[voicetest] it's this guy

[unsunderworld]

[To the surprise of absolutely no one.

Shadowbringers spoilers abound beyond this point.]

Comments

[scourgingstars]

Fearing death is the sole domain of those who have something to lose from it.

[The swords vanished once it was clear this wasn't about to come to any sort of fight, Ardyn's hands dropping to his hips. This was certainly an interesting way to pass an abundance of time, strange as it was.]

[unsunderworld]

[Interesting, and more revealing than the man perhaps intends. Emet-Selch has no fear of death, but plenty to lose from it, all the more so with the all-too-recent fall of Lahabrea after eons.

No, he still has so very much to lose.]

Spoken like someone with something to gain. And what is it that keeps you in this city of the dead?

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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?

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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.

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

How remarkable. Just what exactly are you, then?

[unsunderworld]

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

[scourgingstars]

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.

[unsunderworld]

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?]

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

And no desire to leave, I take it.

[scourgingstars]

And be condemned to live sometime as long as you? Heavens, no.

[unsunderworld]

It does tend to be less terrible with company, you realize.

[Seriously, you have a very lonely city here.]

[scourgingstars]

I'm not the sort for companionship.

[unsunderworld]

I see. That's a pity.

[It sounds sarcastic, but he does mean it genuinely, in his way.]

[scourgingstars]

[A shrug.]

I see no reason for pity. Solitude is far less complicated than the alternative. It's simply easier this way.

[unsunderworld]

Simpler does not always mean better. Unless you intend to say that buildings such as these are inferior to the mud huts mortals have used in ages past?

[It is possible that he may care more about the buildings than the people who live in them. A little.]

[scourgingstars]

[Ardyn answered in a thoughtful hum, turning enough to look over his shoulder at the Citadel.]

That's not even remotely the same thing. A building can't callously betray anything. If a structure collapses and kills everyone within it, no one's fool enough to presume the building held malicious intent or the like. I'd sooner be alone with an empty city than suffer companionship of anyone mortal or otherwise for very long.