stardiving | IC Inbox (Victory Road)

Tis your body. Mayhap if you treated it as such, you would be in less pain.

[Maybe this will finally beat that into your thick skull? Estinien's seen enough injuries on the battlefield to know that blood from the corner of the mouth is hardly a good thing, and checks closer to see if he's pale or sweating, or if his eyes are uneven.

Even if it is, they can hardly stay here in the stairwell forever. Estinien moves to try to haul him up under the arms, taking most of his weight so he can get Solus standing, then they can see what their options are.]

No more than a cage might be yours.

[He offers, both stubborn and useless. Fortunately, he is neither more pale than normal or particularly sweating more than one might after getting their ass kicked. Any unevenness in his eyes would more be from the black eye he's still recovering from. Thanks Estinien.

The blood is indeed a result of the kicks to his ribs, and while he's not suffered a punctured lung, it certainly did a number on the area. With a pained grimace, he rises under Estinien's aid, grasping his shoulder as well as he can. As for his legs, they are certainly wobbly with how they tremble under him. Between the hip injury, and the damage done to his knees...their support is dubious at best.]

...Let us be off, hm?

[He's trying to protect what dignity he has left, but...]

[If Estinien were the type to scream in frustration...]

And if I am in a cage and someone strikes it, they strike the cage, not I, you stubborn fool.

[Estinien moves to support the side with his busted ass hip and takes the walking stick off his back to offer it to support Solus's other side as they try to get down the stairs, enough to hopefully get to the elevator.]

This is no different for one such as I. The fact I can feel the pain my cage feels does not change that it is naught more than a that to me. This body may look like me, but it is not mine.

Mine was taken from me long ago.

[With Estinien offering the stick, he takes it and does his best to support himself with it. Of course Estinien's the biggest help in this, and while it's...trying, they certainly are able to make it down the stairs. Solus' breathing is certainly labored, and there's wheezing with each breath, but to both their benefit he does not collapse by the time they reach the elevator.]

[He's gonna take back that stick and whack you upside the head with it.]

And now it has been given to you. Perhaps not as it was, but it is what it is. What are you to do when you cannot reach me the next time, make your home where you fall?

If anything, it should offend your sense of efficiency to be barely capable of walking all the time.

[Please, as if his body needs any more trauma.]

This is temporary, as is the wont of mortals. Should this body break down and die, I will like as not be made free.

[Or trapped in a new body, but that's to be seen. No one has died here, supposedly, and if he should be the first, then so be it.]

...But I do agree that there is a certain...vexation with the deficiency that comes with the damage I've suffered. [Leveling a somber smile at Estinien.] But ever have you been the most reliable sort. Should I require succor, you have yet to deny me.

[Maybe that little bit of trauma will be enough to knock something loose in your over-inflated head.

Estinien just sighs.]

And so you will just revel in your suffering. I hadn't taken you for the type.

[Maybe him dying--or coming as close to it as they can in this place--would drive something home. But nothing has so far.]

I've yet to be not in your immediate vicinity. I know not what plans you have when I am not available to come at your beck and call.

Nay, I am not, but naught is gained by holding back. Though, admittedly, none of this was truly part of my plan...

[Honestly, he hadn't expected such a brutal reaction. He knew there was more to Steven, something just below the surface, and his curiosity got the better of him.]

Mm, never you mind that, I will be fine once you depart for your journey. I've plenty of schemes in the works, none of which involve Steven. And even if they did, he would not get the upper hand again, you can be certain of that.

[But he will definitely think of a few now...]

I would venture in this case, you would gain the ability to walk under your own power.

[The elevator dings, and opens to the ground floor.]

Twas Steven who got me in, mind. Access to this building is restricted.

[He's not going to ask how you got here, Ascians being in places they aren't supposed to be is pretty much expected.

As they struggle out to the main room, the receptionist at the desk gasps and says "Oh, honey, you'd better get your grandpa to the Pokemon Center!" Estinien just grits his teeth against what he'd like to say and growls a little, only loud enough for Solus to hear.]

Shouldn't take long for that, maybe a day.

[Because there's no way he's going to let himself be slowed down by this crap. No way he'll let Steven's pettiness delay his plans by more than that. Though, at his mention, Solus smiles a little darkly.]

