2018-09-10: Revival

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  • Log: Revival
  • Cast: Siegfried, Malfi, Yarobeleedt, Kalve
  • Where: Photosphere - Control Level
  • Date: 2018-09-10
  • Summary: Mother holds an audience with her children with some unexpected results.

======================<* Photosphere - Control Level *>=======================

The core of the Photosphere is where the Quarter Knights operate out of. The highest level of the Photosphere is led to by trams and stairwells, with a ring of the critical systems that powered it: engineering, life support, and the now long-defunct faster-than-light drive. WIthin that ring is the command center itself.

The command center includes numerous screens, showing maps of Filgaia and readouts on Metal Demon operations throughout the world. The high tech nature is abundantly clear, as this operates as the room from which the Quarter Knights command the Metal Demon war efforts. At the center of the room, though, is the heart of their race: sealed double doors, inscribed with runes of fallen Hyades, that mark the final resting place of their beloved Mother.

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

Last week, Mother awakened.

Despite this, she had not reached out to her children. Only Siegfried had spoken to her -- and even then, only briefly. His words to the Metal Demons since then were brief: that Mother, after such a long slumber, required her rest to return to her full faculties. Today, that would change.

The call went out to the elite of the Metal Demons -- or at least, those who had been at the forefront of their efforts.

Mother would address them all.

On the lower tier of the control chamber, Siegfried waits. The cape-wearing Quarter Knight stands with arms crossed. A few Demons have arrived already; Alhazred is one corner, but the robed Quarter Knight is silent. Even Boomerang leans against a wall.

As one might expect, Siegfried intends to do the talking today.

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Malfi does not expect to do any talking, since she's not among the elite. She's standing in the gallery with the rest of the lower-ranking Hyadeans, but she has dressed for this occasion, wearing a black-and-white gown topped with a purple hooded cape with gold trim. Black sandals adorn her golden feet, but what really stands out is her long white hair, elaborately styled with braids and twists and resplendent with at least a dozen pins and clips, some jeweled. Some seem not quite to scale: she probably stole them from humans. Her expression is rapt, attentive: at last she'll hear Mother speak again!

<Pose Tracker> Yarobeleedt has posed.

        Yarobeleedt is nowhere to be found on the Photosphere outside of the Control Level. That's odd. He's been in dire physical straits since the return to Filgaia. No, nobody shoved him through the recycler (yet). Did he leave in search of other statues, though there should be no more? It is a mystery. One would think he would be eager to be called from wherever else in the Photosphere to come into Mother's very chambers, because his vocabulary appears to be very limited outside of her very name.
        Hmm. It is a mystery as to where he could possibly be, right now.

<Pose Tracker> Kalve has posed.

Kalve is one of the more scientifically-minded Hyadeans in attendance. He does not stand anywhere near Alhazred.

Kalve is a distance back from the invisible cordon that the presence of the Quarter Knights seems to put up. He's relaxed from his usual pass-for-human guise, letting the red markings of a third eye on his brow and the stripes of the same color across his sclera remain visible alongside the tightly-fitting, oddly articulated and almost insectile armor that covers his body. His poncho isn't yet repaired, so he is instead draped in a cyan-trimmed grey cloak cut into vertical strips to let his three sets of arms move freely.

Black-gauntleted humanoid arms are crossed in front of his chest, while two chrome claws are folded just beneath. A pair of almost skeletal hands rendered in iron are clasped behind his back. The hunch where the Manipule Array affixes to his back is concealed by the cloak. It gives him a rather severe appearance despite his somewhat distant and serene expression.

This is a good day, Kalve thinks. He's glad he can be here for it. Nothing could possibly ruin this moment.

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

Siegfried nods as the Demons file in. The absence of Yarobeleedt is, ultimately, not precisely remarked upon. After all, Yarobeleedt is something of a disgusting enigma to the Quarter Knight. Siegfried's metallic eyes, occasionally gleaming red in the light, meet each of them in turn.

"We have all been through much--made stronger. Tempered, by our experiences and the loss of the traitors. Despite this, Mother has awoken... and it is time that we greet her," he says. "Our race has lived for this day--spent long, countless years praying for it to come. It is not prayer, however, but action that brings it about. Let us venture forward, my comrades, and meet Mother. Let us see what we have wrought."

He turns. His cape swirls out after him, a dark red. He looks up, then. He feels another pang of misplaced sadness; the knowledge that Riesenlied is not here to see this.

Why does that pain him?

He quashes the thought, and then strides up the stairs. There rests Mother's cocoon, secured in the middle of the chrysalis on the wall that supports it. As Siegfried walks up to it, he stares reverently -- and then he drops down to a knee, his head bowed. "Mother..."

