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ximilialog2022-08-05 11:19 am
- ! event log,
- doctor who: river song,
- fear street: ziggy berman,
- fullmetal alchemist: edward elric,
- grishaverse: the darkling,
- gundam seed/destiny: yzak jule,
- marvel comics: gwen stacy,
- mcu: natasha romanoff,
- mcu: peter quill,
- naruto: kakashi hatake,
- pacific rim: newton geiszler,
- supernatural: dean winchester,
- the 100: clarke griffin,
- the old guard: andromache,
- the untamed: wei wuxian,
- the witcher: yennefer of vengerberg,
- towards the terra: soldier blue,
- yakuza: zhao tianyou
MISSION: WISH FULL, PART 1
● ● ● M I S S I O N 8 . 1
After two weeks of much-needed rest, there is once again the unmistakable ping of the earpieces, alerting the team to a new file — and before most of you will be able to read through the file, Viveca’s voice interrupts you.
I’ll see you on the platform tomorrow morning, so go pack your things… just not anything that’ll rust.
She ends her speech there, and then the comms go silent, allowing you to get a better handle for the new mission file and to start packing. Whatever it is you do to prepare — whether it’s training intensely, sleeping the day away, or focusing on what to take with you — you still have a bit of time.
The next morning, it is not just Viveca but Degar, too, waiting for the team on the teleportation platform. The hum of the machine is loud as always, but not quite enough to drown out Degar’s voice.
Just close your eyes and try to imagine your fishiest form, and I guarantee you’ll blend in with the rest of the Xrisora just fine. Good luck everyone.
The golden light of the spell mingles with the bright white from the teleportation machine, bathing you in what resembles the first rays of morning sun. You’re sent off to a chorus of murmuring voices, barely discernible except for the words whispering your personally catered goal—
And before you so much as open your mouth to respond, you can feel it: a splash of cold that feels almost welcome as you breathe in the water that surrounds you, feel the oxygen from it go through the gills you now have.
Welcome to Qruria City, orbers.
In front of you, the mighty gates to Qruria City rise up, carved into the rocks of the ocean floor, shaped by years and years of sea currents. Behind them, you can peek at the tops of lotus-pod-like buildings amidst gently swaying seaweeds and corals that climb up on the sides of the buildings. Grains of sand move underneath your legs, or tails, or perhaps both — as from around the gates, two guards come forward, one a shark merman, one a woman with the lower body of a shrimp.
You nod — and so do some others around you, and that seems to be enough for Xriom.
With those words, the gates creak open, letting you swim into the city.
1.0 A series of tall, dark grey twisting towers carved and created from sedimentary rock form a border around lush park-space full of brightly coloured flora that can be found draped across the queendom and its structures like a living blanket. Nestled into crevices and shrouded in coral and plant-life are a series of market places and residences, large swaths of farmland, and places where any citizen of Qruria can thrive in their day-to-day life. The queendom is large and there is plenty to explore, with friendly faces to greet you as you pass them by. All you need to do is … do a little swimming to get there.
The entertainment district is cluttered with underwater grotto taverns, stages for singing, dancing, and gatherings. These spaces are lit by way of bioluminescence, blossoms that have become permanent fixtures and begin to glow the moment the waters become dark. They do lend themselves to creating a certain mood.
Just past the taverns and performance centres are stalls and shops selling simple, practical, and beautiful items: garments, pottery crafted from hollowed out shells and coral, jewelry. You may walk past a stall selling beautiful, luminous necklaces made out of flaming pixie cups — these sparkling plants are bright like diamonds, and famous for imbuing their wearer with a feeling of happiness if worn for over one hour. There are herbalists selling healing tonics and medicines; and just past these shops, cafes and restaurants. Some are no more than holes in rocky caverns, but others are up high in lotus-pod-like structures sitting on top of rock pedestals, grand and famous with large dining halls and sparkling dinnerware promising you the meal of your life.
Beyond the pomp and the circumstance are quiet farmlands where mer-farmers keep their herds of Zavos, caring for them. You might instantly recognize some of these creatures simply by consulting the bestiary that is downloaded into your communications device the moment you arrive in Qruria.
2.0 Even from afar, the royal palace is a sight to behold: made from a marble-like material much more refined than the roughly-hewn towers past the palace’s walls, the structure seems to glimmer as the water currents circle around it, with spires that stretch towards the water’s surface, the entire palace area is lit with bioluminescent-powered lamps. It’s a must-see for any tourist from out of town, and certainly for any foreigner, and some areas of the palace itself are also open to the public with designated tours free to join.
