who we are and all that we're trying to be
He listened to her, Safrin, a god, despite his constant, consuming irreverence, despite the agonizing way in which the world had ensured he was ignored. She didn’t glide away from him, however, even as she started to waver, and he thought it so odd, so strange, to see an omniscient being weakened. Because of them? But it wasn’t the Spire itself, not the stone, not the marble, not the ruins curling and crawling up towards the sky; what is inside, who is inside…
His first thoughts were measured towards the plants; their odd colors, their poisonous distinction, how he’d pressed into their existence with deadly incantations and they’d done the same right back to him. Vai had even blistered with her fire, and the result had crushed, blistered, and simmered against his flesh; was it more than those bestial things? It was the who portion that truly concerned him – because what else lurked within those threads? The serpent Jigano had mentioned? Or more, more, more – and were they doomed to reenter that hellhole again?
Then she flickered, like the stars, waning and faltering, only a glowing outline of ethereal, otherworldly incantations in the end. He nodded towards her, uncertain of anything else to say, unworthy and undeserving; but grateful just the same.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
