Completed Hanging Upside Down

Delaney ran alongside Kristen through the castle grounds. She was sending tendrils of shadows behind them to hopefully slow the ogres down. They would not be able to do too much without her continued commands but any little bit helped.

She nodded at Kristen's words. Her focus too split between her shadows and trying not to fall over broken stones and other debris. She just hoped they weren't too small. Delaney loved the dark but she was slightly claustrophobic. Hopefully in this case just meant smaller than ogre size.

The two of them made it into the keep without incident and she sent two tendrils in opposite directions before holding up her hand for Kristen to pause. It was not even thirty seconds later that the tendrils returned and coiled up her arms.

"This way, Kristen!" Delaney took off in the direction that she figured the underground would be. She just wanted it confirmed before they wasted precious time running around the keep like idiots.

Kristen Pirian
 
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Kristen made it through the main portal of the Keep and came to a halt and caught her breath, shoulders climbing and chest heaving in the dim light inside. A small note. A small but proud note: she was only a little winded! Just a little! She could have kept going for a while if such was needed. She wasn't doubled over, hands on her knees, panting and gasping, no! She was getting better, getting fitter, hardier! Proctor Magomo's regimen was rough, of course, she wasn't denying that, and naturally there were days when she felt like a sack of potatoes and could hardly bear to rise from bed and oh how she lamented to exert herself on those days! But it was working, and it was paying off.

The ogres could be heard outside, thundering closer, one among their number shouting, "They went in there! I seen 'em!"

And it was then that Delaney's scouting was done, and Kristen wasted no time in following after her.

"That is a very useful skill, Delaney! I'm glad for it!" Kristen said, relieved and joyful.

The Keep wasn't massive, but neither was it small. There were common rooms and armories and bunkrooms and training rooms and officer's quarters and other various chambers. All of the stone doorways weren't accommodating in the slightest to the enormous height and girth of the ogres, so Kristen took some comfort in their brutish, frustrated voices being made obscure by distance and depth.

Of course, the further in they went inside the Keep, the darker it got. Some rooms had scant bits of light from windows choked with overgrowth, but many were pitch black.

Kristen held both of her pauldrons in one hand, keeping the other on Delaney's shoulder, fearful that she might lose her in the dark. "Your...your sh-shadows at least thrive in the darkness, do they not?"

A bit of nervous laughter escaped her.

Delaney Lennox
 
"Yes, they do. They are very pleased right now."

Delaney brought one of her hands up to touch Kristen's that was on her shoulder. It was to reassure Kristen as much as it was to remind herself that Kristen was still there. She kept sending tendrils out into the darkness to scope out their path. Delaney controlled darkness and shadows but that didn't mean she could see in the darkness.

The tendrils would come back to whisper directions that would keep the two young women on the right path. It was completely dark now and she was relying solely on her shadows. They were letting her know where steps where, turns, and if there were any other obstacles.

The angry shouts were getting quieter and quieter with each step and Delaney finally let their pace slow a little.

Kristen Pirian
 
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Oh how much Kristen appreciated Delaney's hand on her own! There was a measure of comfort a hand could provide that a shoulder simply could not. It was as if reassurance itself could be found in every palm, togetherness in the tips of every finger.

"If not for the intrusion of those ogres, this would have made for a fine exploration," Kristen said. And she had a small moment of sudden fear here, squeezing Delaney's shoulder before it departed. She hoped that it was only those ogres outside who had taken up residence in this ruin!

"I've read of this place in a tome on Celestialist history—obviously not within the Academy library, one would be hard pressed to find such a book there!" Kristen let out a bit of shaky, awkward laughter. Cleared her throat. Continued, "Sentinel's Home, it was called, and it predates the Age of Expansion. Yes, a chapter in an order of knights long vanished by time (perhaps ironically, ha ha) by the name of Astra's Legion made their home here, and this very chapter venerated Aionus. Mayhap you can see why I am so keen to explore it!"

The present chamber they entered had a tall and narrow window, hanging moss shrouding its edges. A slash of light from the outside, faint and golden, illuminated dimly a set of curving stairs descending down into the Keep's lower levels. Just the top three steps, however, and past that point they disappeared into the darkness.