The cocoon opens.

Mother looks most unlike her children. There is metal plating, to be sure: a face that looks like a metallic mask, a bodice and a body, and armored plating that stretches out like robes. And yet, woven throughout it is glistening red flesh; there is meat inside of Mother, revealed to all the world.

And Mother's masked face does not move, and yet her voice speaks: "Siegfried... all of my children... you gather before me now, and this pleases me...!"

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Mother is pleased. Mother is pleased! Malfi beams as Mother's voice fills the room. Her presence both energizes and comforts her children. She sees excited, happy expressions on the faces surrounding her -- even those that are nonhumanoid. They'd all be murmuring, if they dared. It's all anyone in the Photosphere has talked about for a week now: Mother has awoken! And better, she was acknowledging them. The Photosphere reverberated with the beating of Mother's heart. She is both figuratively and literally its center. As she should be...

<Pose Tracker> Yarobeleedt has posed.

        All eyes are upon Mother. She is what they have bled, struggled, and occasionally compromised for, and they have returned. To hear her speak... no, they can hear her speak almost at any time, now. To see her awaken, a historic moment in the lives of her brave, fierce, powerful soldiers who dedicates themselves to naught but her.
        Yarobeleedt wouldn't miss this for the world, for what of him is coherent enough to understand in so far as motivation and even casual conversation goes.
        ...
        He hasn't.
        Quietly, Yarobeleedt rests behind the pod, positioned as such that line of sight would be impossible to establish - perfectly behind her. He lies low to the ground, on his back, face-up as he basks in her glow - even if he doesn't have eye contact with her. That should be the fatal flaw in the plan of a zealot such as himself, forever robbing him of bearing witness to the first time she truly sees her children, but the thing is...
        Yarobeleedt doesn't need to meet Mother.
        He has always been there for her.
        How one precisely 'meets' someone they've already decided they've known for the better part of seven decades, if only by one's own severely warped definition of this concept, may be a concept best left without further elucidation.
        His bliss goes in silence, which is itself bliss for the rest of the Photosphere.

<Pose Tracker> Kalve has posed.

Kalve has spent his centuries of service within the Photosphere wondering what this day would be like. He knew it would be grand, a spectacular thing to behold, something he would remember for the rest of his days. They would retrieve Mother, help her to return to life, and she would deliver them, all of them, unto glory. He has held that thought in his heart for as long as he can remember, and Kalve's memory is a long thing. It would be itself glorious, a cause for celebration on the eve of their great victory over all their foes.

She emerges, and Kalve does not feel that surge of triumph he expected. He feels strangely light, with a tightness in his chest that lessens along with a tension he had been holding in for who knows how long. There's a warm feeling, but it feels shallow and superficial at best. Her emergence... it is welcome, yes; a relief, certainly. But how many wonders and terrors has he seen on Filgaia and Lunar to compare this moment to? Something to meditate upon, then.

He does not avert his eyes, as Siegried does, until he's gotten a good look at her. He comes to regret that somewhat.

Kalve keeps it off his face, smoothly taking a knee like the Knight does, bowing his head. His mind is awhirl with a confusion that grows in intensity as he works the problem over internally, silently turning it over again and again. Hyadeans come in many shapes and sizes, yes; that is not unusual. In their way, so do Filgaians, representing slices of particularly common adaptations in a way Kalve has likened to sets of similar physical elements present in groups of Demon warriors.

But... meat?

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Malfi kneels, silently, with the rest of the gallery. There are no whispers and few rustles. They are all listening reverently to what Mother will tell them next. Some have waited for this day for centuries -- others, like Malfi herself, for less than one. But today the assembled Hyadeans are of one heart and one mind. And one Mother...

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

Mother's eyes do not move, independently. And yet, Malfi can sense her looking at her -- there is a weight and a pressure to her gaze. There is something ineffable about it. And, perhaps tellingly, Yarobeleedt can feel her gaze -- despite that he faces her 'back,' where the structure of her pod and her armor would block the line of sight. But, a goddess does not see in the same way that mortals do, does she?

She seems to look at Kalve, too. For a moment, it is like she senses his thoughts; like she knows. But, it passes, as if her attention turns elsewhere.

And her voice has a metallic, yet angelic quality. "You may relax, now, my children. The hateful influence of the Guardians is shattered... and your work has not gone unheeded. I have subordinated the essences of such filth!" There is a laugh, then, gay and peeling.

"But there are fewer among you than before... when I awoke, and was cast back into the darkness."

<Pose Tracker> Yarobeleedt has posed.

