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 narrows his attention in upon Amos, cool and calculating. ]

If you try to keep us from one another, you will lose him. Some part of him will always think of me, because I will never demand the same from you. I will never weigh his importance to me against my distaste for you.

[ And in that, Set stands above Amos. In that, he thinks himself better than this man — someone he does not know is so desperate to be good, only that he is a hollow mimicry of humanity and ought to give up already. Ought to either die for good or become something else and stop pretending. The threat only stirs something darker, deeper within him. Predatory and territorial, even though he does linger upon the idea of being crushed. Mortality is not a pretty look, for an immortal creature. ]

You know only what you want to know, Amos Burton. You only consider that which brings you comfort, and allows you to avoid that which brings you pain.

[ Like that, Set brings to bare the words Amos had whispered: She died.

He does not want to understand the man hammering at his mind, the threat that he is, the yearning that Set has to snap his mind between his fingers and slaughter him like every other man he has driven to madness and torment in his eternal existence. Knowing that he cannot, without ample preparation and careful planning. Knowing that Amos is not a trifling opponent. ]

I am telling you, that you are wrong. I will never abandon Minegishi Gen. I treasure him, with the same heart I despise you. And you will never believe me, because you have to be right. So. What happens to you, if you are not right, Amos?

[ This isn't about the gun, now. But, Set does send an image of it.

( Settled in his hands, the blood cleaned from it and the casing cleaned. A cloth dipped in water and later, in oil, to polish it and attend to it fastidiously. A delicate pick crafted from sand, to get into the tight grooves and seams and clean them, too. He cannot comprehend the inner workings, but that isn't difficult to remedy. He just has to find someone who can take it apart and teach him. ) ]

[baltimores]

[ There's the sensation of nostrils flaring, his breathing audible in between Set's words. She died, and it doesn't matter, because she's dead. It matters because Amos let slip something about Lydia — someone personal, and private; someone not to be known about by others, the one person he could consistently rely on during his shitty formative years — and even hearing Set reference her is.

He breathes; in the physical world, his fists clench, his eyes trained on swirling desert—

His eyes trained on his gun in that motherfucker's hands.

Amos is silent for a long moment, studying that image Set sends him — analyzing it bit by bit, piece by piece. It's no longer bloodied, and that's good. Its outer workings look like they're in good condition, and that's... good. There are no bullets with it, and that's better, considering who is currently in possession of it.

His mood does noticeably shift, anger downing in temperature, like heat dispersing from an object once it has entered the vacuum of space. He's still pissed, but at least Set did answer his question. So.

His voice is quieter when he speaks, skepticism dripping from his words. ]

That's what you do when you treasure someone? You ambush them and beat them bloody? You fuck with his head and leave someone else to pick up the pieces? You worm into his brain so bad that he can't comprehend what just happened? That's what treasuring someone means to you?

Why would I believe you when that's what you do to people you say you care about?

[ This is why Set is a sociopath; this is why this is one of the rare times when Amos knows he is right. Because you don't do that to your people, let alone anyone still so young. You just don't. ]

[redsoil]

No. [ A simple, direct denial of Amos's beliefs. ] That is what you see me do, and all that you care to see.

[ Because, as Set thinks, he and Amos do not want to see anything more about one another. He certainly doesn't. There is a satisfaction he feels, in hating Amos Burton. Not because he has wronged Set in any capacity, but because he is just — he is an Exalt, and by all rights, they ought to be deeply compatible. But they are not, and instead of working on that, they prefer to shove one another further into something dark and heady and hateful. He likes hating Amos, to be quite honest. There's nothing quite like having someone to bear the brunt of the things he won't allow himself to feel toward anyone else.

Something simple and satisfyingly direct, in refusing to look at him in the way he looks at everyone else. Like Amos is his favorite sacrifice. ] — I protect Rudebeckia de Borgia from a war she wants no part of, and from a man who terrifies her. You. You would never choose her over Zenith. I have chosen to hold Gen higher than Meridian, I hold Rudbeckia and Lucien higher than both factions, which makes me better than you.

[ He snarls the words, claws and teeth and the sounds of dogfights. Guns firing, men and women dying and bleeding and praying to some higher power — god, faith, belief. War. ]

So what if I beat him? If he stands against me, he knows I will not hold back — I respect his decisions, and meet them with the whole of my heart and my own conviction! We promised that to one another, when I delivered him to Zenith!

[baltimores]

[ It is a baffled, angry silence that meets Set in return — nothing to combat the sounds of war and whatever it is Set takes from that, letting them fill up the field where desert and space meet. He is not bothered by them, unlike the brief barb at the idea of Amos sacrificing Lucien for the sake of Zenith, the shock of the very idea dispersing with a crisp impression of the fuck—

Because Set is a psycho, and everything he says keeps adding to the impression.

