uh

Be careful with tulpa or mindtwin type stuff. It tends to... Not go away once you wake it up.

Yes, obviously, that's the whole point of the exercise,

A beat.

Sorry, you're giving me a reasonable warning if you don't already know I know way too much about all this stuff, I shouldn't bite.  Mindfuckery is a special interest.

But really, she knows.  She understands.  Which is why she even thought of this idea.

She's too - rigid - to do the sort of deep intuitive magic that just pulling mana out of nowhere and turning it into blasting in a manner that doesn't rely on the fundamental properties of existence, is.  But if she entangles a complementary pattern into her soul - someone that she could be, could have become, but not someone she is -

She'll find new perspectives - and new powers, fit for the uses she isn't.

She's lucky, then, that those who await her subconscious realization of a truth much like that one can think of themselves in similar ways.  But then, they're all images that stand in the reflection of this consciousness's hall of mirrors.  Perhaps it never could have been otherwise.  

Perhaps, but she will fight you if you turn to fatalism like that - she can all but feel her hand grasping for the hilt of her sword at the thought of simply letting impersonal fate take her down without a fight.  The light that shines from within their heart could manifest in a million different ways, not just these three.  Perhaps O5-i, pfeh, feels more secure with the options so constrained --

-- Don't blame this on her, that's Alex's anxiety --

-- but Elaine is quite certain that these few facets of their oversoul are merely those that shine the brightest - not all those that could ever be found.

...Regardless.  They do have a job to do.

Also, you appear to have been a bit late, fair warning.  Also, it, really?  The whole point of us folk is being people in ways that merit a proper pronoun, that's what you need to hook into the metaphysique --

-- Inforant later, smite evil? gribblies nowish.  BRB.  --EIM

Alex, pass her those screenshot windows, if you would be so kind?  She's positively overflowing with mana from the joy of realization anyway, from the taking-off of an ill fit mask of singularity; it may as well go into something useful - especially since it'll probably just start sloshing out and exacerbating the problem, otherwise.

-- uh.  Wow this is happening.  Okay.  Yeah uh here you go.  She's gonna go hide in her corner and think about magic rocks or something.

There, there.  It's alright.  You needn't flee the premises.  See?  Elaine has everything under control.

And indeed it is a very simple action for her, to channel the Light that always did enrapture her so into a gesture and a spell, line of sight established.

It is a simple clenched fist, and a pulling motion, drawing on certainty and revelation both for associative power.  They'll invite her in.  It's mana, after all.  It's what they want.  But should they prove as harmful to let continue, in Ophelia's careful eye, as she expects they might --

Well, the Light Wind and the Light of the na'aru both handily expunge most corruptive influences.

Though it's the shadows on the future that their possible deaths cast, that she, their chosen Atropos, weighs, as she sits in an indefinite instant of judgement - the revelation of her being serving as a locus to accomplish her purpose in this work, a twist of the kaleidoscopic lens that is perspective revealing the crystals of truth that lie within.

Unfortunately, the Bulbling is truly the parasite that Wren described it as, and that seals its doom.  She veils just how it passes from Alex's attention - oh, not that Alex doesn't know, but... There is a difference between knowing that you've effectively boil-fried a doubly knocked-off cabbage to death with Light, and having paid intimate attention to its death-throes.  That grave burden is hers to bear - and Elaine's; there will come a time when she notices the weight of her actions, despite the high of battle, however distant, that's hiding it now.  Still... it is certainly not for the poor dear they're here to protect, each in their own ways.

The Diggby and the Scoola, though.  Those, she almost expects she could use, in a hunter's mien.  But now is not the time for that - it is time for a weighing of hearts, not a weighing of statlines.  And it is, truly, the moral component that she insists to the world shall matter, in her own first act.  That this shall not be an action that Elaine would regret, for she knows that her other other half hates to be the cause of suffering unto innocents just as much as she - whether they be beast or thinking being.  Let this spell be sealed with care and compassion - that it shall in these circumstances do no more harm than has been done, but in future use abide both mercy and necessity - for it would not do to fail in the world's defense, should such a horror of exigent circumstance come to pass, yet nor will she permit the infliction of harm simply because of a harm prior dealt, without the immanent need to prevent a future ill.

That this Light that shines forth from their soul in this moment, shall neither cause, nor falter in preventing, unnecessary suffering - she so binds their hands and deeds.  As she wills, so mote it be.

...Someone really has a sense for drama, and it is not her.  But it seems to be working, she hopes.

Even if it's a placebo, she'll take the placebo - because, as is quite clearly evident, so much of her cares all too deeply about...

These little critters, just trying to get by.

She, herself, wants nothing to do with them - is already brainstorming better isolation mechanisms, because clearly what she has is somehow proving insufficient.  But that doesn't mean that magivores are evil because of their diet, or that she wishes them harm.  That the spell will hopefully glance off in a scattering of probability and a flash of light if these things aren't hurting anybody...

Well, it's a selling point.

She's quite certain that if she plumbed the depths of her own self-knowledge, she'd find more predictably final solutions to problems involving things that are unfortunately alive.

But none of them want to be that.  So they won't.