agogelogs | SPECTATOR LOG: The Fate of Little Xici.

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SPECTATOR LOG: The Fate of Little Xici.

WHO? Anyone interested in witnessing the end of Little Xici, the Regency spy.
WHAT? Little Xici's story concludes.
WHEN? Midnight; September 22ed, 1972.
ANYTHING ELSE? Contains body horror and death.

At some point, late at night, Little Xici is interrogated. The Commander drags the spy into a private tent, closed off from the rest, and the sound of blows and swearing can be heard. An hour later, Xici is dragged back to her previous place, tied up once more, blindfolded, and left to stew.

An hour after that, the screaming begins.

It's late at night, after the battle itself is long finished. Many dismiss it as a condition that will one day come to be known as shellshock, and go back to sleep. Anyone in the tent with Little Xici, though, will know the source of the sound: Xici herself, screaming and screaming, though no one and nothing is touching her.

"I don't deserve it!" She pleads to no one, and tears begin to prickle through her blindfold, "only traitors are- I am not-!"

Her arms slip their bindings, because her hands no longer rest at the end of them. The wounds are old, looking like her hands were severed years ago, even though anyone who saw her even minutes back saw perfectly formed working hands. Now only with stumps, she claws at her blindfold. In an act of mercy, another operative in the tent, one Angela Zeigler, removes the blindfold for her. Little Xici barely notices the woman, too consumed with the fact that, within her boots, her feet have also disappeared.

Next go her ears, and then her nose. Her eyes disappear as well. Each time, there is no blood. There is no gore, beyond the organs themselves simply slipping out of existence, leaving scars that look years old and long healed.

Little Xici screams the entire time, screaming that she doesn't deserve this, that the tribunal only does this to traitors, and she has told them nothing. "I have always been loyal!" She yells, "I have never betrayed-! This is for betrayers! I was loyal!" She cries, and struggles, and moans. The screams pitch, high, pathetic and desperate, they build and build in the night air.

As suddenly as the sounds begun, they end. Little Xici is gone, as though she never existed at all.

The tent wasn't empty when Xici's death-- when her slow erasure from existence-- began, and certainly many more have come to see the source of the screaming. There is nothing to do but talk amongst yourselves of what you just saw-- that is, if you feel it needs discussion. Some may wish only to return to sleep, or leave immediately for other reasons.

What's done is done. Xici is gone, however slowly she went. The spy has been dealt with.

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The Commander comes out again, when the screaming starts and this time - she can actually be seen. Dressed no differently to a Sans-Coulette man. An eyepatch over one eye, back stiff, shoulders broadly set, mouth a hard line and she sets herself to stand witness to it all: beginning, middle and end of the screaming, the pleading. She does not rush to help, she does nothing. Her knuckles still raw from the beating she had given out, red over the edges of them as she shifts them where they're tucked at her sides.

When it's done, when there is nothing left, it's then her arms drop. Then that she turns back to anyone else is gathered: "You asked what they might do? Such is the way of the Regency. If they find out your name, this will be your fate. I would suggest dying before they ever find out who you are."

Because what else needs to be said - thinks no clearer point can be made. Her shoulders roll back, one hand lifts to the other, a sore point on one hand that she works in a small motion that belies a deeper agitation, frustration - faintest regret. Little Xici deserved better. "Get ready to move out. We head to Paris."

And now that she has finally appeared - now might be a good time to grab her for a face to face chat, rare an opportunity as that has been so far.

Kate arrives after a minute or two of screaming, after hands and feet have gone but in time to shoulder her way through the gathering crowd of onlookers to a spot near the front with a clear view as the prisoner's eyes suddenly just-- aren't. She watches in growing horror as she realizes what must be happening, flinches at the sudden relief of silence. Time travel is, truly, the absolute fucking worst.

