The presence is alien and difficult to perceive, but it settles over Brenda like a set of spectacles, sharing with her its senses. The past, and present, and future are laid bare before her - or at least, they would be. Where her vision of what is to come should lie sits instead a fractally shattered kaleidoscope, as beautiful as it is impossible to interpret, but somehow the dizzying vision it offers fails to grab her attention compared to the sheer wrongness she can see elsewhere. In the past she can see the death of the sight's owner, though the more she sees the less owner seems appropriate; rather than a creature, the entity is more of a living process embodying cosmic order. It had arrived from far away to seal the worldwound and return the demons to the abyss, but had proven insufficient to the task and been slain by Deskari's terrible scythe. The ruins, the blood, the corpses; none of these are what had disturbed the entity about the incursion. Though foreign to Brenda, from the Aeon's perspective this distinction is obvious; in the end, the souls of the dead will go to Pharasma, and the living will continue as they ought, with no reason for the entity to interfere. Instead what disturbs its vision are the demons, splotches of awful color on a monochrome palette, each obviously not belonging at a mere glance. And yet more than the demons, what disturbs this last fragment of an Aeon is what lies below it, the very substance's existence on the material plane a mockery of everything it stands for. Had it the strength, it would unmake it utterly, and yet here and now it is a powerless existence on the precipice of falling apart into oblivion.

The sense of wrongness is drowned in turn by a sense of wonder, joy in communing with this alien being and grief at its destruction. Its priorities are unlike hers, yet beautiful in their clarity.

She's gonna try to Dragon Fairy Elf Witch it. Because she needs to see what happens.

The new senses sharpen, like the difference between seeing the world through fogged up lenses and those same glasses after a cleaning. From this new perspective the abyssal traits stand out just as much, though without the Aeon's relaying the inherent judgment is gone; instead, it is simply undeniably clear that they are not of this world. The Aeon itself appears similarly, though it differs along a vector that is hard to put into words and most likely relates to the place from which they respectively come. The telepathic contact is also easier to maintain, which seems to be slowing the Aeon's deterioration but doesn't appear to be sufficient to stop it entirely.

Curiously, none of the sense of otherness lingers around her own body. For whatever reason, to an Aeon's gaze she belongs on the material plane as much as any local mortal.

Brenda pushes respect and gratitude and sorrow along the telepathic link, though it's hard to tell whether the Aeon cares about such things. She sends also her intention to do what she can to stop the demonic invasion; her reasons may be different but their goals do overlap.

Does the lack of a sense of her own otherness mean that only her mind was sent to this plane, and her body was recreated anew as though by a Star Trek transporter? Did the Spirit negotiate her arrival here with some other power? Or is it just that seeing herself as alien would be uncomfortable, so her magic is screening it out as a drawback? Hard to say. 

She digs in the rubble for the blood-touched sword.

What was once her sword is a broken, shattered wreck of over a dozen pieces large enough to be visible with the naked eye, and likely a fair few that aren't. It was clearly not designed for a tenth of the punishment it underwent, either in the combat itself or from being dropped and then buried afterward. Near the center of the pieces, however, lies a dully glowing purple crystal that is stands out like a shining beacon to her new senses. Contrary to what she might expect, however, the crystal is not attached to a piece of the sword or just an unconnected rock. Instead, someone has clearly taken the time to set it to a stone handle, allowing it to be carried without touching it directly. Along the hilt are runic patterns vaguely reminiscent of her gloves.

What the ever loving fuck. Someone, possibly Areelu Vorlesh, dug up the sword, turned the blood into a crystal, put a handle on it, and then buried it again. Maybe Areelu or whoever couldn't wield the thing themselves, and wanted to make sure nobody would mess with it until she came looking for it? And couldn't just give it to her because . . . well, given Areelu's reputation it makes sense that she would want to come and go unseen. Alright, maybe it wasn't that much of a mystery.

