aquaveiled | Inbox @ aionlogs

To hear him speak is such a different experience than going on this ride with him. With Estinine, with Abel even, the feelings were a little more controlled and withdrawn. But this leaves no doubts and she isn't sure how she feels about it. Her continued guarded confusion, at least, is all put palpable.

From anyone else 'in an egg' would have been amusing. Maybe a part of it is, given the ridiculousness of the notion no matter how real it is. And the thought of Zenos in all his...girth hatching from one is comical. Almost. But she isn't laughing.

Is it wise to admit that she was? She may not have been forthcoming to others about her little side quest, but many other Aions were also hopping from shrine to shrine to track down newcomers. Technically she was doing exactly the same thing.

"I wanted to see if you survived."

So...that's a 'yes'.

Again that rush of warmth, one that continues to suffuse all that comes next with a soft glow that can only be fondness.

“Come now. You know nothing as banal as Death can claim me.” The tone's arrogant, sure, all the swagger befitting his former station, though there's an edge to it; this isn't a blade that sits comfortably in his hand, nor one he quite knows how to make sing, but it's the one he's been given and is trying to wield anyway. Almost but not quite a boast, as if he himself lacks some measure of conviction in its merit. An edge which is lost as he continues “Though I will concede it would have made for an excellent finale... something I doubt your new allies can hope to offer.”

The word 'allies' tastes... not rancid, exactly? Offensively bland, if anything. Insipid. And yes, very obviously bait, expecting her to voice some protest that will put at least vague faces on the Pleroma blur.

Is this...something she's going to need to get used to? There's such a disconnect here she feels she's ill-prepared to have this conversation even knowing the very real possibility he could have been here this whole time.

Zenos isn't wrong. Even when he tried to take his own life he'd come back. A part of her had wondered if their last final battle would have been the end. Even if she was sure she saw his chest stop moving, she'd been concussed enough on her own to make any call to his state.

At the mention of allies, there's a flash image of Estinien that she tries to beat down, knowing how displeased her dear friend is going to feel. How angry. And he's already put himself in danger so many times. She doesn't know how much he will be able to glean. She has to be careful.

"Is that what you're hoping for here too? An end?"

There's a long pause, somewhere between dead air and a dial tone. Long enough she might be tempted to consider the call abruptly terminated, and then -

“... third time is the charm, is that not the phrase?” Another sensation like a laugh, though this one is cold, hard, weighs the chest down rather than fills it with light. He had nursed the same... yes, it's definitely a hope, that the breath she'd seen leave would indeed would be his last. “And yet here we still are. No, as tempting as it might be to charge full-pelt at the nearest foe, were there any worth the name save yourself,” - again, he's definitely fishing, trying to stir the pride he knows she must have in her companions, to get a clearer image than that quick flash - “I am content, for now, to abide.”

Edited 2022-05-05 00:50 (UTC)

She does think, for a moment, that he's lost interest at least for the time-being. But that thought is cut short and Himeka is left with the reality that a Zenos unsatisfied is a dangerous one, content though he states he is with the current situation.

It's hard to find such appraisals flattering even though she realizes in his strange worldview, they are. She's still trying to reconcile what felt like almost genuine happiness coming from him only moments ago with this same desire.

She can take a guess as to what he's trying to do--either garner a reaction or a little information as to her situation or that of the Pleroma in general. She may have let Estinien slip through but she will do her best to obscure the faces of others and try not to think of them individually. Zenos may receive vague blurry snapshots generic crowds in Godsblood or greenery of the forest. Himeka tries to keep her thoughts on him instead.

"Are you really?" Might as well challenge the thought. "I'd have thought that you were tired of waiting by now. And to instead bow to the Regent..."

She knows Zenos is willing to play along with whatever works for his own goals, but...does that fit with what the Regent wants? What he wants?

A fond chuckle (a single short bark, plosive, felt in the upper shoulders); touché. Well played. He can respect the art of the strike. And yes, it's obvious the word 'bow' in particular leaves a here-very-literal sour taste in the mouth. “Theirs is a very tedious city, that I will grant.”

It's her turn to get a series of snapshots; less vague, but muddled with enough older memory they're their own sort of blurry – a table spread with black doilies and finger food (that's also several banquets and other soirees he was forced to attend, at least one of which the table seems comically tall, viewed from a child's perspective), a shotglass filled with something clear and fruity-smelling (that's also a lacquered cup of sake, and the words Yanxia is a dunghill before it empties), an amalgam of 'top ten most boring speeches Emperor Solus ever gave', spires that might be Achamoth or Babil. All drenched in overwhelming boredom. He's less adept at this than she is, by virtue of time-spent if nothing else, but in some ways that works to his favour here.