Kristen paused at the top landing of the stairs. Said nervously, "I'll...try not to fall." And another nervous laugh forced its way out. "Y-You'll catch me if I do though, yes?"

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney just smiled at Kristen ambled on about the Keep and what she had read about it. Of course Kristen had read about this place. That is what Kristen did. It was very Kristen. The mention of Aionus made Delaney nod slowly. Yes, now she understood perfectly why Kristen waned to explore this place.

The Queen of Shadows squeezed Kristen's shoulder in reassurance once more when she said she would try not to fall but the next words caught her off guard.

"Y-You'll catch me if I do though, yes?"

"Always," she said with a smile in her voice. "I will always catch you if you fall, Kristen Pirian."

Because I love you...

Kristen Pirian
 
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Kristen, standing in that slice of light filtering in through the slim window, flashed her a bright smile. "Aww, Delaney, that is a most endearing thing for you to say!" And truly, she was touched. My, how hard it was to believe that only a matter of months separated her from being flatly terrified of Delaney to have having her as a best friend.

The Academy was full of surprises, was it not?

Absolutely not on account of her nerves and as a bid to slightly delay their descent into the darkness of the lower levels, Kristen set her chainmail and pauldrons down and suggested, "Well. Now would be a good time for me to don my armor again—what pieces we were able to recover, at least."

Hopefully those ogres didn't go and ruin what had to be left behind out of spite. Most of all her book of verses, for armor could be replaced rather handily with the resources backing House Pirian, but the book was far more special!

"Could you help me with some of it?" she asked. "The pauldrons, certainly. 'Tis quite the chore trying to affix them to my arming doublet with one hand."

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney just let out a small huff at Kristen's words. She really needed to stop being endearing and nice. She was the gods damned Queen of Shadows and she needed to start acting like it. Right now. No more nice Delaney.

"Well. Now would be a good time for me to don my armor again—what pieces we were able to recover, at least. "Could you help me with some of it?"

Fuck, she thought. Mean Delaney had lasted a whole five seconds. She had lost her edge. It was time to go hang out with Liliana again. That girl would remind her of who she was.

"Of course," Delaney answered and grabbed the first pauldron. She set the piece of armor on Kristen's shoulder and started to secure it in silence.

"What else did you read about this place?" The Initiate asked as she moved to Kristen's other side before repeating the process. Perhaps if she could get Kristen thinking about the Keep, she would stop worrying about the stairs. Delaney knew this was a stall tactic.

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Delaney helped with her pauldrons, and Kristen set to fastening her sabatons to her arming pants. Her gauntlets, her gorget, her tabard and outer belt all had to be abandoned with her mace and her book of verses. But...maybe they could be retrieved later? She did hope that the ogres hadn't set up permanent residence here—such would be uncharacteristic. Falwood was hardly their normal lands, the Steppe far to the north (and on another continent entirely) most likely their home.

"Well, the sources aren't very specific, but it certainly seems like Sentinel's Home met with a dire fate once the Age of Expansion first peeked over the horizon of time." She started on her other sabaton. "Templar Chapters also established themselves here, but each migrated elsewhere in their own time, and Sentinel's Home was thus left for the forest to reclaim. I only hope that there's something left from when Astra's Legion occupied this place. How exciting would it be to recover an artifact long lost, a relic which might link oneself to storied men and women who lived over a thousand years ago?"

Which was to say nothing of a holy artifact! Imagine, something truly blessed by the power of Aionus, channeled through the prayers and bestowment of a venerable priest from a bygone age! What a discovery such would be! And, on a petty and utterly personal level, it would be a way for Kristen to rebuke the snide comments many of her peers (and Proctors) had with regard to her faith. A childish impulse, she recognized, paling mightily in the face of her more mature motivation, but nevertheless it was there.

Kristen stood, as armored up as she could be.

"I'll try not to fall," she said again.

Then she placed her hand upon Delaney's shoulder once more, her guide in the dark that awaited.

