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Inner Sanctum First Floor | 12:01 AM | Third Day
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So it''s possible to be a little underground while not being ''underground'' as the system defines it. That felt important to keep in mind.
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amazing food.)
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Anomaly-Divining Arcana every fifteen minutes to check for incantations. That could be essential in figuring out how the Power itself has been suppressed. ...but unfortunately, I could find no clear record. it picked up Seth and Ptolema''s healing incantations, though, and Anna''s divination, so had the system been specifically sabotaged? I wasn''t sure off the top of my head how that could be accomplished, though.
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were some strange incantations cast in the underground - complex Aetheromancy too sophisticated for me to make sense of - some time recently; about a half hour after we''d first arrived at the main hall. That indicated that something had been going on.
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Phantasm-Projecting Arcana, a technique from around the turn of the millennium - it was being pioneered when I was still in university."
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everywhere else for one that matched the time so closely it could be reasonably assumed they had been the ones communicating. It was like it was designed to be user unfriendly.
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right. But there it was. At 11:00 exactly, communication had been established from the printing room.
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Oh, right. If you didn''t know where we''d found Lilith, it wouldn''t make total sense, would it?
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Yeah, this is your theory, my unceasing sense of universal background guilt said. You need to take responsibility.
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Saying it out loud, it almost sounds like a reach, huh. But then, so much about this situation was insane it felt hard to tell what was reasonable and what wasn''t.
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really didn''t look like a person."
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deeper issues," Kam continued, saying the words ''deeper issues'' in the tone so loaded you could kill someone with it. "But she can clearly understand adult concepts, and if there''s a reason she might not have normal feelings towards a parent--"
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certain."
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must, even in your... State. Do you think I''m incapable of getting the truth out of you?"
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period, Zeno did a pretty bad job of coming across as conventionally intimidating. For all their obvious skill in the Power, they had a certain ridiculousness - over-aggressive elitism and pride, along with obviously thinking they were by far the smartest person in the room - with an affect that made them come across as smaller, as opposed to someone like Anna, who had a naturally greater presence regardless of how she looked.
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creator of the entire discipline of Neuromancy. The Power couldn''t command the human mind directly, but above and beyond what could be achieved through the mundane use of chemicals, it possessed indirect means to make it suggestible, to go soft. Gods, I''d been subject to a couple during my acclimation treatment.
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behind all this." She snorted. "And Eshk, you heard what the redhead said a second ago - she''s right about that much. Anything could be going on inside the brat''s head. For all we know, she could think of herself as a three century old man."
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crabs with better survival instincts then you assholes."
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mother," Zeno said flatly. "Don''t get existential on me, now. What happened with the two of you?"
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my theory - I''d never expected to hear a straightforward admission, at least not like this. Linos''s mouth practically fell open, and Ophelia, who''d been defending her, looked the most shocked of all. Even Zeno seemed a little taken aback.
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no idea what to say. Lilith had always been strange, but this was like the person in front of us wasn''t even her anymore. That she''d been possessed.
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Huh."
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whom?" She demanded.
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What?"
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