2020-10-31: Things Have Changed
- Log: Things Have Changed
- Cast: Kaguya, Seraph Harmaus
- Where: Thunder Plains
- Date: October 31, 2020
- Summary: Kaguya, in the Thunder Plains, is met by Harmaus, in a different shape than she last knew him. He asks her a question that turns out to be very important to her.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya hasn't heard from her 'good buddy' Harmaus in a while. This is one of the many things she's considering as she looks out from under the shelter blocking out the rain and lightning here in the northern part of the Thunder Plains. Oh sure, there are fiends out there, and the risk of lightning, and the rain and everything...
But at the moment she's organizing a few items from her bag, particularly the set of electro marbles she just harvested from local fiends, and some other similar things. More to the point, she is sitting here where her radio doesn't work for reasons. They're very important reasons that relate to not being found by her entourage at the moment, who she left in Macalania, too accustomed to moving freely again after her time in Filgaia. She'll pop back up on them soon enough.
The rain continues. There's a sudden strike of lightning--
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Ah," a familiar sounding voice rumbles, from behind Kaguya. "Here is the starborne child. It reminds me, stories of lightning. Once, humans think lightning was touch of the stars. So close, yet so far, yes?"
If she looks behind her, she won't see him.
"They needs look higher, higher, higher yet for stars! Above clouds, beyond the Blue Star. Beyond the sun! But, ah... it knows this. It knows this well."
She, too, will need to look higher to find her odd ally in matters of the Goddess and the true nature of Lunar. He is perched in an alcove in a stone pillar, washing a paw.
Though perhaps she may not recognize his current form.
Pausing in his washing, Harmaus takes this moment to squint down at her with a pair of orange eyes. "What knows it of events of late?"
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Ah, funny. What was the saying...? Eh, doesn't matter.
"Huh. The more you know, I guess." Kaguya does glance over her shoulder. She doesn't see him, which surprises her a little, but maybe it's just all the echoes around here. She looks around as he speaks further.
"Yeah, they're waaaay far away. Super far. That's..."
Ah, up! She sees the source of the voice and--nope, the blonde doesn't recognize this form at all. She tilts her head.
"Uhhhhh," she says, instead of answering his question. "What happened to the creepy body?" Pause. "I think that's the kind of thing that counts as an event worth knowing, you being a cat."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Harmaus, for his part, just stares down at her from his shelter in from the rain. Perhaps if he'd still had that body he might have grinned or smiled, but this face is by comparison expressionless.
If he had been difficult to read before, now he's got a form that can't do human-like facial expressions.
"The body?" he echoes. "Ah, yes. An unfortunate setback! It was lost to us," he says, then clarifies, "Died. Murdered. However it wishes to say it. ...I must thanks it, though. Even if I loses my body, talking with Seymour has been... fruitful? Eh... not quite the right word, but I cares not for precision."
He doesn't move from his hidey-hole, continuing to stare at her. "But, ah... it allies with Guard still? It wonders me."
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya doesn't deal with a lot of animals. Or elemental-beings-in-the-shape-of-animals. The closest she came was horses, and she's met a robot horse. This does not particularly help her read Harmaus. But, the words do. Lost...
"Ah. So your possession buddy got whacked, and now you're in your... apparently regular form." Kaguya is not the type to call the terrible cat adorable, but some people might be. "Thanks, though, huh?"
"Well, cool that it worked out, you're welcome. Apparently big Sey's been a busy guy, trying to turn into Sin and everything. That's what I hear, anyway. But you got good stuff out of him? I assume he knows a lot, with a plan like that."
"Oh yeah, I linked back up with them. I've got some guards back there in the forest," Kaguya gestures vaguely. "But I don't feel like doing authority right now."
"Doesn't bug me if you're getting something out of Seymour, though. Anything you want to share? After you do, I had an interesting time you'd be interested in recently, too."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Exactly!" Harmaus declares, squinting down at her. "This form is mine own. Has many advantage... and disadvantage, too. Ah, but particularly on the Blue Star, yes? None sees me, nearly, nearly."
The lack of hands might have also been an issue for him. Seraph or no, eventually not having thumbs has got to be a pain in the ass.
Even if you can normally walk through doors.
......Which isn't something he can do at all in Spira, can he??
"Yes, yes," Harmaus says, shaking his head as if to dismiss the matter. "So I hears. Becomes Sin, destroys the world. I cares not for this plan of Seymour's. But... ah, it would be interesting. Seeing what Seymour becomes. Seeing what Sin does!"
Again, he squints as if well-pleased. "Sin interests me," Harmaus says simply.