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney listened in silence to Kristen talk about her research. This girl was something else and she fascinated Delaney a little more everyday. She was strange one but it was the best kind of strange. Delaney did not understand her faith in the slightest but she admired Kristen for her devotion to an unseen deity. That took courage.

As Kristen prepared to start down the steps, Delaney sent a tendril down ahead of them. She had the other taking each step in front of her so it could report if there were any holes or lose stones before she stepped down. She was determined that they would make it to the bottom without issue.

The Queen of Shadows brought her hand up once more and set it on Kristen's that rested on her shoulder. It seemed to have relaxed her before so, of course, she would do it again.

With that small comfort given to Kristen, they started to descend.

"I think it would be very neat if we brought home some ancient relic. It would certainly look good on you and I. The Academy loves shit like that," Delaney laughed out. If she kept Kristen's mind on something else then it would not be on the stairs.

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"And no mistake! The Academy, and I would daresay the assembly of Dreadlords as a whole, is fond of anything which might grant power." That is, of course, if the ancient relic in question did in fact carry that sort of blessing from Aionus she'd been fantasizing about. If it were merely a relic of historic or religious value, Kristen had a woeful feeling that it might well be confiscated by the Proctors and destroyed as if it were worthless rubbish.

All of these thoughts did help keep Kristen's mind occupied, and she didn't fret during the descent down the steps.

Pitch black came to envelop them both as they reached the bottom landing. No more occasional windows down here. Stark quiet all around them, the sort only to be found in the stillness of a truly abandoned place. Their footsteps pushed back against it, this quiet, temporarily banishing it and the almost smothering quality it had before. Like a blanket tossed up into the air it came to settle back down upon them, or close to it, before their next footfalls.

The present hallway stretched under the Keep and castle grounds for a while, branching paths and rooms splitting off from it, all concealed from their eyes but not from Delaney's searching shadows.

Kristen clutched Delaney's shoulder as they progressed, certainly a trifle fearful that if her grip were to come to slide away that she'd be terribly lost in the underground.

"Delaney...?" Kristen said, positing an idea. "Mayhap there's a old storeroom, or some other kind of room, wherein we might find wood from which to fashion torches?"

Provided, of course, that by chance said wood was not rotting away, that maybe travelers from more recent times had sought shelter and left some surplus firewood. Something.

Delaney Lennox
 
Kristen's idea was a good one but she was not sure if it was a viable one. They would need wood that could actually burn in addition to something to make it set fire in the first place. It would have really been nice to have Zael along on this ride. He would be extremely helpful.

"Yes, let me send the shadows to check," Delaney said at the same time she sent the mental command. It would take a minute or so and she kept their steady pace down the stairs.

Everything that happened next happened in the blink of an eye and slow motion at the same time. With her shadows on another errand, there was no one to warn her about cracked steps so when Delaney stepped down and felt the shift, she loosed her hand and pushed Kristen's from her shoulder gently. The stone cracked under the Shadow Queen's foot and sent her tumbling forward.

Her fall down the stairs felt like it took forever and she felt she had hit every single step on the way down. Her journey did not end until she hit her head on the stone and everything went still.

Delaney lay at the bottom of the stone steps in a sprawled mess. She was alive but she was knocked out.

Kristen Pirian
 
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"No! Delaney!"

She couldn't so much see it as she could, with bone-chilling clarity, hear it. Hear as her best friend lost her footing and went tumbling terribly down the stairwell, only a distant thump at the bottom landing signaling an end to her fall. Kristen froze, hands cupped over her mouth.

"Delaney!? Delaney!?"

Oh no, no, no. She needed to get down there. But she also needed to not slip and fall on the same fault that Delaney had. Maybe the ogres couldn't get down here, but they couldn't be so sure that there wasn't something else taking up residence down in the darkness.

Carefully, Kristen reached over to the wall of the stairwell, feeling for it, finding it, bracing herself. A probing foot carefully poked down in the pitch black, Kristen being awfully mindful to keep her weight on her backfoot. It was a slow and painstaking process, testing each step and going down one and testing the next, so on and so forth, but eventually Kristen got down to the bottom. Blindly she fumbled, down in a crouch and with exploratory hands reached out, until the tips of her fingers found something warm.

