[F23-PP] Sinking Dust

[Setsuna 0]

A decrepit city of stone and soil, where moss clung to every surface. Shambling dead move to and throw through every nook and cranny. Each passing moment sees another small fraction of rubble fall from nearby decayed building, making a sharp clack that causes the horrors of the floor rushing to it. Ravenous like wolves, they clamber to the sound as if it was bell to the next meal. A soft exhale from the girl sees the bitter frost sheering cold turn them to nothing more then frigid statues. Beyond that which most could challenge, and with it a sense of stagnancy and a lack of purpose.

Lately her drive had dwindled, as the point had escaped her as if long ago. These crooks had found a tomb of their own making, and with it their demise lingered overhead like a watchful guillotine. Her intervention felt no longer required, the very throws of violence had since died with a sense of dread. The ever vigilant ghost of floor 4, who most had come to know as a ruthless and malevolent specter without mercy. A gambit well played, and with it a sin that would forever stain pale white hands.

A form of contentment, she'd not accept the folly of salvation. Her choice was made, and despite her appearance she was always a woman confident in her choices. That sin would lead her to damnation, and she welcomed it. For although she was a monster, she'd accept judgement when it came.

"Blood will beget blood, and it will rain like snow."

Spoiler

Setsuna, The Frigid End
Level: 32
Paragon Level: 43
HP: 800/800
EN: 98/98

Stats:
Damage: 23
Mitigation: 20
Evasion: 4
Accuracy: 4
Loot Dice: 1
FLN: 16
FRZ: 56
FRSTB: 40
RSKY: 8

Equipped Gear:
Weapon: Shiva's Embrace - Skadi [T4/Demonic/Katana] Fallen 2, Freeze 1, Frostbite 1
Armor: Azuresilk Kunoichi Wear - Ghost [T4/Demonic/Cloth] Evasion 2, Risky 2
Misc: Kunoichi Wrapping's [T1/Demonic/Trinket] 3 Accuracy, Evasion 1

Custom Skill:


Skills:
Katana R5
Cloth Armor R5
Charge

Active Mods:
Blindside
Vanish
Surprise Attack (Assassin)
Athletics
Untraceable

Inactive Mods:

Addons:
Ferocity
Nimble
Stamina
Precision

Active Extra Skills:
Hiding R5
Parry
Disguise
Frozen Hide

Inactive Extra Skills:

Battle Ready Inventory:
Teleport Crystal x1
Crystal of Divine Light [201986e] x1

Housing Buffs:
Well Rested: -1 energy cost for the first three expenditures of each combat
Squeaky Clean: The first time you would suffer DoT damage in a thread, reduce damage taken from DoT each turn by 25% (rounded down)
Hard Working: +2 EXP per crafting attempt and +1 crafting attempt per day
Filling: Increase the effectiveness of a single food item consumed in a thread by +1 T1 slot.
Item Stash: +1 Battle Ready Inventory Slot
Delicious: Turn 3 identical food items (same quality, tier, & enhancements) into a Feast. A Feast contains 6 portions of the food items sacrificed.
Relaxed: Increases out of combat HP regen by (5 * Tier HP) and decreases full energy regen to 2 Out of Combat Posts.
Advanced Training: +10% Exp to a thread. Limit one use per month [1/1]
Multipurpose: Gain +1 to LD, Stealth Rating, Stealth Detection, or Prosperity to one post in a thread. Can be applied after a roll
Decor []: This buff affects the player and their choice of up to two party members.

Guild Hall Buffs:
Lucrative: Reduce LD needed for Salvage by 5 (10+ for Alchemist crystals, 6+ for everything else). +2 EXP per craft. Rank 9 crafters receive +1 crafting attempt per day. Rank 10 crafters receive +2 crafting attempts per day.
Col Deposit: +5% bonus col from last-hit monster kills and +10% bonus col from treasure chests.

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Setsuna

[Alkor 0]

The sky was a fire, eternally lit over the ashes of civilization. Orange and red hues bled across the mottled, dusty landscape where trees once thrived and Elves nourished and revered the land. Where trees like jade once stretched toward the sky, now only the husks of buildings and whispered memories of a time long lost remained. Alkor stared out at the ruin with vacant eyes. 

