hugtopia | Video: There's an old voice in my head

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Video: There's an old voice in my head

So it seems the coeurl is out of the bag.

[For those of you that haven't seen Cor since he escaped the Temple Priests care he's looking... well... quite a bit less haggard. As a matter of fact he looks better than he has in months. No less worried or stern but the harsh weathering has faded from his skin making the light smattering of freckles clearer, his hair is a little darker, the lines in his face a little lighter.

As a matter of fact he looks more like a man in his early 40s, not one teetering ever closer to 50.]

There's likely a whole mess of time paradox concerns but as we have more and more people from Eos arriving it is becoming harder and harder to keep track of who knows what. Anyone that has any input on how to handle these potential paradoxes I'd appreciate it.

[He sighs, lifting a mug of coffee to his lips, and offering the tablet a resigned shrug.]

Of those here... I believe I have the most complete picture of the future. It was August ME 758 last I knew. If you'd like to know what your future holds rather than tripping into it. Come see me.

[He reaches out to kill the feed, hesitating for just a moment.]

Mmm, Ardyn, I've a favor to ask when you have a moment, as well.

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[To withhold information?

No, he would already know the final results, so there was no point.]

If it was successful? The mass manufacturing of infantry, allowing us to strengthen our forces exponentially while requiring limited human involvement.

[Cor actually barks out a startled, sickened laugh at that.]

Limited human involvement?

The Magitek facility was established so you could take civilians, infect them with the Scourge, and then run experiments on them that resulted in the death of many of them and the destruction of their humanity in the ones that did survive.

Your success came at the cost of your People. They weren't even dying in battle they were dying in your labs.

[His expression clearly changed as he was attacked. In a way that made no sense besides. From one of bliss to perhaps the closest he came to offense. And then, very firmly stated because it was true.]

I have never experimented on humans. That is not at all the purpose of my research.

And yet you saw fit to take a man in a very fragile state to begin with and force feed him the memories and mindset of a being that nearly destroyed the planet seeking to exterminate mankind.

[He sighs heavily, sinking back in his chair and shaking his head. Oh to be so young and blissfully ignorant. The immediate response, though, the way Verstael recoils at the very idea is... comforting, actually.]

Ardyn's input was, most certainly, invaluable.

[He raised a brow skeptically.]

Ardyn is a very difficult man to force to do anything.

[He did essentially live with the man and cater to him, so he didn't exactly have to 'pretend' when it came to stating that. There was a reason why, upon their initial arrival, he had pondered if this place was real or if Ardyn had spiked his drink.]

Remind me, who put him in that 'fragile state'? [He leaned forward, waiting for the answer.]

His brother, it seems, who then saw fit to alter the history books and lie to his descendants.

[Are you expecting him to show how guilty he feels for not somehow figuring that out, Verstael? Because he's not going to let you see it.]

As they say, history is written by the victors.

[At least he admitted it. Verstael leaned back, slightly more relaxed with a casual wave of his hand. So, Cor at least knew that much.]

Anger and blame have been nonsensically directed at the wrong place. Betrayed and lied to by gods, held captive and tortured by his own brother, a practice that continued for two millenia, and the evil in the world is the fault of a man in his thirties who freed him and spoke only the truth to him?

[He shook his head, seeming to relax more. If only he had a drink.]

I never withheld what I wanted nor why from Ardyn, nor was he incapable of speaking his mind to me. He certainly didn't hold off calling me a 'rambling lunatic'. [Something that seemed to roll off of him easily as he spoke very casually of the exchange, like he was more amused thinking back on it than anything. After all, he'd always liked Ardyn.] It was Lucians who convinced him that he was a monster. I always thought he was a marvel.

If the truth made him take the actions that he did, then I would question why people who gain knowledge have a history of turning on the gods. I have wondered endlessly what it is that they learned.

Lucis didn't even exist when he was imprisoned on Angelgard. Lies and misinformation meant no one considered it more than an old wive's tale and for that we are guilty, certainly, but hardly for convincing him of anything.

The man lives with me, Besithia. The idea of the actions you say he took absolutely horrifies him so forgive me for suspecting there was some measure of extenuating circumstances involved. Regardless he'd never have even had the option, never mind suggestion if you weren't personally trying to subjugate beings far beyond your abilities.

[He sighs heavily, reaching up to rub at his brow.]

There's plenty of blame to go around, Niflheim and Lucis both, now and generations past. It doesn't matter. What was done, what became of Ardyn and ourselves and your Emperor and my King.... it was all orchestrated by beings that can play a far, far longer game than we could even conceive of. That's why knowledge turns people against the Astrals.

