[Plot] Sea of Holes

[Samantha McManus]

"I just don't want him to suffer."

[Cailleach]

"There's Communion in suffering. Ask Demesne's wielder, she knows. The Sparks respond to suffering as much as joy, perhaps more. It is easier to suffer terribly than to love deeply."

[Samantha McManus]

"But that's a choice, isn't it? He isn't beloved by his spark because he's a walking ball of trauma."

[Cailleach]

"No but he's hurting because he keeps throwing himself into the unknown, chasing his Spark's Embrace, seeking his truths."

"And do you want to know the terrible secret of the Abyss?" she asks, leaning closer. "It's all of our own making. We're not who we are because of our Sparks. Our Sparks are as they are because of what we offer them and they respond as best they can. Sometimes we share because what we offered is similar enough so we lay claim to certain branches and facets. But Legion is one and their Spark was forged from a single whole. It is theirs and theirs alone in it's entirety."

[Samantha McManus]

"The part I don't understand is why he's drawn to the titans."

[Cailleach]

"Kinship? Maybe he feels the Sparks that drive them. They're born as a response. An answer to a silent question. Purpose in it's purest form."

[Samantha McManus]

"But they feel wrong to me. To you as well, I'd bet."

[Cailleach]

"They do. They're an answer thrust into the world to an a question unasked. A naked thing scrambling for a shell. But to him I imagine they are a glimpse behind the curtain to a greater truth. He feels the Spark behind it, pulled from it's place and burdened with unwanted schemes. They are purpose seeking a body. He is a body seeking purpose."

[Samantha McManus]

"And if Li Ban is like us, she has to know that we're compelled to end them, to fix that."

"Even if we're not who she's trying to get at."

[Cailleach]

"She may not care. You must have noticed that you cannot simply sever them. The Sparks rest in our flesh and soul and it's how we ply them." she says, then hesitates a moment but seems to decide that their deal entitles Sam to more. "Why I cannot devour them here. Why the sweetmeat is more supple when it's bathed in the light of a Spark and why I learned of this faster than you. We take on just enough of others to let us pluck at their Sparks. Not enough to wield them but to ease them from their Communion when their time has come."

[Samantha McManus]

"Then isn't this what we're for? They aren't supposed to be here. She's bringing them back outside of their appointed time."

[Cailleach]

Cailleach frowns at Sam, clearly suspicious she's being lured into some kind of moral or divine trap.

"What she's doing is not supposed to happen. We can't be for something beyond what's meant to be..." she says very carefully. "But she needs be stopped before her workings become part of the Way of the Sparks."

[Samantha McManus]

"She can't be that powerful, can she? There's always friction when she does this. A wrongness."

[Cailleach]

"I do not know. She's plunged these depth far longer than me. We cast our minds into it and feel the ebbs and flows but she exists in it. She is not stronger than the Sparks but... in time, they change. Their rules exist solely because they exist in their covenant with us and if she forges new paths they may become a part of it. That mustn't come to pass."

[Samantha McManus]

"So if she's trying to teach them a new tune, we need to sing a better song."

Sure. That makes sense.

[Cailleach]

"A...better song? To all of them? They don't like or prefer, they simply are..." Cailleach tilts her head at Sam.

[Samantha McManus]

"But if she can change their ways, we can too."

[Cailleach]

"Blasphemy..." she says, though without the condemnation that might normally be associated with the word. "Change it how? Bar them from forming their own flesh in our world? You'd cripple us all, strip them of blessing us with the fluidity of our own skin. You suggest treading a very treacherous path, Morrigan. But perhaps it can be done."

"They like patterns and to sing a siren song that weaves a new truth into being... I will help you commit this sin." she grins.

[Samantha McManus]

"We know what the Titans feel like. We know it's upsetting to us. A wrongness, a wound."

"And as you said, if they ever decide they don't need us, this will be a world of mindless monsters and humans unable to push back."

"We're trying to find out more. We're trying to prime the clay vessel to survive the depths, to bring us all back safe."

[Cailleach]

"The... vessel?" She reaches down, hand slipping and crawling under the bark of the tree and Sam can feel Cailleach's thoughts slip past the surface and into her mind like cold, gangly eels. It's not an attack or even much of an invasion, just a cursory search for context, but it still feels a bit odd. Not to mention the ease with which she does it is a little disconcerting.

Then her whole posture changes. She fully turns towards Sam, leaning forward while still perched on the branch on all fours. Her pufferfish spikes grow longer into full-fledged spines and fins and quiver in excitement. "You seek to walk this place! In the flesh!? To swim amongst the stars in the deep! Raven Queen, you are madder than I knew! How? You must tell me! Nay. You must show me! I will accompany you!"

[Samantha McManus]

"I have a feeling they're not going to want to be locked in a submarine with you."

[Cailleach]

"Because I tried to eat them?"

[Samantha McManus]

"And because you helped trap them in a fantasy world. Other things besides."

[Cailleach]

"That was one time! Nobody even died." she harumphs, which makes her fins flare outwards like a billowing cloak.

[Samantha McManus]

"You don't play well with others. I just had to convince you to make the minimum effort to see my sister."

[Cailleach]

"Very well." she says, demeanor changing from puffed up gremlin to an almost regal posture with the fins serving as a kind of cloak. "If the Claymen are your chosen vessel then I recommend you bathe him in the Blood of his Spark. Call it as close as you can so when you rend the heavens asunder it is right beyond the veil. It's the one most responsive to your needs and the waters in it's wake are thick with succor."

[Samantha McManus]

"...the blood of his spark. You mean mutant growth hormone, don't you?"

[Cailleach]

"If that is how you must present it to the living machine. I would prefer anointing him in blood."

[Samantha McManus]

"He might be a bit big for that at the moment."

[Cailleach]

"Sounds like you need more blood." she grins. "Or a bottle but be honest, it would not feel right to 'christen' him now would it? That seems like something Samantha would do, not the Battle Crow."

"Tell me, do you hesitate because you're afraid? Of what you might become if you truly clad yourself in feathers? Because the Abyss will not bend to affectations and titles alone."

[Samantha McManus]

"Whyever would I worry, when I've got such a sterling example of where that leads?"

[Cailleach]

"Tchhssss! Those who cannot or will not see the truth cry madness. You think me a victim of circumstance? Deranged by the blood on my hands?"

Cailleach straightens her back and places her hands on the branch between her feet. Without the hunch she strikes much less of a furtive, withdrawn pose without giving up the more feral aspect of her finned and spiked body.

"My deeds are my own. I do not reject the nightmares for what they drove me to do. I am the Nightmare! The path leads wherever you choose to stride, Samantha."

[Samantha McManus]

"If you had no regrets about it, you wouldn't want to see our sister, Samantha."

[Cailleach]

Cailleach opens her mouth but her needle-teethed maw simply hangs open and for a moment her living attire disappears like wisps of ink in the metaphorical sea and she's reduced to a gangly young woman, clutching at a tiny branch in a vast ocean.

"We are who we can bear to be..." she whispers before her green eyes turn into black pits once again and her skin quivers and knots into the pitted hide of an octopus that mimics the bark of the tree.

[Samantha McManus]

"Courage cuts both ways, doesn't it?"

[Cailleach]

"Chose your own path. But do walk it." the bark-like heap mutters and Sam is getting the impression that Cailleach is withdrawing from this space as she merges back into the tree.

[Samantha McManus]

"...good talk," Sam sighs, and goes to withdraw as well.