Location: Red Lake Cafe Interacting With: @Nallore Olivia Johnson | @Infamous Auror Taylor Evers
Josh held Taylor's gaze and matched her smile with a welcoming grin of his own. His expression wasn't a sign of acquiescence; no, in fact, it was the very opposite. It was one of defiance and victory. Victory in the sense that her response answered his question. And defiance in the sense that he wouldn't simply back off this topic as she seemed set on doing; as she had rather stave off his advances instead of reveal to him what the actual fuck was going on. Maybe he wouldn't press the matter now, but he sure as hell would put in motion a sequence of events that would.
Joey nonchalantly rubbed his jaw and shrugged off the imaginary tension his striking question had seemed to create in him. "Wouldn't mind too much? Naw, can't have that kind of weight on my conscience." he jibbed. "Let's go, wouldn't hurt to check again wouldn't it?"
He reached for his wallet in his back pocket and in one motion slid a five out and tucked it under an empty cup of orange juice. Money was tight, but he had respect for the workers of this establishment. With that Joey got to his feet and stretched the kinks out of his body.
He paused and looked down at Taylor. ”You don’t mind if I drive us do you?”
I made a big deal a while back about how I was going to wrap things up and then bail since the start of my busiest year of university coincided with the coup in which Kho and the Australians seized my oh-so-coveted Co-GM status.
But things are a bit more stable now and it'd take ages to wrap stuff up to the point where I'd be content to just wipe off my hands and go, so I'll just abandon any notions of quitting.
I'll try to keep a trickle of maybe a post or collab every month or so. And maybe I'll do more ogre stuff.
Vestec tossed Amartia's body onto the snows of the Realm. Already it was shifting and changing, the snow melting and being replaced with desert sands. "Tsk tsk Amy. You had such a perfect plan, and then you had to get greedy and ruin everything. You destroyed your people, your culture, and your civilization all in one successive series of tantrums. It was really quite impressive."
Vestec circled around Amartia as he pulled himself together, giggling. "Then you sell your soul to Logos, whom is an enemy to everyone else, and use his dubious gift to eradicate what remains of your city. When the only person you could consider an ally shows up, you proceed to abuse her and deny me as your father. Sorry, Amy dear, but you can't escape who gave you life. I'm more your father than even Lifprasil."
"Then, rather than actually building your defenses, you decide to destroy your city and make in capable of being rebuilt. You fill the ruins with the horrificly warped monsters that used to be your loyal followers. And most, if not all, of them were killed in the following war. Which, I might add, you were horribly unprepared for. The only thing that saved you from being annihilated in minutes was dear old Tauga's preparation, slight home turf advatange, and the fact that the demons killed everyone they found. You got your ass kicked, Amy."
Vestec giggled again, stopping in front of Amartia. Suddenly, blackness covered his entire body. "To make an unnecessarily long monologue short, your crimes are; Stupidity. Arrogance. Childishness. Lack of Control. But I can forgive all of those." His voice was ice cold, every syllable precisely prounounced and controlled. It began to rain, washing away the sand and turning it into a small lake, rising around their ankles.
"I can even forgive your insistence that you didn't need or want my help. What I can't forgive," Flickers of blood red began to arc through Vestec, his voice becoming rougher, angerier. His fists clenched, newly formed claws pressing into his palm. "Is how you dared to bully Astarte. She would have done what you asked. I would have helped you do what you asked. But no. You had to make yourself feel powerful by manipulating and hurting an innocent God. For that, you will not be forgiven."
The red retreated as he straightened, hands unclenching. "But I'll let you say your piece, be it in your defense or in your defiance. Speak, Amartia."
Amartía managed a chuckle around loosened teeth and torn and swollen lips. "When was the last time we spoke like this, Vestec?" he simpered, grinning up at his father.
Blood was slowly oozing out of numerous wounds all over his body, a small yet relentless flow of crimson, but however, he felt no pain; he was numb to it. Even the casual mending of broken bones and reattaching of torn ligaments didn't so much as garner a reaction.
"How many centuries has it been, since I've last seen you?" he continued. His grin disappeared and his voice steadily rose. "I've long since lost count."
He struggled to seat himself upright, yet his body refused and he fell back into grass. The terrain had changed again.
"Not once Vestec, not once have I petitioned you for help in my eons of existence. I forged Xerxes with my bare hands, with only two godly signatures to account for! Yet the rest of you have the gall to reprimand me!? To talk down at me?! Did your hands toil day in and out, building a culture, a nation from nothing?! No! You have no right speak as if you're a father reprimanding a child!" He was screaming now, each syllable emphasized by the rattle and quake of a broken body.
Yet for all his anger, his next words were oddly calm. "I have no regrets, Vestec. Everything I did, and everything I will do serves to fulfill my life's ambitions. My purpose. Astarte, was just another pawn in my game. How she or how any of you feel during my making of it, is of no concern to me at all."
"And what were your life's ambitions? To tear down everything you've ever built in fits? To disregard the fact that Tauga was the only reason your hard built Xerxes didn't scatter and tear itself apart in your long absences? To mutate some and scare off the rest of your loyal citizens?" He chuckled darkly.
"Your nation was kept alive because the gods deemed it merciful to do so. Vowzra's Victors could have destroyed everything you built, but he decided to only take you prisoner. Teknall could have smote everything into ash, but you were going to finish that job yourself. I could have destroyed everything in chaotic fire, but decided to let Lifprasil prove himself."
