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 Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:39 pm
The imprisoned Princess was a problem that nagged at Ashanite.
Generally speaking, his own experiences with torture had borne in him a disgust for the practice--not least because he knew that it had solidified his choice to stay in the Negaverse. He had wavered in his course, before being locked in a tiny room and forced to endure physical and mental torment.
(Sometimes, he wondered if he really had escaped. But it was moments like these, taking a long walk to where the Princess was held in her cell, that made Ashanite certain he had to be free. He doubted his mind could have conjured the things he had experienced in the years since his escape.)
The tap, tap of the metal soles of his boots on the ground served as plenty of warning that he was coming, certainly, and he wasn't trying to be subtle or quiet. He stopped outside the door to her prison, and regarded her. They had never met, he didn't think--not until this moment.
"Good evening, Your Highness. Is that the appropriate form of address?" There was a hint of arrogance in his tone, a bravado that covered the conflict he felt, seeing someone else caged. This was for the betterment of the Negaverse, he told himself. Sanctioned by Laurelite. His personal hesitations were no reason to do something stupid. "I suppose I never learned how to speak to Order royalty, before I chose the Negaverse."
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Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2022 5:13 pm
Slumped against the wall to the right, Ganymede sighed and opened his eyes. She stared tiredly through the bars that kept her caged. Was this how Laurelite meant to torture her? By sending Generals to talk at her, one by one, until they’d all had their chance to… what? Be a nuisance?
“I don’t have a title in this life,” she said. “It used to be ‘Your Grace,’ but that was during a time when titles meant something. Anyone who might have the authority to give me a title now has either been dead a thousand years, or they don’t remember the things I do.”
Through the dark, her gaze narrowed ever so slightly. She studied this General the way she studied all the others, but something about this one was familiar.
Ganymede sifted through memories, certain they’d never met, but…
“Squire of Saturn,” she said. A quiet laugh escaped her, little more than a huff of air. “I don’t recall you choosing the Negaverse. Laurelite corrupted you by force. What was it she said?” Ganymede tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “The fate of all will be either assimilation—or death.”
A derisive smile twitched onto Ganymede’s face. “Maybe she should have added rotting in a cell to that list.”
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Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2022 10:42 pm
Aha. Perhaps he didn't remember her, but apparently she remembered him.
"You were in attendance at that particular show, hmm?" He said. "Forgive me for not remembering, things were....thoroughly chaotic." To say the very least. Umber had nearly killed him rather than handing him over to Laurelite. It had been a near thing that he escaped, and a lot of the fear he'd felt had not been play-acted. Anything could have gone wrong on that field.
"It was a stunning performance, I think, not to stroke my own ego. But I did do a good job portraying the hapless, lost Squire. Alas, pure fiction, and a fiction that hasn't suited my needs for some time. So I'm sorry to tell you: no, I did in fact choose this, Your Grace."
She'd given him a title. He might as well have a little fun with it, since the opportunity was before him.
"In any case, it sounds like you don't find the accommodations to your liking. That's unfortunate. This does look a bit less comfortable than the cell your people held me in, back when I was a Captain."Sunshine Alouette he talks just so much, gany does not deserve this
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Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2022 11:05 am
Ganymede had over a decade’s worth of experience to draw from. She wasn’t a lost girl anymore, stumbling along a path that seemed unclear. Very little surprised her now.
She laughed quietly, unsure what to believe. Perhaps his corruption had been a performance. Perhaps he only thought it was. Over the years, Chaos may have warped him so much that his memories of the event were unclear. It was too late for her to determine what the truth may have been back then. Whatever the case, the person he had been before Laurelite stuck her hand in his chest no longer existed, and wouldn’t again. The Knight could return, but not the boy.
“I have no people,” she countered. “Whoever took you had nothing to do with me. Maybe you missed the part where my people have been gone for over a thousand years.”
There was magic on Ganymede, there were structures, there was life, but it was not the flourishing world from long ago.
“I have no authority over anyone,” she continued. “If I did, you wouldn’t have been captured then. I can’t say the same for now. Time’s change, and people change with them.”Noir Songbird But his talking is so amusing!
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Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2022 2:25 am
Well, that was an interesting tidbit. This Princess claimed not to have any authority--Ashanite wasn't entirely sure he believed her, and he was sure his skepticism showed on his face.
