[It's lucky, maybe, that by the time Thancred and Lu Bixing find themselves tumbling into an unexpected memory hole together, Thancred's already been through the exercise a few times already. He knows what to expect when they hit the bottom — but more importantly, he's seen the nature of the memories that are called up and exposed for all to see.
He's not altogether surprised to see this one, grimly enough. Once he'd caught on to the nature of these little excursions, he'd known it was really only a matter of time.
|| There really is no place quite like Amh Araeng, the edge of the still-living world.
The skies burn too bright everywhere in Norvrandt — unnaturally bright, burning with the primordial Light that saturates the landscape and threatens to swallow up every last living thing below it — but nowhere quite so violently as in the already-barren deserts of Amh Araeng. What would otherwise have been sun-bleached dunes of rolling reddish sands appear almost alien with the way the roiling light-stricken skies wash them out below; the wooden shanties and railway trestles of the mining town they're leaving by Talos-pushed trolley have long since gone gray from overexposure to the unrelenting sun.
But they are on their way, the three of them standing on the open-air bed of the trolley car. Thancred is unmistakable in his gunbreaker whites; flanking him are two young women. One wears a hood pulled down over her features as if to protect her skin from the burning sun; the other's long blond hair waves gently in the breeze produced by the car's movement, her thick bangs framing a pair of too-bright, unnaturally blue eyes.
Their progress comes to a halt — literally and figuratively — when a man (enemy Thancred's memory automatically supplies) appears before them on the tracks, first blocking their way before outright derailing it altogether with a kick to the front of the trolley that sends the whole of it flying, spilling its three riders out ungracefully into the sand.
Ran'jit, Thancred's memory names him with unmistakable venom, and the two of them exchange barbs before eventually the other man turns his hooded eyes toward the blond girl struggling to her feet.
You will remain as you are, while I dispatch these villains, Ran'jit tells her.
I won't let you! the girl, his Minfilia, cries.
Her defiance rouses visible ire in the other man. You forget to whom you speak! he snaps at her. Who armed you? Trained you? Fought and killed a thousand sin eaters with you?! And when you were inevitably cut down and lay lifeless in my arms — who sought out your successor to carry on the futile struggle again and again?!
But then his Minfilia — his timid, shy, self-doubting Minfilia — does something she has never had the courage to do before. She pushes herself up, and she finds her resolve, and she snaps, I never asked to be saved! However much it hurts, and however hard it gets, it's my life, and I want to live it on my own terms!
He realizes then, as all his own anguish and guilt and loss comes crashing down on him, that none of them — none of them — have the right to take this from her. Not even if it means never seeing her predecessor again. Not even if it means death and oblivion at the end of all things.
Ran'jit moves to take her, and without even thinking, his body moves to place itself in the way. He bids her go and complete the mission they came here to do (I won't have you waste that newfound resolve on me, he tells her); he tells their redheaded companion to take custody of her and flee. And when Ran'jit seeks to pursue them again, once again he puts himself in the way.
Not another step! he snaps, gunblade drawn. Your fight is with me!
You think yourself her protector?! Ran'jit spits back. Hah! As if a whelp like you could be a better father to her than me!
And they fight, there on the barren red sands of Amh Araeng, beneath the unrelenting sun. And Ran'jit has the benefit of age, skill, and power; he summons the abilities of his own martial arts and that of his spirit dragon besides. It soon becomes clear that his guard is impenetrable, his defenses too quick and too prepared. There's no opening to be had, and soon he has Thancred cornered, targeted from all directions by an inescapable threat —
And Thancred vanishes.
Now, the memory turns to first-person — a view of Ran'jit that begins to white out at the edges, blood thudding like a drumbeat in the ears. The strain of maintaining his invisibility is palpable, putting undue demand on a body already pushed hard from battle — but his deception buys him his chance, and he makes his shot.
And after battle resumes, when he finds himself cornered yet again, he does it again.
By the third time he's forced to vanish, he knows it will be his last. He can feel the tightness in his chest, the way he's left to stagger instead of walk. This is going to kill him. He was already at his limit; with each and every step, he pushes himself past it.
His last shot lands true, and the battle ends, and Ran'jit prepares to make a wounded retreat — as Thancred digs his gunblade into the ground and collapses onto his back, gasping in his inability to draw in air, too spent to move.
