Healing?

[Glenn]

In truth, the scene unveiling before Lamai should have been anything but terrifying to her. It was all the sort of thing she had dealt with before. Drow. Cults. Rituals. Blood and pain and initiation. Perhaps she had never dealt with them all at once, never so deep under the surface, never with so much darkness or quite so much blood.

Still, none of that warranted the warnings. None of that warranted the apologies. None of that warranted the sense of dread that permeated in the dank, stale air of this memory.

By now, the images she had seen had knotted together into a narrative. Glenn had crawled back to his feet with dark ambition. He betrayed newly found confederates almost immediately after committing terrible sins to win their trust. He had ingratiated himself with a self-centered daughter of a middling House. He had betrayed her trust as well by stealing hair and blood so as to enter and taint her dreams, and through them, the female herself. It all spiraled quickly from there. Burnie's mind WAS broken by this point. He no longer remembered why he was doing all of these things. All that mattered was success. All that mattered was defeating the fate Sarayn had set upon him, to prove her wrong, to not just survive but to thrive amongst her people.

Yet in the end, he was still himself. Faith and Common Sense as ever remained the two great blind spots of his intellect.

Glenn Burnie had a unique relationship with gods. Lamai had explored deep within his mind three times now. She had seen hints of his childhood: sold to a monastery as an infant, raised in a faith whose monks worshiped only stability and the senseless accumulation of wealth while they ground down their followers with intellectual and spiritual repression and ignorance. He learned from an early age the fallacy of a blinding faith. When he finally ran away, it was only to be overtaken by a mystical relic, thrust from one disaster to the next as a helpless pawn, no control over his life or his fate or his future. His hatred of religion and his hatred of magic did not stem from anything save for his own experience.

Gods were the worst combination of the two, beings of magical power that parasitically fed upon the fear and hope of the weak and the lazy and the scared. They offered promises of life beyond death, of gifts granted in exchange for sacrifices, of punishments levied if specific rules were not followed. They fabricated the backwards idea of "souls," and held back progress to maintain their power through blinding the masses with ritual and tradition.

He had chosen this pious House due to a certain ease of access and their blind fervor, yes. He would gain more credit with them through his betrayal than with others. The young drowess in question was simple and easily manipulated. More than any of that, however, he had chosen this House because it felt better to fool the faithful. It felt more natural. It was more gratifying, more satisfying. In his twisted state, satisfaction had been something he could scarcely resist.

And after all he had been through, what was there to possibly fear? What could come forward now that he couldn't handle? He could memorize lines. He could take whatever flaying he had to survive. He could pretend to be earnest and devout. He had done so before. Child's play, all of it. All he had to do was survive one more tiny, inane hurdle, one initiation, and he would be be well on his way to freedom or anything else he wanted.

In his arrogance and desperation, Glenn Burnie had overlooked one important fact. It truly did not matter if any god was truly holy. It did not matter if any ritual was sanctified and sacrosanct. Power was power and it could create or destroy just as easily whether it was divine or not. So deep beneath the surface, in the midst of a vile, ancient race, he was well over his head. This was not just a political game, a harmless manipulation. These were not just eccentric fools to be mocked and trifled with.

And the ritual? The ritual was a thing of power, a thing of power created solely to be withstood by the soul of a drow. It mattered little what exactly a soul was. All that truly mattered was that the intense magic flowing through the air during this initiation was focused upon something OTHER than the mind: a spirit, an essence, a lifeforce, something more than just the sum of one's thoughts and memories.

No matter his current physical appearance, Glenn was as human as could be, perhaps a bit frayed here and there by magic or trauma, but utterly human nonetheless. In this sacred hall where countless had been tortured, mutilated, and murdered, never had such screams crashed discordantly into the walls of stone. The ritual attempted to force all that he was into a shape that it could never be. Rivers of power flowed over him yet that simple fact could not be changed: Glenn Burnie was human. In the end, something had to give. Something snapped, and no, it was not the once-mapmaker's already crumbling mind. Something vital and primal within him became dislodged, no longer connected, lost. The very heart of him was torn asunder.

Physically, he recovered within days. His screams had been seen as an admirable sign and his initiation a success. Soon thereafter he was able to perpetrate one last betrayal, this one ending in blood and fire and riches.

