2023-03-23: NORTH
- Log: NORTH
- Cast: Seraph Harmaus, Kaguya
- Where: Pentagulia - Harbor
- Date: March 23, 2023
- Summary: Harmaus, retrieved by Kaguya, considers the road he has yet to travel.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
He had been taken for dead. There were not as many among the Guard who could see him, and fewer still it seemed who could determine the difference between a living and dead Seraph. And he had been lying there so, so still, impaled still by that length of stone that Ghaleon had summoned.
But Harmaus was not dead.
He had been listening, carefully and quietly, for the voice he could still only barely make out.
SEEK.
SEEK.
He had been left there on the pavement while the Guard took the rest of them into custody. And he had been lying there still as they swept the city for any other 'intruders'.
It was a simple matter for another to step down next to his inert form, free him from the javelin of rock, and bear him away.
The sun has since dipped below the horizon and night is well underway: darkness swallows even the holiest of holy cities and only the occasional magical light along the main thoroughfares can keep it at bay.
Harmaus, at last stirring from the reverie that has consumed him, turns his eyes towards the Blue Star, split only by the precipice of Goddess' temple. No sign remains of the damage to his corpus but, ah-- such was always the blessing of a spiritual body.
"Soon," he speaks, his tail swishing across the rooftiles, "knows I the truth."
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya heard it all. She saw it all, from her position along one of the rooftops, surely spotted by Ghaleon but apparently not by anyone else. Lucia demanding the 'truth' of an apparently false Althena...
She decided not to remind a trigger-happy Goddess who she was, and what reasons she had to be bothered about her. Kaguya herself isn't very happy with the Goddess right now. And so, one could call it a whim, but... No, indeed. It wasn't a whim. Kaguya had a reason for it.
So she grabbed Harmaus's body and stole him away, and now, here in the docks...
"Is that so?" Kaguya asks, looking up to the Blue Star, too. The place where she landed, all those years ago now...
"So you'll know the truth. Which truth is that? You didn't seem to like the last couple 'truths' you got."
Pause.
"You're welcome, by the way. I didn't do it just for you. But I'm not interested in seeing what used they'd have for a half-Hellion Seraph."
Kaguya, of course, did not hear that strange voice.
"Must be nice not to have to worry about wounds, though."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Starchild," Harmaus says when she speaks, not turning his attention her way even once. "...I understands it not."
They had most definitively split ways, before. He had found her leanings unacceptable. She had likely finally understood the depths of his obsession and madness. And yet, she had plucked his inert form from the pavement.
Most likely, he would have eventually collected himself, gone to another place to lick his wounds (such as they were). Then he would have set off towards the final stage of his long, long quest.
But she had intervened and even he cannot simply shrug that aside. Even if he doesn't understand it.
"There is truth, and there is truth. It appreciates it not," Harmaus tells her, gazing still at the Blue Star -- and at the temple.
"Close I am, now, to grasping what is deeper. I hears it. It calls me."
His tail twitches, once.
"Wounds... ah. Blessing of this 'body'. What is spirit cannot tear. But it can die. It can warp."
He can't be ignorant, now, of what broils inside him, of where it will take him. Even his delusions cannot hide so much from him... can they?
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"That's me."
Harmaus doesn't understand her. That's not news to Kaguya. They did not exactly part on good terms, after all. Quite the opposite... Kaguya is still not entirely certain that she hasn't saved him just so that she could try to take care of him herself, when it comes down to it.
But not yet.
"You 'hear' it? You sure you're not just hallucinating or something? I hear Malevolence isn't very good for Seraphim." Pause. "...No, you would be sure. Because it's different now, isn't it? Different, now that we've heard she's not Her."
"I think it even surprised Magilou."
Then she considers him a little further. "Yeah. And yours is real close to doing just that. Do you think you'll 'understand', when it happens? Is that part of the goal? Or are you on a clock now?"
She shrugs. "The first Fell Dragon I ever met was the Saint of Sinners. Not eager to repeat the experience."
"...Anyway, what are you going to do now? Your grand plan to reveal the lie, and all. The people won't believe it's not Althena; they're too invested."
"But I guess I do. It makes a lot of things add up."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"So says they. So says they!" Harmaus replies, shaking his head as if to also shake off her statement and the weight it ought to bear. "No. Hears I something deeper, still. The truth, calling out to me! Just a little more, yet. Then..."
Again, that tail swishes.
"Was ever there a Goddess? Or, has there always, always been imposter? My Lord of Calamity who would not... no love has I for it who balks at fate, at chance to change 'what is'. But knows it best 'Althena'." His tail thumps against the tiles now, as if to betray his agitation. "It was... not."
He is quiet for a moment, gazing at the temple, at the Blue Star of Filgaia. "Comes I here to unseat a goddess -- to let Her blood run in the streets and to topple Her throne. But settles I for destroying 'pretender'. Then, I do as truth bids me."
SEEK.
If he quiets his heart and turns his ear towards the current that flows under the skin of the world, he can hear it, still.
