2020-03-24: An Eternity Of Lies
- Log: An Eternity Of Lies
- Cast: Kaguya, Seraph Harmaus
- Where: Kattelox City - Downtown
- Date: March 24, 2020
- Summary: In private, Harmaus explains matters to Kaguya. A deal is struck. Takes place immediately after A Fateful Meeting.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
The warehouse is not in a good part of town. It's quiet back here, but not a friendly, comforting quiet. ...Would either of them especially notice that to begin with, though? Regardless, the night has fallen more thoroughly before they arrive, and the area is still. ...Until Kaguya stops at a door in one of the warehouses, and taps on a makeshift keypad on the outside; there is a 'bing' and a light indicator turns to green. "In here," the small Veruni suggests, and walks inside. There are worktables with cloths laid down over them, a terminal to the side, and...
A number of small tanks, some filled with water with contents shadowed by the darkness, some full of what looks like plant life, and some apparently empty. Kaguya sets the box down by the terminal. Wires and tubes cross the workspace; sticking out of one of the cloths is the barrell of a very large firearm.
She turns around. "Workspace. Kattlelox has more of the parts I need than most places. The traps on the doors will keep others out. Private enough?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
It's not in a good part of town.
But, Harmaus doesn't seem to care about that little factor, proceeding through that part of Kattelox as if he were merely walking through the park he'd been lingering in. Perhaps the knives and gun on the belt at his hip suggest something about his capacity to handle himself, though -- that, and possibly the confidence he seems to convey as he strolls along, quite casually.
He watches curiously as Kaguya engages the lock (the keypad that is) and follows in after her into what is--
Her laboratory.
"Jaeja," the mysterious man murmurs, gazing at the tanks first, then approaches the cloth-draped gun barrel and squats down for, apparently, a closer look. He lifts the cloth.
"If others cannot enter, it suits us fine," the man says, glancing up at her.
He drops the cloth, then stands.
"We tells you what we says now to prove what we will say," he says, spreading his arms wide.
"This body is human, yes, yes indeed. But I only borrows it." His mouth splits in a grin.
"Or it loans me its body? Yah, well. Semantics, yes?" he says, looking her in the eye.
"It," he says, indicating her, "is starborne. It lives a long time, very long indeed! Forever, maybe? Or maybe not?"
Light, pale, like stars, like an aurora seen with the naked eye, begins stream upwards from both hands -- a display of cold white light, only barely tinted with faint purples and greens at the margins.
"I... am eternal," Harmaus intones, over the thaumaturgical display of his arte's element.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Under the cloth is more metal, but it does not resemble most ARMs that others carry. If Harmaus is familiar it has the general shape of a rifle of some kind, at least.
"All right then," Kaguya answers as they find the locale is agreeable enough. It's possible that someone could bypass her traps and locks, but not quickly.
He mentions a reason for telling her something, and Kaguya listens from there, looking him up and down. "...Huh," she answers about his borrowing it. Her strangely pale green eyes though are easy to find; she gazes right back. 'Forever, maybe? Or maybe not?' prompts a brief laugh without much mirth. But that fades, as she looks with more interest at the light streaming around him, th way it is tinted, the way it is just light...
"...That's interesting," Kaguya concludes after a few moments looking him, the borrowed body, the shown light. "Really interesting. Okay. With me it's more like 'maybe not'," she answers. "But I can feel what you're saying, now that you do it. You're not human. You sure picked a winner with the body, though."
"So, you say this proves what you say next. What's that?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Familiar enough, perhaps, that he tilts his head at it, apparently curious.
But he leaves such interests behind and stands to face her.
And he tells her a little about his own nature.
"We learns some about its people. Some, but not much!" he barks, flashing her a grin. "Just enough, to know it lives long."
Harmaus pauses, regarding her.
"But not as long as it likes, maybe? We still learns it. More to learn yet."
But he is eternal.
Because he is...
"Needed a good body. Needed a body that fits in. This, good enough. My form is little good where none can sees or talks me. So now I am we. We are enough."
The light slowly begins to fade.
