lazybox | [voicetest] it's this guy

I happen to live here. Are you truly so far outside reality that you know nothing of Insomnia?

Thoughts to consider, perhaps always, every time he looks at her. The way that he has accepted Era, who both is and is not a piece of what he has lost in a way so much more literal than most anyone else...

In another world, perhaps it would be the beginning of accepting his grief and letting go. But he can't, no longer possesses the ability, one of the first sacrifices on the altar of his god. They chose to revive the lost, the old world and the old order of things.

If he were capable, he would muse on the contradiction, that so many creators wanted nothing more than to go back to the way of life they had.

What form would she have taken, pulled into the rift like them? Another dark thing, or is that the result of their god's touch, and she would have become likewise a vessel for Her light? That is a far more interesting thought to occupy his mind, especially as she consumes his aether like the monster she so nearly became.

(If she had - the voidsent are powerful, and even the strongest is but a fourteenth. The same was true of the Sin-Eaters, and he could have defeated Vauthry or even the origin point if he had had need. A soul at more than half restoration, under that kind of power? That, he is privately, secretly, less sure about.)

Her contented humming is not quite matched, the sensation more aetherial than aural, but the emotions that tinge his aether are similar enough. Satisfaction, security. The crisis is past, for the time being, and they can deal with the rest on the morrow. "If you're feeling a bit better, you should rest."

Yes, actually, this is the first I've heard of the place. You'll forgive me for not having taken the time to visit this world in any great detail in the last millennia or three, I've had quite enough to deal with elsewhere.

My, you really are a complete foreigner to this world, aren't you? I wonder however that might have happened--a wandering immortal of sorts?

Not exactly. I'm afraid that your world simply hasn't been high on our priority list.

[Yes, 'our,' just putting that out there.]

There's been fairly little of interest happening here until quite recently. An interesting case study, but nothing more.

Oh, do tell. Even if I've slipped into a particularly strange new form of manic hallucination, I am enthralled and fascinated.

No hallucination, that much I might promise.

[You know, if he were so inclined. Emet-Selch glances around, as if taking in the world they reside in, and shrugs as though exasperated. It is on the sky that his eyes finally come to rest.]

You might say that I am an architect of sights such as that. Why, just yesterday I stood beneath its very opposite - a world which has not known night in some near-century or so. All for the sake of aligning it in such disarray that it might be Rejoined with the world from whence it was split, ages before ages ago.

In some ways she is feeling a bit better, which is a great relief. The movement of her tail slows against his hip — or what she believes passes for one. The anatomy of this form of his is questionable, and though there is idle curiosity about it now that he isn't using it to attack her it isn't something she would ever inquire about.

Era hums in response; tired, content. There is still a great deal of pain, yet pain is such a fixture in her life she hardly spares it any thought beyond assuring it won't kill her. Breathing in the last of the fruit gifted to her, she licks her lips and fingers and permits herself to settle wholly against her companion. Her shoulders droop along with the lids of her eyes, body preparing to convalesce now that she has sufficient enough aether reserves to keep her alive while she sleeps.

"Apologies for..." For what? She cannot find the words with her tired mind, like trying to cup water with spread fingers.

{Inconviencenuisanceburden} her aether pulses weakly, having no such lingual limitations. It is still distinctly hers in feel, though it is tinged with darkness as Hades' is slowly absorbed and aetherially realigned.

[ This is treading a bit close to conversations she really doesn't want to have right now with him. There wasn't a need for it to be broached at the moment, but she didn't want that to change. They both knew something that did do the soul a good deal of harm in this place.

If she danced too much around it through (heh), he'd know what she was avoiding, more like than not.

Wicked White she's so tired, sometimes. ]

Yes, of course. [ She lifts a hand up to rub at her forehead. Still so tired. ] Ruana's made her opinions about the expendability of these bodies all too clear. Likely she'd be even more pleased, if she knew all the circumstances.

[ Knew how much she was making their jobs difficult, that is. ]

Even Lahabrea took better care, as quick as he was wont to burn through them.

[That part, at least, they can agree upon. Neither is much fond of the woman.]

Considering the efforts I've taken to live in most of mine, it's almost personally offensive. At least this time it doesn't much seem to be given a personal touch.

It is the edge of the tongue she has forgotten how to speak, and the feeling of his aether in response is {confusionexcitementsatisfaction}, even before he speaks, voice low and murmuring even beyond the norm for the language he currently has no option but to speak.

"Think no such thing. You are a challenge in many ways, yes, but not in this." He will not spare her when he thinks she hasn't lived up to the admittedly high standards that he carries like an albatross, but he will not permit her to think anything less of herself for his decisions, either. "My willingness to expend a great amount of aether for those I value, few as those things now are, is in some ways near the root of the whole of our predicament."

