... was spared.

John envisioned her punishment as he shaped her psyche and physique: the kind of body and mind-warping horror he had performed on Vanessa Hawthorne, but with all the expertise gained since. How could he not justify it? Vanessa had threatened him, probably engineered, directly or indirectly, murders before, and even had slaves. Juniluny was just Vanessa with real power, a suicide trigger on all of her victims, and having violated John's soul in a way that still haunted him. Yet his suffering must seem so insignificant compared to what she did to Kim... he couldn't even imagine the perverse evil needed to do that.

Except... I can. He was doing it himself as he plotted ****, and quest completion, at the expense of what remained of Juniluny Snickerbottom. He had envisioned and planned every step of how to ruin her sex and plant his children inside her, all under the excuse of a quest, as punishment for all her bad karma... and his, for ultimately having a hand in why the girls had all come to realize she was here. It chewed at him and drove him harder: she had all but deceived him into endangering Moira, Kim, and whoever else might've realized the Cabalist in their midsts... and contemplating that only made this seem more like justice, because she deserved every inch of it, of course, which is why he contin- No... even if she does, I... I can't keep being the one who does this kind of... The entire, perverse scenario played out in his mind... and he almost physically recoiled from his own mind's terrible invention.

"Get over here, then," she muttered, her mouth suddenly salivating as she anticipated the turgid meat before her. As much as she wrestled with the horrible circumstance, she nonetheless felt a touch of nostalgia from her first escapades with a minotaur. Of course, she had been the master, then... and when it started to hurt, she merely needed to will the beast to stop. She looked at the boy... who neither stepped forward nor really paid her any mind. He tapped that bizarre menu of his, and his school uniform was suddenly restored over his body, vanishing the cock she was ready to pleasure. "What, you want me to unzip you too? Spare me the romance, tall one, and whip the damned meat out already-"

"Quiet." She fell silent, as she had to. In that silence, she swallowed all the extra spit her mouth had filled with; she gave a tiny prayer to unknowable gods that he didn't notice her all but drooling for it. He contemplated her in silence; they sat and stood there for almost a complete minute as he began to cast the inverse of every spell he had laid upon her: her vagina shrunk, her fears and desires were re-balanced, and all the while he shook his head at what he had almost done and at how far he had gone to do it. Another minute passed; John didn't bother to track the time. They had hours, after all. "Come with me." John walked Juniluny to the double doors and opened them to the rest of the Temple.

The halfling looked about with wide-eyed curiosity. Her eyes squinted at the false sun and then continued to narrow at the seductively-posed elven male at one of the nearby doorways. **** into silence, her naked panic at the sight of the elf was missed by John. The elf eyed her only once before returning his full attention to John. "Welcome home, Master!" he half-cried, half-moaned.

John did his best to ignore Thumalk's ill-worn robes and come-hither eyes. "We're going to get you some clothes, some shackles, and then we're going to go back and talk things out with the Order." He glanced back as they walked into the central plaza to find her trembling with the urge to respond. "You may... respectfully answer."

Her mouth opened wide... and slowly drew to a close for a pregnant pause. They were already walking into the Forge when she finally found her words. "Respectfully, Master," she just barely managed without sounding sarcastic, "two things... no, wait, forget it, just the really absur-" Her tongue cut her off before she fixed her tone. "Just the really important one: I think you must have no clean and proper idea of what the Order is about if you think you can talk to them."

"I've done more than talk with them before," he muttered. He began to scroll through his craft menu and resized the displayed armor sets for halflings. Preferrably something that doesn't need soul gems...

"Maybe they like you, but they'll kill me before the night comes."

"They've taken prisoners before... though I can't say I know what that must be like."

She scoffed. "If you believe that, I've some nice neckwear to sell ya." He glanced at her. "... with all due respect, Master."

John's latest skins and creature parts didn't add up to anything useful, but, with craft's new functionality, he could convert a few pieces into generic leathers to give her something akin to a simple, decently-covering outfit. Recalling her ruined nightie, he chose the baby blue leather armor and confirmed. "You're working on whatever the Cabal has told you, right? So they told you they don't take prisoners?"

"I'm going off what... is known by the Cabal," she hesitantly stated.

The sky-blue armor appeared in his hands. He quickly stashed it in his inventory. "Be specific; you're going to tell me everything you know about the Cabal before we go back anyways, so this is as good a place as any to start."

Juniluny shivered with a new and palpable fear; she had imagined she could resist ****, but this boy seemed able to get her to tell him anything... even the few sworn secrets that were entrusted to her. She had been so focused on this new dilemma that she hadn't even noticed when the full suit of leather armor was suddenly upon her.

Acquisition successful. Items planted.

"Master, you've returned!" Tita hastily stepped and swayed towards the Forge... and caught sight of Juniluny as she did so. "Oh, and you've caught a hobbit. Well, that's nice; the goblin will appreciate the company, at least."

Juniluny's brain stumbled at every hurdle it had to overcome: she recognized the sharply pointed ears, pale skin, and shocking blonde hair with pale flesh as the proper genetic marks of a moon elf. She had seen it in Thumalk but disregarded it as unlikely, perhaps a mistake on her part, or else just another show of how mad his captures were. But now, a second moon elf... and one who happened to be absurdly pregnant to match the impossible claims of her slaver. Maybe John was still bluffing, and that insane sack of young was the man-elf's? But she finally worked past these considerations to recognize the words that then reminded her of everything the moon elves were and weren't... and the fact that one seemed to roam free and live in comfort was an injustice that almost made Juniluny laugh aloud. "In what tipsy-topsy realm of buggery is this spawn of Luna allowed to roam free while I follow you like a dog?!"

