The Temple of Inari 57: Life goes on

[Fenric]

A very valid point...

Kenji smiles and nods

I'm sure they would love that!

The koi have been milling around, talking quietly to each other and occasionally eating random things. It doesn't really make sense, but then again when do these off-kilter spirit worlds ever make sense?

[Ironsmith]

Braeg smiles and slows the tune to a slower, melancholy melody, a wistful look in his eye as he plucks out the first few bars and takes a little "breath" to start the first line of his song.

Watch that old fire, as it flickers and dies
That once blessed the household and lit up our lives
It shone for the friends and the clinking of glasses
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes

Strange. There was definitely more than just Braeg's voice singing that line. But nobody else here knew this song, more than likely. He wasn't... exactly using magic, either. Those voices were very much real, they'd simply been silent until now.

Capture the wild things and bring them in line
And own what was never your right to confine
The lives, and the loves, and the songs are what matters
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes

Strange also; it didn't sound like it was just Braeg playing now, either. The notes don't align with his plucking, and even if they did, the sounds that result simply can't come from a lute... there's also a violin, or maybe a cello, and some kind of woodwind in the background.

Do you feel heavy? Your eyes drop with grief
Your spirit is wild and your suffering is brief
So never you buckle or bend to the masses
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes

It's not just a song anymore, either. The light in the little koi realm flickers and dances, maybe something like the surface of a pond at noon, at first, but now something more like the moody glow of a dying campfire. Shadows dance across the floor, both figuratively and literally. A few quietly offer to partner with the koi, holding out their hands in invitation.

Get round the fire with a glass of strong ale
And tell us a story from beyond the pale
Bury some seeds and expect some strong branches
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes

Now show me a man that can meet all his needs
For what we need most now is unity's seed
A common old song for all creeds and all classes
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes

As abruptly as all of these visions came, they vanish, recoiling into the dark, which itself fades away, back to the regular lighting of the koi pond. When Braeg opens his mouth again, the only voice heard is his.

What will we do when the world, it is ending
And time it is halted for friend and for foe?
Try to hold on to the time as it passes

I'll tend to the flame...

He pauses, both his lute and voice briefly going silent, letting the weight of the words rest on his audience, before he plucks out the last few notes.

You can worship the ashes.

[Fenric]

The koi adopot somber posture and slowly dance, accepting the new shadowy partners without hesitation.

Kenji listens, very impressed by Braeg's magical minstrly. He claps softly at the end as the koi go back to their aimless wandering.

That was really amazing, Braeg.

[Ironsmith]

Braeg smirks. "Of course it was. I've had a few hundred years to practice." The fiendling chuckles and tucks his instrument under his cloak, where it disappears from reality as quickly as it does from view. "Well, this was an amusing little diversion. I might be back sometime, or I might not. We'll see how the mood takes me." If Kenji doesn't stop him, Braeg will waggle his fingers in farewell and disappear in a cloud of earthy green smoke.

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

A new person arrives at the temple today. This one being a tall, cream-colored minotaur in a jacket and green pants. Her clothes and small amount of jewelry look expensive but not obnoxiously so. Mina has found herself with money but still isn’t comfortable spending it.

[Fenric]

And so the rehydration of old characters proceeds. Felina is here today, her robes showing she has attained the fifth rank in the intervening years.

She turns to Mina and bows politely

Greetings, neighbor: the blessings of Inari be upon you. What can we do for you today?

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Mina returns the bow with a nod.
"My name's Mina." she says with a young voice that sounds very slightly Japanese.
"I came to ask for advice and possibly help for a friend. He is very ancient, you see. He was the chosen weapon for my past life. I mean literally, like, he was a talking sai. But I only found him again last week. And a few days after that there was a magical incident. He was thrown into a mortal form a very long time in the past.
The celestial bureaucracy of his homeworld set things up so that he could use it as a means to get things set up for me. He got me land, an estate, and a good deal of money. But he keeps nothing for himself. He is over a century old, now. He doesn't need to eat, so he doesn't even though he's rail-thin. He can barely see. I tell him that this is all very cruel: He has done me a service, but he seems to be near the end of his life and we've only had five days together.

He's a rude, loud-mouthed jerk, but he's been loyal for centuries and he refuses to have anything to show for it."
Mina blinks, realizing she just went on a bit of a tirade.
"I'm sorry for dumping that all at once. I haven't been able to vent about this to anyone."

[Fenric]

Felina tilts her head and her ears flick as Mina explains

Well... that's something else, to be sure. So ... um ... what sort of advice or help were you looking for? I'm not really sure what you are hoping for...

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Right she really did dump a lot on that.
"I guess I want to ask if I should just accept that this is part of the big Celestial Plan. I want to believe that, but they also reincarnated me as a very small person and then rudely changed their mind and zapped me back into being Tarr, Demon Slayer. So um. I guess it's a question of faith.

