What's In A Name?

[grantuseyes]

Micolash sits cross-legged on a table. Strewn all around him are ink pots (some overturned and spilled), parchment paper (in stacks and scattered alike), pens and nibs and a few sticks of charcoal. His fingers are stained with ink and there are a few splotches somehow on his face and on his pinstripe trousers, along with a dark handprint on the metal collar of his cage. The side of his left hand, the one he's currently holding a pen with, is smudged even worse with black.

There are discarded drawings all around him, some that look like false starts on some manner of monsters. Some are just pages crammed with drawings of eyes, or scrawls repeating phrases or rambling prose. Some are crumpled up into paper wads or have half-hearted attempts at scratching out or erasing the contents.

The parchment Micolash currently has in front of him is being scrutinized by the scholar. Looking over his handiwork and trying to determine if it passes whatever muster he's going for. It's certainly a drawing of SOMETHING.

Whatever verdict he's pondering, it doesn't prevent Micolash from looking up and addressing whatever person is wandering close to his work station.

"What does your name mean? Do you know? Do you care?"

Comments

[coldsong]

Ah, good. Loki's main concern was that it not sound like he was suggesting the man commit suicide to be with his beloved Cosmic Horror. First of all, he has his doubts things work that way, and secondly, the man seems broken enough to follow that train of logic to its terrible conclusion and someone would surely hold Loki responsible for that. Hence the relative delicacy of his questioning.

He hums in thought, and some part of him is really rooting for this lunatic to find his way to the arms of his Spider some day, but he's not going to offer to help. At least not directly. He hasn't forgotten Adia's story. Although now he may want to revisit it and find out a few more details.

"Well, I think it's truly charming that you feel for Her so strongly. I am not that kind, but I would stick my neck out a fair distance for a devotee who pledged himself so earnestly."

"I take it by your frustration you are stuck here? For how long now?" Mother Kos; he files that name away for future reference and possibly research. Probably yet another being he would like to avoid at all costs, but Mother as an appellation paints a picture that's worth studying.

[grantuseyes]

"I feel strongly for all of Them. They are all so. Resplendent. Nearly terrifying in Their perfection and beauty. But Rom, O Vacuous Rom, You are. Special. To me." He tapers off with his dozy and halting speech. He always is droning or dragging out words with odd emphasis and pauses.

Micolash heaves a HUGE, defeated sigh. One hand fiddles with the end of an untied shoelace while the other remains parked on the cage's handle.

"I am. Not merely trapped in this Dream. Were it only that, I wouldn't have wasted a moment in setting about exploring these many doors and passages! God, no. My imprisonment is smaller and worse still. I am. Flesh once again. To make my Nightmare of Mensis, I shed my mortal form. My profane, limiting human body. Once again shackled! Encased! Beholden to a body that must eat and sleep and excrete and can succumb to lack thereof!" Each of those categories is listed with powerful revulsion.

"I'd forgotten. How tedious it was, to be just a man. Just a human. Endless effort and toil to keep an otherwise worthless body persistent. Because without, it will waste away. And your mind, your revelations, will die with it. Your spirit will remain only in the bloody echoes you leave behind."

He laughs, sudden and bitter. "So many here insist my cage is an unpleasantness. But they cannot see as I do, to know as I do! To look beyond the will of self and realize the true cage is our flawed and mortal forms. Not to mention belief that the Waking is the sum of existence." Micolash now whimpers piteously, "Humans are cursed. Anchored to bodies unfit from the start for ascension and arcane knowledge. To dwell on it makes me feel. Positively dreadful..."

[coldsong]

"Only nearly terrifying? You are braver than most," he murmurs. Granted, he finds the image of Rom less terrifying than some flesh-and-blood individuals of his acquaintance. There's some bias at work there, though. These types of beings should be frightening to the living, mortal being, since they are so very alien.

He is interrupted from his musings on the nature of the Cosmic as Micolash continues, looking up at his facial expressions through the bars of his cage. Loki blinks slowly, thoughtfully at him, and wonders if it should worry him that he understands his complaint perfectly. This is not to say he doesn't differ with some of his conclusions. This is not to say the feel of them falling from the man's lips to the ground around his feet doesn't send a shudder of discomfort down his spine.

