01-28-2015, 12:40 PM
She listened with a stoic expression. The ardency of the Regus's speech might have stirred blood if the man hadn't condemned the past actions of gods in the same breath he advocated the killing of children. Tehya could see it no other way. War would come of this pre-emptive strike, bloody and self-prophesied. Before long it would shred the very world they had always promised to protect. It grieved her.
People were not born evil. She refused to believe that. And she would not murder children for what they may one day become.
Self-identity aside. Her own secret; her own lie. She would not murder children.
Her eyes took a blink; she was aware that the gathering was being surveyed in turn, their unwavering loyalty tested in their various reactions. Not to the Atharim's cause - at least as Tehya understood it - but to the Regus's. Steeped in church dogma, in tradition and ritual, all trappings she considered unnecessary to the very core of what the Atharim should be.
She'd never before felt ashamed of the tattoo on her wrist, never felt it burn like a cult brand rather than the very promise she usually considered it to be. Bile stung the back of her throat. It was the 2040s, and the archaism disturbed her. The neglect in the name of ceremony. While they watched a man twitch and die at the behest of the man they called leader, the streets were undefended. Innocents died so that the Regus may have - what? An audience to the breadth of his power? Power corrupts. His actions spoke louder than his words.
People were not born evil. She refused to believe that. And she would not murder children for what they may one day become.
Self-identity aside. Her own secret; her own lie. She would not murder children.
Her eyes took a blink; she was aware that the gathering was being surveyed in turn, their unwavering loyalty tested in their various reactions. Not to the Atharim's cause - at least as Tehya understood it - but to the Regus's. Steeped in church dogma, in tradition and ritual, all trappings she considered unnecessary to the very core of what the Atharim should be.
She'd never before felt ashamed of the tattoo on her wrist, never felt it burn like a cult brand rather than the very promise she usually considered it to be. Bile stung the back of her throat. It was the 2040s, and the archaism disturbed her. The neglect in the name of ceremony. While they watched a man twitch and die at the behest of the man they called leader, the streets were undefended. Innocents died so that the Regus may have - what? An audience to the breadth of his power? Power corrupts. His actions spoke louder than his words.