✶ imeeji: memory
Apr. 9th, 2021 06:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Sometimes the only way to protect the ones you love is to take a stand. To refuse to suffer in silence.
Alea Iacta Est
Summary
✶ Alisaie, along with Alphinaud, the Warrior of Light and Julius, a young Garlean officer, arrive back at the subway station at Tertium - the current headquarters of what remains of the Garlean 1st Legion, who are holding all three of them captive - following an expedition to collect ceruleum in the ruins of the Imperial capital. They are greeted by Legatus Quintus van Cinna, who orders that the ceruleum they have found will be used not to keep the refugees sheltering in the station warm, but to fuel the 1st's surviving Magitek armor.
✶ Declaring that the time for action is upon them, Quintus hustles his men into the subway train serving as his office, leaving Alisaie and her friends on the platform, under strict orders not to move. Anxious and shivering, they can do nothing but watch and wait, painfully aware the refugees they hoped to help will after all face another freezing night without fuel.
✶ When he re-emerges with his troops, Julius informs Alisaie and Alphinaud that they are to be taken to an undisclosed location, and remain with the 1st as their prisoners. They will only be released once the Alliance surrender their supplies and provisions and leave Garlean soil. Alisaie is furious; Alphinaud fears for the Alliance; the Warrior of Light seems poised to strike - when a plainly distressed Julius threatens to trigger the magitek collars both twins wear around their throats. Thinking better of risking their safety, the Warrior of Light reassures them, before they are led away by the soldiers.
✶ Alisaie and Alphinaud are imprisoned together inside a sealed storeroom. It's even colder in here than in Tertium, and (after venting her frustrations by kicking the door a few times) Alisaie reluctantly submits to huddling next to Alphinaud to stay warm.
✶ With nothing to do now but talk, Alisaie confesses that she has been thinking about why nobody would accept Garlean rule: Quintus, along with Emperor Varis, felt that unity under a single standard would be the only way to rid the world of the Ascians. She feels that there would be no place in such a world for anyone who didn't live up to Garlean standards of perfection and purity - and it's frustratingly similar to the worldview espoused by her father and the Forum in Sharlayan, protecting its own values at the cost of everyone and everything that didn't fit in. She feels both Qunitus, Varis and her father have placed too much faith in following the values that were handed down to them, never questioning them enough to find their own.
✶ Alphinaud wonders if the worldview of their elders is too reductive - that they see life as a series of problems to be solved, and people as things to be categorized, and defined by those categories. Alisaie asks if he thinks that, and Alphinaud says no - not any more, at least. He now considers his younger self quite aggressively ignorant, learning to look beyond banners and politics and to appreciate exactly how difficult it is to truly build a better world.
✶ Alisaie wishes that their father could look beyond his avowed pacifism and understand that theirs is a cause worth fighting for. She is unsurprised he could not change Alphinaud's mind, though, and assures him that she stands behind him totally, and has found her own reason to fight. Alphinaud, she says, will be the one to lead the way in the fight against the Telophori. Even if people think them fools for trying, it's easy to criticise earnest efforts while offering no solutions, only scorn. Alphinaud is stubborn and strong and more of both than he realizes, and she'll be there to catch him when he falls, or just perhaps give him a thick ear. Maybe both.
✶ They fall briefly back into silence, only for the sound of the door opening to startle them out of it. The sight that greets them is a welcome one - the figure of Estinien Wyrmblood, stood over the unconscious Garlean soldier who was guarding the door.
✶ Freed by Estinien and his scouts, who have disarmed and removed the magitek collars, Alisaie and Alphinaud are informed that the Garlean 10th legion, who Quintus was relying on to retake the capitol, are in rout. Faced with mass desertions from their conscripted soldiers, they have admitted defeat and petitioned Alliance leaders for aid. This, coupled with their own escape, has swung the situation back in the Alliance's favor. The twins hurry back to Tertium, hoping that they can still convince Quintus to agree to a parlay, only to discover on their arrival that he committed suicide mere moments before.
Notes
✶ This may seem like quite a strange and heavy discussion for two teenagers being held captive in a storeroom. On the other hand, for siblings raised in the scholar society of Sharlayan, it may well also be surprisingly comforting to sit down and talk about ideas instead of the realities of their situation, about which they can do very little.
✶ Though he would deny it until his dying day, Estinien Wyrmblood is shaped like a friend and he knows it.
✶ The player-character Warrior of Light, who accompanies Alisaie, is seen as a humanoid shape made up of blinding white light surrounded by a rainbow corona, of indeterminate age, race and gender. None of their individual features are discernible, and though they can be seen to be speaking their voice cannot be made out.
