Ordinarily I would not send such correspondence with the sole purpose of asking a favor of you, but I suppose circumstances are a bit queer at the moment. For the next several weeks I will be indisposed of, thus unavailable at my and Hythlodaeus' abode. However, Hythlodaeus will not be with me, but he will be home.
Well am I aware of your usual mid-week visits, but I had hoped that I may request you make more frequent visits. Little would I wish for Hythlodaeus to succumb to loneliness, or - worse than that - boredom. He is ever so fond of you, after all, and like as not could use the company.
Oh. Sure, I can call on Hythlodaeus more frequently. I don't know if I can make it every day, but I can definitely come over three or four times a week at least. Is it okay to ask where you'll be in case of an emergency?
[Although. Hm. Somebody had just uploaded Hades' match against Blue to the Viridian Gym Staryutube channel. Maybe he was going to cash in his boat tickets to get away from all the mud and slush.]
Marvelous, that is a relief to hear. I fear with him growing more and more accustom to my company, to so suddenly be bereft of it and for quite some time will prove difficult for him. As for where I'll be, Dirk and I are making our way down Victory Road.
I must admit, I'm a little surprised. I'd have assumed you'd wait until it was closer to summer to make the trip less bothersome, the way I am—you've never really struck me as someone who's fond of long term camping. But I suppose Dirk could be the goad there. It's sweet that he's making the trip up with you, especially when he's already done it.
Do you have an estimated date of arrival to the Elite Four? I'd like to know so I can watch the live broadcast if possible.
(And don't worry. I'll do my best to keep Hythlodaeus occupied. And, well, if nothing else, you'll both have pokegear to check up on each other with.)
Oh, he is certainly making use of the PokéGear, don't you worry about that. However, such correspondence is an ill substitute.
Have I never mentioned my time in the Garlean military? Having spent years in the frozen wastelands of Ilsabard, a three week trek scaling a muddy mountain is naught by comparison. Dirk coming along was not of my request, he seemed rather intent on accompanying me, but little will I reject his desires and less am I in opposition of them.
Thank you for your congratulations. From my measure, we shall find ourselves arriving on the first.
You might have, but it was before my return home if you did?
Still, I'm glad for your sake that he insisted. I'm sure you'd have been fine on your own, but it's nice to have company for these long trips.
(Did you know Scorpia might be going up Victory Road in a few weeks too? She's hoping to finish her Kanto badges soon so that she can go with Akane Tendo and Cassandra. I'm very proud of her.)
Either way, while I cannot say I have much love for camping, it is hardly a trevail to stop me from my goals. I have endured far worse.
Indeed, his company and the assistance of my Rotom will certainly make the trip far more enjoyable than it otherwise might have proven to be. Honestly, I cannot help but wonder how many choose to suffer this trip without such basic comforts that my Rotom affords, seems foolish.
Young Scorpia, I do not know her overly well, but she seems a friendly, hardworking sort, I would expect no less of her--nor Mistress Akane. That the two of them get on is unsurprising, though if the Cassandra you speak of is the one that comes to mind, well, I do not think she favors me much. Though it matters little.
... Hades. Are you implying that you plan to use them in their capacity as appliances as well as their capacity as companions?
[Please excuse him while he laughs his fucking ass off. Holy shit.]
Honestly, I can't blame Cassandra much for being a bit leery of you. I think she got here around the same time you did and you were still very much in Emperor Solus mode with everyone. You really have mellowed out since then.
Absolutely, it would be beyond idiocy to not. Why shall I suffer without comforts from home which I have readily available to me? Clean clothing, fresh food, the convenience of an oven. Well do I know it makes for an amusing image, but there is no shame in utilizing everything at your disposal.
Besides, Hythlodaeus had made certain to pack up pre-made meals, as is his wont.
As for Cassandra, you do realize I had not treated everyone the same way I had treated you, correct? Not that you were particularly special, but the circumstances were. Cassandra did not seem to trust me when I was being quite genuine in our discussion, and I believe that says more of her than it does me.