Ebony Maw, he thinks. It's like hearing him talk all over again, waxing rhapsodic about death and balance. You may think this is suffering. No...it is salvation.

"My dear, dear friend," he says quietly, dancing somewhere in the union of a three-part Venn diagram of compassion, fascination, and revulsion. "Is there nothing a mortal body can teach you? I agree, once you have left it behind, there should be no returning. That seems unfair. But you are on a journey, as are all of us. Let not your destiny so consume you that you neglect to learn and grow on the way."

"Perhaps there is yet something here in the Nexus that you may gather and carry with you when you meet your gods once again. Some bright little bauble of experience They might find novel."

[grantuseyes]

Micolash appears reluctant to humour this line of thought in turn, mouth screwed up into a mild look of disgruntled distaste. "A mortal body may only teach you how to resent it. A friend speaks of this, that things such as...physical contact. Touches and interactions. Sex and intimacy. These matters are doorways to unique understandings. But it feels pointless." He waves his hands in frustration. "Humouring of social instincts; the species' basic drive to breed and propagate. Little else. And if there is nothing I abhor more than being beholden to instinct..." He trails off.

"I can bring Them nothing as I am now." He starts speaking against suddenly after a pause, like there hadn't been one at all. "What can a human teach a god? What human can receive the greatest of Their gifts? Lesser men are torn asunder, their minds unable to contain what they are being shown. Nothing is ideal about being this way. Trapped in a body of bile and bone and blood."

[coldsong]

"There are mixed opinions on that, friend," Loki tells him, almost amused, but he sobers again quickly, listening to the complaints. "I could argue any one of them with you, but you sound as though your mind is very firmly made up."

"I am sorry for your misery. You seem very determined in it."

He leans back a little in his seat. "There are gods, and there are gods. Some of us quite like our human worshipers. Mortality, love and fear and need on such an intense, ephemeral level can be endearing. You have your heart fixed on beings that are very, very Other, though. I could not say what They desire. I think that distance may bring you grief, but perhaps you don't care if it does? Your passion is fascinating."

[grantuseyes]

"Made up because the evidence is resolute," Micolash retorts with certainty. "There is no comparison. I have been both. And to have known an existence where I did not have to tend to an endlessly needful body, only to be thrust back into one? It is hellish. The only thing keeping me calm in the face of it is my cage. It...numbs me. Just enough. Just enough to not dwell endlessly upon the horrors of being. Soft and. Vulnerable flesh." The distaste is tangible and dripping from every droned word.

As if an example of how it soothes, Micolash reaches both hands to stroke at the bars around his head. Like he has to reassure himself that they're still there, or he just finds the feel of their rusted iron calming on its own.

However, his hands freeze where they are in their self-soothing caresses when he hears a specific word. His head tilts to one side behind his enclosure. "...Some of. Us?" The man said some of US like human worshippers. He's quite sure of it. Not that he's a stranger to mishearing or simply hearing things others do not or imagining the hearing altogether. But Micolash feels confident in this one!

[coldsong]

If there's anything Loki can sympathize with, honestly, it's being forced to be something you don't want to be. He flexes his fingers idly, thinking as Micolash vents, rubs his forehead where under layers of illusion the skin is blue and oddly ridged.

"No," he says after a moment. "I do understand, I think. The physical can chafe the psyche. Knowing that you---mn. Feeling the awareness of your body, can be a kind of torture."

Is it any weirder to be dependent on a cage than to use a thousand-plus-year-old illusion as a security blanket?

...well, it's a little bit weirder. But not so much so that Loki feels compelled to point it out any further.

"That is what I said," he tells the man with a shrug. "There are gods, and then there are gods. I am not of the kind you adore, but that I am a step beyond humanity in strength, power, longevity, and intellect is unquestionable. I have had, and continue to have worshipers."

He's so modest.

[grantuseyes]

Micolash is trying to process this information, that this man considers himself a god, and its a hard train of logic to follow. It keeps getting derailed by hiccups such as the fact Loki would deign to be something above humanity but still look human. It would make much more sense to shed it all, wouldn't it? Why would someone want to be shaped as a man if they had options outside of that? Unless this one doesn't. Which wouldn't be much of a god to begin with if he couldn't.

