[ Matt, as has been noted elsewhere, looks half awake right now. But he wanted to be here, both to reassure his coworkers that he's fine, and to see how exactly this is all meant to end with the Innocence. Initially, he wasn't sure it was possible to kill something like this being, which he had construed as a god of sorts; now he's not so sure. Certainly the concept brings him no pleasure. Maybe it should make Matt happy, or at least relieved, to see someone who tried to destroy him in such straits. But regarding Estinien's body--half-consumed by darkness, battered and impaled, but with lungs still bellowing air and heart stubbornly beating--produces a horror in Matt that verges on nausea. At the same time, he can't help wondering: What's going to happen? What tactic will the Regent take to destroy the Innocence? Curiosity thrills in him, curling fitfully in his stomach and extending tendrils to the tip ends of his missing fingers.
It's not as if this gathering is wholly without its pleasures. Matt is fascinated, astounded, to look around the cavernous room and pick out his fellow Kenoma: by gradients of darkness, by Legacy. He can't articulate why he feels the way he does. Like nearly all intuition, his conclusions come as if from far beyond himself, divorced from whatever evidence may have prompted them. For the moment, he simply observes, trying to catalog his thoughts and feelings as they come.
Aris, his retainer, has done a frankly incredible job of dressing him given the timeframe. Matt's usual black boots are accompanied by slim navy trousers and a grayish-blue shirt, dazzled with a constellation of smoky beads. Its sleeves are a bit shorter than Matt's usual, exposing both the bare stump at his left wrist and the dark band around his right. Matt woke up with it still in place, so whatever his blank-check promise to the Regent entails, death wasn't the answer.
For the moment, Matt sips from a glass of wine. All he can do is watch and wait. ]
opennnnn
It's not as if this gathering is wholly without its pleasures. Matt is fascinated, astounded, to look around the cavernous room and pick out his fellow Kenoma: by gradients of darkness, by Legacy. He can't articulate why he feels the way he does. Like nearly all intuition, his conclusions come as if from far beyond himself, divorced from whatever evidence may have prompted them. For the moment, he simply observes, trying to catalog his thoughts and feelings as they come.
Aris, his retainer, has done a frankly incredible job of dressing him given the timeframe. Matt's usual black boots are accompanied by slim navy trousers and a grayish-blue shirt, dazzled with a constellation of smoky beads. Its sleeves are a bit shorter than Matt's usual, exposing both the bare stump at his left wrist and the dark band around his right. Matt woke up with it still in place, so whatever his blank-check promise to the Regent entails, death wasn't the answer.
For the moment, Matt sips from a glass of wine. All he can do is watch and wait. ]