"Thank you, and remind me to ask you more about how that works."
For now he crouches down, flips the eye once, and then sticks it on the left ruby. Pure chance and a total lack of symmetry - far more Changebringer than Archtyrant. The fire flares, but both his skin and his sandals were forged in the deepest pits of the Hells.
He does use the knocker properly, after that. Eight times, specifically.
The voice that drifts from beyond the door is still melodic and crooning, but if you know, you can hear the grated edge to it.
The fire bends around Kahl; he simply does not allow it to reach his skin. The eye, too, remains unburnt, although Asmodeus won't have that much trouble scraping it off, later. He's done enough to make the door his that Kahl would have to really fight him, to make it stick against determined efforts.
Normally Kahl would move himself inside rather than walk, but that would be to leave Zerxus's side, so he doesn't. Zerxus feels a warm sting in the tiny claw-scars on his shoulders, an invisible brush of Kahl's connection. And then they go in.
The room itself is actually more humble, if only on the surface. There's a well-sized cot in the corner, adorned with mismatched pillows and a hand-knitted blanket; there's a shelf of books against the straighter wall, and an ordered collection of trinkets nestled across from it. The unknowing would see this and assume an intimate glimpse into the god's true priorities.
Asmodeus himself is lounging on a battered armchair like it's a throne, idly thrumming through a leather-bound tome. He looks, to both of them, like Evandrin; the resemblance to Elias is starkly obvious. So is the way Zerxus goes taut, bracing through a fresh wave of tormented yearning.
"It's hardly Malsheem, but welcome all the same. Please, sit down." The words are as smooth as polished glass. With a wave of his hand, two wooden chairs scrape across the floor to settle right next to each other.
For the second time, he laughs in Kahl's realm. His knees don't buckle - he's too proud for that, even here - but he does lower himself to the ground and take a long, steady breath.
It reminds him, just a little, of those brief minutes fighting Glee Shoth, blazing white with the Dayfather's power. Asmodeus would likely hate the comparison; Kahl smiles at the thought, very briefly.
Well. Yes, but that isn't his priority in this situation specifically.
With an arch of his eyebrows, "It's hardly my fault that he looks at me and sees what he failed to keep." It's not precisely untrue; any form he chooses is only an aspect crafted for mortal comprehension, and it's often influenced by their own yearning. That's what it means to be the most beautiful of the gods.
Of course, he has far more control than Zerxus realises, and with a truly put-upon sigh he shimmers and ripples. He looks older now, with more prominent horns and sharply trimmed beard.
There's an edge of uncertainty to that, but Zerxus understands the moment he's staring up at Asmodeus.
"You son of a bitch." He growls it in the lowest form of Infernal, blunt and harsh. "All this time - "
"How much time is that, if you don't mind?" Still playing at being polite, then. Still keeping his temper in check. Fine.
"Around a decade."
"...That's all?" It looks like genuine surprise. "Fascinating. You don't even know what Aeor is up to."
"Aeor?" He's still pissed off, but it recedes in favour of sheer bewilderment. "...Did you get yourself killed fighting Ae - " The devil's eyes burn, and the air in Zerxus's lungs evaporates.
"I'm being extremely tolerant, in my opinion." He's addressing Kahl, now; his voice remains low and smooth, but the words are clipped.
It's the first real emotion Kahl has shown in this conversation, and that emotion is bewildered teenage dismissal.
"I don't care about your opinion, though." He says it - not slowly, but just a little bit more enunciated than normal. Not that Asmodeus might be a bit dim, but - well. That he might have spent so long surrounded by servants and sycophants and marks, all desperately wanting something, even if only to be passed over - that he may have overlooked the possibility.
Recent events notwithstanding.
"Tolerate it or don't. If you won't, we'll leave."
Zerxus spent a lifetime trying to make himself an open hand. But Kahl doesn't care about persuading anyone, most of the time. By the time vengeance is needed, persuasion has long since failed. He won't be drawn into arguing with Asmodeus about what's acceptable: there is only what each of them will, and will not accept.
Even here, it's a rare thing for Asmodeus to look so thoroughly wrong-footed.
It distracts him enough that Zerxus can gasp in a breath, and he almost chokes on it as he trembles - but alas, even this isn't a source of satisfaction.
He's trembling with laughter.
The answering growl is pure petulance in his ears, and it almost makes him laugh harder, but he's able to control himself and catch his breath, shaking his head. "Sorry. ...Well, no, I'm not."