This was a truth, unmitigated by the system's proclivity for beautiful lies. The first in a series of grim reminders that their fate was controlled by a power outside of their realm of control, and with each day that passed, this frozen frame of reality came closer to fruition. It did not spread from this place, yet as they struggled, every waking moment brought them closer to this Terminus.

Yet it did not disturb Alkor.

He was a man who had never learned to love life, and while he did not want for death, neither did he fear it. The lone Knight sat in quiet contemplation of a silent Armageddon, an Apocalypse that had come and gone and left in its wake this cryptic beauty. Slowly, even as it clung together, it wasted away.

Impermanence. 

The nature of this place, this world, even the world beyond Aincrad. There was solace in the somber revelation that not even their Virtual Prison could escape entropy. Alkor looked around at the animate dead, the creatures that coupled with this place to write the horror fiction that Aincrad's programmers seemed so desperately proud of, and sighed.

Somewhere nearby, they had chanced upon a victim. Or perhaps, there were victims? Whether it was an event or a Player that now stumbled into misfortune, his ennui now teetered on apathy, and he found himself slackjawed. He almost lost sight of the danger.

"...."

[Setsuna 0]

Through an amber orange glow of setting sun, past crystalline fixtures that once drew life. The soft patter of tabi on a layer of dust that threatened to consume everything. Each step leaving a small groove, a remnant that would be erased by the next passing wind. A frozen heart one that matched avalanche, filled to the brim with sorrow. More of the shambling dead rushed haphazardly into the storm and found themselves trapped in its wake. Like lemmings off a cliff, their tendons seize and refuse as the temperature dropped. There was an elegant beauty to this exile, where most would fear to tread. A silence that was deafening and yet welcoming. None to preach, none to listen. Absent and empty.

Pressing on as power emanated from her, as if the cardinal could sense her wavering emotion. Pent up anger and remorse, and with it a shield that held it from view. "This is the truth. This is where I belong. In the wreckage of all i've wrought." A soft murmur bounces off the walls as one of the only sounds. Catching a side glance, a familiar face perched on his own catching the same sight. A hand releases her katana's grip, immediately on edge and ready to draw blood.

"What brings you to purgatory?" The girl offers in a stoic and chilling question.

[Alkor 0]

He didn't seem surprised to find someone in this place. 

It may have been more accurate to say that it was more surprising that whoever or whatever was here did not immediately attack him. Alkor was of course glad for that fact, but he seemed more preoccupied with the state of the world around him than anything else. He came here for the view, for the ambiance that was the silence at the end of the world. To be alone with his thoughts.

Most people came to places like this out of a sense of dread fascination. Fear, loathing, a reminder that they were alive and that this was the alternative. For Alkor, it was one of the most sacrosanct places in this world: one that while many people knew of it, few cared to visit.

But of course, Setsuna was like him in many ways. She didn't find beauty in the same things most people might. He began at one stage to wonder if she found it in anything at all really, what with the way she had devalued her own life. It was always sad to see others who didn't know their worth, because Alkor had never discovered his own, either.

It made sense that she found her way to this place, slaughtering her way through the mindless dead.

When she addressed him, Alkor glanced up and leaned back against the wall behind him. "Normal people don't like places like this," he explained. "It's quiet. I like places where I can think."

[Setsuna 0]

Taking her place on a bit of what was once a ceiling, now nothing more then a crumbled slab of stone. Using her hand to press a skirt like slant flat as she folds her legs and offers a blade to her lap. Sliding it from its sheathe and revealing a parade of white mist like dry ice that collects beneath her. The girl removes a small box, long and thin and lifts the lid. Inside a bottle of oil, a few rags of different textures and a slab of stone affixed to a block. A metallic click as she twists the handle, one eye shut as she scans the katana's edge.

"Normal people don't belong here. This is not a place for the living." Setsuna remarks coolly, as she casts some water from a uncorked gourd to the stone and begins to rake the edge on its surface. "Which begs the question, how have you found your way to this place?" The slick noise of metal on stone, as she worked out all the knicks and wear on the steel. But for such an inquiry, a price had to be paid in trade. "I am here, because this place is free of folly and of falsehoods. There are no requirements, no judgements and as you said. It's quiet, but I'm not much of a thinker." An acknowledgement paired with a dabbing of a rod soaked in oils.

