Upon Vestia: Chapter Thirty-Four

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"We could stay here and see if Vestia can start getting some movies on file for us." Shane said with a shrug.

"Jarral?" Vestia said. "I have some questions for you."

~~
"Can you scan him from outside the cell?" Vestia asked Kay when she saw him taking the scanner. "I don't think you should go in there with him." Yeah, the demon probably wouldn't try to kill Kay or Matt, but still, no need to tempt trouble.

Jarral looked up, oh, it was the ship. He set his pen down. He was sitting crossed legged on the floor. He stared into the camera.
"I take it you still are not certain your crewmate is himself again?" He guessed.

---

Kay nodded. [I should be able to, if he's close enough to the bars. ] He didn't like this, but people didn't double over in pain unless something was wrong.
He grabbed some weak painkillers as well, until Esk's body had time to clear all the drugs Dawn had given him from his system, it was safer this way.

[Dawn's method SHOULD have worked though.] right?

---

Matt looked to Esk. "You know, this is pretty fucking surreal..."

"what?" Esk replied.

"Well i'm not really used to being on this side of the bars." Matt shrugged, trying to lighten the mood.

Esk sighed.

Matt lowed his head.

"Suppose it makes a change for me... being the one everyone sits up all night with to make sure he doesn't kill them all right?" He snorted. "For once i'm actually a legitimate danger to you assholes. Great."

Matt frowned. Yeah, it was depressing having to sit on guard duty again. "We'll sort this out..."

"Yeah I know."

"Extremely uncertain," Vestia said wryly. "Web was just visiting Esk, and when he teleported home, Esk apparently felt some sort of severe pain. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that, but I don't think he's ever had that sort of reaction before."

~~
"It should have worked, I think. But then again, demons aren't something anyone fully understands yet," Vestia said. "I'm asking Jarral for more information, maybe that'll help."

Jarral closed the book, he looked suddenly actually interested. "that is.. most curious." He rose to his feet, his whispering robes settling around him. "As I have mentioned, I believe Fate's realm to be on the other side of that rift, the space between universes... When Kevali shape space, they flit through her realm. It is how she guides them, redirects them, ensures they do not end up in the vacuum of space or somewhere she does not intend them to be. " He looked thoughtful, pacing as he spoke. "It is possible that in shaping space around himself, my father, for a moment, opened a conduit to that realm. Why that would cause pain though... I cannot say." He continued to pace back and forward. "perhaps a surge of energy was drawn through by the demon to maintain their hold... but did you not stop his heart?" He stopped pacing to look up at Vestia. "That SHOULD have worked... unless..." His eyes widened. "HOW did you do it?"

"Dawn used an injection that stopped his heart," Vestia said. "Do different methods not work as well?" She thought about the rift opening so close to Esk, even if Esk had been cured, would having the rift open so near him, give a demon a way to take control again? Oh man, now she was definitely concerned.

Jarral looked thoughtful. "I do not know. The Star Marshall drowned me... we drowned or suffocated most of those we cured, it was simply the best solution..." getting drugs to stop people's hearts out there wasn't exactly that easy and in a pinch, well, the methods had worked so...
"It is possible that we were wrong." He conceeded. "We knew that torture would often drive the weaker ones out of their host... She was not trying to kill me, but it seemed to be rather more effective." He shook his head. "Perhaps it is pain or.. trauma.. I cannot say."

"That... might make sense," Vestia said grimly. "I imagine that demon is pretty motivated to not leave. And she must have known we'd do everything in our power to keep Esk alive, so she wasn't at much risk of being stuck in a corpse for long." She sighed, "We still don't know for sure whether he's possessed or if this is just a side effect of his previous possession, do we? I'd rather not torture him if there's any chance he's free of her already."

Jarral shrugged. "Then I suppose you wait.. see if the demon makes itself known again. It might be stupid enough to do so, or it may have learned a lesson from all this... it is hard to know for sure. Some demons are far far more cunning and subtle than others."

"All right," Vestia said. "Thank you." She considered, "Do you know if a demon can move to a different host or something? I know they must be very strong telepaths, but I admit, I don't know how telepathy really works."

Kooshie wrote:"Esk was possessed by a demon and they had to kill him to get the demon out," Ellie said. "I mean he's alive now, but he wasn't! So now we're all freaking out, and he's in the brig for a long time, I guess."

Shane frowned at the news, that was shocking. "Weird that he would be the one taken over out of all of us. Well, we can test your theory, see if I can read your mind to see if it works at all."

