Summary:Spring continues his attempts to win Thorn of Night back over to the light.
XP:S1
Tags:< Seeking a Monstrance | Sol Invictus Logs | A Plague of Skeletons >
The sun sets on another long, uneventful day in the prison which Spring temporarily, and under implicit false pretenses, currently calls his home. Unusually, it has now been six days since he has seen Thorn of Night, even in the morning.
Spring smiles, a sight that has grown increasingly more annoying to everyone who has seen him during his stay in the prison, and stretches out on his stone bench to await the dawn.
It is moments before he would have fallen asleep that Spring hears a huge crash, followed by Essence sounds, then sounds of slicing and spurting, and then, a bit later, a faint wet burbling followed by the sound of shuffling boots.
Spring "Hm."
Spring gets up and knocks quietly on the door
There is a long pause, and then Kai -- or Thorn of Night -- shuffles over from out of sight, blood matting her hair and dripped across much of her face, her left leg favored in her walk, and something furry and dripping that looks more or less like a head held in her right hand.
Spring "Kai?"
Spring "You have something on your cheek."
Thorn blinks, then wipes her face irritatedly with her sleeve -- which has the effect mostly of smearing the previously clearly-delineated bloodstain across more of her face. "And you have something on your neck," she says.
Spring "Yes. Good eye."
Spring "I actually meant the cheek of your severed head. Now you have blood all over yourself."
Spring "Do you have a handkerchief or something?"
Thorn drops her head -- upon inspection it appears to be that of a blood ape -- and scowls. "I ought to have blood. It is a sign I have been doing my job."
Spring "Consider timecards."
Spring "Are you all right?"
"I am fine," she says, pulling up a nearby chair and seating herself in it. "Those fucking demons," she says dismissively, "are still pestering me! It's annoying."
Spring "Was that one of your own demons that you had to kill?"
Spring clucks his tongue. "Back at the Sunlands..." he pauses, "we had specialized divisions for that."
"No," she says, shaking her head, "another strike force. Probably left over from before, and no one bothered to change their orders."
Spring "Ah."
Spring "How irresponsible."
Spring "It is almost as if they give no thought to human life."
Thorn laughs coldly. "Almost, indeed." She reaches across to a table out of sight, and pulls over a black iron platter with a sandwich atop it -- nearly raw, bloody meat pressed between two slabs of blackened bread. "And since when do you care so much about it yourself?"
Spring "I had a change of heart."
"But why?" she says. "That is quite a change."
Spring "A philosophy based on force of arms inevitably fails when faced with an opponent against whom puncture wounds are not a sufficient solution."
Spring "I wanted to bring us together."
Spring "I saw, then, that Thirteen had done more to drive the circle apart than anything the enemy had done."
"But life, as a divider, is meaningless. Pointless." She kicks her blood ape head gently. "This thing will be back to whatever it was doing in three days," she says. "And everything bad in the universe just builds up over time."
Spring "That is why we were created, Kai. To change the unchangeable."
Spring "If you want the blood ape to stay dead, rub sea salt in its eyes and throw the head into a volcano."
alsoquin nods. "And that's exactly what I'm going to do," she says. "Break the cycle. Get rid of the false distinction. One state for everyone and every thing."
Spring "That strikes me as not so much changing things as disguising them."
Spring "You cannot eliminate suffering by eliminating all those who can suffer."
"I didn't go to school or anything, but it seems pretty sensible to me that eliminating all those who can suffer really would eliminate suffering." She gestures with the plate towards Spring, as if asking whether he wants some of the sandwich.
Spring reaches out for the sandwich.
Spring "You fail to examine the causes of suffering."
Spring is now holding half of a blue yeddim sandwich.
"Well, you seem like you are probably an expert in suffering. Please, tell me what you think I'm missing."
Spring "What if there are forces present in the universe that dictate that suffering is necessary? That caused the creation of humans, Exalts, all creatures that can suffer?"
Spring "Imagine a...a Great Curse, if you will, woven into the structure of our world, that mandates that there must always be suffering."
Spring "Eliminating humanity would just lead to the creation of new creatures, to feel the suffering that must be felt."
Spring tries to eat the sandwich and gags, coughing, then looks at it warily, and takes a small bite out of it.
"Knock the whole universe out," she says. "Salt it so nothing can grow. Doesn't seem impossible. In theory, anyway."
Spring "In theory."
Spring "But without a strict identification of the problem, any solution you attempt, no matter how drastic, is hidebound by the limitations of your thought process."
Spring 's peroration is slightly hard to understand, as he is attempting to relearn how to chew.
< Seeking a Monstrance | Sol Invictus Logs | A Plague of Skeletons >