Delaney.

Kristen touched and searched, hands patting down her fallen friend, feeling for the wet warmth of blood or the probing protrusions of a broken bone. Arms, legs, stomach, chest, face, Kristen had to make sure she was alright.

"Delaney, can you hear me?" she said in a whisper, fearful of those thoughts she had of something slumbering in the dark. "Please say something. Anything. Let me know you're okay."

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney did not move at the sound of Kristen's pleas.

What Kristen did not see though was that Delaney's shadows had all but enveloped her now. A few tendrils even went into her via her nose and mouth. They were working on reviving her. Waking her up. Healing her with darkness. One more step down a path to complete darkness in herself.

It was a battle she had been waging for the past few months. Delaney was not as hateful as she once had been and the shadows needed her back so they jumped on this opportunity to heal and corrupt at the same time.

The silence from the Initiate gave no indication of her status for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she coughed and groaned and tried to sit up. The wave of dizziness washed over her and she gave up her effort for the time being.

"Kristen? What happened?" Delaney had a massive headache and her body was sore but she was no longer bleeding internally thanks to her darkness.

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"Oh thank goodness!"

Kristen couldn't see her in the dark, but that didn't stop her; she had a pretty good spatial awareness of where Delaney was even so. She leaned down and hugged her as she lay, the edge of her ponytail brushing against Delaney's neck as it slid over from the momentum.

"You fell! You slipped and fell." Kristen sighed and raised herself back up. "I had taken such a fright. 'Twould be an event most awful if you'd met with a grievous injury."

Kristen herself had suffered only a minor gash on her head from the ogres' trap. It was sore, there was drying blood, but aside from the pesky bump that was forming it wasn't anything too serious. Delaney, if something had happened, wait—

"You are well, aren't you? Are you okay, Delaney?"

Delaney Lennox
 
Kristen's hug along with the subsequent tickle of her hair on Delaney's neck made the sore Initiate smile and shiver at the same time.

She had fallen? Well...fuck. Kristen had been the one relying on her to keep them safe on the steps and she had failed miserably. She was lucky to be alive, she supposed, and then her thoughts traveled to her shadows that she could hear whispering in her head.

Fuck.

Delaney had been seriously injured and they had healed her. She owed them now. They had saved her life. They wouldn't force her to hurt Kristen if she just gave into them a little more...

She had been so controlled lately and this had undone all of it. She would not let Kristen know though. She would be long graduated and gone before the darkness consumed and controlled her. Kristen would always be safe from her.

"Yes, I am fine. I am sore but the darkness here allowed my shadows to heal me..." Delaney did manage to sit up this time and rubbed the back of her head. "Sorry, I failed you on the stairs, Kristen."

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The darkness healed her? My, that was...suffice it to say that Kristen would never have expected to hear such a thing. She even felt a touch envious. Could Delaney heal other people as well? Could she empower them? That was one thing Kristen, in the first year in which she discovered her magical aptitude and was promptly told to keep it a strict secret, had always wanted to be able to do. Like the clerics and priestesses she had read about! They used their Divine Magic for such feats, and so common was this impression of Divine Magic that many Proctors relegated Kristen as a healer before her training had even begun in earnest.

But Aionus, of course, was a deity whose bestowed magic was different than other examples. Yet all the same she wished that she could have healed Delaney with her magic, but, alas, it was not to be, nor would it ever.

"No, no, Delaney, you failed no one," Kristen said reassuringly. "We are training to be Dreadlords, but we are still human. Not a single one of us is perfect. Why, I once saw Proctor Magomo slip on some spilled grease in the dining hall at the Academy and fall straight onto his backside! He stood and looked around with this sheepish look on his face and proceeded on, trying to pretend it didn't happen!" Kristen giggled. "He didn't see me, and thank the gods for that!"

She hoped a little spot of levity might assuage Delaney's own thoughts, if not the soreness.