If you join one of these tours, you’ll be led past the entrance gates and into a courtyard (one of many, and one of the few open to the public to view). Depending on the time of day, you may also catch sight of the Queen’s guard training by the barracks with long silver spears in hand. They look fierce, and their weapons look sharp. And while most of the tour is in the service of viewing the architecture and understanding how the royal family live their lives behind the palace’s gates, on the very rare occasion, you might sight the small royal princess swimming past a row of columns, giggling and chasing after her sea dragonling; or making a concerted effort to hide from whatever lessons she’s meant to be in that day.
3.0 There are a variety of different species of fish that also share the city space with the xrisora — a school of mackerel that move around in a synchronized cloud; whales that drift above the city, casting shadows onto the buildings … and even larger creatures, bioluminescent markings on their skin, swimming slowly towards the surface. Some xrisora stop and bow to their direction whenever they are seen.
One species of sea creature, one that faintly resembles a plesiosaur, sticks mostly to hiding behind rocks and coral reefs, shying away from the xrisora and the orbers… except for one of them. It sways its head back and forth as orbers swim past, as if sensing something — and when it sees Finn, Peter, Daisy or Clarke, it makes chirping noises and starts to swim around them, clearly excited.
4.0 As you wander — perhaps seeming a little lost or a little bored, maybe — you hear a little something that sounds suspiciously like pspsps. Looking around you don't see anything, at least not right away. But, then a sprigtly looking little guy bubbles up directly in front of you.
He's a fast talker and an even faster swimmer. He circles around you, no matter if you're still or moving.
There is no card.
Where, exactly, is this place? Well, if you watch him swim away, you'll be able to spot a small stall in the distance, in the city but right along the edge of it. If you miss it, you can inquire about it to be pointed in the right direction by any passerby. And once you visit him, he'll make an offer promising great rewards.
5.0 There is a different kind of excitement that can be felt all across the queendom of Qruria City, a feeling of anticipation that bubbles and gurgles in the hearts and gills of every citizen. Twinkling bioluminescent lights are hung like streamers across archways and around pillars of coral and limestone. Bright flags made of different coloured kelp wave and flutter with the current. Shops have started to pull out thematic wares — crowns and flowers, preciously crafted jewelry, small glowing sticks of light, iridescent fabric meant to drape over one's shoulders, or around one's waist all in celebration of something that unifies the whole of the queendom.
If asked what it is that calls for the occasion, one of the xrisora will cheerfully exclaim, “The festival, of course!” before they carry on. The festival they speak of is the Caerulea Festival, and it is the one time of the year when the light from the surface stretches its reach, touching the ocean floor and bathing Qruria with its bright glow.
Some might ask for your help in putting out the finishing touches to the fronts of homes or the frontages of a store. Or, depending on how buoyant they may seem, an excited xrisora might drape a free chain made of small shiny shells around your neck, or weave little corals into your hair.
You’ll find that the energy is the same across the city. Find a way to be helpful if you can, or simply find a place to sit and float, watch as the city around you is transformed throughout the week in anticipation for this festival of light.
6.0 In the middle of the City, there is a protected ‘park’ of sorts, a cluster of coral and plant-life in every colour one can imagine. With tendrils of gold, blooms of bright pink, and curling stems of blue and green, some multi-coloured, others a solid deep shade of its chosen hue, this ocean’s forest will be the main attraction of the Caerulea Festival, the best vantage point for the reach of the surface’s light. A stage with the delicate texture of a giant clam-shell has been set at one end with the park as its backdrop, and it is here that a congregation of xrisora have gathered to hear the Queen speak just a little before nature performs her very best number of the year.
She swims towards the stage in a gauzy gown of pale violet that compliments the greenish hue of her skin and shimmers with each motion of the water’s current or her own movement, her guard and handmaidens trailing behind her in straight lines. Each one of them is adorned and decorated in coral and pearl and jewels not unlike the Queen’s.
