poe money, poe problems

"Your soul is a currency, and God's trying to maximize his return."

"Goddesses above, Baelve, do you have to be so..."

Proving his point before he'd even finished the emphatic action (or collection thereof), Baelve rolled his eyes, raised his brows, and shook his head, all the picture of understatement. No, he wasn't dramatic, and Goldie knew it.

He wasn't impugning those very same goddesses, after all. He spoke of a god, seedy and self-interested, yet noble in its - his? - ignobility. Everyone knew that everything good came from the golden goddesses, and if you wanted to make up auxiliary deities that you didn't like, well, you were free to do that.

The fact remained, however, that Baelve roundly refused to be sentimental. Roundly? Certainly not pointedly. He occupied that strange gray area outside cynicism that so easily escaped warmheartedness. Goldie so often got so close to labeling him as a jerk, as the middle stage along a path of just not caring about others all your life, but...

Oh, drat it all. Baelve was Baelve. No one knew where he'd come from, and he'd never tell. Goldie had had sweet parents, both knights, who'd sent her to live with an aunt in Hateno, and then, when the Calamity struck (resurfaced, rather) she'd never seen them again. She was named for the goddesses themselves, and she often struggled to incorporate any chariness into her ray-of-sunshine outlook. Princess Zelda had always been so kind to her, too. Symin was looking to train her as an assistant, but he'd given her the go-ahead to do some travel and exploration in the wake of the Upheaval.

Back to their original topic, the Depths, where no sun had ever shone...

The Bargainer Statues bore a chilling resemblance to the figures, neither Rito nor Zora nor Gerudo nor Goron, playing a never-ending game of shotput down there. If that race had been the original occupants of the Depths, it would explain why there were so many Poes scattered about. Upheaval happens, Chasms open, ambulatory Hylians venture downwards and find the immobile Bargainers who request the return of their fallen brethren, or subjects, regardless of deeds done in life. If they were trapped in the statues, they might have had a heightened sensitivity to the cries and pleas of wandering souls.

Maybe the Zonai had even been the ones to wipe out that other ancient race, and seal up the chasms. She'd heard whispers about Link's encounters with the ancient sages, and associated tales of the Divine Dragons. She still believed in the goddesses, and her associated pet theory about the dragons, but...

"Hey, Baelve..."

He grunted (softly) acknowledgement.

"Do you think maybe the Zonai weren't as benign as everyone's been saying they were?"

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Goldie realized how foolish she sounded - in the specific context of this conversation partner, that is.

"Gods who mined the earth to scarcity and frailty, trying to maximize their return in this world. And the Hylian souls, through Sonia, were a currency they could capitalize upon."

Yes, the idea of trading souls, of any denomination or color, for anything at all was absolutely abhorrent, but they were talking about rare vestments and the few natural resources, in the way of flora and fauna, that the Depths offered, not...power, or people.

Of course Baelve would consider this hypothetical conflict between the Zonai and the proto-Bargainers to be a no-win scenario, completely grayscaled and ambivalent. Not that it would be any better if the unknown race had been involved in wiping out the Zonai. They had no idea how long it had taken for the mixed Zonai-Hylian royal bloodline to homogenize, or at least approach a visual homogeneity, nor how many Zonai there had originally been, prior to the Imprisoning War.

How could anyone just write it off to ancient history, banal?

Baelve would find a way.

"You scare me sometimes, Baelve."

"Only sometimes? Roger that - I'll work on it."