"Hey!" she spots the commander, recognizes her more by presence and reputation than sight, and is jolted into action, jogging a few steps to catch up with Grothia before she can make an exit. Arms cross as she plants herself before the other woman. She's dressed similarly, though she's doing a poor job at passing for a man at the moment, no hat and clean-faced but for a smear of mud on her jaw she's missed. "Can COST do that, too?"

Grothia pauses, by contrast she is neat. Clean. Her clothing, however civilian she might be trying to pass as is a little too carefully lain. Sits stiffly on her like it knew it had to behave. Her gaze breaks away from her briefly to slide back to the empty space that had once been where Little Xici had occupied. The one visible eye fixed on it before she looks back at Kate as she stands in front of her. The answer is simple, at least. Holding without looking away, and slow to blink.

"Yes."

It was nothing that Angela had ever seen before, and far exceeded any of the horrors that Angela had seen inflicted on prisoners before. Thankfully Overwatch had had better treatment of those that they'd captured, but watching this woman disappear piece by piece--

"Did you know they would do that?"

Torture her as they had. Kill her that way. Death like that-- Angela didn't want to think about it.

"I did." Her one visible eye doesn't leave the space where one Little Xici had occupied. Screaming and pitched misery and then silence. If it's touch her, it didn't cross her face. "Do you think I should have shot her first?"

Contemplation really - either way, she's dead. But here she stood, witnessing something apparently.

Part of her knows the soldier's response, thinking it would have been kinder. The woman would have died regardless but they could have saved her what she'd gone through. The humanitarian in her, the woman that had felt sick and distraught watching such a thing--

"Would there have been nothing we could do? No way to help her?"

Her head shakes. Regretful - in the way her eyes look to the empty space. How such a thing could be so full in that moment as she forms the words to field the understanding that any veteran of this war knew.

"The moment she was captured, her fate was sealed whether she recognised it or not. We only had so much time to prize the information out of her because they did that to her." It's said with a shake of her head - a waste, though a waste of what, she hardly knew.

Angela takes a few moments to consider what she says. Her fate was sealed, capture... they needed information but it seemed that getting it would result in the death of whomever they took it from.

"Can we not find another way? Get the information without capturing someone?" Listen, talk... not get anyone killed.

"Subterfuge, spying, highly secretive reconnaissance. Unfortunately." She has no skill for it, quite clearly. The scars on her knuckles are proof enough for that. Her way forward has always been regretfully, the most direct way forward.

"But once they have been captured, and from time to time, we must - this is there fate."

"But if it isn't so necessary we should try other methods." She had just admitted that it was possible, even if not all of the time.

"Those lives that are lost could impact on the history we're trying to save."

"We try - " there is a concession, sharp inflected in tone and the stiffness of stance - a Commander, after all. She looks back to her soldier, she squares her shoulders and directly.

"But we are at war, Miss Zieglar. I suggest you do not forget that fact. I will make exceptions where and when as I can. But never forget that."

That irritates her. Considering her role in all of this it's something that she's well aware of.

"How could I forget?" Never mind that she'd come from one war torn place to be thrust into another.

"I'm not a soldier but I see the cost this has on everyone." Every injury, each death. She'd had to remind her last Commander about the humanitarian toll before. Soldier's could easily forget, or be so focused on their goal.

"Do you really want to win this using their methods?" COST might not be going back in time to torture people to death but allowing it was just as good.

Her one eye slides across her. Looking her down from her height, hard, jaw tensing sharp, then loose again before she goes to speak. That uneasy curl of her fingers behind her back as she takes her ground.

"You mistake me, I have no quarrel with your wanting to try to do better." Her breath is in slow. "But pretending that it can always be so? I see no gain in it. You have enough reasons to distrust me as it is, without my senseless lying about the kind of war this is."

As the murder happens, Ashitaka watches.