Yet, I do suppose you are right. I have been more at ease knowing what I do. Impending death has that effect, or so it seems.
It does make an amusing mental image, yes—especially when I picture them trundling after you two outside their pokeball. And admittedly, the prospect of having a fridge and an oven on the trip is appealing—but I suspect Thace is going to want to do proper campfire cooking for ours, as sort of a prolonged hunting trip, sans traditional hunting.
And honestly, parts of that summer tend to blur together in my memory these days, so I'll accept that correction. I think it's partly time for me and also partly that I really was psychologically a mess at the time—more so than usual.
I don't really know Cassandra that well either, if I'm to be honest—we've only had one conversation and that was before I went home. She seemed like a nice woman, but somewhat reticent—though I really don't remember anything that we talked about anymore, I'm afraid.
... although I have to ask about the impending death part.
Yes, I think Dirk likewise enjoys the idea of campfire cooked meals, but I have long since grown weary of such novelty. Little will I stop those who have not, however.
It is quite understandable, between the psychological duress you suffered and the handful of summers you garnered from your mental return to your reality, it is of little surprise that you would find your memories less than accurate. All the same, it was a different time for us, one I am glad to have put to rest.
But yes, I had not spoken to any beyond Dirk, Hythlodaeus, and Elidibus about my imprending fate, and even still I am not entirely certain of it. I know I shall be laid low by a group of mortals I had been assisting prior to my arrival here, and when I fell into a slumber we had been at odds and in the heat of battle when I returned.
The climax of such a fateful encounter was denied to me. That is until Elidibus arrived, thus did he report to me that I had been slain, or so he believed. During his own encounter with this hero of the mortals, he had all but ensured their demise, banishing them to a realm between realms, until an unlikely ally pulled them from the brink of annihilation.
That ally being myself.
Yet I could not tary for long by his account, and so I am left uncertain of my fate. I may very well be on the brink of death, vulnerable to the tow of the aetherial sea as the Underworld wears away at my very soul.
Mostly I am at peace with it, for it would prove pointless to be otherwise. Any upset will not change it, and I have long since grown weary of time's march. Besides, that they could best me, though far from an individual basis, grants me that which I have sought for eons.
Is it a failure upon the pupil to never succeed his mentor, or is it upon the mentor? I admit it is a bittersweet feeling, and the uncertainty of such a reality is far from comforting, yet I cannot help but hope.
[That... sort of makes sense. Hades is fucking ancient and it isn't surprising that after so long a life, he might be tired of it all. And Steven knows by now that Hades doesn't actually hate mortals, the way he'd initially assumed he did. He loves them in his own way. Not exactly the best way--it reminded Steven of the way his grandfather loved him, in all the difficulties and complexities of that relationship--but in a clear and definite way none-the-less.]
That does make sense, I suppose.
[He stares down at the screen for a long moment before typing:]
This is unrelated but... I think I got one of those 'secret thought' cards from you a few weeks back.
[He could say more on the matter, on his thoughts about the mortals, about his probable demise and the hand he played in Elidibus' own beyond merely rescuing that mortal hero, but gifting them the tools in order to do the deed in the first place.
He chooses not to, allows Steven to steer the conversation away from something so close to his heart. Now isn't the time to go so deeply into his bittersweet relief of passing on the torch.]
Did you now? I believe I likewise obtained one from you, for I know few others who brandish the term "Abuelito" as you do.
I'm one of the few Spanish speakers here, yeah. Yours was fairly obvious too, considering that no one here has quite the same diction that you do.
[He can guess a little of what his might have been, then, if Abuelito was mentioned in it. It's silly to want these things from Hades and it's the kind of thing that pisses Dirk off at him.]
Yours came as a kick in the gut, but one I probably needed—and honestly, not something I wasn't a little bit aware of, at least on some level.
I'm working on figuring out how much of me *is* me and how much is me responding to my environment and the company I keep. I'm not done with it, but I *am* working on it.
I don't know. I hope you won't see me as such a child someday.