"...Jaeja. Knows not a one -- not one! -- of experience of 'becoming'." Finally, he turns his head to look at her, and even under 'starlight', his form betrays the spread of his spiritual sickness. "If that is required to know, then accepts I the price. But thinks I..." He turns his head back to the temple. "...to suffer is to know. To know is to suffer. This... I accepts all of it."
He chuckles, darkly, as she asks him what his plan is now.
"I says it not already? To kill the pretender. And know. If they that lives follows not after... ah, well."
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Something 'deeper'? Kaguya wonders about that. "So what's it saying?" she wonders. She probably shouldn't ask. He'll probably just give her some mad babble. "It seems to be something that's getting you agitated, anyway. Or excited?"
Was there ever a Goddess...? Kaguya sets her jaw, thinking about that. "That she knew who she wasn't implies there was a 'her' to know who she was, at some point," Kaguya points out.
But this is why he came...
"Yeah. I see. I'm supposed to prevent you from doing that kind of thing. But I doubt I'd get much thanks if I did."
Not one. Yes, Kaguya looks at that form of spiritual sickness. "...Can't argue there. Suffering teaches you a lot. And I don't know shit about becoming a Fell Dragon. Just that they're hard to handle. And one here..."
She should stop it. It could hurt a lot of innocent people.
But he 'accepts' it.
"So, you'll know. If everyone else doesn't... so be it? That's how it is?"
She considers. "...You don't sound quite as crazy as you used to. At the same time..."
"I won't be able to step aside, if your new form endangers the people here."
"I don't like you," she admits freely. "...But this is a 'truth' I think it would benefit more of us to know. So I won't stop you here and now. Just remember, though. If you turn..."
"I hope you learn before I find you."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Whether she appreciates it or not, he does tell her what he hears now.
"It bids me seek."
And even when he says that word aloud, there is a particularly sticky weight to it, as if it were aiming to cling to whatever it could find purchase upon.
"Ja, well..." he utters, when Kaguya mentions that Lucia's knowledge of Althena speaks otherwise. "Knows I less and little how and why Lucia knows 'Althena' thus... but it unmends not my point. Who was 'Althena'? What is 'Althena'? Knows I the stories -- knows all the stories! But origin... or original... ah. Another unknown, yet."
Had even Magilou ever looked upon the face of the Goddess? Harmaus cannot say, and cannot know.
"Will it stops me, now and here?" He has turned from his view to look her over. "I will fights it, should it tries. ...Ah, but... does it not has others, taken by the faithful?" His tail swishes slowly.
"Has it time to destroy me, here? Thinks I, it and mine desires in truth harmonize! But, if it tries destroying me, I will hesitate not." He is calm now, calmer than the creature she'd known him to be -- or even as he presented himself just hours prior.
His promise is a deadly serious one. But it is also a promise without rancor. He will do as he must as she does as she must, whether it be him seeking his truth or her seeking his end.
His tail thumps the once against the roof tiles.
"Once, thinks I... I leads all others to truth. Now, I understand. I cannot. I can but seek. And I will tear down all false things I see as I seeks. They will see, and maybe, turns away. Or maybe, they walks after."
It's dark. Cats don't smile. But is there not a hint of a smile in what she can see of his eyes?
"It does as it must. I does as I must. But I holds back not -- not at all! It seeks to destroy me, then I seeks destroy it. ...However I am. Or become."
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
No, that is no mere hallucination. There is something about that word that chills kaguya the way it is said, as if it tries to cling to her, too. She doesn't give the satisfaction of seeing her shiver about it, but she sure feels it.
"...True," Kaguya admits. "She's not very forthcoming. We don't know, yet."
And she must admit, she does want to know. There is a lot that she wants to know, when before she was willing to consign his entire search for this 'truth' to the wastes. "...Nope," Kaguya answers with a shake of her head. "I don't have time to fight you. I'm not sure I could win, and I have people to worry about."
It's strange, to see him so... calm. And yet--
"I guess we'll find out," Kaguya says of what they'll do. "Maybe you'll tear open a 'truth' that the rest of us can see, too. And if you do, I'll remember it. I'll promise you that much, for the time we were able to work together--if you bring out a 'truth', I'll make sure it doesn't die with you."
"But that's all I can promise. Like you say... We'll both do what we must."
"And what I 'must' isn't tangling with you right now. So good luck, Harmaus." Kaguya starts to turn to go. "...Whatever happens next is what happens next."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"And so, it sees its truth," Harmaus declares. "It does as it must. I does as I must. Perhaps, we aids another, one last time..."
Here at the end, he bears her no rancor, indeed. So much has changed: between her and him. Between her and the world.
And for him, all has changed.
"...And it bears witnessing the truth, at last. I fears not laying down my existence. Can it says same? Ah..."
He looks her over, as if to burn her presence into his mind's eye.
"Ah, but always, it has." His gaze attends the temple -- the Blue Star.
"Soon. We sees who is right, who is wrong."
"Who becomes memory. Who endures."
Whatever happens next is whatever happens next. The die has been cast.
What face it displays, though, is yet to be seen.