7.0 If you haven’t already been roped into joining in the festivities, you’ll find yourself wanting to do so on your own accord. With stalls and shops open to browse, new foods to try, and music being played all across the city on small sound-stages and in the city’s square, it’s already too difficult to resist, and it would be a shame not to take part. Even under the water, the smell of warm food manages to waft its way into your senses, with market stalls that offer an assortment of savoury platters and sweet delights in bright and appetizing colours of pink and red and rich warm brown. The shops you may have swam past earlier seem brighter and more energetic with their wares and vendors beckon you to try a shawl or look closer at some of the jewelry pieces. At every corner of the city, there are small groups of musicians and dancers twirling with the water’s current, singing beautiful songs that have a hopeful energy to them. It doesn’t take long before the tune is stuck in your head, easy enough to follow along, daring you to sing aloud. If you want to, performers are more than happy to rope you in and let you join them.
You are not the only foreigners who have come to Qruria City for the Festival either. You’ll find during your explorations that the city feels fuller now, with more people in the city’s streets and hanging around the shops.
8.0 After the main event, Queen Xephia opens a large gala that is expected to last until the next morning. The city’s centre is transformed into a space for dancing, singing, and merriment with musical acts that span from energetic ditties, and big band numbers to slower, calmer ballads that sing of love lost, or love regained again. They are tunes of hope and longing and discovery, and the melodies are not unlike the ones you might have heard earlier … only now there is a larger, more unified gathering. As the waters become darker and evening settles, more and more lights begin to glitter around the kingdom, reflected in the flora and the water itself. It transforms Qruria as though she has become a completely different city, but the feeling of awe and magic never wavers.
All manner of fish-folk can find a partner here, whether it’s someone they might know already, or seek someone new. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to learn about the different cultures on Xrisora, and perhaps in your own way learn clues about the possible whereabouts of the orb while you’re at it.
The next morning, you may be slow to rise after an entire day of festivities … or maybe you’re one of the partiers that haven’t even had a wink of sleep yet, dancing until your fins ache and until the rays of sunlight start to slowly filter through the water again, cascading like falling stars.
This magical calm is broken by the clanging of alarm bells in the palace, the sound reverberating through the city, soundwaves echoing from large bells so low you can almost feel their vibrations.
The closer to the palace you go, the more you find it to be in complete chaos: guards swimming to and fro, barely even paying attention to the early visitors.
Before you think to ask what exactly it is they are searching for, you see the king himself, swimming out into the palace entrance. A small sea dragonling swims around his head in rapid circles.
It is this shocking announcement that ends the merriment of the festival in one swift strike, the information traveling from one onlooker to another — Queen Xephia and Princess Xoria are missing.
F Y I
• If you have questions about any of the prompts or the mission in general, please direct them HERE.
• To submit a search request regarding exploring a specific place or speaking to an NPC, please do so HERE.
• To sign up for a quest, please do so HERE. Characters will get the choice of two quests that Levi has prepared for them, and after hearing the first one, can ask to hear the second if they don’t like the first. One character may sign up for multiple quests. Quests can be done in pairs or larger groups.
• Take note of the bestiary that is downloaded into the communications device the moment characters arrive in Qruria. It is accessible to all orbers, and will update as the mission progresses.
• And finally, your soundtrack for this log: ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
no subject
[He'd watched it from afar too many times, the children growing up either unprotected outside of the Little Palace, or before it even existed, growing closer and forming alliances. Friendships. Mutually beneficial and inside the Palace walls, towering over their small frames until they were all in the shadows of it.
Sheltered.
Protected.
And they formed the same.
He'd watched Ivan and Fedyor, their friendship deepening against the odds of their various personalities. The ties that binds people together.
A hand to hold in the dark.]
My answer would depend greatly on who's asking. But my tzar thinks I do. [That wink, though.
His own smile widens in response.] All rules, or just the ones you don't agree with?
no subject
Wei Wuxian has known many terrible men in his lifetime. Wen Ruohan, Wen Chao, Jin Guangshan and Jin Zixun. Xue Yang. None of them have had even a tenth of Kirigan's charm. Never had any of those men been so good at being sweet. (Jin Guangshan, he thinks, is the only one who tried, but the sour stench of the rest of his personality made it impossible for him to fool anyone.)]
Tsar?
And it would be more specific to say only the ones that don't serve a just purpose. I attended a school once that had three thousand rules all carved into stone. Some of them, "honor good people," "perform acts of chivalry," and "have courage and knowledge" are worthy rules and principles to live by. Some of them "be loyal and filial," "be respectful and humble," are too vague. Who should I be loyal to? Should I blindly follow the ones put in charge even in committing vile acts of hatred? [He grins to soften the example, like it isn't pulled straight from his life.]