Did he now...I thought I heard him when the door to the stairwell opened, the bastard.

[Solus doesn't swear too much, and if Estinien were aware of such, he might pick up on how agitated he truly is with this situation. Though, that agitation gets trumped rather quickly when he hears what the receptionist says. His eyes grow wide as he stares at her, then Estinien as he growls...before his expression falls to something far more amused.]

Your grandsire, am I? I know we've grown close over these past few days, but little did I realize you regarded me ever so fondly.

You're still limping from days ago. Injuries such as your do not heal in a matter of hours.

[He's going to dump you on Nurse Joy and just get the fuck out of here.]

I've met your family, I want nothing to do with it.

[To be fair...does anyone want anything to do with Zenos?]

I do not expect these hurts to be healed immediately, no, merely enough to walk. I can walk with a limp.

[He has demonstrated this plenty by now! Though, he eyes the walking stick...maybe a nice cane would make this a bit easier on him. He had one as an aged old man...

Speaking of, Estinien's comment gets a wry laugh from him.]

A terrible lot, but you cannot choose family. Or, perhaps you can, if this is aught to go by.

[Just ignore the fact that's Steven's fault.]

They would heal faster if you cease aggravating them.

[Estinien is really one to talk, but when he was grievously injured at least he rested for a few days. Look, he's been mortal his whole life so far, he knows how this works!

He just grumbles under his breath, he already has an adopted family member he doesn't talk to, he really doesn't want to add you to the list. You're fucking awful. He'll just work on getting the two of you to the door, since he's doing the walking for both of them.]

I am ever fond of sleep, but if I am to make any progress I cannot spend my days lazing about, as much as I would like to.

[He parts dismissively.]

Your duty may be over, but mine is far from, as such I will—

[And with that next step, his knees give out from under him. Think fast, Grandkid!]

A few days 'lazing' now would save you many more in the near fu--

[Estinien stumbles as he suddenly finds himself carrying all of Solus's weight, but he's a strapping young grandson so he doesn't fall. Thankfully. That would be bad! He casts around and sees a bench nearby, luckily close enough that he doesn't have to drag Solus far.]

[Solus is uncharacteristically quiet as Estinien drags him over to the bench, and helps him sit down. Folding his hands together, he leans his arms on his thighs (tender though they are, but so is about everything right now), hanging his head. With a couple slow and wheezed breaths, he finally looks up at Estinien, a disarming smile on his face.]

...Ohhh, Very well. 'Twould seem I've no choice but to concede to your point.

[Unfolding his hands, he gently grabs at his knees, looking at them with a grimace as he tests their tenderness and swelling. He really has been pushing himself too far.]

[Make it sound like an impossibly hard thing for you to do, why don't you...?

Estinien sighs and throws himself down on the bench beside him. Iceheart puts her paws up on Solus's other side and watches him with concern.]

You're worse about chirugeons than I ever was.

...It is not easy accepting my lot, I confess.

[He looks to Iceheart, raising one of his hands, shaky though it is, to pet her.]

Perhaps I am being needlessly reckless. 'Tis quite uncharacteristic of me, yet I cannot help but feel compelled to push on. As I told you before, my work is not yet finished, and my duty ever calls to me...

[Though, admittedly...he cannot hear Zodiark, cannot feel him. Like the connection has been completely severed, and he's left feeling...strange. Lost in a way, and so he's been focusing and pushing himself towards figuring out how to restore that, how to get back, regardless of what pains it takes.]

[Estinien lets out a small huff of breath. He knows full well what it's like, to have something pushing you forward, something that you have to accomplish.

Granted, his didn't involve destroying multiple worlds, but...]

What duty do you speak of? From what little I know of you, tis naught simply to sow chaos for the sake of it.

[You're far too structured for that.]

[Solus stops for a moment, keeping his eyes on Iceheart while his hand rests on her head. He mulls it over...but figures what would it truly hurt? After all, Estinien has proven quite the ally thus far, and he'd rather people know the truth. It's tiresome always being seen as the villain of the tale, when by rights he isn't. Painted as such with the brush of ignorance.]