[Alkor 0]

"Normal people," she said again. The way she spoke inferred that she included him in that grouping, and Alkor smiled faintly. Setsuna was probably one of the only people who would ever place him into that category. He reached into his cloak and rifled around the contents of his inventory until his fingers rested upon the prize he sought, and when he found it, the long, rustic pipe spun deftly between his fingers and into plain view.

"Normal people," he repeated once more, whether or not to agree with her. With a quick motion of his left hand, the pipe was between his lips. He leaned forward and brought his right to the tip, igniting it. Eyelids half shut, he took several shallow puffs off the device to help it burn.

Not a place for the living? Setsuna truly had become jaded. He watched the smoke rise as though he were mesmerized, and the woman took to honing her blade. "This world of Aincrad is no place for the living," he responded, "and yet, every person trapped here is by proxy, alive. Is it so strange that in a prison, the jailed find another cell, perhaps one less appealing than the one they were assigned?"

Alkor didn't see it that way, of course. Setsuna was the one who prescribed the negative value to this place. Which left unsaid that she assigned herself negative value. "Not a place for the living," she had said, and yet, she spoke as though she belonged.

He took a deeper drag.

The pipe spun quickly again after he removed it from his lips. He held the heat deep in his lungs, watched the woman work her blade. Alkor considered what he might say to someone who in her own mind, was no better than dead.

He exhaled. 

"I'm not much of a thinker," she said. He had no choice at that. His lips cracked into a proper grin, and he laughed and choked out smoke as coughing began unbidden. Thinking was all that Alkor knew how to do. He didn't know how to stop. Aincrad was a prison, certainly, but Alkor's mind was a life sentence that he had been serving since the very beginning.

"Imagine," he said slowly, recovering his breath, "that every waking hour, you were haunted by something. You ran from it, but it pursued you relentlessly. You reasoned with it, but you had nothing it wanted. You begged for it to stop, but it refused. Then you found a place where it couldn't quite get to you. You could see it, hear it, but it couldn't reach you. For a brief moment, you were safe from the monster."

Alkor stared down at the pipe in his hands. They weren't shaking for once. He sighed.

"Everyone wants to go to Heaven," he told her, "but if Hell is quieter, I think I'd like it there better."

Edited June 23, 2023 by Alkor

[Setsuna 0]

Dragging the small oiled bit of cotton down the length of the blade, as it threatened to freeze but couldn't. A permafrost film following it instead, giving the metal a look like breath on a window. The girl glanced over, a pair of striking cyan blue eyes that were in direct contrast to the orange hued backdrop. "Such a curious place for laughter, and yet it suits you." Setsuna remarked with that same signature tone, chilled and aloof. "It is quite the jail cell, and some would be lead to believe it paradise. So foolish and frivolous, the small birds in cages that try to tap and cope with their prison. I'd rather not pretend."

Looking to a burnt out ball that clung above, dust taking to a sweeping cloud that proved this places emptiness. "That I can almost imagine. A night to where I cannot sleep, where screams and tears tear at my eardrums. Where a lead lined wall is a constant reminder of my weakness. No matter how fast I run, or how much I train. I can kill without mercy, or remorse. But despite all of my efforts, I will always have been too late."

The girls attention shifts to Alkor with an intensity, a fixation and in her retelling it was devoid of anything save a gaze that did not waver. It appeared tired, lax. "I cannot reason with the monster, there will be no safety from it. I cannot see it, nor hear it. I am the monster, and I cannot escape myself."

Sliding the blade back into its saya.

"Welcome to hell."

[Alkor 0]

She spoke of hell and of paradise, and Alkor wondered. Where did the barrier between the two begin to fray? Christian depictions of Heaven for thousands of years described it as Paradise, as a perfect place where pious souls spent eternity. Yet by contrast, those souls gave up debauchery and fulfillment in life to find their way there, casting aside precious experience, beauty, all the things that made life living. In pursuit of a dream, they spent their fleeting moments on Earth denying themselves humanity.

What was paradise? What was damnation? Did any of it matter?

Alkor looked again at the pipe, then up at Setsuna. He took the device between his teeth and pointed a finger in the young woman's direction. "We're always too late," he said. "By the time someone realizes what they want, it's already an afterthought to someone else. If you go by contemporary notions of early and late, you'll always be disappointed."

