Xozo gets no further

Because the crack of the whip silences her. The sound isn't loud, but final, like the air itself remembers who is in charge.

"What in Orrynthal's Nine Cosmic Deathsongs," says the Mora Relle, their voice syrup thick and sharp with acid, "could you possibly want, Xozo?"

The speaking faerie pauses just long enough to resume the lashings around her. With a huff, she continues, only half engaged with Xozo. "Can't you see we are busy, meticulously logging every detail Orrynthal has deemed worth recording? Do you not think we've already considered every dumb question you might bring us? Because we have, and we all know, even you, deep down, that wasting even one more moment on you would be a disservice to Orrynthal. Have you even considered that?"

Xozo opens her mouth. Closes it and then tries again. "I... we... actually, I was just..."

'Ruffled Hem Roses' Eileen thinks to herself as she places a hand on Xozo's arm. She doesn't rush in, she buys time calmly, professionally, with the same undertone she once used when someone tried to sell her off brand perfume at full price, the nerve. The kind that came with a too sparkly ribbon and promises of faraway lands, but smelled mostly like bathroom cleaner and bad decisions.

It is clear what kind of creatures these are, from their space alone. Archivists, keepers of order, loggers of detail so precise it could cut. These Quills didn't just value structure, they revered it. Tradition, hierarchy, protocol, everything had its place, a testament to their overwhelming need to manage and, if need be, to hurt. Anything required to remain in control, that much was obvious at least.

Even their minds, Eileen suspects, are much the same. For she has yet to meet a species so indifferent to pain that they have come up with an institutionalized system of hurting one another. It makes even the barbaric gnome clans to the south look like free spirits by comparison.

Her gaze glides across the atrium again. The floors gleam and sparkle. The shelves are symmetrical to the point of discomfort. High above, scrolls float on unseen currents, fluttering with perfect timing, never once colliding. All of it reinforces the narrative of their being, telling a story to Eileen that starts making her smile. Not kindly, not cruelly, just the smile of someone who recognizes a stage when she sees one.

These terrible creatures, these terrible ebony quills, killers of parents and harbingers of fractured families, love this place because it is a theater to them. A pageant of precision masquerading as administration. Supremacy maintained not through weapons or laws, but through elegance and ritual. Through the illusion that everything here runs without flaw, without question. It is a space that demands perfection in its highest form and has no place for slippage, not even an inch.

The point is reinforced even in the way in which Mora Relle strikes first. A sharp, quick, deliberate interruption, cutting off the pace of the conversation. The multiple avenues of attack delivered in a way that sounds perfectly prepared. It is clear that this Ruffle Hem Rose would never have responded well to anything. The conversation would always have bent toward redirection. It is the act of someone terrified of being seen in the breath between a mistake and their recovery. It is something she can use, something she can exploit.

A system such as this one cannot be challenged by force, not if the goal is to win. It does not respond to shouting or indignation, because volume only plays into the script. Drama is its medium of course. Instead, it must be questioned softly. The questions must seem curious rather than challenging, innocent rather than disruptive. They must be asked slowly and clearly, always within sight of the audience, always beneath the gaze of the watchers. The performance space makes the actors confident, but also careless, and that is when the moment can be claimed. One simply needs to help them forget their lines while reminding them, gently, who the protagonist really is.

"Well, Mora Relle," Eileen says, her voice still warm and pleasant, each word perfectly in place. "Your archives are so very neat. I wonder, how do you truly keep track of every single document?"

The faerie turns toward her, already glowing faintly with self importance. Their eyes sparkle with a kind of ceremonial vanity. "We are lifeforms that exist beyond your comprehension," they say, lifting their chin slightly, as if tasting the air of their own superiority. "Our traditions are older than your continents. We have upheld them longer than your species has had language. Managing these archives is nothing but a mere twitch of instinct. Like blinking or breathing or judging."

Eileen rubs the tops of her hands. The gesture is small, almost imperceptible, a habit and a signal, it both soothes her and gives the false impression of meekness.

She thinks again of the key marked 'For VIPs Only', still nestled in the folds of her shawl. It carries a certain strangeness, as though it were meant for this place, made to match the cadence of the room and its obsessively curated rules. Orrynthal was clearly some kind of divine or bureaucratic authority. If the quills served that entity, then perhaps Orrynthal made arrangements that allowed for exceptions. Perhaps certain visitors were permitted with passes such as priests, ambassadors, bearers of special titles.

The theory begins to settle in her mind. Even the fluffy tumblers had mentioned something about arrivals when she entered, a comment she had at first dismissed as nonsense. But the deeper she goes, the more she begins to wonder if it might have been a clue wrapped in whimsy.

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"Oh, then I'm so curious, dear. How do you store your VIP passes and official decrees? Is there a special ledger?"

The smile that had been stretching across Mora Relle's face begins to fade. A tight line of suspicion forms at the corners of their mouth.

"Of course we do," they reply, their tone clipped. "It is standard policy and procedure to retain special ledgers for VIP passes and official decrees given to representatives of Orrynthal. It is our mission to know who is and who is not on the ledgers."

Eileen leans forward slightly. Her posture does not press but it does not show deference either. "And surely," she begins, stretching the phrase with a gentle kind of reverence, "in all that time, you have misplaced a scroll or two. A smudge, perhaps, a lost record, a signature overlooked. You must have a system for handling small slip ups."

A sound begins in Mora Relle's throat, low and warning. Xozo catches it before it becomes a word and tugs at Eileen's sleeve, whispering urgently. "We should really go," she says, her voice taut and nervous. Her eyes flick across the room.