Pause. The sense of focus shifting from that montage back to her. “Should I insult you by asking where you are?”

Edited 2022-05-05 07:27 (UTC)

It is a mix of different thoughts, some she can place as distinctly Garlemald now having been there herself, but the others? She's left to draw some conclusions on her own. Himeka isn't sure she would call them useful yet, but she'll take it all the same.

He calls her move which isn't too surprising. In truth Himeka is someone who acts much more on instinct, being in the moment, and choosing her words carefully is not one of her strongest points. A large by why she chooses to stay silent around him.

But now she would almost rather talk than continue to to parse through his actual feelings and emotions.

"Far away from Achamoth." Obviously. She figures that Zenos would know she wouldn't actually tell him. "But I'm sure the Regent has their own guesses, don't they?"

In that, at least, they are alike (same tenacity, different channel, as the bird-child had put it), both creatures more of instinct than forethought. In him, it's that unguarded intensity whenever something succeeds in rousing him from torpor; where she has learned to hold her tongue, he has never needed or particularly wanted to censor his.

“You assume I am privy to anything they may or may not think.” It's amusement, rather than frustration, in his tone; Himeka might well get the impression that no matter how tedious he finds everything else, not being in charge of anything is, for the moment at least, a welcome novelty.

They are alike in more ways than she would ever want to admit. Himeka has, at least, finally accepted that she values feeling powerful and becoming stronger in her fields of expertise. That it isn't just in exploration that she finds joy, but there is an undeniable rush of adrenaline when she can have aether respond to her call in brilliant explosions. She may not often start fights but has long since drawn issue with finishing them.

It's part of what makes them a dangerous combination given his own proclivity to the former.

It was a reaching on her part, but Zenos will feel the slight pang of frustration or disappointment that he has nothing to offer in that regard, fair though it is. She would like to return to her comrades with more than a warning that her efforts in the dreamscape were for naught and that they have more than one problem on their hands.

She huffs through her nose, narrowing her gaze out towards the water.

"I may have been hoping that grand speeches of plans and intent were something of an epidemic amongst evil overlords."

Okay, that was definitely speaking without thinking.

“It pains me to disappoint you.” The retort is fired back quickly enough to be a jest, but there is as ever an undercurrent of sincerity better befitting comrades than mortal foes. A tightening of the chest, if it feels like anything, a narrowing of the throat, a note that sounds in answer to the frustrated edge in her tone. “Though you have conquered fewer nations, and used far more magic, than any of our heroic epics would suggest befits your own station.”

A beat. “No doubt you have other, more prosaic good deeds demanding your attention?”

Silence hangs expectantly; this time there is no chance one might think his attention wandered.

Gods, he really sounds like he means it and that is more disconcerting than the ill-natured jests of a deranged mind. It's much easier to trade minimal banter on the battlefield before coming to blows, but in a battle of wits she finds herself less well-equipped. Unprepared.

There's a reason that despite her propensity for gathering allies, she is not the defacto diplomat of the Scions. (Apparently calling it the "corpse room" was in poor taste, she's found.) Zenos has the advantage here.

Mayhaps she should just say what's on her mind? Provided she doesn't out any of her friends and allies, of course.

Himeka's pause draws out as she licks the salt from the sea air from her lips. Then she exhales.

"Yeah, I do. And you're well-aware of what those are." She had said as much during their recent altercation. "What did they say? What did they tell you about their cause? Helping them try to end everything won't help you."

"You're conflating An End and The End, Beast." He fires back, before he can think better of it (again, caution and prudence tend to somewhat go to the wind where his Greatest Enemy is concerned). "You should know better than that by now."

There's a pause, where he considers her words; outside this strange shared space he shifts, from languid lounge to sat up, on the edge of the bed, thumb running over the edge of the crystal as he holds it.

"... I asked you, when we last faced each other: if there is No End, what then? Do you recall what you told me?"

It's not not an accusation, at least in part, and not not a tiny bit mocking - really, what does she expect him to do here? As well as they know each other, she should know by now he is and always has been slave to his own nature.