At least the ones I disagreed with entirely, "don't drink liquor," and "wake up at 8am!" These serve a purpose for some, if not a moral one.
It's the duty of every just person to examine the laws and rules that are in place to determine what they're really for, who they benefit, and then ignore them as needed. [Changing them would be better, but never in his life has he had faith in his ability to change the system. Better to separate from it entirely.]
no subject
[All of them useless at anything other than bringing pain and misery to the ravkan people. The borders were overrun several times a month, the First Army was bleeding able-bodied men and women from starvation and the freezing cold at the Fjerdan border. Cutting costs to allow the tzaritsa to hold her balls and her dinner parties.
Entertainment, bought and paid for by the dying people just outside the gates of the Grand Palace.]
I command the Second Army at his behest. He is my ruler.
[It never failed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, to see that fat, lazy man on the throne, flanked by his equally useless first son and his greedy wife. To know that all lives were in his pudgy hands, and he would squash them all for a second helping of honey-marinaded rabbit.
To kneel to this man...]
Well. That is quite different where I'm from, we all bow to the laws made by the tzar, and the ones that came before him. To disobey, means death.
[Said as lightly as if he was talking about the weather, or lack there of down here. As something so intricate to the life he leads when he's in his own world, that he could not comprehend a world where this wasn't true.
Even in Fjerda, or Shu Han- they all bowed to the rulers. They all suffered as the rich got richer and the poor were left to die on barren fields or frozen tundras.
But he dreamed it differently - he knew how to make a world, where the suffering would end and his people could finally live free.]
It must be nice, to have that choice. What happens if you don't get up at 8 am?
no subject
It makes him wonder if Kirigan and this tsar are at odds. It would make sense, he thinks, for him to be one of the many men Kirigan has fooled. From what little he knows of this ruler from Mal, and Kirigan's note on disobeying, this is probably a man who deserves the disloyalty. (There are wise and just rulers in some worlds, but most of them...)]
Empires like that have come and gone in my world too, and likely they will eventually rise again. [It occurs to him that he should probably stop this. End the conversation and walk away. The answers to Kirigan's questions won't compromise anything important, but he's said enough.]
I definitely wouldn't be put to death for not waking up on time though. [He grins and ignores the sense telling him to leave.
"It must be nice to have a choice" he says, and Wei Wuxian glances away, just for a moment. If Kirigan were anyone else, those words would pierce his heart and plant the seeds for concern. (But it is Kirigan, and he swallows back the gentle probing questions that threaten to rise.)] And actually, the rule was five. Eight was just the latest I could get up without getting to class late...[He laughs out loud and tosses Kirigan a conspiratorial grin.]
I got detention, mostly. Line writing. Copying the rules over and over. [Not for rising late though. That could be overlooked. Spouting off about unorthodox practices in the middle of class? Not so much.]
That's just one sect though, when I was a visiting disciple. They don't all have rules like that.
no subject
[Rebellion, like the one on the rise in Novokribirsk. Or, it had been on the brink of civil war until he sailed in to the Unsea with Alina.
And maybe that was it. Why this man seemed so intriguing, the clear Shu features on his pretty face. It reminded him of Alina, of her bright brown eyes and the heat she held in her hands. The power that she never wanted, that she has begged him to take from her.
Perhaps he should have listened more.
Or, it's the signs of a soldier in Wuxian's words, the overabundance of rules and the teasing glint of mischief in those eyes...]
Well, that does beat the punishment for failing to turn up to class in my army. [His mother and her cane, the sharp crack as it flew through the air and her bees.] Our are a bit more-- corporal in nature. But only because those rules are more like guidelines.
The law on the other hand. Well-- the camps we saw on the last mission seemed awfully familiar. But not for my kind.
[A too depressing subject, when the flower cups sparkle along the line of shops and the fabric of a dress slips like silk through his fingers. Something forest-green and shimmering.
Still brushing his fingers over the dress, he turns his head to grin at Wuxian.]
What other strange rules do they have? No bread for breakfast? No showers after ten?
no subject
He pauses at the mention of corporal punishment though, head tilted slightly. It's a common practice where he's from, and he's been punished in that way more times than he can count, it's just not the sort of thing that's ever seemed of note to him. At the Lan lectures, the only time his punishment had been physical, he'd earned it. And at home...well. He isn't going to speak to Kirigan of his home.
