Chaos Plot Reactions!

[thefinaljedi]

Who: Anyone/Everyone affected by Helios' nasty bout of Possession Sickness
What: Picking up the pieces
When: August 11th/12th
Where: Wherever there was bad mojo!
Summary: Apep, an Egyptian god of Chaos, possessed Helios and wrecked havoc. Those involved are going to have to cope with their injuries, mental traumas, and newfound night terrors!
Rating: R, for possible trigger warnings for descriptions of violence and bad language.


Nothing is ever easy for them House 46 folks. Gawddamn!

Comments

[fleurdesel]

...what sort of ritualistic purification involves water and potential public nudity?

[windandrain]

Misogi. I just told you.

[fleurdesel]

Would you care to elaborate on what, precisely, Misogi usually entails? All I know at the moment is that it's going to be done in the mountains, will involve water and potential nudity.

[windandrain]

Meditation under a waterfall.

[fleurdesel]

...At least it is summer.

[windandrain]

Yes, it is. But it should help. You'll feel cleaner.

[fleurdesel]

Of that I've no doubt.

[She nods, more to herself than Saori, and sips her coffee.]

I...thank you again. Truly.

[windandrain]

I said before, you'll have a chance to repay me. I am weakened, severely, right now. This place saps my energy. Even looking like this is...draining.

[She pulls out a book, clearly ancient and filled with yellowing sheets of paper, scrolls that had been bound in the book, thumbing through it.]

There is a ritual. I will need your help.

[fleurdesel]

Name it and it'll be done.

[Three rules to live by, more or less. LeBlancs keep their word. LeBlancs pay their debts. LeBlancs do anything for family. With what has come to light recently? Saori may be a recent friend and they may not know enough of one another to be family, but there is a debt to be paid here.]

[windandrain]

After your misogi I will begin the ritual. I will remain in the forest, in meditation, for one week. Each day, three times a day, I will need you to come to me with food and water. Simple things. Rice, seaweed, fish.

[And the hard part]

I'll need you to pray, as well.

[fleurdesel]

...I haven't in. Ever. Really.

[Offerings and visitations, that she can do. That's easy enough. But prayer? It's never helped anyone that she knows of, and while she's painfully aware of Saori's divinity it's. She doesn't rightly know how to pray.]

[windandrain]

You can do it. All you have to do is sit, and think about me. Its different than talking to...the Christian god. I...take energy from positive thoughts directed at me. Thats the easiest way to say it. Its complicated and I don't think I could properly explain it to you.

[fleurdesel]

I wouldn't expect you to have to but...that I can understand and manage well enough. Thinking of you positively is never a chore, Saori.

[windandrain]

Then that is what I need from you. When I am anchored properly, your debt is paid.

[Simple as that, she snaps the book closed]

Thank you. I was worried for a moment you were unwilling.

[fleurdesel]

Unwilling? No. I just have never prayed to any deity for anything before in my life. It's not a practice with which I am familiar.

[After this, though, her grasp of deities, their power, and the desire to pray to them is more solid. She's been more than a little unfair to Luce now that she thinks on it.]

[windandrain]

Its not praying for something. That...isn't quite what a prayer is, Del-chan. A prayer is an acknowledgement that you know we do, in fact, exist.

[For a moment, a tired smile plays across her pencil-thin lips. The woman was beginning to figure it out, she could see. Not unlike Yuuna had]

[fleurdesel]

That is how most I know of treat prayer in my world. A way of showing their faith. Then again from what I understand the western and eastern religions are very, very different.

[Faith without proof. Comfort for those that needed it, something she never put much stock into before. Her faith in those she knows and trusts is new and shaky enough as ti stands but...for Saori, she can and will do this.]

It's a bit difficult to not acknowledge it when I walked through a storm that parted rain for the sake of my comfort to meet you.

[windandrain]

Some would call that magic, and believe me naught but a simple magician.

What makes you think differently?

[A round about way of asking 'Do you truly believe me?']

[fleurdesel]

I've met magicians, I live with a wizard. There is something fundamentally different in how it is you handle the weather- you're not controlling it or binding it to your will. It's an extension of your will instead, and a mere wizard would not have their soul thus bound to a mirror they carry, nor be so offended at my smoking. And...

[It bothers her to think back on it, but that moment. That look, wherein She knew Saori had seen the entirety of her and made note of the mark Apep had left behind.]

A simple magician could not have seen my very soul in but a moment and understood what had been done.

[windandrain]

[Saori nods sagely, what Adele said was true, but that hadn't stopped others from feeling the same about her in the past. Not to mention Mages with phylacteries ]

Magicians come in many forms. However, I appreciate your belief in my words.

[She reaches out and takes Adele's hand]

I'd like to share something with you.

[fleurdesel]

[Wizards with the sort of power Saori had either ran to the old and wise- or the young and arrogant. At least as far as literary archetypes went. She's only met but two, and of them only knew one well.]

Oh?

[She's not at her most eloquent right now- but she reaches out all the same to curl her fingers in Saori's.]

[windandrain]

I want you to see the truth.

[Saori closes her eyes, and sends a thin tendril of power from her hand into Adele's, briefly affording the doctor a glimpse of her true form as she had done for Lupin some days before. The doctor's eyes would see a truly large humanoid form, almost nine feet tall, with long flowing hair the color of nightshade and dressed in cloth made of molded thunderclouds. It possessed a noseless face, similar to her human form, but with eyes made of pure lightning, and a mouth that exhaled the scent of rain. Her hands were different too, impossibly long fingers, with ribbons of blue-white energy pulsing down their length. An alien visage, used only in dire need or when the goddess wanted to prove her nature to someone in doubt. Adele deserved proof

Then she pulled back]


The Truth.

[fleurdesel]

The truth? What-

[It's similar and at the same time entirely different from the flashes. This wasn't soaked in blood and full of anguish and rage. This was cool, serene, almost a balm against her senses despite the strangeness of what she was seeing. Were there ever a doubt in her mind that Saori was more than a mere woman; it's been erased. She can't wrap her mind around the figure, the details flit through her consciousness but forming a whole of them was difficult. All she can rationalize is that this, not a bearded man in starched robes, is what she'd always thought a deity ought to look like. Old. Powerful. Primal. Almost entirely inhuman. She's gone still in the meantime, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes of the damp that had sprung up.

Saori was herself again. Or rather what she normally appeared to be.]

...I don't. I do not have the words.

[windandrain]

Do you need them? Sometimes it's best to just accept things, and follow the river wherever it leads.

[That mysterious smile returns]

That is my truth. The skin I wear in the land of the Kami, Kakuriyo. This, as you see? This is also my truth. The form I wear in Utsushiyo, the physical world.

[fleurdesel]

[Perhaps it's better not to have them at this point. What she's seen, what she's being told- she's entirely out of her depth here. And yet not at all made uncomfortable by that fact because she's come to trust and deeply respect this woman. Goddess. Woman.]