Memory Of The World

Uta's paces echo through the small hall of the Church. She walks one way, looks at the gate, walks the other way, looks at the gate. She takes one finger to her mouth to bite her nail, but she sputters in disgust shortly after. She forgot she was wearing gloves. She hesitates, gives her hand a quick shake, casts another worried glance at the gate, and resumes her routine. "Any moment now... should be any moment now..."

    It looks like the Gate just stands about, while there is little that will be noticed. It's like a light fills the place with that redigitization. Merek shimmers along into being, while he's wearing the usual attire he often does. The man then would kneel to the floor while he takes a look about the place, "Ahhhhhhhh!" The man stands up, while he nods a bit. "What!" The man notices that Uta's about.

Uta is startled at Merek's screaming, and clenches her staff tighter, pulling it closer to herslef, treating it more like a safety item than an instrument or a weapon. "AAAAAAAAH!", she shrieks in unison with Merek.

She blinks at Merek's question; still holding onto her staff, still with her arms pressing against her body, she stares, and after a short pause, she asks back, "What?", still kind of scared.

    Merek looks about the place, while he takes a moment to look into a hand. What he's wearing upon him, well it looks like Shadow Eclipse. "Ya, it wouldn't be easy like that," the man notes. Then he nods a bit to Uta, "Uta... I think. Ya, it's you. I think you were speaking to me when I was fighting." Then he walks to the woman, "It's been a day, right?" he asks.

"Merek you rediculous, crazy man you." It's not the first respawn she's seen so Shiruba knew it was better to stay back a bit and give him a chance to get his awareness back in order. "Welcome back to the living world. So to speak."

Uta fidgets with her fingers. "It's been both twenty-four hours exactly yes... and it has been quite an eventful period before that." She waits a little, glances at Merek, glances down, then back at Merek. "I get that to mean we are not mentioning our discussion at the battle. Good. Very good. Thanks." She straightens her back again. "Welcome back, yes," she adds, with a pull to her jacket to straighten it. "I'm glad you didn't die for real. Everything's alright, right? All fine?" She pulls up her menu, and while she runs a medical-grade inspection, she addresses her Cait Sith friend,

"...Shiruba, next time I should stand back like you did..."

    Merek seems to be thinking about it, while he nods to Uta, "Ya, words all of that, you know." The man then looks to Shiruba, while he speaks, "... What about everyone? You all were able to retreat?" he asks. The man takes a moment to place that Shadow Eclipse into a sheath. "... We need to find a way to save Hector, all of them. They are all pawns, there are honorable men, made to work in service of the Queen."

Shiruba nods her head as she walks closer. "Everyone else was able to withdraw while Hector was focused on you, yeah. Scouting reports that Hector also vacated the location after there was nothing else to fight over. Still, that was one of the most reckless, rediculous, suicidal things I've ever seen done!"

She puts a hand on Merek's shoulder. "Thank you."

"Yes, Merek. Thank you. We are indebted..."

Uta smiles and lets out a sigh of relief at whatever her HUD shows. "Good. You're in perfect health, as usual." She frowns at him. "Merek, how come every time I inspect you you're always the healthiest person I've ever seen... and yet, you're the only one of my patients I've seen die? Stop being that weird." She leans over to him, and almost whispers (but it's still loud enough that Shiruba can hear it in the silence of the Church) "...and yes, I am aware of the irony of this coming from me..."

She pulls back, crosses her arms, and starts pacing around the hall, not far from her friends, looking down at the floor as she does so. "...I have been thinking about that, actually...", she says, probably referring to Merek's revelations. "They have some sort of procedure to turn people into undead..." She stops, straightens her back, and looks up again. "...do you think it would be possible to take some tissue samples from Snowball, and devise a cure? I mean... it's possibly a long shot, and we're more in the territory of reverse necromancy than medicine here, but..."

