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[blackfire]

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[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. ）

[bindsthedead]

More so than any other mission?

There are oddities though- like our groups being separated, unable to communicate. And two orbs this time.

And it may be because this world is so different from my own, but these afterlives do not feel like a natural thing.

[Which is part of what inclines Sabriel to aid Entr'i in her goals, aside from genuine outrage at the unfairness of it all.]

[blackfire]

Natural in what way?

[bindsthedead]

Paying to have your sins absolved strikes me as extremely strange. Some ritual of atonement would not be entirely out of the question, but absolution through money seems like a very human idea, and I would not expect the forces governing death and what happens after to adhere so closely to human expectations.

Death, in my experience, involves the inexplicable and unknown, following arbitrary rules that do not follow human reason.

[blackfire]

I have considered the possibility that the realm exists as a projection — or a reflection — of what the residents of Giva expect of their afterlife.

Depending on the orb's influence, it is difficult to say.

[bindsthedead]

Perhaps- although does this mean that if belief in Giva changed, both realms would be altered? And the people display perceptible thought and emotion, according to Blue.

We have seen the orbs tamper with the forces of life and death before, just not to this extent. Unfortunately the rulers of both Taeum and Sedorum refuse to show their faces.

[And if anyone in either realm knows the truth, it's them.]

[blackfire]

If I am correct, the place was very likely static from its inception onward. I do not believe it can be changed through evolving beliefs — likely only action from the orbs.

Which I suppose may occur as a result of Entri'i's actions, if it goes according to her plan.

[bindsthedead]

You're probably right- we don't have full records, but as far back as anyone can recall, the status quo was firmly in place.

I hope it does.