Society had constructed the abstract notion of time around something that it neither fully comprehended nor could it control. Existence flitted away like a small bird, people aged, things decayed. This place was the perfect example. It deteriorated, yet it still stood. Setsuna was a prisoner to that misconception. Alkor was too, in his own way.

"You can't save everyone," he shrugged. Those words stung him, too. There were people he would have saved. Times that he would have reached out his hand, but he hadn't. His eyes were glassy as he continued. "But killing people? That doesn't save anyone," he said. "I know, I know, you've made up your mind, you stared in the darkness too long, and you became the monster you wanted to slay."

Alkor knew who Setsuna was now, despite how hard she fought. She was harder on herself than anyone else. He stood up and walked toward her, placing a hand on top of her head. She deserved someone telling her that it was enough. He wished someone had done it for him.

"This is hell?" he asked, skeptical. "I don't see any monsters here. Just a cute girl who's been working too hard."

He withdrew his hand promptly, not wanting to overstay his welcome in her personal space.

"You should spend more time with other people, doing the things that make you happy. Not things that tear you apart inside."

[Setsuna 0]

Finding some comfort in a hand placed upon her head, although it was nearly scalding. Survival had done her wonders as to wielding skadi, but it had also robbed her of all heat and cast her pale white. "I was late the only time it mattered. I was naive, hopeful. Before Aincrad I was blind." The retelling stung hotter then any knife or blade, like a razor across her throat. A knot the size of an apple. A story not spoken but lived, where few knew it. "The three charged with introducing me to this game, as a way for me to experience what it is like to see. They were brutally murdered outside of Tomoika, right outside the safezone by a few feet." That wound was still so deep, the single line drawn down her face burned as well. Showing that somewhere deep below the cold there was heat.

"That wall has hundreds of names, and each one reminds me of them. Vitreous took everything from me in one day." A sharp glance at Alkor, that stilled composure with the slight gleam on her cheek. "I cant save everyone, I can hardly save a few. There is a limit to what one person can do. I am still skeptical of the ones I spared that night on floor 23." The truth held like glue, that those orange players from the tundra could very well shoving a knife in someone at this very instant.

"This world is alien to me, all these colors. In another life I could have experienced it all for the first time, but my first vision was that of the sickening natures of people." The cold hard truth, a fact she'd considered time and time again. What if things were different?

"I've been this all my life, absent and devoid. They were my direction, the hands that led me to what I enjoyed. Without them I am lost, and I have no idea where to begin to discover what makes me happy." That was it, the final nail in her coffin. Her life had never truly began and this was her one chance to grow into her own. And it was taken from her.

[Alkor 0]

He cast his eyes toward the floor.

How many times did it matter? How many times had he been late, admonished, but ultimately been able to continue on from it? How many times had it altered the very course of fate? He couldn't know, or he couldn't remember, but to put that kind of weight on something seemed like the effects of anxiety than anything firmly rooted in reality. It smacked of his panic attacks, things that seemed massive in the moment, but that held no real bearing on his life.

At the same time, it was an experience they did not share. Her Survivor's Guilt drove her to take on a mantle that burned her away at both ends. It eroded her sense of humanity to the point that she viewed herself as subhuman. He couldn't empathize with that. 

He'd never felt human to begin with.

"Everything," he intoned, repeating the word, savoring it. Alkor thought about the concept of everything, and what it meant to him. The word at its core was all-encompassing. It could be assigned great value, or small, all based on perspective. For Alkor, everything was a simple concept. It was small in scope, but vast in value. To Alkor, his Grandmother, his parents, and his sister were everything. If he died, their sadness would be a rift that could never be refilled; and if they were to die, some part of him would inevitably die with them. With that perspective, Alkor believed he had some notion of what "everything" meant to Setsuna. "Everything that matters, you mean," he said. It was not a question.

"Because it's not everything if you're still alive," he said, "and at that point, it's not really everything that matters, either. It's everything that you feel like matters." Alkor wasn't good at speaking smoothly or sugar-coating his words, but Setsuna wasn't really the type who liked to hear platitudes, so that was probably alright.