"Master, it's speaking ill of me," Tita pouted, "please make it quiet."

John narrowed his eyes at his pregnant **** before turning to Juniluny. "Don't tell me moon elves took your home, too?"

"Took?! Sunshire is a myth instead of a home because of them! They made monuments with the corpses of hundreds of halfling warriors! They salted the earth and flattened every burrow, flooded every hole, castrated the men they chose to let live and let no women live at all!" Juniluny finished her rant with furious red in her face, and she only grew redder as she realized she could do absolutely nothing to hurt the legendary evil before her. "I had always imagined finding one, keeping it as a toy for ****, maybe even bringing it to the folks back home-"

"That's enough," John announced.

Tita sighed with a touch of relief. "Thank you, Master... truly, these hobbits get rather uppity. Are you sure you want to keep one around-?"

"That's enough out of you too, Tita," he interrupted. "How is Woofroot?"

If she was offended, she made no show of it. "I've been feeding it plenty of water from the fountain... and struggling to keep it well-nourished, as it seems quite thirsty."

John nodded his approval. "Tita, continue to take care of Woofroot." John approached Juniluny, who remained glaring hate at the moon elf, and, with a touch, jumped them both into the study. John took a moment to appreciate the daily set of books in the tiny shelf: tomes on eyes in mythology, the various knightly and crusader orders of history, the hermetic mages of contemporary history, and at least one text on Russian culture. Nothing as overt as 'Guide to Gorbachev's', eh? Guess the study has its limits... Juniluny eyed the same shelf, though her gaze continued all around the unfamiliar, closed room. With a tired sigh, John sprawled himself out on the leather loveseat in the corner and motioned for Juniluny to take the wooden table chair across from him. "Why should I believe what the Cabal thinks about the Order versus what I know about the Order?"

"Take it back!" she begged. "Don't make me answer it, please-!"

"Answer me."

"Because... gah... n- we have spies in the Order!" she blurted. The Cabalist clutched onto the wooden chair as if she were ready to fall. She squinted her eyes in agony... and waited... and slowly opened a single eye to assess her situation. Flabbergasted, she patted her body down. "I'm... I'm alright!"

John squinted at the halfling. "Why shouldn't you be?"

"I'm... I was told I was enchanted to light up with hellfire if I ever described Cabal secrets to... oh, that rotten little schemer, that fiendish femme, that filthy cunt Priscilla! When I get my hands around her pretty little neck-!" She continued to pat herself down. Emboldened, she raised her chin up high and looked John in the eye. "We have several spies, but I know the local one: another John, by coincidence; one John Iowa." She flinched again, as if expecting a terrible wrath to bear down on her from the Heavens.

"You're... you're still alright," John murmured. "So what did these spies tell you?"

"Well, John Iowa is how I found out about one mage that... wait a tick. Was that...? I mean, I figured it was the Warden, given that the Order got the poor boy, but were you there when they snagged ol' Rurik Talon?"

A drop of ice traveled down John’s throat until it rested in his stomach. "The... The Artificer, from the smugglers?"

"Of course! They pumped him for information for all of three hours before they took him apart for parts... pretty nasty habit of theirs, by the sounds of it. Luckily that report was given to me before I had to pass it up, or else I'd have never known!" Snickerbottom gave Newman a narrow-eyed sneer. "So you were there, huh?"

"I... was- but let's focus here. What do you mean they took him apart? They took his magical equipment away, and now he's left in a cell without his powers, or...?"

He's... don't tell me he feels bad about it? Oh, this precious boy... this vicious, stupid, precious boy...

John scowled at the widening grin of the Cabalist. She had him, and she knew she had him... but he needed her to be lying, to be leading him astray and away from the nicer, more comforting truth. Moira had promised to let her father know his wishes... to avoid a needless ****, to hold to Moira's description of the Order's punishments being based on "necessity" and "crime." What need would the Order have in so disposing of a man who, even today, would still be under control of his own **** collar? Juniluny had to be lying when she described anything worse than simple imprisonment...

... but it was impossible. She was bound to truth, and so she truly received this report. John couldn't think of any good reason for this spy to make up such a horror story, either. The realization that he was stuck believing her was plain on his face, and Juniluny took satisfaction in confirming his fears. "The ol' boy was more machine than man, you see... so they tore his implants and brass organs away or off or out while he was still conscious. They harvested the pain, or 'justice' as they call it, for their 'Lady.' They took the collar off too, to make sure he didn't like it, and kept him alive for as long as the healers could before they finally took more than he could live without."

"That's..."

John couldn't stop his mouth from hanging open... and Juniluny's grin finally broke into a snorting giggle. "Oh yeah... real heroes, those Order boys and girls. And you think a hot little number like me will be kept around? Why, because I'm a plenty pretty, preciously peculiar, plenary powerful and precise pedant? No, my dear... those are good qualifications in just about any hole that the Order isn't in." Juniluny finally hopped onto the chair and crossed her legs before leaning forward. Her glare cut into John with an ugly enjoyment. "They'll take what they can from me, too..."

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Stasis" branches are dead off-shoots I decided against pursuing. They're short, non-canon, and irrelevant. This status will be removed if, for some reason, someone wants to start their own branch therefrom.]