All for Haluth'Maug

Luther overlooks the wounded horseman with great sadness. Despite the obvious necessity, such a thing can't be considered a victory. It's a misfortune. It's a misfortune that they were brought needlessly to this fate. It's a misfortune that he had to enact this fate upon them. On either side, nearly all of those involved are innocent; at least in the grand scale of things. Their sins are the legacy of the ones before them, and the ones before them were similarly backed into a corner.

An arrow whistles towards one of the sling bearers. With a thought Luther summons a black tentacle from the nearest bit of spacetime that he's able to fold. With a flicker of his yellow and black eyes he commands the tentacle to slap the arrow from the air sticking it harmlessly into the dried soil of the desert.

"Is all of this truly necessary?" Luther murmurs, "Could this not be avoided."

"Nothing(Everything)... Necessary(Unnecessary)."

The chaos priest exhales his frustrations into the air. He wishes to close his eyes from this madness and violence, but to do so would be to allow his comrades to come to harm. There is certainly no shortage of archers left on the enemy's side, and the acolytes don't have the same level of speed and power that he does. It's very stressful, and his patron's enigmatic replies don't help.

"Of course. Nothing is necessary." Luther blithely agrees.

"Desire(Want).. Finality?(End)"

Luther narrows his eyes slightly at the thought. He knows what Haluth'Maug is suggesting. It would be easy enough for him to turn the tides of this battle. Further still, the Watcher, with all it's power, could end this all in an instant. Obviously Luther doesn't want to hurt anyone unless it becomes absolutely necessary, but strangely he gets the feeling that his patron doesn't either. He gets the feeling that isn't what the Watcher is suggesting at all. Deep in his soul, he feels that this question is a test. For what, he can't say, but that is the impression he gets.

"... I'm tired of the riddles. Can you just tell me what you mean?"

"How(When).. Much(Will).. Peace(It).. Is(All).. Enough(End)?"

Shocked at the verbosity, Luther almost misses an oncoming projectile. At the last second he manages the absorb it into the writhing of the boiling sea through a quantum tunnel. Having to spread open a hole in space shakes him from his thoughts briefly, but when he returns to them he feels there is some wisdom in what it said. Some great truth he has yet to realize.

"Battle?(Victory?).. Conquest?(Opression?).. All?(Oblivion?)"

The words of Haluth'Maug seem to get louder and more impassioned, if such a condition can be attributed to its magnanimity. Luther finds his eyes softening, as he comes to a kind of understanding.

"The  end of peace.. "

"Death(Stillness).."

"Yes... I understand." Luther says.

As the words of the Watcher resonate in his head, Luther finds his suspicion and resentment turn into a kind of tentative reverence. Perhaps Haluth'Maug isn't evil, not in the way lesser being ar at least. Haluth'Maug just is. It is just its nature to be strange and grisly, in the same way as life itself is. Everyone knows life is messy, and often brutal. Birth, conception, consumption: every part of it is bizarre from an outside perspective. Of course, this might still be a trick. A grand plot to make him easier to control, but Luther doesn't feel his patron has any desire to control anything. To control would be to create order. To create order would be to make stillness. To make stillness would be to make death, and reduce the total writhing in the universe.