Flatly, eyes blazing, "Your honestly is noted."
Zerxus has grinned up at him before, usually with blood in his teeth, but this is different. This is broad and bright and downright fond.
"You're ridiculous, and he isn't impressed with you, and you have no idea what to do with it." Mortals are too far beneath him for that sort of thing to matter, and his siblings are too caught up in the epic tragedy of their history.
"Maybe you should think about having a real conversation."
"Oi, you're going to make me put up with him just because you want to tell him to eat his vegetables?" Kahl squawks, fully conjuring a small head of broccoli in one hand and throwing it at Zerxus. It bounces off his horn.
At the same moment, he shoves with his will - strengthened by petulance - and pushes Asmodeus's influence away in a circle around them both, for about a foot out.
His eyes are glittering as he takes a few deep, grateful breaths, before turning to Kahl with a downright sheepish expression. "I know it's a lot to ask. He's not always this insufferable."
"Really." Asmodeus is quite literally fuming; the air ripples in a haze around him, and his hair is a river of flame. "Are those precious moments of reprieve enough, now that I don't wear your husband's face? Do you want to hear how I died, or shall I just - "
"Stop it, Asmodeus." It's a different tone, of course, grimly intent, but the quiet confidence remains. "You don't have to manipulate me into mourning you."
"I want to hear how you died," Kahl puts in, because apparently he's been protective enough that Zerxus now thinks he's morally nutritious, rather than a vindictive catastrophe.
With a sharp gesture at Kahl, burning gaze locked on Zerxus, "You mourn me, and yet."
"Everyone I've ever loved hates you, I've made my peace with that." He won't insults Kahl by breaching the sphere of his protection, but he stands up and reaches a hand right to the edge of it.
"Tell me what happened to you. Tell me how to stop it."
"That will hardly help me." It's the answer that Zerxus expected, but what he didn't is the slightest, strangest catch to the words. The future of another Exandria means nothing to him, but he still wants it to change.
What does that mean? What does that tell him, beyond any convenient half-truths?
"The wizards of Aeor are forging a weapon to kill the gods."
It's not really a visible barrier, except perhaps for the faint heat haze where the temperature shifts.
If you want to hug him or whatever I don't care, Kahl tells Zerxus, silently. Kahl doesn't, actually, hate him. He just recognizes that circumstance - namely, the circumstance of Kahl having every intention of stealing his whipping boy - has made them enemies, and he doesn't have a reason to indulge Asmodeus playing games designed for him to win. But he doesn't hate him.
I'll let you if he can bring himself not to burn you. Just the same as with the faces.
He doesn't say it aloud, though. Kahl doesn't want to interrupt Asmodeus actually getting past brooding and mantling enough to explain anything of substance. He draws his knees up in his chair. It makes him look smaller, more childish, even though he hasn't changed his form's appearance. He fades into the background in a way that should be utterly bizarre for a god to do; it's like he's not even there.
Possibly, Asmodeus still has enough connection to Zerxus to spy on thoughts. In which case, he will at least understand the terms without having to go through the dance again of being affronted at Kahl having any.
It's something he feels more than sees; a harbour, a balm, solid ground.
I doubt he can. Zerxus would still do it, but he cares more about respecting Kahl's wishes than denying his own pain.
"And he calls me ridiculous." For the first time, there's nothing artful in the way he speaks; it's not loftily imperious or disarmingly tender. It's just quietly, wearily earnest.
Asmodeus rises, but the fire flickers and fades. "You love too easily, Zerxus."
Before Zerxus can even begin to process that that, "We called a truce, the Betrayers and the 'Prime Deities', so that we could infiltrate Aeor together. The only way to breach their defences was to become mortals."
He could never comprehend a process like that, and so doesn't try. What he's focused on are the broader implications, the pieces finally grinding painfully into place. "...All of you?"
"Most of us."
Zerxus sits down, heavily, and swallows hard. "They - those fucking idiots, did they even think - "
They probably did think, Kahl suspects, privately. Gods' wars are hard on mortals. And, after all, they're all going to die anyway. Better to be killed for a moment of temerity than to cower helplessly like field mice under careless slings and arrows of divine magnitude. If they thought they had any real chance.
And given the gods' response, clearly they had. Kahl rather wants to cheer them them all.
Anger shivers through Kahl; he feels like sea ice, ever-cracking.
