David Boree

Let alone this extremist offshoot, right?

Yep.

In her own writings at the time, Ziz describes hideous fights with Gwyn, in which Gwyn tries to mentally dominate and mind control Ziz.

They both become believers, and a new theory Ziz has, that's basically like, she uses the term mana, which she describes as like your ability to persuade people, which is if you can convince someone of something,

It's evidence that you have an inherent level of magical power, and someone with naturally high mana, like Ziz, can literally mind control people with low mana.

That's what she believes she's doing whenever she tries to talk someone into something about themselves, is she's mind controlling them.

And she and Gwyn have mind control battles.

At one point, they start having one of these arguments where basically Gwyn threatens to mind control Ziz and Ziz threatens Gwyn back and this starts a verbal escalation.

The way Ziz describes this escalation, which is again, these are two sleep deprived, traumatized people fucking with each other's heads on a boat, but the way that Ziz describes the escalation cycle is going to be important because this has a lot to do with the logic of the murders that are to come.

I said that if they were going to defend a right to be attacking me on some level and treat fighting back as a new aggression and cause to escalate, I would not at any point back down.

And if our conflicting definitions of the ground state, where no further retaliation was necessary, meant that we were consigned to a runaway, positive feedback loop of revenge, so be it.

And if that was true, we might as well try to kill each other right then and there.

In the darkness of the Caleb's Bridge at night, where we were both sitting lying under things in a cramped space, I became intensely worried they could stand up faster.

Consider the idea from World War I. Mobilization is tantamount to a declaration of war.

I stood up, still, silent, waiting.

So you see...

First off.

And there's other people there as well.

Yes, yes.

And just like the logic of, well, obviously if you attack me, then I'm going to counterattack you.