"Yes. Seymour introduces me to the 'Trial Knight'. Bearer of the sinful seed I seeks. Closer and closer yet. I gets my answers."
But he opens his eyes again to regard her, below him. "I wonders its alleigance to the Guard. To the Goddess. Does it believe? Or... is a means to an end, instead?"
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"That's true. You're little and stealthy and stuff, and inconspicuous. Gotta be an issue not to have hands though for some stuff. But I guess if you can do magic you can get around a lot of that."
Kaguya listnes to the further matter of Seymour's plan--and then, of course, confirms that he's not on board with that part at least. Kaguya doesn't show it but she's glad about that part--it'd be... inconvenient, if her terrible buddy got that kind of terrible.
"Yeah, I mean, I'm not in favor of destroying the world or anything but 'interesting' is definitely one word for it." She remembers what Marivel said about that, thinking on it. Buuut--
"Sin's the closest thing I've seen to a 'god' in Spira, and maybe on Lunar generally. It interests me, too. Though for different reasons, probably. I plan to kill it if I can."
"Ohhh, though--so you ran into the Trial Knight too? I was gonna say I ran into them. Talked a little about Malevolence. Corruption, pollution, they suggested when I mentioned it affects more than humans. I kinda buy it."
Kaguya smiles unpleasantly at the matter of her alleigance. It's not a nefarious thing so much as a sassy teenager unpleasant, though. She shakes her head. "I believe in what I can measure and repeat. I believe Althena's called a goddess, and that she's powerful, and she's done OK by me so far. But I'm with her because I'm with Hyland and that's the state faith. But when it comes down to it, even if I think of some of them as friends... It's more that I need the allies. I'd leave if I thought that was the best way to achieve my goals."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Spira is bound to be an unrelenting hardship if he can't get someone/something to manage the doors for him.
If there is one good thing that can be said about the wretched Seraph, it's that he at least doesn't want to end the world. Change it, yes, break a few eggs on the way, certainly, but not destroy it.
What use is the truth if there's no one about to appreciate it?
"Wonders it why Sin exists? Why Malevolence exists not in Spira? Both connected, I thinks," Harmaus remarks, gazing up at the sky just as a bolt cracks across its expanse. "It wonders me... if Sin dies, will Malevolence come to Spira? Or is connection deeper, deeper, yet?"
He shakes his head, whiskers bouncing a moment from the movement. "Spira is poor place to seek secrets. Protections hide as much as help. May only know more once Sin is gone!" He bares his teeth for a moment, almost in mimicry of a humanoid grin.
"Ah, it meets the Trial Knight? ...We speaks to it not before. Dangerous, dangerous... but risk not comes without reward! Perhaps time comes to speaks to it. Perhaps I makes a deal. Ah... much I could do."
Kaguya says her piece and Harmaus begins to lash his long-furred tail. "Ah. It is 'okay' with Her even after what I says to it? Tcha," he rumbles, shifting his body as if agitated. "Is it so desperate that it willing accepts lies?"
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya has a lot of problems, but opening doors isn't one!
"Yeah I wonder about that too. That's one possibility--but I'd need to test it. Maybe if we could find some Sinspawn and a source of Malevolence at the same time, but..." Kaguya gestures. Kind of a tall order, and a dangerous experiment to make.
"There's a lot of secrets here to look into. It's just taking care of Sin that's the problem. I'd wanted to have tested a lot more for my Golems by now..."
Almost a humanoid grin. Aaaalmost. Kaguya looks it over, mulls what it means.
"Yeah, I didn't have the opportunity to talk more than that. I had a different objective at the time."
"...Hmmm," Kaguya answers as Harmaus gets all agitated. She senses that this is something of a careful moment, but...
"You know," she says, moving to stand up and look out to the rain, "For a while I was, yeah. I was just looking for a place to preserve my people, then to take out Sin so that they'd stay safe from it. I figured my people could just take care of whatever else after that, so Althena lying or not wasn't my problem."
"...But you know, things have changed."
Kaguya steps out into the rain, briefly, letting the waters of Spira crash down onto her again. "...I can't just leave it to somebody else. And because some of these Guards of hers are my friends, there is a lot to learn." Her eyes slide back to Harmaus. "And you're not the only one who's presented evidence to me that something rotten is going on."
She stays in the rain for the moment. "...I've got different priorities than I did the last time I thought about how I feel about Althena. It'd be convenient for me if the evidence we found proved that it wasn't her, of course. Then I wouldn't have to change anything. I could just go along."
"...Yeah." Kaguya thinks, and turns back, walking under the roof of the structure again. "Yeah, for a while, I was willing to accept lies. I didn't care that much. The truth was a curiousity, something interesting, but ultimately just something to do."