Madam Yu was within her rights to dole out whippings when he misbehaved. If she'd been especially hard on him—if he received more whippings than any of the other disciples at times for the smallest of infractions—he'd clearly brought those on with the damage his existence had done to her reputation. Besides, she never used the discipline whip on him, the one made to scar even someone with a healing golden core. She only ever used Zidian and those ones always healed like nothing had happened at all.]
Plenty of weird rules. No talking during meals. No more than three bowls at any meal. Sleep by nine PM. [Despite his intentions to keep playing at charming, he smile has completely disappeared by now, and he answers Kirigan's question about the rules automatically. It's clear there's something else on his mind. He should let it go, but—]
You said the camps were familiar? [There's an edge to his voice as he remembers them even now. Kirigan wasn't the only one who found them familiar.]
no subject
He busies himself with the dress instead, the heft and feel of it. Of Yennefer's face and how she would look in it - dressed in shimmering forest green and her tentacles.]
Yes. [His black gaze finds Wuxian's, holding it in silence for a heartbeat. A fluttering of fins and the gentle scent of flowers around them.] In Ravka- [it was so clear in his mind, the rise of the northern work camps and the tall fences.
The chains set in to the perma-frost and the hollow-eyed look of the men and women trapped there] One of the tzar's ancestors made several of them. He placed them at all corners of the realm and they are in use to this day. Any otkazat'sya who fail to serve the throne, are placed in them.
The official story is that it is a punishment and that it will end, eventually. They might be sentenced to ten years in the work camp, but the promise of being released by the end of their term. [Something like sorrow fills his eyes as he looks from Wuxian to his hands] It is a lie, of course. No one walks away from the camps.
It's a comforting lie they tell the people to keep them in line.
[It was a cruel fate] For people like me, the punishment is death. There are no Grisha work camps in Ravka.
My world- my country is a cruel place, Wuxian. And too many are too afraid to rise above the cruelty and build a world where it isn't necessary.
no subject
But there's another part of Kirigan's story that gets beneath his skin more, and the hands at his side already curled into fists curl even deeper. For the moment, Wei Wuxian forgets who Kirigan is. Forgets what he suspects is true of the man and all of the atrocities he's committed. For the moment, none of that matters.
For people like me, the punishment is death. There are no Grisha work camps in Ravka.
A group of people singled out for who they are. (No one told him this part. He should have known there is always more to the story. He should have known.)]
What are Grisha? Why are they singled out like that? [He knows a little about what they are, but even if he wasn't trying to play dumb, he wants to know what Kirigan has to say about them. There's obviously more to this story than he'd known.]
no subject
The slim protection that the station granted him by not outing him as an amplifier with every touch was-- not nothing.
It left him reeling and it was strange, to hold the hand of someone he knew had a connection to creation, like his own to the Making, and feeling nothing. And it heightened the jolt whenever he brushed against the Sun Summoner.]
Grisha are people like me. We are all connected- [he holds his hands out, the dress drifting to the table] and we manipulate the threads that binds everything together. We are closer to the Making at the Heart of the World. Some Grisha can manipulate fire. Or water. Some can read the smallest building blocks of the universe and manipulate solid matter or coax a chemical reaction. A few are Healers.
There are not many of us left. [his fingers twist together and darkness pools in the palm of his hand.] We are... blamed. For failing crops and heavy rain. For disease and for being unnatural.
Our lives are almost worthless. Until we were formed in to an Army and agreed to fight for the throne, and as payment we get to live.
no subject
Never mind that all he'd ever wanted to do was protect the Wen. Never mind that they were innocent, that they only wanted to be left in peace. That at the end of the day, none of that mattered and when he'd failed to protect them, they were summarily slaughtered and their bodies left to rot to keep their souls from peacefully entering the cycle. Innocent men and women that he'd loved.
When he opens his eyes again, there's anger and a depth of empathy that wasn't there before. (And if Kirigan is paying very close attention, a soft curl of inky black smoke slips around one of Wei Wuxian's fingers before disappearing back into his skin.)]
How generous of your king. How benevolent. [The sarcasm in his words is honey-thick.]
So you play the good general and your people stay safe. [A situation that can't last, not forever. Someday something will slip. Abruptly, Wei Wuxian remembers the Fold and wonders what else about this man he doesn't know.] It would be a shame if something happened to such a wise ruler. [No matter the kind of man Kirigan truly is, this much he knows is true.]
no subject
The same nameless feeling that bubbled out of him when Daisy mentioned being 'inhuman', the dull rage in the Arc and the impotent despair that filled him at watching history repeat itself - over and over.