"If you spoke in the language of truth, your tongue would split your head," Kahl breathes, a quiet whisper that rolls out of him like - like light shining behind the world, casting sharp shadows that betray the true shapes of all things. The Godstongue Kahl speaks - the one the scriveners crib a few dead static words from, to make every scrap of mortal magic in that world go - is the langue of making what is real.
He can feel the thin pressure of the Narrenschiff, the box around him that will not let itself be interfered with, but within it, they are all only matter and energy and process and soul, and all things ordered and dissolving can be dissolved and re-ordered, re-described, re-named, if named in the Godstongue. But he says nothing that is not already true, so it takes no power from him, to force the world into the shape he has spoken.
Asmodeus is hurting Zerxus at every moment. But Kahl does not say that in the Godstongue, lest he curse them both, and bind the strength of his speech to the fact of it.
And then he is not speaking the universe anymore, and the edges of him no longer picked out in silhouette; he is not a mad child who has gone from prison to prison to prison, a vengeance that will be forever unsatisfied, all his tragedy and erratic strangeness illuminated in the harshness of truth shining from his own mouth. He is only a scrawny red-headed teenager again, with no trappings of visible power apart from his life-green poison eyes.
"But I know what you meant," he mutters in common, looking away.
He's still paying attention, of course. Asmodeus's word means nothing to him at all. But he will accept it as a sign of intent for the next minute, the next seconds, even if it is only intent to bring harm in a different way than the ones Kahl has forbidden. And Kahl doesn't want to be looking with his regular eyes if they're going to kiss or something.
It is not the language they spoke in the Eternal Palace, but it is so much closer than anything he has heard in thousands of years.
Asmodeus is not, in this moment, Asmodeus. He is a shimmering blue flame, crackling playfully; he is a thousand beautiful fireworks; he is a blazing seed of possibility, full of wonder and joy. Then he is real, and he is beautiful still but he is burning, the flowing mane of copper-bright hair catching fire and hardening into two spikes that spiral back around his ears.
It is real, but it is not now; he doesn't need to sink to the floor in the wake of it, gasping and shuddering as his form ripples again. (Not Evandrin, no, but younger than the last, both less human and more vulnerable.) It was a truly galling level of exposure, but there's no need not to take advantage of it.
Zerxus, in that moment, felt the seething contradiction of his nature more keenly than ever before; he looked almost molten, ever-shifting and shot through with cracks of starlight, flexing wings of flame. It leaves him stunned and breathless and aching, but that doesn't stop him from rushing forward. There's no hesitation in kneeling down and reaching out, even now after everything.
It is a lie, when Asmodeus accepts the compassion, but perhaps not as fully as the first time.
"I saved us, then. I couldn't do it again."
"We'll find a - " Zerxus's voice almost breaks, but he does stop himself from promising too much. He doesn't expect it to be taken well.
Asmodeus laughs, wry and soft. "He is teaching you something. Well done, godling."
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Re: Narrenschiff, Day One
For now he crouches down, flips the eye once, and then sticks it on the left ruby. Pure chance and a total lack of symmetry - far more Changebringer than Archtyrant. The fire flares, but both his skin and his sandals were forged in the deepest pits of the Hells.
He does use the knocker properly, after that. Eight times, specifically.
The voice that drifts from beyond the door is still melodic and crooning, but if you know, you can hear the grated edge to it.
"Enter. Both of you."
Re: Narrenschiff, Day One
Normally Kahl would move himself inside rather than walk, but that would be to leave Zerxus's side, so he doesn't. Zerxus feels a warm sting in the tiny claw-scars on his shoulders, an invisible brush of Kahl's connection. And then they go in.
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Asmodeus himself is lounging on a battered armchair like it's a throne, idly thrumming through a leather-bound tome. He looks, to both of them, like Evandrin; the resemblance to Elias is starkly obvious. So is the way Zerxus goes taut, bracing through a fresh wave of tormented yearning.
"It's hardly Malsheem, but welcome all the same. Please, sit down." The words are as smooth as polished glass. With a wave of his hand, two wooden chairs scrape across the floor to settle right next to each other.
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Then he pulls Zerxus back inside his realm and sits down.
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"I...don't think I ever mentioned that part."
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"Ah. That's where he was." Still serenely conversational, but the air has gone dry and scorching; a mortal would barely be able to breathe.
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It reminds him, just a little, of those brief minutes fighting Glee Shoth, blazing white with the Dayfather's power. Asmodeus would likely hate the comparison; Kahl smiles at the thought, very briefly.
"Did you actually want to talk to him?"
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Kahl is fairly confident that Asmodeus would talk to him just to cause pain, with no interest in the content. But he won't press the point.