He was still Glenn Burnie, a Glenn Burnie restored and revitalized, and his stubbornness drove him back to the surface, back to a crystal clear sanity. His goals remained the same but the methods no longer mattered. There was no line he would not cross. There was no hesitation, no introspection, no doubt, no fear, no remorse. Nothing would stand in his way as he perfected the place that he loved and safeguarded the people who lived there, HIS people, even from themselves.

The terrible truth was this.

The broken mind was merely a symptom.

Glenn Burnie had become a soulless abomination.

[Lamai]

Glenn. You foolish, blind idiot. What have you done?

Lamai kept her mind blank from a worded reaction. There were no thoughts of her own to permeate his memories, to even think that she was there at all. The images, the knowledge, it swirled around her faster and faster, almost as if it would eventually slide down into a drain and out of her grasp forever.

And then.. there.

A bubble was crafted, created, hidden. It was tied off and knotted around a dimly, floating light. There was protection.

There was nothing Lamai Carver could do for this, as it stood. She needed more help than what she had at her disposal.

She needed..

... goddamn it.

---

Lamai's eyes opened with a sudden, jerking inhale of breath as if she was coming up for air. Hands retracted, and she coughed a harsh sound. One hand covered her mouth, hiding the telling smear of crimson across her lips.

"Well.. " she murmured, fishing out her handkerchief from her pocket and calmly cleaning off hand and mouth. No mistaking the blood on either place, though she tried to pretend otherwise.

"... how do you feel?" Did he remember? Dear gods, please say he didn't remember.

[Glenn]

"Would you like me to take that for you?" Hospitality, thy name is Glenn Burnie. He hadn't missed the wiping, even as he was slow to sit up. Yes, really, give him a bit of your blood, Lamai. The smile seemingly had never left his face. He didn't sleep with it there but it was really only a near thing. "I'll get you a new one, gold embroidery with your new name. A lovely gift for you showing such care for me." He made no move to reach for it though, indicating that he was probably being facetious with her. "No? Alright, then."

But she had asked a question, hadn't she? "I feel fine because I am fine." And then, if anything else, the smile widened. "I do hope you received a wonderful welcome in there. No one's ventured into my mind in a long time. I hope it wasn't too full of dust and cobwebs."

[Lamai]

Not so fast, Glenn Burnie. That handkerchief was held close to her mouth; she still needed it, after all!

"I'll keep this one. I would hate to ruin such a pretty gift by getting blood all over it," Lamai murmured. Knowing what she knew almost made her shudder in the presence of that smile, but Lamai was stubborn and far stronger than that.

... and besides, there was a certain Bite to contend with.

"Quite entertaining, yes. We'll have to do it again, sometime." As if they had sat down and had tea. Of course, she wasn't quite getting up yet. Her head was far too dizzy for -that-.

[Glenn]

Tea and spiders. What a lovely afternoon that might be.

The smile bore into her. Did he remember? Did he not? Certainly his comments indicated that he had an inkling of the first part of the journey at least. Regardless, he was up and on his feet far before he should have been. She had one bite. He had a thousand-thousand, ever moment of every day, and that was on top of a very kindred sense of stubbornness, perhaps the only thing that forced the torrent within him to be channeled in an arguably constructive (if not entirely positive) direction. A different person with the same affliction might find serial murder a more engaging pursuit than provincial perfectionism, after all.

He was halfway to the door before turning his head back to her. "I realize I am unfortunately contributing to unfair masculine stereotypes, but yes, Lamai, now that we've finished with our little romp, I am going to leave you here without remorse and get on with my day. There's simply too much to do to lounge about. Feel free to make use of the bed if you're fatigued. There's an abundance of food downstairs as well."

The undertone to his voice was just a little too cheery, but the smile hadn't shifted in the least. One last lingering look, and then he turned his head and started back towards the door.

[Lamai]

Lamai discovered something. Even knowing why and what she needed to do, that smile still made her want to slug him in the nose. There was only a hint of restrained tension, and the fact that he'd not hesitate to arrest her for doing so was certainly a deterrant.

"Of course, Ser Burnie. Do enjoy the rest of your day."

There was one, big problem with Myrken. How was she going to find someone remotely religious enough to discuss the solution to the problem?