At first I nod, happy enough to accept his reformulation. Quickly though, I shake it. My head that is. "There are no new truths, just ones that are. Truths do not change, and here of course I do not mean personal truths, or truths about feelings or anything so unimportant. There are truths that we might discover, but that does not make them new. Truths that perhaps never been before, but again, they are not new, they simply are."
I nod. "Yes. But there is no truth to this process. There are the facts that correspond to where she is in her testing, how successful she has been thus far and so on. But there is no truth here to be discovered."
"Allies to perhaps remember you, when you are gone?" I ask. It is something like a joke.
"The only difficulty is that it would need to be a mobile trap. You could not, for example, dig a pit near the spire to trap it, for it would attack long before more than a few shovel-fills had been removed."
I shake my head. I too have had this thought. "If she could exercise control over it, she would have. That she has not leads me to believe that she can't, or that she does not wish to. If the latter is the case, nothing I or any one of us can say will change her mind."
For a moment I pause, unsure how much more to reveal. He is one of them after all. One who would wish to keep us in this place, if he is at all inclined to side with those to whom his race owes its allegiance. "I know the answer to your questions. I know what the creature is and what it was, and how it came to guard the Spire. But I am not inclined to reveal that information. Whatever you are, accepted, attuned, abandoned, you are not one of us. I mean that less in terms of scoping out lines to stand behind, and more to indicate that our priorities differ. And this information is indeed powerful.
So let me ask you this. You have indicated some of your goals and how you will go about achieving them. But what in the short term? Will you stay here, beneath the bubble? Will you seek to break free? You know why we are closed, what thoughts have you on that? That we are an evil to the world, meant to be detained. Would you so readily help us out?"
I nod. "Yes. But there is no truth to this process. There are the facts that correspond to where she is in her testing, how successful she has been thus far and so on. But there is no truth here to be discovered."
"Allies to perhaps remember you, when you are gone?" I ask. It is something like a joke.
"The only difficulty is that it would need to be a mobile trap. You could not, for example, dig a pit near the spire to trap it, for it would attack long before more than a few shovel-fills had been removed."
I shake my head. I too have had this thought. "If she could exercise control over it, she would have. That she has not leads me to believe that she can't, or that she does not wish to. If the latter is the case, nothing I or any one of us can say will change her mind."
For a moment I pause, unsure how much more to reveal. He is one of them after all. One who would wish to keep us in this place, if he is at all inclined to side with those to whom his race owes its allegiance. "I know the answer to your questions. I know what the creature is and what it was, and how it came to guard the Spire. But I am not inclined to reveal that information. Whatever you are, accepted, attuned, abandoned, you are not one of us. I mean that less in terms of scoping out lines to stand behind, and more to indicate that our priorities differ. And this information is indeed powerful.
So let me ask you this. You have indicated some of your goals and how you will go about achieving them. But what in the short term? Will you stay here, beneath the bubble? Will you seek to break free? You know why we are closed, what thoughts have you on that? That we are an evil to the world, meant to be detained. Would you so readily help us out?"
