Room 115 - Mental Cases

[Samantha McManus]

"It's very simple. She gives them dignity. Whatever that's worth when you're cold and in the ground."

By this point she's visibly shaking, tensing.

"I give them meaning."

With that, she bursts into the flock of ravens again, all of them taking wing towards the battlefield.

[Miriam Bell]

"Sometimes there's no meaning to be had..." Miriam mutters a bit bitterly as she watches the ravens fly towards the battle.

[Samantha McManus]

Badb coalesces right in the middle of the chaos, with a sword now in-hand. With a fierce cry, she starts carving a swathe through the soldiers, with not much of an eye as to one side or the other.

This gets the attention of the washerwomen quite quickly, and they start to converge upon a single spot by the river.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam floats a little closer to the battle, though she still very much stays out of the actual conflict. She curiously watches the washerwomen.

[Samantha McManus]

The washerwomen all gather into what looks like a huddle before the fabric of their clothes starts to flow together. Ultimately the shape condenses down into a single woman. She's of similar build to the more mundane Sam that Miriam knows, save that her hair is stark white.

Her lack of a face hurts the resemblance a bit, too.

She turns towards the battle, striding towards it. The warriors part to allow her to pass, but don't actually look directly at her.

"Finally," Badb snarls, hacking her own path towards the other woman.

"It's not them you're angry with," comes the reply.

"Observant as always, aren't you?"

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam follows after Nemain through the corridor of warriors, still keeping a respectful distance.

[Samantha McManus]

By now the path is clear between the two, and Badb closes the distance in a charge...

...only to plunge her sword into Nemain.

There's no blood. Nemain doesn't even falter, and without a face it's hard to tell if she even feels pain from this.

Badb howls in anger, stabbing at her counterpart several more times with similar results.

"Why. Won't. You. Fight?"

"Because it's not about what you want."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam keeps a careful eye on Nemain, worried the attacks might wear the woman down, but she refrains from intervening at the lack of blood or really any kind of reaction. That probably means this is roughly going the way it's supposed to. Aggression and passivity, anger and calm.

[Samantha McManus]

There's a rumble from the hills like distant thunder. At the sound, Badb stops.

"Oh, now look what you've done."

"You knew what would happen."

"I knew you'd bring her into this."

"Neither one of us can prevail. She's needed."

Dark clouds are gathering in the hills, rolling into the valley and darkening it.

It might not be a good idea to be there when they arrive.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam backs away a little, but she didn't get here by being cautious. She wraps herself tightly in her shroud though, steeling herself for the storm to come. She tells herself she's weathered worse.

[Samantha McManus]

Nemain doesn't move at all, just awaiting the storm in her own way. For her part, Badb's frame tenses, her sword at the ready. How does one fight a thunderstorm, anyway?

As the clouds darken the valley, the warriors flee the battlefield, leaving just Nemain, Miriam, and Badb.

As the clouds are nearly overhead, a sudden gust buffets them. Badb digs her heels in and weathers it, but as it strikes Nemain she scatters back into the washerwomen, who are pushed back towards the river.

A bolt of lightning strikes dangerously close to Miriam and Badb, and when the blinding flash clears there is a woman standing at the point of impact. Her frame is a seeming compromise between the extremes of the other two, not as soft as Nemain, but not as angular as Badb. Her midnight black hair is bound up in a tight, severe bun, her eyes mirroring the thunderhead above.

Badb charges the woman with a cry, and with a clipped, precise movement the woman raises her hand. Lightning lashes out from it, and Badb is knocked sprawling back towards the forest.

Then the woman turns her stormy gaze towards Miriam.

"You're not supposed to be here."

[Miriam Bell]

"I was asked to be by Samantha." she says, not backing down from the woman but also showing no signs of seeking out a conflict with her.

[Samantha McManus]

"You need to go. Now."

[Miriam Bell]

"Badb didn't seem to mind my presence."

[Samantha McManus]

"Badb is not known for her impulse control."