She mentioned the wall, and his thoughts traced back to the singular name that he'd placed there himself. Alkor wasn't fond of that memory, but it was a lesson that he'd learned, albeit with great difficulty. Would he kill again? Not so readily as Setsuna, perhaps. Actions had consequences. No matter how hard the girl wanted to mitigate them by "accepting her lot as a monster," the weight of her burdens only grew with each murder.

"Skeptical of a life you chose not to take, eh?" he looked at her quietly for a moment. "You've told me you're not proud of it, that you hate this thing you've become, but it's necessary.  It's something that you must do, something no one else can do. That its righteous, a duty that must be performed. How many excuses do you intend to make before you admit to yourself that there really is nothing else? That you've forgotten how to live a normal life, and that vengeance, that this crusade for justice is slowly consuming you?"

Alkor spun his pipe again. "Normal girls your age are worried about what they wear, or who they talk to. They're worried about grades, about social status, about boys, things like that. You drew the short stick and got stuck in here, and it is true that it's robbed you of the experiences you might have had outside. But to some degree, we all have a little bit of control, still. You have the choice to kill, or not to kill. Do you think that your friends, the ones you've called your true north, who were your direction- do you think they'd steer you down this path? Would they have you take life after life, not even once feeling fulfilled from it?"

Deftly, he took another drag. 

"You're fishing for purpose in a sea of blood, Setsuna. You're only going to find one thing there."

Edited June 24, 2023 by Alkor

[Setsuna 0]

A sharpness to her tone, as she slinked into herself. "Everything I had, everything I knew." The faintest pain on her tone, as if her heart was bleeding. "You know how hard it is to rebuild from nothing, in a world you know nothing about. Its overwhelming, consuming. It's easy to say, that I can just start over and forget. But it haunts me, I cannot sleep, I cannot eat. And this game wont even let me die." Embracing her arms, feeling warmth that burned and ached. As it would turn out, emotional scars could be much deeper then any physical one.

Turning to Alkor with a glare, clenching her jaw and locking eyes with him. "I have seen it a thousand times." The killer that pleads for their lives, turns on their heels the moment they are spared. Simply waiting for the coast to be clear, then finding some other nefarious bullshit to dive into. Exploitation, Battery, or Murder. It didn't matter who it hurt, or who it killed as long there was a dollar sign attached to it. If it meant that at least they survived this mess, they were perfectly content being selfish and ruthless. So why should she be kind or pardon them?

"I am not proud of it, but these people you fight so adamantly to convince me their lives are worth anything. How many lives do they have to take before your willing to finally pull the trigger. Have you lost anyone? What would you say to me when you let someone like Vitreous go and he killed my friends. 'Sorry, his life was worth more then theirs?' or 'I didn't have the right to stop him?'" Looking out toward the sun, sizing the fires of hell in their reflection on her eyes. "I don't have time for that garbage, and my purpose is to weigh those who would do these unforgivable acts. Not allow them to sponge off someone else's life, because others completely fail to stop them. Some are not worth sparing, or worth forgiving. The moment you realize that you will finally understand my purpose. If you have a way to identify those worth sparing other then a damn cursor I am all ears. But I will not pretend that is everyone."

[Alkor 0]

Alkor sighed. He was the last person on earth who could help someone struggling with their identity, yet here he was, faced with someone who probably needed help more than he did. The way she was talking was indicative of something deeper than "take a timeout" or "go walk it off." But how many licensed therapists had logged into this game and gotten trapped? That would have just been too convenient.  "I can't sleep," she said, "I can't eat."

So the logical recourse was then to kill people?

He watched her with his pipe dragging smoke into his throat. The burn ached in a good way, the longing familiar and yet filled with a hollowness. It didn't give him any real comfort.  When she talked about the value of lives, though, he froze. Quietly, he lowered the pipe into his lap and listened, waiting patiently as she discounted his words and efforts as garbage. 

"You're playing a zero sum game with human life." He kept an even gaze hard on the girl, not screaming, not raising his voice, not getting angry. "This has worth, this does not. This is worth more than that. You know who valued lives that way? Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Tze Tung. Dictators. People who colored their enemies as having negative or no inherent value, instilling in the minds of a militarized people that when they took life, it had no meaning, and thus they ought have no emotional attachment to the prospect of ending those lives. You're not talking like a rational human being right now, Setsuna. You're talking like a child soldier."