Amos regards his proclamation, and turns up his nose at it. ]

Don't get me wrong, I know I ain't shit most of the time, [ the words coming out in a drawl before getting more pointed, ] but at least I'm not the one declaring myself better than anyone else. Nobody who actually cares about anyone else does that.

[ Yes, Set can have his proclamations, and based on his last conversation with Ruby he understands that they might even be true in some circumstances, for some people. But when Amos reflects on the people he has followed throughout his life — Yima, yes, and Lydia, and the people in between — he knows that none of them would have pulled that shit. The fucking arrogance of it all...

... This is why he hates him. Amos continues to stand his ground, offering nothing to counter Set's asserted domain. In the end, all there will be is a void; in the end, that's all he'll have (blinded to the humanity he still possesses buried deep within him, too blanketed with sheer nothingness to be uncovered so soon). ]

You didn't deliver him to shit. You don't respect anyone other than yourself, because it's all about you. You act like you're above me, but I got no problems reaching you from where I'm standing.

[ Get the fuck back down in the mud with me already, you asshole. You're already here. ]

[redsoil]

[ As if to spite Amos, Set's mind seems to step up onto him. To use him as a platform to ascend and stand over the muck he so badly wants them both to wallow in; maybe Set is filthy, reprehensible, sociopathic and maybe, he truly does belong in those mired depths — but, he'll happily use Amos as a stepping stone just to ensure the man sees him as something elevated. Something that won't just be filth because he wants it.

It's like hostile edging. ] That's because you know yourself as nothing better, whereas I do. I am better than you, and I am infinitely more than you have concluded that I am — why else would anyone share genuine connections with me, if not?

[ He sneers, lip curling as he manifests once more. A flitting creature, a storm. Fickle and cocksure in a way that probably reads as madness to an atheist, but is only because he was born-made to be this way. Everything he is resides in his purity of confidence, or — at least, the facsimile of it. ( If he acts hard, brutal and laughs like he doesn't care, he won't be caught. Won't be revealed. ) ]

You keep telling yourself whatever you need to. Whatever makes you feel big enough and strong enough, Amos Burton. I truly do not care for whatever reality you had to build, to escape the last one.

I will not fight you over anyone. You just have to accept that I will also be part of their lives, the way that I accept you.

[baltimores]

[ Nobody who has stepped on him in the past — used him in order to get ahead in some fashion — is better than him. It's always been the contrary; a display of some of the worst humanity has to offer, occasionally disgusting, always unfounded. Amos doesn't react to Set treating him as a stepping stool in this mindscape but to raise his hackles and stay otherwise grounded — reacting to a threat that hasn't done anything to him yet, but holds the potential to make it worse. A defensive, defiant position.

Because Set is, indeed, insane; because divinity isn't real, some sick joke that Amos can't make heads nor tales of, and so assigns it to the mark of a madman. (He is blind to what it could be a cover for, both unwilling and unable to pry deeper.) ]

And this is what acceptance looks like to you, huh. [ Lording, arrogant— ] How long until you drive them away? How long until you ensure those genuine connections don't want you to be a part of their lives? Because I am in the real world — [ down here, accepting of his position, his standing in life — ] and that's what happens to people like you. Either you drive them away, or you get them killed. There's no in between. There never is.

If that's what you need in order to be better, then good luck with that.

[redsoil]

I am the real world. I live it, breathe it and know it.

[ Their incompatible views of the world will never allow them to cooperate, nor look upon one another with anything but naked hostility and loathing.

And if Amos thinks he belongs down in the dirt ( where Set ought to be, too, where he does exist but fights for betterment and strength all the same — ), then he cannot be unhappy when someone uses him as something to stand upon to get out of that darkness. Set will not let him protest how he is used and viewed, if he never wants to get out of that mire. ]

I chose the third option, by the way — to be myself, and to be desired because of it and to allow those I share relations with to decide with me what we are to one another. That is what drives you mad, in the end. That in spite of all your faith that you are right... you are the only one who feels that way.

[baltimores]

[ Thing is, Amos wants to be better, himself. Feels he isn't capable — deserving? — of it, but wants it. Part of that is helping others to be better, too. It's something he's dabbled in from time to time, and every time he's helped someone — pulled them out of a spate of darkness, helped put them on a path they appreciated — it's felt good, for both parties. In theory, he should have no problem with helping Set feel better about himself.

But Set is not someone who deserves that, and so, here they are — sweet words of self-assuredness raked along his being, reminding him of his capacity to be prey after all, furthering his desire to be predator. Caught in a standstill, in the midst of a paradox of sorts — desert has an end and space does not, his realm will win every time; Set is older than him and has significantly more to draw on.

So, he at least has a chance, he figures.

It just pisses him off that Set also has one. ]

I am right. [ It is also like talking to a brick wall. ] And I can wait until everyone else sees it, too. I got time.

Don't get blood on my fucking gun again.

[ And with that, he cuts the connection. Takes a breath once he's out of that heat — as though that was the only part of the exchange that had bothered him, and not the possibility that Set could be right, too. ]