To Stephen’s irritation with himself, he realises he hadn’t actually been considering that angle. He’d instinctively been thinking about it in medical terms: the shard as cancerous tumour to be excised, to be cut out before it advanced too far and devoured too much of the body. Remembering Wysteria’s reasoning in cutting off her own arm: The anchor had become dangerous. They do that. They are quite capable of destroying the body they’ve been embedded in.
And what a dreadful shame it would be, if Mademoiselle Baudin were destroyed through it.
But in terms of a war: what does that do to their scrappy organisation, if they ever learn (if he ever learns) how to remove it safely without amputation? Both good and ill. It would remove the literal anchor keeping people here, and remove their only way of closing up rifts and holding their steadily-fraying world together at the seams. Like preventing incursions, and he thinks for the first time: perhaps that’s the difference between Thedas and the world a Stephen Strange had carelessly broken. Here are anchor-bearers, patching up the holes.
And this is what Gwenaëlle’s like: the sort of choice she makes, day after day, over and over, regardless of the cost. He gazes at her a little too long. Then he pushes through it, recapturing that thoughtful cast to his voice instead:
“I was thinking about it from the Head Healer standpoint, the how about we don’t get devoured by our own shards someday angle,” he says, “but, true. For now, we still need it faster than it’s slowly killing us. It remains a grim necessity.”
A beat, then adding: “But if the day ever comes that it does start going necrotic, please do let me know. Rather an eye or an arm than a life, as you say.”
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And what a dreadful shame it would be, if Mademoiselle Baudin were destroyed through it.
But in terms of a war: what does that do to their scrappy organisation, if they ever learn (if he ever learns) how to remove it safely without amputation? Both good and ill. It would remove the literal anchor keeping people here, and remove their only way of closing up rifts and holding their steadily-fraying world together at the seams. Like preventing incursions, and he thinks for the first time: perhaps that’s the difference between Thedas and the world a Stephen Strange had carelessly broken. Here are anchor-bearers, patching up the holes.
And this is what Gwenaëlle’s like: the sort of choice she makes, day after day, over and over, regardless of the cost. He gazes at her a little too long. Then he pushes through it, recapturing that thoughtful cast to his voice instead:
“I was thinking about it from the Head Healer standpoint, the how about we don’t get devoured by our own shards someday angle,” he says, “but, true. For now, we still need it faster than it’s slowly killing us. It remains a grim necessity.”
A beat, then adding: “But if the day ever comes that it does start going necrotic, please do let me know. Rather an eye or an arm than a life, as you say.”