Sometimes the only way to protect the ones you love is to take a stand. To refuse to suffer in silence.
Alea Iacta Est
Summary
✶ Alisaie, along with Alphinaud, the Warrior of Light and Julius, a young Garlean officer, arrive back at the subway station at Tertium - the current headquarters of what remains of the Garlean 1st Legion, who are holding all three of them captive - following an expedition to collect ceruleum in the ruins of the Imperial capital. They are greeted by Legatus Quintus van Cinna, who orders that the ceruleum they have found will be used not to keep the refugees sheltering in the station warm, but to fuel the 1st's surviving Magitek armor.
✶ Declaring that the time for action is upon them, Quintus hustles his men into the subway train serving as his office, leaving Alisaie and her friends on the platform, under strict orders not to move. Anxious and shivering, they can do nothing but watch and wait, painfully aware the refugees they hoped to help will after all face another freezing night without fuel.
✶ When he re-emerges with his troops, Julius informs Alisaie and Alphinaud that they are to be taken to an undisclosed location, and remain with the 1st as their prisoners. They will only be released once the Alliance surrender their supplies and provisions and leave Garlean soil. Alisaie is furious; Alphinaud fears for the Alliance; the Warrior of Light seems poised to strike - when a plainly distressed Julius threatens to trigger the magitek collars both twins wear around their throats. Thinking better of risking their safety, the Warrior of Light reassures them, before they are led away by the soldiers.
✶ Alisaie and Alphinaud are imprisoned together inside a sealed storeroom. It's even colder in here than in Tertium, and (after venting her frustrations by kicking the door a few times) Alisaie reluctantly submits to huddling next to Alphinaud to stay warm.
✶ With nothing to do now but talk, Alisaie confesses that she has been thinking about why nobody would accept Garlean rule: Quintus, along with Emperor Varis, felt that unity under a single standard would be the only way to rid the world of the Ascians. She feels that there would be no place in such a world for anyone who didn't live up to Garlean standards of perfection and purity - and it's frustratingly similar to the worldview espoused by her father and the Forum in Sharlayan, protecting its own values at the cost of everyone and everything that didn't fit in. She feels both Qunitus, Varis and her father have placed too much faith in following the values that were handed down to them, never questioning them enough to find their own.
✶ Alphinaud wonders if the worldview of their elders is too reductive - that they see life as a series of problems to be solved, and people as things to be categorized, and defined by those categories. Alisaie asks if he thinks that, and Alphinaud says no - not any more, at least. He now considers his younger self quite aggressively ignorant, learning to look beyond banners and politics and to appreciate exactly how difficult it is to truly build a better world.
✶ Alisaie wishes that their father could look beyond his avowed pacifism and understand that theirs is a cause worth fighting for. She is unsurprised he could not change Alphinaud's mind, though, and assures him that she stands behind him totally, and has found her own reason to fight. Alphinaud, she says, will be the one to lead the way in the fight against the Telophori. Even if people think them fools for trying, it's easy to criticise earnest efforts while offering no solutions, only scorn. Alphinaud is stubborn and strong and more of both than he realizes, and she'll be there to catch him when he falls, or just perhaps give him a thick ear. Maybe both.
✶ They fall briefly back into silence, only for the sound of the door opening to startle them out of it. The sight that greets them is a welcome one - the figure of Estinien Wyrmblood, stood over the unconscious Garlean soldier who was guarding the door.
✶ Freed by Estinien and his scouts, who have disarmed and removed the magitek collars, Alisaie and Alphinaud are informed that the Garlean 10th legion, who Quintus was relying on to retake the capitol, are in rout. Faced with mass desertions from their conscripted soldiers, they have admitted defeat and petitioned Alliance leaders for aid. This, coupled with their own escape, has swung the situation back in the Alliance's favor. The twins hurry back to Tertium, hoping that they can still convince Quintus to agree to a parlay, only to discover on their arrival that he committed suicide mere moments before.
Notes
✶ This may seem like quite a strange and heavy discussion for two teenagers being held captive in a storeroom. On the other hand, for siblings raised in the scholar society of Sharlayan, it may well also be surprisingly comforting to sit down and talk about ideas instead of the realities of their situation, about which they can do very little.
✶ Though he would deny it until his dying day, Estinien Wyrmblood is shaped like a friend and he knows it.
✶ The player-character Warrior of Light, who accompanies Alisaie, is seen as a humanoid shape made up of blinding white light surrounded by a rainbow corona, of indeterminate age, race and gender. None of their individual features are discernible, and though they can be seen to be speaking their voice cannot be made out.