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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[redsoil]

[ Set provides the sacrifice, the latent energy of the soul pressed into John's hands and permitted use — the density of his divinity is a crushing weight, an endless echo around them that increases in stubborn resistance as the figure that the necromancer summons forth begins to claw at their persons. Seeking to become them. No, to find their own identity. No, they are it's identity. Set has never known himself to have an "end", but in John he finds a place where they are tangled tightly into one another.

Where he can slip across the space where there ought to be a division between them, only to find that he no longer starts and stops with "himself". He is John, and the figure before them yearns to take that too. It feels like hands upon him, so he delves into the recesses of John's wisdom and spreads himself there, a sheet of soft sands and blown debris that rasps hard as diamond dust against the questing, yearning, panicked force of the other Shardbearer. Wordlessly, he roots himself among John's personage, and is fearless and furious as a storm; he neither hates nor loves the Bearer that tries to become them, to be known, he simply resists it.

Within him, there is a familiar refrain of being lost to the memories and minds of others and Set is able to stand steadier in the face of this onslaught because of his experiences with the souls of the dead, who sought to subsume and enforce their agony and misery upon him, hundreds and thousands of times. He feeds that ruthlessly back into the distant Shardbearer, in place of his vitality — feeling it stolen from him in increments like a wound in his throat, teeth and mouth drawing upon him in need.

Subdue it, he urges John without word or sound, as if he is the same unified thought within the once-man, now-god. Bend it to command, control it. Conquer it so it stops wailing / stops grabbing and pawing / bring it to heel. ]

[hyperpotamous]

[ fortunately for the both of them, john's personage is something that can be relied upon. he dislikes change and always has; john prefers the idea of something fixed and immutable, even though he knows it's impossible when even mountains are shaped by wind and water. life is change, but his unwillingness to be swept away by it means he's held firm to his own identity even in the face of incredible pressure before.

he is also aware of set, but their merging feels surprisingly natural. he has always known where he ends, and everything else begins, so the feeling of being at once finite and limitless is not as disorienting as one would think. it's hard to know if the thoughts of control and submission originate from him or set, but he acts on them anyway. the gnarled roots that resemble skeletal fingers crawl along the ground to wrap more aggressively around the Bearer's tree, and for a moment, it stops incessantly trying to steal from them as john pushes back.

the Bearer continues to struggle, its panicked distress warping the environment around them even more noticeably. john wasn't trying to draw anything out of the Bearer directly, but something passed between them anyway. flickers of foreign memories play in their minds, as vivid as if they had experienced them. john knows this person was a Zenith Iconoclast. he knows they were a king like he was an emperor. a Zenite who still longed for their home, kneeling before yima, whipped into the same zealotry as the Shard-bearers in the present who believe in the cause. the heat of springstar's sun. blood. pain. confusion. a bright light that blinds them before they are swallowed whole.

then the Bearer slips whatever control john might've had, its fragmented sense of self making it challenging to know what he should even be controlling. they cease to stand beside the River because they are plunged into the grey depths instead. you could never really drown in the River because it was all just a metaphor for something greater, but that might as well be what's happening now as they sink deeper as if drawn by a powerful current.

john had been here before — moments before yima dragged him to kenos — and drowning had been the least of his concerns. the sensation of water pressure is a full body ache, and it only grows more pronounced as they sink towards the dark riverbed. a great gash splits the river bottom before an immense mouth opens, baring rows of human teeth and searching, reaching tongues that writhe like worms and try to drag them down — a stoma. a portal to something like hell that only ever opens for the resurrection beasts. or for john. this is not a place he lets himself be dragged to with ease, fighting it all the way down, turning the murky water red with blood as he slices through the tongues as violently as he tries to break the hold of the Bearer's roots. john certainly doesn't want to be the weak link that ends them both... ]