Delaney Lennox
 
If only Kristen knew the cost of her shadows healing her. She was not insane now but if she kept getting hurt she would be someday soon. Kristen would not be envious if she knew that it was no divine power that had saved Delaney and it would never be.

Delaney laughed at Kristen's story in spite of herself. She was picturing Proctor Magomo slipping, falling, and then walking off as if nothing had happened. He would have definitely punished Kristen if he had seen her. The fear of her telling someone and ruining his reputation would be enough for him to try and destroy her.

"I am imagining it and I kind of want to recreate it so I can see it with my own eyes," she said once she was done chuckling.

"Oh, my shadows found some torches and some flint down the corridor a little more. They said it is the second alcove on the right," she finished speaking and tried to get to her feet. It took a little longer than she would have liked but she got there.

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My, what a fitting retribution for the manner in which Proctor Magomo had chastised Delaney when, goaded on by the Punishment Game, she'd come to him with foolishness. To be chased all around the Academy grounds whilst wearing nothing but her undergarments! Gosh, if it had been Kristen and if Mother had heard the news, why, her poor mother's heart would've stopped right there and she'd have died upon hearing it!

It would certainly tickle Kristen's funny-bone to see Proctor Magomo (or any of the intimidating, formidable Proctors for that matter) take another all-too-human tumble on account of some wayward grease on the floor.

Oh, my shadows found some torches and some flint down the corridor a little more...

"Excellent!" Kristen said, her voice full of renewed spirits and void of that trepidation she'd had at the top of the stairs. In perhaps a strange way, suffering the intense stress of thinking Delaney to be seriously injured, only to have it moments later be relieved, had done wonders for her state of mind.

She rose to her feet as well. Kept one hand on Delaney's shoulder and with her other stretched out toward where she thought the wall might be. The tips of her fingers then graced cold, rough stone.

"Alright. Second alcove ahead and on the right. 'Tis simple enough." Then, after a tiny moment, she added, "I would take great care with your steps though, Delaney. One brush with painful misfortune is one more than you needed today, surely."

A small bout of awkward laughter filled the darkness of the hallway.

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney chuckled dryly at Kristen's warning. It was flat ground. She could handle flat ground...she hoped. Her own hands followed the stone wall as they walked together. They passed one space on the right and kept going until there was another opening.

Once they had entered the alcove, she moved to the left to feel around for a torch or for the cold smoothness of the flint. It would be very nice if everything was nicely stacked together but she had a feeling that they would have no such luck.

Delaney's hand hit the slightly rough, lacquered handle of a torch. She grabbed it and continued to explore. Two torches would be great but one would do if that was all they had.

"I have one torch," she told Kristen softly.

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It felt as if they were smothered in darkness. Such a thing, Kristen realized, was quite a rare occurrence for her. There was always some sort of light, be it a candle or lantern or magical etching, that kept the halls of the Pirian Estate illuminated, always a moon or two and the sea of stars above to cast a pallid glow in through her window. Pitch black, real pitch black, was foreign and...frankly terrifying. Maybe even more so than those ogres outside.

The sound of their footfalls in the underground of the Keep was the only thing to remind Kristen that she was still here. Still...being, as it were. Her sense of hearing had taken primacy.

That, and her sense of touch. Thank Aionus for the comforting feel of Delaney's shoulder tucked inside her palm and beneath her fingers.

At last, then, a torch.

"Splendid!" she said, and—

Her foot accidentally kicked something. Something hard but quite small. There came in the darkness the sound of a few tap, tap, taps as the thing bounced along from floor to wall to floor. The thing which felt...like a rock of some sort.

"Flint?" Kristen questioned. "Where did it go? I think...I heard it come to a stop over...this way? Goodness, I shouldn't turn, or I shall lose all sense of direction."

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney heard the bouncing and tried to follow it to get the location of its resting place.

"Yes, probably," she said as she pulled Kristen's hand from her shoulder and placed it against the nearest wall. "Just stay here. Do not move. I will find it and come back."

The Queen of Shadows used those shadows to help her locate the flint. She bent down and felt around until the smooth stone between her fingers.