"You seemed to have plenty of people willing to jump to your defense, on that hill," he pointed out. "If those aren't your people, in some way...." He shrugged his shoulders. "Unfortunate. Seems as if Order hasn't gotten any less terribly messy since I was there. But I suppose that's to be expected. No one has an ounce of authority, so you all run around like chickens with your heads cut off, stumbling into the occasional victory, and every once in a while, a few of you decide that torture sounds like the fun, exciting order of the day."
It really was sort of galling that Order ever pulled anything out, Ashanite thought, but they managed somehow, as unfortunate as it was.
"So what does a Princess do, if she has no useful authority, then? The only other Royal I ever ran into was Castor--" he wrinkled his nose in disgust, "--and I'll do you the favor of assuming he's the aberration, not the rule, and you don't all run around doing rampant murder."
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Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2022 10:25 am
“You’ll have to find my fellow royals and ask them,” Ganymede countered. “I don’t speak for Castor, or any of the others. I can only speak for myself.”
She couldn’t even be sure where the others were. She remembered Polaris, Iris, and Camelot, but she’d not seen them in… years. She’d not seen Chronos for even longer. For so long now, whenever Ganymede searched any gathering crowds for another royal, she saw only Castor. Whatever conflict existed between them over the years had to be put aside, for the good of everyone. They were all the White Moon had to combat a Queen and several General Sovereigns.
Two was not enough.
Now, with Ganymede stuck here, there would be only one.
“You speak of Order like it means something,” she said.
The term grated on her, though she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t used it herself. With her memories of the past adding to her experiences throughout their current war, Ganymede understood more about the forces at play than she had when she was new.
“There is no Chaos on one side and Order on the other. There is Chaos, and there is the absence of Chaos. I would’ve thought an agent who began as a knight would have a better understanding of the war, but if you chose this for yourself, I suppose you might have been deluded even before Chaos took its hold on you.”
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Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 3:00 am
"Perhaps I'll look to," Ashanite said, and he shrugged. "But I've got you here right now, so I'm asking you: what is it that you do, as a Princess, other than make very terrible choices? Because honestly, I have some criticisms." To say the very least. There was something both foolish and bold about helping people turn traitor to the Negaverse in front of Laurelite and all the General-Sovereigns, he supposed. "Not that I imagine you care, but you are stuck here."
A captive audience was certainly convenient, in its way.
The way she described things made him hum, and he looked thoughtful for a moment.
"Does it not mean anything? Is there no word you'd use to describe the people fighting for your side? I suppose that makes sense--and it's ironic to call it Order at all, considering..." He thought of Megiddo, nearly murdered by Camlann. He thought of the messy defense at the battle on the hill, and a dozen other times he'd watched them trip into anything even remotely resembling success. "And I wouldn't say I was deluded. I saw the path that staying on your side would lead me down," Ashanite said, "and I chose one that I thought better suited me. I'd have been nothing if I stayed, bound in service to an empty cathedral on a dead world. And considering some of what I remembered of my Wonder, it may well have served its purpose a thousand years ago, and my guardianship of it was simply a relic. But here," he shrugged, "I can guide my subordinates. I have the respect of the Queen. The choice seems obvious, all things considered."Sunshine Alouette ashanite likes the sound of his own voice SO much.
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2022 9:15 am
“If you’d rather be bound in service and subordinate to an entity that cares nothing for you beyond what sacrifices you’re willing to make for the inevitable destruction of this planet, then yes, I suppose the choice must have been glaringly obvious.”
An arrogant blowhard — that’s what she was dealing with. He liked spectacles, he liked the illusion of power and influence, and he liked to think his place here meant something more than his place on a dead world had.
It didn’t, of course. He was little more than another pawn. Maybe a bishop, or, for irony’s sake, a knight; to be fair, Ganymede knew very little about chess. Whatever the case, he was meant to sacrifice himself for something greater, only that something greater would lead to more of the empty cathedrals and dead worlds he seemed to have no use for.
“What terrible choices have I made?” she asked, in the tone of voice that made it clear she didn’t actually care to hear the answer. “I help people who ask for it. I don’t force it on anyone. I couldn’t even if I tried. You think I shouldn’t do it publicly, is that it? I get the impression some of you take issue with that, which seems pretty hypocritical to me, given that Metalla and Laurelite have been known to corrupt on the battlefield, on numerous occasions.”
Ganymede waved a hand at the General. His very presence here was proof enough of that.
