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]

[ Like her, he cannot conceptualize a world that could be eliminated from existence. It would shatter him and unmake his entire existence, to truly come to an invalid conclusion; Ra was almighty, and there were other gods in other pantheons that were wise enough and hungry enough to set aside their grievances to band together in defense of a reality that gave them form and reason. He must believe that Ra, who stood above the end of the world and cast it down night after night, could continue to do the same with this foreign threat.

And he, god of war, former protector-god of Egypt, would do his own duty -- and battle the end of all things. He would resist, for the land that did not love him.

Hayame seems an unloved creature, as well. Severe women were not loveable women, though he had never cared for the quality of one's personality over the strength of their heart. She is a cold thing, where he scalds with dry heat. He ghosts his touch around the image of her face, held between them in the mind's eye. A demon did this to her. A demon marred a woman of battle prowess, and he hisses between his teeth at the thought of what has been done to her. ]

I believe the same as you. The Ennead cannot be destroyed, we will forever reincarnate into ourselves -- worlds are always under threat, but the stalwart will stand against it. Are you that warrior, for your own world? How far would you go, to bring it back?

[warmare]

[She should stop him. He oversteps, to keep his hand so near her face, tracing her skin with so little distance between her temple and his fingertips that a part of her almost wished he would just close the distance and touch her skin properly. But how foolish would it be, to try and make him withdraw from her when the dryad had linked their hearts? Even if she banished this manifestation of his form, the mental vision of his body and face as she remembered...

He would still be there, inside of her, in so intimate a realm.

He would still be reminding her of what mockery she found in that clean, gaping wound. If it had been a burn, a slash... the eye could be excused. Just a wound. Collateral damage. But the prettiness of the removal not only marks it as the work of someone (no, a demon) that had managed to gain complete mastery over her for a precious moment in the heat of battle... but it marked her for the humiliation it was meant to be. The target had been her eye from the beginning, so that she might live on obviously crippled instead of granted the dignity of death.

So that she might seek revenge, have it, appearing before this demi-god bloodied and beautiful in her savagery... only to have the dryad be the next one to humiliate her, and take it away, leaving only this curse behind. But he asks her if she is the stalwart, the one who will struggle against a threat to her world and suddenly-

Hayame seizes his wrist, so that she might hold him there in the intensity of what remained of her gaze. (In the process, his fingertips do brush her skin.)]

There can be no end to the places I would go to return to my world.

[He speaks to a woman who had helped to enslave her own kind, all for the sake of trying to improve her own standing. To a woman who had struggled and fought and clawed to be recognized in a world stacked against her from birth. To a woman who knew saving her world would mean that at the end of the very day she returned... she would die. But all things (not worlds) do die. ... And that is where she wants to meet hers, the rest be damned.]

Now tell me your name. And if you are truly the god of war... Give me your blessing.

[redsoil]

[ They are bound by their decision, to shed one another's blood and flesh before the tree; they had chosen ears, easy enough to hide by the fall of their hair and appropriate for them. They would not be swayed by whispers, not by what they heard or felt. Her convictions are powerful, her mind wild and cold. An ice-bitten woman, harsh and feral as he feels in turn. Their minds and their bodies have been marked, and he rises into her space -- not upon his toes, but as if he has grown to be able to level himself with her lopsided gaze. ]

Good.

[ What he gleans from her mind is monstrosity. A damnable soul that continues her path forward no matter the cost to herself; in a sense, he finds a kindred spirit in this woman. That she bears the body of a mare as well is, remarkably, of no importance to him. The gods of Egypt are born in human shape, in half-human shape, as animals, as the elements. He, too, wears the form of a beast from time to time and she is no more or less for it.

When she seizes him, he is a river of red. The cascade of fresh blood and the clash of weapons, fingers digging into the sands of the desert and voices ragged from crying in pain, anguish, conquest. He is the hands that curl across the backs of her own, the arms that follow the pull of her draw, the eyes that track her kills -- be they her own, or those she chooses anew. Tugging at a long strand of hair with his other hand, the one she has not captured and joined herself too, he rips it free from his head -- a lock of carmine that bleeds at the end, into sands.