"You can talk to him with a neutral face on."
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With an arch of his eyebrows, "It's hardly my fault that he looks at me and sees what he failed to keep." It's not precisely untrue; any form he chooses is only an aspect crafted for mortal comprehension, and it's often influenced by their own yearning. That's what it means to be the most beautiful of the gods.
Of course, he has far more control than Zerxus realises, and with a truly put-upon sigh he shimmers and ripples. He looks older now, with more prominent horns and sharply trimmed beard.
"Better?"
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He simply stares, unblinking as an unimpressed cat, until the change.
"Understand: I am indulging him. I am not naturally indulgent. I need very little excuse to reconsider."
Inside, he warns Zerxus, I will return you now. But if he keeps trying to play stupid games, we'll leave.
Before Asmodeus has time to respond, Kahl puts Zerxus into the other chair.
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There's an edge of uncertainty to that, but Zerxus understands the moment he's staring up at Asmodeus.
"You son of a bitch." He growls it in the lowest form of Infernal, blunt and harsh. "All this time - "
"How much time is that, if you don't mind?" Still playing at being polite, then. Still keeping his temper in check. Fine.
"Around a decade."
"...That's all?" It looks like genuine surprise. "Fascinating. You don't even know what Aeor is up to."
"Aeor?" He's still pissed off, but it recedes in favour of sheer bewilderment. "...Did you get yourself killed fighting Ae - " The devil's eyes burn, and the air in Zerxus's lungs evaporates.
"I'm being extremely tolerant, in my opinion." He's addressing Kahl, now; his voice remains low and smooth, but the words are clipped.
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It's the first real emotion Kahl has shown in this conversation, and that emotion is bewildered teenage dismissal.
"I don't care about your opinion, though." He says it - not slowly, but just a little bit more enunciated than normal. Not that Asmodeus might be a bit dim, but - well. That he might have spent so long surrounded by servants and sycophants and marks, all desperately wanting something, even if only to be passed over - that he may have overlooked the possibility.
Recent events notwithstanding.
"Tolerate it or don't. If you won't, we'll leave."
Zerxus spent a lifetime trying to make himself an open hand. But Kahl doesn't care about persuading anyone, most of the time. By the time vengeance is needed, persuasion has long since failed. He won't be drawn into arguing with Asmodeus about what's acceptable: there is only what each of them will, and will not accept.
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It distracts him enough that Zerxus can gasp in a breath, and he almost chokes on it as he trembles - but alas, even this isn't a source of satisfaction.
He's trembling with laughter.
The answering growl is pure petulance in his ears, and it almost makes him laugh harder, but he's able to control himself and catch his breath, shaking his head. "Sorry. ...Well, no, I'm not."
Flatly, eyes blazing, "Your honestly is noted."
Zerxus has grinned up at him before, usually with blood in his teeth, but this is different. This is broad and bright and downright fond.
"You're ridiculous, and he isn't impressed with you, and you have no idea what to do with it." Mortals are too far beneath him for that sort of thing to matter, and his siblings are too caught up in the epic tragedy of their history.
"Maybe you should think about having a real conversation."
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At the same moment, he shoves with his will - strengthened by petulance - and pushes Asmodeus's influence away in a circle around them both, for about a foot out.
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"Really." Asmodeus is quite literally fuming; the air ripples in a haze around him, and his hair is a river of flame. "Are those precious moments of reprieve enough, now that I don't wear your husband's face? Do you want to hear how I died, or shall I just - "
"Stop it, Asmodeus." It's a different tone, of course, grimly intent, but the quiet confidence remains. "You don't have to manipulate me into mourning you."
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"Everyone I've ever loved hates you, I've made my peace with that." He won't insults Kahl by breaching the sphere of his protection, but he stands up and reaches a hand right to the edge of it.
"Tell me what happened to you. Tell me how to stop it."
"That will hardly help me." It's the answer that Zerxus expected, but what he didn't is the slightest, strangest catch to the words. The future of another Exandria means nothing to him, but he still wants it to change.
What does that mean? What does that tell him, beyond any convenient half-truths?
"The wizards of Aeor are forging a weapon to kill the gods."
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If you want to hug him or whatever I don't care, Kahl tells Zerxus, silently. Kahl doesn't, actually, hate him. He just recognizes that circumstance - namely, the circumstance of Kahl having every intention of stealing his whipping boy - has made them enemies, and he doesn't have a reason to indulge Asmodeus playing games designed for him to win. But he doesn't hate him.
