Chapter Text
A strange, prickling sensation down her back makes the hairs on her neck stand up, just before she hears a voice next to her.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
It belongs to no other than Emet-Selch, and Cassia tenses as she sees him stand only a few yalms away. Being in the vicinity of an Ascian it not something she thinks she will ever be comfortable with. Especially not with one of the most elusive and arguably most powerful of them.
From what the Shadowhunter in the Source told them, there were three Ascians that were somehow above the rest. Three that had abilities far beyond Cassia’s understanding. She had met the other two before. Lahabrea, the Speaker, is dead by now, but it hadn't been by their hands. When their little group of Warriors of Light had tried to stop him, they had merely succeeded to set him back a bit. No, it had taken a primal built from the prayers of a whole nation for over a thousand years to put an end to him.
And Elidibus, the Emissary, had been a chapter in himself. Strangely forthcoming and polite, yet ruthless in his pursuit of eliminating them. That he hadn’t succeeded, they had achieved through trickery, not power.
Back in the Source, they had only heard rumors about a third one. About the Architect, Emet-Selch. After he had freely admitted to being the one who constructed some of the most powerful nations throughout their known history earlier that day, Cassia no longer wonders about his title.
What had given her pause, though, was the realization that they had met before. Back in her days in Garlemald, shortly before she had found Adriene and left the theater and her much more lucrative position as one of the highest sought-after courtesans behind. Back then, all she had been aware of was that she was in the presence of the Emperor himself. Something that had in itself already been imposing enough. And still, it pales in comparison to being near him now, knowing that he is so much more than just an Emperor.
“This is my room, me being here is hardly a coincidence or a surprise,” she finally answers dryly. “And I can only assume neither is your presence.”
Cassia is beyond glad that her years as a courtesan and actress had taught her well in pretending to be at ease even in the presence of the most powerful people.
There is no point in talking around the issue. She had seen the way his eyes lingered on her earlier down in the plaza of the Crystarium.
Emet-Selch only shrugs as he leans against one of the bookshelves. “Can you blame me for my curiosity?” he asks plainly. “You are very far away from home.”
“So are you.”
At her pointed reply, he lets out a short laugh. “Oh, you have no idea, my dear.” With a shake of his head, he gives her a curious look. “You didn’t tell your friends.”
It sounds vague, but Cassia knows what he means. She had recognized him as much as he did her. But their only other meeting prior to this day had been fleeting, feeling far away, almost like it had been in another lifetime. Cassia supposes for him that it is the case quite literally.
But most of all, it had been of no consequence.
“It hardly seems important, in the grand scale of things,” she says with a shrug of her own.
“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” the Ascian agrees before looking her over with an intense look. “You’ve changed careers since we met, I see. Taking the mantle of the heroine on yourself instead of merely playing one for the masses.”
The way he phrases it seeps underneath her skin, and for a moment, Cassia is caught utterly off guard by the way it stirs something in her she usually manages to ignore.
“Would it surprise you to hear that it feels almost the same?”
Her voice is quiet but the words uttered without much thought linger strangely heavy on her tongue.
He gives her a look she can’t read at all. It is piercing and inquisitive, yet he doesn’t ask any questions out aloud. After a moment, the tension in the room breaks when he clicks his tongue.
“It is Garlemald’s loss,” he steers the topic somewhere else. “I remember you being quite riveting on stage. A performance for the ages it was called if memory serves.”
“Thank you,” Cassia answers politely. The situation is beyond bizarre, but at least this treads on familiar ground. These kinds of interactions had been common enough for her so she knew exactly what to say and how to say it. “But I had excellent material to work with and a great troupe who made it into what it was.”
She isn’t prepared for how quickly Emet-Selch’s look turns into a frown.
“Modesty doesn’t suit you. In fact, it’s a rather boring cliche.”
His voice is a bit brasher than before, throwing her off-balance.
Cassia blinks in surprise, and it takes her a moment before she admits, “It’s a habit. It gets me further than the truth most of the time.”
At her honest reply, Emet-Selch only scoffs dismissively.
