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IC INBOX ( KENOS ).
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█ 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. |
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[ Set waves his hand lazily, complaining to another god in the only way he knows how. It's been a long time since he'd first arrived in Kenos, and the complaints he had were never going to change — they were fundamentally wrong with the world, and no degree of Rosie-the-Rivetering positivity from the mortals was going to change the core fact of the war: that they shouldn't be able to make or remake worlds, even with power to boost them. ]
You cannot give me a half-answer and not expect me to come to tear the other half out of you eventually, but okay! Let's start with something: why was the world so desperate to have you? I know why it wants me, and I have some ideas of why it might want you, and only after Quetzalcoatl's death.
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But, as satisfying as that might be, Tezcatlipoca isn’t actually an idle god. He’s casual and seems laid back, but he’s a hard worker and a perfectionist. So, he gets to the point. ]
Because I’m the one stop shop, so far as gods go, duh. More bang for your buck to pick the Tezcatlipoca from which all others were created.
[ He’s mostly joking there by referring to his mythology, but partially not. It’s possible, but that’s not something he has special insight into. ]
Nah, maybe, but what’s more important… [ He laughs, but the feeling with it is more gloomy. ] There’s a chance that none of this shit works out. Went fishing with Matt, wrestled back my omniscience for a few seconds, and the part I didn’t tell him is that includes my ability to see the future. I can’t ever tell ya how likely one future is over another, but there’s definitely one that’s a dead end.
[ He doesn’t feel the need to describe it in more detail, because it’s what Set imagines. Oblivion is the victor, the end. ]
Quetzalcoatl’s had firepower, sure. She could kill most gods from our world, yourself included, because technically speaking, we predate all of you. [ don’t worry about that one set, ] But don’t need firepower when you’re up against somethin’ like Oblivion. You need the finger on the scales of balance. Gotta make every soul here fight so hard they’ll regret bein’ born. They gotta prove that they have lives worth livin’.
[ Tezcatlipoca’s tone and speech changes for the last portion, and Set is one of the few that will recognize it for what it is. They’re words with divine weight rather than him speaking like a human. ]
I appear to mortals only for fights of survival, and the people here face extinction. So, they will endure and overcome, or they will be obliterated. I’m here to be sure that whatever the outcome, it was the one that was deserved.
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Well, duh.
Set can smell it in his divinity: the traces of another god who no longer exists, destroyed so utterly that even reviving a world will not restore her. The words spur Set to lean closer, attentive to Tezcatlipoca's tone and what he is saying ( or not saying, or saying in a particular way ). To reach out with his bare hands and press them each to a point on the other god's form; one to his knee, the other to his hand. It's a fondness hard-earned by others, given to a dangerous rival solely because in the end, Quetzalcoatl had been someone he loved — and the root of her was here, before him.
That love, naturally, needs somewhere to go. It is hesitant and injured, but it still settles into the flat of Tezcatlipoca's palm. Simple and steady. ]
Do you want Oblivion to win?
[ It is the greatest threat, as well as the reason for the strife and war they are now part of — and Set knows that he is young, estranged from the whole of his divinity long before he even arrived in Kenos if the texts he's read are true. God of war, storms, chaos, trickster, hero, demon. He wears a thousand faces, and none know him for the truth. A solitary, integral god, much like Tezcatlipoca. ]
Is that an outcome you, as you are, can accept? True extinction. Where not even the cosmic sea from which we all hail remains. Because I will never accept that.
[ It's there, that Set's eyes shine; pupils dark and narrow, burning hot with the echo of Ra's fire and the sun's cruel rays of conquest, of punishment. He leans further towards Tezca, wrapping his hands around his face; fond, but searching for his convictions in the midst of his divine duties. ]
I don't exist to keep balance, you know. You might be the god with the "most bang for your buck", but I must be here... for more than just someone's sentimentality or random selection. I was meant to give meaning to ma'at, to be the adversary. Even if they deserve Oblivion, I intend to survive their lacking.
I'd like it if you survived too, Icnoacatzintli. I wouldn't mourn the mortals.
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For a mortal, he’d dance around the answer, because they’re not meant to get straightforward answers from him. Straightforward answers from the divine are just bad for mankind. They need to think and carve their own path. For a fellow god, however— ]
No. Of course I don’t want it.
[ Even saying it comes with a heavy feeling. A mortal would probably call it guilt, but it’s something vaster between them. It’s duty and all its oppressive weight. It may come in shades amongst deities, but it denied them choices all the same. They had roles to play, things that must be, and in Tezcatlipoca’s case, simply wanting was something complicated.
…After all, he’d been supporting the pursuit of the kind of extinction that Set talks about. It’s not Oblivion, since Oblivion was bigger than what even ORT could do, but for the pantheons of Earth…? It would have been the same result. Without a planet, every spirit with a connection to the World would be snuffed out, just like that. It’s what Daybit wanted to do. Tezcatlipoca didn’t think he was wrong for it, either, considering.
Still, though. These aren’t uncertainties so much as difficulties. Set removes his hand to hold his face, and Tezcatlipoca can see the fiery, dedicated passion easily. His convictions run cooler than that, and it was shown even by that touch on Set’s hand. He’s the god that’s steadfast with his eyes always on the future—but the future itself belongs to others, not to him, necessarily. So, the epithet is both fitting and a touch ironic. ]
Problem is, wanting and accepting ain’t the same thing.Funny thing is, that’s pretty damn related to the second thing I wanted to ask you. It’s a favor. But we’ll get back to that.
[ He can explain Daybit and what they’d been fighting for in a minute, because diving into that first wouldn’t come off the way he’d want it to. So, instead, his hand settles on the back of Set’s neck, and he presses his forehead to the other god’s—or at least that’s the impression in Communion. It’s physical but also something relaxed like he’s letting more of his divinity seep out with the “touch”. It’s a gesture of sincerity. ]
If you survive, I survive, Yaotzin. [ He grants Set one of his epithets with a little joking in his tone, but he means it as a term of endearment. ] The mortals here might not, but maybe that’s their fate. Maybe it’s their destiny to create the fertile ground. And that’s why I can’t interfere. My balance isn’t one of makin’ sure both sides are playin’ nice. It’s of a winner and a loser and makin’ sure there’s a “tomorrow” after it all… Even if it means the death of a person, a civilization, or a whole damn planet.