[Emet-Selch pauses in the wake of this assessment. Time ticks away, long seconds which are truthfully little more than a drop in a vast ocean.]
...we did. For the sake of those who had placed their faith in us and our plan. How, after all, could the three of us possibly hope to nurture what little remained of our star alone?
[His brow furrows again, fists clenching at his sides.]
Yet what he has not told you is the process. To rejoin one of the shards with the Source requires enormous quantities of aether of a carefully chosen aspect - typically brought about by a cataclysmic, world-changing event. We each developed our own methods of ushering forward such a tipping point, but the results are much the same.
Such an event causes a tear in the Source, through which the reflection's aether is then funneled and absorbed. The shard is destroyed, obliterated, along with all life upon it, and calamity befalls the Source. Destruction for the sake of salvation. Untold carnage. Loss of life and knowledge and culture. Entire empires manipulated into bringing about their own downfall and the destruction of their worlds. Are such acts truly any different from what befell us?
[His eyes turn to the elder Emet-Selch and pin him there, angry and conflicted.]
Should you ask me if such a thing is worth it, there is but one answer. Yet that answer does not excuse your actions, nor what choices you have made given all that you know.
You're right. I do understand your pain, and your loss, and the wretched path you've been set upon, yet our history has twisted you into the very thing you and I refused to become! How?! I told them I would never, ever fall to your level of madness, and yet here you--!
[Emet-Selch cuts himself off, his eyes widening in shock and confusion. Told them? Told who? When precisely was this? It's the oddest notion, but he could practically swear that he has been in a position much like this one at least once before.]
1/2
...we did. For the sake of those who had placed their faith in us and our plan. How, after all, could the three of us possibly hope to nurture what little remained of our star alone?
[His brow furrows again, fists clenching at his sides.]
Yet what he has not told you is the process. To rejoin one of the shards with the Source requires enormous quantities of aether of a carefully chosen aspect - typically brought about by a cataclysmic, world-changing event. We each developed our own methods of ushering forward such a tipping point, but the results are much the same.
Such an event causes a tear in the Source, through which the reflection's aether is then funneled and absorbed. The shard is destroyed, obliterated, along with all life upon it, and calamity befalls the Source. Destruction for the sake of salvation. Untold carnage. Loss of life and knowledge and culture. Entire empires manipulated into bringing about their own downfall and the destruction of their worlds. Are such acts truly any different from what befell us?
[His eyes turn to the elder Emet-Selch and pin him there, angry and conflicted.]
Should you ask me if such a thing is worth it, there is but one answer. Yet that answer does not excuse your actions, nor what choices you have made given all that you know.
You're right. I do understand your pain, and your loss, and the wretched path you've been set upon, yet our history has twisted you into the very thing you and I refused to become! How?! I told them I would never, ever fall to your level of madness, and yet here you--!
[Emet-Selch cuts himself off, his eyes widening in shock and confusion. Told them? Told who? When precisely was this? It's the oddest notion, but he could practically swear that he has been in a position much like this one at least once before.]
[Yet he can't remember it. Or can he?]