It takes conscious effort not to think of this in terms of her own world, her's being a war fought mostly without weapons. Instead, men satiated their thirsts for power by slinging vast sums of money in a correct direction. They invested in vessels the size of intergalactic leviathans. They terraformed new planets to be squeezed for their assets. In doing so, they sewed the seed not of war fought by soldiers, but a war of labor. The demand for human bodies to dig their trenches, run their machines and fly their ships never waned, only increased. Methodically, in fact. To a point in which every human worker became disposable. Less than human.
Where there is labor— where there is cheapened protocols for safety— there is death.
Millions of deaths.
Her world has evolved past the traditional man verses man, but that's not to say it doesn't still exist— no, is unfathomably worse in worlds that aren't her own.
A war of magic, then. Like nuclear fallout. And Fever, at its epicenter, sprawled across her desk with her vast sums of money and power, not a care in the world for how it's obtained nor who it hurts. A business woman. The business.
She knows the image is not entirely fair.
"There's a reason people don't know who owns 'the company' I and so many others work for. Why no one knows. If we knew these people by name, they'd become sitting ducks. Everyone wants to kill the big man whose driving them into the ground, even if its subconscious. We do what we're meant to do, what we're told to do, every day hoping that maybe it will feel worth something. When in reality it's only ever worth the amount we're being paid."
Ellen holds her gaze in white-knuckled fists.
"There are all kinds of warfare. Your's probably looked a hell of a lot different. But there's always someone on top, and everyone else on the bottom. You got close to the top, and someone who wanted it more than you swept the rug out from your feet. If not Orrin, then someone else. The families of the people you brutalized. The creature you saddled up with. That thing probably had no one's interest in mind except for its own."
She doesn't mean to scold, not really. Doesn't intend for it to sway Fever's already swayed opinion, to change anything about the circumstances. Her words come freely and sharply for no other reason than that they do. The Temple echoes in response. Feline bodies stir.
no subject
A war of conquest.
It takes conscious effort not to think of this in terms of her own world, her's being a war fought mostly without weapons. Instead, men satiated their thirsts for power by slinging vast sums of money in a correct direction. They invested in vessels the size of intergalactic leviathans. They terraformed new planets to be squeezed for their assets. In doing so, they sewed the seed not of war fought by soldiers, but a war of labor. The demand for human bodies to dig their trenches, run their machines and fly their ships never waned, only increased. Methodically, in fact. To a point in which every human worker became disposable. Less than human.
Where there is labor— where there is cheapened protocols for safety— there is death.
Millions of deaths.
Her world has evolved past the traditional man verses man, but that's not to say it doesn't still exist— no, is unfathomably worse in worlds that aren't her own.
A war of magic, then. Like nuclear fallout. And Fever, at its epicenter, sprawled across her desk with her vast sums of money and power, not a care in the world for how it's obtained nor who it hurts. A business woman. The business.
She knows the image is not entirely fair.
"There's a reason people don't know who owns 'the company' I and so many others work for. Why no one knows. If we knew these people by name, they'd become sitting ducks. Everyone wants to kill the big man whose driving them into the ground, even if its subconscious. We do what we're meant to do, what we're told to do, every day hoping that maybe it will feel worth something. When in reality it's only ever worth the amount we're being paid."
Ellen holds her gaze in white-knuckled fists.
"There are all kinds of warfare. Your's probably looked a hell of a lot different. But there's always someone on top, and everyone else on the bottom. You got close to the top, and someone who wanted it more than you swept the rug out from your feet. If not Orrin, then someone else. The families of the people you brutalized. The creature you saddled up with. That thing probably had no one's interest in mind except for its own."
She doesn't mean to scold, not really. Doesn't intend for it to sway Fever's already swayed opinion, to change anything about the circumstances. Her words come freely and sharply for no other reason than that they do. The Temple echoes in response. Feline bodies stir.