[20:57] "I do."

The creatures fists, ball up- They 'grasp' in the air, right below the jaw of the skeletal figure, as though pantomiming gripping him by the collar.

"I have every piece of evidence that Rilla Lithia could, would, and will. She has dubbed everyone beneath her. She has never made good on any promise unto her people. She would not even stand in defense of her own realm. You spoke to me, of the enemies given unto you."

"I heard from Lady Cho- She believes that Rilla manipulates you and uses you without your knowledge, and I do not mean through magic. If she is your friend- Even not an equal-"

Those hands, those fingers splay.

"... You chided me. That cruel are those who watched after me. That I need not do their bidding. But they have never stopped me. They caution me, they deride acts they find foolish. But they have enabled me. Empowered me. Given me much from their own breast, no matter how selfishly it beats, or foolishly in mine."

A hand splays over his upper-left pectoral, over the brocade coat. "No matter what it cost them, compared to what it gained them."

"She abandoned her people first, Peacekeeper. Time, after time, after time. I can tell you this, now; Time is just a ticking away, for any promise she made in the past. In the future."

"... Ask her. Ask her for yourself."

"Could you not do this? Ask her what she plans? Ask her what life she intends to save, that she would not for her own charges? What she has that is so- So radical, that she could not bear to lower herself? That she LIES to Ardent, to crawl amongst them and sup their scraps than bear the judgement of her former peers?"

"Please. Even tell me-"

"What would she hold it for that could excuse it? Why can't she grant you this boon, for looking after her?"

(Eiphraem Kang)
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[21:26] A word that others have used to justify all too terrible things. A word that others have raised above all other virtues at the risk of losing sight of its temperance -

"Progress."

Peacekeeper's eyes have grown particularly green. Wisps of blue and silver swim in tainted green moons with a luminescent spread of scarce rays of moonlight radiating out from them. The runes along his bones seem to dim as the word passes out from his chest cavity.

"Not for me, but for the living. For those... for those who haven't yet died. That - that, is what I think she would use it on, if anything.

That is the only thing I can imagine, Eiphraem."

The skeleton's gaze slowly falls from the Archon's eyes to his chest. Rising and falling, certainly, with the signs of life -

if not rising and falling, then perhaps tensed with the signs of tightly-contracted muscles ready to extend. If not tensed, then certainly layered with pliable, warm flesh.

A weak 'inhale' of air rushing into Peacekeeper's chest -
a pause -
a weak 'exhale' of acidic gases rolling out of the same hole.

Peacekeeper allows his eyes to flicker out of existence for little more than a second, and the sound of hissing vapors escapes from him. They filter through openings in his robes, rising up from around him in smaller bodies of fumes.

As his eyes slowly flicker back to life, the runes atop his skull grow in intensity once more, letting off an eerie blue glow as moonlight overtakes that necromantic green.

"Stopping people from becoming what I am, rather than fixing what has already been done. Adding life to the process of death and resurrection, rather than mimicking and -

some would say, mocking it."

The skeleton's hands which had laid unused and unmoving all throughout the conversation slowly rise in front of him. Palms outstretched, and bones covered in leather. Like a pianist playing a lament, Peacekeeper gracefully guides one thumb and index finger to grip one tip of the glove and pull it up and over, off of the hand so tightly bound in leather.

Lunar runes, tiny and paid in blood, adorn the skeleton's hands. Between his fingers flow a mixture of the light of the moon and the necromantic energies that hold him together, tied and twisted together in an especially morbid knot.

The skeleton's eyes raise from peering at the back of his skeletal hand to meet the Archon's once more. Bright, and beautiful, and -

far more certain than they had been.

"I am but one. And there are undead, but comparatively few, compared to those who haven't died.

It is clear to me.

There are things that I cannot experience as I am. Things that people lament the very idea of losing. Things that people would kill others to regain. But there is an advantage I have-"

All of a sudden, Peacekeeper's eyes BURST with energy, and sparks fly outward from them, some even landing upon the Archon's chest. Little motes of moonlight dissipate into the creature's skin, imparting a soothing kind of cold.

It is something that comes at once as part of an epiphany. Something that he had noted in others, one of the restrictions placed upon his own kind. Something that he had regarded as a weakness, and something they, the ignorant, had regarded as a strength.

His voice, which had become clearer, fiercer, more potent -

drops to a whisper.

"I don't know the difference, Eiphraem. I can't remember what it's like."

His fingers curl down into his fist as if pulled taut by a puppeteer's strings. Methodically. Mechanically. Painstakingly. His arms slowly fall to his side under the same mechanisms, and before long all that is left is -

what to the uneducated, might look like an especially fancy mannequin carved of bone and adorned with dimly-glowing runes.

"That is why slaves do not hate their slavery. It is because they think they enjoy it."

He pauses.

Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.

Never moving. Never making so much as a sound.

Finally -

"I need some time to think."
(Peacekeeper)