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[blackfire]

// うちは

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[blackfire]

（ this response comes several days late. he has not so much as checked his earpiece, and has no desire to be involved with the discussions happening on the network, so the fact that her concern seems to reference context he has paid no mind to means he spends further time tabbing back through various postings.

finally: ）

Have you been in war, Sabriel-san?

[bindsthedead]

The closest thing I've experienced was Scorpion's Bend- that's the only site of mass death I've visited that didn't have wards set up on it.

And I've felt groups of people die at once, but never that many

[And Sabriel's not even sure how she's going to react to an actual battle- something with far more people involved than any of the fights previous missions have involved.]

[blackfire]

Can you ward yourself against it?

[bindsthedead]

No. There's no spell to take that sense away, like there is for the others. Feeling it is my natural state of being- I can dull it down, like how you can try to focus on anything but a particular sound, but that doesn't shut it off completely.

[blackfire]

I see.

Then the coming weeks may be difficult for you.

[bindsthedead]

I'm trying to brace for it, and hope the consequences of what I did last mission will work in my favor for once.

Maybe there's still a way to stop it though.

[blackfire]

Oh?

[bindsthedead]

Entr'i wants to assassinate the Highest One, take both orbs, and use them to merge the worlds. If Taeum and Sedorum are unified before the war starts... There would be far less bloodshed.

The problem is that the one in charge of Sedorum wants her to kill the Highest One in battle, so his minion can attack her in the aftermath, take both orbs to Him.

Entr'i's been warned about this, but I don't know what will happen.

[blackfire]

Do you trust her? Entri'i.

[bindsthedead]

Yes. She'd never showed anything but concern for the suffering of the people in Sedorum, and she was willing to turn her back on Taeum and everything there to do what she felt was right.

[blackfire]

Have you been able to learn anything of Giva?

[bindsthedead]

Only by implication. It's clear that it's not technologically advanced, but that there is still a gap between rich and poor.

Have you?

[blackfire]

No.

I have directed my focus towards the military in Taeum.

[bindsthedead]

Let me guess- they're just as eager for a fight as Sedorum, just with better weapons?

[blackfire]

They feel their cause is just, their leader is peerless and the war's outcome already concluded in their favour.

They are not experienced enough with war to know better. It is never that simple or clean.

（ and no one fights harder than those with nothing to lose. ）

[bindsthedead]

Sedorum's confident too, although perhaps not that much. They have more forces, but getting equipment for all of them is a struggle.

I suppose there haven't been any recent wars in Giva, if the souls of soldiers are not appearing on either side.

[She would expect more to show up in Sedorum- for all the rhetoric about honor, glory, and service to country, faith, or some ideology... war is ultimately about killing people. And Giva's standards would need to be seriously warped to consider that anything but a sin.]

It's going to be uglier than either side knows. All I can do is hope that Entr'i's plan works.

[That, or hope that in Giva, the world of the living, necromancy will work and she can impose her will on both sides, force them to stop until Entr'i renders the war irrelevant.

It's a fantasy, but it makes it easier to ignore the surges of Death Death Death from her misfiring senses, and the thoughts about what it would feel like to stand on a battlefield with a thousand deaths echoing in her head.]

[blackfire]

I did not say there are no soldiers.

（ there are about as many as he might expect, all things considered — but that does not mean they are experienced in quite the way he means. ）

Do you think it will?

（ he doesn't trust entri'i, and frankly he is not terribly pleased by how the conversations have gone on the network surrounding the matter, but he is also not remotely interested in debating the finer points of assassination as pertaining to war with her. ）

[bindsthedead]

I do not think she would propose it as openly and consistently as she does if it were a mere idle hope, or she had no idea how to implement it.

But nothing is certain when the orbs are involved, or a war is brewing. And perhaps it is because this world is so unlike my own, but my necromancy is essentially useless in Sedorum- souls are effectively the same as the living, and I cannot access this 'purgatory' people speak of.

It may be different, when the war moves to Giva though.

[blackfire]

Perhaps.

Have you played chess, Sabriel-san?

[bindsthedead]

Not often, but I am familiar with the rules.

[blackfire]

Do you know the pieces well enough to know which you would be represented by on a board?

[bindsthedead]

I know what they do, but that would depend on who was playing, wouldn't it?

But not the king, and aside from him, all pieces are ultimately disposable.

[blackfire]

From the player's perspective, at least.

Less so the pieces themselves.

[bindsthedead]

True enough. And yet the pieces move anyway, to capture the king.

[blackfire]

And a king cannot win a game alone.

（ which means the pieces are only disposable insofar as they enable victory. a king alone on a board can at best only ever be a stalemate. ）

I ask, because the nature of this conflict makes me feel as if we are all being manipulated by some broader design.

（ he doesn't mean, necessarily, that he thinks it's the case here — just that there are elements of that nature in play. ）