And also I was kind of going to ask if you had any magic to help with a very elderly person with physical maladies."

[Fenric]

Felina snorts

Sorry... it's not my place to air my feelings about the Celestial Bureaucracy. And perhaps yours isn't quite the same as the one I'm used to...

then she winces

Old age doesn't respond to treatement all that well. There are certainly medicines to help with pain and loss of appetite, but have you considered that perhaps he's tired and wants to move on? Mortal souls don't really handle residing in a body all that much beyond their maximum natural lifespan - at the very least they get tired and grumpy, at worst they go flat out insane. If he's really been that selfless and all, he's probably in a pretty good spot to face the Judge of the Dead.

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Mina raises an eyebrow.
"That's the thing- no, and no. He doesn't have a mortal soul- he's a sapient weapon who up until recently spent two thousand years in a sealed box waiting for me, and was still intent enough in his mission to spend several days indicating his long-term plans for coaching me. That doesn't mean he's not a person but his mind doesn't work like a mortal's. And I'm afraid that might also mean if he doesn't have a mortal soul I have no idea if They will send him back to me as another weapon when his body gives out, or if they'll just discard him since he was supposed to be immortal until this incident.

And also, he is so incredibly blunt that he told me after waiting two millennia for me, that I was in awful shape and promptly had me gain five hundred pounds of bovine muscle, then called me a harlot for wanting to show it off a little. So when he told me he has no plans to shuffle off the coil soon, I believe him."

[Fenric]

Felina looks thoughtful - in her world, there is no mind without a soul, so this is a new wrinkle for her.

Hm... And he certainly sounds like a sentient weapon, yes: they're not known for their charm. Um... Have you considered getting him changed back into a sai? I have to admit we're a bit far afield from what I am familiar with.

Having to discard all of the relatively straightforward solutions she would normally suggest has her looking rather perplexed, and she fishes for any further information to help bring clarity.

Could you elaborate on this magical incident you referred to? What happened?

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

To be fair, Mina doesn't know whether or not he has a soul- she's only sure that he can't have a mortal mind and soul, because any mortal mind would have gone entirely mad sitting in a box for so long.
Maybe he passed the time making calls.
"He seemed to think he'd rather go back to being a weapon, but considers his current self the will of his- our pantheon." If they had jurisdiction to give her Tarr's physical form, they're still tangentially her gods.
"A stranger approached myself and a friend of mine offering boons. Then she got agitated when we refused and vanished. When she did so, Sai was gone, I was wearing nicer clothes, and my friend had been given a second body she could control at will. From the sound of it, Sai was sent to Skyside as a mortal minotaur about my age, a hundred years in the past.
We know that this stranger wasn't one of his 'Friends' but he thinks that they might have co-opted the effect put on him to suit my needs better."

[Fenric]

Felina looks nonplussed

There aren't many people around here who would act like that, and I won't say any of their names out loud.

But that hardly seems like it would have any relation to your pantheon at all, assuming they're anything like the Celestial Bureaucracy I'm used to... if you're under the Ministry of the Left, then change is fair game but so is changing back. If instead you're under the Ministry of the Right, then change is not quite forbidden and I would have thought you'd have known ahead of time that they were issuing an order for him to take on a new form.

Not that it really matters... even if it was a full-on imperial decree, the emperor and the two ministers are hardly the ultimate authority in the universe no matter what they like to think. If he really wanted to be back in his old form, that could be arranged... one way or another.

Then she looks at Mina

But... is any of that sort of thing what you were looking for? What is it you would like to see happen?

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

"There might have been a decree. They aren't answering his calls. Or mine, not that they ever have." Mina grumbles. Her prayers have never been very pious.
"I just want the poor guy to be happy. To live a little. He's been mortal for a century but he still considers himself just a tool for me to use. He made an estate and still wears a robe that costs two silver pieces. He sounds like he'd rather go back to being steel but I wouldn't do that to him without his express consent on the matter. At this point I'd settle for helping him be less blind and maybe giving him some of his time back."
It's hard to convince him to go out and live a life when his top walking speed is a low shuffle.
And when despite that he still has enough moves to evade her attempts to push him out the door.

[Fenric]

Felina tilts her head

Potion of Youth, Potion of Longevity, two ibuprofen caplets and a pair of glasses... pretty much in that order? It won't honestly fix everything and he'll need the painkillers because those two potions in that order make you feel like you've been thumped soundly by four burly men with cudgels for an hour. But it'll roll it back quite a bit and reset him ... some?

she shrugs

Everyone responds to the youth potion a bit differently. It's pretty rare that it can do more than half your current age, and sometimes it can't even do that much, but it's better than nothing.

