IC INBOX ( KENOS ).

[redsoil]

█ To Commune with Set is to stand barefoot in an endless, scorching desert. The sun illuminates all, scalding the shadows themselves out from underneath whomever enters his dominion; the arch of gentle, distant, waves of sand mask the precarious chasms, towering dunes akin to mountains. The sense of vastness, timelessness, is of particular notice, lending itself to the alien, eldritch quality of his mind. There is a dark storm in the distance, and you know intimately that this divine being is far from benign. You cannot bargain with a force of nature. You can only survive it. COMPATIBLE WITH: Exalt, Iconoclast REPELLED BY: Advocate

♠

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[warmare]

[She cannot look up at him when she bows so low, her pride wounded and warring with the undefinable fear that his sudden and unexplained absence had left her with, forcing her to confront how weak she might truly be in some ways in these foreign lands, surrounded by so many things she has never known and so many people with whom she feels she cannot connect to or accept. Where he had always been, sometimes strong and sometimes faint, an endless desert beneath an overbearingly hot sun or just the hint of sand and dry wind... There had been nothing. Just nothing. No god, no "friend", no patron, no Meridian ally, no frustratingly chaotic force, just... nothing. He was supposed to go back to his rightful world some day, like she was, they were both supposed to survive now-

Hayame has given him offerings before, her violence combed into his hair and made a part of him, proof that even in this land far from his Egypt that he was a god with proper worshipers, faith, and prayers... But she had never thrown her dignity at his feet like this before, bared her needs like this, (except that night, those needs-). She does not want to look and potentially see something she cannot stomach on his face.

But suddenly there are hands, hands on her hands, and once he says he will, will... Her halved gaze raises, fingers unconsciously seizing on his. (Dead, he'd been dead-)

The veils part. Veils she had not even known existed. The scents in the air change. The surroundings change. Everything changes as she is drawn in deeper, somewhere secret, somewhere precious, and somehow, despite the fact that a war room should seem like a contained, finite space... what she sees when everything solidifies is so vast and so powerful that Hayame cannot take it all in. She is so achingly and undeniably mortal in that moment, confronted with a breadth of knowledge and perfectly remembered voices, incidents, whispers, schemes, and strategies that if she'd ever doubted he was a god those doubts would have been crushed underfoot beneath the weight of everything Set has collected.

He calls her star to him, and it lights up in his hand, a ball of fire striving so desperately to burn bright or burn out. For a moment, she cannot tell if she is laying on the ground staring up at him or shining between is fingers. Connected as they are by communion, her own knowledge bleeds slightly into the lines and tethers, other stars in his constructed sky winking, darkening, and twinkling in turns. Leaks of everyone she had disgraced herself to searching for him when she feared him dead, Akua... Byleth... Liem... all humming in the night. People she had suspected could have a hand in it, Sebastian, Silco, people she now blamed for it, John Gaius, flickering. Claude growing brighter and warmer, where she'd taken her comfort after finding the cocoon at the Tree. Humbled at first by the divinity she'd been sunk into, she cannot form words. She doesn't even realize that in her attempt to take it all in, to somehow be equal to it, her eyepatch has faded away and her mind's version of herself has two eyes again with which to strive to see and understand. The Church... the Beyond... She has no contacts there, she does not know if she can serve his causes there, but before she can ask him more something he says...]

Soon to be... ?

[He had promised her his favor, that day so many moons ago now, when he had first dyed part of her inky black hair red and sworn to stand at her side and go to the wretched ends with her for as long as he was able. She had just assumed that... that she was already blessed, perhaps in some way she simply did not understand or could not sense, so what...

What did that mean? If he wants her interest, her direct questions... He will receive them.]

[redsoil]

[ With her star held in the cage of his fingers, he reaches his other hand to her face and strokes the space under her eye — the whole of it, in this place, tracing the fine spread of her under eyelashes to the corner of it. He has never met her, with both of her eyes, but she is just as lovely without one, and he has never considered her lacking in anything for being half-sighted. After all, she has been lethal and powerful no matter the encumbering injury, and were she ever to have her eye back... would she not be even more incredible?

( In the pit of his stomach, he does his best to ignore the way he feels something hot-cold shiver down his spine and spread through his ribs. She had thrown herself at his feet, begged him for something he could have granted her simply because she was loyal and steadfast, but instead had withheld from her. Either because he had simply forgotten, or had determined that keeping her in the dark was — essential? necessary? for what end? To see her debase herself at his feet like this?

No, that cannot be it. Their relationship is that of a god and a warrior, not a god and a creature. ) ]

Kenos diminishes the power of a god, and makes even endless beings into ones with end.

[ He'd, personally, "died" after all. Dissipated, though at least it was with direction and purpose. ]

Because of your devotion, I have become more like myself once more. I have fulfilled an unspoken criteria with this world, and I am able to bestow upon you proof of our agreement — as a proper god should. My blessing, Hayame. You may name the shape it will take between us, and partake of my power for as long as we hold our vow between us.

[ Where better to finally grace her, than amidst the grandest war record ever kept? ]

You made this possible.

[warmare]

[The wound that demon had inflicted on her had been fresh and raw still when they had first met, the inside of her eye socket inflamed and tears still running bloody behind the makeshift bandaging she'd wrapped around her head. He had seen it, hints of the dark recesses where an eyeball was supposed to be, when she'd arrived in the dryad's roots chaotic and disheveled... but since then she has kept it hidden away, the sign of her shameful loss to a being that had been skilled and precise enough to reach in and rip her eye out the nerve root without leaving a single other scar on her beautiful face. A being that had left her alive to live on disgraced rather than be granted the release of an honorable death.