The twin knowledge that he had received from his text conversation with the commander and his own questioning of Xici had spun in his brain like a vicious storm. It offered him no peace, leaving him grasping for some sort of answer. This restlessness had led him to remain close to where she was being held after the fight had settled into the mingled silence of mourning and recovery. He had had to distance himself slightly at the interrogation, the sound of violence causing the demon's mark to riot beneath his skin. Once that had ended and the screams had begun, however, he had returned to watch. And he forced himself to. His right hand was clenched so tightly the white of the knuckles seemed fit to burst from the skin, his left hand clasping tightly on his right forearm. The mark ached again. He wouldn't allow himself to look away, taking in each gruesome detail of the meticulous erasure of a human life before it had even had the chance to exist.

How very wrong it was rattled him deep to his core.

He had noticed the person watching, and it wasn't until Xici was well and truly gone and she addressed the group did he know for certain who she was. He stares at her a moment, wrestling with impulse, but it won out in the end. He strode quickly and purposefully towards her, feeling a storm inside his chest he couldn't quiet but only let loose.

"You knew that this would happen." Despite the severity of his expression, his words were fairly calm. There was a blistering look in his eyes, but—was he angry? Yes. Not necessarily at her or, at least, not entirely. He was angry at all of it. Ashitaka could not allow himself to hate, but if he could spare it for one thing, it would be for whatever accursed being allowed this twisted scenario to play out. "You knew, and yet she was treated like this. What did you gain from her suffering?" The tiniest bit of his aggravation bled through his words here; he couldn't keep it at bay any longer. "Was it worth it?"

It was not the smartest move, but he wasn't always known for them. He had raised a hand against the leader of a town in the middle of an armed crowd, rescuing their sworn enemy. He had taken a bullet through the chest for that, and he might have lost his life. You would think that would make him more cautious, but if anything, it had only bolstered him to follow what he felt was right.

"Yes."

She slides her visible eye to the empty space. Her fingers curling and uncurling at her side. Then back, peering down from her height over the boy. Watching the anger bubble and brew over him like a tar pit up from the depths of a planet.

"Yes I knew." A brief clarification, stubborn and sure when she looks more - contemplative than anything. Not a real anger in regards to him. "Do you suppose there is a single person in this camp that doesn't believe me now?"

Anger was a capricious weapon. He knew better than to wield it brazenly—the fact that the mark across his right side itched and ached at his current emotional state was enough warning for him to rein himself in. That, and the barest shred of common sense he had, facing down someone in command as he was.

Truth be told, this situation was a riddle with no answer. Not even he had seen any possible positive outcome for Xici. Even still, the clarification that the commander offered only made the steely glint in his eyes harsher. He had spoken with her enough to know that she had been similar to them, working on limited information and understanding, blinded by the wool the Regency had drawn over her eyes. She had not deserved to be a spectacle to cow people into obedience.

It would've been better to simply put her to the sword cleanly before such a dreadful end had come for her.

"She should not have been used as a warning." Much of Ashitaka's visible anger was gone now, left behind only in the reservoirs of his flint-like gaze, his measured words. "And we should not be motivated by fear."

That one sharp eye looks down on him still, gauging him completely. Just what had she gotten in these new recruits. "You should not, but you should know exactly what you are a facing. Now there can be no doubt."

She looks back at the profoundness that is all of a sudden, empty space. "Do you suppose I should have shot her, then? Walked up, killed her, before she realised just how little she meant to them? Would that have been better? Letting her continue to believe that we are the villains?"

It is not - angry, merely, to a line, curious. Something like learning, or learning him.

His eyes remain on hers, level and unyielding. Unfortunately, the commander had landed herself a very stubborn and idealistic young man in Ashitaka. Her reasoning seems hollow to him in this moment, however, with the horror of what he had seen still fresh in his mind. Everything that had happened to him since he had awoken in Jerusalem was beyond his understanding. He was equipped with a magical force which allowed him to speak to distant comrades completely unseen, transported through time and space, allowed to speak languages he had never even heard before. He had no trouble understanding what danger they were in, comparing it against what he had already seen.

His jaw clenches as she speaks. At the end of her questioning, he answers swiftly with a strong, "Yes." He takes a breath before expounding. "I understand little of what she spoke of, but she felt a powerful conviction for what she did. To take that away from her in the moment of her death was needlessly cruel." And almost petty.