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Mina nods. She doesn't really know how much longevity he'd need since the old bull has to be pushing 120 biologically right now.
"Right now he can't see more than four feet in front of him. I can't tell if his eyes are actually that bad or he just refuses to try glasses. I think it's probably the former. If it impacted his work he'd probably have gone for it." Sai is stubborn but he has some pragmatism.

[Fenric]

You need the longevitiy to "set" the potion of youth, otherwise you just go back to old when it wears off.

Felina shakes her head

Eyes are tricky, we'd really have to see him and inspect them directly. Generalized healing potions and spells do nothing at all for natural age-related conditions, and a Salve of Clear Vision can do more harm than good if he's got glaucoma or macular degeneration or a detached retina... it would cure cataracts, though. Do his eyes look cloudy in bright light?

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Mina stops to consider.
"If the potion gives him ten years back, his eyes might get better on their own. They do seem a little cloudy, I think." she hasn't quite stared at them much close-up since that would be obvious even to Sai.

[Fenric]

Felina nods

It's possible, yes. It's always hard to guess exactly which conditions will get reversed, but no there's harm in doing things in stages. Do you want to try the potions, then? I don't have any ibuprofen handy, but you can get that at any random drugstore, supermarket, or convenience shop.

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Mina nods. "Yes, I'll try it. It'll be up to him if he wants to take them. What do you need from me for them?" They certainly won't be handing these things out for free, right?

[Fenric]

Felina nods

Just a moment.

She pulls a cellphone out of her sleeve-pocket and dials. After a moment, she asks

Price check: one 17555, one 17556 to Nexus Temple Inside. Yeah, I can hold.

She smiles reassuringly at Mina, then the phone makes the squaky noises of someone talking

Sorry, please repeat that? Ok, thanks: yeah, we'll take one set - if the customer doesn't want them we can always find someone else.

Then she waves over an acolyte

Go get the current retail on two pounds of blue ice.

The acolyte bows and scurries off. Felina chuckles and looks at Mina

Just have to jump through a couple of hoops since I know for a fact we don't have any in stock here. Do you have a preferred method of payment? We can convert most reasonable currencies and quite a few unreasonable ones as well.

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Mina now has the incredible surreal experience of reaching into her pocket (Mina has had to deal with many things thrust on her, but women's fashion not having pockets is something she simply would not stand for) and pulling out her wallet.
Which is full of money and not disappointment.
What a strange timeline she lives in.
"Um, I have a decent number of Inside bills here, if that's fine." she mumbles, her slight blink at being able to say that. Her bank account a week ago was what, the price of three ham sandwiches?

[Fenric]

Felina chuckles

You'd be amazed how rarely people pay with basic generic money.

the acolyte returns and hands Felina a receipt. Felina looks at it then smiles at Mina

Five hundred thirty six, shipping and tax included. Exact change appreciated.

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Yup. Mina just...hands over that money. Right there. Without going on a two year loan for it.
Is this what being rich is about? Getting stuff that you want and not actually worrying about it?
"Wow that's...shockingly simple. Um, how long should I expect it to be?" she asks the priestess.

[Fenric]

Felina takes the money and then looks over at the summoning circle in the middle of the room, which has already started to glow.

Bout... fifteen more seconds.

The glow intensifies and the area above the circle becomes impossibly distorted before it all stops quite apruptly. There, in the center, is a plain paper parcel of no substantial size... just big enough to hold two bottles of perhaps 200 mL each in some protective packaging. The label on the side proudly proclaims it to be a product of Merisanne Life Sciences.

There you go. Now be careful: he needs to drink Youth BEFORE Longevitiy, and drink them one at a time giving the first one a chance to work before drinking the second. But don't dally too long or it won't be permanent. And no matter what, don't mix them together!

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

Mina nods and picks up the package.
"As long as they're labeled I'll make sure I hand them to him in the right order. Do they blow up if they're mixed or something?" she asks, curious. Magic's never been her thing.

[Fenric]

The box has several cautions about being fragile, a few "this side up" diagrams, and a warning to keep clear for half an hour if the box is dropped or crushed.

Felina nods

Yeah, they are very clearly labelled.

then she shakes her head

And nope, it just becomes one of the most potent poisons in existence for about ten minutes. After that it's just junk and won't do anything at all except maybe give you a tummyache.

[Deathkeeper]

Sanctuary

"Oh, well. I'll make sure he washes his mouth out after the first one, then. Thanks." Mina says, a little flabbergasted.
She's just going to take a while to read all the instructions when she gets home.
All of them.

[Fenric]

Felina makes sure the Fox Cola machine is full and then tidies up the sanctuary, upon which she finds a thickly dust-covered manilla folder. Cleaning off the dust, she finds it labelled "Stale Plots", which she proceeds to read with some interest.