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“Come on,” Sonia said before hurrying towards stairs. Her face was pale and drawn. Lydia rather thought her mother felt as nauseated by what they’d just seen as she did. What she didn’t expect was to find Julie leaning against the wall just outside the squash courts shuddering violently.

“You aren’t actually going to leave her like that, are you?” Matthias asked.

Julie didn’t respond at once – she didn’t even look around – but eventually she shook her head slowly.

“What are you going to do, then?” Sonia asked.

“I don’t know. Killing her isn’t an option and neither is just letting her loose. Even now, she’d try again and probably less directly next time.” She gave a heavy sigh. “But you’re right, leaving her locked in like that wouldn’t be right. I need to think of some other way to control her.”

“Was what you said about Ken true?” Karen asked.

Julie nodded sadly. “Yeah, she completely scrambled his neurons. He can’t even breathe without help. They’re trying to fix that first. I really shouldn’t have gone there first. It made me so angry I kind of snapped.”

“Sounds like what happened with me and that Leshy,” Karen said. “Though I just hit him with my axes until he was a bloody pulp.”

“Not surprising,” Naria said. “You’re both purple and they tend to be triggered by seeing other people suffer.”

“Definitely,” Kelaria said. “Estara-miria gets very creative when she slips into descent as well. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often.”

Julie shuddered again. “I don’t ever want to feel that way agai–” She broke off as the door to the Squash court opened again and Sarah came out with Kelly floating behind her.

“She’s passed out,” Sarah said. “You don’t have to keep quiet.” She paused then added. “You really did a number on her. Most of it is fixable but wow… you aren’t really planning on leaving her like that are you?”

Julie shook her head again and repeated what she’d told the others about needing to find some other way to control her.

“Let her family deal with her,” Sarah said.

“I think that might actually be worse than leaving her that way,” Julie said after a moment. “They are really really pissed at her.”

“From what you said about Ken, I’m not surprised,” Sarah said. “I’m going to take a look at him once I’ve put Kelly here in a bed. I’m hoping some of our allies can fix what she did.”

“My mirian probably can,” Adrian said. “Assuming we can get Ken to him safely.”

“And we need to get him breathing on his own for that,” Julie said.

“Brea–” Sarah stared at them. “She scrambled his brain that badly? Okay, no wonder you were so angry.” She shook her head. “That still wasn’t okay, you know.”

Julie gave her a weak smile. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“We’ll sort it out once we know what we’re going to do with her,” Sarah said. “And we’ll sort that out once we’ve got Ken healed. For now, I’ll keep her unconscious.” She looked over at Adrian. “Can you send an imp to Indaturan explaining the situation?”

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