And what if what shes had believed was wrong? Destructive? Would lead to danger for himself and everything he held dear? It was a difficult hypothetical to pose, especially when he could still hear the fervor ringing in the words she had spoken to him. He could do nothing but respect people of conviction.

"If she was to die, best put her to the sword so she could die in a way she could take pride in."

It was what he did. Struggling to find the answer to the curse laid upon him, he would rather die in the thicket of conflict he sought to unravel than simply waiting, inactive, and letting the rot take him body and soul. For Ashitaka will always commit the cardinal sin of war: he purposefully sought to humanize his enemies, wanting to understand them as much as he could. It was caused him to stand here now, unwavering still.

What to do with such idealism? How to soothe it against such horrors and acts - a better Commander might have more soothing words. In silence she continues to watch him, and in a work of her jaw of teeth against teeth, she takes in his words. Bright and harsh as a dawn star as they are.

His heart is going to bleed many times, before this is done. She doesn't want to bury him, either. At a loss over a humanity she is not always best at - she taps her fingers against her side and seeks to find something else to give him, because there is no taking this back.

"Would you like to know how to pay homage to our Gods for her behalf?"

Edited 2017-11-13 01:31 (UTC)

He was destined for this. A fate inexplicably tied to conflict, and yet it pained him, causing the beast tethered within to claw and riot. Ever unwilling to keep his enemy as masked and faceless, putting forth every effort to understand intrinsically why it was they fought and what they believed in. Whether it was in the forest, Irontown, Jerusalem, or here, it was simply his lot. In many ways, Ashitaka was a gear within a machine that refused to turn when and how it should; he was at least vaguely aware of this. But to merely fall into lock step was to betray himself and what he sought to do, feeding into what the mark wished of him.

Her question was not something he anticipated. He wasn't sure what he anticipated, but it certainly wasn't this. He pauses a moment, slightly off-balance to the cadence of the conversation.

"I have already accepted a similar request from her." He keeps the specifics to himself. He's unsure of any of the details, if it was something she would oppose or support, if it was similar or dissimilar from what she proposed now. He didn't even know if their gods were the same. Regardless, he had given his word.

He doesn't seem fully satisfied with even what he said, however, and after a moment's hesitation he continues, asking, "Is homage to your gods something she would be honored by?"

"Then you can't see it through without the proper instruction."

The empty space draws emptier, the night goes on, still to the screams - but what do the bugs in the trees care, the creatures stirring beyond the camp line. The silence.

Such, terrible, terrible silence. "She would. Perhaps then you can show it to the other new recruits. For the soldiers that will die fighting for them from our homes."

Little Xici had made it seem simpler than that. For a moment he gives pause. By nature, Ashitaka is not a mistrustful person. He was earnest, which typically incited the honesty of others, and he tried to place trust in that. There is the faintest part of him that wonders to her intentions, but he places it aside. He weighs her words before giving a simple nod.

"If you would teach me, then, I would be grateful," he says.

She nods for him to follow her, not far - in the end, her tent isn't any different to anyone else's. Just a small, sparsely kept room that is the same, a low bed with two chairs, a table, their kit from this era. A change of clothes to a rather more frilly, dress - however she pulled that off. But it's a simple set out, she didn't seem to have the taste for more.

But on that table is a chess set - a plain set of carved wood pieces that don't look any more out of place than the rest of them. A dark wood and a lighter wood in plain hewn pieces to the shapes they need be. "Sit. Wine?"

She moves to a chest at the foot of the bed, fishing out a bottle and two cups. Holding them up in offering to him with the words.

He follows wordlessly, though the journey from the tent that would be the cairn for what few memories remained of Little Xici to the one that the commander had been using for her own was a short one. He isn't necessarily surprised to find that the living area is so similar to the others that he had seen; it seemed to match her manner, though he is at least vaguely pleased to see that she lived in the same conditions that the rest of the agents did.

