[ 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 ] : sender is telling receiver they "deserve better than whatever this is".
His eyes aren't cold. He looks upon Selena with love, affection, understanding -- but never anger or hatred. No, the general would never feel that way about her no matter what sides of the battlefield they found themselves on.
And still: he raises his lance, because she is now his enemy. He hates that. He hates this. But he will never hate her.
"You deserve better than to fight for the shadow of our king," he says. "You deserve better than whatever this is."
for you i would (still accepting)
Her eyes are steel.
To another, it may be seen as betrayal, that her gaze could be so harsh knowing all the years that had passed—serving side by side, growing as friends and allies. A glance would say that all was forgotten in the face of what the Fluorspar must do.
But Duessel would know—that is merely a matter of course. To do what is difficult (what is necessary) despite the weight of the world: Fluorspar grows cold, sharp, becoming the emperor’s will. It is easier to do so withdrawn than to live fully and completely in the moment—and chance succumbing to her own grief.
“…Perhaps.” (She says it as a ‘maybe,’ but Duessel is never wrong.) It was entirely likely that she was making the wrong choice—that, in lacking his wisdom, she could not see what else could possibly await her.
All the same, there is lightning.
“Perhaps.”
It sparks at her fingertips, wild and untamed and mourning. (Whatever remained of them, there could only be another grave.)
It is not a matter of deserving. (Selena did not do this for herself.) Oaths are binding, lasting forever and beyond death—such was knighthood. Even if she desired to cast it away (just as Duessel had managed to do), it was not her own will that was to be exacted; she was here by the emperor’s orders.
Steel becomes less harsh, weathered away, if just slightly.
“But all the same, the path before me is clear.”
All the same, it conducts lightning.