It was-- better. Here. On the station and surrounded almost entirely by people like him. By men and women who knew, intimately, the fear and the guarded conversations that happened between those who are murdered simply for being different.
The wisp of smoke almost goes unnoticed, because Wuxian's face holds too many feelings for him to look away, and Aleksander's eyebrows draws together in a frown.]
I am what my people need me to be. [Teacher, general, confidant. The demon in the woods. Though, less as the years went on, as the pain and suffering continued.
As he would have told Alina, if she had waited - if she hadn't run and taken the only light in the world with her- it hurts more if you like them.
And everyone dies in the end.] Should anything happen to the tzar, his son will take the throne and we would be used for things worse than war and the occasional spectacle at court.
[His smile is sharp] Does any of this seem familiar?
no subject
Maybe it's just the difference in their personalities, but the question prickles beneath his skin. For Kirigan to share such a painful story and then call attention to his own reaction...It feels calculated. If he wasn't on guard, would he have noticed? Or is it actually an innocent question, and he's only seeing what he expects to see?
(He can't imagine sharing about the Wen and then asking that question. Not unless he had an aim.)
Setting his provoked suspicions aside, he only shakes his head, exhaustion rather than a denial. The empathy he feels is real, but he won't go so far as to give pieces of himself away to a man he doesn't trust.]
Shouldn't it? Isn't that always how people behave? Terrified of what they don't understand. Persecuting the innocent for their own peace of mind, or worse, when peace of mind is only a convenient guise for greed.
[His fists curl again but there's no further sign of that black smoke.]
I'm sorry for their ignorance and the suffering of your people. They don't deserve that.
no subject
And it saddens me every time I learn that we are not.
[Specifically the ones where people like him were targeted. Where being born with the power to change the world, was looked on with suspicion and hatred. Worlds where manipulating the strings that holds everything together, was used as an excuse to murder whole generations.
Like Ravka.
His jaw clenches, eyes darting to the side-] Don't be. You didn't cause our deaths, nor our suffering. [otkazat'sya did that. Over and over, all of them looking at starving and dying Grisha children and feeling a sense of relief about it.
As if being abandoned by the Making tore a hole inside of them, and they all filled it with anger. With bitterness and violence.]
Not many people in my world would a agree with you. They think we deserve every ounce of pain that they heap on us. That the camps in Shu Han that are for my kind, are a necessity. They might be starving because of our tzar, but at least they're not Grisha.
[People like the Tracker. So much contempt in such a young man, that he would want Alina to stay grey. A mouse forever, if that meant she never changed. Never lived.
A tiny tendril of shadow rises from his clasped hands, like ink on water, it spirals up before dispatching.]
no subject
He doubts that a man like Kirigan really expected better of other worlds, but it doesn't matter. Other worlds should be better. It should be surprising. (Wei Wuxian had long accepted that greed and fear are the nature of mankind and that so often goodness does not win out.)]
It's easier to hate you. Convenient. People love nothing more than to have a convenient target they can pin their hatred on. [And despite his vague answer to Kirigan's question about familiarity, it's clear he's speaking from experience.
At the sight of that black shadow, Wei Wuxian's brow rises. (Shadows, he knows. Has been told.) It looks like resentful energy, but it isn't. He can't feel its call. He motions to the faded shadow, raising his gaze to meet Kirigan's.]
Your Grisha power?
no subject
[Through the years, he'd held different beliefs on the why of things. Why them? Why the camps? Whe the labs in Shu Han and why the Icecourt in Fjerda?
When Grisha had saved lives, over and over, to great personal cost, why was it that their generosity was repaid in stakes and pyres? Why pay the debt owed in blood and ostracization?]
I think I held similar thoughts about them once. A long time ago. That they hate us, because we are here and we scare them. [The demon in the woods] Because they know what they would do, if they held this much power in their hands and they fear we are as cruel as they are.
[He's not seeing Wuxian at the moment, mind going back to distant memories of Ravka. Of what should have been home, but wasn't.] They call us saints, after we die saving them.
[Blinking, he focuses on Wuxian again. The pretty face and the inquisitive look in his eyes.]
Yes. I am the Shadow Summoner.
no subject
His eyes return to kirigan's then and he watches the man slip into his memories and knows that whatever part of this is intentional, whatever is calculated, this much isn't.