The chess set draws Ashitaka's attention for a moment. He's not familiar with the game, though he can tell that it is one, and considers it briefly as it is one of the few personal items deviating from the standard issue in the room. He sits in one of the chairs, though the question stumps him for a moment. Certainly alcohol had been available even in his village growing up, but he had never done much partaking in it. But it almost seemed rude to refuse, noting the two cups that she had retrieved.

He nods. "Yes. Thank you." To his credit, he seemed calm, if not a little wooden (somewhat easily-noticed by the straight-backed posture even while sitting in the chair) at the change in social environment. But if his stay with COST was to be one of any length, he felt it necessary to get to know the person he would be following the orders of. And so he would.

She nods just as stiffly in return, and if she were the type to linger on it - she might make further note of it. The awkwardness in the social situation, the deferring to being straight backed and set across the shoulders.

But as it is - she simply goes through the steps comfortably. Nodding, taking her seat across from him. The cups placed in front of him before she pours the wine from the green bottle, unlabelled, it seems local for it. The liquid a dark red as it pours out - at once saccharine and bitter all in the same breath. Fills them up most of the way before she puts the bottle away again.

Then she slides it back across to him. Picking her own up to take a steadying mouthful from it before she indicates to the board. "Do you know how to play?"

It wasn't discomfort as much as a lingering feeling of alertness, a strong personal impetus to not seem to take anything for granted. Even a lifetime ago when he had been the only prince of peoples destined to die out and fade into the sands of time, he had maintained respectful distance with the elders of his village. Simply put: getting invited for a personal chat and a cup of wine with a superior officer directly after a first official meeting was moving a little quickly for him.

He accepts the cup of deep red liquid, though a watchful gaze would show him looking a little confused at it. He follows her lead, taking a sip, and for his merit he doesn't seem to show any sign of distaste. He had had sake in very small amounts before, and the taste was... vaguely similar, though it's not something he'd say he particularly enjoyed. But he was not about to refuse something offered by way of what he assumed was hospitality.

His response this time is more immediate; he shakes his head, observing the carved figures on the checkered board.

"I have never seen this game." Though... He noticed that the rows closest to the middle were all the same, small and simple, though the others were more complex, some having the same style but mirrored on the other side of the board. In something like this, such differences were rarely just stylistic.

"These pieces. There are different types. They act differently, then?"

"It is called Chess - is ancient, even to the people of this time. Not that they know it, it's just another game."

She gestures to the pieces in front of them, running between the two neatly arrange rows in front of them. "You are correct. All the pieces move differently, and they are named after the courts of nobility. The most important and slowest piece being the king, and the most powerful and movable piece, the queen, now - "

She begins to explain, in a direct manner, the purpose of each piece. Tapping her finger to the top of it, sliding it over the chequered board to demonstrate its movements. It's rhythmic, meeting his eyes very briefly in between her brief gestures. Then when she's done, she pauses - settling back. " - following so far?"

"I see."

He had certainly never heard of it, regardless of how ancient it was, but that wasn't really surprising. Even within his own country the cultural difference between the Emishi village and others he had visited had been enough to set him apart as a stranger. He had gotten used to that role.

She describes the pieces in turn. There's a momentary glimpse of a smile at her commentary on the queen being the most powerful piece on the board — merely because he thinks that there were people he knew that would be very pleased to hear its comparison to the king. As she finishes, Ashitaka thinks that he can mostly remember all of the specifics. He nods. "Yes, I believe so." He considers for a moment. "With all of the differences between the pieces, I can see that there is a lot of strategy to it."

He's silent a moment longer before he sits back in his chair a bit more, crossing his arms over his chest. "It is like battle."

"It is. Everything has a value, a weight. Every movement must be thought, considered, long before you make it."

She grunts a little, bemused or frustrated, the expression is apparently the same. A little pinch of tension at the middle of her brows, a twitch in the corner of her mouth. It's brief as she looks up from her movements to his face.