“Do away with it then, for now. Let’s see how the truth fairs instead.”
It sounds almost like a challenge, and Cassia frowns with a tilt of her head. Something about this whole exchange confuses her to no end.
“Why are you even interested?” she cant’t help but ask. “You’re an Ascian. You basically just told us hours ago that you were responsible for constructing the Empire as nothing more than a tool. You labor tirelessly to reach your rather destructive goals.” Spoken out loud, it draws the strange feeling she has from this whole conversation even more out in the open. “Why would someone like you care about an old play? Especially here and now?”
He looks genuinely surprised at her question, and the hint of a smile hovers at the corner of his mouth as he inclines his head.
“My dear, I may not look like it to you right now, but I am ancient.” There is a sense of weariness in his voice for a moment that sounds surprisingly genuine. “My goals are consistent and immovable, but besides that, after uncountable years, there is little left but whimsical indulgences to keep the mind interested. Theater simply happens to be one of those.”
Cassia tries to open her mind, to let herself feel around in the spaces between his words. To search for any hint of untruths hidden behind the things spoken, but she can’t detect anything that isn’t supposed to be there. Not for the first time, she wonders, if her Echo simply doesn’t work on Ascians, but for now, she decides to assume he is telling the truth.
“That’s why the Prima Vista was so well funded then,” she speculates, and when Emet-Selch nods, some things about the high regards for the theatre company that had been present throughout the Empire suddenly make a lot more sense to her. As does its decline after.
“You know that your grandson pretty much threw that all out of the window after your ’death ’, right?”
“Ah, children, how much they can disappoint you truly knows no bounds,” he sighs with an overly dramatic flair before he expectantly looks back at her. “All the more reason to speak of better times. Come on, hero, indulge me! And be honest about it.”
She is still unsure what to think about the whole situation. There is an Ascian in her room, one of the most dangerous beings she had ever encountered, and she is alone with him. By the fact that no one had yet started to furiously knock on her door, Cassia knows that none of her friends is aware of this. She should, by all means, be terrified, but the fact that he apparently wants to talk about theater makes the whole thing distractingly bizarre, and Cassia decides that the wisest course of action is to simply go along with it for now.
“The Kingdom under the Sea was probably my favorite play I’ve ever been in,” Cassia says after a moment. Whenever she thinks back to that particular time, it comes with a smile. It hadn’t been perfect back then, but it had been a time when she, even with all the worry for Adriene, had managed to be somewhat happy every now and then. The memories of her day-to-day life in the troupe feel almost glaringly normal in retrospect. “If I am being honest about it,” she adds, “I think our production of it was quite well executed, but it could have been more.”
“More?” Emet-Selch crosses his arms in front of him as he gives her a curious look. “It was by far the most elaborate production of that piece I’ve ever seen.”
“It was beautifully done for the most part,” Cassia agrees. “But I felt a bit like we were barely scratching the surface with our interpretation. There is so much in the script that holds many meanings at once, layers to dig through, but our director wanted to go with a very traditional, classical approach.” She sighs before she shrugs almost apologetically. “And it was decent, but it could have been a whole journey.”
“If I recall correctly, you got high praises nonetheless. ‘The best she has ever performed’, was that not so?” Emet-Selch’s smile looks less mocking than Cassia would have expected. He sounds almost like he agrees with those words.
Her first instinct is a demure denial. It would be the polite thing to do. The thing that made people more sympathetic to her. One of those unwritten rules of small-talk and polite social interactions. But this conversation is neither, and the Ascian had clearly asked for her honesty.
“Yes,” Cassia says simply. “And all modesty aside, they were probably right. It was my best performance.” It still feels slightly strange to openly praise herself like this, but at the same time, it is nothing but the truth. Cassia knows though that if she really wanted to be truthful, it needs just a little bit more. “I still think it could have been better,” she adds. “You know, I tried to contact the author once, back then.”
That catches the Ascian’s attention. “The author of the play?”
