#diamond ask

Time to eat everything you made

Love your ^_^

"Did Ms. Twait get caught trying to sneak in again?"

Minovae's tail swishes, a wary look in her eye.

[Perception check passed] You notice a light dusting of pink taking to the skin beneath her scales on her cheeks. Her eyes subtlety darted about the room. She seems on the cusp of fluster.

"I've told her before it's dangerous to poke around a Hellknight citadel, even with me having informed the men she's just to be removed from the premises. She's not a spy or anythi--"

She pauses, and corrects. "Well, I guess she is a spy, technically. Just for her... her..."

Her fluster is more obvious.

"Her novels." She says it like handling an explosive. Decisively and carefully.

An awkward stretch of silence passes. Horror blatantly passes into her expression as she realizes. "Oh, oh no. You're here to ask me about that damned book, aren't you? That's why you've brought up her name!"

Her horror is obvious nervousness now. She laughs anxiously, tail fully swishing. Her hands twine together and she works her fingers and knuckles together.

[Perception check passed] Her eyes dart to her desk. To a drawer.

"She's a menace to society!", she blurts out. "Those books she writes - she can say it's not meant to be anyone in particular but she knows full well what she's doing and so do all of her readers! She can file down the proper names off of people and places and fudge descriptions but it's obvious! Do you know how embarrassing it is to have a sordid excuse for a novel out there that's obviously about you and your husband?"

She groans and takes a steadying breath, clearly worked up.

[Perception check passed] She casts another quick look at the drawer and looks back at you.

"Ever since Anevia said that the people would eat us up after painting my whole self-destructive blow up and his death as some great romantic tragedy, I thought it'd just be Drezen. Ms. Twait has made us an Absalom Times best-fucking seller though and now I can't go anywhere without people assuming the stuff she wrote is actual fact! Now apparently she's looking to write a sequel, given she's been found snooping around the Citadel walls and trying to sneak in several times now. She's more of a plague than Jubilost Narthropple, I swear. At least he is upfront about requesting an interview. I offered Ophenia one just to get it over with and try and have some stake in the narrative and she rattled off something about it 'interfering with the creative process' and 'organic observations.'"

She snorts. "And have you even read her works? It's--", she's blushing aggressively, "--trash! Nothing but the raunchiest, dirtiest smut! And generic, hackneyed plot only meant to get you to the smut!" Her cheeks are nearly pure red beneath her seafoam scales. "Half of it is physically impossible!"

You ask her how she knows that.

[Perception check passed] She pauses for just a split second. Her eyes again flick to the desk before she shakes her head.

"Well of course I read it! I had to see just what people were getting into their heads about us. And then I promptly threw the book into a river", she nods perhaps a bit too brusquely. "I'm just happy I didn't buy it in the first place. Daeran bought it for me as a gag."

You ask what she keeps looking at, and gesture at the desk drawer.

She halts. Her breath catches. She stares at you with the wide eyes of a soldier before a cavalry charge. "What? Nothing! Just... I have a meeting coming up soon. You need to go. Now."

I answered an ask similar to this.

Whites destabilizer mind controls.

Yellows uses electricity to destabilize form.

Blues uses extreme emotion to destabilize its form.

[Thanks for the ask! - I did some extra research through your tags so hopefully I got it right!]

Minovae smiles, then looks a bit guilty as she answers. "I know her far less well than I'd like to, and that's a shame. Everything I've seen and learned of her tells me we're more alike than not." She lowers her voice, and looks around to see no one else within earshot. "Honestly, Hemlock is how people should be. She's the type of model, ideal character that the Orders would consider all the signs of a successful, lawful, healthy society. I still stand by my beliefs that the Orders strive towards obsolesce and we need to embrace it, and Hemlock gives me hope for that."

She waves her hands, tail rattling, acknowledging the awkwardness of that statement. "I know I shouldn't say such things! That people should be one way or another, but, truly, if there were more Hemlocks the world would be a much better place. An ounce of that sense of accountability and care for others spread across the people would disband us faster than anything." With a chuckle, she notes, "It's funny she has the name she does, honestly. Her and Camellia should swap."

An even grin and light in her eyes mellows as she sighs. "What more can I say? Her sense of duty is beyond reproach yet balanced with a kindness that keeps her from falling into the kind of zealotry that gives my fellow Hellknights a bad name. She has a good head on her shoulders and doesn't blindly follow written law for the sake of it. She's brave. She's funny. She knows how to have a good time and can spread a smile like an infection! Even Regill thinks nothing but highly of her, and that says a lot."