"I guess it makes sense it'd be him, I mean he was kind of evil anyway," Ellie said. She never had liked Esk much, had she? "No, no mind reading. Not even to test hats. It's a bad day for poking in people's brains," she said, shaking her head.

"I meant because his natural barriers are so strong and I would only do a light one, if you wanted to test it. No use wearing them if they don't work, right?" He shrugged, he would let it go if she didn't want to try.

"His barriers are that good?" Ellie asked. "Well maybe the demon asked nicely then. And Esk just wanted to join it." She shook her head, "Not even a little mind reading." She might have a slight suspicion that her tinfoil hat plan wasn't going to work. And she didn't want that trust in tinfoil hats to be crushed.

"I doubt that." Shane said "He keeps his mind closed to everyone, probably learned that as a kid."

"That's why I think it actually happened cause he's evil," Ellie said. "Come on, let's go take all this foil to a table. I need to make myself a hat."

Shane looked to the foil and picked up all he could carry. "Gonna need to save some for food, at least until we can re-stock."

"Now there is a theory we have not been able to reliably test. Without being able to identify the individual demon, how would you know?" Jarral asked. "I am not certain their ability is telepathy as such, it is... something else. They seed a fragment of themselves into the mind of their host, at least, that is how the demonology books describe it. The truth is, nobody is entirely sure HOW they do it. We are still opperating mostly blind here. We know certain things work, but sadly we do not really understand why. " He sighed, looking a little frustrated. "I keep trying to learn more, but I have exhausted the tomes and records of mortals and am now resorting to attempting to uncover the books of the demons themselves. They are not easy to find and those I have tracked down are... obtuse and difficult to translate. There is a great deal they simply do not want anyone to know, so they did not bother to write it down. I doubt we will ever fully comprehend a great deal about them and how they function." He paused. "I only hope it can be resolved before you reach unity. If they can jump hosts, they could get quite a distance quite quickly."

Ellie considered that, then nodded and left a couple rolls on the counter. She didn't need that many hats anyway. Probably.
She headed to a table to get to work, making a tricorn hat because that was her favorite style.
"Maybe I should make a fancy occasion one too," she said thoughtfully.

~~
Vestia took a few seconds to ponder that. It was all extremely worrying, and she was liking this less by the moment. "The best way to learn more about demons would be to root through Esk's mind if the demon's still there. But doing so would be cruel, not to mention extremely dangerous if the demon turned out to be more powerful than the telepath doing the searching. If they can move between hosts, then we absolutely don't want the demon moving into one of the star dragons, for example." She thought of Ivor again, the guy had definitely detected the demon, but she seriously doubted that he'd be able to fight off the demon. Assuming the demon was able to transfer to him.
This was so complicated.
"You're right about Unity. We can't let the demon leave this ship, doing so could be very bad. The best thing we can do is purge it, somehow. And maybe we should delay our arrival until we're sure it's gone."

IF they could ever be sure. Ugh.

Jarral shrugged. "Then you may have to kill him again. It may even be safer not to bring him back." He was apparently fine with just murdering people, then again, he was really quite strange wasn't he?

Shane followed Ellie to help her make the hats. "Party tin foil hats?"

"Well that's not an option we're willing to pursue, but we'll definitely be thinking this over carefully," Vestia said. "Thank you for your help. I might have to ask you more questions later, but we'll see."

~~
Vestia would check to see where Kay was, she kind of wanted to fill him in on what she'd just learned.

~~
"Well I mean, I don't want to be unfashionable just because I'm staying safe," Ellie said. "A selection of nice hats is very important." Her culture had a thing about hats.

"Of course." Jarral replied in dim annoyance.

--

Kay was heading back to the brig.

"Hey Kay," Vestia said. "Jarral has a hypothesis about what might be going on with Esk."

Kay looked up at the camera questioningly.

"He thinks when kevali teleport it opens a sort of connection to the Rift temporarily. Esk's reaction to that might mean someone's still in his head." Vestia said. "Also he has an unpleasant hypothesis why stopping his heart might not have worked."

Kay looked unhappy and stressed. [I hate to admit it, but we need to know for sure.] Esk wouldn't let him search his head though, maybe Starr could... was it safe to even do so? eugh.

"We really do," Vestia said grimly. "It needs to be someone who's good at protecting their mind, since we don't know if demons can move between hosts or not. I'm not sure if Starr's a safe choice because she has a link to her people to protect her, or if she's a dangerous choice because she'd be such a powerful weapon in the wrong hands."
"I hate to put him through this. We should ask his permission first, but honestly, if he refuses, we won't know if it's him or the demon talking." Ugh.