['Alike...?? he wonders to himself. 'Spare the other?']
[Well, perhaps.]
[Emet-Selch meets that steady blue gaze, but for the moment, he says nothing. After all, his experiences, too, are markedly different. Where they had feared losing themselves, he instead had been left to watch as those around him began to wane, piece by piece chipping away until naught but duty remained.]
[His had been the burden of remembering. Family, friends, loved ones, names and faces all... as they began to slip from Lahabrea and Elidibus's grasp, Emet-Selch had taken the burden upon his own shoulders. His nightmare had been the heavy, ceaseless plod of time, the fear of failure, cracking beneath the weight of such precious cargo; losing them. Losing everything where those he held dear already had. And oh he had mourned each minute detail as it sifted through his fingers, his vision a final bastion for them all. He had held the hopes and the dreams, and the despairs of many, empowered by the fallen souls of their people.]
[Like them, he too had felt a pull urging him ever forward, bound by duty and cognizant of Zodiark's will. But not quite in the way they describe. This choir of which they speak he will never know as intimately as they do. To him, that song is synonymous with the voice of their Dark Lord.]
no subject
[Well, perhaps.]
[Emet-Selch meets that steady blue gaze, but for the moment, he says nothing. After all, his experiences, too, are markedly different. Where they had feared losing themselves, he instead had been left to watch as those around him began to wane, piece by piece chipping away until naught but duty remained.]
[His had been the burden of remembering. Family, friends, loved ones, names and faces all... as they began to slip from Lahabrea and Elidibus's grasp, Emet-Selch had taken the burden upon his own shoulders. His nightmare had been the heavy, ceaseless plod of time, the fear of failure, cracking beneath the weight of such precious cargo; losing them. Losing everything where those he held dear already had. And oh he had mourned each minute detail as it sifted through his fingers, his vision a final bastion for them all. He had held the hopes and the dreams, and the despairs of many, empowered by the fallen souls of their people.]
[Like them, he too had felt a pull urging him ever forward, bound by duty and cognizant of Zodiark's will. But not quite in the way they describe. This choir of which they speak he will never know as intimately as they do. To him, that song is synonymous with the voice of their Dark Lord.]
....