socialcapital | [ JACKSON HEART ]

"Well, I think it should be possible in our current situation in a way it wouldn't be sharing the memories from an outside perspective."

It's a nice tea in there. Something floral.

[He takes a moment to breathe the aroma -- it's not often he's served something he can't recognize, and the ghost of the Acidian in him appreciates it.]

I consider such things a rare gift. If you are willing, I accept.

[And he takes a sip of the tea.]

The tea... is just tea. It's delicious, crisp and clean tasting.

Firuz gets up and pulls a small thin box out from storage, placing it down on the table. Inside is a single arrow - expertly made, fletched with clean, white, straight feathers, and tipped with a sharp arrowhead of white jade.

"I think... a lot of it is in here. Not every time. But some of the times."

[It is Very Good tea, and his impoverished soul does a brief calculation on how much he truly hopes it's not worth.]

A lot of what?

"The feelings? The accumulated experiences?"

("The vibes?" offers Saida, helpfully.)

[He looks it over, curiously... and sets his teacup well out of the way before reaching out and laying his hand on the arrow's shaft.]

These memories aren't like a regular share - they're first-person, through Firuz's eyes, sharing Firuz's feelings.

It starts at the most recent point on his personal timeline - a city starving. 80% Limit.

You're fairly confident that you can balance on this knife's edge, though; you're providing the food even as much as you're withholding it. You think you can breed enough resentment without piling up bodies for this. You've deemed it an acceptable thing to do, but even if they live, can you really justify this much suffering? But if you stopped now, wouldn't everything else you did have been for no reason?

It's further back - creating this situation was not easy. At 50% limit, you move pieces around in the world like it's a game. There's a mercenary company that's often employed by a different city's lord to quell resentment among his people. You need his people resentful, so you slide your way into the mercenary company and rot it from the inside out, sowing distrust and paranoia among a group formerly famous for loyalty. These people are just collateral - almost entirely victims of the wrong place and the wrong time. Now that you've gone this far, you need to make the end result worth it, don't you?

Further back, further back. You trick gods into an argument that causes a rainfall shortage at several points along the river; you disrupt trade routes at larger cities so that forces are redirected there as protection. You still have to do something, even at only 30%, 20% limit. You had your big outburst but you're not done chasing your revenge.

Then further back, an incident - you feel bad. You didn't mean to lose your temper like that. You know better than that, especially when Rikiya is in so much danger. You turn around to go after him - swallowing your pride will be fine for once, you can bluster over it later, protecting your companion comes first - but when you get there it's too late, and your group can't even risk retrieving his body. And it's your fault. And you killed him just as much as if you fired every arrow. You could have kept him safe and you didn't. And now he's dead. Do something about it.

You do something about it.

You burn their temple to the ground.

It's just one temple - most of the monks escape, even - but knowing you've destroyed something of theirs feels satisfying. Knowing you've caused them a loss as well feels right.

And it keeps going back, less intervening details each time, but the cycle is there and obvious for someone looking for it - innocents suffer and he can't stop it. Innocents suffer and he caused it. He's forced to compromise his ideals for better or worse - having to accept a financial loss does appear to cause significant upticks in his darkness level, for instance - and the shadow inside of him builds, builds, builds, then releases in increasingly destructive ways, and every time it releases it feels good, no matter how upsetting he'd usually find the actions it drives him to take.

[He breathes out in a slow hiss.

The flood of emotions in those memories is compelling. Thick and dark and rich with the satisfaction of feeling delicate things collapse under crushing force, of forcing the prideful to their knees, of the obeisance that is due.

It's familiar. Seductive. Perfect...]

[... except for the guilt.

This fluttering, drowning spark in the middle of the shadow. The one thing out of place, time and time again. A constant irritant, a reminder that these are Firuz's emotions, and that Firuz Mahalenka, at his core, is not this.

He sighs, lifting his hand.]

You make for a very poor demon.

He shrugs, but doesn't seem especially committed to arguing.

"Lots of people disagree."

Oh no. The unwashed masses hold an uninformed and easily manipulated opinion. How exceptionally rare -- nothing like that has ever happened before.

HE PUFFS HIS CHEEKS UP.

"Hey."

That --

[He opens a hand toward the arrow.]

-- didn't change my perspective. It confirmed it.

"So you still think I'm being influenced against my will?"

He gently but firmly closes the box.

You and likely every other solar, yes.

And I think if you ever find the cause of that -- if you discover, for yourself, why you fought so bitterly with a child you wanted to protect -- if you discover why that child himself fought back with a vehemence that would not listen to reason or sense -- the wave of rage you'll feel will eclipse the very sun.

"... I don't know if there are even entities powerful enough to curse all the Solars. Maybe the Celestial Incarnae, but they don't have any motive to curse their own Chosen."

Something kept the sparks of Solars from incarnating into new exalts for the whole of the past age and a good part of this one.

"Solars were going crazy way before that, though, if the stories are to be believed."

So you agree that there's something suspicious about your moods -- something that resonates with the stories of other Solars.

"Well, I knew all Solars historically had gone crazy. That's what everyone knows about Solars. But I figured, like everyone else has, that it's just an inherent quality of a human channelling the powers of the Sun."

What kind of association does the Unconquered Sun have with guilt and penance?

"He... Doesn't? He's like... the god embodying supreme perfection. Isn't it kind of inevitable a flawed human vessel wouldn't be able to handle that? ... Is what the logic was."

I am trying to imagine you telling Harmonious Song that she's incapable of handling supreme perfection.

"I kinda think murdering her along with all the other Solars was a way of telling her that."

I meant you specifically.

That aside -- none of what you're doing has anything to do with supreme perfection, or a lack thereof. It doesn't even have anything to do with vengeance. At this point, I'm not even sure you understand what the feeling behind vengeance is.

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