[Setsuna 0]

As her attentions lingered on the sun, basked in that burning glow in silence. Allowing Alkor the ground to speak. After all she was fair. Wisps of smoke emanating from the phoenix's pipe listing limply through the air around them both, being carried by the odd wind as it would pass by. "Your absolutely right. For all but one thing." Words hang limply off her lips as they played out, weak and quiet in their delivery. Spoken as if to not disturb some lingering thing that lay out in this wasteland, or perhaps as she did not feel the need to speak loudly. "There is only life and death. I am deciding who lives or dies. Despite what you might believe. I hate it."

Turning to face him, blade handle still stayed on her shoulder as she sat cross legged upon a stone. "I absolutely despise what I do, what I have to do. To put it bluntly Alkor." An odd turn of phrase, speaking someone's name. She didn't do it often. "Its disgusting, its ugly. Its bloodshed. Removing cancer." There was no room for a smile, a lifeless and cold deadpan had conquered her face long ago. "I wish it were different. That these creatures running around in human skin haven't forgotten what its like to be human. They are someones child, someones friend..." A blanking out for a moment on the statement. "But somewhere along the way, it was lost. Now all that's left, are ravenous wolves that wish to devour everything they set their sights on."

A harsh wind takes her hair aloft. "They do not value lives, I can show no mercy. To defeat an enemy, you must become them." Her attention affixes back to the sun. "You did not answer my question. How many Alkor, when is enough enough?"

[Alkor 0]

"I answered a question that you didn't want answered, because the one you asked is subjective.  There is no good answer. 'Enough' is quantified by a person's appetite. Yours is insatiable, because you've created a ceaseless hunger for justice. Enough will never be enough. Not until they're all dead, or you are, or this world ends." It would have been so easy to get caught in the trap of circular logic, the game that the victim creates to justify their abused mind's rationale. Alkor didn't have the ability to empathize with that. He was a machine when it came to logic. The correct answer, parsed quickly and efficiently.

Alkor looked down to the pipe and slowly lifted it in front of his eyes, balancing it across his palm. "For so long as you say to yourself, 'this is my duty,' then it is. None of them want to die. There's no longer order or a system in place to tell them how to distinguish right from wrong, and so, they determine that for themselves. But look back at what you said before too- your friends were your direction. You had no sense of self, no real sense of what you should do. How is that any different? You've taken it on yourself to determine what is right and what is wrong, and presumably no different from them, you've made the decision that what you're doing is wrong, but you're doing it anyway, and you hate yourself for it."

He closed his eyes, spun the pipe, and replaced it between his lips.

"I'm just saying, it's enough when you say 'when.'"

A puff. A drag. Billowing smoke.

"You say you have to become what you hate to destroy it. I say, you just have to make the effort to stop it from happening. That's enough for me."

[Setsuna 0]

That thickened ball of flame began to linger just above the glowing sea of dust, about to find itself submerged in its expanse. Eyes lock to Alkor watching wistfully as he spins a pipe in his clutches, clearly taking in his words. It was rather strange how the two had so obvious a difference in opinion and yet both found the ground to discuss. "There isn't a good answer." the girl remarked in a low monotone, that fell from her lips like an afterthought. "I know that I am broken. I cannot picture myself outside of this."

Admitting it more to herself then for Alkor's benefit.

"For years, this has been my duty. No one else wishes to wade through the filth. They don't want to die, and yet some still persist regardless. When will they learn, who will make the call if not me? I shouldn't have to be the one to deal out justice to a bunch of wolves in human skin. I know it has happened before, others that have taken lives for a wrong committed. And yet it still runs rampant on the streets of Aincrad." Sliding up from her stone, the sharpest glare on her brow. Nursing dark thoughts that stuck in her head, an anger that could not be quelled. She lacked the tools to handle it on her own.

"I'm just like them and I wont pretend that I am not." Staring down at Alkor in his seated position, katana in its sheathe in her left hand hung firmly. A motion she'd held it in time and time before, before it was torn out and removed a life. Holding so heavily, before it hits the dirt.

