The mermanta considered the Warden across the table, emerald eyes resting with a quiet contemplation on the questions he asked. Learning as much from the words that were chosen for those queries as he did from the answers he received in response to his own. What conclusions he drew he kept to himself, bending his sparing speech to satisfying the Resurrected Sword's curiosity instead.
"If I chose your path instead of Ronin's, would that free me from her hatreds?" he asked in return, sincerely inquisitive in how much distance Deimos had gained in his choice to remain apart. "When the War came, were you given a choice to remain in Halo and protect your home and loved ones?" A choice Ronin certainly had not been given. But how deep did Deimos's independence truly run? Therein lay the crux of the difference between the two options Safrin had presented him with.
The next question drew a longer pause from the mermanta, a request for information the Mer had not shared with landwalkers... perhaps ever. "We cannot access the wild magic of humans," he rumbled at last. He trusted Evie implicitly, and in turn he would trust his best friend's choice in husband to keep his people's weaknesses private. "We cannot access most elements. Cannot create items, mundane or magic, except from water and ice." Transient things, especially in Torchline's heat. "Much of our magic exists to entice humans into the water, and little more." Weak emotional influences, far less powerful than Hotaru's compulsion magic. Glamour that was less than skin deep. Granting temporary water-breathing to humans, for far less time than a cloudmanta crystal could provide. "The spells of greatest use I have already mastered. Water manipulation. The calling of storms. Aquaportation." A lift of his shoulders in a shrug that was small but held an ocean straining at the bonds and limits placed upon it.
Could a human, possessed of boundless potential since birth - or at least able to unlock it by attuning to or becoming cursed by the gods; if not both, as Deimos had done - understand what it was like, to be so limited?
But the question of time, so precious and so fleeting, a resource that Torchline would seem to have less of than other regions given the moon-island intruding in its waters unaware of machinations occurring in Stormbreak and elsewhere, hung even more heavily over the mermanta's head. He nodded agreement to the Warden's understanding of a question that only Safrin could answer, leaving that mystery between them settled as one neither of them could answer.
"If I chose your path instead of Ronin's, would that free me from her hatreds?" he asked in return, sincerely inquisitive in how much distance Deimos had gained in his choice to remain apart. "When the War came, were you given a choice to remain in Halo and protect your home and loved ones?" A choice Ronin certainly had not been given. But how deep did Deimos's independence truly run? Therein lay the crux of the difference between the two options Safrin had presented him with.
The next question drew a longer pause from the mermanta, a request for information the Mer had not shared with landwalkers... perhaps ever. "We cannot access the wild magic of humans," he rumbled at last. He trusted Evie implicitly, and in turn he would trust his best friend's choice in husband to keep his people's weaknesses private. "We cannot access most elements. Cannot create items, mundane or magic, except from water and ice." Transient things, especially in Torchline's heat. "Much of our magic exists to entice humans into the water, and little more." Weak emotional influences, far less powerful than Hotaru's compulsion magic. Glamour that was less than skin deep. Granting temporary water-breathing to humans, for far less time than a cloudmanta crystal could provide. "The spells of greatest use I have already mastered. Water manipulation. The calling of storms. Aquaportation." A lift of his shoulders in a shrug that was small but held an ocean straining at the bonds and limits placed upon it.
Could a human, possessed of boundless potential since birth - or at least able to unlock it by attuning to or becoming cursed by the gods; if not both, as Deimos had done - understand what it was like, to be so limited?
But the question of time, so precious and so fleeting, a resource that Torchline would seem to have less of than other regions given the moon-island intruding in its waters unaware of machinations occurring in Stormbreak and elsewhere, hung even more heavily over the mermanta's head. He nodded agreement to the Warden's understanding of a question that only Safrin could answer, leaving that mystery between them settled as one neither of them could answer.
