"Zero does."

"Not for too much longer, if all proceeds to plan."

"What do you mean?"

"Zero's goal, and thereby mine as well, is to kill the parasite permanently. To do so, we must first eliminate it from you, then Four, and so on, ending with Zero herself. We did try to cut it from her first, but it was able to regenerate."

"I want to talk to my sister. In private."

"Of course." Assuming Zero has no objections...?

She's not happy about it, but she's happy about nothing in this situation, so like, fuck it, may as well. 

Eliese and Hex should excuse themselves, then.

Hex leaves quietly. 

Eliese will follow her.

"...How did Zero even find you? First it was the fucking dragon..."

"It seems to have been providential happenstance. I was attacked by a giant snake with a mirror for a face, and it somehow transported me to another world. I landed in front of her."

"Not the weirdest story I've heard."

"What's my competition?"

"This magic parasite shit, for one. Just about everything with the Intoners, for two. There's a ton of minor shit, we'd be here all day if I tried to list it out. Like, Three's got these creepy ass giant baby dolls; hard to beat that on the weirdness scale. Cathedral City randomly appearing a couple centuries ago full of weird ass magic and technology, and whenever anyone tries to live there stuff goes sideways in really impressive ways, for three. Oh, and all the Intoners insist they're sisters even though they look nothing alike and can't agree on basic shit about their childhood, for four. Also all my memories from before a bit over a year ago are definitely fake, and the other disciples don't seem able to think about this logically whenever I try to tell them, for five. - I don't think that's the same bullet point as four, the Intoners have been around longer than a year. And that point's weird as fuck, because, okay, Septa's arrogant and stupid about everything that isn't fighting, and Ennea's a stubborn bitch, but Octa's normally the reasonable one. I'm not."

"A fairly impressive list, I must admit."

"World's interesting."

"Makes it more fun, no?"

"It'd be more fun if Five would let me let loose more often."

"Is she the controlling sort?"

"Nah. She's just started taking this whole leading a county thing seriously. There's way less killing since we won the war. It's boring."

"No guerrilla insurgents opposing your conquest? Who did you take over from?"

"Bunch of asshole warlords, not well liked. But - people worship the Intoners. It's not about who came before. Elves and fairies and shit are immune or resistant, but humans? Humans fall for them, hard."

"Four's the only one with opposition, mostly 'cause she got even more excessive than me but screwed up and didn't finish killing off the elves, so they're pissed at her, and so is One so none of us are supposed to help dig Four out of her idiot hole. Which at least Five looks the other way on me going to help out... Septa's doing really well with the current Resistance, though, and she can probably handle worse even without her magic."

"...Whiiich, no clue if we'll get insurgents now that Five's not magic. Probably not? Five's been reading these boring books One keeps sending her about history and governance and shit, and now she's giving people free food. Two definitely won't. I don't think Two's actually magicking people, she's just popular. Three's probably going to need to immediately leave, or like go ahead and finish turning her population into dolls - which, currently? She's got zero opposition for being a necromancer or experimenting on live subjects or turning her soldiers into monster dolls. Everything she's doing - other than the creepy baby dolls - is super cool, like, I can really appreciate the artistry there, and if you'd tried to fight your way in normally you'd have gotten to see some of that - Three lent me a bunch of her non-baby dolls because I asked nicely, and helped her get a wider variety of subjects which was fun. - Anyways, Three is probably straining the Intoner mind control at this point, even with humans."

"One's ruling from Cathedral City so she's only got soldiers she trained up from everyone else's populations, no one else can live in her territory."

"Not a complete geopolitical collapse brewing. That's always pleasant to see."

Shrug. "I don't really care."