Of course everyone’s favorite Friendly Neighborhood Mage Cabal couldn’t spend this much time in someone’s head without trying to turn them into a drooling idiot.It’s sort of a specialty of theirs. Wandering around in Damien’s ex-Wife Sara’s head was no exception.

One of the things Damien wanted to know was whether or not Sara had ever loved him. I’ll be honest, it was a question I struggled with myself earlier on when I was putting the whole story line together. Ultimately I thought it would be more interesting if she really did love him, and I think that was the right choice. It’s very easy to play the scheming conniver who was simply using him, but it muddies the waters a bit if she actually loves him.

Or, so one would think.

Damien recently hosted a press conference on behalf of a police detective who had been publicly ranting about Werewolves, and had actually done a great job of convincing people that this was clearly a sign that the police needed more funding, so that they could not only not be so overworked but also get the help they need to deal with the things they have to see at crime scenes and such every day. He absolutely won over the cops at the very least.

How his ex would feel about it was a different matter entirely. Yes, he did a good thing, but his name is now forever associated with Crazy Werewolf Guy, and as his ex-wife she is forever linked to him. What she really wants is to find a way to turn this to her advantage. Of course, she’s also pretty mad at him for attempting to cheat on her a few times (and only failing on a technicality – those women were actually her in Supernal Disguise) and even more so than being angry she’s hurt. She needs to figure out how to play this off. She goes with “What happened to you? You used to have a respectable career, you had the world in your hands? What is going on?” This, rather quickly, degenerated into “you know, everyone knows I’m your wife. They all see you saying this stuff on TV, and I’m the one who has to put up with the snickering and the ‘poor, pathetic, Sara’ looks from everybody! I still live in the same building you know! What do you think my father thinks of all of this? And you aren’t the one who has to put up with it! Tabloids are calling me now! Because of you!”

And yes, he took the bait and asked “tabloids? which tabloids?”

And she pulled the old “I dunno, crazy stuff with weird names like Sad, Sick… somethingorother.”

“Sick Sad World?”

“Yes, I believe that was it: Sick Sad World. What does it matter? I don’t want to be getting calls from tabloids about you!”

Sick Sad World would be the conspiracy rag that was used to tell Aenaiyah that her sister had been taken.

dun…Dun…DUN!

Stupid me, I expected Damien to think he’d have to… I dunno… maybe PROTECT his INNOCENT CIVILIAN EX-WIFE who was only DRAGGED INTO THIS BECAUSE OF HIS ACTIONS.

You know, like a normal person who might feel some sort of remorse. Because up until now he has no idea that she too is a Mage.

Not so Damien. He decides that it might be a great idea to set her up to be bait! He figures that if someone decides to show up to kidnap her they can use that opportunity to find out more about the kidnappers.

So they break into her apartment, and backtrack through her phoneline to find out where the call from “Sick Sad World” came from. On the one hand, I am completely unconvinced that it actually works that way (I declare shenanigans!), but the fact of the matter is that no tabloid called her. Confused by finding no way to traceback a call to “Sick Sad World” Aenaiyah does some Post Cognition to see Sara’s side of her conversation with Damien, and  what she was doing before that call. Aenaiyah by this point has oodles of dots of Time Magic so she can watch quite a bit of Sara’s day. She does not get the impression that the phone had been ringing off the hook. When she gets to that part of the day where Sara is about to call Damien she finds that Sara has left a message for her. It goes something like this:

You see Sara pick up the phone. She’s about to dial a number, and then she stops. She looks into space (she is the only person in the room) and says the following: “OK… so… if you’re seeing this then I guess the jig is up. Yes, I can do that trick too.” Sara then proceeds to call Damien and has the conversation she had with him on the phone.

Aenaiyah, being Aenaiyah, freaks right the F%&@ out and tells everyone that they need to leave this apartment NOW!

Damien is sure to use his mind mojo to make sure the dog leaves a present on Mommy’s bed before leaving the apartment. Really mature guy that Damien is.

So I was kind of hoping that he might actually feel guilty about the fact that Sara had always loved him. For the group’s trip into her brain I represented this by something that happened in Damien’s and Sara’s youth in school. Sara’s family has always been ‘religious’ (they believe in an Exarch really, but most people would see it as a religion) and Sara was being picked on for it. Sara firmly believed in her own specialness (young Acanthus that she was) and some of the kids were unkind about it. Damien (or Simon, as he was known back then) told the other kids to leave her alone. More than that, he punched a bully in the face for her, which made the other kids disperse. He instantly became Sara’s hero, and Sara decided to pull any strings necessary to keep them together. Fortunately for her Damien’s family were also Seers, though he himself had not Awakened just yet. His Fate Aura looked promising for an Awakening though, and she convinced her Father to let her choose him. A little tweak of Fate here and there to keep them in the same classes and whatnot, and ultimately Damien and Sara did get married. In reality.

In Sara’s Onerios Damien saw the kids ganging up on her and said “F%&@ her” and walked away.

Argus on the other hand used Forces Magic to fly her out of there, thereby becoming Sara’s new hero!

And then the group got to The Pyramid.

Damien’s actions at The Pyramid can only be described as “disturbing”.

Clearly he earned that low Morality score somewhere along the way.