On the Material Plane, a wizard blinks.

She's no longer the only one in the room other than the stranger. An aasimar entered some time ago, singing. Terendelev and Hulrun both stopped by, but their business elsewhere was too urgent to wait. That elf girl is here for some reason. Several angels burst out of the Wardstone and flew Woundward.

And then she heard some very emphatic instructions, from something not quite aligned with this reality, Dopplering as it zoomed back to wherever it came from.

She considers this as she taps the stranger for another minute of Resistance, as she has every 48 seconds since his fugue began.

"Elf girl," she says.

"Yes?" says the elf girl, pausing her humming along to the Song of Elysium.

"Should I stop him?" she asks. (It doesn't really occur to her that the elf girl might not have context for the question, or that she probably isn't a relevant authority.)

(None of that occurs to Ember either, so that's fine.)

"Yes," she murmurs, walking over. "...I'll need to help him, when you do. He's being very silly."

Nenio nods. "I know of a cure for this."

She slaps him in the face with all of the strength in her wiry frame.

The slap connects, and the pain jostles him enough to realize that, you know what, maybe a good first step is removing his hand from the Wardstone.

He does that. From there, withdrawing the weight of the burden to the angels inside is straightforward. Physical contact with the enchantments inside was kind of important.

“Thanks,” he says, a little distantly, to the wizard who rather literally smacked some sense into him. He is aware enough to note that when the wizard smacks sense into you, you’ve been very dumb indeed. Oops.

Then he promptly falls over, because standing is doing a thing and he’s not going to be doing any things for the foreseeable future.

Ember catches him in her arms as he falls, for all that she's a dangerously skinny child and he's a grown man.

"You did something very brave," she says as she begins her work and the world fades to soothing black. "And very good. And it wasn't the best way you could have done it, but maybe it was the best way you could have done it and still be you..."

He has no idea what that last part means, or why a random child is here and also attempting to comfort him about his questionable choices.

Fortunately, he can solve this problem by ceasing to be conscious.

How sure is he that the problem will be solved? She's still there when he wakes up.

On the other hand, he hurts less, and there's less of a sucking void at the center of him. And he's in a remarkably soft bed.

Okay, admittedly going unconscious mostly just delays problems instead of solving them, but, well. Usually they delay them any.

"Mmmmhhi," he mumbles. He then gets to checking if he's been looted again. Has he been looted again??

His accessories are intact, but his armor has been appropriated; he is instead wearing a gold-embroidered white silk nightshirt. His weapons have been polished and are sitting on the bedside table, atop a (mercifully black) outfit that looks entirely too fancy. This entire room is too fancy. The girl looks wildly out-of-place; she's been bathed, and she's wearing a well-made black dress, but it doesn't have any gold thread on it.

"Hello," she says serenely. "I asked my friend if we could stay with him. I thought you wouldn't want too many people knowing where you were... that's scary, sometimes."

Honestly he doesn't even mind if his armor got looted. In context, probably not, but he was mostly wearing it for the get out of death for free bonus. The rest of his stuff essentially makes it entirely superfluous. ... Eugh, the nightshirt is white. This feels icky and wrong, even if he acknowledges that it makes sense with an outfit that looks much more acceptably black based.

"A bit, yeah. That's very kind of you, thank you. Um. I'm Veron, pleasure to meet you?"

"Yes! I'm glad to meet you too... people call me Ember. I've never gotten to talk about things with someone else like me. Would you like some soup?" She offers him a warm bowl of greens in rich vegetable stock. "I don't think you've been eating enough."

(She says this, apparently without taking notice of the irony in doing so while every bone in her body would be visible from the right angle.)

"I haven't been," he agrees, because he really didn't find the time. He hasn't even been able to go shopping yet!

... But he does notice that she also needs to eat more. This little elf girl is also the type to absolutely forget to eat, isn't she. Well, he knows how to combat this.

"Sure, if you'll have some too? A meal's better shared."

"I don't eat," she says simply, handing it over. "Or... I haven't. In a long time."

He will accept this, then. ... And nibble at it, he guesses. As much as one nibbles at soup, anyway.

"Why not?"

She tilts her head, birdlike. "I don't because I don't need to. I don't need to because... I'm not sure, really. I suppose I grew out of it, when I became the thing we are."

That's the second time she's mentioned 'thing that we are.'

"... You're an outsider-alike? Huh. ... I still need to eat, I feel ripped off. Do you need any weird things for your maintenance?" That he could perhaps go fetch, because he's an adventurer and that means you go on ridiculous side quests for people that help you, just because you can.

"Oh! Yeah, okay. I can see that. ... Probably still counts as outsider-alike, mind. I think outsiders get this sort of, er..." He waves vaguely. "Self knowledge for free, without all of the, er, stuff to get it? And I guess not as, uh, open ended as what I've got. Maybe it's only a little like being an outsider. Anyway, you should meet Deekin, he's got the thing too, and he's got a better knowledge of, uh. This kind of stuff??"

Also he's way better at putting explanatory concepts into words. That too.

Another giggle. She kicks her feet. "Yeah, I think outsiders are a bit more like what you are than what I am... but I didn't bring you here to get an explanation, I brought you here because I needed to explain something to you!"

She worries a spot in her cheek, trying to think of what to say. Soot speaks up instead. "Stupid."

"Soot! That's not - well." She shakes her head and takes a deep breath. "...it wasn't a good idea, what you did with the angels. I know you know it wasn't a good idea. But it was a worse idea than that."

"... Yeah uh, especially after my, uh. Other big dumb idea," he winces. "But yeah, uh. Go ahead with. The how."

"...me and you, and people like us. We have something that isn't like what other people have. Other people are just blood and meat and souls and magic, and they do things that blood and meat and souls and magic do. We used to be like that, but something changed. You learned your Name. I... um."

Ember gestures at the terrible burn scars all over her body, some of them still black.

"And now, it's not quite the same? We've still got all of that stuff. But it's not most of us. It's not the part that matters, anymore. We're a story. A story that tells itself. And - and sometimes the story is wrong. And you fight it. But that's a story too? And - anyway, when you're a story you can do things you couldn't do with your meat or your magic. Like telling demons to be nicer to themselves, like stealing light into Hell."

She pauses.

"And you're... still a story... but... some of you is missing? There's a lot of... context that isn't there... your story is big and powerful but it doesn't quite feel like it's about you."

He needs a few moments to parse that, but honestly, it's not as bad as talking to the Seer during her moments of being extra Seer-y. He... thinks he can understand?? Maybe?

"... My extra," he decides that even if the elf child is not a child he should avoid cursing in front of her on principle, "uh, epic nonsense, is missing, you mean? ... That would explain the emptiness I'm feeling, wouldn't it, yeah. The, er, blood and meat and soul and magic is all there, it's the extra nonsense that's missing. So, when I went and did some epic nonsense with the angels, I wasn't playing with a full deck. Metaphysically, not just being really extremely dumb."

"Yes... and, the thing is, a lot of your story is still happening, with kindly shadows and candles in the cold. And if you keep going, you'll get back into it. But when someone in a story does something that's brave and good and a bad idea, and their story isn't quite sure what it's about, sometimes the story is about how the world isn't kind to people who are brave and good and have bad ideas. And there are enough stories like that."

She gets a bit vehement towards the end, then covers her mouth. "Sorry."