Olas. That was impossible. Skandra wanted to say so;, but avoided it, for obvious reasons. It felt something like crawling around on your hands and knees listening to this conversation. Gershul was not holding anything back. Then again, there was always a strange sort of respect between Shantar and Gershul. Whether or not that respect would veer into homicidal tendencies depended mostly - well, entirely - on who had the upper hand. Skandra was willing to bet that Gershul thought he had the upper hand here. Shantar probably had an idea he was just waiting to implement. And since Shantar was the only person who could beat Skandra at cards without cheating, the youngest Immortal thought it had a fair chance of working.
Maybe.
"You still don't see it, do you?" Gershul asked with a note of mockery in his voice. "Even my son sees it."
"Sees what?" and now Shantar was wary.
One was leaning forward, the other away. Shantar was starting to see something that he couldn't un-see, and it was probably the same thing Skandra had been trying to tell him about all along. There was no room in Gershul's heart for reason. Or for pity. Just as there was no room for compromise or understanding, and there had not been in quite some time. Skandra wondered what would happen to a creature that hated something that much. Eventually you became consumed by it, to the point that otherwise irrational ideas became perfectly rational. And then all the alchemy in the world - all the science and love a heart could contain - were pointless.
Dull weapons against the second coming of an invincible army.
"The future, Shantar," Gershul laughed low. "Magic had its time, and the most it could give us was soldiers who fought and died and lived again. Resurrection is still an impossibility, but you can have your arm back, by the gods. You can go fight and die again in a holy war that none of the simpletons who send you even understand. How many for Lorien, or Armas, or Bahamut? You call me mad, you say that I should not do this thing, but what I intend is what would come to pass in any case. They cannot reason, they cannot become something more than they are, and this is why they're doomed to end. I'm simply changing the date."
"What makes you think," Shantar said slowly. "That, if it is even possible, you have a right? Or a privilege? You don't decide-"
"I'm not trapped," Gershul stood up quickly, and forcefully; his voice was feverish. "By what cannot be seen. The only boundaries I respect are the boundaries which can be demonstrated. So, if you think my rights stop well short of this, Shantar, perhaps you'd be willing to prove it."
Skandra wondered, in that instant, if Shantar really would attack.