Indeed, I'm well aware of how othering my manner of speech is, and with my errant thoughts vulnerable as they were to those creatures, it is not as if I could simply mask it.
Regardless, it is a mark of maturity that, despite what pain came about by such thoughts, you have chosen to not ignore their wisdom but embrace it. Well do I know it feels not the case, but you are young, and ever are you to live an incomplete life shy of perfection. However, this means not that there is scant benefit in striving for it.
Ultimately, it is ourselves who benefit the most from our improvements, and there is no meaningful grow without pain.
Edited 2021-03-19 22:24 (UTC)
Phillimore was Mr bii's PC in a game I ran years back
I'm middle aged by human standards, actually. Changelings live longer if we don't die by misadventure—but not *that* much longer. A bit over a century. I think the usual human span is something around seven or eight decades
The oldest man I've met among us is turning two-hundred-and-two this year and Phillimore is something of a novelty for both being away for as long as he was—he set the record for longest Durance in the modern age at a hundred and twelve years—and for having being taken at the ripe old age of seventy-nine.
(Longest Durance that was escaped from, rather, as Fantomas—a friend and sort-of mentor back home—claims one of the men he'd been with had been taken during the Civil War period.)
And I'm getting distracted from the point at hand, but I think you're right, at least when it comes to myself. Maybe some people can grow without pain, but I don't think I'm one of them.
Not unlike the mortals of my reality. Though elezen, like Estinien, may live a score or two longer than the other mortal races, they can scarce hope to reach two centuries. As such, I am well aware of the mid-life of humans, as it is the same for the mortals I have lived beside for ages, they who I have lived as for millennia. When I speak of youth, I am speaking in relative terms, even as a withered old man upon your deathbed, you will still ever be young to me.
Little have I cared to keep track of mine own age, however, and with the state my reality is in, it's pointless besides. Time passes differently between each shard and the Source--what may be months on the Source may be a century elsewhere and so on. The astronomical number begins to mean nothing the larger it grows, anyway.
But yes, back to the point. There is no growth without pain, you are not special in needing this, but pain itself needs not be severe to foster cultivation, but without it entirely, one has little direction nor grounding. Naught to spur one forth.
Everything is necessary to maintain balance and progression.
Right. I think the pain might have to be a little more noticeable for me than for some people, but you're right that it's not special. I've known other people for whom it worked like that.
But yes, that does make sense that you're thinking in relative terms. And I hadn't realized the mortals of your world had the same spans--I just thought I'd mention the ones in mine in case it was different.
(Honestly, Phillimore really is a special case and I suspect his Durance might have either featured time dilation or had kept his aging in stasis, which is not unusual. Mine didn't, but I've known others for who it did. Some of them had their aging start again when they got out, some didn't.)
[He frowns a little, his thoughts circling back to what Hades had originally said about his maybe-death. It's uncomfortable to think of the man as being as maybe-suicidal as his words had hinted at and that's part of why Steven had steered the conversation away from that, but at the same time, there's something he wants to understand better.]
Hades? Maybe I'm not thinking about this from the right direction, but how does being able to kill you signal that the mortals of your world are 'worthy' now?
[He could continue this conversation about mortals and ages and time, all of that, however it feels like smalltalk compared to the question he just asked. They can circle around to the other thing if need be.]
It is quite simple, really. Had the mortals greatest warriors proved themselves incapable of defeating me in battle, then there would be little hope they could stop annihilation should it return to our star, when I alone could nary stop it.
When the Final Days were upon us, it took countless souls--souls equal to mine own--to halt it. If I proved too powerful for them when vastly outnumbered, then they would not be worthy nor able to defeat that which is greater than myself.
Likewise, with my tempered state, we would continuously be in opposition of one another due to our varied perspectives on salvation for our people.
[There's a long moment of staring and frowning before Steven types,]
Tempered?
I'm sorry. I feel like I *should* know what you mean by that, if you're mentioning it off-handedly, but it might be something that came up during the summer, in which case it might be a casualty of the previously mentioned memory blur.
