LOREN
When Phoebe snapped at him Loren realized he might’ve gone a bit too far this time. ”You’re right, I did. I’m sorry.” Hopefully that would appease her, but if not he was perfectly capable of groveling a bit more: he’d left his pride behind when he disappeared, it seemed. ”Well, was the goddess alone at the Spire or was someone else there? If there were other people, or beings, maybe interacting with one of them caused the blight to spread?” It wasn’t obvious at all to the summoner that the goddess simply approaching the Spire had infected her, especially given that there was still so much they didn’t know. There were too many variables in the experiment, so to speak, not that he knew that type of language.Phoebe was stubborn and angry, but Loren was just as, if not more persistent, and had a lot of experience lately dealing with mad people. It helped that she wasn’t mad at him specifically. ”Right, but the blight hardly acts much like a normal disease, does it? At least, from everything I’ve heard that seems to be the case. Few diseases impact plants, animals, and people in the same manner, and none I know impact goddesses. And just because the Ascended are immune doesn’t mean The Voice is.” At least, he didn’t know that for sure and he would be curious to find out if the healer had that information and how.
Loren decided to try to switch up his argument a bit, since Phoebe seemed totally blind to her bias here. ”Let’s consider something. What if The Voice was tinkering with Ascended fluid in the Spire during those 300 years, trying to improve it. What if it made a mistake, in its arrogance, and created something that even it could not control, and it was consumed by it?” That allowed for the malevolence of The Voice—which the healer seemed adamant about—while still suggesting that it might not be solely responsible for the outbreak. He tilted his head at the healer’s last comment. ”How does it spread anyway?” No one seemed totally sure about that, so her firm stance that contaminants on the Ascended were to blame seemed quite a leap.
A beggar's book
outworths
a noble's blood
