fic - the faithful and the brave : 40 [novella]
Title: The Faithful and the Brave
Part: 40
The Faithful and the Brave
Part 40
Orbonne Monastery. Where it all started, and where it would all end.
It made sense, once they thought about it. Pargan had spoken of how the monastery had been built upon the ruins of an ancient palace. The lower levels of the monastery that they had explored had in fact been rooms of the palace. And that night, when they had encountered Templars below... The Virgo Stone had been stored there. The Templars had believed they could locate the 'key' there, from Pargan. Could not the 'gates of the Necrohol' also be there?
They didn't have the key or even know what it was, but they hurried south to Orbonne anyway. Duo had optimistically reminded them all that he was something of an expert at getting into places without keys. The best ways involved getting there before the people with the key. The journey would take them just under five days, but that would be cutting it close by their estimates. Noventa had predicted the fighting would start five days hence, and Dermail had planned for the war to generate more fuel for his summons. They did not know if the leader of the Knights Templar was aware that his mossfungus plot had gone awry, but they hoped it unlikely he would begin his work any earlier than the expected date.
Their days of travel were relatively unimpeded, with all attention concentrated on the impending battle in the lowlands of Fort Besselat. Though there was urgency in their travel, there was also opportunity to rest up and regain some equilibrium. They had suffered some physical injuries, but the battle against Treize had left them all heavy-hearted. It seemed to Duo that Heero kept himself from withdrawing into a depressive funk only with grim determination, which wasn't really great, but it was better than the alternative. Time enough to brood and grieve after he had his sister back.
There seemed more to it than that as well. Duo watched over Heero as he slept. At Sally's, Heero had confided that his sleep was uneasy, that the events at Yardrow lingered in the corners of his mind. It had only gotten better insofar as he had gotten somewhat used to it, and insofar as Duo was there to soothe away the worst of it. He still could not articulate just what it was that whispered to him in his sleep. He did not care to dwell on it over much. Time enough to deal with that later, as well.
Soon enough, they were at Orbonne, once more slipping in to the old monastery, though this time by day. They passed by Pargan's office, but did not stop. They hoped the old man had recovered from his beating at the hands of the Templars, but once was enough. There was no reason to involve him now. They remembered the way down.
Once below, Heero gave them a direction easily enough. Quatre could sense it if he worked at it, but it was uncomfortably plain as day to Heero. They felt unwelcome in the ruins' stillness, a feeling that grew more hostile and dire as they descended, but they pressed on determinedly until it passed.
Once beyond this unseen threshold, they had the strange sensation that the ancient palace was becoming less ruined, more pristine, rather than the other way around. The halls were still filled with dust and cobwebs, but the wall hangings were more intact, the furnishings more sturdy, the fixtures less tarnished. They thought maybe the distance from the surface had contributed to the place's preservation, and perhaps this was true, but they knew it was more than that when the lights on the walls began to respond to their presence, glowing softly as they approached, fading as they departed. There was something still inexplicably alive about this place, even fourteen hundred years after a monastery had been built above it. It seemed remarkable that no one had ever explored the palace's trove of pre-Cataclysmic artefacts, but maybe that oppressive feeling from earlier had turned all intrepid historians away.
It was around this time that they found tracks in the dust. Their destination became obvious soon enough. Bright light spilled into the hall through thick, unadorned doors thrown wide open. There was a hum of voices from within.
The large chamber could have been a natural cave, or perhaps just a room carved painstakingly out of the earth. At the far end, an ornate arch was embedded in the wall, emitting a faint light of its own. Standing before the arch was the Knight Commander of the Templars, hands outstretched. Sylvia sat wearily to the side in a puddle of rumpled skirts. One of the guards spotted them immediately and shouted a warning to his fellow attendants.
Well, no chance of subtlety, then. Duo had entertained brief notions of steathily creeping forward and slipping in after the gate had been opened, but apparently Heero thought it was a better idea to thwart their plans before the gate was opened at all. If he really had any ideas in mind aside from rescuing his sister as soon as humanly possible.
"Sylvia!" He shouted it like a war cry. His subsequent charge was saved from being foolhardy only by the scant three seconds he waited for his allies to prepare themselves to support him before rushing in.
Hope sparked across her face as their eyes met. "Heero!"