"...But I learned some of Filgaia's lies, too. I learned that everything I was working towards, everything I was planning for, was based on a set of lies. Did you know that?"
The ground at Kaguya's feet begins to brown further, becoming chalkier. She doesn't notice, but her hand has curled into a fist.
"...It would've been easier," she points out, "If you hadn't brought that up. But I was getting complacent. Now.. Here's a 'truth' I want to know. And I need to see the Goddess myself to learn it. Why'd she really send us out here? Was it really to defeat Sin? Or was this stupid war the plan all along? What are we really doing here?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Tricky, tricky. Would needs bear it across the sea. I wonders if Sin cares for its spawn?" is Harmaus' assessment of the experiment Kaguya proposes.
But...
The conversation shifts away from Sin. Towards another, across the sea.
Harmaus, eyes still upon her, unblinking, settles down in his alcove, tail still flicking with naked agitation.
"What secrets finds it," he says, once she has started to explain the first part of the decision she's come to. "What finds it? Rot and lies in the Guard? ...Or another place?" He may be single-mindedly obssessed but he is sharper, perhaps, than it may seem.
"Ah... the starborne kin," he murmurs, pupils narrowing to mere slits. "Tell me. What learns it?"
Of course it only becomes clearer to him the more she speaks. What else would have her seeking succor among the Guard, when her people have such fabled power (he had gleaned much on Filgaia, learning in the shadows before seizing a body of flesh). But what, then, had she learned--
She had learned that everything had been a lie.
"Then it learns as I have," he says, the orange of his eyes only barely visible between his nearly closed eyes. "When structure of the world is all lies..." His tail stops lashing, settles down to merely thumpthumpthump at his side. "...it tears apart the structures. Brings light into dark places. Burns it down. It learns as I have."
It would have been easier if he'd never brought it up.
"Suffer not liars. Suffer not falsehood. Not even falsehood within itself. Ah... I knows it. Lies are sweet seductive things. Comforting those lost," Harmaus whispers, his eyes closed. Only the tip of his tail twitches now.
"I goes to see Althena, someday. Maybe someday soon. I reveals Her for the liar She is. It comes too. It asks its questions before I destroy Her. Then..." Harmaus lapses into silence for a moment.
"Then... I have peace."
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"They say it always comes back for them. That was the idea at Mi'ihen."
Kaguya speaks a lot then. She says a lot of things. What all has she learned? Well, the upshot--the most imprtant thing, Harmaus knows well. Her people indeed ahve fabled power, and there is mor that she could say--more that she will say-but first...
"Tear it all down, huh? ...I did have a friend say that if you want to build something good, you have to risk it turning out bad."
"I'm not ready to bring all the light that those lies among my people need yet. I'm not strong enough to do it without finding some alternative--I don't have the 'power'. But..."
He's creepy. He's much more creepy now than he was. And he's talking some dangerous stuff. But... He has a point about--
"Truth. I was a spy, y'know. All about lies. Until I got to reveal the truth. I think... yeah. Even if I'm not ready to share all those truths yet, I want to know them, don't want to fool myself anymore. And there's things that need burning down."
She's not sure yet she can commit to what Harmaus wants; she wants to see the evidence for herself, first. If Althena is the problem...
"Truth..."
"...Yeah, I'll go with you. I want to see for myself. The truth of the difference. The truth of the split in our worlds. And the truth of this goddess, too."
She owes that much to Spira, if nothing else. "...Might be that I'll help you find that peace, depending on what the 'truth' turns out to be."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
It's some dangerous stuff, all right. Breaking a system means ruining any good that came with it. Breaking a system means being sure that the system is bad.
Breaking a system means being able to break that system. Harmaus has not broken it yet.
He says only someday. Maybe soon.
Or maybe not.
"Ah? It tells me not?" he remarks, as if disappointed. One eye cracks open, followed soon by the other. He shakes his head the once. "...Matters me not. Truth will out, yes? I learns it soon enough."
Soon enough. Someday soon. What is 'soon' to a Seraph?
He has settled down, a still statue within his shelter from the storm. Only the tailtip twitches, intermittantly. "Ah... very good," purrs Harmaus. "I shows it my truth. Soon... soon, once I has the 'seed' I requires..."
And then?
"Together, yes. It happens together. Rip the goddess from her throne. Restore the true world. This happens together." He seems assured of her allegiance, regardless of the clear doubts she must have of him -- of his beliefs and aims. Is this assurance also part of his obsession? Or...
"It regrets it not," is his statement in the end. But will that turn out to be true?