        Yarobeleedt always believed he could feel Mother's approval, in any one of his mania-filled daydreams of conquest, glory, and everything in-between.
        He melts a little more - figuratively speaking, probably - as she bids them all relax. The Guardians' hold on her is no more, and his work has not gone unheeded. All his hard work in finding the statues! He... he found more than the others!! And that is where he puts a period at the end of the statement, internally.
        There are fewer among their number than before... and Yarobeleedt internalizes, that means there are less who can compete. Of course he would outlast all of his weaker, dumber, slower, more useless lessers like... everyone in the gutters! All of them! How he has these thoughts without madly gibbering aloud remains mysterious.

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Sighing rapturously, Malfi gets back on her feet as Mother orders her assembled children to relax. She's not too relaxed, however, though she's grateful for Mother's reassurances that she has thrown off the shackles of the vile Guardians.

        Malfi wonders when Mother is going to get her revenge on them.

                And on the traitors!

<Pose Tracker> Kalve has posed.

Kalve feels the weight of a gaze that does not move. He does not hide his thoughts; he braces for judgement. If thinking such things is a crime worth punishing, then he deserves his fate.

He does not, however, flatten into paste, so he seems to be in the clear... for now. Kalve composes himself in the intervening seconds. Mother bids them to relax, and so he does, as if on cue. He stands, looking up with some amount of hesitation.

"We have suffered losses against the inhabitants of this world, Mother," Kalve dares to say, "both in ensuring your safe return and attempting to carve out a place of our own. Many have fallen. Others have... left."

It's hard to say 'betrayed you' to the face of your goddess.

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

"Left, you say..." Mother trails off at Kalve. And then, abruptly, she shrieks. It is a terrifying, piercing cry. It startles Siegfried into standing up; that cues several other Metal Demons in the back of the room to do the same. "They have betrayed us! Betrayed me! And they must DIE for their sin! But... suffer first. Always suffer..."

Boomerang, it should be noted, was always standing.

Siegfried swallows and hesitates; he cuts a brief look at Kalve. His expression is difficult to read, but the closest that one might manage is, 'I'm not sure what just happened here.'

Then, he clears his throat: "Mother... we hunt them still. We prepare your armies. We ready for war. We ready for your war."

That seems to, for the moment, mollify Mother. "Good... good..."


<Pose Tracker> Yarobeleedt has posed.

        She shrieks. At this volume, at this pitch, at this character, all living things would quiver before her spoken wrath.
        Someone does not jump out from behind the pod. No, the argument can be made that a presumed reaction of fear is less frightening than what transpires.
        To Yarobeleedt, a creature who seems to be ruled entirely by fear, spite, and sheer infantile pettiness, her words echo his thoughts virtually to the letter. She might be orating them out loud - a coincidence, logically - but to hear someone that one dedicates their everything to go on and echo one's deeply-held beliefs from a position of unquestioned authority...
        Her earth-shaking shriek is no different from the most sweet, harmonious voice, the contents of those words seeing the lowly worm-serpent-whatever sigh in a euphoric glee that no one should.
        Siegfried clarifies their next course of action - to prepare her armies, to ready for war... her war. She is pleased by this. He continues his blessedly quiet existence of happiness.

<Pose Tracker> Kalve has posed.

Kalve, despite his rather remarkable self control, winces. It's a full-bodied one, a spot between trying to stand his ground and relent to the unexpected shrieking of the Goddess before him. His body ripples strangely for a moment, one foot sliding a half-step back. Her words aren't... that surprising, but the vehemence and tone absolutely are.

Kalve shares that momentary look back at Siegfried. There's a brief instance of concern across his face. His head twitches fractionally to one side, uncertain. That was not expected.

"Yes, Mother. Of course. They will be found." Kalve does his best to act the loyal subordinate in the face of a deific figure who might be a little unsettled still. It's... tricky.

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Malfi listens with delight as Mother pronounces her righteous judgement on the apostates. She doesn't envy Kalve's place near the center of Mother's attention, though, or the painstaking care he takes with his words and tone. The war is well and truly about to begin, the extermination of the humans imminent. Malfi was, frankly, hoping to salvage a few to study if she could get approval for it. It would be a pity to wipe them all out without learning everything possible about them...

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

Siegfried has had a feeling of dread ever since Mother awakened. His few conversations with her have been halting; she has shrieked and screamed, in a way that is familiar, but with the advancement of years, he finds it troubling. His expression is concerned.

"Yes, Mother," Siegfried says. "It is as Kalve says. We will address the accounts... and, if need be, we will destroy them utterly."

