nexus_crossings | It's amazing what you can live through

It's amazing what you can live through

The Prophet appeared in the Nexus, draped across one of the benches in the plaza.

To those who had seen him before, he was noticeably different. The blue crystal that was fused to his body was gone, though his skin had a pale, almost bluish tint to it now. He was more haggard, his body more withered, his expression bordering on panic.

So much had happened. So much. His eyes looked around, pleading for someone to share these burdens with. But which ones? He could ask so many questions. What do you do after toppling a government to make sure a better one takes its place? How do you defeat a rampaging god? How do you defeat a rampaging god when the person you love most is now inside that god?

And those questions may very well come up in conversation. But The Prophet dared to be selfish for a moment first, crying out with a fear that now weighed heavily on his soul. "Is... Is immortality a blessing or a curse?"

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The whole plaza slowly became ingulfed in darkness and the smell of blood; iron, stale. There's the sound of metal blades sliding along each other and the rustle of feathers. Here, some questions attracted attention one might rather avoid.

A rush of heat in the dark before the angel appears. He's ragged looking, bleeding slowly and covered in black leather.

"What is a blessing to one can curse another." His voice is quiet compared to the oppressiveness of the dark and his presence. The click of teeth, all of which are in triangular points, cut the end of every word.

The Prophet looked up at the being leaning over him. The presence should be terrifying, but that terror lasted for only a single gulp before he remembered why he asked the question in the first place.

He can't actually be killed. That was supposed to be the blessing part.

"I didn't mean it to sound as rhetorical as it did..." he admitted. His vice wavered, but he didn't move. "...But I fear... I just traded one curse... for a different one..."

"My answer was not rhetorical." Moloch would always have the clacking of his teeth as he spoke. He sat, crosslegged, and started to clean his wings, straighten the feathers.

"Immortality is not as permanent as humanity believes." Moloch had seen angels die. It was not an easy process but it could happen.

"Maybe not..."

The Prophet thought back to the myths he'd learned from the acolytes at the Temple of Blood. The first sacrifice, The Ancient One, eventually chose to rest after outliving many generations, or so the story went. There had been other sacrifices since then, and none of them still existed either. Someone given immortality could, in theory, die.

"But it is still a very long time... to be like this..."

He shuddered slightly, but hadn't really moved. He didn't have the strength to do that anymore.

This was the first time Moloch took time to study the now immortal human.

"Are you looking to ...fix... this condition?" It was a logical question with the way this discussion was going. Repairing a body that was even past where it would die was not outside the angel's ability but it would come with a cost, of course.

He glanced at Moloch, and then back up at the sky. He couldn't even turn his head to address the angel properly.

"...I'm not entirely sure what I am now. Let alone how to fix it."

Moloch paused in the cleaning of his feathers to stare, head cocked at the prone human.

"Has this curse of weakness weakened your mind?" He could see the physical weakness and wondered if that was the curse. If it was, it appeared to go beyond the physical if the human had no idea of wants. Wants fixed problems.

"A little." He admitted. "But no... not like the others..."

Each piece of the armor of the spectres carried its own curse, as it were. The last person to wear the lens struggled to tell the future from the past. The last person to wear the belt lost all semblance of human decency. But he'd only had those pieces attuned to nim for a few months. It was nothing like the years the pendant and bracers had eaten away at his strength and constitution.

"Forgive me... My only want, for so long, was to stay alive long enough to return to The Blackbird what belonged to The Blackbird... I never once stopped to think about what might come after that."

He didn't expect to survive it, honestly. He definitely didn't expect to be rendered immortal.

These comments were a surprise to the angel. Now he had all of Moloch's attention. Those bloody looking eyes were focused and unblinking.

"You serve the Chancellor?" That certainly was an unexpected turn of events. Though he isn't sure which is more surprising; that Belial had human followers or that Belial would leave someone to suffer this way.

The Prophet didn't know anyone by the name of The Chancellor.

"I serve my people..." He answered with the calm dignity of a charismatic diplomat. "I suppose my life is forever intwined with The Blackbird now. But I am no acolyte. I swore no oaths, took no pact... I merely took on the burden in a moment of desperation."

He was completely unprepared for any of this.

This did not sound like Belial at all which had the angel re-evaluating his thoughts and back to preening his wings.

"To curse one in a moment of desperation sounds like you have a pleasant god in your midst." The way those words came out made it clear that they were not complimentry at all. "Even I refrain from preying on the truly desperate."

"Or a desperate one..."

Men were not meant to wear pieces of a god's soul as armor. It was as simple, and perhaps as corrosive, as that. Men were also not meant to hoard those pieces on this side of the veil for 400 years, leaving said god with festering wounds and growing resentment.

The Prophet could empathize. Even more so, now.

"I may not be the best to answer that," Loki says, pausing nearby with some sort of latte concoction in his hands. After a second to consider, he offers it to the man. He looks ill, and a lavender-and-honey latte might not be the thing to help, but it smells good at least.

"Compared to a human lifespan, my kind are functionally immortal, but nearly everything dies in time. Still, I offer you this question: is life itself a blessing or a curse? Most would say it rather depends on what you make of it, but your mileage may vary."

He looked at the man, his eyes following to the offered mug, but he didn't move. It was a kind gesture, but one he struggled to accept. Literally.

His fingers twitched. His hand moved slightly. Muscles tensed and the strain of the attempt was written plainly on his face until he gave up trying. "I'm sorry... I..I don't have the strength to take it. Or even sit up..."

The armor of the spectres did that. The fragments of The Blackbird's soul bound to him were gone, along with the godlike powers they provided. However, the damage they'd done to his body and mind remained.

Mileage may vary indeed.

"...That's... where the curse part comes in."

...oh. Well. Holy shit? Loki's expression shifts, and he sets the mug aside in favor of pulling off the cloak he's wearing and casting it carefully around the weakened man. "You're here alone, I take it? If you're that weak, you can scarcely be left helpless in the square like this."

"Are you in any pain?" There are no visible injuries, though he certainly looks like a gust of strong wind could snap him in two.

"My partner..." his eyes fell softly. "The Mystic... I don't know what state he's in now. But he isn't here."

Even saying this next part out loud, he knew how strange it would sound to someone who wasn't Kuro (or Crow as their people were originally called), who didn't worship The Blackbird. But it was the fate he'd apparently inherited from their ancestors' mistakes.

"He was the acolyte. I was the sacrifice." The Prophet added, hinting at a ritual that was recently performed. "He was taken up, body and soul... to be the new Blackbird. I was... well, I am... immortal now. Maybe just functionally, like your people. Previous sacrifices... from what I understand... have stopped existing at some point. I don't know how. Or when..."

There was a lot he didn't know. But pain? That had been a constant in his life for a while now - the obvious result of a god's soul eating away at yours. He'd had some pieces of the armor for far longer than others, so it wasn't a balanced decline. Wisdom and intellect, for example, were barely affected. His constitution was wrecked. His strength, worse still. He was literal weeks away from death when they managed to perform the ritual.

"Nothing new..." he almost laughed. "That's a silver lining, at least."

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It's amazing what you can live through

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