“I looked them up,” Cassia confesses, and she feels her cheeks growing warm with a hint of embarrassment as she remembered just how much she had idolized that author back then. How desperately she had wanted to speak to them. “Of course, it was a pseudonym, but I wrote to their publishing house, asking if they could forward a letter. I really wanted to talk to them, to ask them questions I had while reading.”
“And, did they reply?” Emet-Selch askes with a curious look.
Cassia can only shake her head. “Sadly, no,” she laments. “Then again, I rather abruptly left both the theatre and the country mere weeks later. If they ever did, I missed it.”
“Now I’m interested, what did you want to ask?” The curiosity is still in Emet-Selch’s eyes as he leans forward a bit.
“Ah, it’s nothing too important,” Cassia tries to wave the question aside, looking out the window into the glowing beauty of the onsetting sunset. “I’m sure you have better things to worry about. The end of the world and all.”
Emet-Selch is obviously not letting himself be discouraged and his voice turns almost mocking as he asks, “My, was it something embarrassing perchance?”
“What? No!” She practically feels her cheeks redden further as she shakes her head vigorously. “Just… personal,” she adds, and for a brief moment, Cassia expects him to prod or to blatantly make fun of her for writing what could only be described as adoring fan mail, but to her relief, he simply leans back again with a nod.
“What was your favorite thing about that play then?” Emet-Selch asks instead, and Cassia is grateful for the simple change of topics.
“How it builds up hope throughout the character’s journeys,” she says with a smile and without hesitation. “That’s why I was unhappy about how our director went with the ending.”
It seems to give him pause. “If I recall correctly, it was the common interpretation, wasn’t it?”
“It was bullshit, that’s what it was,” Cassia bursts out, and the Ascian looks strangely taken aback. “The script leaves it pretty open, but our director decided to show on stage how nothing really changes. He came up with this whole stupid idea of symbolizing fate through the falling curtain.” There is a blatant scoff in her voice, distaste dripping from her every word. Despite the production being years in the past already, Cassia can't help but still feel strongly about this. “It makes it clear that, in the end, nothing they did mattered. That they are determined to play out their parts by fate.”
“My dear, that was the point of the whole play,” Emet-Selch says, and there is a slight hint of condescension in his tone as he continues, “I’ve seen quite a few performances of it, by different theatres, and on that, every director agreed.”
“I know,” Cassia agrees with a sigh. It is exactly what her director had said to her back then. But none of his arguments had ever quite managed to convince her she was wrong in the end. “See, I don’t think the author necessarily intended that. The script leaves the ending open and…”
Cassia pauses, trying to rein herself in as she realizes her speech had gotten faster. It seems the topic still manages to get her blood pumping and her heart to beat quicker, even after all these years. But these discussions always tend to go one very specific way, and a part of her can’t help being wary about it. She half-expects Emet-Selch to outright laugh at her any moment now, but when she steals a quick look at him, he only seems to be calmly waiting for her to continue.
“Don’t keep me in suspense now,” he prompts when he sees her hesitation, and Cassia smiles slightly to herself as she takes a deep breath.
“Well, I always felt the ruler of the kingdom under the sea wasn’t the true villain of the piece. Their motivations were not that different from the hero’s,” she finally says, holding her breath for a moment in anticipation of the inevitable. This is usually the point when people start dismissing her, telling her to go back to acting or something cruder even, and to leave the thinking to people smarter than her.
Emet-Selch does not react like she would have expected though.
“Ah, but a good story needs its villain, don’t you think?” he asks, and he sounds almost playful for a moment. “It would be remarkably boring without one, after all.”
He doesn’t agree with her, but he also doesn’t sound outright dismissive, and that is far more than Cassia would ever have expected.
“Maybe some people prefer boredom over danger and uncertainty,” she quips back before she can even think about it, and to her surprise, he lets out a hearty laugh.
“And rightfully so, I guess,” the Ascian agrees before he fixes her with another strange look. “Not you, though…”
“Not me, no,” Cassia can’t help but agree. Underneath her careful demeanor, she feels her excitement brewing, waiting to rise to the surface. She has no clue if he even wanted to hear more of her thoughts on the play, but so far, he hasn’t stopped her, nor does he make fun of her for her more unconventional thoughts, and so she gives herself a push.
