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]

[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.]