Audio

[fearsdaughter]

[Where she's tucked herself away is unimportant, which is why she's not giving that bit away. Mother Nature sounds more resigned and contemplative than anything, and there's the faint sound of crowds in the background.]

Death is like gravity, it cannot be stopped or all of the universe begins to go out of sorts. Things unravel when people come against such things, more than they believe they are already. Things die, it is a part of existence and a rule of the universe that should never be broken.

And yet here we all are, being forced in to a fight that will be ultimately lost. Forced to take a side and prepare ourselves and others for what? To be felled in battle? To fade out of existence?

[She sighs.]

I don't know how many of you have seen war, but it is not anywhere near so glorious as anyone wants you to think. It is blood and death and terror for little more than bragging rights over some pile of dirt or another.

It is people sitting at windows waiting for their lovers to come back with scars that will never go away if at all.

It is those you love leaving and never coming back.

It is watching everything you love burn to ashes in your fingers for some ideal that will never fill the hole they leave.

[She sighs, shaky.]

Worlds have died before, entire civilizations and people have been erased from existence and yet... here we are, still alive, still existing despite all of that.

We should be planting a new tree, making new homes, not trying to save a burning ship... but what do I know about anything. I'm no god, no war hero.

I've just been dragged here and forced against my will in to a fight I've no interest in. So please; sell me a reason to fight, give me something to believe in that will work.

Comments

audio

[fearsdaughter]

I could do it, if I had my own power here and wasn't being forced in to a battle I have no interest in. Creating life takes time I'm not being given.

Earth wasn't made in a day after all.

[ka_sera_sera]

Oh, aye.

[He's making no effort to sound as if he believes her, but he's not being snide either. Believing she can do such a thing indicates either madness or a great deal of arrogance, and there's often no arguing with either. The restrained anger of his previous reply, though, is gone. At least she's willing to do something to help, impossible as it may or may not be.]

The thing, Ms... [He glances at the name beside her post, raises his eyebrows, and continues dryly.] ...Nature... is time. Many of this tree's branches have fallen already. The worlds of its leaves are withering. Even if power on that magnitude were available, would there be time to use it?

[fearsdaughter]

If there were enough of us focusing everything we had in to it... it's possible. It wouldn't be pleasant to live on at first but with time it would improve.

[It isn't madness so much as being very old and rather powerful before coming here. When you can throw hurricanes and ice ages at problems and have managed ecosystems as well as watched humanity for a few thousand years you tend to have a different outlook on things.]

It's simply... battles and killing things isn't always the answer, there are always other options and nobody's seem to taken a moment to discuss them or to consider that this whole... ending is likely only a way of clearing out the rotten and diseased to renew everything.

Forest fires don't destroy the ecosystem, they give it new ground to begin again.

[ka_sera_sera]

[Roland's leaning forward, frowning thoughtfully. After a second, he gives a slow shake of his head.]

Worlds like mine are dying, maybe even diseased, as you put it. But that only happened once Yggdrasil began to fall. If life can be put back into the tree itself somehow, the rot eating away at everything else can be reversed.

[His eyes, now, are wider than usual, his tone fervent and even a little bit optimistic. It's a rare look for Roland, but this is the one hope he's pinned the last half of his life on. If there's room for any optimism in his life at all, it's here.]

[fearsdaughter]

You're willing to sacrifice lives here but not elsewhere to save things? That seems... hypocritically selfish. Pruning a few branches and saving what you can from those worlds would likely allow more to survive in the long run than raging against something you don't really know how to stop.

It's.. like gangrene, you can't reverse it only stop it's spread.

[ka_sera_sera]

[That anger's starting to come back again. It shows itself only in his slow breath, in the tightening of his jaw.]

'Pruning' the sickening worlds won't stop the sickness that's inside Yggdrasil's heart. If I'm to make a sacrifice, I'll make one that matters. I'd not condemn thousands of worlds to the darkness simply out of arrogance.

[fearsdaughter]

Tens of thousands of worlds have fallen before these ones and nothing stopped it then. The arrogance is in thinking you can stop it, darkness does not stop for anyone or anything. The universe has survived such a thing before and it will again, I have seen it.

[Her own anger is slightly less veiled.]

I have lived through this thing before and as distressing as it is to see it happening again in my lifetime I know that there is nothing to be done beyond hunkering down and waiting the storm out.

You do not scream at the sea to stop the tide from rising, you do not throw stones at the sky to stop a storm from happening.

[ka_sera_sera]

With all your professed power, enough create a new home for every soul that now suffers, you'd sit back in safety and let it happen?

[Roland sits back then, jaw still tight, but his voice going flat and distant.]

Then let it happen. Hide away and watch us die all around you, and once all order and light is lost you'll be able to tell yourself how right you were. But if I die, I die in the service of the Tower. Of the tree. Of everything I once loved. And you will live only for yourself. I wish you luck of it.

[When the recording ends this time, it's for good. He's done. Roland doesn't waste his time on selfishness. Nor on cowards.]