[OPEN TO KENOMA] EXECUTION OF THE INNOCENT

[aionpcs]

WHO: The Regent and Interested Kenoma
WHAT: As promised, the Regent is carrying out the Innocence Entity's invite-only execution.
WHERE: The Regent's Throne Room.
WHEN: Firaseri 22nd, after dissipated Kenoma have emerged.
WARNINGS: Disturbing imagery, gore, limb loss, general unpleasantness.

It's the evening of the 22nd when the call goes out: it is time for the execution. This is purely an event for the willing and or eager, and besides being informed of it, no Kenoma will be pressured into attending. Those that are interested, however, will be led to the Regent's throne room for what promises to be a very special occasion.

Upon entry, the set up of the throne room will seem quite familiar to those that have been there before. A cavernous room filled with nothing but the throne itself, its emptiness seems an intentional call to the void. Several stairs lead to the dais where the throne sits, currently occupied by a the Regent. As usual, any details about the Regent are obscured behind flowing robes and a faceted mask. Presently, they are swirling around a glass of what is presumably wine, but drinking absolutely none of it. Any Kenoma that seem interested will be offered a drink by one of the Citadel servants on duty.

It's not just the Regent present, however. Off to the right side of the room, an arrangement of familiar void-dark spears have been fused into the wall and floor, with their prisoner still held at their center, pierced from all sides. Estinien Wyrmblood appears as little more than a shadow of his former self at this stage, every ounce of color stripped from him, in sharp contrast to the black ichor that bubbles and drips from a cruel assortment of wounds. One eye is swollen with infection, oozing void, while the other is completely blank with whiteness. Each limb has been shorn down to a stub, as if burned by a dark fire from the outside in; all except a set of ragged, broken wings strung up being him. His torso, pierced as it is, seems to be barely holding onto form.

If he reacts to the arrival of 'guests', it isn't apparent. Instead, he seems practically comatose, all except for that open eye and the shallow movements of his breath. His shard is exposed, resting beneath his collar bones, an eye-like shape that has become similarly colorless. The usual sheen of color that all shards hold has faded away, now showing nothing but the gray of the stone beneath it. Those with True Sight will see that he has fallen to the first tier of Pleroma, and even that he is only tenuously hanging on to.

At their throne, the Regent lifts their glass.

"Welcome, kindred."

Comments

[fightforthejoyofit]

It's likely only that prickle of familiarity that keeps him from dismissing Matt out of hand; it's true. silk can conceal surprisingly sharp daggers (see: Yotsuyu), and the marks are curious, but everything else about the shorter man's bearing suggests they're very different creatures. Zenos, for his part, stands near enough eight foot tall, holds himself like a large cat, his attention intermittently flicking to the Regent, his great-grandfather, and the nearest exit as they converse. He's in his armour (it still bears the scars of the recent conflict, of Syrlya's blade and Wrathion's spellwork, more because he's not had opportunity to fix them than out of a desire to flaunt his meagre participation, such as it was), his blade at his hip (the scythe is more habitual, but... somewhat impractical, for occasions such as this).

"She being the Innocence?" He inclines his head in a curt nod; his features are generally impassive, his default expression one of tedium, but there's no disguising the curl of distaste that thinking about that 'first' manifestation brings to his lip. "I was in Venera, yes. Her death is long overdue."

That much, at least, is genuine, so if the "This is a victory" he tags on afterwards sounds a little like he's trying to convince someone (maybe himself?) that's probably coincidence.

He takes another mouthful of the wine (a more normal one, this time, rather than emptying the glass in a single swallow), gestures to the stump with the half-full glass. Tact has never been his forte, and will inevitably lose to curiosity. "What happened to your hand?"

[semicharmed]

Matt, too, is struggling with how victorious a victory this really is. After what he's seen of the Innocence, what Xishen had told him about how she's less a being and more an amalgamation of traits and energies, it seems impossible that she should really be gone. But if there's a time and place to say that, the Regent's throne room at this exact juncture is ... decidedly not that time or place.

Still, he murmurs agreement over the rim of his glass. At Zenos' question, he stiffens.

Matt should probably start expecting this. In a way, when he's around other people, he always is--buzzing with awareness of what he's lost, shame and awkwardness hanging around him like a miasma. None of it prepares him to answer the question, though.

Part of him thinks, fuck it. He's closer to the Kenoma now than he's ever been, and that's the only force he really needs to impress.

"I cut it off," he answers. (Technically Xishen cut it off, but that wasn't really her decision. She sure as hell didn't suggest it.) "Scrying for the Innocence. I don't know how much it helped or not in the end, but I figured--she hurt so many people, I had to try."

[fightforthejoyofit]

That the Innocence will eventually return Zenos, for his part, considers inevitable (or did, before they felt the full force of the Regent's destructive power, which complicates matters more than a little); it is, to all in intents and purposes, a more powerful Eikon, and all those have ever required to reform is a devout believer and a font of aether. But for the time being it is gone, and that at least is uncomplicatedly to his benefit, given the changes it forced upon him before. Glory Be Kenoma, etcetera.

