#ari01

@numinal

“...Are you dead?”

The most frightening bit wasn’t the question -- it was the innocence. Even in his cold, unfeeling voice, the Usurper King spoke with the innocence of a child, unfitting the eight-foot tall figure draped in extravagant robes that he was. He was standing over a figure crumpled on the ground, clad in civilian clothes which marked him as little more than an everyday passerby -- one of the entities the denizens of this city referred to as an ‘NPC.’

Zant had not had many intimate run-ins with their kind, and even fewer run-ins with death. Indeed, though he was loath to admit it, as a conqueror and a king, he was remarkably....inexperienced, when it came to mortality and to the morals surrounding it. And so, there he stood, over a body which lay still, unmoving at his feet.

Bending down, the masked figure gently stretched out a hand, the long sleeve which draped over it dragging ever so slightly on the ground. For a long, long moment, his hand simply hovered over the corpse’s face...and then, the body simply....flickered. It flickered, vibrated, and vanished, back into the unknown and desolate base codes this city-prison was composed of.

And Zant knew he wasn’t alone.

“.............What does it mean, to die?” Without even turning to look at the stranger, he asked yet another question. His voice was warped and hollowed by the mask he wore, and still it carried that bizarre and ominous innocence which only a child could possibly possess. He asked his question without a single hint of emotion, and yet, it was so very sad. 

It seemed another had been dragged into his mess through some unusual method. As far as Karna was concerned, it hardly mattered who it was or why. A bystander finding their way onto a battle of this scale, where arrows were raining from the sky and spells and astras were cast from all sides, was one of the worst possible outcomes. If she wasn’t an enemy then he saw no problem assisting her, no, even if she would prove to be an enemy later all that mattered now was that she was removed from this conflict where she had no stake.

“If you can stand, I suggest you run.”