Ah Dragon Spit

Raven sat on the beach scared.  She was scared of a great many things, but mostly herself.  She was afraid of the darkside within her, and what it made her capable of.  She was afraid the mist already had her and that somehow this sliver of hope she had grasped was only a lie.  She had give everything to become the Empress of the sith, then she had given all of that for a chance at forgiveness.  And now after hitting bottom and having lost all she worked for it would be a waste, for the mist would claim her.

Malekite once told her the worst kind of torture was hope.  There can be no true suffering with out hope.  Once people learn they are helpless they stop trying, stop caring, stop wanting more...you can not lose something you do not desire.  The real trick, he taught, was to make them think they could win, to make them believe in a better world and that they could live there, give them something to love and take it from them.

How funny, she, a master of every form of torture, had done the ultimate routine upon herself.  She actually let herself believe redemption was possible.  What she found instead was gitty little children so happy to lead the Empress on a leash and make her their weapon and pet.  She let that resentment build until the Shogun could do nothing to crack her shell.  She pretended and played obedient padawan when it suited her and led Reven here to their end.

She new Balthier was up to something and it involved a master skeleton key, Ravenloft, the Fox and the DarkOne.  She still was not sure if she pushed him to this mission because she wanted to be a hero, or because she just desperately wanted to break free of him.  He was not so bad, certainly not deserving of whatever fate the mist handed him after she manipulated him. How could she atone for such actions?

He was not the first she had cursed to a path of darkness and destruction.  Kittiara showed resilient to her manipulation, most likely because she did not have a deep enough emotional investment in the prize.  However, Lux fell beautifully. as a well constructed symphony falls note by note into a masterpiece greater than all its smaller parts.  She had thought a lot about saving Lux.  Killing her was the easiest and maybe best option...but in Ravenloft that would only seal her fate.  She had removed the cursed ring and put that burden back on herself -- where it belonged-- but her heart still broke into shards because she knew exactly what she saw when looking at Lux--herself.

So now at the end she was trapped in Ravenloft the end certain.  The ship they hoped to escape on had been destroyed.  They hoped to break the curse be delivering the bodies for burial at Graben island.  They had delivered the bodies but were still trapped.  Maybe she could still think of a way.  The ship was cursed because it did not deliver bodies of the dead Graben family from Assyria to Graben island.  Which was total flaming Dragon spit because how would an Assyrian family have burial plots and an island in Ravenloft, how would a low magical kingdom like that have such a connection to the mist lands?

Balthier maybe the key.  What scheme was he pulling? He was after a key that the Fox, a forsaken, had stolen.  She had already theorized that the forsaken may try to use that to free the Dark One fragment from his prison in Ravenloft.  --The Tarot card Vicenzia just showed Lumeria was a Fox.  -- George claimed the body was killed by chaos magic.

It was not some Graben family.  It was the forsaken using Captain Garvyn to ferry these dead bodies into Ravenloft.  He was cursed because he failed to make the deliveries.  BLOOD AND BLOODY ASHES...we just delivered those bodies and fulfiled the Forsakens' plan. AH DRAGON SPIT!! What will happen next?