The decision was made almost as soon as the session with the Lotharro ended. Woe needed to be a witness to the power that had wrought these atrocities he'd witnessed. These curses he'd only but lifted. The Puppeteer - in whatever identity he'd managed to wrap around himself - had crafted a trio of thralls, emptied of all emotion or heart. The Biqaj, the Lotharro, and the Qi'ora had been cured only with the slow ritual Lovalus had shown him. Woe was delivered the opportunity for a full tour of their inner turmoil as she reformed their emotional cores, their threadbare tangles, thread by thread. It wasn't easy to prompt one who wanted nothing to reach for desire, to give them for whom the will to move was stripped, a fleeting aspiration to change. She'd barely managaed it out with her own sanity intact. The Lotharro had been a disastrous near failure, yet ultimately she'd managed to deliver some semblance of functional feelings for the large man.
Even so, his words as a Frayed haunted her. "No more pain." He stood his ground on those words alone, whispered to the gloomy dark cell. He'd physically defended it, pinning her to the wall with a single arm, nearly crushing their larynx. It had been a change from the other two patients, who were rather docile and inert. The Lotharro couldn't have been speaking sense. No more pain. Simple phrase, but what would the world be if they were made manifest of the condition of every soul? If the good and bad emotions could be replaced with logical self-preservation? A world without hate, terror, anger, or envy. A world where no one knew a reason to despise their fellow man, but acted upon and toward the collective good of all things.
She knew the Puppeteer, for all their tinkering in the emotional weave of his subjects, had only intended to empty the feeling from a heartless vessel. He'd only wanted to create a perfectly compliant subjects to enslave, and had no interest in bettering anyone's lives, apart from his clients who paid him handsomely.
Yet, the idea of emotionless and unfeeling populace made Woe wonder.... could such a world prosper? Could such a society even be engineered, were the first problem solved? Was it preferable to the ruin all of mortalkind had inherited?
Her necessary investigation took her to the very lair of the Puppeteer. She needed to see the laboratory where these crimes had been committed to unwilling subjects. Where so much ether had been poured into the creation of those three ex-monsters. She slipped in unnoticed for the most part, ,though she didn't intend to remain unnoticed. She came in the shell of the one she called Blanch for reason. They knew her face, which would give them access to certain areas that would immediately be sealed to any other.
With a heart of stone and a deep concern, she entered into the den of the string-wielder.
