CliveRosfield | Text

[herofhopeless]

I haven’t been able to find my brother, Joshua, since the fog came. Has anyone seen a man, a little over 6 feet tall, light brown hair that’s a big longer, blue-green eyes, wears a lot of black and red, has a very formal and convoluted way of speaking? He’s kind, curious, intelligent. He would have done his best to help anyone who may have needed it during the mission.

Please, if anyone has seen him, call me, text me, yell my name from the top of a building, I don’t care. I just need to know that he’s okay.

Comments

[odinpusrex]

Yet there is still a reason for those very things occurring that rest beyond our influence. The cause only inscrutable for those refusing to learn its truth. You think too shallowly however, and in terms I defined not. I claimed not that this might have been the result of a single mission's outcome.

We do not know the full parameters in which we are being tested, to assume that we do is arrogant and foolish.

[herofhopeless]

That's one of the problems that I have with this place. We don't know the parameters. Sometimes, the most we can go off of is what feels like essentially boils down to 'do your best.' Doesn't that bother you?

[A couple minutes pass before another text comes in.]

How do you do it? How do you hold such faith in a system that is so unclear? I want to believe that we are doing what needs to be done, that we aren't tucked away here for the entertainment of some potentially omniscient being. How do you not doubt?

[odinpusrex]

What leads you to believe this is for entertainment? What proof have you of such? One could speculate an endless number of possibilities for our fate here, yet without aught to lend credence to these baseless imaginings, they are little more than idle delusions of doom.

However, let us imagine your alternative. That we labor under false pretenses towards a salvation which will never be ours. What then? What believe you we might do in the face of a being which possesses the power to snare and bind us thus? You struggle to find hope in our present situation, how would you manage it in a struggle far more impossible? Should we slay him, how then might we return to Valisthea thereafter?

[herofhopeless]

I have been told about a world where the struggles of the people there were just that: entertainment. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that it could be the case here, though I do doubt it. Most of the time, I think we would make pretty boring entertainment.

When it comes down to it, we have little proof of any of this, only what Aurora is allowed to tell us and do for us. You’ve seen much here and have a better understanding of what the patterns and trends are, so I defer to your judgment there, but I’ve also seen people who have been here longer stop looking and just accept things as they are. I have trouble wrapping my head around that.

Contrary to what some might believe, my default isn’t to kill or destroy something when it becomes an obstacle. I do try to understand what I’m looking at first. It isn’t just learning about what Echo is or what he wants; it’s about learning why any of this is happening in the first place. I find it difficult to blindly follow the instructions of a being who hasn’t given proof that what he says is true, especially when the method he chose for selecting champions is by kidnapping them.

I’ve seen this place hurt the people I care about repeatedly for unclear reasons, and I can’t just sit on my hands while that continues to happen. I won’t stop fighting for our world. I’d never do that. I’m also not going to sit by while things that hurt us, hurt you, keep happening.

[odinpusrex]

The inhabitants of Aphaia chose that fate for themselves as they awaited their doom. It was not a system foisted upon them by a higher being, rather one facilitated by the decay of their world. They sought joy through depravity while hope could not serve them. Their demise promised by that which we labor to forestall for our own world. We are not bereft of proof, but many would deny the reality before them, no different than those who ignore the Blight.

None ask you to follow blindly, but to speculate on endless nothings will cloud your ability to ascertain the truth when it presents itself. For it may seem another delusion, than the reality it is. A mind cluttered will only disservice you.

Suffering is to be expected in our labors to save our world. To expect anything less is naive. You need not concern yourself with me, Mythos.

[herofhopeless]

Thank you for more context about Aphaia. Is it the only other place in a similar situation as us that Etraya has been exposed to since you got here? Any other places that have started to unravel or that are like Etraya in trying to stop it from happening?

We met Scylla. Dion, Sleipnir, and I, I mean. He gave us a page from a journal, told us there were others scattered around that could help give us proof that the universe is unraveling. He also basically implied that we are his only hope in figuring out how to stop it from happening.

Some suffering is to be expected, yes. That comes with the territory of fighting for something that you believe in. Does that mean I am going to sit by and watch the people close to me get hurt if I can help it? No. You can tell me that I don’t need to concern myself with you as much as you want, but it’s not going to stop me from doing it.

[odinpusrex]

It is the only world we have been shown nearing its termination. Aurora had revealed it to us as a measure of proof, for it had been requested of her. Thus she offered us the chance to see for ourselves the grim reality that may yet prove our eventual end should naught be done at all.

I know not what to make of Scylla. Writings can be fabricated, and his means of ingress and contact leave much to be desired. That he should reveal himself during such a vulnerable mission bodes ill.

[He is just... going to ignore that bit about Mythos fussing about Barnabas. He finds it a pointless disagreement that neither will budge on. Of course protecting those who matter has its purposes, but Barnabas is not some damsel that needs to be saved by his own measure.]

[herofhopeless]

Do you think it would have been possible to pull that world back from the brink? It makes me wonder how far gone a place needs to be before it can no longer be saved. I doubt there is a way to save every world. This will only get messier. I don’t know that it would come down to us specifically to make some tough decisions, but being here certainly influences those who do have to make them. We know that much for certain with Echo, even if we don’t know what the parameters are for those decisions.

I don’t trust him, but it’s like you said, we should explore all avenues of information that we receive. Assuming all of the journal entries he was distributing were found, we might be able to find out more on how to help our world and the worlds of the others here. For what it is worth, however much that may be, he said the only way he was able to get in was because Aurora opened the vent, and that Etraya is the only bubble city he has been able to gain entrance to. He was desperate, I believe that much.

[Everyone needs saving sometimes, even powerful Kings who cut off their hearts. Maybe even especially them. Clive lets the subject drop, too. They’ll never agree, and there is no point in pushing it.]