"We have two Gods that we all call our own, whether they be Xici or myself. The Watcher and her lover, the Hunter. In their name, we offer games, songs, plays, art - for their entertainment in the hopes that they find it favorable. So play as best as you can, the greater the match, the more favourable they will be."

His first glimpses of widespread battle had seemed so hectic. Samurai ranging across the countryside, cutting down those barely equipped to be able to defend themselves, even raising arms to a completely separate passerby. He'd only started to see something more than mindlessness in war when Eboshi had showed him the weapons she was developing, speaking of her plans from the battlements of the fortress she had built in defiance to the local lords.

"I see."

If he takes notice of the temporary shift in her expression, he doesn't show it. He seems intent on listening to what she said, absorbing the information.

"Why do you offer those things in particular?"

Ashitaka comes from a very stringent society. It's not to say that the Emishi did not have their games, their songs, their dances, their art; they existed, but to carve out a living was so difficult, they were typically things left by the wayside. He thinks that their society must be far more stable to be able to afford a system of faith where their dedications were purely things of creativity.

"Because we are his gift to her."

The pieces are set, but not quite right, she leans forward briefly, a little niggling that she has to set straight the pawn that moved. Just out of line with the others from her demonstration to him of each piece. "They say that the Watcher grew bored, one long night - and she became restless. A dangerous thing for a God to be. Fearing her restlessness, for he once himself was just a man and knew the suffering that a restless God could create, the Hunter sort to entertain her."

She hums, telling the stories she knows learned at the knee of parents. But she had learned in books when it came time for them all to be presented to their parent, for want of a better term. Customs taught with the expectation of 'fitting in' and 'being respectable'. "The trouble, of course, was that what truly entertains a God? So day after day, her restlessness grew and so, day after day, he brought her something new to entertain her. For twelve days and nights, they did this. But by morning, she grew bored of each and everything he put in front of her. So - he made a deal with her. She must bind her eyes, so that her restlessness did not overtake her, and that he might surprise her - and in one year, on the eve of the first day they sort to entertain her, he brings her a game."

Her smile is slow, shakes her head briefly. "The game he presented her with, was the only game that never grew dull, and was always changing: life itself. We are all just pieces you see. Like these." She waves over the chessboard. "Moving or being moved, who is to tell. By playing these games, by dancing or playing music, we bring the Watcher delight, and we relieve the Hunter of such a great task, and incline them both to look favorably on us."

He is unsure how he feels on the concept.

It is a difference in the construction of the religions, however. He had already noticed this, attempting to understand the conflict in Jerusalem. Humans being in a way subject to gods was a strange concept to him, for in his conception, gods were simply powerful spirits of things far greater than they could comprehend, like the power of nature. If humans were beholden to anything greater than themselves, it might perhaps be the departed souls of their ancestors long since past, but the thought of his life being lived not for himself or for the struggle for something better in the world but for the amusement of a distant deity was a strange one.

His attention catches on something the commander says as she adjusts one of the pieces on the board. "He was once also a man — had the Hunter been human?"

He supposes it is not out of the question. Gods could become demons. Men could become monsters. There was always a capability of change, even if the change he had seen had always been negative.

His attention is on her as she tells the story, though it falls back to the assembled chess pieces once the purpose of her teaching them to him seems to become clear. His jaw sets, something not quite sitting well with him.

"I see." The statement is without emotional input.

He is silent a long moment, considering, before he decides to put it into words. "Is everything that life offers them part of this entertainment? Illness, anger, violence — to what do these belong to?"

"He was - yes. Just a man, who took her heart so surely, that they have been chained together ever since. A soldier with a good heart, kind, despite all he could have been."

She settles it, love, what a strange thing.

Though the latter makes her laugh, looking at it all, the chess pieces. Outside, the wounded groan, the sick wretch and the mothers and wives mourn for their dead sons. They mourn for France, and the grief grows enough to swallow the country whole. Shuddering like a woman giving birth. It might just kill France as much as bring something new to life.

