Peony Min (blackmagicks) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-11-26 13:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, !plot: as i lay dying, peony min, sabina domicetti, toku matsudaira |
Who: Peony, Toku, & Sabina
What: New developments!
Where: Mages’ Tower - 9th floor conference room
When: This evening
Rating: PG
Status: Complete
There was no pattern. No matter how Peony wished to make some sense of the matter, she could find no rhyme or reason in the information gathered from the various clinics. Those who were ill seemed to have become ill entirely at random -- it was taking young, old, healthy, frail, men, women, children, nobles, and commoners. And there seemed to be nothing they could do to stop it. Cormac’s efforts were keeping many of the ill alive for now but it was a temporary measure. That was what kept them here, even after the sun had set. What were they going to do? Her hand was steady as she raised a cup of stone-cold tea to her lips and cast Fire, with hardly a thought, to warm it. Her heart, however, was in turmoil. She looked across the table at Toku and knew that behind his impassive expression he, too, was struggling. Merrion’s seat was empty. Before she could speak, however -- to ask, perhaps, if her colleague was having better luck -- the door swung open. Sabina Domicetti stood leaning in the doorframe, looking impeccable as ever despite the circumstances; she had been in the infirmary trenches all morning, fingers plunged into suppurating wounds, palms clearing away infection with holy fire, and yet not a single auburn hair was out of place. Still, all the make-up in Ivalice could not quite disguise the dark, tired circles blossoming beneath her eyes like bruises, and it was likely for the best that she'd spent the last few hours locked away in the library far from patients, buried beneath a heap of research. "Councilor Min," Sabina said, canting her head politely. "Councilor Matsudaira." She strolled to the table without further ceremony, plunking down a large leather-bound tome that had surely seen much better days -- the pages were yellowed so deeply they looked almost green, and the embossed title on the front cover had worn down to an illegible blur. When Sabina opened the book, the faint smell of mildew and rot rose from within. "I do hope I'm not interrupting anything... but I believe I may have found us an answer." Toku looked up at the woman and let out a relieved sigh. “Then you might yet save this city.” He had been writing on the same notebook for days, trying to find parallels, any detail he may have missed that could throw some light on the nature of the illness, but his efforts had been in vain. “Here, we only have questions.” One look at the tome’s spine was enough to identify it—time and questionable care had weathered it to a sad state, but it was unmistakeably the Mortissima by Amarinta von Hapsfeldt. Of interest mostly to white mages, but he remembered having read excerpts as a scholar. To think that a tome that had been in the Tower library all along held the answers, and this had escaped them until now… “What have you found?” he asked Sabina. "A cure, perhaps," Sabina said, simply, carefully turning the decrepit pages of the Mortissima to reach the final section. "This is a first edition printing of Lady Amarinta's epic. I had no idea such a thing was still extant, much less that it was mouldering in a forgotten corner of the stacks here." Tracing the words with one long finger, she stopped down the middle of the page. "This final appendix contains all of her original notes, which have been thought lost for at least two hundred years. Here, on page 807, there is a reference to… an herb." Sabina eyed the other mages, then clucked her tongue. "A bit of a longshot, to be sure, this herb that she doesn't even identify by name. But she describes its leaves, their colour; she calls it the all-salve. And three hundred years ago, it was thought to be the only means of curing a festering illness brought on by profane magicks." Peony was already looking over the page the white mage had indicated. The dialect was old, but not completely unfamiliar; it was not terribly difficult to read. The account of the illness was not identical, as far as she could tell, and some details were missing, but the description of something like a poison and yet simultaneously like magick, was exactly right. “And this herb,” she spoke, even as she continued to read the faded words, knowing that Sabina would have already completed her perusal of the tome before coming here. “Where do we find it?” "I'm pinpointing the location based on Lady Amarinta's descriptions. