Zenos is not sure what he expected from the Regent - what he's been able to glean has been filtered through the fear or scorn or admiration of the other Kenoma, and so needed to be taken with not so much a grain of salt as an entire boulder, revealing more about his comrades than their leader themselves - but quoting more-or-less verbatim from his own playbook was not it. He is not used to feeling Understood - Himeka has tried, but comes at it from malms in the opposite direction; this seems to issue from ilms away, if that. Granted, the parts about Relieving Suffering are very much not his wheelhouse (he has never concerned himself with the welfare of cattle, and has no intention of trying to do so now) and he bristles a little at the term My Kenoma (were he at all given to empathy, he might wonder if this is how the likes of Yotsuyu's brute felt next to him) but the rest - how one might stoke hatred and cultivate nemeses? The assertion that might makes right? The refusal to be anything but themself? That he knows, and the artistry of it is beautiful, the way a new blade or a hithertoo-unseen beast is beautiful.
He is not sure if he wishes to fight for the Regent or with them (the line between kindred and rival has always been more of a rust-red smear where he's concerned, hasn't it?) but either way his blood sings more than a little. Himeka's challenge does not help matters in the slightest, much as it pleases him to see that whatever happened in Venera does not seem to have dulled her spirits.
At first he simply observes, nothing both the Pleroma most vociferous in their objections and the Kenoma most adamant in their support. Special attention is given to those who've already expressed a hunger to kill - the likes of Rin, Childe and Majorita - wondering if that hunger remains, or if they will balk now. Whatever happens it seems a fight is at this point inevitable, and that, at least, is an uncomplicatedly joyous prospect. Probably.]
So it is to be war in truth [he says, to nobody in particular]
no subject
Zenos is not sure what he expected from the Regent - what he's been able to glean has been filtered through the fear or scorn or admiration of the other Kenoma, and so needed to be taken with not so much a grain of salt as an entire boulder, revealing more about his comrades than their leader themselves - but quoting more-or-less verbatim from his own playbook was not it. He is not used to feeling Understood - Himeka has tried, but comes at it from malms in the opposite direction; this seems to issue from ilms away, if that. Granted, the parts about Relieving Suffering are very much not his wheelhouse (he has never concerned himself with the welfare of cattle, and has no intention of trying to do so now) and he bristles a little at the term My Kenoma (were he at all given to empathy, he might wonder if this is how the likes of Yotsuyu's brute felt next to him) but the rest - how one might stoke hatred and cultivate nemeses? The assertion that might makes right? The refusal to be anything but themself? That he knows, and the artistry of it is beautiful, the way a new blade or a hithertoo-unseen beast is beautiful.
He is not sure if he wishes to fight for the Regent or with them (the line between kindred and rival has always been more of a rust-red smear where he's concerned, hasn't it?) but either way his blood sings more than a little. Himeka's challenge does not help matters in the slightest, much as it pleases him to see that whatever happened in Venera does not seem to have dulled her spirits.
At first he simply observes, nothing both the Pleroma most vociferous in their objections and the Kenoma most adamant in their support. Special attention is given to those who've already expressed a hunger to kill - the likes of Rin, Childe and Majorita - wondering if that hunger remains, or if they will balk now. Whatever happens it seems a fight is at this point inevitable, and that, at least, is an uncomplicatedly joyous prospect. Probably.]
So it is to be war in truth [he says, to nobody in particular]