"Why do you think the suffering would not just be part of the story? We would not call her the Watcher if she only watched the sweet and never the sour."

Maybe that transformation had been negative, then, if viewed in a certain lens. Ashitaka is not sure he would accept such a yoke; he had a realistic understanding of his place in the world. He didn't wish to join the spirits or the gods, and he didn't even really wish to join the society of those in Irontown. He merely wished to live, to assuage anger and to stay hatred, though these missions seemed to him to be the most difficult. Far more difficult than to stand and fight in a war.

He understands his stance on this, but what he understands of love is half-baked. His affection was an infliction of infatuation, one which occasionally seemed to rob him of sense. But... no, perhaps he does understand the perspective of the Hunter. His heart felt as if it belonged to someone who counted herself more among gods and beasts than among men. He had never really allowed himself to think that far into the future, but perhaps...

He sighs, staring at the pieces on the chessboard, his shoulders bowed as if under some great weight.

"If it is all simply an amusement to her, why not simply allow the world to flood itself in war, and the hatred and anger of men?" More and more he finds he doesn't like these distant, unknowable gods. With those he had known in his own lands, you could see them, speak with them, attempt to reason, to understand. Here there were only secondhand stories, vague implications, soothing ideals. "I find it difficult to feel I owe anything to a goddess that does not differentiate between those thriving and those suffering."

"You don't owe her anything, that is hardly the point, I'm afraid. She simply is, like tides on an ocean, or the air she breathes. She does not ask for tithes, not interfere unless asked to."

A pause, grimacing before she corrects.

"Unless you ask the Hunter too." But that too, comes with a shrug. She isn't a great philosopher, much to her trainer's frustration. She never strayed too deep into such things. "Regardless, this is mine and Xici's God and Goddess. Whatever sense it makes, it is our own, whom we pledge our lives as entertainment too."

She isn't offended. "Though I do wonder why you think it must be all one or the other, why cannot happiness and grief be a thing of equal measure in the eyes of beings greater than ourselves?"

The gods in his own world were physical presences, as real as the wind and the rain, as real as the pain of a fresh cut or the comfort of familiar arms encircling you. As real as the curse he carried upon his body and soul. It was why what she said was so difficult for him to understand, the concept of a god which was not only invisible but without intention, without interaction, so completely inert in the grand scheme of things that he felt as though knowledge of them was scarcely necessary.

But it is a frustration that he holds onto, contains, and then releases. He has felt many conflicting feelings for differences in culture, great walls which seemed impossible to climb or circumnavigate. As the commander continues, he looks down, feeling vaguely cowed by her admission. These were not gods of his to judge; it was not only foolish but rude to do so.

"I understand." He's silent for a moment before he continues, "I apologize for my tone."

Her question is a sharp one, one that draws his attention in to look up to her and then deflects it; he looks back to the chess board, thinking carefully. Why indeed? So much of it had to do with his own dealings with the gods; he respected them in an almost instinctual fashion, but it did not prevent them from treating him harshly, threatening him and confounding him.

"I do not believe there is any way I could know for sure." But he doesn't seem content with that answer, a kind of tightness around his eyes causing them to narrow. "I have tried, but I do not understand the will of the gods. That they might save you from one fate," he thinks of the place on his chest a gunshot wound used to be, "but leave you consigned to another." The demon's mark that still remained.

"Perhaps it is because I do not understand that I want to believe this. I want it to make sense. I want... for there to be a purpose to it, to the suffering, to the joy. For if there is no purpose..."

He trails off.

If there was no purpose, what was it all for? His life, in which everything had been torn away from him, all due to the spite of a divine creature he had chanced upon in the worst circumstances? And what about Eboshi's, or the lives of those who she sheltered? Or San's?

"It feels more difficult to move forward."

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SPECTATOR LOG: The Fate of Little Xici.

PLACEHOLDER.

GROTHIA

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