“If you think about it, the play still has a much more compelling villain,” she suggests, and when Emet-Selch only gives her a questioning look, Cassia smiles.
“Fate. This determinism of destiny they like to put in the ending is a far more compelling antagonist,” she explains enthusiastically. “And I wanted to know from the author if that was what they were actually trying to say. If it wasn’t so much a story about good versus evil but much more about people of all sorts and differences roaring against the very notion of fate.”
It is quiet when she stops talking, and Cassia chews slightly on her lip as the silence spreads over several moments.
“That’s a very unique perspective…” Emet-Selch finally says after a while, and she can’t pinpoint if he finds her suggestion worth thinking about, or if he is trying to be polite in his dismissal. In her experience, the later one is much more likely, and she deflates a bit.
“You can just say you think it stupid, you know? That’s what the director told me as well when I talked to him about it,” Cassia admits with an exasperated sigh. It’s not like she isn't used to having her thoughts dismissed.
“I did not say that at all, my dear,” the Ascian points out with a raised eyebrow. He doesn’t offer any further explanation but it is somehow enough for Cassia to manage a small smile.
“You want to know why I was so good in that role?” she asks, feeling a sudden urge to explain just why she feels so strongly about this. “I somehow felt like it was specifically written for me.”
Emet-Selch looks nearly taken aback, disbelief clouding his features. “For you?”
“I know it wasn’t,” Cassia says with a sheepish look. “That play is older than I am by far, and even if it weren’t, I would never be that presumptuous. But still, there were quite many aspects I could identify with.”
She can see that he doesn’t seem to think much of her little explanation as Emet-Selch draws in a deep breath before he gives her a piercing look.
“I can scarcely imagine anyone more different from the character you played,” he says, and Cassia thinks it could have sounded judgemental, but it feels surprisingly like he is simply trying to state a fact. “You were a very rich and very beautiful actress at the height of her career.”
“Were?” she asks, unexpectedly hung up on that one little word, and Emet-Selch lets out a soft laugh.
“Well, I have no insight into your monetary situation and you are hardly at the height of an acting career anymore, are you?”
A small smile grows on her face as she notices how he seems very deliberate with only asserting two of the three things he mentioned. A moment later, she quietly scolds herself for being apparently vain enough that it matters what one of their sworn enemies thinks of her appearance, and she tries to get back to the earlier topic.
“I grew up in circumstances where I learned from a very young age that everything I was was considered wrong by nearly everyone except my closest family,” she starts to explain her point. Faint memories of Lothering well up in her. Thoughts of hiding day in and out, of carefully trying to suppress parts of her for the safety of everyone.
“I had to hide who I was, and at the same time learn to control powers I didn’t understand. And then I lost absolutely everything. My family, my home, everything who ever meant something to me, except for one person,” Cassia continues, and by now, she isn’t even really looking at the Ascian anymore. Her eyes are unfocused as she fights down the strange sense of nostalgia she feels for her long-lost home.
“While I was in that play, I was still looking for her, for my sister Adriene. And I had been for nearly five years at that point.” She takes a deep breath before she looks at Emet-Selch. Something in her feels almost defensive all of a sudden.
“So you see, a character deemed ‘wrong’ and with no right to exist in the kingdom under the sea, who is all alone and losing herself in an environment she’s not made for spoke to me.” She still remembers all too well the first time she read the script. Cassia had found herself feeling so much for the character she was supposed to portray on stage, the tears had streamed down her cheeks for most of the last act of the play. “They wanted to banish her from the kingdom, for fuck’s sake, when they very well knew that the world on land didn’t exist anymore and she had nowhere to go.”
Cassia stops talking as she realizes she had gotten not only more intense but also a tad louder. The dismissive look is completely gone from Emet-Selch’s face, replaced by blatant interest, and Cassia swallows.