"GOOD!" Mother shrieks again. Yes... yes, good. I sense that the Guardians' power is cut off--but they will direct their pawns to us. We must shatter them! We must break them! Filgaia has betrayed us all... so we will give it a song of destruction, an ecstasy of desolation, to remember before we CLAIM IT UTTERLY!"

Her shrieks rattle the fixtures and emplacements here. A few Metal Demons step backward, shocked. Siegfried's eyes widen, slowly, as he hears this.

"But... Mother, perhaps..." And then, his spirit shaken, the protest dies in his throat. His fingers shake, slightly, at his side.

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Malfi was prepared for Mother to seek vengeance on the Guardians -- after all, they'd held her imprisoned, in pain, for a millennium -- but not for the shrieking. She steps back, disturbed and a bit shocked, her expression perplexed. Yes, by all means seek the Guardians out and destroy them, but perhaps approach it a bit more rationally? She does not say a word. One does not dispute one's goddess.

<Pose Tracker> Kalve has posed.

The idea of bringing up his ferroforming project abruptly falls by the wayside and is trampled by the fleeing bystanders. Kalve stiffens, jaw tensing, mouth firmly shut. Mother's voice quite clearly seems to go between soothing, angelic tones and the shrieking of a... well, a monster. It is shocking on a deep and fundamental level. It is worrying on the same.

Kalve swallows. He clears his throat quietly, and then swallows again. If even Siegfried is cowed by her unexpected rages --

"We have destroyed several of the Guardians' links to their followers," he manages, after a moment. "Shall we continue our work against them, while they are weakened?" You don't leave wounded animals -- even if those animals are in the shape of something like gods themselves.

Kalve dearly hopes this is a symptom of Mother's injuries, and a momentary slip. Is she just angry at what they did to her? He could understand that. But this... it must be fleeting. Isn't it?

<Pose Tracker> Yarobeleedt has posed.

        In this tiny corner of the Photosphere - its most important, of course, but spatially speaking - in the space between the back of Mother's pod and the surrounding structure, Yarobeleedt's world is one he never wants to leave. He does not see the trembling of his own kin beyond the other side of the pod where they face her. Where they see her, directly, to know full well the appearance and character of what they stand for. Her fury is halting to bear witness to. Her first moments may be remembered more as wrath with only fragments of motherly love and gratitude - to be looked upon with fear as to what it would mean to invite her displeasure were she to raise it beyond voice.
        The injured advance scout writhes where he rests with joyful anticipation of everything she says. Must shatter them? Will shatter them! Will break them! Must give it a song-- no she said will. Will give it a song of destruction... the whole world could fall apart around him, and Yarobeleedt would scarce notice or care that the rattling of the chamber is not doing the deteriorating coherency of his body any favors.
        He finds the courage to rest his more intact arm against the base of the pod - whether to reassure her, or to just feel her power if she screeches again, none can be sure.
        He is without fear.

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Malfi believes that running away would incur the goddess's displeasure, and so she stands her ground as the crowds mill around her fleeing, nearly trampling her. In the end it may be only her sheer size and mass that save her. That, plus sheer determination. In vain she tries to persuade her brethren to remain in the room and listen to Mother. The goddess has every right to be angry! She was tormented by the Guardians for a thousand years!

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

"Yes... yes! We must destroy them!" Mother answers Kalve, with that shift between calm speech and shrieking. It rattles the pod around her; the pod that Yarobeleedt leans against. Whether Mother can sense her, though, none can say.

Siegfried opens his mouth; his throat is dry. "We will continue to interfere with and attack the Guardians' followers, then," he says. "We should also move against what ships and boats that we can. We want to make it difficult for the humans to decide to send an entire army across the narrow sea, to Elru."

He hesitates, for a moment. Then, he adds: "What else would you have us do, Mother?"

"You are to go out..." And then her breath catches, and the shrieking renews: "And deliver sorrow and misery to the traitors and the humans! Let them know that we will bring nothing but pain and fear!"

Siegfried stares, in silence, and contemplates how he could possibly turn that into a real strategy.

<Pose Tracker> Yarobeleedt has posed.

        Touching the pod while she screams and shakes the very foundation of where she now rests is one of the single most painful things Yarobeleedt has suffered in recent memory. His very body is continuing to fail, bit by bit, with every flawed regenerative torpor session following that first one post-Arctica. Such violent rattling does little good for the parts of him that maintain some level of consistency and coherency. Joints rupture, platelets shift somewhere on the metal biomass as though the underlying stuff were confused about where it should be or how it should settle. It's like something is shattering, and the shards within are stabbing him in its attempts to go 'okay yeah this part of this person stays here like this.'
        He does not shriek or cry in pain. He can feel Mother above all. She wants sorrow and misery to those who oppose her, and in the depths of his maniacal schemes and plans that rarely ever play out anything close to his imagination in reality, he is already inflicting it and she is approving.
        There is only one missing matter...! Perhaps he should go forth and petition himself right now for the position most lofty, that the most loyal and effectual (such as himself) deserves...!

