SPECTATOR LOG: The Fate of Little Xici.

[agogemod]

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.

Comments

[lonelywar]

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?"

[byfist]

"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."

[lonelywar]

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."

[byfist]

"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?"

[lonelywar]

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."