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

[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."