You would have her suffer and die, Ran'jit snarls just before he flees the field of battle. I would spare her that fate!
That is not for you or anyone else to decide, Thancred hisses back. Not ever again. ||
His eyes are closed, by the time the memory ends. His arms are folded across his chest. And yet, for all that the vision was a brutal one in so many respects — Thancred almost seems to be smiling.]
[ okay, this is a lot. it's like watching a space western, only it's someone's real life - lu bixing takes a short, surprised breath when the memory ends, his eyes still scanning the screen like there might be more.
the last words of thancred's resonate with lu bixing, and he lets out a short, surprised breath as he realize that it's over, feeling a sense of... pride, really. warmth, respect for thancred, as he asks, a little breathlessly, ]
[All too often, he muses privately, these memories have been personal things; cutting and damaging and terrible ones. And this one is, too, in its own way — certainly it was far from his finest hour.
But it's hard to regret the chance to see his girl again. It's been so long, and if he doesn't escape this place it might well be forever. But there she is, so much brighter and bolder and clearer than any internal memory of his could ever hope to reproduce.
'Tis hard to regret that, whatever the cost.]
He lived long enough to pose one final obstruction to a dear comrade of mine — the one that was wearing the hood for protection against the desert sun. I'm afraid she had the honor of putting an end to him once and for all.
[ lightly, teasingly: ] Well, I'm sure you whittled him down, first.
[ lu bixing's joking, but, he looks pretty warm too as the screen finally fades away, eye crinkling up at the corner with the warmth of his smile. this made his heart so warm. and - really, it reminds him, in this moment, of the old persian cat who raised him. ]
You're incredibly brave, Thancred. And - so was she, the little lady. Minfilia, right? What an incredible show of strength and character.
[He pronounces it easily, affectionately; the sound of it rhymes with green.]
The name Minfilia was a burden. One that the shard she lived on had asked her — and too many others before her — to bear. She made her choice of the life she wanted to live. She deserved to have her own name while living it.
[And yet, when he lets out his next breath after he finishes speaking, it carries a tremor in it. The contrast between the way he says Ryne and Minfilia is stark; the former gentle with pride, the latter tight with grief.]
[ the first part gets his eyes to light up in the way that a nerdy person's eyes light up when they're sensing a challenge, so, yeah. thancred is correct.
he shakes his head. ] I'm not. Start at the beginning, for me?
Gods, I won't manage this half as well as Urianger, but...
[He sort of mutters that to himself, before digging into his bag and retrieving a notebook and a pen; he flips to the very back page of it and frowns at it a minute before slowly and methodically drawing a chart.]
Just so. There are six elementally-aspected forms of aether, with two others at the poles for a total of eight. Elemental aether consists of fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, and ice. At either end are — you could call it raw aether, I suppose. Pure passive aether, and pure active aether.
[Below the chart, he sketches out a new quick sequence in a straight line:
Light - Ice - Water - Earth - Wind - Fire - Lightning - Dark ]
This is how they range, most stagnant to most active. Do you follow so far?
[ he's a very good student, paying close attention and scooching closer to look at the diagram. itd be funny if i interrupted this with a memshare but i will not ] And aether itself is a power source - for magic of an elemental sort?
[ (scientist voice) mitochondria aether is the powerhouse of the cell]
It's behind everything, really. Magic, living beings, the aetherial sea. Most living creatures maintain a balance of aether, just as the star itself endures by keeping its various aspects in balance. A surplus of any one type of aether, in disproportionate amounts, yields calamity.
[He taps his pen idly against the notebook.]
An excess of water-aspected aether might produce floods. Too much fire-aspected aether, wildfires and droughts and unrelenting heat. Too much earth-aspected aether, and the ground quakes and splits.
[He glances sideways at Lu Bixing.]
So what do you suppose happens from an excess of light-aspected aether?
[NO IT'S A VALID GUESS ffxiv magic is nonsensical so no rational person would get this question right ever anyway]
Most scholars in my homeland would agree with you. But surprisingly enough, it's just the opposite.
[no really there was an entire in-game cutscene explaining this backward-ass logic which is also the only reason why thancred even knows it]
Light is the pole of passive aether. Stagnation. Introduce a flood of light into a thriving forest and all you'll be left with is a lifeless desert. A wasteland too saturated with static aether for anything to thrive or grow.
