[The smaller man’s sudden despondency is noted patiently, without surprise or remark. He is, Liem is quickly coming to suspect, a gentle person with a bone-deep weariness of conflict. He suspects the elf has seen much of it, and wonders if he has lived a long time among humans, where death is so often found.]

For me, it almost as if I am back home again. I left one war of secrets and politics and quiet little battles, and traded it for another.

[So in some ways, of course, serving in Kenos’s war has been astonishingly simple. He has experience with just this sort of thing, after all.

But it has also been a gruelling, wearying experience — as fighting in Taldor’s civil conflict would have eventually become as well, he’s sure, if it had dragged on for this long. If Meridian is successful and he does manage to return home to continue that war, it very well might.]

There is at least one shard-bearer in Kenos, though, who to the best of my knowledge has never participated in any conflict here, faction-oriented or otherwise. [He makes an effort, now, to speak gently.] I do not think you would be prevented from doing the same.