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[miniroth]

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After post-(soul-)surgical follow-up & any given Exile session with Mayerling - voice; un: imyarek

[unsheathedfromreality]

So you're aware, I'd noticed you and your -- training partner, is it? In Exile the other evening.

[It's a measure of their relationship, such as it is, that Illarion's sticking to Shriketongue (and not sounding like a total weirdo) in speaking to Sephiroth.]

I didn't want to interrupt, but surveilling you without your knowledge would be wrong.

[miniroth]

[Did Illarion reach Sephiroth? Reach Casimir? There's no way of being sure, when it's audio only, and at a distance that suggests the relic isn't in hand, but maybe sitting on a counter or table a short distance away.]

Oh. Were we disturbing you?

[unsheathedfromreality]

No. I keep odd hours, [bro you keep ALL hours,] and was out hunting myself.

Though if you plan to train regularly there, I'll shift my territory so we don't deplete the monsters between us. [He says it laughingly; like they could be depleted.]

Do you have anyone else with you for those sessions?

[miniroth]

I see. In that case I'll find a way to mark my targets, the point isn't to kill them, and ... and you should absolutely not eat the ones I'm involved with. You haven't, have you?

[..Oh right other people.]

Mr. Valentine attends as well as Mr. Mayerling. They have very different schedules.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Oh now that is interesting.] I haven't had to eat any of them yet. What are you doing to the ones you're targeting, to make them unwholesome?

[There's certain religious reasons he could think of from home, but... he's certain this is not that.]

Unsurprisingly. Do you need another person?

[miniroth]

Injecting them with a bloodborn pathogen. I would prefer it not being in anything sapient, and I don't know whether or not digestion destroys it, so please don't.

[That's not entirely accurate but also, kind of completely accurate. How is he supposed to practice if the thing that gives him control isn't actually in anything else?]

What I am doing is probably ... best kept to as few as possible, I think. It.. .. it won't go well if I'm caught by certain people.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Ah. While the undead were largely unaffected by disease, it would be better not to mess around with that.] May I ask why?

[Then, after a beat:]

Understood. I'd only be volunteering myself. The more watchers you have in Exile, the better.

[miniroth]

I don't linger there if I can avoid it. I don't like the fog.

[Anything could be out there.

He still thought now and again he could hear the scrape of axe on stone.]

... Um. To practice a rather niche skill?

[unsheathedfromreality]

It's disturbingly concealing.

[He gets it. It's behind his offer.]

One controversial enough to inspire, hm, violent reprisal if certain people found out?

[miniroth]

[There's a long minute or two of obvious hesitation before:]

Not unjustly. It would be a bit of a stretch to call it 'controversial', I believe the usual take on it is irredeemably evil.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Ah-ha.

He'd made a guess about this once before and the immediate denial had not been convincing--because there were enough pieces out there to put together what's implied.]

A tool is rarely evil in itself, though many of its uses might be. But remaining totally ignorant of those uses out of fear doesn't prevent them, in my experience.

Have you asked Baba Yaga about taking her creatures from her? [Because that's the real trespass here, in a pious shrike's reckoning: Not asking the local deity for permission.]

[miniroth]

Consider it a rare exception.

[And it's part of what he was. He could no more escape it than he could rewrite his genetics. If it was evil, what did that make him?]

.. Yes. She's important for [Containment.] making sure nothing goes awry.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Forgive my ignorance in this case, but why might it be an exception?

[He does have many of his own biases when it comes to this particular tool, having been victim of it in more ways than one.

But he can maintain dispassion about it.]

Good.

[miniroth]

... If it's all the same, I'd rather not talk about it.

[Idle curiosity tended to backfire. And Illarion would certainly join the many others who learned to avoid him after what he was became clear.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

It isn't, unfortunately, all the same.

[The idiom's a bit of politesse, he's well aware, but still an opening.]

I suspect you're training an ability to control minds.

To declare my own biases in the matter: I have been in thrall to another's will. My mother has an effort-gift of persuasion she's used to hurt my children.

[To kill his son--her grandson--but that is a little much to share, even in the interest of eliciting information in turn.]

I have, therefore, a vested interest in you learning to use your own gift rightly. Knowing more will help with that.

[miniroth]

[The call is cut.

It will still take messages of course, that's what it's designed to do, but it's well over an hour before there's anything from Sephiroth.]

EVENTUALLY: text. GET OUT THAT TEXT TO SPEECH APP

[miniroth]

My cup overflows with people with a "vested interest" in me doing what they think I should be doing, when they tell me I should do it and how they tell me to do it, or else.

Do you think I'm an idiot? Are you under the impression that I'm somehow not aware of what I'm doing and the cost to everyone else should I make even the smallest of mistakes? Do you think I have not been told relentlessly and at length how much harm I can do? How much harm I've already done and will do?

I already know. I have always known, ever since it was explained to me what I am, and what awaits me.

Add to the chorus.

text;

[unsheathedfromreality]

[It is not, by far, the first time someone's gone silent on Illarion only to break that silence in full fury.

He waits patiently through the intervening interval, attending to a few small matters that require little thought. He wraps up the last of these when his Relic pings with a new message--picks it up, and reads the response through Iskierka's eyes.

Oh, little one.]

No.

I think you are all too aware and it's crushing you. [QED, as they say in the Empire.]

Whether or not you believe it, you deserve a say in all of this. The opportunity to make mistakes without condemnation and to discover what a person with your nature is and can be.

But I can't help you in that way either without knowing what you are and who else affects you.

Ignorance in those matters did nearly get me (justifiably) shot.

[miniroth]

[And that's the tamed version, subject to rewrite and walking away and rewrite and reconsidering and more. What would it have been without an hour's filter?]

It was not justified. Mr. Valentine means well, but he knows what I become, and his dearest friends are my victims. He seems to believe that by acting thus he can prevent it, but he is fourteen years too late. His counterpart in my time still sleeps, content to leave me to my fate.

Objectively it is better for you to make whatever assumptions you'd like about my nature. Those that find out tend to make encouraging noises about choices and then disappear, or threaten to kill me if I misstep. As if they could.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Much less coherent, certainly. But that, too, Illarion has been subject to.]

Unjustifiably shot then. It remains that it would have been much less likely if I and Mr. Valentine had known more about each other.

[The added information on Sephiroth's self-appointed guardian and not-father is tucked away, but not followed. Not now. Vincent's failings, perceived or actual, are aside from the point.]

Objectively, it is not. I'd assumed you were like one of my own people, with a part of you outside the realm of the visible. Until we witnessed you rip yourself in half and survive it because, I can only assume, my instructions on summoning an Omen were very incomplete.

This is also something I'd like to avoid, in the future.

[miniroth]

I am very much not in two pieces.

Well I am now but not like that, I'm pretty certain if I tore myself in half I'd be in hospital at the least, picking myself out of a crater courtesy of Thirteen's resurrection at worst.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[...hm. Yes. Okay.]

Are you free to continue this conversation in person?

There is something I need to explain.

[miniroth]

Yes with caveats, if you're very far away it's going to take a while to get there and I have classes at 8 tomorrow morning.

[unsheathedfromreality]

There's a little-used park in Willow, not far from the Prancing Pony.

[He describes the location.]

Is that close enough?

[miniroth]

I know it. It'll take a couple of hours to get there, I'm not designed for speed in the air but the cover of dark might help if eyes linger.