Photo 195 of 200 in A Fool's Gallery

Pin It
Visiting Aranias
The Wilderqueen’s Throne was bathed in sunlight by the time Korysha finally reached the highest level and it was there that she found the Wilderqueen herself. For a moment she simply stood beside demi-god and took in the view of Greenshade, after some time the Wilderqueen turned to look at her and Korysha knew that she must speak.

“Thank you for… Aranias it is good to see you again. I ran into Mel Adrys on the Gold Coast some time ago and he told me that you had saved him, thank you for that. Nirn would be a slightly more dangerous place without him.”

The Wilderqueen did not immediately respond, instead she turned to look out over another part of Greenshade; perhaps she was in that moment orchestrating some new change to the forest. Her eventual response was just what Korysha had been expecting, “Why do you continue to call me Aranias? She is gone. I am the Wilderqueen and even if we both may wish otherwise Aranias will never return.”

They had this conversation every time Korysha came to visit and it always ended the same way, “She… You are my friend or has that changed?” The Wilderqueen was silent, so Korysha continued “Since you are my friend you don’t have to be the all powerful Wilderqueen when I am here, you can just be Aranias. Just Aranias, nothing more. And I doubt that she is gone, otherwise you would not remember what Spinner Maruin and I did. You are Aranias just as much as you are the Wilderqueen.”

Again, more silence.

Korysha couldn’t help but sigh, she knew that they would continue to have this same conversation every time that she visited and she could only hope that she would one day get through to Aranias.

With another small sigh Korysha decided to change the subject, “Enough of this. I brought some of those tiny cakes that you like, so why don’t we go downstairs and eat?”

Golden Fool's Album: A Fool's Gallery


8 comments
  • Paws likes this
  • Paws
    Paws Point taken about fate, I didn't articulate well. On a meta level she has to become the Wilderqueen because that's how it was written, but in-universe terms we know that, while fate and destiny is a thing, it's not absolute in the way it is with other set...  more
    October 16, 2019
  • Paws
    Paws ... Bring about a Bretonic Wilderking? Like, the Sentinel is almost a proto-Wilderking in the same way Ostion was before he and the Green unified.
    October 16, 2019
  • Golden Fool
    Golden Fool I'd still like to think (emphasis on Like) that Aranias had the choice of accepting or running from the fate that we and Spinner Maruin did everything we could to push her towards. Which I think comes from that small part of me that goes "What if fat...  more
    October 16, 2019
  • Paws
    Paws I hear you regarding free will and fate. I watched a BBC documentary about ten years ago that looked at the Libet Experiment. I clicked around this morning expecting to find science had proven free will is a certainty in the decade since I watched that do...  more
    October 17, 2019