(CLOSED)

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde & Lexa (some Angel)
WHERE: the Alkon Facility
WHEN: Day 161 - 163
SUMMARY: The ladies from a pair of hard-scrabble worlds have decided to go on a hard-scrabble mission beneath the earth to look for supplies and weapons data.
WARNINGS: Definitely death and some horror elements, will update as necessary.

Comments

[erbier]

[ Ilde doesn't really question any of this, it makes as much sense as anything else from her own world, the ritual of it all, the violence, even without understanding in full she has a sense, a concept. ]

An honor. [ Well, Lexa takes it very seriously, Ilde isn't going to call it anything else. ] We did not have such a leader, in my caravan.

[ The first person she has mentioned this to, her childhood, the group of starving people she roamed with. ]

[adamance]

[Her gaze on Ilde is steady and curious.]

Did you have rules? A law of the land? Were you nomadic? [These questions come from two places: intellectual curiosity and the curiosity of someone who does wish to genuinely understand another. There are parts of Lexa that are shortsighted, but it's her thirst for knowledge (thirst to see and adapt her views in a broader sense) that makes her a capable commander. She could have been all brute force, but she isn't.]

[erbier]

[ She shuffles one foot against the ground, looking at nothing in particular. ]

The law of the land was survival, and obedience to the Godking. We roamed, as scavengers. There was nowhere fit to stay for long.

[ There was no real food, and should they attempt to stay anywhere for long, the shadow sons would descend en masse and tear it all apart. It was better to stay in small groups, better to keep moving. ]

[adamance]

And so this Godking ruled with fear, then? That is how he expected obedience? [Judgment leaks into her voice all too quickly. That's the conclusion she draws immediately. That Ilde would be forced to live that life isn't outside the realm of possibility. Her people do exile those who are deformed, and control most of the supplies that they might have to trade within the Dead Zone and beyond, but she would never demand that her people force nomadic individuals to always be on the move.

It would only anger them, and cause more problems.]

[erbier]

[ Difficult to explain the man, the shadow that hangs over her, eclipses her, wraps her up in darkness with the slow embrace of a lover. ]

He did not expect it.

[ He knew mankind to be unruly, pitiful and miserable and ugly. He expected nothing of them, and he cared nothing for them. They were animals, consciousness in a sack of flesh. Their anguish was the music of the world, and he had rended it from so many with his with his cruelty, with his overbearing strength, with his scorching fire, with his oppressive charisma, as hypnotic as a cobra. ]

He did not leverage fear, he was simply fearsome. He was too powerful.

[ Too powerful for what a man could contain, his cup ran over, boiling lava, drenching the world around him in ash and burning. ]

[adamance]

[Doubt rings clear through her mind. No matter what she's learned about abilities and alien species while here, and no matter how she's changed, she still has a difficult time envisioning someone with that much strength.

But she knows better than to speak to that, choosing to hold her tongue. What Ilde feels and believes should not be undermined, even if Lexa herself thinks she might be weakened by those beliefs. They cannot be changed so easily.]

Those who use their power to expect obedience do leverage fear, [she says finally.] It's all in how he chose to use the power. He believed he had to oppress. [Lexa knows she could just as easily throw her weight around without any additional ... strength, and become a tyrant. But she doesn't. That's a choice she makes, and her people follow her more easily because of it.]

[erbier]

[ She stares into emptiness. She understands what Lexa is saying to her, there was just so much more to Godking Dreus. So much that could not be explained in words, he was a being which overflowed with magic. Mere words were inadequate, and so she too decides this is not a topic for this moment. She inhales, stretching out her shoulders, ready to try again on the next door.

It moves a bit more easily and slides back into place more slowly... the one after it has half of one door missing altogether, the deterioration only increasing, until the end. ]