KIADA
burn it into my collar, hollowed onto your wrist
Everyone settles and Kiada’s iceberg eyes are glued to each person speaking when their turns come and go. Honestly, she doesn’t know it will go – to choose to remain neutral, just how neutral it made them, which things the region would do that might seem like they’re favoring one side over another. But she’d never really been the one to make those decisions. She had been born to be a warrior, a soldier, and that is what she died as. This version of her? It’s purely survival now.
Probably because it feels so threatened just to live.
Surprise does arch a brow when the unknown woman, Shaye, speaks. And she brings up a fair amount of points that Kiada can’t help but to talk on, not wanting anything to be misconstrued. She thinks on the fact that Sah doesn’t imagine that neutrality will carry Halo through the war, but Kiada also doesn’t imagine that Halo would make a full stance on the New Gods without pissing off the Old Gods followers, and choosing the Old Gods would certainly be stabbing their Ascended population and allies in the back, too.
So it’s complicated, but she can at least put some things to rest.
She casts a glance at Neron before she stands to address the group. “Hey.” She begins, taking a breath she doesn’t need – imagining it makes her seem a bit more human, and she’s partial to preferring to act as much like her old self as she could. “I’m Kiada. I lived here for a time before I… Died. Rescuing Tanau from the sickness that infected many of us.” She pushes past this in a breeze. “I wanted to make things clear on the whole summoning the Ascended during LongNight. We were summoned because we had taken a vote with our goddess on whether we wanted to fight the monsters or choose to keep them roaming the Grounds every year and save ourselves. We chose to fight them. And while I hadn’t realized the circumstances – given I was attuned and then dead for a time – rightfully, I was upset about having to be summoned. But it was explained to me that it was a choice.” And a choice she still thinks was right, even if that monster had crossed over the portal to Halo. Sah, Neron, and herself had made sure to kill it.
“All of us who Ascended chose to do it. My mother chose to Ascend for her own safety.” A glance given toward Neron, because Rexanna had also been an Abandoned Ascended hybrid, and as far as she can remember the two of them were what could be considered friends. “And I was offered a choice to come back to life. I could have denied it and I didn’t. I wanted to come back here to be with all of you and live my life again. But with war approaching, that life is in danger too. For all of us, not just me, not just the Ascended. I see my friends and my family in all of you, in a land that I love.”
And she’s sorry to say it when she spins the conversation back to Sah’s suggestion, a small apologetic glance given to Morgan, because she doesn’t want to start shit, but she has to ask anyway. Her attention flickers to Sah, who she’d fought beside and borrowed magic from during the LongNight attack. “So if we don’t remain neutral, which gods would you suggest we side with?” A heartbeat of a pause before she continues. “Because if you’re choosing the Old Gods, you’re losing a portion of your people anyway, Advisor. And it needs to be taken into account for our preparation for the war, regardless of what we choose.”
Probably because it feels so threatened just to live.
Surprise does arch a brow when the unknown woman, Shaye, speaks. And she brings up a fair amount of points that Kiada can’t help but to talk on, not wanting anything to be misconstrued. She thinks on the fact that Sah doesn’t imagine that neutrality will carry Halo through the war, but Kiada also doesn’t imagine that Halo would make a full stance on the New Gods without pissing off the Old Gods followers, and choosing the Old Gods would certainly be stabbing their Ascended population and allies in the back, too.
So it’s complicated, but she can at least put some things to rest.
She casts a glance at Neron before she stands to address the group. “Hey.” She begins, taking a breath she doesn’t need – imagining it makes her seem a bit more human, and she’s partial to preferring to act as much like her old self as she could. “I’m Kiada. I lived here for a time before I… Died. Rescuing Tanau from the sickness that infected many of us.” She pushes past this in a breeze. “I wanted to make things clear on the whole summoning the Ascended during LongNight. We were summoned because we had taken a vote with our goddess on whether we wanted to fight the monsters or choose to keep them roaming the Grounds every year and save ourselves. We chose to fight them. And while I hadn’t realized the circumstances – given I was attuned and then dead for a time – rightfully, I was upset about having to be summoned. But it was explained to me that it was a choice.” And a choice she still thinks was right, even if that monster had crossed over the portal to Halo. Sah, Neron, and herself had made sure to kill it.
“All of us who Ascended chose to do it. My mother chose to Ascend for her own safety.” A glance given toward Neron, because Rexanna had also been an Abandoned Ascended hybrid, and as far as she can remember the two of them were what could be considered friends. “And I was offered a choice to come back to life. I could have denied it and I didn’t. I wanted to come back here to be with all of you and live my life again. But with war approaching, that life is in danger too. For all of us, not just me, not just the Ascended. I see my friends and my family in all of you, in a land that I love.”
And she’s sorry to say it when she spins the conversation back to Sah’s suggestion, a small apologetic glance given to Morgan, because she doesn’t want to start shit, but she has to ask anyway. Her attention flickers to Sah, who she’d fought beside and borrowed magic from during the LongNight attack. “So if we don’t remain neutral, which gods would you suggest we side with?” A heartbeat of a pause before she continues. “Because if you’re choosing the Old Gods, you’re losing a portion of your people anyway, Advisor. And it needs to be taken into account for our preparation for the war, regardless of what we choose.”
heaven knows i don't follow, but i believe in this
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