“And now I’ve just told you most of my personal history despite barely knowing you at all,” she murmurs before she narrows her eyes at him. “You are very good at this.”
She half-expects him to deny deliberately prodding her for information, but he only gives her an amused look.
“It is one of my many talents,” Emet-Selch says, indicating a little bow with a hint of flourish. His eyes turn calculating as he adds, “You are a little less boring than the rest of your ilk, I must say.”
Cassia can only scoff at that. “Don’t throw around compliments like this so carelessly, you might get me to blush at the praise.”
At that, Emet-Selch lets out a genuine laugh. “My dear, you’ve had quite the reputation off the stage,” he says with a knowing grin. “I don’t think there are many things in this world left that could make you blush.”
“Well, acting was only one of my many talents and not the one I was most valued for, I know that.” Her eyes narrow slightly at him. “And I know you are aware of that too, your palace paid quite a fortune for my time after the last curtain, after all.”
Emet-Selch only shrugs at that. “Courtesy of my grandson, I believe. I can only hope you were treated adequately.” He sounds a bit skeptical at his own words, and with his earlier remarks about disappointing children, Cassia gets the distinct feeling that there is absolutely no love lost in that particular family tree.
“I never actually met him, I understood my time and attention was meant to be a gift to one of his loyal generals.”
“Of course it was, the boy was never one for self-indulgence.” Emet-Selch scoffs with an aside wave of his hand before he pushes himself off the bookshelves. “Well, as informative as this was, keeping up with your mortal’s thoughts and ideas is always very exhausting. I believe I shall take my leave.” He sounds lofty, all of a sudden, like the past half hour or so is of no consequence at all, yet somehow his eyes linger on her nonetheless.
“Suit yourself,” Cassia shrugs, trying to not let her disappointment show. Their discussion had just started to become interesting, after all. “I still don’t know why you wanted to talk to me in the first place.”
“Indulgence, my dear,” Emet-Selch says with an impatient click of his tongue. “Like I said earlier. Believe it or not, but I do not actually meet that many people who share my interest in the fine arts.”
The matter-of-fact tone in which he says this makes Cassia snort loudly. “I can only guess the kind of people you meet while plotting the end of the world.”
“Don’t bother,” Emet-Selch says with a dismissive note. “Most of them aren’t interesting enough to be thought about at all.”
A dry laugh leaves Cassia’s mouth. “But I am? Now I might actually feel flattered.”
His eyes narrow once again as he gives her a disapproving look. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you at all my dear, I’m afraid. Neither does fishing for compliments.”
Despite his scolding tone, Cassia finds herself at the brink of genuine amusement. Their banter is not overly friendly, but it is quick-witted and full of sharp edges. And even if his words sound almost harsh, there seems to be little heat behind them.
“You are a bit of an arrogant asshole, has someone ever told you that?” she asks him in the sweetest voice possible, and it gets her a genuine-sounding chuckle.
“It has come up.” His reply is bone-dry before he waves his hand once, and a portal appears behind him. “I shall take a look at that play of yours again at the next opportunity, if only to see if I can see where your interpretation stems from.”
“Good luck with that.” Cassia laughs outright now. “I doubt it exists in this world.”
At that, he sends her a look full of mock pity as he shakes his head. “You speak as if I am bound to the laws of any one world.” With a last unreadable look, he looks her over for a moment before he shrugs and turns away. “Farewell,” he says simply with a dismissive wave of his hand before he disappears into the purple void, and a moment later, the portal is gone and he with it.
Somehow, Cassia had expected that to be it.
When she next sees Emet-Selch, he is complaining about their pace and their decision to take a few days of rest before marching onward to the Rak’tika forest. Nothing he does or says gives any indication their little talk had even taken place. Part of her thinks she should be relieved at that. He had obviously sated some curiosity and that was that.
Yet ‘relief’ is certainly not the right word for what she feels. It takes her a bit to admit to herself that what she feels is much more akin to disappointment. Which is ridiculous. She doesn’t know all too much about Emet-Selch, but she knows what he is, after all.
An Ascian.