He waved a hand, Vetros wavering into view. "You talk about only two signatures? Vetros only has one. Zephyrion was barely active in it's creation and they're still more powerful and more stable than you ever could have been." The image wavered again, focusing on the Rovaick at work. "The Rovaick only had Teknall to show them how to forge metals, and Toun to give them discipline. More stable and on their way to being more powerful." The image shifted, focusing on the dwarves. "Until Heartworm showed up, they had no one but Lazarus. You remember her, don't you? Disciplined, and more stable than you could ever dream." The image disipated and he turned back to the demi-god.
"You had no ambitions. You were a child, playing with toys and tossing them away whenever they bored you. Breaking them whenever they annoyed you. Pathetic. You are not worthy of my divine gift." Vestec's hand reached out, as his voice boomed across the Realm of Madness. "I retract my gift of life to you, son."
Vestec's hand reached out and he ripped Amartia's soul from his body, guiding it too his hand. It began to snow as he impassively watched his son thrash and die in agony.
For what seemed like an eternity, yet only spanned a single moment, a red haze of pain pulsed through Amartía's body, making even thought torturous to attempt. Then, with a palpable jolt, something clawed through the haze of torturous sensation to push at his back. He almost wept with relief when he realized it was the feel of cold snow. As he became aware of it, Amartía's senses spun as his perception of how he related to the environment around him sickeningly changed until everything that wasn't consumed by the pain was telling him he now lay on his back.
And, much to his frustration and chagrin, the strength and power he once had to speed him through the Battle of Xerxes was now gone, leaving him weak and virtually powerless. It was as though his limbs were made from unwilling clay, not flesh and bone, taking enormous will and strength just to make a finger twitch. In fact his entire body now refused to respond to his demands, sluggish and torpid. If it weren't for the fire burning through every finger length of him, he would swear he was, ...
"Dying?" he whispered out loud and surprised himself by actually being able to do so. The strength and sound of his voice, while much stronger than what it was in divinity, was still hollow and weak in his ears.
Amartía gritted his teeth and relented. Everything he worked so hard to attain, had been whisked away within the blink of an eye."What are your terms, Vestec?"
"There are no terms. You are going to die. Your empire's bones will be crushed into the dust. It's culture obliterated. Your people will be assimilated into other, far more successful, nations. You will be a footnote in history, a petty tyrant who destroyed his own nation and was executed by the stronger Alefprian Empire. You. Are. Nothing." Vestec's voice was cold, disinterested. This wasn't personal anymore. It was a sentence being carried out.
"Then so be it." Sin whispered. All the fight had left his body. He had nothing left to give.
Vestec watched as his son died, the life leaving Sin's eyes. A few moments passed, the snow gradually covering Amartia's body. The God of Chaos mused aloud to himself, staring thoughtfully at the soul in his hand.
"I am not, however, going to let your soul die."
Vestec was gone, reappearing in a tribe of humans. "One last chance. One last chance to prove yourself worthy." He threw Amartia's soul into the body of a boy, one day away from manhood. "Make yourself king. Your goal is to build and empire. Rule it. Bring a balance to the world because you know the Alefprian Empire is evil and will destroy your people."
Burning that desire into the boy's mind, he left, a whisper in the wind.
A short little diddy, sheeding light on the state of Ama after the Battle of Xerxes.
To start, Vestec throws Ama into the Realm of Chaos and roasts him for a few good mintutes. Ama is smug little prick and laughs at how this is the first conversations he's had with the chaos god since his birth. He goes on to brag about how he build Xerxes with little help.
Vestec hits him with a BOI, and proceeds to compare him to his other sibalings, a sin back in our childhood days. Vestec says fuck it and takes his chaotic essamce away, essentalily making the dude mortal, and casts him into the body of a boy with the desire to build an empire. The self-perpetuating cycle of Sin begins....or does it?
Location: Red Lake Cafe Interacting With: @Nallore Olivia Johnson | @Infamous Auror Taylor Evers
Josh masked his observant gaze with a sip of his juice. He caught Taylor's hesitation in her use of past tense verbiage. He could readily assume that she herself was either confident in the fact that Riley was indeed dead, and her going to the lake was to pursue some other agenda, or maybe she truly had mad a mistake, likely Riley's death had indeed hit close to home for her and thinking upon her as alive helped her to cope with the situation.
It wasn't out of place for the people of the local community to go searching for one of it's own in a supposed kidnapping situation such as this, so he couldn't rule that out as a possibility in their motives.
Why am I trying to figure out their motives anyway? Maybe they just wanna find a friend. What other possibility could their be?
It was likely the case, but something about the Red Lake's recent happenings felt off; the supposed kidnapping of Riley at the lake; the Mayors ruthless assassination and foreboding manifesto, and now this brash group of teenagers deadset on finding a friend.
Maybe it was the city kid in him talking. Being brought up in a rather uncaring society where the missing where presumed dead until proven otherwise must have jaded his thinking. They were never proven otherwise anyway. But this was different, something told Josh that Red Lake was in for some shit if everyone didn't watch their assess.
Josh thanked Olivia for the meal and leaned back in his seat for a moment. He was acutely aware of he fact that he and Taylor were now alone together, but when wasn't that the case? He and Taylor often smoked in such a setting. Maybe he lost his inhibitions when he was high. Thoughts for another day.
"Taylor..." Joey began, raking stray dreads out of his eyes before he spoke on. He hated to doubt Taylor, but he wasn't on to pass on a gut feeling. "Ima be straight with you. This whole 'investigate the lake' is giving me a bad feeling. Ain't the danger. That's another thing entirely. But it's you guys. Could be just my imagination, but is finding Riley the only reason your going up to the lake?" He deadpanned. A twinge of apprehension hit his gut, something told him that was dangerous question.
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