"I don't know how to make it stop, I want it to stop." With a clear outrage plastered on her face, she snatches that pipe from Alkor and takes a puff. It burned and was intense, it was uncomfortable and it found heat in places she'd never felt. Her eyes water and for once the pain was elsewhere. The instinct to cough was suppressed by her own instinct to understand. Exhaling the smallest whaff of smoke, the most defeated and broken murmur.

"When..."

[Alkor 0]

"Reality is often disappointing," he said from a place of vast experience, watching the woman as she approached. He said little else as she espoused her thoughts of self-worthlessness and even hate, all but affirming the demonization of her entire persona. She fumbled with her weapon in the way of a murderer for a moment, but relented. The blade settled on the ground, and she relieved him of his pipe.

Alkor studied Setsuna as she took an unprepared hit from the pipe and her eyes watered from the burn. She said that she wanted it to stop. She said that she didn't know how, but she wanted it. "It's not wrong for you to decide that you don't have to be the one who metes out justice," he told her. "You're a young girl with an entire life ahead of you doing something that even grown men trained for years struggle with. Humans aren't made for killing each other. It's not a natural thing. It's a perversion of the natural order, a sickness that seizes and corrupts and takes and takes until there's nothing left."

As she exhaled, he held out his hand. He didn't simply take back the pipe. Alkor waited for it to be returned.

"Taking from others doesn't give back to you. Material goods and wealth are fleeting things, just like human lives. Losing them, gaining them- only when a gift is freely given does it ever give both parties a sense of fulfillment."

He closed his eyes, smiling. 

"It happens when you want it to."

[Setsuna 0]

Placing the pipe gingerly into the phoenix's clutches, staring out into the horizon that had since twisted to twilight. The orange being replaced with the cool blue, night had fallen. "I'm afraid, what happens when I do?" Setsuna admitted her only fear. "I agree." Kneeling low and using her left hand to push her skirt beneath her butt. Modest even still, Alkor would get the taste of the chilled weather of Snowfrost. It held to her no matter where she went, although the heat on floor 9 threatened it. "People can't stomach the thought of murder. I've dealt with the hesitation and with the desire to avoid it from others. I assumed that it took a specific sort to move past it. I did not hesitate for fear of what would come from that hesitation."

A foot or less from Alkor, tracing the view from where he sat. She wanted so desperately to see through his eyes, and learn from his experience. A studious child that became a persistent woman. "Taking from others leaves you with nothing. All it does is buy you one more day, at the expense of everything that comes later." Held fast as she perused the horizon from the same shoes, she found his introspection stemmed from an account that most couldn't speculate. "Have you ever taken a life?" The brutal question, one that she'd said blankly.

[Alkor 0]

What happens when I do?

A million or more questions across a million more lifetimes in a single sentence fell from her lips. The future was something people sought solace about even in reality. They paid psychics to divine it, pouring out fortunes. Even in ancient times, civilization looked to the skies, gazed into flame, and cast bones simply to glimpse the unknowable. Anxiety was this small girl, wondering what all of them had always wondered, and simply because no one had ever given her peace about it.

Anxiety was Alkor, who knew her pain all too well.

"Hesitation and fear are natural, guttural responses. Instinct is what keeps man alive when he does not know his enemy. Casting it aside is to invite danger, or worse." And worse had come for Setsuna already. She had crawled into that darkness of her own volition, and she had gone so far that she was uncertain if she could ever turn back. 

When she said that she bought one day in exchange for the next, he closed his eyes and rested his pipe in his lap. How viscerally true that statement was. Mankind was so quick to profit in the present with no regard for the legacy that they left to their descendants. The life of someone who was different, who was not part of your tribe, your family, your culture- that was a reasonable price in the eyes of many.

Or a price beneath consideration.

Have you ever taken a life?

He nodded slowly, solemnly. It was passing often that he went to the monument and looked at that name simply to remind himself that he had, that the life he had taken had value. For all of the evil that the man had done, he could never have the chance to change. He wasn't even given the opportunity. 

"I have," Alkor said. 

He had hesitated. He had considered his options. He came to the decision that it was necessary, and that his actions were just. But when reflecting on that decision, on his actions, he found that anyone would come to that same conclusion.  Any rational human being would call it justice, if only simply to wash away some of the guilt. 

Did he regret the decision, though?

