By the Pyre
Mitr's spirit is in a fiery cage of its own life, and Mitr tries to meditate and communicate with it.
In Mitr's Mind
He tries to focus on communicating concepts of making something. He leaves it open what is to be made. He adds the process to this concept, then the legendary Wind Shear (a glaive known throughout Teöstra), then the symbolism of the glaive or pike of civilization.
What comes out of this creation is Mitr's Glaive. And the spirit's reaction is one of gravity.
Mitr looks around and the spirit looks with him. In Dago they see comfort, in Tallbeck they see knowledge, and in Nonu they see fire, uncertainty, and chaos. Similarly, they each represent a group of people; the farmer, the scholar, and the hunter.
The spirits ask who to give a gift to.
In Dago it sees warmth and care, but no expectations; in Tallbeck it sees trepedation and reacts with anger; in Verla, however, it sees something different. It shows some insight, but in her, it sees mountains crumbling, a stone hand that drags down a home, and a dark sky looming behind; in Fearrond, the feeling of glass shattering, and the spirit shows stunned impotence. To Tatiyena it reacts with a chuckle and then a frown. It saw lenity[??]; And to Nonu, a cordial nod.
In the end, it asks who to give it to, and after some consideration, Mitr chooses Verla.
It explains it as being 'power', and it asks him "are you a giver or a taker?" to which Mitr responds with "to give something, first one takes." and there's an audible chuckle, then a big bright flash of energy and a question in Mitr's head goes "was this enough?"
Outside Mitr's Mind
Dago sees the spirit world and the blood red line between Mitr and the pyre.
In it, there is the giant spirit with demonic-looking features, and the other spirits seem to fear it.
It casts a line towards Verla, and the pyre turns black, it crumbles from the top and down, as it dies.
Mitr then turns slightly red, and we all see him cast a bolt towards Verla. On his face, his skin tears off in three small symmetrical fiery patterns under each of his eyes.
Mitr and Verla are both cast 10ft backwards, landing on their backs, knocked out, in a double circle with an orange triangle above their heads, as they lie in the middle of a runic circle dug 10 inches into the ground.
Mitr is now a little part fire genasi, and in the spirit realm, a tiny red line can be seen connecting Mitr and Verla.
Fearrond walks up to Mitr, still lying on the ground, and threatens him due to having just seen Mitr blast Verla and them both going unconscious. Mitr's response is, very reasonably, "..What...?" which doesn't seem to help as he's confused.
Verla is lying on the ground, very warm and rigor mortis seems to have set in with her muscles being all stiff and cramping. Dago tries telepathy at her, but it doesn't go through. Verla cannot hear through the intense emotions she is feeling. The feeling of when a whip was raised against one of her own. The feeling of the company. The feeling of forcing a soldier - or forging one from nothing with only power as a tool. Verla is drowning in her own head. She can feel her breath slip up in the sea of uncomfortable bad thoughts, of muddied thoughts, where she can't think nor can get out from.
Fearrond held Mitr by the collar, forcing him to look at Verla, knocked out and lying in an occult circle of foreign power. Forcing him to see what he has done. And he threatens him further. Mitr sees the look in Tallbeck's eyes - even he looks wary of Mitr now.
Mitr, after getting to his feet, tries to walk towards Verla, and Fearrond tries Detect Evil and Good. He sees a slipstream of fire living in Mitr as well as a fey presence lurking by him. He sees fey fireflies from the pyre over the head of Mitr and Verla. In the background he also sees the magic dog looking curiously at everything that's happened, with a focus on all of us.
One of the side effects to raw glister is tieflingdom. We know that fey often interact with witches and spirits. And that the dog is special.
Dago heals Verla and it brings her back to consciousness, but the memories of her bad thoughts and the emotions that followed remain. She is pissed.
Very pissed. At first she doesn't get up, she's coughing and not feeling great. She talks directly to Mitr, asking him wtf. He answers that this is freedom, that he is a bird, that he can help save all of us, and tat it was a gift. He was a bit surprised by the outcome, but it was really a good thing, a surprising positive. And that makes her more pissed, because to her, he just hurt her unnecessarily, he gave her a "gift" without knowing what it did, how it would affect her, whether she wanted it, and he hurt her. He admitted to not being in control of the spirit that lived within him and that it was really the spirit. Because you see, he is the bird who always wants to fly, he wants freedom and wants to give it to others as well. Verla, seething, replies with "you're a caged bird", and as he explains further, she tells him that she's seen the horrors of these revolutionaries, these boundryless freedomfighters, who fight the good fight for others without asking, those who are cruel "for the good of the many" and who are really just misunderstood. That she will never back this reckless throwing about of power he doesn't understand, and that if he ever des something similar again, seeing as he obviously cannot control the things he tries to dish out, she would kill him herself. "So walk away before I kill you."
He does decide to step back, to walk a good distance away, and Verla, trying to find some relief from the intense anger, frustration, hurt, and disappointment, falls to her knees and roars with tears streaming down her face.
In the meanwhile, Tallbeck and Fearrond tries to puzzle out what in the world has been going on, and they come to the conclusion that the bones in the ground, the pyre, the hut, and the perfect circle of the trees, it all forms an alchemy table in the shape of a keyhole, where the pyre is the key.
Back to the Camp and Village
A while later, we decide to move on - to keep going, and we head back to our camp to get our stuff. As we pack up and get our weapons back, we are approached by the villagers who ask Tatiyena to stay in the village if she wants to. She declines and they say that we do need help navigating. A lot of help. But if she reaches the academy, she should give them something, and they hand her a scroll.
We get to choose between a walk on foot or to go and find mounts by tracking down Tatiyena's contact. We decide to leg it in the end.
Before we leave, we ask the villagers for winter's clothes and they give us 4 bear skin capes, as well as 3 pairs of boots and whips, which we trade for oil and 4 oranges.
We set out for Verbum, which is a camp site of interest in which we can find our next step.
Camping on our way to Verbum
During camp, when Tatiyena is on watch, Mitr silently packs up is stuff and slips off into the night.
In the morning we find his tent missing, he took one of the bearskins, and ofc the ring of Jump. It becomes canon that Tallbeck sleeps naked.
Dago can see the line from Verla tying her and Mitr going straight east and dissipating some 30ft away. Nobody has told Verla about the tether, so she is none the wiser.