Scales of Retribution [Aegis vs Gloomlight]

[Titania]

The answer from Gloomlight is swift, forceful, and intense. Lines of Bastion soldiers take the field, marching forward in silver and black to prepare themselves to defend the Keep and the land of Athelios's faithful. It is a stoic task-- not one done with the fervor or piety they have shown in the fight against the demon or the witch, but with a solemn sense of utter duty.

This is their home. This is the will of their Oracle, of whom represents Athelios. And these interlopers from a far-off land, much as they may be respected warriors? Are not to be allowed to interfere in the will of their God on Meranthe.

A statement comes, soon after, a speech heralded by little more than a standing at a podium and a sigh, from the current Oracle.

"Sak'noth."

"Mettadora."

"Xarxes."

"Ult."

"The Moonfall Witches."

"Atreylla's wayward, demonic spawn."

"The Tower, and all its' little games."

"All of these things you could throw yourself against. All of these more than righteous targets-- People you could slake your blood-thirst on and be revered as no more than the heroes you would rightfully have become for slaying them. Survivors of the Fel waiting for their chance to strike back and rebuild their empire, as you so vividly provide at this exact moment with this infighting. The last remnants of RISE after we and Xuefeng crushed it from existence, still following slavishly his masters' decrees, who did you the insult of attacking your own bloody renewal of vows. A new, interloping group of monsters and witches of the worst sort come to despoil and corrupt our land, take all they desire and spread their malign influence, and yet--"

"You are here to kill someone who has already been neutralized. Whose malignancy has been excised by scalpel-point. Who has been killed, and killed again, and reborn something utterly new."

"You are not the Lord of my lands. I do not serve Ualdir, and you have no say over the faithful of Athelios. Do you forget that His very will was invoked in the ritual to purify Na'Ria? Do you have some mistaken belief that my God is offended by our attempts to find a better solution, a way to ensure we do not need to raise our children unto warriors and killers? He? Who dwells in Helheim, spending his whole life wondering at what point a soul may no longer be redeemed, upset that we search and experiment to find the extent possibilities of such?"

"I allowed you to try her, yes. I expected you to be better than you were. I expected a fair trial, not a mixture of gish-galloping the defendant and transparently having made your decision for her death well before she even arrived. I expected you to actually treat her like a person. That was my mistake. If I had remembered properly who you all were, and what you all did, instead of assuming that you might meet me midway and actually consider what she was-- Had I predicted that the trial's verdict would be borne of babbling about how she's an undead without any semblance of free will while she actively invokes divine magic before you... I would not have wasted our time with this diversion. I would have settled it on the battlefield, as it seems you are quite insistent on doing anyways."

"In the end, I feel, this was inevitable. All I could do was buy time, I realize, despite my years of attempting to find some means, some common ground. I suppose, in the end, I am as much a zealot for my path as you are yours. You fight to annihilate all that is errant and wrong in this world-- I can respect your consistency. I fight to create a world where children need not draw steel, following the paths of their fathers. Where we have no enemies that we must dedicate our lives to the destruction of. I fight for a Meranthe where we have killed our enemies in the only way that truly matters-- by killing their ideals, their purpose, their legacy. By taking from them the reason they fight at all."

"Na'Ria is, as it stands, an important part of this plan. Because as long as she lives, we are able to offer demons the choice between salvation or destruction-- Her purifying light, else the ends of our swords, should they willfully and knowingly refuse it."

"Thusly, these two paths, unfortunately, are damned to conflict. That is okay. I am tired of running from it, pretending that I can arrange some manner of peace between two utterly conflicting priorities. We will see whose ideals are purer on the field of war."

"I will pray for you, Ualdirsson. You deserve that much respect. But you will not find me and mine wanting in our conviction."

"If you think you're a hero, come die like one."

And with that, the Oracle returns to Gloomlight Keep, all she needs said voiced.

War will come. War, in Athelios's name. So it has always been, in Meranthe, and it seems she's come to accept that.

Objective: Defend Na'Ria
Time: TBA