<Pose Tracker> Kalve has posed.

Kalve's hopes are summarily dashed. His response is almost automatic, almost mechanical. "...Yes, Mother."

She's not getting any better. If anything, she's just getting worse. If he had to give his medical opinion, he'd say she was... injured, somehow. Damaged. Is it the... the flesh she carries? Is she somehow diseased by this place? Can they do something to help heal her, body and mind, until she is the progenitrix they thought her to be? Her hatred of the Guardians and the humans -- is that tied to it all?

Kalve inclines his head, pressing a fist to his chest in a sort of quiet salute. "As you wish."

He lapses into silence after that.

He needs to talk to Siegfried about this.

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

"Good... good."

Mother falls quiet for a moment, as Siegfried bows his head reverently -- and that bow of his head hides the doubt that now utterly clouds his features, as well as his mind. Has Mother been corrupted? Or, is this the Mother that always existed? She was always prone to her rages. And yet...

However, he is surprised when Mother speaks again. "There is another matter. There must be always be four Quarter Knights... and Berserk was struck down." Her voice quiets. "While the other three have served me well... we require someone unbound by chains of honor. Someone unconcerned except with the battle we must wage across Filgaia."

Siegfried's eyes widen, slightly.

"Boomerang. You will be the fourth Quarter Knight."

<Pose Tracker> Malfi has posed.

Malfi gasps as Mother pronounces Boomerang's promotion. She knows little of him beyond reputation: hard, ruthless, bloodthirsty, always seeking the strongest opponents to test himself against. His companion Luceid was a turncoat Guardian, and this Malfi mistrusted. Still, the Hyadeans had traitors of their own, so why not the Guardians, too? Still, this was something Malfi hadn't expected. Part of her had been hoping for a tournament to determine the next Quarter Knight. No chance of that now: Mother had spoken, and it was done.

<Pose Tracker> Yarobeleedt has posed.

        Yarobeleedt straightens out at mention of a new fourth Quarter Knight. Everything snaps back about as well as they're ever going to, the largely melted large snake-thing starts to tap forearms together. He can't wait to show himself as the new Quarter Knight...!
        "Soon... soon, debut the addition of power? No... but also combine?" He muses in a hushed whisper. He works up a quiet 'fufufu' as he crosses his arms and turns his head. "I sleep at the middling... yes yes yes. It will be surprise but also not? For who but---"
        'Boomerang.'
        Yarobeleedt's jaw unhinges. He might have just lost all the joints in the lower half of his skull. It might even fall off of his face, as his surrounding biomass stretches as though it were trying to cushion the shock of a tremendous impact.
        'You will be the fourth Quarter Knight.'
        Yarobeleedt's body mass sways as he sinks against the ground in a pitiable puddle of pathetic. But, but, he was the perfect addition! He could complement Siegfried's leadership, Alhazred's intelligence, and... the other one's... he would provide...!
        ...
        ...
        ...
        He only loves Mother, like everyone does. If everyone loves Mother, unconditionally and without doubt like himself, how can he possibly stand out and compete against them?!
        He is left with this conundrum to ponder in her grace.

<Pose Tracker> Kalve has posed.

Kalve twitches. 'Unbound by chains of honor'? Dangerous words. What are they but the roving monsters the humans seem to think they are without their honor and pride as warriors? Highly-advanced barbarians, come from the stars to steal their children and burn their homes? And Mother wants to --

He stills. She is in her right mind for this decision, he thinks. The shrieking... her voice is steadied; calm. He may not agree with it, but neither does he have an alternative.

<Pose Tracker> Siegfried has posed.

Mother's gaze can be felt, briefly, on Yarobeleedt -- as she realizes, finally, that he was right there. She remains silent at the sight of him.

Boomerang spares only a glance. Then, the newest Quarter Knight laughs, from the back of the room. "Heh... if that's how it is. All right," he says. "We'll make this work out."

He lifts his hand -- giving a two-fingered salute -- before he starts walking out of the room. Siegfried glances over his shoulder; his eyes narrow for a moment after him, and then he looks back downward. Finally, he nods. "...Your will be done, Mother."

He turns, after that -- and walks, his cape swirling after. The expression on his face is a dark one. The other Metal Demons begin to file out, too, slowly.

All the while, Mother watches -- impassive, silent, and yet there is an occasional soft laugh coming from behind that mask.