You are right, I do believe I had mentioned it before, but it was far more in passing, and far less in any descriptive way that would illuminate its meaning.
As you are aware, I am an Ascian. This separates me from what Hythlodaeus was in distinction, for while we both are ancients and Amaurotines, he is not an Ascian. In the face of total annihilation, we ancients sacrificed half our people to summon forth the very first and most powerful primal—or as some would name Him a God.
Upon his creation he tempered we who summoned him, we of the Convocation of Thirteen. There was no resisting such power, it was only natural for Him to claim us. And so, as He was made manifest to so mercifully execute our will, so too were we to be bound by His.
It is but the natural consequence of summoning a primal, though we knew it not at the time, but had we failed to do so, all of existence would cease to be. A steep price to pay, but it is one I would again and again for my people, for all of existence, for life itself.
You had not the means to know, and I had little interest in sharing such information. I need not your sympathy, however, for I do not dread my lot, nor do I blame Lord Zodiark for doing what was necessary for His prolonged existence.
Just as living beings must take sustenance from other organisms, a being forged through faith must likewise feed through it as well. Faith and sacrifice, He is doing naught more than what is necessary, what is His purpose.
Would you be cross with a machine for the needed consumption of electricity for its intended operation? We tempered are but the wire to carry the current. It is not a matter of right or wrong, it is but the natural order in which all must abide.
I am grateful for His mercy, for His magnificence, for all He has provided.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fingersandteeth) wrote2022-02-21 05:11 pm
text;
Ordinarily I would not send such correspondence with the sole purpose of asking a favor of you, but I suppose circumstances are a bit queer at the moment. For the next several weeks I will be indisposed of, thus unavailable at my and Hythlodaeus' abode. However, Hythlodaeus will not be with me, but he will be home.
Well am I aware of your usual mid-week visits, but I had hoped that I may request you make more frequent visits. Little would I wish for Hythlodaeus to succumb to loneliness, or - worse than that - boredom. He is ever so fond of you, after all, and like as not could use the company.
Are you up for the task?
Re: text;
[Although. Hm. Somebody had just uploaded Hades' match against Blue to the Viridian Gym Staryutube channel. Maybe he was going to cash in his boat tickets to get away from all the mud and slush.]
text;
Re: text;
I must admit, I'm a little surprised. I'd have assumed you'd wait until it was closer to summer to make the trip less bothersome, the way I am—you've never really struck me as someone who's fond of long term camping. But I suppose Dirk could be the goad there. It's sweet that he's making the trip up with you, especially when he's already done it.
Do you have an estimated date of arrival to the Elite Four? I'd like to know so I can watch the live broadcast if possible.
(And don't worry. I'll do my best to keep Hythlodaeus occupied. And, well, if nothing else, you'll both have pokegear to check up on each other with.)
text;
Have I never mentioned my time in the Garlean military? Having spent years in the frozen wastelands of Ilsabard, a three week trek scaling a muddy mountain is naught by comparison. Dirk coming along was not of my request, he seemed rather intent on accompanying me, but little will I reject his desires and less am I in opposition of them.
Thank you for your congratulations. From my measure, we shall find ourselves arriving on the first.
Re: text;
Still, I'm glad for your sake that he insisted. I'm sure you'd have been fine on your own, but it's nice to have company for these long trips.
(Did you know Scorpia might be going up Victory Road in a few weeks too? She's hoping to finish her Kanto badges soon so that she can go with Akane Tendo and Cassandra. I'm very proud of her.)
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Indeed, his company and the assistance of my Rotom will certainly make the trip far more enjoyable than it otherwise might have proven to be. Honestly, I cannot help but wonder how many choose to suffer this trip without such basic comforts that my Rotom affords, seems foolish.
Young Scorpia, I do not know her overly well, but she seems a friendly, hardworking sort, I would expect no less of her--nor Mistress Akane. That the two of them get on is unsurprising, though if the Cassandra you speak of is the one that comes to mind, well, I do not think she favors me much. Though it matters little.
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[Please excuse him while he laughs his fucking ass off. Holy shit.]
