cancry | Superbia Intro Log

It would have been a terrible loss had we had to leave you.

[...Oh actually maybe he should say-]

You're sitting on the white side of the board. Traditionally white goes first.

I would have been quite beside myself, I assure you.

[He carefully traced the edge of the board with a feather-light touch that ghosted over the arranged pieces on his side, drawing out the image in his head as meticulously as he was able. After some thought, he slid a pawn forward without lifting it off the board--the quiet sound in its wake like a bookmark in his head.]

...It's worth a try, if you're willing to humor me as an opponent.

So long as you take no issue with me occasionally fixing your pieces.

...I used to be quite good. I wonder if time and death have rusted me. [obviously we're not gonna pretend we know shit for shit about how good chess is played but he definitely slides a piece, just to mirror Phoenix] As they have rusted away everything else we are.

I'm not sure if I was any good or not. I think I've at least a handle on the rules, though I doubt I will be much challenge.

[It wasn't really about the game itself. He had a feeling they both could use the company, and could stand to remind himself that Chiron was Chiron.]

...Rust can be cleared away, with a bit of effort and patience. Perhaps we may yet even find something better beneath it.

[you know how they also say shit like 'rook to e4', they're doing that too just. bc he blind okay. fuck if i know how it works I just move the pieces fam]

Ah...it's the something better that worries me, I fear.

[Which is a shift. It was the something worse that had him wrapped up in a fervor before.]

[neither of us know what we're doing it's fine]

Is it? Whyever might that be?

...The idea that I used to be better before I was worse. Would it not be easier to simply assume I was some thing that did what it did to you the whole time, rather than a man who lost what made him man?

...

[One tiny piece in an enormous puzzle slid easily into place, and Phoenix found he wasn't happy about that at all.]

Not at all. In fact, I would be relieved. Is it not a good thing to realize you already held the capacity to be better, rather than learning you were made to be terrible and had to learn to be otherwise here of all places?

I don't...know the in-between. I still don't know what happened to make me think I was so in the right, to do what I did. I don't know what the purpose was. The dying took away what I once knew, and I'm not sure how much more I want to learn.

You all seem to generally like me as...me.

[...Part of him wanted to come right out and say it immediately, but that would have been unwise. Phoenix was still stringing together what felt like years of memory, of dust and stone and things meant to have been lost forever--speaking of everything at the slightest provocation would have been careless at best. He wasn't even sure if admitting to what little he knew would help or harm the matter.]

Despite what I'm sure you must think, I consider you my friend--I like 'Chiron' a great deal, in fact.

But that's just what I mean. You like me here, as I am, and the more I learn, the more I see what I was, the more...that I am not so certain how much of this Chiron version of me will remain. What happens if this all just repeats, where I am a good man who turns into a monster?

[Pausing with his hand resting on one of his knights, Phoenix thought that over. Even with the endless amount of things he didn't know, what he did made the answer seem simple.]

I wouldn't allow that. [A brief, decisive motion of the piece on the board.] Neither would Achilles, or Mona, or any other of our number.

One's most drastic courses of action transpire when they perceive themselves on a precipice with nowhere else to go. [A small, but perhaps pointed, adjusting of his sunglasses.] To have others at hand willing to pull one back from such measures is in itself a considerable guard against taking paths one is unwilling to follow.

[If anyone else had been with him in that long-forgotten destroyed city, maybe the person Phoenix used to be wouldn't have set himself ablaze in desperation. If someone in those lost histories had protected their protector, perhaps Chiron wouldn't agonize over this before him now.]

...And yet, I had people.

[Well. His brother didn't really count after a certain point, he supposed.]

Achilles would tell me not to jump to conclusions. He would be right. But it's...difficult to deal with some of what I learn.

I'm sure you did. [Knew it for a fact, even.] I wouldn't dismiss that, to be clear. But now you have people as well as benefit of shreds of hindsight, however faint.

Each of us is...contending as best we can with what we have. Some perhaps have a more difficult task ahead than others. But I have no reason to believe we will fail to assist one another, if and when a dire situation demands it of us.

It won't matter to you if I look not unlike a disconcerting monster. Others might hold a different opinion. [chiron i promise they wont give a shit actually]

Did you...come into more knowledge of yourself, recently?

I seriously doubt that, but you're right in that I wouldn't very well know the difference.

[Then he paused again, measuring any number of possible responses--what he should have said, what he could have said, what he wanted to say.]

...Something like that. It seems I spent some measure of time as a historian of sorts.

...Huh. That does seem like something you'd be suited to. And you'll fit in quite well in a school setting, Professor Phoenix.

[Phoenix huffed out a brief and quirt laugh edged with something almost sarcastic to it. This was going to be a whole world of trouble just blending in, on top of everything else he was dealing with right now.]

One can only hope. I presume an ordinary school to be a fair bit simpler than archaeology.

I wouldn't count on it, in a place such as this. Always a catch. Always something else going on. You just have to see the angles and...think ten steps ahead.

[He paused long enough to reevaluate his image of the board; it was already getting tricky to keep track.]

No, of course it's never so easy.

[This feels just familiar enough to keep him from panicking into a blubbering pile. But also just familiar enough that he hesitates longer than he really ought to in doing...anything. What a strange in-between to be in. But at least he isn't hallucinating other people. Not really. What a strange thing, to be a calmer, cooler man than the madness ▮▮▮▮▮ had been. But maybe there's a cause. A root cause he's dancing around.]

My title and my power both are appropriate. I was a prince and a healer of the people with magic gifted to me by the gods. But I can't help...I cannot help but realize the drastic change in my memories. I'd noticed before but was in little fit shape to voice it properly. Is it strange to notice architecture? I had never given it much thought before Aera-- [He cuts himself off from that thought. If his breathing seems just a little wet, I'm Sure It's Fine.]

Well. And a technology jump. Drastic alterations in fashion sense. I scarcely...know what to think.

...

[Phoenix was silent under the pretense of considering his next move, frowning slightly. Maybe it was cruel to keep quiet, but where to even begin? It wasn't as if he knew every single thing himself, either.]

[Eventually, he took a slow breath and spoke.]

I encountered fragments of a tale much like that in my research. Almost as if it was what we sought specifically.

[He doesn't make a move this time. Looks down at his tinted fingers, the discoloration and the dark tint in the veins. If he focuses, if he fights, he can push it back down. But it isn't as though he has to hide it from Phoenix.]

It's a gift. [He insists.] A blessing. Perhaps others have been so blessed in history.

...Perhaps so.

[He doubted it.]

I don't know enough to confirm or deny that.

Time passes...so strangely, in the city in my memories.

...Phoenix, I- you know that I fear becoming something of a monster by any definition. But I don't think I've any choice in the matter.

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