23rd metal . CTS spam
[ It's after Cassel's announcement that Zane can be found in the CTS.
The scene is medieval - or, ancient, anyway. Armor, swords, horses. A battle. As the door out of the CTS closes behind him, they surround him, weapons braced. He blinks back anguished emotion, and tosses back a vial of metals, and touches steel, pewter.
He launches into the air, and the fight begins.
There are hundreds of them, and only one of him: and yet. He slaughters them. He uses the metal they carry to Push and Pull himself; he is always faster, always stronger, and he is the utter picture of grace.
He kills them all.
And when they are dead, the bright green hill of a battlefield strewn with corpses, he goes into the forest. Braces himself against one tree and flings metal at another, a thud-thud of swords, knives, shields whipping and burying themselves into the bark. He Pushes, and Pushes, until finally the tree splinters and collapses, crashing slowly and mightily into the ground.
He keeps destroying the trees, over and over, until someone interrupts - or another army shows up. ]
The scene is medieval - or, ancient, anyway. Armor, swords, horses. A battle. As the door out of the CTS closes behind him, they surround him, weapons braced. He blinks back anguished emotion, and tosses back a vial of metals, and touches steel, pewter.
He launches into the air, and the fight begins.
There are hundreds of them, and only one of him: and yet. He slaughters them. He uses the metal they carry to Push and Pull himself; he is always faster, always stronger, and he is the utter picture of grace.
He kills them all.
And when they are dead, the bright green hill of a battlefield strewn with corpses, he goes into the forest. Braces himself against one tree and flings metal at another, a thud-thud of swords, knives, shields whipping and burying themselves into the bark. He Pushes, and Pushes, until finally the tree splinters and collapses, crashing slowly and mightily into the ground.
He keeps destroying the trees, over and over, until someone interrupts - or another army shows up. ]
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So empathy is more important to you than power.
[Strictly delineated though it is.]
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[It is. And this surprises him a little.]
But power is part of empathy - the people who understand the most are like Cassel, who have been used for power.
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That's pretty normal? Caring way more easily about people who are like you, I mean.
Empathizing with people who aren't like you is hard. I mean, it's important. But it's hard.
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[That's the trick to it, the terrible essential thing: people are people. And that makes them more similar than they seem.]
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They were just the same, my father and the people who burned me. Scared and harsh the same way. For me the trouble wasn't knowing that people are all basically people just the same.
[She thinks about something she said to Cassel once, joking and not joking: that she could care and not care at the same time, that it was her superpower. And she could, before. She could empathize and understand people right down to their marrow, know the tender whys knotted at the core of them, and use that knowledge and wall the implications of it up in a little oubliette inside her and hate them and use them and kill them anyway. Her walls have been crumbling for awhile and she is - mostly - glad of it.]
The hard part was believing that anyone anywhere deserved even a smidgen of kindness.
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Less how?
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...I never considered that people could be good.
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[Well, mostly.]
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