(no subject)

[bloodyashes]

If you hadn't heard, Monsun is apparently disappearing soon. If anyone has time, I could use help moving the last few supplies off to the islets. There's also the tent to be taken down and moved - we should be able to carry individual pieces through the mana pool and set it up on the islets, but it's too much of a job for the few of us who remain at camp.

Finally, I might need some assistance getting Ardyn off the island when we get a little closer to time.

-Asch

[Feel free to also use this as a jumping-off point for action responses involving tearing down said tent and moving everything. Eventually, said giant tent will be re-erected on the islets, but right now the focus is on moving stuff. Asch isn't likely to really stick around to scribble on the rock, he's got too much to do.]

Comments

[scourgingstars]

If he thinks himself so much smarter than Bahamut, then long enough for none of you to have to deal with me.

[bloodyashes]

Right, because you'll have so many stories to tell down there. Lots of incredible fish corpse gossip.

[Monsun's desert makes him more emotionally open, which occasionally makes him even more of a snarky little shit of a teen. Back under the tent he goes.]

[scourgingstars]

And it would be so preferable to everyone's next stories being 'so that's how Ardyn killed me because he's an abundance of anger issues and no idea how else to express them.'

you've ruined me for not using bold text you goddamn airlocks

[bloodyashes]

You were here for a couple of your months before this island even opened up, weren't you?

[AKA you being a ball of anger issues isn't actually a new thing.]

How many people did you actually kill in that time>?

oops

[scourgingstars]

Do you wish to know why I haven't? Because, quite simply, the fact that death is as meaningless to all of you as it is to me makes it not worth the effort.

Now think about what would happen if I were to change my mind on that stance. If I were to be so furious that I simply decided to kill one or perhaps several people again and again whenever they came back?

[His voice dropped somewhat, to a tone of frigid gravity.]

Do you know what it feels like, to die in almost every imaginable way one after another? Have you any conceptof what it feels like to resurrect from being impaled on a sword only to instead be shot? To recover from that only to be hanged, or burned at the stake, or crucified?

It's not an ideal way to spend one's time. And I don't wish to decide that casually murdering anyone repeatedly is a decent cure for boredom.

[bloodyashes]

And yet at the end of the day, you still haven't.

[He doesn't laugh off Ardyn's words. He treats them with the respect they're due, closing his eyes. His hand rises, slowly, to press into his chest - to the place where, Ardyn might by now have seen, one of those impaling blades left its mark.]

I don't know what it feels like. I won't try to claim to. But you do. And before you launch off again into claiming that the normal you doesn't understand compassion and that the you here doesn't exist anywhere else, that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm not saying that you care about others. I'm saying that you do not like to see them suffer to no purpose - do not like, not dislike. You get no enjoyment from it.

[Even beyond being nominally incapable of enjoyment. Asch continues to choose his words specifically and carefully, speaking slowly in that way that indicates that someone is putting a lot of thought into what they're saying.]

I don't know about your anger and what that might cause you to do. But I think that we can say that you starting a slaughter from sheer boredom is off the table. If you haven't done it yet, that's not likely to change.