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"Hah." Armida had no way to make any sort of facial expressions, not even the limited ones Malodore managed, but something in now-familiar plague doctor body language suggested amusement... and approval. "Indeed not. We are unpleasant to that worthy as well, I am sure. Far too difficult to digest."

There was a moment of silence as the plague doctor shuffled on, her hooves thudding on damp wood. The path seemed to lead over a tangle of sodden roots, slippery at times though Armida's own footing was sure. "That wicked child called to us in its time of need," she said, finally. "I felt in it a grief that my Celeste had tasted - so I thought, in my greed, that perhaps you were my analogue. I grieved, a bit... for its sake." Another pause.

"And then you returned, as I did, and the irony was too great to ignore. As well; I had wished to meet you, before, to ensure you were wicked enough." Mischief, then, just a thread of it in the crow-voice, but her movements were a bit heavy, a bit slow. Weighted by her words.

The plague doctor stopped moving and turned; the mask had no eyes, only smooth curves in the sculpted porcelain that marked out the contours of an human face, utterly unlike a plague doctor's 'true' visage. Still, Armida was adept at fixing someone with even a sightless and false gaze. "And what did you learn, beyond Death? Beyond the boundaries of all you had known?"

The coracle pole creaked beneath Armida's grip.

Armida remained still, her body language impassive. "A lesson worth learning, and worth learning young." She stretched out one arm, the one holding the coracle pole; deftly, she shifted her grip so that she was holding one end of the pole, and used the tip to pull back a tangle of hanging vines. Light streamed down into the shadow.

"You can see it, just beyond. The corpse that binds me here." The very tips of the towers of Casa Cirurgien were visible through the window she'd opened in the canopy. "I had thought I had escaped, but trading one cage for another is not escape." She pulled back, and the fall of vines slid back into place, cutting off the light once more. "If I leave now, what use all the time spent watching the Casa die? To leave is to admit to wasted years. To remain is to treasure bitterness. So. You see, perhaps, how I might envy your fortune." The crow-voice spoke evenly, as if they discussed nothing more serious than the weather.

The laugh was immediate and harsh, though perhaps that was just because it issued from the throat of a crow. "I thought so, once."

"If I wanted to, I could reduce the Casa to rubble in a month," Armida said, quietly. "The swamp would grant me that, if I wished it. The foundation is so perilous. It would not take much. And yet I, in my pride - my hubris - want them to have nothing they can blame but themselves. I want every tower to crumble, every stone to tumble down, and for the Elders to stand bereft on the ruins and know beyond doubt that they failed." The crow-voice did not modulate in tone at all, but her grip on the coracle pole tightened until the wood groaned beneath her claws. Only when a faint crack sounded did the plague doctor relent.

"So, you see," she said, with a raspy wet sound that came not from the crow's mouth along with her words, but from beneath the smooth white surface of the mask. "I am complicit in my own captivity."

"Flatterer," the crow-voice growled, but some of the tension bled out of Armida's stance. "As do I. And, I suppose, when it is accomplished, I shall be as lost as you feel you are at this moment, yes?"

"Give yourself more control over your path," Armida said, after a moment. "Allow yourself the luxury of change within the boundaries of the foundation you have set. Don't decide to wait out immortals," and that last was accompanied by that odd wheeze from beneath the mask again.

There was a pause. "And be mindful of what you discard when you make your choices."

The plague doctor began moving forward again, over the curved roots that made up the path. "Then perhaps you can avoid the errors I have made. That is all I can offer, in truth. Unless you have need of a crow." There was a twist of mischief in the crow-voice, though whether it was placed there by Armida herself or by clever Ligeia was unclear.