Which is the closest his tempering will allow him to come to regretting it, to asking if things could have been different. He offered of himself freely once, to a god of salvation, to a hungry primal, and a hungry hero consumes and places demands on him far less.

For all that Era is aware now that she is a person, for better or worse, and thus allowed to share her burdens, to stumble, to fall, and seek help to lift her back up to her feet, it is still difficult to forgive herself her perceived failings. To have allowed herself to be so injured in the first place, and then to allow herself to give in to a gnawing hunger so primal and deep and horrific...

Most of all she feels shame, and it is etched in every line of her now, though the tired curve of her body pressed against him camouflages most of it. She lets out a small, hummed note as he speaks again, tilting her head to the focal point of his 'voice' so that it might better reverberate through her horns.

"I'd've done similar," Era murmurs. From what she knows of the circumstances... She would never have agreed to sacrificing so many others, but...

If what she has been led to believe is correct, technically she did do something similar, in that time before time.

She shoves those thoughts aside, instead using a fragment of aether to express the {lovelovelovelovelove} and {protect} that she feels for her people. Even when they disappoint her so, she cannot help but to love them to an extent that is almost painful. And while Emet-Selch, the Architect, may not be of her people, he is still one of hers now. Someone to protect and love however she can, especially when he is the only one she can rely on where it counts the most.

Hopefully it suffices where words would not, because what words can one express the true lengths they would go to in order to save one's people?

It doesn't occur to her that straining her soul to the point of it fragmenting into corrupted slivers, losing all sense of form and self, and fighting so fiercely against it — refusing and defying reality with all of her being — was likely explanation enough for Hades.

Era shifts and sighs, long and exhausted, now teetering on the edges of consciousness. She shivers briefly, tucking her chin deeper into the warm fabrics he created for her. Inhales a scent that eases the homesickness that grips her heart. She exhales slowly; another sigh. Goes boneless without a care.

Her tongue is as lead in her mouth for how little energy remains in her, but she has a deep, desperate need for an answer to one final question:

"Will you stay?"

[ She's not entirely able to hide a grimace at his mention of Lahabrea. And his possession habit. Both on Thancred's behalf and her own, given the particular antagonism she and the other Ascian had once had for each other. ]

Personal or otherwise, it's a delay we don't particularly need at the moment.

[ The complaint is more resigned at this point though, a sort of "what can you do"? They would get through this. They would get back to their worlds. They had to. There just simply wasn't another option. It was only the pity that resolve alone couldn't quite quell her unsettled nerves at times. ]

[Show or not, the fact that Emet-Selch seems to be almost bored isn't anything too terribly out of the ordinary. In fact, their surroundings aside, the whole situation isn't too different from any of the discussions he'd had in Where Nothing Gathers, back at home. If maybe with an extra side of potential threat. But that's not really any difference either - threats on his life are nothing new, as depressing as the thought would be if he let himself dwell on it to any significant degree.

(But hey, he's old. He's allowed to have a few less than stellar coping habits, he figures.)

The shift in Emet-Selch's expression, on the other hand, is interesting. Even so that it strikes a chord in him, one that hasn't been touched on in ages and that he'd expected never would be again; while he doesn't exactly sit up straighter something in the way he holds himself shifts.]

Amaurot, hunh? [There's a note of reverence in his voice as he says the name, almost as if he's paying respect to it and to those who are gone besides. There's a pause, too, before, he speaks up again.] It looks like it was quite the place, if this is anything to go on.

Sounds dreadful. [Ardyn rolled his eyes, trying and failing to process what half of that even meant.] I've rather grown to detest light in my old age, I'm afraid.

Oh, it does me no favors either.

[And there, the faintest hint of a smirk.]

And you've no room to talk about old age in front of me, I assure you.

Oh, it was. I could only bring so much of its magnificence to life here - my energy is hardly infinite.

[Also, presumably the real Amaurot was beneath the sky, not the sea.

The fact that the stranger is paying the city itself the proper reverence, however, makes its Architect relax, just a bit. If some intruder must see his heart, at least it is someone who respects it.]

Gone more ages than any mortal could comprehend, of course. But so long as even one of us remains, then so does the dream that it might return.

Is that so? And here I'd almost be tempted to say the same.

If you were my age, I would know you.

[Stated as simple fact. There is no option but to know each other, after so very long.]

I was old when this world was born.

How remarkable. Just what exactly are you, then?

I stopped counting a few millennia after the Sundering; somewhere between eighteen and twenty thousand is the best estimate I can produce.

My, and here I am a mere two thousand and change. I'd call it humbling if I had the capacity to feel as much.

Don't worry, young man, you still have plenty to learn.

[When was the last time he talked to anyone who even cracked two centuries? Anything like an equal, but those he has been with for so long that they quite literally have nothing to discuss anymore?]

And so little time. I'm not terribly long for this ruined world, truthfully.

And no desire to leave, I take it.

[voicetest] it's this guy

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject