Walking to Rosewater

[Ebiris]

"Only they and the Incarnations know, hmm?" she wonders. "Those first moments would colour everything. They had to know that as well. That's what often puzzles me about the search for an Answer, in setting up the workings of Creation as they did, surely they would have formed preferences of their own?"

She turns to look upwards. "Or... how could the same mind that created this have also created Hades? Did they truly feel nothing over it?"

[Anastasia]

"What I fear is that they truly did not feel anything over it," Mystra admits, "That good and evil are truly alien to them."

[Ebiris]

Alicia suspects the same, but it's so alien and impossible to truly grasp at the same time.

"This isn't particularly restful conversation," she notes, reaching down to stroke Martin's fur.

[Anastasia]

"It isn't," Mystra agrees, a hint of a smile on her face. "If all we have done is a cosmic fluke of beings who only care about one thing...?"

A pause at that, as your cat is happy and purry and napping already.

"Neither of us are gifted at resting when there are things to do," Mystra says at last."Or mere thoughts to discuss."

[Ebiris]

"It's an interesting conversation, if not restful," Alicia agrees. "Sometimes I wish the Incarnations were still more present and active, that more would be made clear for their presence. Other times I'm glad for Chaos's distance and the other two's absence, that things would be fine if we got out of their shadow entirely."

[Anastasia]

"I miss those early days," Mystra says, "For in those times we all believed the Answer was close." Her smile is sad and bittersweet, "I fear we need at least one, should something dreadful ever come from Beyond. Yet I understand all too well your own desire to be free of those limitations and those complications. To think that something that understands only law and chaos rules over so many things of righteousness and the wicked chills me."

[Ebiris]

"Something dreadful from Beyond... if Ao is even right now battling some equivalent to keep from Creation, we wouldn't even know, would we? If something else of Beyond killed or convinced the other Incarnations to leave... how would we know if it happened?" Alicia wonders, gently scratching under one of Martin's ears. "Like a pet left at home while their owner leaves and never returns..."

[Anastasia]

"I've seen that," Mystra says softly, "To see a loving animal starve in body and soul is a wretched thing. Far too evocative and truthful to how it could be if we were abandoned. Perhaps one soul in Creation could fight a true horror from the Far Realm."

[Ebiris]

"Just one?" Alicia asks. She remembers 'fighting' with the things that appeared during Antenora's ascension and they got by okay. A greater deity she'd expect to do fine, although... who's to say where the scale goes? If there are other things like the Incarnations or greater, and what she fought were the equivalent of shocker lizards?

[Anastasia]

"A serious threat," Mystra says at last, "The one you fought in Creation had adapted, mad and hateful as it was."

[Ebiris]

"Who is the only one here you believe could fight a true horror then?" Alicia asks. Eblis, because he is One? Shar, because the Incarnations empowered her to End things? The Arbiter, if he's counted as part of Creation and not the missing Incarnation of Neutrality under another guise. They're the ones she considers to be the most serious contenders out of all Creation for this particular challenge.

[Anastasia]

"Your friend Hellman Oberuth," Mystra says, "What he did in the battle against the God-King...he doesn't know. You don't know, do you?" Mystra asks, the second after a moment.

[Ebiris]

That was an unexpected answer. "You mean his ability to move instantly without magic from one spot to another?" she asks. It's impressive certainly, but against something like an Incarnation? "Sylian's been grooming him to battle creatures of the Beyond through his dreams, phantasms in the ethereal plane. But him alone out of everyone in Creation?"

[Anastasia]

"What I mean by that is that he's beginning to move beyond the Weave," Is the reasoning, "He's begun to draw on it less, microscopically, but it's progressing with no loss of ability on his part." Here Mystra adds, "That movement and other things - I know not what, but he changes. The ability to enact raw will, the ability to be beyond death...I pity that man, Alicia, for I know not where he goes, but I would fear to follow. With a talent to use such things and fight them, I can see plainly he is being groomed."

[Ebiris]

"Then where does it end? How far does his potential reach? And what is the one grooming him already capable of?" Alicia goes through a few pertinent questions that fact unlocks.