From what she could gather so far, he had been quite busy playing Emperor in Garlemald when the Calamity happened, but just from what little they had learned over the years, especially from Urianger’s time instigating himself with Elidibus a few years ago, Cassia knows that all the of the Ascians are of one mind. Even the ones that work alone labor for the same goal.
Emet-Selch might not have personally destroyed her home, but even if he didn’t have a direct hand in it, she had no doubt that he had been in complete support of what had happened back then. After all, by his own admission, he has a similar fate in the works for the world she is currently standing on.
Cassia should be nothing but glad he got bored by her quickly. And she certainly should not lament that the brief discussion they had had somehow been thoroughly intriguing to her.
With a sigh, she leans over the railing of the balcony, watching the militia train their newest recruits down in the courtyard below.
Vanquishing two Lightwardens in a row has put a new spring into the step of nearly every person in the Crystarium. The city had been bustling with activity before, but it was nothing compared to the past few days. A palpable feeling of careful excitement seems to hover over the place now, visible in every aspect of the city life. From the crafters who work with a smile on their face to the looks of hope in each pair of eyes she had seen at the markets. But nowhere is the change as visible as with the guard. They train more rigorously than ever before, full of enthusiasm. Of conviction, Cassia realizes. A deep-seated hope coming to the surface, speaking of grand feats and the possibility of defeating the sin eaters.
“Examining the troops?”
The slightly patronizing voice of the Ascian tears Cassia out of her thoughts, and she barely manages to suppress a flinch. She doesn’t need to turn around to know that Emet-Selch is standing not too far behind her. Just like she doesn’t need to look at him to know that his face holds the usual peculiar mix of disinterest and amusement as he speaks. His tone already freely gives it away. As does the small sigh of exasperation he lets out when she doesn’t immediately answer.
“Oh come on, Hero, why the long face? You’ve rallied the masses and they are ready for whatever you need them to be. Cause for celebration one might think.”
Just when she had managed to somewhat talk herself into accepting that their little private chat had been a one-time occurrence, he had to show up again. A mix of worry and tentative excitement goes through her, and she forces herself not to look at him, to keep her eyes on the training would-be soldiers instead to keep her features neutral. The sound of a sword clattering to the ground echoes through the air, and Cassia watches as the recruit scrambles to pick it up again. For the first time, she notices just how young some of them look. She can’t believe the boy to be older than fifteen perhaps, and something in her stomach feels heavy at the thought. All those faces filled with hope, and Cassia can’t help but worry.
“They are not ready,” is all that she can mumble.
“Pardon?” comes Emet-Selch’s reply, a hint of curiosity swinging in his voice as Cassia shakes her head.
“We never wanted to rally the masses, as you put it. We wanted to help and now…” she lets out a deep sigh. “They are going to die.”
Cassia keeps looking ahead, her eyes following a group of guards engrossed in a late evening training exercise before she turns around to look at her unexpected conversational partner. “Not all of them of course, but I’ve seen this before, back in Ala Mhigo.” Her voice is quiet as the memories of fallen soldiers, comrades, friends, feel almost overwhelming for a moment. “They are going to march into battle, fighting for their future - and some of them, so many of them, won’t ever get to see it.”
The look Emet-Selch gives her is the same he had held when asking her about the play, somehow. It is far less disinterested than he usually looks like, and Cassia doesn’t know just what to do with it as he suddenly says, “Those who survive will, though.”
She can’t help but let out a scoff at his words. “Oh, that makes it all better of course. That some survive…”
But the Ascian doesn't seem offended at all. “Doesn’t it?” he asks, an eyebrow raised in question as he holds her gaze. “All of them want to fight. For their lives. They know the risks, know they might not see it all the way through, but they are willing to die for what they deem worth fighting for.”
Cassia knows his words hold some truth to them, but she can’t help but feel tired. Tired of watching people around her die. Tired of seeing the loss in every corner of the world. Tired of watching people make sacrifices over and over again. Somehow, the whole futility of it all throws her back into the memories of the discussion about the play and her feelings around it. It feels almost like she is making much of the same points, feeling frustrated by the same helplessness, only in far more pressing and real circumstances.