Dermail spoke no order. He did not turn away from the arch at all, but three of his men came forward immediately to meet their attack. The remaining two stayed behind, seeming to take up a guard position, but then there was a pulse of power, and they changed. Physically, there was little difference to be seen, but it seemed obvious they were now what Duo had so eloquently termed knight-things. They moved forward into the fray with menace.
Wufei let loose a stream of flame at Dermail, hoping to distract him from his task, but the spell hit a protective shell and dissipated. "Shit," Wufei muttered.
Sylvia stared at the sudden battle, darted a quick glance at Dermail, then gathered herself. She took a deep breath, chose a direction, and surged to her feet. She made it only a few steps before Dermail grabbed her by the arm and jerked her back. She cried out.
"Sylvia!" Heero risked a glance in their direction before having to duck and counterattack. Dermail began incanting a spell. Sigils on the arch started to illuminate, one at a time. With a growl, Heero kicked his opponent back and slipped past him, but the other of the knight-things appeared before him with startling speed and herded him back with an aggressive assault.
A third of the sigils on the arch were activated now. Heero found opportunity to turn away from his opponent to slash at one of the two remaining normal knights, distracting him enough for Duo to dart in for the kill. Quatre incapacitated the final one with both spell and staff, leaving the two unnaturally strong knights to guard against their advance. With uncanny ease, they were always in position to push them back. Trowa even attempted to jump over them, and somehow he was slammed back into the ground having barely left it.
Three quarters of the sigils on the arch blazed with reddish light. Duo pulled back slightly to get a clear shot on Dermail. The Knight Commander was keeping Sylvia close to hand, but Duo neither worried about his aim, nor about Dermail putting her in harm's way. He needed her alive. Duo threw a knife that should have hit Dermail right between the shoulderblades, but somehow it embedded itself in the forearm of the knight-thing that was suddenly in the path of its flight. He cursed, but its swift shift in position left its side open, and Heero took full advantage and sliced at its knee. It felt no pain, but basic anatomy was still in play. The severed tendons caused the knee to buckle, and Heero nearly severed its head as well as he rushed past.
The last sigil activated. The area within the arch flared and settled into a softly undulating quicksilver surface. Dermail marched through the portal with Sylvia in tow. She reached out for her brother, but Dermail shoved her forward and she was gone. The portal rippled as it swallowed them, and then snapped shut with Heero mere steps away. He struck the rock wall with two hands and a boot to halt his momentum, then returned to pound his fist against the stone with an inarticulate cry of rage.
He spun to continue the fight, but Trowa was already pulling his spear out of a smouldering knight-thing. They stared at each other silently for a moment before Heero turned back to the wall with his hand raised once more. He trembled, as if fighting the impulse, and slapped his open palm against the rock with another frustrated shout before turning back to them. "Now what?" he bit out.
They came forward to inspect the arch. The glow of the sigils had faded once the portal closed. "He was incanting a spell," Wufei noted. "Did anyone catch it?"
"The whole thing?" Duo muttered skeptically. He kept it quiet, knowing sarcasm wouldn't help here. He didn't want to be a part of the problem. He wanted to be a part of the solution. He had confidently assured them, assured Heero that he would find a solution. He doubted anyone had taken him very seriously, but doors, keys, locks... merely minor obstacles to be overcome in his line of work. The fact that it was a magic door with a magic lock and presumably a magic key, well, certainly not his area of his expertise but he was unwilling to be intimidated. He bit his lip and put on his thinking cap. He hadn't been quite foolish enough to promise Heero that they would find a way, but his resolve had seemed to comfort Heero in the night, and by all that was holy, he was going to follow through.
"He had a Zodiac Stone on him," Heero contributed distractedly, hand splayed upon the arch. "Possibly two." A tumult of emotion still roiled beneath his surface, and yet this arch, this arch that he wanted to smash for daring to defy him, this arch that was the only thing that could reunite him with his sister... with his nemesis... He felt a pull from it, almost as if he could will himself to the other side.
"Our Stones are dead," Quatre said, frowning. "But we can try..."
Trowa leaned nonchalantly on his spear and rested up. He had no expectation of being able to help solve this puzzle.