I'll let you if he can bring himself not to burn you. Just the same as with the faces.
He doesn't say it aloud, though. Kahl doesn't want to interrupt Asmodeus actually getting past brooding and mantling enough to explain anything of substance. He draws his knees up in his chair. It makes him look smaller, more childish, even though he hasn't changed his form's appearance. He fades into the background in a way that should be utterly bizarre for a god to do; it's like he's not even there.
Possibly, Asmodeus still has enough connection to Zerxus to spy on thoughts. In which case, he will at least understand the terms without having to go through the dance again of being affronted at Kahl having any.
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I doubt he can. Zerxus would still do it, but he cares more about respecting Kahl's wishes than denying his own pain.
"And he calls me ridiculous." For the first time, there's nothing artful in the way he speaks; it's not loftily imperious or disarmingly tender. It's just quietly, wearily earnest.
Asmodeus rises, but the fire flickers and fades. "You love too easily, Zerxus."
Before Zerxus can even begin to process that that, "We called a truce, the Betrayers and the 'Prime Deities', so that we could infiltrate Aeor together. The only way to breach their defences was to become mortals."
He could never comprehend a process like that, and so doesn't try. What he's focused on are the broader implications, the pieces finally grinding painfully into place. "...All of you?"
"Most of us."
Zerxus sits down, heavily, and swallows hard. "They - those fucking idiots, did they even think - "
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And given the gods' response, clearly they had. Kahl rather wants to cheer them them all.
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Asmodeus steps forward, before inclining his head at Kahl.
"You have my word that I will not harm him."
Re: Narrenschiff, Day One
"If you spoke in the language of truth, your tongue would split your head," Kahl breathes, a quiet whisper that rolls out of him like - like light shining behind the world, casting sharp shadows that betray the true shapes of all things. The Godstongue Kahl speaks - the one the scriveners crib a few dead static words from, to make every scrap of mortal magic in that world go - is the langue of making what is real.
He can feel the thin pressure of the Narrenschiff, the box around him that will not let itself be interfered with, but within it, they are all only matter and energy and process and soul, and all things ordered and dissolving can be dissolved and re-ordered, re-described, re-named, if named in the Godstongue. But he says nothing that is not already true, so it takes no power from him, to force the world into the shape he has spoken.
Asmodeus is hurting Zerxus at every moment. But Kahl does not say that in the Godstongue, lest he curse them both, and bind the strength of his speech to the fact of it.
And then he is not speaking the universe anymore, and the edges of him no longer picked out in silhouette; he is not a mad child who has gone from prison to prison to prison, a vengeance that will be forever unsatisfied, all his tragedy and erratic strangeness illuminated in the harshness of truth shining from his own mouth. He is only a scrawny red-headed teenager again, with no trappings of visible power apart from his life-green poison eyes.
"But I know what you meant," he mutters in common, looking away.
He's still paying attention, of course. Asmodeus's word means nothing to him at all. But he will accept it as a sign of intent for the next minute, the next seconds, even if it is only intent to bring harm in a different way than the ones Kahl has forbidden. And Kahl doesn't want to be looking with his regular eyes if they're going to kiss or something.
Re: Narrenschiff, Day One
Asmodeus is not, in this moment, Asmodeus. He is a shimmering blue flame, crackling playfully; he is a thousand beautiful fireworks; he is a blazing seed of possibility, full of wonder and joy. Then he is real, and he is beautiful still but he is burning, the flowing mane of copper-bright hair catching fire and hardening into two spikes that spiral back around his ears.
It is real, but it is not now; he doesn't need to sink to the floor in the wake of it, gasping and shuddering as his form ripples again. (Not Evandrin, no, but younger than the last, both less human and more vulnerable.) It was a truly galling level of exposure, but there's no need not to take advantage of it.
Zerxus, in that moment, felt the seething contradiction of his nature more keenly than ever before; he looked almost molten, ever-shifting and shot through with cracks of starlight, flexing wings of flame. It leaves him stunned and breathless and aching, but that doesn't stop him from rushing forward. There's no hesitation in kneeling down and reaching out, even now after everything.
It is a lie, when Asmodeus accepts the compassion, but perhaps not as fully as the first time.
"I saved us, then. I couldn't do it again."
"We'll find a - " Zerxus's voice almost breaks, but he does stop himself from promising too much. He doesn't expect it to be taken well.
Asmodeus laughs, wry and soft. "He is teaching you something. Well done, godling."
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