[Miriam Bell]

"I was asked to investigate and for that I had to meet the rest of you three. She just showed me the way."

[Samantha McManus]

"And now you've seen. So you're going. Whether it's the easy way or the hard way is up to you."

[Miriam Bell]

"I don't mean to fight." she says, raising her arms as she floats up, trying to retreat form the depth of Sam's mind.

[Samantha McManus]

"You're not the one who has to put this house in order," Macha says as the stormclouds gather to close behind Miriam's retreat.

Back in the physical world, Sam is clutching at her head, apparently in pain.

[Miriam Bell]

"Oh crud..." Miriam mumbles as she stands up. She's a little unsteady on her feet but manages to walk over to Sam.

"Are you alright?"

[Samantha McManus]

Sam grits her teeth, unable to come up with an intelligible response other than a strangled gargle from vocal cords that seem to not quite be in one form or another. Her face pushes into the angular cast of Badb, before her facial features are swallowed up wholly by the blank skin of Nemain, her hair going stark white. Eyes, nose and mouth bud forth from featureless skin as her hair darkens to black. Her skin ripples, then pushes forth black feathers, then beaks, cawing in an unholy cacophony.

Then suddenly it all rights itself, leaving Sam panting in a cold sweat.

"What... what the hell was that?"

[Miriam Bell]

"That's what I'd like to know. Good lord..." she says. She doesn't look disgusted, per se, but still a little disturbed by Sam's body mirroring some of the things she'd seen inside her head.

"Uhm... I may have found what had bubbled to the surface. And there may have been more than just that."

[Samantha McManus]

"Did something... happen while you were in there? I've never felt that before."

[Miriam Bell]

"There were some parts of your psyche that... reacted a little explosively to each other. One of them was what surfaced during your night out in the woods. I may have brought them together so the other two would wake up. I thought that'd be better than just letting your Id be the only one to bubble to the surface."

[Samantha McManus]

"...can you try and rephrase that in a way that doesn't make me sound crazy?"

[Miriam Bell]

"I'm not sure I can, to be honest. They were buried pretty deep, but they were definitely there. They also had some strangely... mythological ideas about where they came from."

[Samantha McManus]

"That doesn't sound very encouraging..."

[Miriam Bell]

"If you ask me, they're a result of you trying to disassociate yourself from the minds of others. So you focused your mind into very specialized splinters that are easier to distinguish from the background noise. They claimed that you as the personality on the surface stems from them and as far as I can tell that's correct. Between the three of them they seem to have some kind of well established balance."

[Samantha McManus]

"So this is just... a defense mechanism of some sort?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Honestly, I can't tell for sure. But if it is then it's a deeply ingrained one. Look, I don't know how rough your time at Muir was and whether or not you fell apart enough for something so fundamental to take hold, but you wouldn't be the only one to, yeah?"

[Samantha McManus]

"I don't... I don't want to talk about Muir. I don't belong there anymore..."

[Miriam Bell]

"I'm just saying, these things leave scars on us all. There's no shame in that."

[Samantha McManus]

"Well okay. Just... don't tell Will about what you saw in there. I think admitting I used to have problems is part of what freaked him out."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam frowns a little. "About that... I think there's something in Will's mind that somehow corresponds to you. Are you sure you've never been in his mind?"

[Samantha McManus]

"If I was, it certainly wasn't intentional, Miriam."

[Miriam Bell]

"I kind of figured. I don't have to do this, you know? If you'd rather just sweep everything under the carpet you can just leave."

[Samantha McManus]

"I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, Miriam. I just don't know what to tell you."

[Miriam Bell]

"Well, would you say that your time at Muir was bad enough to cause something like this? I understand if you don't want to talk about it, trust me, but you can't just ignore this."

[Samantha McManus]

"Well there was... a fair bit of time where I just wasn't getting better, Miriam. They didn't know why I was shifting, and I couldn't tell them what it felt like."

[Miriam Bell]

"It'd fit. It would certainly make more sense than what they claimed. Which is that your codename isn't just that."