(It's everything else that he's still figuring out)

And apparently Matt contributed, or tried to contribute, to that uncomplicated good. Presumably it did something, if the limb is still missing; those digits he'd lost himself, shattered into chalky powder resisting the Innocent's attempted transformation, have long since grown back (not an experience he particularly wishes to repeat, but useful information to have given how often he intends to cross blades with the Pleroma). The conviction is impressive, as is the directness of Matt's answer; the both combined earn a slight eyebrow raise of something-like-admiration.

"Is that why you're here?" he asks. Matt does not seem the sort to revel in suffering, especially if what the Innocent did moved him to such measures.

[semicharmed]

Matt feels slightly lightheaded in the wake of this personal revelation (though the wine might help). But fortunately, his fellow Visionary doesn't seem inclined to make a big deal of it. He can't detect any mockery in the other man's expression. No disdain.

After a moment's consideration, he nods.

"I thought I should see it through to the end," he says. "Or the next phase, however you want to think of it."

He pauses a moment, sipping his wine, before venturing: "And, you know ... I don't like the guy at all. He tried to kill me even before he tried to kill like, all of us. But I don't want to see anybody get eaten up by something like that."

[fightforthejoyofit]

He laughs (or, well, not quite laughs; it's a single huff of air, and a flash of teeth, as he glances away to the space Estinien once occupied). "Having sampled that thing's 'Gifts' in Venera I'm inclined to agree. Better for us all, to see it brought low."

Should he take it personally, that he seems to be one of the few Kenomans Estinien hasn't tried to kill? He can only hope it's because his First Friend has staked that claim, though there's a lingering whisper that says no, it's that he's become a very small fish in a pond increasingly full of sharks.

A light shrug, and he glances back to Matt. "Now we wait to see what the Pleroma do next; his loss, and hers, must pain them."

[semicharmed]

"... That's a good point."

Is Matt really just realizing now that the Pleroma might feel a way about Estinien being captured? Yes and no. It's more like the brief hours between waking up below the Citadel and coming here, during which he's begun manifesting new abilities, have only had room for so many thoughts. And most of those have been related to relief that Abel and Himeka are alive.

A relief that mingles with guilt, now. That he tries to quash down around the Regent, worried they'll read his thoughts and find him wanting (again). In the moment, Matt's nose wrinkles in distaste.

"I can see how they'd miss him. Even beyond their personal reasons ... he's formidable." Matt was lucky to get out of his own conflict with Estinien relatively unharmed, but he saw what he did to Kaeya. "But I'd hope the Pleroma aren't mourning the Innocence. They've gotta know she's too dangerous. I mean, she was manifesting again and again, stronger every time. That's not stable."

[fightforthejoyofit]

Matt is not the only one relieved (at Himeka's survival, specifically; from the little they've spoken he still considers Abel to have all Fandaniel's madness and none of the jibbering clown's utility), and on this end at least there is no guilt to it. Perhaps that's foolishness - Meteion's warned him more than once about the perils of courting disfavour, but as he'd said to her then, he's disinclined to take advice on loyalty from a traitor (though the fact he's still talking to said traitor at all probably speaks volumes).

Of course, Matt likely doesn't know any of that.

"Given the stakes if they lose? I imagine they considered the danger an acceptable risk, to wield so potent a weapon against us."

[semicharmed]

Matt's expression sours further as he considers that Zenos' proposition is depressingly likely. Love or hate the Regent, at least they don't pretend to have the moral high ground.

"I would find that pretty disappointing," he murmurs. "I mean, to be fair, I guess I don't really know what they all stand for as a group, apart from 'preserve the status quo.' So it wouldn't really represent hypocrisy per se." Except from Himeka, who seemed to be pretty firmly in camp Helping People, Spreading Love, Saving the World. "I guess maybe anti-authority, which is fair enough. But the first batch of them didn't exactly get a primer on the political situation before they made their choice."

Ah, Matt, how quickly you forget that when you arrived in Horos, you were kidnapped and manhandled by emissaries of the Regent, then spent several weeks convinced they were going to sacrifice you in a blood ritual. Just saying, maybe the Pleroma read the tea leaves there.

[fightforthejoyofit]

"Do you think they'd have chosen differently, if they had?"

Zenos' tone is one of faint, amused scepticism, one eyebrow raising slightly as he regards Matt. His own experience was quite different, coming in the second wave, and from what he's heard from Meteion that first impression was particularly ungentle... but the unmaking of reality-entire is always going to be a hard sell. He remembers Himeka's demand for Proof, and her confusion that anyone would fight for the Regent's promise of a world reborn without it. All a more diplomatic opening salvo would have secured, he's pretty sure, is a higher number of defections the first time that conviction was tested.

[semicharmed]

"I don't know," Matt admits. "They are all pretty stubborn."

Despite himself, his voice is tinged with affection. He shakes his head.

"The only thing that's really come up when I've talked to them, though it's come up a lot, is that they don't want to believe their worlds are gone. They just can't let go of the possibility. And they want things to go back to the way they were, which ..."

A slight shrug.

"I don't know. Maybe it'd be normal if I wanted that too."

[fightforthejoyofit]

"Something about doomed causes and hopeless odds would-be Heroes find impossible to resist, it seems."

There's affection in his tone too, for all he's criticising said Heroes. The sort of gently bemused humour with which one might discuss something stupid-but-adorable their pet did, perhaps.

Matt's last words get a curious headtilt, however. "There's no shame in not missing the time before; some worlds deserve to burn."