"It knows Malevolence."
Still starlight -- sunlight at a distance -- streams from his fingertips, only muter now.
"Cans not live on Lunar and know Malevolence not! So it was told of Malevolence. Told it was bad, yes? Sin, defilement, disease..."
The light has by now faded. Harmaus drops his hands to his side and gazes at Kaguya still.
"It was told a lie."
He's not smiling anymore.
The look in his eyes is strange.
Like a candle in the dark, raging against the shadows.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya files away the way he seems to look at her weapons. But he starts to tell.
"I can provide a little more than that. We're smarter, stronger, tougher than humans. Even a little thing like me is more than a match in hand-to-hand for groups of human soldiers." She shows her teeth in what is not quite a smile, at his pause. "Not as long as I'd like. That's true."
"Hmmm, okay," Kaguya replies, and her guess solidifies as to what he is. "Heh. Yeah, it sure seems functional."
But there--Malevolence. Kaguya tilts her head. "Yeah," she says. "At least, that's one of the stories I heard. I was there, when Lastonbell fell again."
A lie, he says, and he has a look that is familiar to her in a way. "...But I also heard that it's human nature, just part of what they are. That's what I have the most evidence for so far, anyway. I've only seen humans and those related wrapped up in it." She pauses, and looks into the candle. "So what, then?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"This we hears, we learns. But sees, not until today!" Harmaus declares, again the portrait of mirth as he trades remarks with Kaguya.
Something glimmers in his eyes at her remark. 'Not as long as she'd like.'
"Aha..." murmurs the strange man.
Before he turns away from that subject and and demonstrates -- himself -- what he might just be.
At that mention -- of Lastonbell -- he becomes almost animate: more akin to flame or rushing liquid than flesh and blood. "Then it sees! It sees the Saint of Sinners!" he exclaims, caught up in the rush of the shared experience. "Only once has we seen it before," and here he seems to catch up to himself a touch, regarding Kaguya a touch more coolly.
"...What did it think of the Saint?"
She asks as he goes on: what does it mean? What's the point he's getting to?
"Has it wonders ever why wars and plagues exist on Lunar? So different from Filgaia. A goddess yet lives -- is she not powerful? Can she not end hardship and suffering? But she is absent, absent. The goddess is all. Our mother -- but I, eternal, have yet seen not her face!"
He shakes his head as if aggrieved.
"The world she makes is rotten, broken. Sad. Lonely. She makes it this way. Why? On a'purpose?"
He points at Kaguya now.
"I says to it -- I, not we -- that Althena is no true goddess! Malevolence is the leaks of the world she now hides from us! Malevolence is reality!"
He drops his hand.
"So this is our aim. We works here, Filgaia, to understand Malevolence where it is not. We works here to unseat the lie." He looks at her, that fanatic light in his gaze still.
"Does it still wishes to serve 'the goddesss'?"
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya laughs along with the smile, because sure there's a little mania to this but his seeming enthusiasm is infectious to her. She jokingly flexes an arm, but lets it be for now.
She does not elaborate, yet, on the other subject, of light. Instead there is a remark more pressing, a current one--"I saw," she agrees of the Saint of Sinners. "It was... Magnificent," she admits. "But more than that. Different from that. I've never felt anything quite like it. I don't know if I want to see it again or not."
Fluid, agitated--but he goes on. Wars, and plagues, but with a living goddess. "...You haven't?" she wonders, thoughtfully. "I haven't either, not cloe up..."
Kaguya considers his words as he points at her, a thoughtful cast to her expression, jaw set. "The leaks of the world..."
"You know, she says after a moment, straightening, "There's some evidence to suggest that. Malevolence exists inside her Barrier, but not in Spira. Spira has a god of its own: Sin. And no Malevolence. Not only that, but the people can see Seraphim just fine, which is true neither on Filgaia nor on her part of Lunar."