That, he tucks into the raven-black silk of her high ponytail. A shock of red against the dark. ]

I am Set, the mightiest of the Ennead. Carry my favor, starless warrior, if you are resolved to this path. You may find me no better than your hated demon, yet I will stand at your side and go to those wretched ends with you for as long as I am able.

[warmare]

[Somehow, in this space of hearts and minds, where it is spirits and not true bodies that meet… it does not seem strange to Hayame that this man (this god) has a shape that is fluid, that one moment he is yay tall and the next he is able to look her in the eyes.

Eye.

When she wakes, she will wonder if there is a strand of her hair that retains that crimson stain even in the true world. Through their touch she feels… everything of him- or rather, vague impressions of everything, both disorienting and grounding… and… she lets go of his wrist, though not before she squeezes it in her grip as if to remind him that she had taken it in the first place. From there… she bows her head just slightly to accept his boon. It is difficult, in this place where their essences are bare… to deny his divinity, no matter how she might have doubted elsewhere.

The blizzard still rages in her “lands”. But as if they have passed into the eye of the storm, the bitter wind and whip of ice is eerily still around only them and the line where cold snow bleeds into hot sand.]

I am Hayame.

[Someone who has never prayed. The gods of men never answered jinba, and she had been raised ignorant of her own kind’s natural worship. But now… she finds enough experience to cobble together her own version of worship.]

If you desire battle, then the violence I do in this world may be yours. If there is an offering you desire more… I would have you name it.

[She could be the woman he had met in the dryad roots, half feral with the surge to fight and a demon’s blood in her mouth, but she could also be this. And if she finds irony in the fact that she who feels so lonely in these foreign worlds might finally find someone willing to stand by her side only for that person to be War…

Perhaps that is what she deserves.]

[redsoil]

[ One day, perhaps he will regain his majesty and divinity. This realm is untended by ma'at, and the order that the Ennead had imposed upon him might not impact him as heavily. Though the mantle of his godhood was bound away, held in the palm of Isis's hand and under her watchful eye, no god could unmake him -- as badly as they might have wanted to, they could not risk destroying the one-great protector of Egypt. Use him, certainly, but not eliminate him.

This world, this realm, could return him to that glory. He'd felt the connection to his divinity while staying faithful to his duty, the reparations he was required to make. She was not the only soul who had been cruel; she, to her people, and he to the mortals who had looked to the gods for aid, not slaughter.

In the eye of the storm, he feels her wash over him as they make their agreement. Perhaps for the two of them it would be a dangerous thing, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder ( shoulder-to-withers? ) against the unknown requirements that would be imposed upon them, but she -- she vows her violence is for him. It is as honest a devotion as he thinks he'll get. ]

I will accept, Hayame. Dedicate your violence and sins to me, and I will repay you in kind.

[ Though he may only have the might of a demigod, his mind is still that of an inhuman thing -- he does not truly desire blood and flesh, nor mountains of bodies. He was a protector, once. Not a slaughterer, but a slaughterer he now is. And he will absolve her of anything she does from henceforth, if only she names him in that act. ]

[warmare]

Let it be so.

[Later, Hayame will realize that she never asked exactly how this god liked his prayers. She will have to come up with something by herself, and settle for running a comb through the long, dark locks that now contain a single strand of crimson. But until then…

The deal seems complete.

She steps back… and turns as if to go, to head deeper into the blizzard that was her hearts. Where she could ice her resolve and cool the temper that had been inflamed so easily by the demon that now encroached in the other side of the “mountain”, bound temporarily with both men who she had tangled with in the dryad’s roots. Both scenes had been violent… but only one had been driven by hatred, by a desperate need for revenge. And if this god would aid her, if she might use that power or blessing to best the other now that his powers had returned in full…]

… I would ask you not to wander far.

[She is a private person. Just the presence of the two in her mind or hearts or shard or wherever they were… it put her on edge, ever wary for prying or attempts to break down walls. But if she is to have truce with him…

Hayame turns back to regard the god of deserts and wars and protection and all sorts of things she feels in the forced connection between, a sudden gust blowing her long mane and tale across her body and then away, like black pennants above the snow.]

The territory is treacherous and cold.

[And those little hidden caves where she stashed her precious remaining warmth and tenderness…

She wasn’t ready to guide anyone there. … She shouldn’t. Not again.]