What you saw in Amh Araeng was a world on the verge of being utterly consumed in light. A world where all but a fraction of it had already been subsumed. And that any fraction even survived at all was the result of the efforts of a single girl, called upon to be the avatar of the goddess of light herself.
[ i understand nothing about this game i am nodding very slowly
but, lu bixing is brilliant so this makes sense, even if that feels very backwards, but he listens to the story, mouth pulled into a soft little frown. ]
To a degree. More that she was able to postpone its imminent doom.
[And one may be wondering why this conversation needed a background foray into aetherology to explain why his perfect angel daughter got a new name, but fortunately everything comes full circle eventually.]
It took most of her power to do it. Robbed her of any tangible form. But some part of her...persisted, and found a vessel in a long series of young girls. Ryne was the last of the ones she possessed. The last time she reincarnated into a new host.
[ it's ok he loved the aetherology explanation. in fact, if you see him pull up his personal device to take a picture of the little chart, don't be surprised.
that comes later, though - he's listening right now, and he's nothing if not a good listener. recognition of what thancred is saying crosses his face, and his brows knit together, feeling the ache and ripple of how much that must have hurt. ]
I was always going to lose one of them. 'Twas only ever a question of which. I asked her — begged her, really — if there wasn't something I could do, if there wasn't any other way.
[He closes his eyes, his expression clouding over a moment in still, stony reflection.]
I put Ryne through a misery she never deserved, with my own damned feelings about it.
[ lu bixing trails off for a moment, reflecting. on the girls from the memory, on the man thancred fought tooth and nail, on the information he's been given, and...when he speaks again, there's a soft emotion in his voice. ]
I know there's no way to ask her, but... you have to feel loved, in order to really lose. It's a double edged sword, isn't it? Considering a life she could have had with that other man, especially.
[He says it under his breath, almost — more to himself than to Lu Bixing. Like remembering something long-buried that should've stayed that way.
But then, after a bit, he shakes it off, and finds more confidence in his voice again.]
Funny, isn't it. How we go around thinking we know what's best for them, when in fact they're the ones who've already worked it out, and we'd know it too if we'd only get past ourselves long enough to listen.
[ that gets him to laugh, softly - the second part. ]
Definitely.
[ lu bixing has no kids of his own.
well...
sort of. it's at that moment that the screen finally flickers to life again, and this time, thancred is treated to a memory of lu bixing's life. ]
[ 100 days into your self imposed isolation after the death of lin jingheng and monoeye hawk, you find a black hair on the couch.
it's not anything special. in any other situation, this would be something you'd laugh about as you were cleaning, if that. but today, one hundred days into your self isolation, it's yet another reminder that lin jingheng is dead.
you're not okay, and you haven't been okay, despite the facade that you put on for everyone around you to see. you stare at that tiny piece of hair held in your palm, such a dark brown it looks black, for three hours. you stare at it for so long that the home medical capsule gives you a warning, unsure if you're evne conscious. that snaps you out of it enough that you walk mechanically to your lab, and you seal it under a microscopic glass slide.
that's not enough - no. you pull out your 3D printer, and you take the hair out of the slide with tweezers and create a perfect ball of resin around it.
that's better. (it's not.) it goes in your pocket, and you get up to start your day.
as you read through your personal device's notes from the day before and brush your teeth, mechanically, you realize none of your notes make sense - just senseless, shapeless babblings of a madman. detached, you think, that's unfortunate, and you delete them. one hundred days of notes, and one hundred days in a row that you delete them.
like coming out of a daydream, you realize you've splashed some cold water on your face, and you look at yourself in the mirror. you are a mess - your hair has grown long enough that it's almost touching your shoulders, snarled and curly and ugly. you have stubble and five o clock shadow on your chin. your clothes are wrinkled, there's a stain on your shirt - when was the last time you even changed your clothes - and you can see that your cheeks are sunken in. you look awful. you used to care so much about your appearance. do you care about anything anymore? you should -
... you can't. you can't bring yourself to do anything about it, so you knock your hand against the mirror until it turns away, and you think you might be losing your mind (if it's not already gone) when you hear another knock. you blink. the default AI in your house says, tonelessly:
"Visitor: Mint. Identity has been set to: Your student. Do you wish to answer the door?”
you sigh. ] No.