"...A step. Beyond. You say," he finally replies, his words plucked and languid, as though verbally tiptoeing. "...The term 'god' is. Misleading to begin with. The Great Ones are as unto such, but are not as well. The first and greatest Insight Bergynwerth's research revealed was that what we always understood as gods were always. Beings far more approachable. Tangible. Higher lifeforms who exist higher and deeper in the strata of realities.

"Do you...make the same claim?" Let's try and be diplomatic and empirical about this. Loki has been a pleasant conversationalist thus far, he really should give him some chance to explain or correct himself.

[coldsong]

"'God' is a three-letter word, and for the moment we utter it in a mortal language, not the tongues of the infinite." He looks at Micolash thoughtfully, trying to decide how far to push this. Because this man is dangerous; as touching as his devotion to his own higher beings is to Loki, he doesn't think he wants his worship. It seems high-risk, at best.

And so, where a younger more arrogant Loki might rage and demand to be knelt to, this wiser version will happily argue semantics instead. "There, too, is the possibility that what one world calls a god, the next may not."

"I am not human. I am a being born to a realm outside of the Earth--yes, I was born--I will age, and I can die. Although I've done that a few times and it hasn't stuck yet, so we'll see how that turns out, a few millennia down the road."

Or, you know, a few weeks down the road. He's not fooling himself that his luck has improved that immensely. "The race of beings I come from are inherently more powerful than humanity. Physically stronger, able to channel magic, etc. But they are tangible and they do exist in the realm of linear time."

"To further complicate the discussion, not all of my species are worshiped. I was and am." If in somewhat smaller numbers than he'd have liked. "And I gain energy from that worship in some fashion."

"Your terminology is foreign to me, and so I may misunderstand you, but I can tell you definitively, I am not of your Great Ones. Though I have heard stories of beings like them in my own world. Perhaps such beings exist multidimensionally and are the same in my world and yours."

"It seems likely that what I am is what your world would consider one of those 'beings far more approachable'."

[grantuseyes]

Micolash listens, brow still knitted with mild consternation, but things slot into his logic as Loki continues. Eventually, he makes a soundless 'oh!' with a mouth shaped like the same letter.

"So you are...Pthumerian." Even if he extremely doesn't look like one? Maybe there's a reason for that too. "Or. A race as? Unto them? Inhuman. Long-lived. Seekers and keepers of arcane knowledge and secrets. Communing closely with the Great Ones, guarding their tombs." He keeps looking Loki over and up and down as he talks, searching for any little clues that would tie him to this unusual race. He's pale? But not WHITE pale. Not terribly tall either. Hmmm.

"It seems. Specious to call others to worship you, if you are simply. Yet another race, and not something more lofty." Not that Micolash ever argued against his own cult of personality, but he certainly didn't orchestrate it at least!

Another thought zings errant through Micolash's skull like a ping-pong ball as he recalls other statements made, backing up to an important one he missed! So it might seem a little disjointed when he immediately follows this all up with, "...How do you come back from death. And how many times."

[coldsong]

It's sort of sad, actually, how determined this man is to make other worlds' logic fit into his own. Maybe that's the only thing keeping him at all grounded in reality, but it is limiting in its way. Still, it's interesting to watch him analyze and fit the pieces together in his own way.

"Asgardian," he says mildly. "Well...Jotun, adopted by Asgardians. I don't know anything about Pthumerians, but from what you have said of them, perhaps, yes, like them."

And he laughs at the accusation. "Specious! Well, I didn't ask for worship initially; it started on its own. But they do call me the god of lies, so perhaps that is fitting."

He shakes his head. "Reality is more malleable and less rational than it seems, friend. I am mortal, and I am Divine. I have held a piece of the Infinite in either hand. I've heard the screaming of the Abyss, broken in Its grasp, and some part of me is still falling through it, in the endless darkness. And yet, here I am, corporeal and saner than some, and once I finish this conversation with you, I have every intention of going to the Cafe and helping myself to some ice cream."

"It is the prerogative of that which is truly powerful to touch refuse and make it sacred."

"...from death? Twice or thrice, perhaps, depending on how dead I was the first couple times I faced mortality. It hasn't been a deliberate effort, as of yet. Just something that's happened. But if it keeps occurring by accident enough, I'm sure I'll figure out how to do it on purpose sooner or later."