Edited 2022-05-06 10:38 (UTC)

Himeka falls quiet again. She does recall what she told him--and she believes it, too. One of her greatest faults is that she has never been much of an explicit planner and prefers to live in the moment, which means that she always hopes they are moments worth living for even if she realizes that is an impossible goal.

Slowly, she repeats her words:

"That there will be an end whether will it or not...and that each moment should count."

So what then...he hopes to find his end before The End? Asking what he will gain from that is pointless, isn't it--because His End is what he will gain. Does he mean, then, to continue to play her antagonist as a means to reach that moment?

"...So you place yourself with the Kenoma with the hope you'll find it in that process."

That cold, heavy laugh again, and again, that sense of a hilt ill-suited to his grip. "Would that it were so simple; did your allies explain to you, about your shard?"

There's a brief pause; the shard sits in his hand, and for the briefest of moments he considers whether he could simply crush it to powder now his strength is returning, and what it would feel like if he did. Would it be like dying again? Or would it be the silence of that void they'd launched themselves into?

(Himeka might well sense some of this, unguarded as his emotions usually are; a sound like splintering glass, maybe? Or she might sense none of it. Communion is an art, and he is gripping the shard much less tightly as he looks at it)

It is, of course, not that simple. If ending were the important part, and not the manner of that ending, he would have done so already. It needs to be a blinding, brilliant inferno that renders him ashes, not a sad little spark alone in a room that he's been told is his, in a city he has not yet had time to hate properly but definitely doesn't like.

He clears his throat. Wraps his fingers back around the shard.

"That you are here gives me some hope this world still has sport to offer. The one that comes next will be better, more worthy, shaped by our hands. And if it is not, we will burn that one too."

She does sense it--she feels it. What would seem like fear and loss from most comes with a strange sense of longing from him. Things she understood about Zenos...they were right, yes, but having his emotions so raw and open to her in this way gives them new weight. An uncomfortable weight. If anything, there has been a sense of strained distance on her end as she tries to maintain her own composure, though there is still something her that resonates with that feeling whether she will or not.

Himeka recalls the First, how painful it had been to contain the Light. How tired she had become, both physically and mentally. How she wished someone else could do the job for once--that she didn't have to try to be the good person and hero that people saw her as. When she took up Emet-Selch's offer to transform at the bottom of the ocean, it was not just to spare her friends the indecency--she had given up. She didn't want to fight anymore.

But as they always have, they pulled her back out of it. Her friends, her dear family. It hadn't been instantaneous, of course. It wasn't until spending time back on the Source that she began to feel more like herself again.

She has to wonder...would such a thing ever be possible for him? (Would he deserve it, after all he's done?)

Himeka looks at her own shard sitting in her palm--a shimmering, brilliant stone. Awash wish shades of pinks and blues not unlike her scales. They were told it's precious, important to protect.

"If I found your shard, I could destroy it."

But as far as if that would permanently destroy him is another case entirely. It sounds like it...yet that wouldn't be the end he'd want. It'd be short, cold. Unfulfilling.

Maybe that's what she should threaten him with.

"Here. In this world."

There's what feels like a sharp intake of breath, a tensing of every available muscle, and that warmth again - except no, not that warmth, different warmth, not that of a fire but of sunlight through trees, of skin flush with blood, branches breaking under foot, a pack of dogs at your heels (are you running with them or from them? Unclear).

And, at the point that becomes something less than completely overwhelming, an almost-growl, with an intensity she'd recognise from the Royal Menagerie and the same timbre as The Final Day. "You are welcome to try."

That--

--was not the response she expected, but mayhaps it should have been. She didn't make it clear...that what she was threatening was not a grand chase and long fight, but a moment cut short.

She's not sure she wants to, though. It is already overwhelming being privy to that sudden rush of what should normally be associated with pleasant things. All his grandiose descriptions really weren't really just for dramatic effect, were they? That's really how he feels.

It's only when she feels a sudden sharp pain in the back of her head that she realizes she's been squeezing her own shard and immediately releases it.

Don't be an idiot, she chastises herself.

Mayhaps the right thing to do is go the other way?

"But I won't."

"No? Then what would you do, Beast, had you my shard in your hand?"

He lets that sit for a moment, before continuing, tone blasé for the most part but with that definite edge to it still lingering (the imagined-forest is dark now, no more sunlight-through-leaves. The air is cold - Garlemald-in-depths-of-winter cold - with a faint smell of copper and ash. The baying hounds, distant now, sound more like wolves)

"Or do you perhaps not meant to claim it at all? I can find other amusement, paltry though it may be by comparison." This part of the dance should be familiar to her, at least. "Legacy by Legacy, perhaps. Should the Innocents be first or last, do you think?"