[ it's not her fault. you don't have anything against her, of course. but the idea of interacting with a single human being makes you want to throw up. you start to turn away, but your personal device starts to yell at you, beeping over and over, and saying, in that same robotic voice: "Legal Guardian obligation."
...right. mint wasn't quite an adult yet - she'd be twenty in just a few months. under the union laws, she wasn't old enough to be alone. the minor protection law keeps children from fully cutting off any communication with their legal guardian, at least in the union. you don't live in the union anymore - you laugh, a little, almost mocking, just sad, and go into your system to delete all records of that law. the beeping silences. you stand there.
...you take a deep breath, and you go to open the door.
facing you is not just mint, but all four of your students. beyond them, you realize dimly, that your front garden has been restored. all the weeds that had grown to the height of the window, the rusted, destroyed robots tha tonce held the sign that greeted home of engineer 001 and commander lin have been repaired and shined to their original condition. the sun is coming through your windows for the first time in one hundred days.
the entire garden is filled with flowers.
your gaze flits across your students. mint, who has recently dyed her hair to be, aptly, mint colored, hiccups. "Professor Lu," she starts, and you feel something swell in your heart that's so heavy you almost can't breathe around it. something in you like a pilot light sputters. ]
Don't cry. [ you say, softly. you want to smile for them. you can't get yourself to smile. you feel ashamed and guilty and horrible and - touched, and so touched you almost can't believe it. ] Did you all clean up the garden?
[ white, the blonde, interrupts you. he also looks like he's going to cry, but he says, "Professor, we’re here to help you, is that ok? We’ll help you fix Zhanlu’s system.".
now that's kind of funny. that's what you've been trying to do for the past hundred days. zhanlu is the most complex piece of machinery arguably in any of the eight galaxies, and it's your system to fix, and the idea of them being able to fix it - they could barely do math, when you first met them, all the way back on beijing beta, twenty years ago.
how could you guys fix anything with your little brains? All you guys can do is fix up some smaller robots and serve some tea, what else can you all even do? you think, to yourself.
rickhead, the biggest one, the redhead, interrupts you. he has never been good at any kind of mechanical work no matter how many times you teach him and he is blatantly aware of it. his face and his eyes are bright red, and he is sniffling, and before you can kindly reject their ridiculous offer, he says, "I can't do anything...Professor Lu, at least let me serve you some coffee..."
these four kids are the only survivors of beijing beta being blown up. they'd wandered around the galaxy under your wing, and grown up faster than any kid deserved to have to grow up. when they gather around you like this, they're like a pack of tiny, lost stray animals, staring at you with their eyes so hopeful that it could be a commercial. you don't know whether to laugh or to cry, something thick in your throat.
because this is the thing. you aren't like lin. you can't just get up every day before sunrise to train even if the world ended. your world has ended, but you have this, this pilot light, this guiding moral that makes you to your core. you would rather die than break the hearts of your students.
you swallow, hard. and, slowly, you nod - you watch huang jiangshu, the smallest of your students, brighten up like the sun, and you agree: ] ....Okay. I'll let you handle the coffee from now on.
[ what you didn't realize then is that this moment single handedly ripped open the crack in your isolated, miserable life and brought the light back in. your students visit you every single day, to make coffee and clean the house and decorate and try and help (badly) (they're so bad at it, even now). you start to put yourself together. you shave. you cut your hair. you take a fucking shower.
and day by day, bit by bit, a tiny part of you starts to heal. ]
[What's strange about seeing this memory unfold is how Thancred can see himself in all of it. The wreckage of a man reflected back in a mirror after a loss too terrible to bear. The grasping for memories and mementos because they're all that man will ever have, because the person they're reminiscent of is never (never) (never) coming back. The resentment of being approached, the reluctance to engage.
And yet he remembers being a child who looked up to a man of vision and believed in the things he believed in because he believed in the man himself — and he knows how it would feel to see one's inspiration reduced to the way Lu Bixing looks when he opens the door, devastation within and hope begging to be afforded a foothold.]
it's not the first time he's seen this memory, this week, but even still - watching it makes his heart ache. the ripple of emotions in his chest is somewhere between nostalgia and shame, but more than anything else, looking at those four eager faces, he misses them, almost desperately. ]
...They are.