With an internal sigh he holds his gaze, outwardly summoning only a tired smile.] Then it must be even harder for you. People fear dark things.
no subject
[For once a real smile, a soft snorting laugh before the Darkling's face falls back in to polite interest.]
I'm the only Shadow Summoner in my whole world. [Again, his mother, but she stopped summoning before he built the Little Palace, content to waste away and grow old without her Small Science to keep her in good health.] There hasn't been anyone like me in-- too many years. I am feared, yes.
[For good reason, by some. By the men who would rather see them all hang from the trees lining the Vy and the merchants who make a living selling Grisha.]
no subject
Ah...I've never been compared to someone's mother before. Thank you or perhaps I'm sorry?
[He goes quiet then and gazes out in the depths of water around them.]
What can you do with your shadows that they fear you so much? [It's a blunt question and he turns his gaze back on Kirigan with open curiosity in his eyes. It's probably not the sort of thing he should ask, but then he's never been the kind of person to care much about that.]
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[Mama, Madraya. But Wuxian talks of fear the same way.] Fear is a powerful ally, but feed it too often, make it too strong, and it will turn on you.
[Quoted from memory because she drilled the lesson in to him from an early age. Like she drilled all lessons in to him, never let them see and never let them touch you, child.
And Aleksander learned all too well.]
Most people are afraid of the dark. Of what they might see, if they look in to it too deeply. [He shrugs] There is Small Science to lit fires, to control the wind and the rain. To move mountains and to heal any wound. Heartrenders to stop or slow a heartbeat. But they fear the darkness more.
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There are reasons to be afraid of the dark. [But, Grisha are not cultivators, he reminds himself. And from what he understands, Kirigan was born with his shadows. He didn't carve himself open to make room for them.]
But with a name like heartrender, I'll admit I'd be much more worried about them. What do they do?
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Or afraid of the dark, like everyone else.]
Yes, there are. [Drüskelle. Witch hunters, thundering in from the perma-frost to murder more of his people or to strike deals with the slave traders by the docks in Ketterdam.
Repeater-guns and pyres built for the living.] They control the human heart. How fast it is beating, they control all the little levers inside of a person that makes us feel, or not feel. Sweating, salivating. Fear is your heartbeat racing and your palms getting sweaty, it's the chill of cold down your spine.
Love is-- much the same, from what I understand. Racing heart, clammy hands, dilated pupils, increased blood-flow. A Heartrender, especially a powerful one, can control all of that.
[Ivan.] And of course, they can always tell who might be lying.
cw: references to suicidal ideation
Now love. Love is much scarier than darkness. [He chuckles.]
And much more dangerous. But. [And he thinks of his birth parents and everything he knows about them.] Wonderful too, I think.
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Darkness had a way of showing you your fears, a black mirror.
With all the horrors the otkazat'syan mind could conjure up and convict him for. As if any Grisha could influence the mind.] They are looked on with suspicion. Scorn. Heartrender children are at greater risk of harm, but not with us.
[The Little Palace, the one place in the whole world where they could grow up without resenting their Small Science, without the carefully guarded looks and the hatred.]
I suppose love can be that. [Even when his own heart drums an unsteady tattoo of Alina, Alina, Alina, the twisting sickness that comes from the weakness she inspires in him.] Fleeting, deadly and worth it.
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Anyone who can hurt a child only needs to look in a mirror to find the kind of monster they're after. [Whether Grisha, heartrender, or Wen. He takes a deep breath and shakes the rest of those thoughts away again.]
Fleeting, you say. Why is that? [He has loved so many and he has loved them hard. Kirigan, he's pretty sure speaks to the romantic variety of which he has very little to contribute, but he knows love. They're all gone now, those he's loved, but the love remains in his heart. He'll keep it there until the day he dies (again.)]
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[Even if the Second Army, along with every other army in the world, used child soldiers. It seems kinder somehow, than stoning them in the streets for the sin of being born who they were.
Being born different, and the jealousy and terror that might inspire.
But not in his Palace.] That is why I built us a safe place. Why I'm doing everything to keep it safe.
[The promise he made so long ago, the words that will never leave him - to make a place for Grisha, even if the world wanted them gone. They deserved to live their long lives without the threat of execution or pain.]
Our lives are not secure. Our future uncertain and there are too many who wants us all to suffer. Violent lives, with violent ends. It hurts more, when you love them.
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