Honestly, I can't blame Cassandra much for being a bit leery of you. I think she got here around the same time you did and you were still very much in Emperor Solus mode with everyone. You really have mellowed out since then.
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Besides, Hythlodaeus had made certain to pack up pre-made meals, as is his wont.
As for Cassandra, you do realize I had not treated everyone the same way I had treated you, correct? Not that you were particularly special, but the circumstances were. Cassandra did not seem to trust me when I was being quite genuine in our discussion, and I believe that says more of her than it does me.
Yet, I do suppose you are right. I have been more at ease knowing what I do. Impending death has that effect, or so it seems.
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And honestly, parts of that summer tend to blur together in my memory these days, so I'll accept that correction. I think it's partly time for me and also partly that I really was psychologically a mess at the time—more so than usual.
I don't really know Cassandra that well either, if I'm to be honest—we've only had one conversation and that was before I went home. She seemed like a nice woman, but somewhat reticent—though I really don't remember anything that we talked about anymore, I'm afraid.
... although I have to ask about the impending death part.
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It is quite understandable, between the psychological duress you suffered and the handful of summers you garnered from your mental return to your reality, it is of little surprise that you would find your memories less than accurate. All the same, it was a different time for us, one I am glad to have put to rest.
But yes, I had not spoken to any beyond Dirk, Hythlodaeus, and Elidibus about my imprending fate, and even still I am not entirely certain of it. I know I shall be laid low by a group of mortals I had been assisting prior to my arrival here, and when I fell into a slumber we had been at odds and in the heat of battle when I returned.
The climax of such a fateful encounter was denied to me. That is until Elidibus arrived, thus did he report to me that I had been slain, or so he believed. During his own encounter with this hero of the mortals, he had all but ensured their demise, banishing them to a realm between realms, until an unlikely ally pulled them from the brink of annihilation.
That ally being myself.
Yet I could not tary for long by his account, and so I am left uncertain of my fate. I may very well be on the brink of death, vulnerable to the tow of the aetherial sea as the Underworld wears away at my very soul.
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For the longest time, Steven just stares down at the words on the screen.]
... I mean, are you *okay* with this? The whole probably being dead back home thing?
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Is it a failure upon the pupil to never succeed his mentor, or is it upon the mentor? I admit it is a bittersweet feeling, and the uncertainty of such a reality is far from comforting, yet I cannot help but hope.
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[That... sort of makes sense. Hades is fucking ancient and it isn't surprising that after so long a life, he might be tired of it all. And Steven knows by now that Hades doesn't actually hate mortals, the way he'd initially assumed he did. He loves them in his own way. Not exactly the best way--it reminded Steven of the way his grandfather loved him, in all the difficulties and complexities of that relationship--but in a clear and definite way none-the-less.]
That does make sense, I suppose.
[He stares down at the screen for a long moment before typing:]
This is unrelated but... I think I got one of those 'secret thought' cards from you a few weeks back.
no subject
He chooses not to, allows Steven to steer the conversation away from something so close to his heart. Now isn't the time to go so deeply into his bittersweet relief of passing on the torch.]
Did you now? I believe I likewise obtained one from you, for I know few others who brandish the term "Abuelito" as you do.
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[He can guess a little of what his might have been, then, if Abuelito was mentioned in it. It's silly to want these things from Hades and it's the kind of thing that pisses Dirk off at him.]
Yours came as a kick in the gut, but one I probably needed—and honestly, not something I wasn't a little bit aware of, at least on some level.
I'm working on figuring out how much of me *is* me and how much is me responding to my environment and the company I keep. I'm not done with it, but I *am* working on it.
I don't know. I hope you won't see me as such a child someday.
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Regardless, it is a mark of maturity that, despite what pain came about by such thoughts, you have chosen to not ignore their wisdom but embrace it. Well do I know it feels not the case, but you are young, and ever are you to live an incomplete life shy of perfection. However, this means not that there is scant benefit in striving for it.
Ultimately, it is ourselves who benefit the most from our improvements, and there is no meaningful grow without pain.