[ his voice is softer than it was before, colored with the gutpunched sort of fondness that comes from watching a scene like that in hindsight. ] Huang Jiangshu, Mint, White, and Rickhead.
[The devastated man in the memory bears little resemblance to the enthusiastic, upbeat LBX he's grown accustomed to around superhell. So either the man is a consummate professional at repression, or there have been developments past this one that changed the circumstances altogether.]
[ both of those things are true, actually! haha!!! its fine!!!! ]
...About fifteen years, give or take. [ he rubs a little bit at the inside of his arm, a little sheepish as the images finally settle. ] I looked like a mess, huh?
[ lbx :handshake: thancred, hands overflowing with uno cards after "confess to an emotion or draw 25"]
You looked like you'd been dragged through all seven hells and back again for good measure. But I'm not about to be hasty to judge, lest these screens pull up some sordid memory of the time I spent a few moons surviving in the open wilderness. You look like a bouquet of roses, there, by comparison.
[He shrugs, smiling faintly.]
Fifteen years — those children are all grown, then, by now. What became of them?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
week 2, tuesday
He's not altogether surprised to see this one, grimly enough. Once he'd caught on to the nature of these little excursions, he'd known it was really only a matter of time.
The skies burn too bright everywhere in Norvrandt — unnaturally bright, burning with the primordial Light that saturates the landscape and threatens to swallow up every last living thing below it — but nowhere quite so violently as in the already-barren deserts of Amh Araeng. What would otherwise have been sun-bleached dunes of rolling reddish sands appear almost alien with the way the roiling light-stricken skies wash them out below; the wooden shanties and railway trestles of the mining town they're leaving by Talos-pushed trolley have long since gone gray from overexposure to the unrelenting sun.
But they are on their way, the three of them standing on the open-air bed of the trolley car. Thancred is unmistakable in his gunbreaker whites; flanking him are two young women. One wears a hood pulled down over her features as if to protect her skin from the burning sun; the other's long blond hair waves gently in the breeze produced by the car's movement, her thick bangs framing a pair of too-bright, unnaturally blue eyes.
Their progress comes to a halt — literally and figuratively — when a man (enemy Thancred's memory automatically supplies) appears before them on the tracks, first blocking their way before outright derailing it altogether with a kick to the front of the trolley that sends the whole of it flying, spilling its three riders out ungracefully into the sand.
Ran'jit, Thancred's memory names him with unmistakable venom, and the two of them exchange barbs before eventually the other man turns his hooded eyes toward the blond girl struggling to her feet.
You will remain as you are, while I dispatch these villains, Ran'jit tells her.
I won't let you! the girl, his Minfilia, cries.
Her defiance rouses visible ire in the other man. You forget to whom you speak! he snaps at her. Who armed you? Trained you? Fought and killed a thousand sin eaters with you?! And when you were inevitably cut down and lay lifeless in my arms — who sought out your successor to carry on the futile struggle again and again?!
But then his Minfilia — his timid, shy, self-doubting Minfilia — does something she has never had the courage to do before. She pushes herself up, and she finds her resolve, and she snaps, I never asked to be saved! However much it hurts, and however hard it gets, it's my life, and I want to live it on my own terms!
He realizes then, as all his own anguish and guilt and loss comes crashing down on him, that none of them — none of them — have the right to take this from her. Not even if it means never seeing her predecessor again. Not even if it means death and oblivion at the end of all things.
Ran'jit moves to take her, and without even thinking, his body moves to place itself in the way. He bids her go and complete the mission they came here to do (I won't have you waste that newfound resolve on me, he tells her); he tells their redheaded companion to take custody of her and flee. And when Ran'jit seeks to pursue them again, once again he puts himself in the way.
Not another step! he snaps, gunblade drawn. Your fight is with me!
You think yourself her protector?! Ran'jit spits back. Hah! As if a whelp like you could be a better father to her than me!
And they fight, there on the barren red sands of Amh Araeng, beneath the unrelenting sun. And Ran'jit has the benefit of age, skill, and power; he summons the abilities of his own martial arts and that of his spirit dragon besides. It soon becomes clear that his guard is impenetrable, his defenses too quick and too prepared. There's no opening to be had, and soon he has Thancred cornered, targeted from all directions by an inescapable threat —
And Thancred vanishes.