She thought she would have forgotten what it was like to have two again. But her body craves to see and take in so much, there's so much all around her, his presence larger in this secret part of him than she ever could have imagined or really been able to anticipate... and her spirit remembers. Yet even with the lost left one manifest, stormy gray above the gentle caress of his curious, lingering touch and staring up at him with the light of her star reflected in it...

He is still too endless for a mortal to truly, truly see, not all at once. Even knowing he has been lessened by his divinity being tethered to a world that was not Kenos, become able to hurt and to die in ways he was likely unfamiliar... Hayame does not say anything at first. She cannot. All her life... all her life she has never been able to exact change or better anything for anyone else. Even with as desperately and fiercely as she had striven to improve her own position, everything had come to naught in the end... and in Horos, in Kenos, on the few occasions she had tried to reach out and help others...

But Set says that she has done this. That her offerings, her devotions, had restored to him something of himself and how he was supposed to be... and he does not say "thank you", not in words like that, but he offers her something. His blessing...]

Set... I have fought every battle since our vow as if I already had your blessing.

[Whether he was capable of actually granting it then or not, his godhood limited and made weaker... she had simply assumed he would be, and waded into conflict and war as if cloaked in his favor already. Now he wants her to name her reward... ?]

If you would give me something now...

[She almost demurs, respectfully lays the offer back at his feet to allow him to select the shape his favor might take for himself, but... It is her choice. Even though she cannot think of an exact conclusion immediately, caught off guard yet and unable to imagine the full breadth of things a god like Set could bestow upon a worshiper... She made it, she made this possible so-]

Then I want... this.

[Her hands raise, vaguely gesturing to... him, to the room, to the overwhelming pressure and intimidating sense of divinity that threatened to swallow any mortal that came before it. That gaze, that aura... that proof that that they were bound to each other.]

[redsoil]

You did this, Hayame.

[ He says it again, for her to hear. It is an injury he must bear, because in the end, recognizing that a god is little more than a memory without those who believe in them is a difficult thing to have to consider. Set has always thought lesser of mortals, thought himself independent — that he had been known for his ability to traverse the world, land-to-land, without being bound to restrictive duties was... well, it had helped. But, without that land and those knowledgeable people, it was Hayame who had allowed him to step back onto a divine path.

However adapted it was. ] You, who have carried my name into battle, will carry the proof of your loyalty and devotion. No one will be able to doubt that I favor you, that I pride myself with your strength and vision.

[ In another life, he would sprawl upon Kenos as the endless, red desert. The arid plains that did not support life, but stifled it; yet, upon those sands, life still found itself spreading, stalwart and defensible, stubborn and true. The desert was a beautiful place, harsh and pitiless, but splendorous to those who adapted to its nature — and he values Hayame for her power, and yearns for her to adapt, as well. To thrive, clever and cunning and honorable, not brittle and faltering.

He sweeps his hands down upon her, her star hovering off into the dark distance of his endless war table, papers fluttering in the wake of her stormy passage. Set gathers her hands into his, pushing his mouth to the place where her fingers tuck together as he aligns the heels of her hands. He kisses her there, and perhaps to a mortal, it would be the most magnanimous sign of his gratitude. She did this. She did. ]

It is yours, Hayame. Call upon me when you have need, and my presence will envelop you — I will strike fear into the heart of the one you wish to cower before you, and they will know that you are a warrior who's prowess is of grave peril to them. Doubtlessly.

[ There is a sense that it is an impermanent thing, that it is not as powerful as a blessing would be in his own world, but it is the crisp, burning bite of power that settles upon her. The whispering hint of Set's divinity, stretched out to bolster her strength. ]

[warmare]

[The purpose in that statement is almost enough for her. She did this. She, who had helped ruin so many lives in order to protect her own, who struggled still with helping others and finding paths that did not end in the failure to understand or to bond…

She did this.

She’ll remember exactly what his face looked like when he said it, the way his lips moved, the way his eyes gazed upon her, the warmth of the peculiar kiss he presses to her fingers… not that the rest is forgettable- it is not. She won’t forget the sensation of his power seeping into her veins and covering her like a battle shroud, nestling into something she could call upon in times of need…

But she won’t forget the rest either.

Somehow, she has found her feet again. Thinking the way he took her hands must be the way of his people, of Egypt, she gently, firmly turned the motion back on to him, pressing her own kiss in turn… and then bringing his fingers to her forehead, where she might bow her head slightly over his knuckles.

A far different stance than the desperate humbling of her previous bow.]

I will not disgrace your favor.

[Even if she failed again… She had to live, like he had asked her, demanded. She had to survive to fight again, despite the fact that her upbringing and instincts lead her to want to offer him her life, to pledge to die for honor and his service…. If she cannot say that she will end her life in his service, then what—]

I will never truly fall as long as this blessing remains.

[Truly. Whether that meant her shard, her body, or something else… She releases his hands so that she might straighten up and stand tall again, looking around until her temporary eyes alight upon the endless papers, the threads that connect… The Church, he’d said, the Beyond…]

Tell me what you would have me know, Set.

[About those things, or anything else he might wish her (allow her) to learn.]