stratholmies said: 👀 + Immortality's a wretch on ethics. Harder to care for folks when they die in blinks. How are you fortifying against that?
💫—❝The war was over a thousand years old by the time I was delivered to the fight. Allies and enemies, they’ve always died in blinks.
Before I was made immortal, they were dying in front of me. In blinks. I cared anyway. It was a crime to do it, too.❞
Back then, the force and light had disoriented him. They had been cast all the way from the front lines to a distant beach, he hadn’t known where. His mecha was damaged and his body was ragged with the trauma and pain of the impact. He’d forced himself to move, anyway. He could see the massive, mangled cockpit where his Supreme General Adiane piloted her mecha from. It had narrowly missed sinking into the sea, but they had survived! They could always regroup and clash again, with those degenerate rebels. He’d stumbled to the heavy bulkhead, blood pounding in his ears; the first priority was to get Adiane clear of the wreckage. His hands had gripped the battered steel, and he’d wrenched at it until his shoulders wanted to tear. It opened, and yielded an uninterrupted view of the sea, beyond. The mecha had been completely gutted. Only that ragged shell had endured the enemy’s power.
In an instant, everything that Adiane had been -- all that she was, her fury, her strength, that which she loathed, that which she loved... it was gone. She would never be mentioned again, at the Capital City. It didn’t work like that. Beastmen didn’t mourn. They were expendable. Recyclable. The Spiral King only made clay soldiers and porcelain dolls - disposable. Beastmen didn’t remember. Yet he knew she also grieved Thymilph’s death, as he did. She was unique among their kind. Capable of love. Capable of grief. An exception.
But who would make an exception for her?
Twenty-eight years after the last battle for his world, and he still remembered those details. Almost four decades had passed since the moment he lost her, and none of it had faded. His stomach still sank when he remembered the clear sky and empty seas where his beloved Adiane ought to have been. So it was that he made the exception; he remembered all of them. Perhaps Lordgenome had possessed a strange insight the day he charged him with the task of witnessing and chronicling all that he could of the Spiral throughout his eternal life.
The lives he touched now, throughout his travels... they would end, too. But their light would be preserved in those who remained, who sought their messages, and in the archives he filled to the brim with the wondrous moments of their existence that he witnessed, even shared. Some of those lights joined the ranks of those aboard the Chouginga, and added new entries to their own stories: so in a sense, no light really ever faded. Those connections were as eternal as himself, maybe even more so.
❝I don’t fortify against anything. As a soldier, it was a weakness, I know. But I’ve always brought my heart to the battle with me. On this side of it, I’m grateful for the flaw in my design. The sense of being connected to others, through suffering and through happiness... it’s revolutionary for someone like me. Miraculous, in a way.
The ache of a loss is real, and excruciatingly sharp, takes me down to the bone every time. But the joys, the tenderness, and the hope are real, too. Just as overwhelming. I’ll gratefully experience all of them, for the sake of existing in full, too. I’ve never been the least bit afraid of pain.
I think that’s the only way I can stomach eternity - is to be alive for it.❞
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