    "You're welcome, thank all of you for waiting," Merek notes to the two, then he nods while he thinks about it. "I appreciate it, I don't know. I think that the medical thing is different while in this place and all," the man notes. There's a look to the place, "Anyway, I'm glad we won, in a way it looks like." The man pats upon the nice hand while he speaks, "Anyway, it looks like we're making progress with the war, we need to find a way to keep the undead from making forces. We will win."

"Not a perfect victory, but yes." Shiruba withdrew her hand and pulled out her map. "We pushed them away from the southern trade routes, making a larger buffer between the area they seem to be staging from and the populated areas around the Dominion capital. More importantly, the retreat of both sides' general ranks spared numerous Lander lives ... cuz if Hector had waded into the fight himself things could of gone -much- worse, just seeing how handly he swatted us aside once focused."

Uta keeps silent, index finger held vertically on her mouth, head tilted. She taps her lips a few times, then turns to Merek. "What about that sword? Did respawning finally free you from it?"

    "It didn't," Merek looks to the weapon, then nods a bit to Uta. "It's still with me," the man notes. Then he takes a look to Shiruba, "Aye, we will see about what we can do. It's important we protect the people."

Shiruba sighs a little. "As much of a bother that is.... it's probably better than them getting it back. If it was important enough to send Hector, one of the more self-composed of the Undead, into a rage, it... the Queen getting it back could be disasterous."

Uta, still pacing around, asks, "Sooooo... what do we do now? about all this? We... keep fighting the way we would otherwise have? Do we make use of any new information we have?" She turns to Merek. "Did you manage to gather any new information while we were retreating?"

    "I don't think we learned a lot, we did win," Merek notes while he nods a bit to Uta, then he takes a look to Shiruba, "I think that the weapon is pretty important. The person that gave it to the Queen... I think that's important. It made King Lethe the crazy man, it's possibly the whole reason all of this is an issue. If he never went mad, if the Queen never gave him the weapon. Well, I think it's important." The man looks to Uta, "I don't think they want to fight, they're just loyal to the Queen, using the King for loyalty."

Shiruba rolls her map back up. "It's.. not really relative to stopping the army, but there is something we may of learned." The parchmet is tucked back into her inventory. "Hector said something about humanity 'slipping away' from them... I swear I heard the King muttering something similar during one of the encounters. And remember how the Princess'... presence could remember very little of her life?" The wolfgirl taps one finger across her chin. "Like being 'undead' for an extended period of time wears away at... well the things that make a person a person. Look at how Hector still has some control of himself, while some of the other commanders we've seen are more intelligent monsters than former men."

"Is there nothing we can do, besides engaging in battle? Some... roundabout way to solve this issue? Or ease it, at least? I don't know..."

Uta starts pacing in circles around Shiruba and Merek again, rubbing her chin. "What else do we know about them... uhm... what was that about them wishing their story to be told or... something like that? Do we know more about that?"

    Merek takes the time to offer a little nod along to the two, while he seems to think about it. "Well, we can probably find what we can when learning about their leaders, I think if we find where the Queen is keeping that ruin we can win the war. We need to take on the undead leaders if we can."

"I'm still working on that," Shiruba replies. "But the magical ways the undead have been moving around makes them difficult to track. We were lucky I was able to deduce how much of their forces are focusing northward for us to hit a southern soft spot." Gives her head a shake. "It's not just expanding their forces, either. Wake and I found some kind of labor camp harvesting materials on a scouting trip... but the superior guardian forces drove us away before we could investigate deeper. It was the Harvester itself there, two of us alone were not messing with that shit."

Wow, Shiruba actually said a curse word. That must of been a serious encounter.

"In any case," Uta begins with a satisfied sigh, "I'm glad that you've respawned and are well Merek. You two take care, I have to go look for an Elemental Machine. Feel free to hit me up about it if you're interested, we might be about to crack some other interesting secret of this world."

    Merek nods a little bit to the two, "I am going to get back to the shop, you know get all cleaned up," he notes. The man adjusts the scarf which he wears, while he begins to walk to the entryway, "Thank you both. I will be on the chimlink for a little."

Shiruba stares at Uta for a moment as the Spriggan leaves. ".... Did she just say Elemental Machine?"