Now, the memory turns to first-person — a view of Ran'jit that begins to white out at the edges, blood thudding like a drumbeat in the ears. The strain of maintaining his invisibility is palpable, putting undue demand on a body already pushed hard from battle — but his deception buys him his chance, and he makes his shot.
And after battle resumes, when he finds himself cornered yet again, he does it again.
By the third time he's forced to vanish, he knows it will be his last. He can feel the tightness in his chest, the way he's left to stagger instead of walk. This is going to kill him. He was already at his limit; with each and every step, he pushes himself past it.
His last shot lands true, and the battle ends, and Ran'jit prepares to make a wounded retreat — as Thancred digs his gunblade into the ground and collapses onto his back, gasping in his inability to draw in air, too spent to move.
You would have her suffer and die, Ran'jit snarls just before he flees the field of battle. I would spare her that fate!
That is not for you or anyone else to decide, Thancred hisses back. Not ever again. ||
His eyes are closed, by the time the memory ends. His arms are folded across his chest. And yet, for all that the vision was a brutal one in so many respects — Thancred almost seems to be smiling.]
no subject
the last words of thancred's resonate with lu bixing, and he lets out a short, surprised breath as he realize that it's over, feeling a sense of... pride, really. warmth, respect for thancred, as he asks, a little breathlessly, ]
Was that the last of him?
no subject
[All too often, he muses privately, these memories have been personal things; cutting and damaging and terrible ones. And this one is, too, in its own way — certainly it was far from his finest hour.
But it's hard to regret the chance to see his girl again. It's been so long, and if he doesn't escape this place it might well be forever. But there she is, so much brighter and bolder and clearer than any internal memory of his could ever hope to reproduce.
'Tis hard to regret that, whatever the cost.]
He lived long enough to pose one final obstruction to a dear comrade of mine — the one that was wearing the hood for protection against the desert sun. I'm afraid she had the honor of putting an end to him once and for all.
no subject
[ lu bixing's joking, but, he looks pretty warm too as the screen finally fades away, eye crinkling up at the corner with the warmth of his smile. this made his heart so warm. and - really, it reminds him, in this moment, of the old persian cat who raised him. ]
You're incredibly brave, Thancred. And - so was she, the little lady. Minfilia, right? What an incredible show of strength and character.
no subject
[He pronounces it easily, affectionately; the sound of it rhymes with green.]
The name Minfilia was a burden. One that the shard she lived on had asked her — and too many others before her — to bear. She made her choice of the life she wanted to live. She deserved to have her own name while living it.
[And yet, when he lets out his next breath after he finishes speaking, it carries a tremor in it. The contrast between the way he says Ryne and Minfilia is stark; the former gentle with pride, the latter tight with grief.]
no subject
Ryne. [ he repeats, first, sure to get the pronunciation correct. and, after a moment, softly: ] ...What happened to her?
no subject
[He actually stops himself a moment, cocking his head to consider LBX before amending his own previous judgment.]
...no, you're precisely the sort to believe things that would sound outlandish to most, aren't you?
[He ponders again. Another long moment passes.]
Are you familiar with the concept of aspected aether?
no subject
he shakes his head. ] I'm not. Start at the beginning, for me?
no subject
[He sort of mutters that to himself, before digging into his bag and retrieving a notebook and a pen; he flips to the very back page of it and frowns at it a minute before slowly and methodically drawing a chart.]
Just so. There are six elementally-aspected forms of aether, with two others at the poles for a total of eight. Elemental aether consists of fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, and ice. At either end are — you could call it raw aether, I suppose. Pure passive aether, and pure active aether.
[Below the chart, he sketches out a new quick sequence in a straight line:
Light - Ice - Water - Earth - Wind - Fire - Lightning - Dark ]
This is how they range, most stagnant to most active. Do you follow so far?
no subject
[ he's a very good student, paying close attention and scooching closer to look at the diagram. itd be funny if i interrupted this with a memshare but i will not ] And aether itself is a power source - for magic of an elemental sort?
no subject
mitochondriaaether is the powerhouse of the cell]It's behind everything, really. Magic, living beings, the aetherial sea. Most living creatures maintain a balance of aether, just as the star itself endures by keeping its various aspects in balance. A surplus of any one type of aether, in disproportionate amounts, yields calamity.