Because all of our tragedies for millennia are the result of a petty squabble and Bahamut.... flexing.

[He listened. Oh, did he listen closely. Perhaps he could address Cor's jab at him about dealing with divine beings, but he thought it more promising to start with something else.]

Care to expound your thoughts about Bahamut?

Beyond being furious and disgusted by him and by us for never questioning when we should have centuries ago? There's not much to say.

We, humanity as a whole, are nothing but pawns to him.

[Interesting. He took some notes, musing aloud.]

I have oft questioned the intent of the gods. The readily quash some while uplifting others. My more recent discoveries about them have not given me any more faith in their objectives.

[Of course, being a strictly science man, he was one to question. And being from Niflheim, he didn't necessarily relate history about them with a positive view.

However, he was ready and willing to move on, learning what he wanted of Cor's opinion.]

And the next year?

[Cor sighs, already frustrated with Verstael but he'd agreed to this. He just hadn't expected it to be quite so time consuming. He should have known better, really.]

724? I officially became a Crownsguard.

[He's quiet for just long enough to make Verstael think that's the only thing he's going to say about 724, waiting just long enough to make the scientist at least a fraction of how frustrated he is.]

And you apparently decided harvesting miasma from felled daemons wasn't enough. You began experimenting on them as well.

[The note he made for that was short. After all, Cor's personal life wasn't of great import to him, though he would remember he was part of the Crownsguard near his own time.

After that he nearly prodded Cor to continue. Obviously he wanted more than a single event for one year, but just before he did Cor continued.]

I see. [That he jotted down for sure.] It's a sensible progression. I was hoping to be promoted soon and work full-time in the lab. I would have more resources then... [It wasn't so far out of his purview that he couldn't imagine it. Certainly, he would want to understand daemons further.]

That those daemons were your own staff doesn't bother you at all?

[You can't act like this is just the natural progression, Verstael.]

Why would they need to be my staff? There are plenty of daemons out in the wild to experiment on. They were breaching our cities... even when I was a child.

[That was some time ago. But, he remembered it.]

There would be no difficulty finding daemons for experiments.

Why expend additional resources when you can witness the process? Watch people you've worked beside for years succumb to a disease that destroys everything that makes them human?

Ifrit's blood, you could take blood and tissue samples at every stage of the progression if you were using your colleagues. It's a slow process but over the next decade it becomes very apparent that your own army is terrified of you. The soldiers know that to be assigned to your team is to receive a death sentence. And not a clean death, a horrific twisted existence before being experimented on.

Eventually you find ways of merging flesh and magitek, corrupting human forms with the disease while keeping them humanoid enough to hold their form with the tek. I was doing reconnaissance at your facility in '35 and '36. All the people you had been experimenting on for nearly a decade... none of them could withstand the procedures. The theory you had was that removing their sense of self would be the best way of ensuring it did not interfere with the experiments.

So you turned to infants. Babies too young to have a sense of self. The future of your country...

[It's all he can do to stop there, to not go into a tirade, to tell this man precisely how sickening he is. How insane and disgusting. But he bites his tongue. Swallows down his distaste and lets Verstael parse that out and ask his questions.]

[It was at points like these where it became difficult to decipher truth from Lucian propaganda.

True, he could see some of it. He absolutely would want to witness the progression and understand how it works. But there were people becoming infected all the time all on their own. It would be possible to do such a thing without infecting new people. Even possible to ask for volunteers - people desperate to find a cure. Certainly he had no cure, but he could research it. And volunteers would come forward, that he was sure of, if he asked for them.

The thing that sticks out the most to him, though, is infants. He hadn't experimented on humans, much less on children. While he certainly pushed boundaries, he still had them.

So, even as he took notes, he reasserted himself again, seeing the man slowly condemning him for thing he'd never done.]

I have never experimented on people.

So you've said.

[He's already made it clear that he can follow the logic leaps of his future self's decisions and advancements. It doesn't matter that he hasn't done it yet. He will.]

You could not convince people to surrender an entire generation to you for experimentation so... you cloned yourself. One of the very first batches didn't respond the way you desired so they were to be slaughtered.

I managed to sneak at least one of them out before the whole group was slaughtered... That's why Prompto looks like you. He is a clone you created and threw away when he was no longer a useful tool.

[Perhaps he needed to address this now, because Cor's account was clearly tainted. Fortunately, or not, Verstael didn't tend to shy away from speaking his mind.]