The sigils were no longer alight upon the arch, but Duo tried to recall them to mind from what brief glances he had been able to catch. Not symbols he could recognize, certainly, but one or two of them sounded a faintly familiar note within him. Had he seen them before? The Stones had sigils within them, didn't they? He stole a good look at the Stones Wufei had taken out.
Wufei held the Scorpio Stone taken from the Cardinal out to the gate. "Hmm, I'm not sensing a response. From the Stone or the gate."
Quatre concentrated, and shook his head. "The portal... felt somewhat similar to what we sensed when Sylvia was taken? Where their tracks disappeared in the woods."
"True..."
Duo couldn't tell at all if the sigils on the arch and the Stones matched. Maybe he'd seen their like elsewhere. Germonique's notes, perhaps? Not in the section that Pargan had translated, but in the back half, the bit Duo had been chipping away at. There were a couple of drawings...
"The spell!" he exclaimed suddenly. The mages turned to look at him. "From the journal! The one you started reading. I didn't recognize any of the words or anything, but the cadence of what Dermail was incanting... It matches."
Quatre pulled the journal out and started flipping pages. "Yes, of course, it's possible... Heero reacted to it, after all. Here it is. Heero?"
Heero's attention was turned inward, to the tug deep within himself that seemed to be getting more insistent. He thought at first it was some connection to his sister, wherever she was, but no, that wasn't it at all. He tried cautiously to open himself to it, felt some sort of resonance there, and then tried a bit more recklessly. The way was closed, but something was on the other side.
"Heero!" Quatre repeated more sharply when his friend didn't respond.
His focus jerked back to the present. "What?"
"Pull back from the gate for a minute." He waited for Heero to get clear before starting to read the spell.
It wasn't like the first time Heero had heard the spell. He was ready for it this time, defenses in place, but as during the fight with Treize, he felt it more clearly now that he was no longer being overwhelmed by it. It plucked at his senses, something old and dry and musty. He closed his eyes, and sensed pinpricks of energies from the rock around them. They sparked in organic patterns of movement, like fragments of ghosts struggling toward coherency. Faint echoes from beyond rustled in the background, a wispy bass line with a scattering of notes stumbling along an eerie, foreign scale.
"It's not working," Quatre said, completing his recitation of the spell. The arch showed no signs of activation.
"Well, it wasn't a bad idea," Wufei allowed. "Perhaps something else in Germonique's notes...?"
"Heero?" Duo said softly, not wanting to break Heero's concentration. Or trance. Or line of thought. Or whatever the heck he was engaged in, with that intense, faroff look on his face. Quatre thought nothing had happened, but he hadn't been watching Heero the way Duo had.
Heero was still for a few seconds longer before holding his hand out to Quatre. "The book."
"-- the connections between -- what?" Quatre thought about it for a moment before passing the journal over.
His brain was telling him that he was no mage. He was occasionally capable of minor spellcraft, but he had never attempted formalized incantation. It was far more than merely speaking a sequence of words, as Quatre had just proven. It was performed in conjunction with an invocation of power.
But it was a power that he had, or could tap into, he was sure of it. The particular power for this particular spell that he had and the others did not. A power that wanted to be tapped. A power that had flowed through him that night at Yardrow, when he had brushed up against what was waiting on the other side of this gate. A power that had left some mark behind.
He started to read. He stumbled a bit at first, but within a few words, he caught their rhythm, or they caught him. Foreign energy welled up within him, tendrils of which reached out to the arch and found anchorage there. The light seemed once more to dance across his vision like spirits from the past. The background sussuration rose and fell like chanting that matched the cadence of his incantation.
"It's working," Quatre whispered, watching the sigils of the arch light one by one.
"Ha," Duo said softly, punching Trowa in the arm. "Told ya I'd figure out the key."
The high notes found their way through the noise and became the clang of metal upon metal, shouts and screams. He smelled blood, and remembered that the ancient palace fell in violence. They'd seen the evidence of battle in the upper halls. And now, shadows beneath the light, hinting at deeper, darker presences that seemed to be getting closer, closer...
He spoke the last words and the portal opened once more, its silvery surface looking elegant and benign. He barely realized he was walking toward it until Duo's hand on his shoulder pulled him to a stop. He waited impatiently for the few seconds it took for them to form up, skin crawling with the need to go through the gate and meet what was on the other side. He sensed completion waiting for him there, so close.