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you recall from scholarly studies, she had a maddening habit of speaking in riddles. Poetry is all well and good, but not enormously useful in a crisis." Sabina procured a map from her handbag, and rolled it out on the table. "From the temperature and geography she describes, I think we can safely place the location of the all-salve in the Emillion Mountains." She tapped the region in question, drawing a circle around part of the range. "I'll need the Rangers to confirm, of course -- topography isn't exactly my speciality." Sabina turned the page, indicating another passage. "Assuming this herb is as good as Amarinta says, I think it's our best shot regardless of whether this is exactly the same plague. The dispersal method she describes is the only thing I've encountered in my research even remotely similar to what we've encountered here." Reading aloud from the old tome, she continued: "And lo, though they knew their brothers neither by touch nor by voice nor by breath, the black rot did spread as if a dancer, taking its steps with each body in turn, methodical in its pirouettes..." Sabina clucked her tongue. "The problem is, the next part is about how to get the herb you have to fight a god-like monster. So. That's the fly in the ointment of this marvelous new scheme of mine." Toku listened to her words and exchanged a look with Peony when Sabina mentioned the monster. Perhaps it had been too much to hope for that obtaining the cure would be easy. Yet in spite of the difficulty, no matter what manner of beast guarded this panacea, he refused to give up when people were dying around him. And those that were sick would not be allowed to join the previous victims. His eyes flickered to the empty chair. “It’s more than we had an hour ago,” he said. “This monster will simply need to be defeated. The plague must be stopped.” He knew, from the look on Peony’s face, that he spoke with both their voices. Her brother was one of the confirmed cases; he knew that, like himself, she would do battle with this monster herself if she had to in order to obtain the solution. “Does the text provide any details on the guardian?” That tattered old tome was their only hope now. "Nothing concrete, I'm afraid," Sabina admitted. "Though it does seem to be an intelligent creature." She ghosted her finger lightly over the page, indicating another stanza of the lyrical account. "If attacked with a large force, it summons other beings to aid it. If faced alone, it is nigh-impossible to sneak past or catch unawares. Amarinta says that of her party's two attempts to defeat the beast, the large-scale battle -- though they were still forced to retreat -- had fewer casualties. A smaller party that attempted espionage was summarily slaughtered in the process." The white mage frowned. "Another thing -- she says you can't access the creature's lair from above. Or rather, air transport isn't sufficient, which you'd think it would be in the mountains. So I'm not sure if that means a cave, or some kind of tunnel, or what, exactly, but the last leg of the journey to the all-salve must be made 'on hume foot.' She's very specific. So we're looking at a ground war, rather than mages dropping bombs from on high." “That last is unfortunate,” Peony mused, still looking down at the book. No helpful illustration accompanied the vague description of the guardian. There were so many unknowns: if the herb existed, and if it could be found, if the guardian could be defeated and if the herb proved effective as an antidote the the illness making its way inexorably through Emillion’s population…. if they were very lucky in all regards, this could be the answer. “We may be able to find more exact coordinates, perhaps, based on other flora in the area and elevation.” There was more information on the herb in this regard than on what guarded it, it seemed. She looked at Toku, considering, and said, “Assuming we could find people willing to go, perhaps a larger group to seek the guardian’s lair… and a commander to make further tactical decision upon arrival. If someone wrote this, the guardian cannot be undefeatable, else how could the herb’s effectiveness be verified?” They had to make the attempt, of course. There was nothing else left untried. “That is my thought as well,” Toku agreed. “Amarinta’s party must have been successful at one point, or she would not have been able to verify the herb had the power to cure this illness.” He looked at both women, determination written on his face. “And if they could defeat it then, we can defeat it now.” "Surely it helped that they had a white mage of Lady Amarinta's calibre on board." Sabina rose to her full height again, eyeing the book imperiously. "Which is why I'm going." As if expecting protest, she raised a hand. "They can spare me here. I'm not the finest healer in this city, but I am one of your most powerful offensive mages, and if this thing is some sort of holy guardian the black mages may not have any idea what to do with it." Sabina closed the centuries-old tome, laying a hand protectively over its cover. "I'll continue to get what I can out of the book -- I'm copying out the vital passages, lest the damn thing crumble to dust in my hands. When we get back, all-salve in hand, I may yet copy out the whole thing. Get us a first edition recreation in mint condition." “Having you on the team will no doubt be a big help, Sabina.” Toku nodded. “Though I fear if this beast is as vicious as the text says, we might need any assistance we can get, from anyone who can give it. These are dark times.” He wanted to believe this was the first step to finding a cure, but he also knew the dangers of singing victory when they were not yet set out, and so he simply said, “We must do our best to protect this city, and trust that we will overcome.” It may have been a long shot, but for the first time in weeks, they had reason to hope. |