The sound from Mora Relle drawing attention from all over. Hundreds... no, thousands of faerie gazes begin to turn toward them. The air seems to pause in its motion, the moment suspended as if a single enormous hand has stopped time mid breath. Every maroon wing, every shimmering thread of embroidered robe, now angles toward them with collective tension.

"Never," Mora Relle hisses. "Not once in the entire reign of Orrynthal's cosmic empires have we, the Ebony Quills, ever made a single slip up."

The air thickens, it begins to feel like honey in the lungs, a waiting kind of silence that presses in close. Eileen does not look away and she moves with the slowness of someone folding laundry or watering ferns. From the folds of her shawl, she draws out the pass. It is platinum in color, its edges warm to the touch. Across its surface, looping handwriting curls with cheer, 'For VIPs Only.'

"Well," she says, her voice so soft it nearly floats, "then clearly, you must know who I am."

A hush moves across the atrium, quiet and theatrical. It rolls through the space like a curtain being drawn, velvet and deliberate. Even the scrolls overhead falter slightly in their endless, symmetrical orbit.

Mora Relle blinks, once, then again. Their eyes move from the card to Eileen's face, searching for the performance, the twist, the part where it becomes a joke. But no punchline comes.

"I..." the faerie starts, the words dry and brittle, "that pass is unregistered. It... It must be. There are no pending arrivals listed within the timetable."

Eileen tilts her head slightly, a motion more curious than confrontational. "Oh, but surely," she replies, "you said yourself your records are flawless. Orrynthal's will demands it. If I am here, then surely I am meant to be."

Xozo makes a soft, strangled sound. It sits somewhere between awe and horror, a gasp dressed in disbelief. The silence forces Mora Relle to breathe in, as if for the first time, the inhale catching on the edges of protocol and pride.

"That pass could be forged," they say at last, their voice trying and failing to sound firm. "Show me the seal, the embossment, I must be the one to verify it."

Eileen's voice remains steady, touched with a polite concern that does not quite smile. It is clear Mora Relle misunderstands the trap, but she would soon understand the weight of the problem.

"Oh no," she replies, holding the card delicately, "I wouldn't dream of handling it incorrectly. Perhaps one of the others could verify it?" Her tone turns maternal then, soft and gracious, as if this were all a matter of procedure. "You understand, of course. We can't afford to let you handle such a task. Not with something this official."

She lifts the card just slightly, letting it catch the pale light of the atrium. The words on the pass glimmer faintly, each loop of handwriting turning faintly iridescent as the seal catches the glow. "I imagine there's a verification station somewhere," she continues, her voice wrapped in calm. "There must be a place, a room, a mechanism. I remembered there was protocol for this, yes? I wouldn't want you to contradict Orrynthal's sacred orders."

There is a flicker then, not a movement exactly, but something close to it. A panic that tugs at the edge of Mora Relle's mouth, she was beginning to sense a trap within a trap. With a sharp motion, Mora Relle opens a drawer beneath the raised platform of their pulpit and retrieves an object shaped like a monocle, lacquered in black and gleaming with ornate silver trim. It clicks open as it unfolds, Eileen watches, unmoving.

Raising it slowly, the faerie places the monocle to one eye and leans forward to examine the card which Eileen holds just barely within her vision. Their breath is shallow now, their expression no longer reads as certainty, it reads as obligation praying to whatever god it serves that it can find a way out of this mess. "This seal," Mora Relle begins, the words dropping in pitch, "it predates the Last Revision."

"Curious," Eileen hums, almost to herself. She taps her fingers lightly along her arm and pretends to count with her lips. "I mean, it has been a few eons since we last spoke, but honestly I didn't expect things to have gone this..." She lets the words drift into air, softened and unfinished, not spoken so much as implied. She knows Mora Relle is already filling in the rest for her.

"It is from a ledger that was," Mora Relle says, quieter now, "decommissioned."

The air reacts as if stirred by a quiet wind. A sound like shifting paper, dry and deliberate, begins to rise. "Decommissioned?" Eileen repeats. Her tone carries only gentle surprise, all soft edges. "But if a pass with the proper authority is delivered and the seal is unbroken, wouldn't that suggest the ledger was retired in error? Or perhaps a little too early?"

A pulse moves through the atrium. It is not a sound and not a breeze, but something between them, a shift in presence. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of faerie eyes blink in unison. The silence has changed. What was once rigid and confident now ripples with uncertainty, like a scroll left too close to moisture. The actors are remembering they are being watched or worse, realizing they never learned their lines in the first place.

Even Mora Relle's composure begins to crack. Their wings twitch, barely perceptible movements, small but compulsive. The sort of motion that betrays tension, not thought. "There is no error," they mutter. "There can be no error."

Eileen's smile remains in place, weightless and slow. "Wow, you would admit their is an error. I didn't mention that, you said it yourself, mistakes never happen," she says, her voice balanced perfectly between sympathy and precision. "So if I am standing here with a valid pass, and your records do not account for me, then clearly someone among you must maintain a second ledger. A confidential one, perhaps, I'm sure there's a solution."

She allows the pause to open gently, giving it time to settle. The point of this whole thing wasn't to make enemies, but sometimes one needs to politely twist a wrist if they hope to get anything accomplished. Still it never hurt to twist a little more. "Unless," she adds, her voice as soft as it has ever been, "you are calling Orrynthal a liar."

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