Your opinion of me is as clear as glass. However, I would not attempt to experiment on an entire generation of the Empire's people. Beyond being nigh-impossible, my work has always revolved around preserving our people. Nor would the Emperor sell out the children of his nation, particularly when he has just had his very own.

[The cloning, though... That was interesting. Though he'd already known Prompto was a clone of him, he had never really considered cloning himself before. He attempted to follow the logic of what he would supposedly do, through the muddied account of a Lucian, pondering his reasoning behind it. It was quite a step to take.]

I've heard your logs, I've read your journals. You can say whatever you like but your experiments have never been about the people. It's been about amassing power and finding a way to ensure your genius lives on forever.

[Cor shakes his head, frowning but not angry exactly. Just disgusted.]

Prompto brought back a number of your tapes... if a sense of self is the source of these snags, why not inject infants with the plasmodia instead? I believe it was? Not even 723 yet. By the time I infiltrated your facility things were so far gone... saving Prompto was hardly even a hiccup in your plans.

[How strange it was, to be accused of things he hadn't done nor had he ever planned on doing. It made him wonder what parts were true and what was happening in Niflheim at the time. He found it distasteful and outright wanted to reject it.

On the other hand, he had heard some concerning things previously. He wanted to change what would happen, but he couldn't do that if he didn't have a clearer picture of things. He needed to understand the timeline of events if he was going to create a new plan of action.

He frowned at Cor, but decided if they were to get through this he would need to hold his tongue, displeased as his expression was. Instead, he took notes, copied the sentence, and replied simply.]

And then?

[Cor just scowled at Verstael for a moment, doubted the wisdom of this offer all over again. His jaw clenched and he forced himself to let out a slow breath, trying to check his outrage.

After a long moment he stood up, shaking his head.]

Just... give me a moment.

[He couldn't stay in this room and look at Verstael any longer. He needed to expel some of that anger and frustration. Whatever response Verstael might give Cor doesn't listen. He simply marches out of the room, out into the chill autumn air so he can keep his head, keep his emotions in check. Abruptly he wishes Duncan were around, the man never went anywhere without a pack of cigarettes and though he didn't indulge often Cor could certainly use one about now.

The thrill of magic coursing through him would have to do in the meantime.

Assuming Verstael actually gives him time to come down from his anger he'll return to the door not more than five minutes later, cheeks reddened by the cold air but infinitely calmer.]

[Verstael stayed put, certainly and quietly judging Cor in his mind. Of course this was why he'd adopted a method of handling things. He needed to stay focused on the goal. Soldiers got too emotional and lost control of themselves.

When Cor came back he would have eyes on him. Not nearly as upset as a bit ago himself. Rather, he had taken the time to collect his thoughts, and with his chin held high his gaze was fixed on Cor.

He didn't say a thing. Let Cor sit himself back down and get on with it.]

[Cor barely looked at Verstael as he came back into the room, gaze downcast and unsettlingly empty after all the anger from before. This was not the man he knew so far in the future. More than that he knew better than to expect any kind of acknowledgment of his wrong doings. Asking the young man before him to be outraged or incredulous over his own actions as little as one year down the line was beyond his capabilities.

He'd known that when he came here.

But Regis saw fit to spend time with him so he had hoped that maybe, just maybe, there was some small sliver of humanity left inside him that would actually care about anyone but himself. It was foolishness.]

2-24 M.E. 725, Niflheim's army invaded the outer regions of Lucis, bolstered by your Magitek Troopers -MTs-. Regis and his personal Kingsglaive went out to meet the Imperial threat and make their way to Cape Caem to depart for Altissia. The plan had been to attempt to reestablish the Lucian-Accordo Alliance.

We barely made it to Altissia when we were instructed to return to the Crown City. His Majesty had to accept defeat. On 4-1 King Mors withdrew the wall back to the Insomnian ramparts. Leide, Cleigne, and Duscae were at the mercy of the Empire at that point.

Keycatrich was destroyed, presumably as a show of power.

[And now that he's let himself calm down, distanced himself from all of it, convinced himself that he may as well be speaking to a nothing more than a voice recorder for all of the response he will get... His voice is dull, tired and weary and as empty as his eyes. It's nothing more than a tactical report.]

[A tactical report Verstael could deal with. He needed to record everything so he could scour over it and find the errors. Trying to discuss morals over every action that happened for the coming decades would run them around in circles.

He took notes, focus on his papers, before swiveling a hand without even looking up to indicate for Cor to continue. They had quite a large amount of time to cover.]

Video: There's an old voice in my head

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