[Ah, but Elloran is the ever compassionate and still naive enough to believe that the life of a soldier is better than death. And enough of his servants believe it that it is only through the sharp thinking of a masked guard who has long outgrown his eyes that the slaughter stops.
For an instant there is silence in the throne room, before Mir's voice begins to echo, warping walls and gravity.
Into that silence one word is uttered.]
Whisptershadow
[Realization seems to dawn, wrong though the conclusion may be. Eyes widen and the guards retreat, leaving their fallen comrades for servocorpses. They barely even register the half-children; unfortunate as it is dispersal malfunctions look just the same. More walls appear, damnably slow from the wailing thinkhives but there none-the-less, blocking the thing in an ever-shifting maze. Even a phase-creature might be slowed by such a crazed labyrinth.
But where is the master? Servants - guards, helmsmen and artists all - flurry around him, tending his wound and speaking in a frightened battle. Somewhere a man is urging him to flee, to take a tacheon bubble and disappear from reality until it is safe.
Elloran is unresponsive, crumpled on the floor, eyes wide in shock, hand clenching the weeping patch on his shoulder. The pain overwhelms him; he is no trained fighter and for all he's seen of war it has always been with the die-or-not apathy. Never this sharp pain.
Yet Mir's song brings him out of his misery. Eyes narrow through repressed tears.
It has been nearly seventy years since Elloran went without his music. No upstart would take it from him in his time of need.]
Sajit. The homeworld of the heart...
[The thinkhive obeys without thinking, so common the request. And the music of Elloran's lover bursts forth from every corner of the ship, the aching melodies not all that different from Mir's...even if if comes from the mind of a genius human. All of the Inquest is hidden in the lyrics and minor chords, all the hidden tears and pain, all of the anguish of an impossible future, all the lost and damaged souls that make the Inquest their home...It is the music of their galaxy, and it will take more than simple hatred to make the thinkhives disobey now. For Mir's song is tempting, but it is...wrong in this universe. Thinkhives go mad, do terrible things, and even claim to have grown souls...but just as humans they are weak creatures of flesh and cosm and they cannot deny the love song that has been carved into every cavern of the palace.]
I will not run. I will not abandon this place.
[From somewhere unknown, steel reflects in the eyes of the untried Inquestor. This was the boy who watched his planet burn, the boy with the silver knife and destiny urging him to follow his father into death. This was the boy who climbed the rainbow towers and defeated the Mad King, his own mentor.
And this was the boy who had lived with luck and passion on his side from inception. And though Inquestors never showed anger, there was steel in his voice as well.]
video
For an instant there is silence in the throne room, before Mir's voice begins to echo, warping walls and gravity.
Into that silence one word is uttered.]
Whisptershadow
[Realization seems to dawn, wrong though the conclusion may be. Eyes widen and the guards retreat, leaving their fallen comrades for servocorpses. They barely even register the half-children; unfortunate as it is dispersal malfunctions look just the same. More walls appear, damnably slow from the wailing thinkhives but there none-the-less, blocking the thing in an ever-shifting maze. Even a phase-creature might be slowed by such a crazed labyrinth.
But where is the master? Servants - guards, helmsmen and artists all - flurry around him, tending his wound and speaking in a frightened battle. Somewhere a man is urging him to flee, to take a tacheon bubble and disappear from reality until it is safe.
Elloran is unresponsive, crumpled on the floor, eyes wide in shock, hand clenching the weeping patch on his shoulder. The pain overwhelms him; he is no trained fighter and for all he's seen of war it has always been with the die-or-not apathy. Never this sharp pain.
Yet Mir's song brings him out of his misery. Eyes narrow through repressed tears.
It has been nearly seventy years since Elloran went without his music. No upstart would take it from him in his time of need.]
Sajit. The homeworld of the heart...
[The thinkhive obeys without thinking, so common the request. And the music of Elloran's lover bursts forth from every corner of the ship, the aching melodies not all that different from Mir's...even if if comes from the mind of a genius human. All of the Inquest is hidden in the lyrics and minor chords, all the hidden tears and pain, all of the anguish of an impossible future, all the lost and damaged souls that make the Inquest their home...It is the music of their galaxy, and it will take more than simple hatred to make the thinkhives disobey now. For Mir's song is tempting, but it is...wrong in this universe. Thinkhives go mad, do terrible things, and even claim to have grown souls...but just as humans they are weak creatures of flesh and cosm and they cannot deny the love song that has been carved into every cavern of the palace.]
I will not run. I will not abandon this place.
[From somewhere unknown, steel reflects in the eyes of the untried Inquestor. This was the boy who watched his planet burn, the boy with the silver knife and destiny urging him to follow his father into death. This was the boy who climbed the rainbow towers and defeated the Mad King, his own mentor.
And this was the boy who had lived with luck and passion on his side from inception. And though Inquestors never showed anger, there was steel in his voice as well.]
Take us into the Overcosm.