This is another chapter title that I’ve been waiting to use for a long time.
Discussion welcome, as always. 
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Didn’t look for typos but this one jumped out at me: Among that slime were the beginnings of some pale, almost fleshy grows
Should be fleshy growths.
Alright, with that out of the way:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
That line from Claudio’s so sweetly poisonous lips - you are no less worthy than Miakoda - sent chills running down my spine.
Which angle is he working on? Grandfather is trying to use Siobhan as a vessel for Miakoda? Terrifyingly plausible. Grandfather doesn’t love her as much as Miakoda and is willing to cast her off? Or just trying to butter her up? Or possibly working a combination thereof, to poison her against her grandfather and cleave to Claudio instead.
Why is everyone so fixated on Miakoda and Siobhan? Why is no one connecting the dots - everything started the very day Claudio showed up. He is the one who has been toying with people’s dreams, and it is the people he touched who have gone mad.
This feels unnatural. What has he been doing behind the scenes to turn people against Siobhan? She’s more and more desperate and isolated. What did he do to her grandfather to get him to leave without a word? What message was he meant to pass on that he didn’t?
The fact that grandfather had a story from after the cataclysm - from those doomed few, who never thought to see another spring, another sunrise - is fascinating and makes me revisit my “the blood emperor and Myrddin may have been one and the same and grandfather was both” theory. But what could have killed him so easily, in that case? Was it easy? Is he really dead? Has he mastered some form of reincarnation magic? Body swapping? After all, there is the amulet that turns Siobhan into Sebastien. Could his consciousness be encapsulated somewhere, interrupted in transit and unable to reach the body? (I’m drawn powerfully to thoughts of a Lich and their phylactery)
Much to think on.
PS - seven years of winter is a beautifully dramatic title. I love it!
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Not everyone who’s gone mad have been touched by Claudio. He’s still extremely suspicious and almost certainly party to blame for all this, but he doesn’t seem to be making people mad directly like that.
While I distrust Claudio, I have difficulties painting him as a lone villain. I don’t think he could’ve pulled anything off without Raz knowing.
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I don’t think Claudio is solo, but I think Raaz doesn’t know the full extent of what he’s up to. He’s one of those people who’s very good at telling people what they want to hear.
He’s probably told/shown Raaz that he admires him, is afraid of him, that he’s infinitely lesser than he is - vain, glory hungry, simple. Just look at how he’s acted - he’s great at showing people a small failing to distract them from a larger con.
I don’t think Raaz, for all his failings, is willing to let Siobhan be harmed (although I have considered it - partially because of Claudio and his words and how much he’s worked to sow doubt throughout these chapters).
When I say touched, I mean cast dream magic on. He directly played with their dreams and then they said they had good dreams despite describing what anyone else would see as nightmares.
That’s what I’m also saying. In 265, Siobhan already had the suspicion that the nightmares were caused by Claudio but then she realised that not everyone who had the nightmares went through Claudio’s dream magic.
While many of the people who had received a curated dream from him refused to tell her what they experienced within—either from fear their wish wouldn’t come true if shared, or because they were embarrassed—everyone who had been having what she stubbornly continued to call nightmares made it quite clear that these had nothing to do with the dreams Claudio had given them at all. She would have remained suspicious, because obviously they couldn’t be trusted to know that, until she found that several of the people who had refused his services were also affected.
And they all insisted that these dreams were actually quite lovely.
That story at the beginning is very similar to what Siobhan has been going through. The Cataclysm and 7 years of winter and the destruction of the village and 7 years with the thing inside her head. Could that mean that the “first hint of the sun” comes next for her?
It might be spreading like a blight, especially if those who refused are sleeping with the ones who didn’t (licitly or illicitly). It’s also possible that they openly refused but then turned to him later in secret. But I’d be intrigued to see the statistics - particularly how many who Claudio magicked did end up insane and what protections those who didn’t might have.
Mm can see more and more of how Siobahn develops into who we find later. She has abandoned without any indications of support or timeframe, detested by those of the community, and whatever other foundations she has will likely die off. Chances of openness in various avenues made more unappealing as she is “punished” while also feeling only she can solve things. Circling closer and further to multiple framing of abandonment and perhaps a great betrayal. Its sad but a rather masterful progression of her later emotional coping mechanisms being brought up by the alternatives basically getting dettered at a vital time in her development.
I do suspect Raaz didn’t orchestrate all of this, but perhaps wanted to align and observe what would happen if things aligned. Could even relate to some old myths of capability he wanted to test by letting conditions get similar, which would explain the fine tuned readings he was apparently doing. I also directly suspect that the Nauts ability to somewhat resist the casting of magic through their flesh may make them more natively hardy in the case of such contact with the spirit world. Huh….you know thinking on it…if the spirit world kind of degrades stuff due to how wide it is, the perfect vessel would be something that could resist the higher variety of phenomena one may get through casting with their body.
I honestly didn’t expect the infection or….I suppose from a certain angle magical convergance to accelerate so swiftly. The framing of that one lady definitely seems shamanic. The hunger seems partially alienation but they are definitely working according to that same alien logic to try and make themselves coherent. I wonder what they are all seeking.
Claudio stood beside her silently for a long while, then chuckled humorlessly and threw his head back to look up at the sky. He spoke softly. “I was excited. When I got Raaz’s letter, maybe I should have been fearful, but I was excited. And Raaz was reluctant, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity.” He looked down at Siobhan. “Your grandfather is a great man, but he has one serious flaw. His curiosity grows easily into fascination, and from there into obsession.”
