A small sigh, and for a moment, Itempas looks -- tired. His shoulders stay squared and his posture straight, but he closes his eyes briefly and shakes his head. He and his siblings have spent three hundred years repairing the damage done by the Maelstrom's passage through the universe, and even with all their work and even with Shill's rekindling, much of that damage can only be healed by the passage of time. Millions if not trillions of years of years of mortal time.
It's his family's experience with the Maelstrom that gives him a healthy respect for -- but also curiosity about -- the books' descriptions of the Void. It's half familiar and half alien. The Maelstrom that spawned the Three was a monstrous generative and destructive force, constantly creating and reabsorbing. There would be no universe if It hadn't been there to create the Three of them -- but It destroyed everything in Its path when it reached out to the universe, and the universe would shatter if It ever generated a fourth surviving child.
"It is my experience," and he speaks with such surety that it's clear he thinks his experience carries a lot of weight, "that such things cannot be stopped by force or magic, once they have been set in motion. Only satisfied." He lifts a hand to his heart, the sort of place a shard might nestle. "The power ascribed to this Uaine Cridhe is... unusual."
No, really, "unusual" is putting it lightly. He and his siblings made the universe, and despite their absurd cosmic powers, they would be reabsorbed the minute they tried going head-to-head with their progenitor. The idea of a gem with the power to what -- control? Freeze? -- a super-force of generation and destruction is pretty out there.
Good cop, bad cop.
It's his family's experience with the Maelstrom that gives him a healthy respect for -- but also curiosity about -- the books' descriptions of the Void. It's half familiar and half alien. The Maelstrom that spawned the Three was a monstrous generative and destructive force, constantly creating and reabsorbing. There would be no universe if It hadn't been there to create the Three of them -- but It destroyed everything in Its path when it reached out to the universe, and the universe would shatter if It ever generated a fourth surviving child.
"It is my experience," and he speaks with such surety that it's clear he thinks his experience carries a lot of weight, "that such things cannot be stopped by force or magic, once they have been set in motion. Only satisfied." He lifts a hand to his heart, the sort of place a shard might nestle. "The power ascribed to this Uaine Cridhe is... unusual."
No, really, "unusual" is putting it lightly. He and his siblings made the universe, and despite their absurd cosmic powers, they would be reabsorbed the minute they tried going head-to-head with their progenitor. The idea of a gem with the power to what -- control? Freeze? -- a super-force of generation and destruction is pretty out there.