That is exactly where she expected him to go and also exactly where she didn't want him to. He can feel a wave of palpable frustration roll through the connection and this time she doesn't try to rein it in. She should. It's playing right into what he wants and what he knows always works--

She cannot let this become another's problem. Too many lives have already been lost to that cause. But she also cannot simply let him have what he wants. Entertaining Zenos' nihilism and bloodlust is not her priority.

She'd thought she finally...finished it all. Hells, he'd come to her aid in the end and she had returned that act by finally engaging him on the battlefield as equals. Was it all for naught?

"--This is not a game, Zenos! It never has been!"

"On that we are agreed."

Sorry Himeka, he's started now, is gathering momentum, and woe betide anything that cannot withstand a freight train slamming through it. Her reaction, as ever, only adds more coal to the fire.

"If there were a time for games, my friend," (and still, despite it all, there is no hint of sarcasm or mockery in the word, a genuine affection that sits uncomfortably with the fervor of everything else) "it was in Ala Mhigo. What sport we made there, you and I, and how glad I am I did not kill you when first we met! And yet here we are. Again. Unceasing! Do not deny that you yearn for my blood as much as I do your rancor."

There's a growl on her end this time though she tries to rein it in at the tail end of it. She doesn't want to answer that question because she knows that to some degree his defeat is something that would bring her...not joy, but maybe a sense of satisfaction. That she can finally put that chapter to rest and spare many other innocent bystanders from being caught in the fray.

"If that's what you really believe then you should stop treating others as if they're just...dispensable pieces."

Reason with him? Ha. Is it worth a shot? Who knows. It's not an avenue she's ever tried before. She's never really taken the opportunity.

She is not the only one who has never tried; he is not someone people Reason With. Attempt to mollify, yes. Capitulate to, certainly. But not Reason With.

"I cannot value that which has no worth." he retorts; there is more than a note of defensiveness in his tone, a deep discomfort with how quick she is to dispute those things he considers immutable facts (as he has said, he does hate to disappoint her)."If they would be considered, let them first show us that which merits consideration."

That he sees them as immutable facts is something she has such a hard time with. There is certainly no small amount of hypocrisy in her own outlook, how she values life as something willing to fight for and preserve yet doesn't hesitate to cut down the people that stand in her way. Despite being one of the few White Mages left, she has harmed just as many if not more than she has healed.

"Just because you cannot see their worth doesn't mean they don't have any." It's almost a little snappy. "The food you eat and the clothes you wear--those were made possible by other people. Surely those people don't need to validate themselves to you?"

"Very well, let us humour each other then." She will feel, as much as hear, the change in his stance; it is as if he leans forward, shoulders raised and head lowered, like a cat preparing to pounce. "The person who made your clothes - assuming it is not one of your wretched coterie. Do you know their name? The circumstances of their birth? Their deepest aspirations? Do you lie awake wondering whether they had a good day or bad?"

He looks at the shard much the same way he did her, when they met in that other place, before he hatched here; again, there is that sense of predator circling dangerous prey. "Or did they cease to exist the moment their function - providing you with said clothes - was complete? Do you, in point of fact, think of them less often, and with less fondness, than you do your cane?"

She does feel it--it's as if his gaze is set on her even though he's malms away. She sucks in a sharp breath despite herself.

And yet...it's a valid question, all things considered, and one she is uniquely qualified to answer. Himeka is far from perfect and has moved on from people she met years ago, but if there is one thing she has always been good at, it's getting integrated into the local community from the bottom up.

"...My furs were provided by a man named Harold--he hunts with his daughter and they skin the animals too. She wants to be an archer. The leathers are aged by a pair of siblings who were also taught by their parents. One of them loves spicy food and the other one cannot handle it. It's become a game between them to sneak peppers in to see if the other will notice before they take that fatal bite. My sandals were put together by a woman named Cerna--she wasn't very friendly, but she does good work. When I ran into her later I found out that her grandson was sick so all her concern was spent on him and her family. I offered what I could, though as you know white magicks don't cure illness."

Himeka exhales long and low.

"I won't pretend to know everyone and I may not know every aspect of their life, but I wouldn't have made it as far as I have if hundreds of people hadn't helped me get there."

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CW: even more un-aliving related ideation than usual for this trashfire

some cw: for her own thoughts on it

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