Phillimore was Mr bii's PC in a game I ran years back
The oldest man I've met among us is turning two-hundred-and-two this year and Phillimore is something of a novelty for both being away for as long as he was—he set the record for longest Durance in the modern age at a hundred and twelve years—and for having being taken at the ripe old age of seventy-nine.
(Longest Durance that was escaped from, rather, as Fantomas—a friend and sort-of mentor back home—claims one of the men he'd been with had been taken during the Civil War period.)
And I'm getting distracted from the point at hand, but I think you're right, at least when it comes to myself. Maybe some people can grow without pain, but I don't think I'm one of them.
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Little have I cared to keep track of mine own age, however, and with the state my reality is in, it's pointless besides. Time passes differently between each shard and the Source--what may be months on the Source may be a century elsewhere and so on. The astronomical number begins to mean nothing the larger it grows, anyway.
But yes, back to the point. There is no growth without pain, you are not special in needing this, but pain itself needs not be severe to foster cultivation, but without it entirely, one has little direction nor grounding. Naught to spur one forth.
Everything is necessary to maintain balance and progression.
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But yes, that does make sense that you're thinking in relative terms. And I hadn't realized the mortals of your world had the same spans--I just thought I'd mention the ones in mine in case it was different.
(Honestly, Phillimore really is a special case and I suspect his Durance might have either featured time dilation or had kept his aging in stasis, which is not unusual. Mine didn't, but I've known others for who it did. Some of them had their aging start again when they got out, some didn't.)
[He frowns a little, his thoughts circling back to what Hades had originally said about his maybe-death. It's uncomfortable to think of the man as being as maybe-suicidal as his words had hinted at and that's part of why Steven had steered the conversation away from that, but at the same time, there's something he wants to understand better.]
Hades? Maybe I'm not thinking about this from the right direction, but how does being able to kill you signal that the mortals of your world are 'worthy' now?
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It is quite simple, really. Had the mortals greatest warriors proved themselves incapable of defeating me in battle, then there would be little hope they could stop annihilation should it return to our star, when I alone could nary stop it.
When the Final Days were upon us, it took countless souls--souls equal to mine own--to halt it. If I proved too powerful for them when vastly outnumbered, then they would not be worthy nor able to defeat that which is greater than myself.
Likewise, with my tempered state, we would continuously be in opposition of one another due to our varied perspectives on salvation for our people.
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Tempered?
I'm sorry. I feel like I *should* know what you mean by that, if you're mentioning it off-handedly, but it might be something that came up during the summer, in which case it might be a casualty of the previously mentioned memory blur.
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As you are aware, I am an Ascian. This separates me from what Hythlodaeus was in distinction, for while we both are ancients and Amaurotines, he is not an Ascian. In the face of total annihilation, we ancients sacrificed half our people to summon forth the very first and most powerful primal—or as some would name Him a God.
Upon his creation he tempered we who summoned him, we of the Convocation of Thirteen. There was no resisting such power, it was only natural for Him to claim us. And so, as He was made manifest to so mercifully execute our will, so too were we to be bound by His.
It is but the natural consequence of summoning a primal, though we knew it not at the time, but had we failed to do so, all of existence would cease to be. A steep price to pay, but it is one I would again and again for my people, for all of existence, for life itself.
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Oh Hades. I'm so *sorry*.
I mean, I agree that you did the right thing. It's just--
[Had Tyler known about this? Was that why he'd started getting along better with Hades?]
Now I feel even more of an ass for conflating you with the True Fae back then.
It might have been natural what he did to you, but that doesn't mean it was right.
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Just as living beings must take sustenance from other organisms, a being forged through faith must likewise feed through it as well. Faith and sacrifice, He is doing naught more than what is necessary, what is His purpose.
Would you be cross with a machine for the needed consumption of electricity for its intended operation? We tempered are but the wire to carry the current. It is not a matter of right or wrong, it is but the natural order in which all must abide.
I am grateful for His mercy, for His magnificence, for all He has provided.
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