"I got it," Delaney said as she headed back to grab Kristen and her torch. Two torches and some flint. They could do this. They would get some light.

She led Kristen back into the corridor and then sat down. She assumed Kristen would follow. She set the torch on the ground then felt for the wick. Once she had it, she started to strike the flint and hope a spark would catch.

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"I'll just...I'll be right here...ha ha..."

Kristen stayed still as an icicle—and, quickly enough, felt like one too. The icy chill of being alone in the absolute dark (alone as measured by the contact of Delaney's hand or lack thereof, anyway) was swift to settle upon her skin and upon her nerves.

By the blessing of Aionus it did not last long. Delaney came back, and the mere touch and presence of another human being down here was enough to banish all of those clawing fears and that sweeping frigidity which had come in. The Academy wanted Dreadlords to be self-sufficient, never requiring anyone, monolithic rocks which stood by themselves...but was such a thing even truly possible? What man or woman could stand a life like that for long?

Out in the corridor, they sat and then came the fast and fierce scraping—ktt, ktt, ktt!—of the flint against a metal support beam. Ephemeral sparks flashed like midnight lightning, none yet catching onto the torch Kristen held up.

This went on for quite a while.

"Are your arms becoming tired yet, Delaney?" Kristen asked, the weariness evident even in her voice. "If you are, I would not mind—"

A tiny orange glow on the torch's end after a spark landed. Tiny and shimmering. Faint and oh so precious.

Kristen's voice rose in excitement. "There! There!"

She blew gently on the ember, feeding it air. A flame the size of a candle's emerged in time. And grew. Grew and grew until a great sphere of orange light came to blossom and Delaney's face took shape from the retreating darkness, and Kristen's as well for her.

She smiled broadly.

"There you are."

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney was about to let Kristen have a turn when it finally caught. The second torch only took a few moments less to light than the first. She could not be mad though. They had two torches and they could finally see.

"There you are," Delaney repeated once the second torch was blazing.

She had to admit that while she loved the darkness, she liked being able to see where she was walking at the same time. These torches would have certainly saved her from falling down the stairs...from dying...

"Alright, now that we can see, let's see what we can find!"

The Queen of Darkness did not wait for the okay before she started to walk with more confidence now.

Kristen Pirian
 
The instant relief that came from the light of the torches fell over Kristen in a soothing tide. Even if Delaney's magic dealt with such, that darkness that had been total only a moment ago, surely she felt some similar relief even so, just in seeing the face of a friend!

"Yes! Right!"

She stood and followed, torch in hand. The Keep's underground took shape before them, the corridor and all its branching rooms reaching out from the nothingness of the shrouding darkness and taking form in the orange glow. Kristen took the time to peek into the rooms they passed, scanning them and their dusty wares. Truly, Sentinel's Home had been abandoned, for it had all the hallmarks of it. No grim, desperate battle fought within these halls (at least none which prompted the end of its occupation). Just the impression that the last Templar Chapter to dwell here had, when they were preparing to move on, grabbed what could be loaded onto their wagons and pack animals and left all else behind.

As they walked, Kristen shared a hopeful idea.

"There could be an escape passage down here, something that leads to a concealed exit far from the castle walls on the outside. A useful tool for sneaking someone out in case of a siege, but, of course, a liability, should the exit be discovered by a foe—so not all castles or manors employ them."

Father said that the Pirian Estate in Vel Anir had such a trapdoor exit...but Kristen herself had never seen it, so in that case all she could do was shrug her shoulders at the notion.

Delaney Lennox
 
Delaney was surprised that most of the small rooms were either empty or contained things that were unimportant to the two Initiates. She was just coming out of one of the rooms when Kristen started talking about an escape passage.

Honestly, she had been hoping they would come across another exit because they had gone pretty deep under the keep now and she was not looking forward to an orc ambush if they had to go back the way they came.

"I was hoping there would be one. We will have to double back to get your book though so hopefully it will be just far enough away for the orcs to think we got lost or fell down the stairs and died..."

Her voice trailed off at her words. Too soon to think about that. Too soon to worry about her future now that she had died and been revived by the darkness.

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