“What good is fighting for a future to every single one of them if they have to give up their own?” She knows all too well that sacrifice is often necessary. But the futility behind it all has never been so obvious, so overly present as it is here in the First where, with every piece of knowledge they gain, it seems like there are less and less good options left for going forward.
“And what would you have them do?” Emet-Selch argues, the questioning look on his face an obvious challenge to her. “Should they just sit around and wait for the inevitable end? Weren’t you the one who argued for raging against fate?”
“Isn’t that what you had originally hoped for? That they just wait for the end?” Cassia shoots back before shaking her head. “We don’t even know when that end would actually be, and they would be alive in the meantime!”
“Maybe dying for what you believe in is preferable to living on in uncertainty, waiting endlessly for it all to be over.”
Whatever Cassia had expected him to say next, it certainly had not been this, and as Emet-Selch speaks, something in his voice gives her pause. A new cadence that does not quite fit the way he had sounded so far. Not entirely at least.
“Is that what you’re doing then?” Cassia asks on a sudden whim, following the feeling in her gut. “Waiting for something to finally be over? For fate to run its course?”
For a moment he looks almost startled before the patronizing look he sports so often is firmly back on his face. “I believe we were talking about the soldiers, do try to keep up, my dear.”
But the sudden change doesn’t fool Cassia, no matter how quickly he falls back into his act. And an act it is, Cassia realizes by now. She had suspected it before, but this moment, however small it had been, drives home like nothing else just how much of everything he does and says feels like one big stage-play. She had tried to take her measure of him before, but she had been looking at him through the eyes of a fighter. Now that she sees something intimately familiar in his whole demeanor, her entire perception subtly shifts. Through the eyes of an actress, he presents a decidedly different picture.
“Soldiers tend to be the same in every war,” Cassia says, a knowing look in her eyes. “No matter where or when they come from.”
A scoff and a frown are his answer as he gives her a scathing look. “You’d think to compare me to those people?”
“You were the one sounding all wistful about dying for a cause,” Cassia says with a shrug. “And you’ve been the one arguing that rallying against fate is pointless.” Her casual answer only seems to spark more of his disdain, yet he makes no effort to leave. Instead, he scoffs once more before narrowing his eyes at her.
“Dying is the easy part.” Emet-Selch’s voice sounds slightly more raw than before. “Everyone can die for their cause. Living on, fighting on, is the true challenge.”
She thinks she can sense a hint of anger in his tone, if only for the briefest of moments. It isn’t like what he said feels wrong. On the contrary. It feels all too familiar, and Cassia lets out a quiet sigh. “What if you get tired of fighting?”
To her surprise, it is her quiet, honest question that has Emet-Selch almost recoil for a moment. But like before, he is back to being his usual, condescending self in a heartbeat.
“I tire of this conversation,” he says, looking past her with a distant look in his eyes. “Why do you insist on being this boring…”
Cassia can’t help but let out a dry laugh at the almost childish insult. “I don’t think I am boring you at all,” she says, watching the corners of his mouth twitch ever so slightly at her words. “I think I am making you uncomfortable.”
Emet-Selch’s lips curl up into a mocking smile. “My dear, more impressive people than you have tried and failed at that.” He sounds surprisingly less sharp than Cassia would have anticipated before he adds, “I shall take my leave now.”
“Comfortably, I assume,” Cassia says with a small huff. “But by all means, don’t let little old unimpressive me stop you.”
It seems like he won’t, as Emet-Selch gives her one last long look before turning around in silence, slowly walking away. Before him, the familiar purple glow of a portal opening appears when he suddenly stops.
“You lose.”
His back still toward her, Emet-Selch’s words hang heavy in the air and Cassia frowns.
“What?” she asks confused, and at that, he turns his head, looking at her over his shoulder with an intensity that nearly takes her breath away.
“When you get tired of fighting, that’s when you lose,” he says softly before disappearing into the portal, leaving behind only silence.