That saves her having to figure out how to crystallize the blood herself, but also makes her somewhat more suspicious of the whole strategy. Areelu Vorlesh has been nothing but helpful to Brenda so far, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't use her in a plot to finish destroying the Wardstone. She'd complain about the difficulty of knowing who to trust, but honestly if this whole setting seemed totally black and white she'd be waiting for the other shoe to drop. The crystal gets an inner backpack pocket all to itself, and Seelah and Wenduag get the best explanation she can give of the last two minutes of weird shit.

"So now that you've got the powers of an Aeon, you can see demons? That sounds very useful, especially if it works through disguises. Does it tire you out to do?"

"I'd be very surprised if it didn't work through disguises; it's not really part of my vision, that's just the best way to describe it in Hallit. It doesn't feel tiring, but I haven't been doing it for long enough to be sure."

"Then that sounds extremely useful. Even the Prelate back there didn't seem to have a way to see demons through disguises he thought was reliable enough, whereas you'll never be surprised again. Could be a very nasty surprise for any demon that thinks they have the better of you because they figured they were hidden enough."

Kenabres is mostly eerily quiet, which makes even the distant sound of a roar distinctly audible to Brenda's enhanced auditory suite. It's hard to get an exact heading, but to her ears sounds like it's somewhere southeast of their current location.

"Yeah, copying powers is great--oh, that sounds like Terendelev, we should go talk to her about the Wardstone. After she's done with whatever she's roaring at." Off they go.

Apparently not everyone has gotten the memo to stay indoors, because there's a girl who looks to be about Brenda's age sitting on a bench singing to herself. The burn scars on her hands and arms are pretty attention getting, but with Brenda's new Aeon sight the crow on her shoulder having a touch of elsewhere about it might draw the eye more.

Detect Fiendish Presence confirms her initial impression that the elsewhere the crow is from is not the Abyss, but that's still interesting. Also concerning, though the burns look long healed.

"Hello. Are you alright?"

"I think so. At least, I'm not injured or sick. Why do you ask?"

"Well, uh, because you're a kid hanging out in a war zone, but that's a bit hypocritical of me, sorry. Also your bird is kind of from another plane and that's cool."

"Soot is very precious to me," she agrees. "My grandmother sent her. I didn't choose to hang out in a war zone, though, this is just where I live."

"I meant that you're not in your house and most people are either fighting demons or in their houses. I'm sorry your city is having a bad week."

"Oh I don't have a house, so that's why. I try to avoid fighting demons, though, since it always feels bad when nobody will let me help them."

She's about to say something sympathetic about the homelessness but then gets completely distracted by the second sentence.

"You can interact peacefully with demons?" If the next thing she says is "Hail Baphomet" Brenda is going to be so disappointed.

"I'm not sure; nobody has let me try long enough before to see if I can get anywhere. Demons have spent their entire lives learning that the way you succeed is by always being able to betray and hurt everyone around you before they hurt you, and by obeying anyone too strong to defeat so they hurt you less. It's hard to heal from that, especially when they're still in that situation even once they leave the abyss. But they're still people like you and me and Soot, that can learn things and change and even grow, just people that have always suffered terribly and never had anyone to trust. I don't think it's too much to believe that they could change for the better, not just for the worse, but people are really scared of them and if I put the demons to sleep to stop them from attacking people the people just attack them back."

"I would really love a way to convince demons to change for the better. And cultists. So far they always attack me and they usually don't stop until I kill them."

"With demon cultists, I think the most important thing to do is to help make sure they aren't afraid and then to talk to them. When people are frightened and lonely and hurt, they make bad decisions that can hurt people, and then they feel trapped, like they don't have any options. Once that happens they sink deeper and deeper and spend more and more time convincing themselves they made the right decision, but it's not actually good for them if you can just help them see it, and then you can remind them that they have other choices."

"I'm not--" she remembers Friends In Low Places and amends her statement to "I don't know if I'd be any good at that. Next time I get attacked by cultists when I'm not running around between urgent tasks I should try it."

“It does sound like it would be hard to help people when you’re busy,” Ember agrees. “And you seem a little lost and overwhelmed yourself. Do you need help?”