animus_network

[After the last event, Chloe finally opted to speak to the network openly. Admittedly, she had already seen the requisite reactions to the event, and part of her detested reacting to something like this. It was merely another creature looming over with her, toying with her mind. Whatever lessons she could glean about an eternity spent in this tower meant very little to her.

However, eventually, introductions were bound to be in order.]

This cage is not so gilded as the last one I was drawn to, but I do not know that it is such a bad thing. Our hosts are certainly as prone to entertaining themselves at our expense as those I knew before. The accommodations lack a certain amount of privacy, but I think that I can manage. Still, to my fellow 'guests,' I bid you a welcome if that is the sort of thing you enjoy. If you are to eat the mushrooms, do be careful which side you eat from.

Would anyone happen to have any suggestions on which route to the morgue is preferred?

[And then, her hand wavering near the button to cut the feed off, she turned and allowed herself a nasty, cunning little smile. She felt an old itch that she wanted to scratch today, so why not give into the temptation?]

Oh, and ... Rolo was it? Do not mistake the imaginings of our host's mind alterations for reality. She has always been mine. She always will be. You aren't the first to try to take her away from me, and I do like to think that I learn from my mistakes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes. It was a place like this. I am dead within my own reality and was drawn from that oblivion to the isle. This place... is very similar in some ways to it, though far more overt in others.

So the other place was also some sort of experiment, simply hidden from the public?

You might as well think of it as such, but I do not think so. It was a world ruled by a rather ... depraved goddess. We were her toys, stolen from our homeworlds. I believe I am growing somewhat used to being stolen away from the jaws of death and turned into a powerful being's toy.

I am unsure if that is a good thing or bad.

[Her expressions shifts slightly to one of disapproval.]

Neither is good, though I would fault the goddess more for breaking such laws than the people here. Though that isn't to say I find these people any better, but a goddess should know better.

Life and death is an important balance to keep, those who have died need to go through the proper process, be judged and then move on through the cycle.

Heh... Another thing I grow used to. People often say what a god or goddess "should" be doing. I am afraid that I am much more used to Grecian myth from my world. Tales of gods are not of kind or noble creatures, simply ones performing a function.

However, in principle I agree with you. I should be dead, and I cling to this existence like a person does to flotsam in the sea. However, I ease my concerns with the knowledge that, however hard I cling, eventually oblivion will catch up. It is inevitable, and I cannot exist forever.

For now, I am in no rush.

I never said gods were noble or kind, but there are basic laws that even gods can't break. A god such as that I would normally punish.

That is true, nothing can exist forever, though I am familiar with two individuals that have no choice in that matter in my world.

...

are you, by chance, a youkai or from Gensokyo? You... speak as they do.

[That gives her pause, she was quite sure this woman had never entered Gensokyo before, yet, was aware of it. Had there been people from her district in that other place?]

I am not a youkai, but you could say that I'm connected to Gensokyo.

Ah. Yes, I am accustomed, then, to the way that your people speak of these things in that case. The bridge princess helped to explain the perspective.

I do not know if this world, or the last I was in for that matter, obey your laws.

Parsee? Hmm, I would take what she said with a grain of salt. Also, it would be wrong to put me in the same category as them. They are my charges and Gensokyo is my jurisdiction, but I am not one of them.

My laws are the basic laws of nature, of life and death and the eternal cycle. It is the fundamental law, these places simply defy it, though are still accountable to it in the end.

[There was a certain, brief hardness in her eyes when the woman spoke of Parsee. She wasn't entirely surprised, given what she'd said in the past about her role, but she clamped her lips shut. Parsee was not here to defend, and part of her suspected might not even appreciate the defense.

She'd always been... prickly.]</small. Yes. You truly do sound like you're from that place in that case. there was always a certain... finality in the way that people from your realm referred to everything. You traffic in absolutes so easily.

I wonder who it is you have been speaking with to think in such a way. The majority of Gensokyo has only a very small understanding of how the world, including theirs, works. Most of them do not even know what the outside world is like. But there is also a difference between the human residents and the youkai residents, as well as the human and youkai of the outside world. I have responsibilities to both sides.

I won't deny I speak in absolutes, but that is simply the nature of a Yama.

A few of the residents, actually. The goddess had a taste for putting them in rather depraved situations from time to time. After a while, the consistency was ... noteworthy. But you say Yama...

Yes, I know a little of your role then. One of the shinigami was there for a little while.

Oh?

[She decided to take an educated guess, since she could only think of one that would be easily identifiable.]

Komachi was there then? And she managed to leave?

Komachi, yes. She was sent away. One does not escape that place. One is stolen away, or sent away, and the thought that one ever escapes of one's own volition is a pretty little lie that people tell themselves to help sleep at night.

Given that I have nowhere to return to, I do not care about that lie.

[Cynical to her core. Finding herself in a second of these worlds had already jaded her on the topic. A lot.]

I see, it does seem difficult to leave these places, I can't imagine anyone being able to do so without everyone else knowing of it.

I have yet to see anyone who could prove to me that someone actually could.

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