[He taps his pen idly against the notebook.]
An excess of water-aspected aether might produce floods. Too much fire-aspected aether, wildfires and droughts and unrelenting heat. Too much earth-aspected aether, and the ground quakes and splits.
[He glances sideways at Lu Bixing.]
So what do you suppose happens from an excess of light-aspected aether?
no subject
A supernova.
no subject
Most scholars in my homeland would agree with you. But surprisingly enough, it's just the opposite.
[no really there was an entire in-game cutscene explaining this backward-ass logic which is also the only reason why thancred even knows it]
Light is the pole of passive aether. Stagnation. Introduce a flood of light into a thriving forest and all you'll be left with is a lifeless desert. A wasteland too saturated with static aether for anything to thrive or grow.
What you saw in Amh Araeng was a world on the verge of being utterly consumed in light. A world where all but a fraction of it had already been subsumed. And that any fraction even survived at all was the result of the efforts of a single girl, called upon to be the avatar of the goddess of light herself.
Her name was Minfilia. My Minfilia.
no subject
but, lu bixing is brilliant so this makes sense, even if that feels very backwards, but he listens to the story, mouth pulled into a soft little frown. ]
...So, she saved the world.
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[And one may be wondering why this conversation needed a background foray into aetherology to explain why his perfect angel daughter got a new name, but fortunately everything comes full circle eventually.]
It took most of her power to do it. Robbed her of any tangible form. But some part of her...persisted, and found a vessel in a long series of young girls. Ryne was the last of the ones she possessed. The last time she reincarnated into a new host.
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that comes later, though - he's listening right now, and he's nothing if not a good listener. recognition of what thancred is saying crosses his face, and his brows knit together, feeling the ache and ripple of how much that must have hurt. ]
... I'm sorry, Thancred. That you lost her.
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[He closes his eyes, his expression clouding over a moment in still, stony reflection.]
I put Ryne through a misery she never deserved, with my own damned feelings about it.
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[ lu bixing trails off for a moment, reflecting. on the girls from the memory, on the man thancred fought tooth and nail, on the information he's been given, and...when he speaks again, there's a soft emotion in his voice. ]
I know there's no way to ask her, but... you have to feel loved, in order to really lose. It's a double edged sword, isn't it? Considering a life she could have had with that other man, especially.
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[He says it under his breath, almost — more to himself than to Lu Bixing. Like remembering something long-buried that should've stayed that way.
But then, after a bit, he shakes it off, and finds more confidence in his voice again.]
Funny, isn't it. How we go around thinking we know what's best for them, when in fact they're the ones who've already worked it out, and we'd know it too if we'd only get past ourselves long enough to listen.
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Definitely.
[ lu bixing has no kids of his own.
well...
sort of. it's at that moment that the screen finally flickers to life again, and this time, thancred is treated to a memory of lu bixing's life. ]
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And yet he remembers being a child who looked up to a man of vision and believed in the things he believed in because he believed in the man himself — and he knows how it would feel to see one's inspiration reduced to the way Lu Bixing looks when he opens the door, devastation within and hope begging to be afforded a foothold.]
Your protégés, I gather?
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it's not the first time he's seen this memory, this week, but even still - watching it makes his heart ache. the ripple of emotions in his chest is somewhere between nostalgia and shame, but more than anything else, looking at those four eager faces, he misses them, almost desperately. ]
...They are.
[ his voice is softer than it was before, colored with the gutpunched sort of fondness that comes from watching a scene like that in hindsight. ] Huang Jiangshu, Mint, White, and Rickhead.
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[The devastated man in the memory bears little resemblance to the enthusiastic, upbeat LBX he's grown accustomed to around superhell. So either the man is a consummate professional at repression, or there have been developments past this one that changed the circumstances altogether.]
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...About fifteen years, give or take. [ he rubs a little bit at the inside of his arm, a little sheepish as the images finally settle. ] I looked like a mess, huh?
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You looked like you'd been dragged through all seven hells and back again for good measure. But I'm not about to be hasty to judge, lest these screens pull up some sordid memory of the time I spent a few moons surviving in the open wilderness. You look like a bouquet of roses, there, by comparison.
[He shrugs, smiling faintly.]
Fifteen years — those children are all grown, then, by now. What became of them?
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