"...Lunar itself, you may have noticed--it looks dead from down here. Just a barren moon." Kaguya smiles after a moment, teeth showing, and it's not very pleasant either. "The kind of power that could unseat a 'goddess', even if it's false... I might need that," she admits. "To do what I intend to do. But for service... I mean, don't get me wrong. I've liked her a little, but I'm not with the others for her benefit. The lands I was given care over are subject to her, just now--and they're a place I can send those of my people who are sick, to slow the progress of the disease we suffer from. Her forces give me resources, manufacturing power that I don't have on my own. And that includes armies."
"But you've got a point. If she can bring back the dead, why is Malevolence beyond her? ...And, besides..." She has a calculated look in her eye. "I can't fix the world if I can't see its true shape. If what you say is true, and she merely covers the problem over... If that's the truth we find, at the end of this research, as you say."
"Then she deserves to fall. Maybe she is the reason the Guard..." Kaguya thinks, chains of answers connecting in her mind. "No, that's premature."
"I want to know 'why', too. And if it comes down to it..." She shrugs. "Nah, my loyalty's conditional when it comes to her. I don't consider myself under the authority of any 'god'."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Magnificent," Harmaus repeats. "Yes. It appears where Malevolence is much." He cocks his head to one side, as if contemplating the matter. "Another secret. Like 'Sin', Malevolence makes it wroth? Or, another reason? More understandings are needed, to discover the truth!"
He's never seen the goddess, he says.
"Never. I, her son, have seen her not." He pauses a moment. "Only images. Statues, paintings. All forms of veneration. Her image, upon her return. But never her. What should a child thinks of a parent absent?"
So there was ample room to rebel perhaps--
"Oho?" voices the Seraph. "It tells us more of Spira! We goes there not. We comes here, in search of Malevolence. But finds it not here, either! Not here nor there... but within Meribus and Glenwood, is much..."
He folds his arms over his chest.
"...You sees it too," he says, of the nature of the moon. "When we looks at the Blue Star up there, it looks different also. Lies," he spits. "Illusions. Trickery. Veils over the world of Lunar -- and Filgaia!"
He's positively manic by now, to go by the look in his eyes.
"As above so below," he goes on, gesturing openly with his arms and beginning to pace. "But which above? Which below? The same -- it is the same lie!"
She names what she gets from her place with the Guard -- names too the fact of her peoples' illness.
"Tcha. It gains much from 'lip-service', yes?" Harmaus remarks. "Then it keeps what it gains! No use discarding, ah... 'good hand' is the word?" he asks, tilting his head to one side. "Good-hand. Useful things. Everything is permitted in war against lies. ...If it wishes to see lies dead and gone, so it does."
The smile that begins to creep across his face is that of the cat that stole the cream when she speaks that she, too, wants to know more -- wants to know the answers to the questions he pose.
Proposes to potentially unseat a goddess.
"An agreement with it, then!" he proposes in turn. "Alone, we are limited. Together, limits, not so much! Yes?"
He extends a hand to her.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"You've seen it before," she repeats, recalling that he mentioned that. "Yeah. I know it did the opposite, for me. I remember how weirdly calm I ended up being. I want to know more about that, too--why it attacks, if it attacks... how Sin reacts."
"Huh. But then, I kinda gathered Seraphim were a different kind of generation than your average life form. ...Still, can't argue there. Absentee parent, huh?"
"I can tell you a lot about Spira," Kaguya answers that. "The big thing is like I said, no Malevolence at all. Some other things instead, and Sin roaming around. Sometimes I wonder if they shouldn't be worshipping it instead of their Yevon, but what people do with their religions, whatever." She gestures.
"Hmmm yeah. It does go both ways. Her being the source is a reasonable hypothesis from the data. I wonder, if we made something happen big enough to be noticeable..." Hmmm.
Good hand! "Mm-hm. It's worked out well for me. But that only goes so far. Heh, yeah. Pretty useful. Though not as useful as I'd hoped."
Kaguya 'hmms' at the proposition. "...Yes," she answers. "And you know, these 'truths' might be related to the ones Im looking for, too. Lunar green, and Filgaia dying..."
The small Veruni reaches out to take Harmaus's body's hand to shake. "Yeah. I'm in."