>>5944423>>5944445“I suppose,” you say, but with some ambivalence.
Izzy regards you curiously, awaiting more, and so you go on:
“Death is a part of life, a part of nature,” you conced. “Someone’s got to clean up the mess, and we might as well make the most of it.”
“Only…?”
“Only,” you say, “What is natural is not necessarily the best, or only, option. I've SEEN as much.”
“On the moon,” Izzy concludes.
You nod, and frown, looking down with some distaste at the columns of little armoured bodies—like soldiers on that single, greatest general: Death Incarnate. That implacable force, not exactly foe but CERTAINLY not friend, which could well have swallowed up Costella if you had not cured her, or your cousin Adolf and his young boy Addison. That Emperor of Entropy which might well have claimed your father had you not intervened, and called that end ‘natural’.
“I don’t begrudge them,” you say, turning your face from the insects and from the inevitability which they represent, “but I just can’t help but feel like…”
“Like there should be another way?” Izirina suggests.
You stop short of saying it yourself, and almost regret the train of thought.
“They’re a necessary evil,” you assert, “if they’re ‘evil’ at all.”
It’s the wisdom of our people—the wisdom that you might struggle to accept at times, but cannot reject. The predator, the scavenger, the killer and dismantler of life… They are a part of nature, too. A vibrant part, a part that DOES deserve to exist… Even if you can never quite bring yourself to face it head-on.
You speak without conviction, though, and Izzy senses it. Even as you stammer your hasty defences, Izirina Henzler just smiles one of those dangerous little Reptilian smiles of hers, made all the more unsettling by the flash of lightning behind her shaded glasses—a brewing storm in a bottle.
You don’t talk much more, until you reach your destination.
The facility where the Unknowable Prince is being held is not so different externally from that which houses the dead and dirty byproducts of elven society. It is larger, and here and there you see signs that greater effort and attention has been poured into its creation: subtle architectural flourishes in the sculpting of mud and clay, weaving of branches and roots, and in place of the fey tree-lanterns you see lattice-headed fungal bodies erected and cultivated to serve the same purpose, preserved in a normally-temporary state of reproductive flourishing by elven spellcraft. The thin, wafting spores they produce fill the place with an incense-like smell and a faint, smoky air as you descend into the sunken structure, carrying motes of light with them to illuminate an otherwise damp and sunless space.
“This place puts me ill at ease,” your Woodland Ranger guide admits.
“Fear not,” emerges a low voice from the foggy darkness ahead, “for you need go no further.”
