The Lord-Cardinal's eyes met her reflective stare for a moment before then eyeing off the brutalist concrete towers that pockmarked the panoramic view of Arzimo, taking a moment to search deep for whatever words might best suit what it was he actually saw.
"Concrete, Nasira." He jested quietly as his brain still ticked away to find an answer befitting to the question. A short moment passed before he opened his mouth to continue, "I see air that is not fit to breathe, food that is unfit to eat. I see pain, I see renegades wandering a shattered nuclear wilderness, killing and looting whenever and wherever they see fit. I see them stealing police ordinance and leaving them next to the homeless while they sleep. I see people stealing extension ladders, going up on various store rooftops, and pulling the disconnects on their heating and cooling devices, costing the store owners thousands. I see people leaving threatening graffiti outside the news stations. I see people using the payphones to call ambulances to places, over and over. I see them running through the expensive car dealerships and smashing the windshields when nobody's looking. I see them applying for jobs and then immediately quitting... and I see them learning how to make homemade explosives to disintegrate local power substations. Anger, to sum it up, that's what I see when I look at Khovezzem; a nation that feels cheated out of its destiny, and nonetheless, a nation that persists. That is, perhaps, why it all feels familiar."
Half of what he said, he didn't actually know whether it was true, though it was as though he had actually seen Arzimo in some kind of fever dream and his brain painted the images of what life could possibly be like beyond the glass window. As he was speaking however, Sven had been nervously fidgeting in his seat whilst the Pale Man glared right at him with his pale blind irises; he knew he'd messed up, but why did this have to be the treatment he got in return? It didn't take long for him to shift slightly in his seat and lean across to murmur to the Battle Chaplain, who in turn turned his invisible stare right back at the Pale Man. Sven was, for all his clumsy blunders, still Emmerich's squire and his responsibility and the two had developed something of an almost fatherly relationship during their training. If there was anybody who didn't so much as even have the slightest change of pulse in the presence of this intimidating figure, it was the Onyx Martyr's very own champion warrior -- one in a thousand and worth his weight in gold. Emmerich's thumb toyed with the hammer of the sidearm tucked by his belt, the conversation between Thalmann and Nasira occasionally interrupted by the audible 'click's that emanated from it, wordlessly chastising the Pale Man.