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This entry was originally posted at https://turnippatch.dreamwidth.org/162574.html.
Part: 40
The Faithful and the Brave
Part 40
Orbonne Monastery. Where it all started, and where it would all end.
It made sense, once they thought about it. Pargan had spoken of how the monastery had been built upon the ruins of an ancient palace. The lower levels of the monastery that they had explored had in fact been rooms of the palace. And that night, when they had encountered Templars below... The Virgo Stone had been stored there. The Templars had believed they could locate the 'key' there, from Pargan. Could not the 'gates of the Necrohol' also be there?
They didn't have the key or even know what it was, but they hurried south to Orbonne anyway. Duo had optimistically reminded them all that he was something of an expert at getting into places without keys. The best ways involved getting there before the people with the key. The journey would take them just under five days, but that would be cutting it close by their estimates. Noventa had predicted the fighting would start five days hence, and Dermail had planned for the war to generate more fuel for his summons. They did not know if the leader of the Knights Templar was aware that his mossfungus plot had gone awry, but they hoped it unlikely he would begin his work any earlier than the expected date.
Their days of travel were relatively unimpeded, with all attention concentrated on the impending battle in the lowlands of Fort Besselat. Though there was urgency in their travel, there was also opportunity to rest up and regain some equilibrium. They had suffered some physical injuries, but the battle against Treize had left them all heavy-hearted. It seemed to Duo that Heero kept himself from withdrawing into a depressive funk only with grim determination, which wasn't really great, but it was better than the alternative. Time enough to brood and grieve after he had his sister back.
There seemed more to it than that as well. Duo watched over Heero as he slept. At Sally's, Heero had confided that his sleep was uneasy, that the events at Yardrow lingered in the corners of his mind. It had only gotten better insofar as he had gotten somewhat used to it, and insofar as Duo was there to soothe away the worst of it. He still could not articulate just what it was that whispered to him in his sleep. He did not care to dwell on it over much. Time enough to deal with that later, as well.
Soon enough, they were at Orbonne, once more slipping in to the old monastery, though this time by day. They passed by Pargan's office, but did not stop. They hoped the old man had recovered from his beating at the hands of the Templars, but once was enough. There was no reason to involve him now. They remembered the way down.
Once below, Heero gave them a direction easily enough. Quatre could sense it if he worked at it, but it was uncomfortably plain as day to Heero. They felt unwelcome in the ruins' stillness, a feeling that grew more hostile and dire as they descended, but they pressed on determinedly until it passed.
Once beyond this unseen threshold, they had the strange sensation that the ancient palace was becoming less ruined, more pristine, rather than the other way around. The halls were still filled with dust and cobwebs, but the wall hangings were more intact, the furnishings more sturdy, the fixtures less tarnished. They thought maybe the distance from the surface had contributed to the place's preservation, and perhaps this was true, but they knew it was more than that when the lights on the walls began to respond to their presence, glowing softly as they approached, fading as they departed. There was something still inexplicably alive about this place, even fourteen hundred years after a monastery had been built above it. It seemed remarkable that no one had ever explored the palace's trove of pre-Cataclysmic artefacts, but maybe that oppressive feeling from earlier had turned all intrepid historians away.
It was around this time that they found tracks in the dust. Their destination became obvious soon enough. Bright light spilled into the hall through thick, unadorned doors thrown wide open. There was a hum of voices from within.
The large chamber could have been a natural cave, or perhaps just a room carved painstakingly out of the earth. At the far end, an ornate arch was embedded in the wall, emitting a faint light of its own. Standing before the arch was the Knight Commander of the Templars, hands outstretched. Sylvia sat wearily to the side in a puddle of rumpled skirts. One of the guards spotted them immediately and shouted a warning to his fellow attendants.
Well, no chance of subtlety, then. Duo had entertained brief notions of steathily creeping forward and slipping in after the gate had been opened, but apparently Heero thought it was a better idea to thwart their plans before the gate was opened at all. If he really had any ideas in mind aside from rescuing his sister as soon as humanly possible.
"Sylvia!" He shouted it like a war cry. His subsequent charge was saved from being foolhardy only by the scant three seconds he waited for his allies to prepare themselves to support him before rushing in.
Hope sparked across her face as their eyes met. "Heero!"
