Audience: Harrowhark Nonagesimus

[probe]

Comments

[bonetiddies]

Hmm.

[Her expression is a little tight.]

I don't want to endanger you, particularly not for questions I don't even know will be useful.

[probe]

[he waves a hand.]

It doesn't bother me. I'll come back.

[bonetiddies]

Hmm. [It does bother her a little? She doesn't want to hurt him. But also, she respects that attitude? It's the one she'd have in his shoes.

Then again - ]

Ah. Being killed cannot hurt you, but indulging overmuch in your aspect can. Is that correct?

[probe]

[he has had like four people be bothered about him being hurt this week and it's baffling every time.]

I'd say being killed still hurts. [dryly.] The indulgence has changed the way we look. If it's hurting us in another way I'm unaware of it.

[bonetiddies]

It doesn't seem ideal.

[So maybe you shouldn't be quite so prideful about the creature.]

[probe]

[hello they are the avatar of pride it is impossible]

All that it's done to me is make it harder for me to pick things up. [:unamused:]

[bonetiddies]

I don't want to contribute to that.

[So try.]

I don't know yet what I want to ask about it. So let's try another question. 'Unfinished business.' Is this something you'd be willing to clarify, now?

[probe]

[a longer pause.]

I want to revive Gwen. [so... they're here.]

[bonetiddies]

. . . I see. So it is a desire you want fulfilled, like ours.

[A little more sympathetic. She. . . still can't get her head around her own wish, but at least she knows by now that it is for the sake of one other person, though she can't imagine who it could be.]

Those visions we've received of other people. Were they also here to indulge and obtain their desires?

[probe]

[he folds his arms.]

They were here once.

[bonetiddies]

But they died. And were consumed, by that thing?

[probe]

[a pause, and then, with a surge of irritation:]

Do you see why I wanted to make sure Mercy wasn't being held somewhere?

[bonetiddies]

Of course.

[Irritation? Hmm.]

But she isn't. We ought not to have worried you so.

[probe]

[his jaw works a little.]

Don't try to take the blame. That lies with the thing skittering around the base.

[... and then, after a moment:] I lied when I said I didn't know what took my head, when we were taken to the place with the repeating hallway.

[bonetiddies]

Ah. Yes. I suppose we assumed we'd solved the mystery of Gluttony, but I suppose it was all of you.

Then those places are something it is doing as well?

[probe]

That's my best guess.

... What was all of us?

[bonetiddies]

Er. Encountered it, I mean.

[probe]

Ah.

Yes. [:unamused:] I imagine it's what took Greed's eyes, as well.

[bonetiddies]

. . . If those places are generated by it, then I find myself now skeptical of the theory that we are being 'tested' by these decisions.

Could it be, rather, that the choices we are being prompted with are meant to generate more indulgence? It would be a very significant indulgence to kill a friend out of greed, for example. [Or to eat a child out of hunger.]

[probe]

I think that it can be both a test and an indulgence generation in the same breath.

[bonetiddies]

But for what purpose would it be testing us?

[probe]

Good question.

The thing doesn't always think the same way we do.

[bonetiddies]

Does it want anything except to feed on us. . . ?

[probe]

I don't know. [a bristle of annoyance.] It does not often give us insights on the things it does. It just does them, and we are left to clean up the messes left behind.

[bonetiddies]

. . . Do you really believe that when it's finished with us, it intends to let us leave?