If my judgement is being influenced, it is only by the poison that was forced into me.
[He can feel the slippery touch of the Kenoma’s infection staining his thoughts, turning even the fondest of his memories of home bittersweet. He knows that he hadn’t thought of his world as being corrupt beyond saving during the six-score stretch of years he’d dwelled there. Why would he swear his service to the princess’s cause in order to see her win the war for Taldor’s crown, if not because he believed in what she would bring about?
Except now it seems more like a hopeless effort against his country’s slow but inexorable slide toward fading opulence and degeneracy. He knows perfectly well that Taldor has been a den of decadence and corruption for much longer than even he has been alive, obsessed with its own millennia-long history of power and glory. He’d thought that Princess Eutropia would usher his tarnished antique of a country into the modern age, but he knows in his heart that there will always be men like Pythareus clutching onto power, and onto the past with it.
He clutches his branded hand into a fist, his nails digging into the scar on his palm.]
And if anything, I am even less inclined to trust in your words now than I was before. You are right that I haven’t met the Regent—but I was never given the option to, and my forging, as you put it, is already underway. My choice has never been a necessary part of this process.
no subject
[He can feel the slippery touch of the Kenoma’s infection staining his thoughts, turning even the fondest of his memories of home bittersweet. He knows that he hadn’t thought of his world as being corrupt beyond saving during the six-score stretch of years he’d dwelled there. Why would he swear his service to the princess’s cause in order to see her win the war for Taldor’s crown, if not because he believed in what she would bring about?
Except now it seems more like a hopeless effort against his country’s slow but inexorable slide toward fading opulence and degeneracy. He knows perfectly well that Taldor has been a den of decadence and corruption for much longer than even he has been alive, obsessed with its own millennia-long history of power and glory. He’d thought that Princess Eutropia would usher his tarnished antique of a country into the modern age, but he knows in his heart that there will always be men like Pythareus clutching onto power, and onto the past with it.
He clutches his branded hand into a fist, his nails digging into the scar on his palm.]
And if anything, I am even less inclined to trust in your words now than I was before. You are right that I haven’t met the Regent—but I was never given the option to, and my forging, as you put it, is already underway. My choice has never been a necessary part of this process.