Dermail spoke no order. He did not turn away from the arch at all, but three of his men came forward immediately to meet their attack. The remaining two stayed behind, seeming to take up a guard position, but then there was a pulse of power, and they changed. Physically, there was little difference to be seen, but it seemed obvious they were now what Duo had so eloquently termed knight-things. They moved forward into the fray with menace.
Wufei let loose a stream of flame at Dermail, hoping to distract him from his task, but the spell hit a protective shell and dissipated. "Shit," Wufei muttered.
Sylvia stared at the sudden battle, darted a quick glance at Dermail, then gathered herself. She took a deep breath, chose a direction, and surged to her feet. She made it only a few steps before Dermail grabbed her by the arm and jerked her back. She cried out.
"Sylvia!" Heero risked a glance in their direction before having to duck and counterattack. Dermail began incanting a spell. Sigils on the arch started to illuminate, one at a time. With a growl, Heero kicked his opponent back and slipped past him, but the other of the knight-things appeared before him with startling speed and herded him back with an aggressive assault.
A third of the sigils on the arch were activated now. Heero found opportunity to turn away from his opponent to slash at one of the two remaining normal knights, distracting him enough for Duo to dart in for the kill. Quatre incapacitated the final one with both spell and staff, leaving the two unnaturally strong knights to guard against their advance. With uncanny ease, they were always in position to push them back. Trowa even attempted to jump over them, and somehow he was slammed back into the ground having barely left it.
Three quarters of the sigils on the arch blazed with reddish light. Duo pulled back slightly to get a clear shot on Dermail. The Knight Commander was keeping Sylvia close to hand, but Duo neither worried about his aim, nor about Dermail putting her in harm's way. He needed her alive. Duo threw a knife that should have hit Dermail right between the shoulderblades, but somehow it embedded itself in the forearm of the knight-thing that was suddenly in the path of its flight. He cursed, but its swift shift in position left its side open, and Heero took full advantage and sliced at its knee. It felt no pain, but basic anatomy was still in play. The severed tendons caused the knee to buckle, and Heero nearly severed its head as well as he rushed past.
The last sigil activated. The area within the arch flared and settled into a softly undulating quicksilver surface. Dermail marched through the portal with Sylvia in tow. She reached out for her brother, but Dermail shoved her forward and she was gone. The portal rippled as it swallowed them, and then snapped shut with Heero mere steps away. He struck the rock wall with two hands and a boot to halt his momentum, then returned to pound his fist against the stone with an inarticulate cry of rage.
He spun to continue the fight, but Trowa was already pulling his spear out of a smouldering knight-thing. They stared at each other silently for a moment before Heero turned back to the wall with his hand raised once more. He trembled, as if fighting the impulse, and slapped his open palm against the rock with another frustrated shout before turning back to them. "Now what?" he bit out.
They came forward to inspect the arch. The glow of the sigils had faded once the portal closed. "He was incanting a spell," Wufei noted. "Did anyone catch it?"
"The whole thing?" Duo muttered skeptically. He kept it quiet, knowing sarcasm wouldn't help here. He didn't want to be a part of the problem. He wanted to be a part of the solution. He had confidently assured them, assured Heero that he would find a solution. He doubted anyone had taken him very seriously, but doors, keys, locks... merely minor obstacles to be overcome in his line of work. The fact that it was a magic door with a magic lock and presumably a magic key, well, certainly not his area of his expertise but he was unwilling to be intimidated. He bit his lip and put on his thinking cap. He hadn't been quite foolish enough to promise Heero that they would find a way, but his resolve had seemed to comfort Heero in the night, and by all that was holy, he was going to follow through.
"He had a Zodiac Stone on him," Heero contributed distractedly, hand splayed upon the arch. "Possibly two." A tumult of emotion still roiled beneath his surface, and yet this arch, this arch that he wanted to smash for daring to defy him, this arch that was the only thing that could reunite him with his sister... with his nemesis... He felt a pull from it, almost as if he could will himself to the other side.
"Our Stones are dead," Quatre said, frowning. "But we can try..."
Trowa leaned nonchalantly on his spear and rested up. He had no expectation of being able to help solve this puzzle.
The sigils were no longer alight upon the arch, but Duo tried to recall them to mind from what brief glances he had been able to catch. Not symbols he could recognize, certainly, but one or two of them sounded a faintly familiar note within him. Had he seen them before? The Stones had sigils within them, didn't they? He stole a good look at the Stones Wufei had taken out.