A tense moment of silence passes. "Honestly... I'm a little jealous of her. She makes it seem so easy... I know that's probably not the truth. That she probably struggles as much as I do, duty and kindness, justice and mercy, reason and decisiveness... Balancing it all without losing yourself... But damn does it make me second guess myself sometimes, that maybe I'm not so naturally as good a person as I think I am if it's so hard sometimes. She seems so sure of herself and I always feel just about to drown..."

[I was hoping for this you have no idea]

"First, I suppose I should ask who put you up to this." Minovae smirks. "Everyone that knows Giliys has their own, strong, opinion on him, and it wouldn't be wrong to say they're probably more similar than not. Was it Theo? I know he worries about anything jeopardizing his healing relationship with Regill, and I can easily see him agonizing over the respective spouses not getting along."

She chuckles, and shakes her head.

"You know there's something to be said about Derenges and their chosen partners being so very unlike them! Still, he needn't worry. Against everything that says I shouldn't, I actually like Giliys. Or, well", her brows furrow. "It's hard to describe. I like him, but also I don't. He's abrasive beyond words and somehow more aggressive and angry than a vrock, but he's also... kind. He's generous, too. Just look at him with his and Theo's kids! Actually, he's so many contradictions folded on top of each other because of the things he's gone through, and it would be so very wrong and hypocritical of me to condemn him for what he had to do to survive it all."

A sense of sadness pulls down her smile and dims the light in her eyes. "He... the things that make him up at his very core are the same ones that make up any other good soul. His sense of right and wrong is amongst the strongest I've ever seen, and it's a crime that such an innately just and bright person has been shaped into what he is now. Society failed him. So many people failed him. His justice has been turned into retribution, all his goodness twisted to be in the name of survival."

"You know", she continues, "I truly, genuinely think he would've made for a knight the likes Avistan has never seen had he not been crushed and pushed to the breaking point like he had. It's just...", she sighs, "It doesn't excuse some of the things he's done, and I admit I might have executed him myself if I had caught him mid-act of some of them, but he's trying. I see it. It might only be because of Theo but that doesn't diminish that he's trying to make amends. I see it, and I see where he's come from and I see the frayed pieces there of what could have been and I see what could still be..."

She hums, low and mellow, musing further on it. "So yeah, he's awful and mean and has done some truly heinous things and yet I would say in full honesty that I would trust him with my life. I'd trust him with my family, too. Even if we didn't know each other, if we weren't 'family' as tenuous as that word is, if he saw me fall protecting Jess and I begged him with my last breath, in my unmistakable Hellknight armor and he just the nearest person I locked eyes with, to take my daughter and get here out of there, I know he would."

A sharp, dry laugh cuts through her thoughts. "Actually, Giliys might be the greatest Hellknight there never was. He definitely would've been an incredible paladin, though I'm not sure which god he would've pledged himself to, and none of them deserve him anyway. I'm under no impression that he might kill me for saying that if he finds out, though", she smiles sheepishly.

[Oh hell yeah]

The dragon queen looks up from where she'd been absentmindedly cleaning beneath a claw, wickedly sharp and black. Eyes the color of acid twinkle in amusement and her lips, painted dark, twist into a smile that could almost be deemed 'affectionate.'

"Oh, Valerius. Vali. You wish to know my opinions on dear Valerius? I assume gossip has spread about our previous trysts...", she grins devilishly. "Why else would you be asking about him and I?"

A low hum reverberates from somewhere deep in her chest. "He is a prime specimen, what more can I say? He is a gentleman and a predator in one. His education is pedigree as his lineage. His physique... his body...", she clicks her tongue. "And his vicious wit is one of the few to match my own, same as his hunger."

She chuckles.

"I suppose that's the reason we keep a... healthy... distance between us these days. I respect him immensely, for all that he has accomplished and all he is capable of, but we both know ours is a hunger for dominance that wouldn't stop short of each others. We are simply two flames that'd only consume one another rather than make one greater pyre. His current chosen wife suits him much better in that regard with her... more humble aspirations." She says this with clear contempt. "Though it is nice to see him no longer moping about the place like a sad pup left out in the rain. It was an embarrassment."

A few seconds pass as she thinks, then rolls her eyes.

"Speaking of capabilities. there is very little I despise more than wasted potential, and dear Vali is capable of so much more than he's found himself content with in the moment. It's a shame, truly, but at least it keeps him from becoming a concern in my own personal politics. I need not worry about what threat he poses to Vyrdraig, so long as he continues being so devoted to that goddess of his... and his bloodthirsty flower."