Tessa deliberately steps toward the edge of Desdemona’s crimson ward, stopping where its light brushes her boots. The suspended black focus pulses, and silver currents tighten around it.
Tessa Vale
Desdemona, give me space. Not protection. I need to stand where I can feel what the focus is doing.
Desdemona Blackwood
No. That stone already reached through you once. I will not expose you to it merely because it has learned how to sound persuasive.
Tessa Vale
It promised something worse than persuasion. It said it would return Iris’s memory of her parents if I helped open the buried door.
The focus answers with a deep pulse. Tessa’s face tightens, but she keeps her toes at the ward’s boundary while Lyla watches the silver thread descending into the floor.
Professor Loen
Let her speak, Desdemona. This confession may reveal the caster’s leverage, and leverage can identify the hand behind the command.
Tessa Vale
I believed it because the voice knew details no stranger should know. If it truly knew Iris’s parents, then someone taught it where to press.
“I ask Professor Loen to sever the silver thread”
SUCCESS (Great Diplomacy, rolled +1)
Iris Evergreen
Professor Loen, please sever the silver thread before it can carry another command.
Professor Loen
Understood. Tessa, remain within Desdemona’s ward while I cut the channel.
Professor Loen steps to the converging currents and draws her wand through the air. A clean band of pale magic crosses the descending silver thread without touching the suspended focus.
The thread parts beneath the spell. Its severed end curls away from Tessa and fades, while the black focus falls silent and the chamber’s silver currents loosen.
Tessa Vale
It is gone. I can still feel the focus, but it cannot reach through that path anymore.
Professor Loen
The channel is severed, and the focus can no longer send commands through it. Your request was sound, Iris.
Desdemona keeps the crimson ward around Tessa as the last silver sparks vanish. The chamber settles into watchful stillness, leaving the focus exposed and its former route harmless.
✓ Quest Accepted
Share the memory with Tessa without surrendering control
“I share my parents' memory with Tessa, keeping my magic anchored.”
SUCCESS (Superb Magic, rolled +0)
Iris steadies her magic against the silent black focus and reaches inward, gathering the memory of her parents before grief or fear can distort it. Tessa remains within Desdemona’s crimson ward, watching carefully.
Iris Evergreen
The memory stays anchored while I let Tessa see it.
A gentle thread of remembered warmth passes from Iris’s magic into the ward, carrying her parents’ presence: familiar hands, quiet shelter, and the certainty of being loved. The crimson barrier holds the memory without letting the focus touch it.
Tessa Vale
I can feel them, Iris. Not names or faces clearly, but the love around you. The voice used a real wound to bait us.
The sharing succeeds, but the spell takes a precise price. When Iris draws her magic back, one detail has burned away: the sound of one parent’s voice is no longer clear in her own memory.
Professor Loen
Your anchor held, and Tessa received what you chose to share. The cost came from the memory’s shape, not from Tessa or the ward.
Tessa Vale
I will not let that sacrifice be turned against you. I remember the truth now: the focus offered your parents as bait.
Quest Complete
Share the memory with Tessa without surrendering control