“What does that mean?” Siobhan asked. “You’re making it sound like…” She grabbed the fabric of Claudio’s shirt at the waist, fisting it in a tight grip. “You’re making it sound like Grandfather caused this. He didn’t. He didn’t!”
Claudio wrapped his much larger hand around her fist and squeezed a little too hard, though his expression was almost bland. “Let me ask you a question, young Siobhan. What is the difference between causing something and having the option to stop it but failing to do so?”
She released her grip and tore her hand free from his. “What happened to my mom?” she demanded, her voice hoarse and urgent.
“You are no less worthy than Miakoda,” he said.
It was as if something scalding had exploded inside her. “That’s not an answer!”
I wonder.
Perhaps I dismissed this conversation too quickly.
If Miakoda broke and became an aberrant, which I think she did - Siobhan seemed to feel that moment but didn’t know it for what it was - then did she become a lucid one? Or an empty body requiring guidance? Or did she become that mirror reflecting a different time or place or something else entirely.
(A thought that occurred to me - if magic is lucid, what happens to it when most of humanity is killed in one swoop because of a natural (?) disaster. What reflects in the world of dreams, of spirits? Could all of the twisted wrongness be traced back to that?)
Perhaps Raaz could have killed Miakodo, to prevent her breaking. But he didn’t. Maybe he is powerful enough to deal with an aberrant like her, but didn’t. Maybe he invited a matter of dreams to come try and reach her, bring her back to herself - but then why the funeral? Again, my mind returns uneasily to the thought of Siobhan being an available host, even though I don’t believe it of him.
What if that master of dreams was a host to a spirit himself? What if Raaz was unaware of that? Or knew but thought it was under control? What if Claudio played off of Raaz’s guilt of keeping an aberrant alive to make him think it was all down to her when really he’s propagating much of this himself?
Spirits can lie, but the consequences of doing so can be weighty. Maybe because words and thoughts can reshape reality and that’s especially dangerous when you’re so ephemeral and your identity is built on the understanding others have of you. But we suspect that spirits need a body to impact things on the mundane plane.
(We found him throwing up in the forest, what is it that he found so indigestible? What is it that he needs to sustain him?)
He chewed it and swallowed, then gagged. Some bloody spittle ran down his chin and slid down the curve of his neck, but he did not vomit. “Have to keep it all down,” he muttered to himself. “Have to keep it inside so I can absorb the energy, have to eat the being, have to digest the self-ness.” He took another bite and repeated the process.
Energy. Being. Self-ness.
Identity. Self determination. The essence of a human. A human can tell all the lies in the world, it doesn’t change who they really are, even if the whole world is fooled. I wonder what kind of a fuel that would be for an ephemeral being?
“I am the one who travels the paths beyond. I will devour the shining one and the bearer of blackest night. I can build myself in my own image. I am the All, the Undiminished, the Empyrean.”
Build myself in my own image. Apart from the biblical overtones there’s a distinct feeling of “I want to be my own person and I’ll eat everything to have that power”.
The people milling around the house certainly didn’t seem concerned with the still-burning fires at all. They too were skeletally gaunt with round bellies, and a few even seemed to have skin so thin that the light shone through like old parchment that had been scraped clean and re-used several times.
That the fire hadn’t spread was likely due to the slimy, viscous fluid that seemed to cover every burnt surface. She didn’t have to smell it to know that it was more of the same substance she had seen before. Among that slime were the beginnings of some pale, almost fleshy grows that reminded Siobhan of the time she accidentally broke open an egg with a baby chick inside, barely starting to form.
These seemed to be growing under the coaxing of the villagers, who were cooing and tending to them.
Again with the thin limbs and distended bellies, reminiscent of pregnancy - or parasitic infection. Are they nurturing new life within themselves? Is a spirit accreting their flesh about itself in order to gain an unchanging self to anchor to? Are the pale and fleshy growths an attempt at forming outside the body? A mass experiment to see which works most effectively?
She hesitated because of his condition, but still asked, “Would it help stop or slow the curse if you used your magic on me?”
Claudio turned to look at her with sudden concentration. His uncovered eye roved over her features, then down to her hands, which were fisted at her sides, before returning to her face. “I really want to, Siobhan. Very much.” Sheer earnestness was clear in his tone and the intensity of his gaze. It was perhaps the strongest, most honest emotion she had ever seen from him.
“But?” she asked.
“But I think that should be saved for…a last resort.”
There was something about the way he hesitated that made her think he was dissembling.
A last resort? Or the final spirit? The most powerful spirit?
He looked worse than she had ever seen him, with hollow cheeks, a greenish-grey pallor to his dark skin, and a crusty line of dried fluid along the line where his eyepatch met his cheek.
The eye again. The eye that hurt, like her eye hurt. The bloodshot eye. The one that didn’t heal for him.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul…
I hadnt quite thought about how the story Raaz msntioned may have been a bit more literal than assumed due to some magical synchronicity. Or rather I had but I didnt really think on how the Spirit World may make things more easily done.
I suspect the reason spirits do not lie as a lie is dissonance. And the Spirit World contains all that is, the lines of symmetry that maintain something may easily diffuse out into yhe greater expanse there, and so a spirit must maintain itself with patterns, a story of what it is. I thus suspect the notes on selfness and building oneself into their own image is quite literal. To make a story that can exist as themselves in that place. Though I am very very interested in why them doing so seems to have induced starvation conditons on the body, could be general hunger from aspects of the spirit world bleeding over, but it could also be partial success. Maybe they are actually making some things but not quite enough, it reminds me of how mages seem to need to eat more from casting as well. Perhaps it is basically that all infected are casting shamanic spells to try and cast themselves to a specific spot…