"There are times in life when you are faced with difficult decisions," he said finally. "Further still, there are times when the decision is not really a decision at all. When you are forced to do something you don't want, because in not doing so you create worse consequences for yourself and others. Death is final. It is something that cannot be called justice in the real sense, because justice means that the collective benefits from the act. Taking the life of another human benefits no one. It does not make the world a better place. In life, your actions should always be directed toward improving the world for those around you, and therefore for yourself as well."

His Grandmother had said that to him.

"If there is absolutely no other choice..." He sighed, shuddered, and lifted his pipe again. After a drag, he exhaled a ragged breath. "But you should always, always start with looking for a choice. A better path. Always."

[Setsuna 0]

It would appear that the girl was staring at the horizon as if searching for something. Setsuna was trying to see his perspective, in the most literal sense. Some had considered her a creature of the cardinal, a manifested weapon and punishment akin to that of redemption. Or a response for the lack of an attempt at the quest. To others a story, a big fish story that had no truth. To the ones that knew the truth, they never lived to tell it. She was the boogy man, one that existed but didn't. No truer a statement then how she felt.

"They were, once." A simple response as her silver-blue hair caught the moonlight, as if a reciprocation of the moon. A single blink as she'd turn, a fixated gaze as she seemed to stare through him. They caught the light the same, making them glow in that same icy shade as far too many had seen moments before death. "I could see it in your walk. In the way you carry yourself." The creature of the mists, held to her eyes to him with intensity. "The way you draw your blade. There's weight to it. You hesitate when you choose to draw it. Even now, you admit it honestly." As if she could see him making the choice each and every time.

"I never thought there was a decision." recalling far too many times she didn't make one. To her it was always a storm, where every life was lanterns upon a blackened sea. Unless there was something to stem the tide, a lantern would sink. "I've contemplated killing you." stating it as nothing more then a fact, honesty deserved honesty. "There was a time I would have. Without a second thought." Setsuna put rather plainly. "But although you took a life, there's a weight to your weapon." She'd recall the time she almost drew her blade on Mari, and she was forced to sheathe it.

"I found you interesting, I watched you. Waiting for the moment I would have to cut you down. For when the weight would disappear." Her eyes trace to his. "And yet, it hasn't. Maybe your proof. That I'm wrong." Setsuna's eyes trail back to the moon.

[Alkor 0]

He pondered for a moment over the conversation. The way she saw the world, right down to her admission that murder was such a casual topic of thought. Alkor's sunset gaze remained stoic, locked on the moonrise and undaunted by the prospect of his own mortality. He had faced death before. He had taken life. He had all but slept the corpse's sleep.

The chill that followed Setsuna was a familiar cold. A frightening cold, at least to those who were not used to it. The ashen taste in his mouth and the heat that still smoldered in his lungs offered no comfort. Alkor withstood it in other ways.

"A blade is meant to be heavy," Alkor asserted. "From the first moment you lift it, as the relative discomfort starts to fade; and until you become used to the weight, almost like it's a part of your arm. Some swordsmasters say that the blade is an extension of the self, and perhaps there's truth to that. If there is, then the blade should carry with it your conscience. Your respect for life. Your desire to do what is right. One should never lift their weapon unconscionably, or in a way that is thoughtless. The weight should not be an afterthought. It should be a constant reminder that it takes exertion of the self- a thought, a decision- to wield it. There was a time when I didn't think that. It would have been so easy to lose myself in the intoxicating power that comes with the ability to end life- to assert dominance over others, to terrorize the meek, or to exact my will against those who disagree with me. But that's when you lose your humanity. That's when everything beautiful about the life you have, ceases to be beautiful and becomes bleak. You're a human, Setsuna. A young girl. You were not born to be a blade."

Alkor took another hit from his pipe.

"I'm not saying I'm right, or that you're wrong. Perspective shapes the world, and growth is marked by your ability to see other perspectives and accept them without condemnation. I'm not here to tell you how to live, I'm just telling you that there are other ways. You're not trapped."

Rhythmic tendrils of smoke rolled from his nostrils as he stared up at the moon, pale light causing his orange eyes to glow eerily. 

"...though I would advise against telling most people that you've thought about killing them. I don't think that would make for a cheerful discussion."