“I do what I do because I can, because there will always be those who ask for my help. If that happens to be in the middle of a battle, so be it, I’ll make a statement with it. I purify someone, everyone sees it, and then the next person who wants my help knows who I am. They choose when to come to me. I’m not going to turn them away to answer to any of you. Others wait. They come to me later, when no one’s watching.”Noir Songbird It's okay his monologuing amuses me. rofl
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2022 3:25 am
Ashanite wondered if immense self-satisfaction and annoyingly unwavering moralizing were requirements for becoming White Moon royalty. It seemed about right with everything he'd ever known from that side, and all of Ganymede's preaching left him unimpressed and unmoved.
"Oh, paint a target on your own back all you like, far be it for me to criticize dramatic public spectacles," he said, dryly. "I just think that perhaps aiding multiple traitors in front of Metallia's finest chosen was not, perhaps, the best plan, for you or, in fact, most of all for them. Because it isn't just your back that gets a target painted on it, is it?"
He shrugged his shoulders, but there was something smug in his smile.
"I wonder how long it will take us to find the others you helped. Personally, I think Jet's method of dealing with them was a bit too harsh. I think they'd be much more useful brought back. Remade. Dead is dead, but alive...much, much more beneficial to everyone involved. That would certainly be a statement, don't you think?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2022 2:45 pm
“I think there’s a reason Jet’s been made a General King, and you haven’t been,” Ganymede replied.
Loath as she was to give Jet — or anyone in his position, with his history of torture and execution — a shred of credit, she thought she was beginning to understand the Negaverse in ways she’d only suspected in the past. Try as they might to appear unified, they were far from the well organized system they promoted. The White Moon may not have their structure, but structure did the Negaverse very little good when their officers couldn’t even agree on what should be done about deserters.
If she were not stuck in a cell, the knowledge would have pleased her. For the time being, all Ganymede felt was aggravation.
“You waste your time recorrupting those who’ve already betrayed you, who made the conscious choice, while they were poisoned by Chaos, that they would rather be free of it. What, you think Chaos might have better luck next time? I fail to see how an agent who might betray you again would be more beneficial than a dead enemy, but…”
Ganymede’s shoulders lifted and fell in an unconcerned shrug.
The thinly veiled threats hardly fazed her. She felt guilt for what happened with Sheikh, for her inability to protect him when he crossed Jet’s path, but she could not feel guilt for helping the other two. They’d already revealed themselves as traitors before they got to her. She had no choice but to help them. Not doing so would have resulted in certain death. At least free from Chaos, they had a fighting chance.
“If your opinions differ than that of your superiors, you’d be better off discussing that with them. You won’t accomplish anything here with me.”
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Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2022 11:52 pm
Ashanite gave a brief nod.
"Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of reasons," he acknowledged. As much as he'd enjoy the power of being a General-King, being a General brought him exactly the level of safety, comfort, and authority that he preferred. Also, he expected she'd intended to upset him with the jab; better to play it off.
It was interesting, to him, that she seemed to prefer to see her allies dead than corrupted. That was a piece of information he tucked away with interest; he doubted it was an honest offer of tactical advice.
"You'd be surprised what can be accomplished with a memory wipe," he said, and that was that. She certainly didn't need more tactical details than a vague threat or two. It was exceedingly unlikely that she would get out, but Ashanite was never completely ready to discount the possibility of a traitor.
"In any case, it's true, I'm obviously not accomplishing anything here. Except for a very interesting discussion, but..." He gave a brief, slightly mocking bow. "I'll leave you to your musings, Princess. I'd hate to take up too much of your time."
As if she had anything else.Sunshine Alouette right about fin? heart thank you for this, it was excellent
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Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:38 am
Red painted lips twitched into a small, sardonic smile.
“A pleasure to meet you, General,” Ganymede lied. She wondered who was worse, Jet with his earnest loyalty, or this man with his silver tongue. It seemed clear to her which Laurelite preferred, though perhaps there was more behind the Queen’s decisions than Ganymede could glean at face value.
Everyone had a purpose in the Negaverse, even if that purpose was to die. Some rose to power and authority. Some had other uses.
Few of them truly understood the poison which lent them its power. Those who did either didn’t care, and thus were truly lost, or they found some way to escape it.
This one seemed content on his path. Pleased with himself. Smug. Perhaps he’d been the same when he’d been a Squire. Perhaps it came to him with Metallia’s influence. Ganymede would likely never know.
She sat in her cell, bright eyes watchful through the darkness.
Indeed, time was all she had here.Noir Songbird Fin works for me!!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!! I forever love me some snark!!!! heart
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