Wufei held the Scorpio Stone taken from the Cardinal out to the gate. "Hmm, I'm not sensing a response. From the Stone or the gate."
Quatre concentrated, and shook his head. "The portal... felt somewhat similar to what we sensed when Sylvia was taken? Where their tracks disappeared in the woods."
"True..."
Duo couldn't tell at all if the sigils on the arch and the Stones matched. Maybe he'd seen their like elsewhere. Germonique's notes, perhaps? Not in the section that Pargan had translated, but in the back half, the bit Duo had been chipping away at. There were a couple of drawings...
"The spell!" he exclaimed suddenly. The mages turned to look at him. "From the journal! The one you started reading. I didn't recognize any of the words or anything, but the cadence of what Dermail was incanting... It matches."
Quatre pulled the journal out and started flipping pages. "Yes, of course, it's possible... Heero reacted to it, after all. Here it is. Heero?"
Heero's attention was turned inward, to the tug deep within himself that seemed to be getting more insistent. He thought at first it was some connection to his sister, wherever she was, but no, that wasn't it at all. He tried cautiously to open himself to it, felt some sort of resonance there, and then tried a bit more recklessly. The way was closed, but something was on the other side.
"Heero!" Quatre repeated more sharply when his friend didn't respond.
His focus jerked back to the present. "What?"
"Pull back from the gate for a minute." He waited for Heero to get clear before starting to read the spell.
It wasn't like the first time Heero had heard the spell. He was ready for it this time, defenses in place, but as during the fight with Treize, he felt it more clearly now that he was no longer being overwhelmed by it. It plucked at his senses, something old and dry and musty. He closed his eyes, and sensed pinpricks of energies from the rock around them. They sparked in organic patterns of movement, like fragments of ghosts struggling toward coherency. Faint echoes from beyond rustled in the background, a wispy bass line with a scattering of notes stumbling along an eerie, foreign scale.
"It's not working," Quatre said, completing his recitation of the spell. The arch showed no signs of activation.
"Well, it wasn't a bad idea," Wufei allowed. "Perhaps something else in Germonique's notes...?"
"Heero?" Duo said softly, not wanting to break Heero's concentration. Or trance. Or line of thought. Or whatever the heck he was engaged in, with that intense, faroff look on his face. Quatre thought nothing had happened, but he hadn't been watching Heero the way Duo had.
Heero was still for a few seconds longer before holding his hand out to Quatre. "The book."
"-- the connections between -- what?" Quatre thought about it for a moment before passing the journal over.
His brain was telling him that he was no mage. He was occasionally capable of minor spellcraft, but he had never attempted formalized incantation. It was far more than merely speaking a sequence of words, as Quatre had just proven. It was performed in conjunction with an invocation of power.
But it was a power that he had, or could tap into, he was sure of it. The particular power for this particular spell that he had and the others did not. A power that wanted to be tapped. A power that had flowed through him that night at Yardrow, when he had brushed up against what was waiting on the other side of this gate. A power that had left some mark behind.
He started to read. He stumbled a bit at first, but within a few words, he caught their rhythm, or they caught him. Foreign energy welled up within him, tendrils of which reached out to the arch and found anchorage there. The light seemed once more to dance across his vision like spirits from the past. The background sussuration rose and fell like chanting that matched the cadence of his incantation.
"It's working," Quatre whispered, watching the sigils of the arch light one by one.
"Ha," Duo said softly, punching Trowa in the arm. "Told ya I'd figure out the key."
The high notes found their way through the noise and became the clang of metal upon metal, shouts and screams. He smelled blood, and remembered that the ancient palace fell in violence. They'd seen the evidence of battle in the upper halls. And now, shadows beneath the light, hinting at deeper, darker presences that seemed to be getting closer, closer...
He spoke the last words and the portal opened once more, its silvery surface looking elegant and benign. He barely realized he was walking toward it until Duo's hand on his shoulder pulled him to a stop. He waited impatiently for the few seconds it took for them to form up, skin crawling with the need to go through the gate and meet what was on the other side. He sensed completion waiting for him there, so close.
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This entry was originally posted at https://turnippatch.dreamwidth.org/162574.html.