While it is true we do indeed sow seeds of chaos by the perception of you mortals, our goal is rather the opposite. We endeavor to bring back the established order of reality—to rejoin the thirteen shards with the Source, so that all of existence may be made whole again.

[He looks to Estinien, his expression contemplative.]

In order for the Rejoining to occur, we must needs produce calamities—each marks a rejoining of a single shard. As a man of the source, that means your soul is seven-times rejoined, a far denser soul than the weak and sickly souls of those from the shards.

My duty is righting the wrongs of our broken reality, so that the natural order may yet come to be once more.

[He.

Doesn't really know what to think of all that.

Sure, he knows what most common folk know, even a bit more than due to both his experiences and...well, his experiences, echoes of Nidhogg's memories rattling around in his brain. And he knows, intellectually, that there have been seven Calamities. Hells, he'd lived through the Seventh.

It...makes sense, that it's what he's doing. But why a Calamity has to happen to allow it...and that rejoining of a soul means that six others throughout time had to die for it. Probably in fear, and in pain.

Six other people, with families of their own, worlds of their own, hopes and dreams of their own. Perhaps that weren't supposed to be, at least if Solus was to be believed, but were anyway.

It's a long time before he responds, and when he does his voice is quiet. Level.]

And you believe that will do it? Just like that? That all the blood shed will be worth it?

[You can't possibly know for sure. Even though you insist you're smarter than everyone. It's not like this has happened before.]

[He allows the silence to fill the air, letting Estinien process what he's told him. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if Estinien denied it all, dismissing it as nonsense. He doesn't expect a mortal to understand, or to be willing to, yet he cannot help but think Estinien might understand.

After all, he had merged with Nidhogg, he has felt and understood the immortal perspective, so maybe...

When he finally breaks the silence, the question is a heavy, but an astute one. He takes a moment to contemplate his answer, because he could be cold and blunt. Tell him he doesn't consider those fragmented souls to be truly alive. That even Estinien, by his standard, is not truly alive. But well does he know that will earn him a lost ally.

As he begins, his tone shifts from the usual light, nasally tone, shifting to something a little deeper, more serious. Almost like a story-teller's.]

...In the beginning, when the world was whole, there was naught but peace. There was no war, no violence, no suffering. No conflict due to disparity, due to want. It was a veritable paradise—a paradise that I and my kin originated from. But without warning, annihilation threatened our world, and in an attempt to save all of creation, we would bring forth Zodiark to rewrite the laws of reality. It would be by His magnificence that we would be saved.

Yet, there would be those who did not appreciate His gift, His divine mercy, and they would summon forth another to defy him: Hydaelyn. To bind him. To enervate him. To fracture him and aught else.

[His eyes shift away from Estinien, looking upward at the sky, his brow pinching in the middle as he continues.]

Back in that time before time, when anyone and everyone were as equals, the powers we Ascians hold were not special. Nay, they were pedestrian. All were immortal, all were powerful, and all could live full lives without fear, without suffering.

But that was taken from you—from everyone—when the Sundering happened. When reality was split into four and ten, so too was everyone else—save three. I am one such fortunate survivor. Yet, Zodiark was not spared like I had been—but it is He who can restore it all to how it should be, how it was always meant to be. By His grace, and His mercy shall everything be made right once more. But this cannot be unless we rejoin the shards to the Source.

[He lets out a slow, somewhat wheezed, breath as he lowers his gaze, peering over at Estinien. His expression somber and reflective.]

To one who has known perfection, I cannot turn my back on it, I cannot stray away from this course. Not when I would be faced with the flawed and dreadful reality we otherwise are made to suffer.

Would you not want the same?

[There's a deep silence as Estinien gathers his thoughts with all of this dumped on him, slots the new perspective into what he knows already.]

I would want to protect my home.

[Perhaps it would be different, if he were as Solus is. But he can't say, because he isn't. There's a malms-wide crevasse between them, and even Estinien can't jump that far.

But the phrasing is interesting. Taken from you. It's also wrong--it was taken from the theoretical person Estinien might have been, in Solus's world, but he does not recall it. Instead, what Solus is doing is taking from him as he is. Taking from all of them. For something that can never be truly reclaimed.]

...conflict was brought to you sooner than you think, why else would any of your number disagree with your course and summon Hydaelyn?

