to Stone Shield for experienced Runners. They've been a unit for a year and a half, and spent about a third of that time as scouts. Probably half the time, these last few months, as we lost confidence in the Chorus scout reports."

She nods.  "Verse and I have some past experience in the field of not-getting-ambushed from tracking missions in Azure," she says, gently eliding over the bit where they were tracking Cairn for multiple reasons, "but I'd hazard that this party certainly needs the hands and eyes; the other three members of that squad have since died in battle, and I don't believe that either Barik or Lantry have the right sort of - aptitude or training for it - I'm not sure Lantry can quite get there, anymore; Preservation only does so much to keep one spry.

"Speaking of scout reports, I presume that you've taken a look at the ones pertaining to the area the Earthshaker reinforcements were intended to travel through?  Is there anything I ought to know?"

"Barik might be a problem," she admits quietly, "When I assigned him to you earlier this fist I wasn't expecting your primary relative advantage to be avoiding attention, and with the Chorus traitorous that's clearly your strength. Your decision whether you'd rather bring him with you." Returning to a normal tone of voice, she says, "I don't have more detail yet, we haven't extended our scouting that far. If you could investigate, I'd very much appreciate it; we can send a phalanx to meet up with them if we know they're inside the valley, but sending a loud search party would make them vulnerable to being picked off, if they have to kick up all the dust a full search brings with it, especially if they couldn't count on having magical backup on the return trip."