[He's just. Gonna put the summoning aspects to the side. He's no Scion, to be expert in the summoning of primals. It's part of their current conversation, but not the relevant point.]

Even if you do succeed, you will not bring back anything as it was. Even if your people did not know suffering or conflict, whatever happened to annihilate your world introduced them to it. And there would be no place in a society as peaceful as you say it was for a man such as you.

[Bluntly. Because it's true--Estinien knows full well how it feels, to be that outlier. You've started how many wars, killed how many people--and they are people, you can get into an existential argument about that some other time--and spent thousands upon thousands of years wanting.]

No amount of blood spilled can ever bring back what was lost. What is gone is gone, and we have to move forward with what is left.

Edited 2020-05-23 16:32 (UTC)

[Solus keeps his eyes on Estinien as he speaks. Surprised by how much he does, how honest he is with his words. Not that the man has proven dishonest, no, but quite closed off. Yet here he speaks his mind freely, even if he speaks words Solus does not particularly wish to hear.

His jaw tightens as Estinien lays down those hard truths--no, not truths, for they could be as wrong as Solus' own hopes. Nothing proves that things cannot be restored, that things cannot be as it was...

Yet that painful throb in his chest at such words makes him doubt his own resolve. Doubt, for the first time, that perhaps what he hopes to accomplish might not be obtainable. That he toils at a false hope.

This startles him, because never has he doubted Zodiark's ability, and while it's not Estinien who is quite making that happen, his blunt delivery hits like a mace to porcelain. There's panic and anger behind his eyes, but he's quick to look away. Quick to bury that doubt which has no place in his heart with Zodiark.

His fist clenched the fabric of his skirts, twisting them in a shaky clutch as he begins, his gaze finding Estinien once more--something desperate behind his eyes.]

I have lived among your people, I have fought beside you, made friends, family...I have observed, I have judged, for eons have I tried to see your ilk as worthy of inheriting our star, our legacy. Yet mortals have ever proven too selfish, too fickle, too frail to be worthy of being stewarts of what my people left behind!

[His voice is drowning in emotion, his tone fluctuating from higher tones as he speaks a little too quickly. Punctuated by a wheeze or a squeak of his voice. But then he thinks on the Warrior of Light...how his hopes are high for him and the Scions. That should he prove successful yet with his vanquishing of Vauthry...

There may yet be another way.

He takes a moment, closing his eyes as he sucks in a breath, then shakily releases it. Once his eyes open again, he gives Estinien as placid and peaceful of a somber smile as he can. His tone becoming even once more as he starts again.]

...I need not a place among them, I need only save them. The dissenters were ungrateful fools, the lot of them. They knew not what they wrought, what they stole away, what future they destroyed... What suffering they would prolong.

You mortals are not the only existence worth preserving... I will pay any price to restore my brethren--my home. Should that cast me as a villain in your eyes, then so be it, but I will not abandon those I have lost. Theirs is a worth without equal, their loss is a far greater toll than aught it would be to restore them...

I must save them.

[There's an oddity with how he speaks. Determined and genuine are his words, but there's a quiver to them, something not so confident in his delivery. Less he doubts his conviction, and more that fear bred of doubting Zodiark's ability to restore what was lost. His mind is at odds, between the belief he's grasped onto for eons, the very thing that has kept him going for so long, and now this new found doubt that seems to be poisoning his heart.

A doubt that his connection to Zodiark seemed fit to destroy at every pass, but now seems fit to take root, to grow unabated by such absolute destruction.]

Edited 2020-05-23 17:34 (UTC)

Perhaps it is not about being worthy.

[Estinien can't think that worth has anything at all to do with most of what he's experienced. If it was, he wouldn't be here--it was hardly his worth that changed his fate on the Steps of Faith, it was only sentiment.

Estinien sighs. He can certainly understand--it's not even particularly hard. It's as simple as fighting for your home, for your people, and that's something he's been doing most of his life. But...the toll that Solus says is not too high, is excruciating to Estinien.]

You have sworn to recover your home, as I have sworn to protect mine. Tis not that I misunderstand your goals, or even that I disagree with them. Tis simply that for your aims to be achieved, tis my people that must pay in blood. Were it not for that, I would call it admirable.

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