letsplayamurder | Week Two

Entry tags:

week 2,
weekly log

Week Two

Okay, maybe it hasn't been so easy. You've been enjoying a relatively pleasant time here with your fellow gods and Athena, only for a disgruntled Titan to seemingly pull the rug out from under that.

Despite the immediate threat from a hidden foe, you've managed to stave off their first attack. However, even if the grass may seem greener this week, or the sky a bit clearer, Athena can barely hide her troubled feelings. If this experiment is to be a success, what has to happen to make it that way?

You're all alive, though. That's worth celebrating, isn't it?

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Quark's Bar

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You're not the first person here to say that. There's... a manner of comfort, in the small things that remind you of home in this world.

[It's not the sky for her, but the buildings, the clothing provided... she's not reassured or comforted, but it's nice.]

I hope it's a good reminder, at least.

[ Alex lets out a breath. Like most of his breaths, it's tired. ]

It feels like...a long time since I looked at the stars like this. Like...askin' for some kinda answer they don't have.

[ The stars told him nothing. The one who did... ]

The stars are mysterious. Even if they did have the answers, I doubt they'd be in any way coherent to anyone but themselves.

[A pause. She laughs softly.]

Perhaps you could ask Luna to interpret them for you. Though from what I've gathered, these stars aren't quite like hers.

[ He doesn't crack even a smile. Just keeps looking up. ]

Nah. I don't think they'd have any good news for us. Even if they could talk.

Messages from higher beings rarely carry good news.

[She understands this quite well.]

... Have you been able to "see" anything?

[ His skin prickles. ]

...Nothing like before, but...

[ It sits in his pocket, heavy, heavy, heavy— ]

There's stuff from home, popping out like...offerings. All the stuff I've recognized, it's... It ain't reassuring.

How so?

[...]

I'm rather... familiar, with prophecy. Not as one who speaks it, but as one who has heard many.

[ For a moment, he's silent. Then, hesitantly, his hand dips into his pocket and pulls out a magazine scrap. He holds it carefully, as if afraid it may vanish. ]

It's the first omen I ever...understood in the moment. Got this back last week. Day before...before Typhon made the ground split open.

[ ... ]

And today, a...

A sculpture my girlfriend made turned up.

[Her head tilts to one side, ever so slightly. Perhaps... she and the other Chrysos Heirs should be thankful, at how far more obvious their own prophecies were.]

I can see why you look over your shoulder at every given chance. That's as unclear as they come.

[From anyone else, that might have been teasing, or mocking. But there's a weight to Aglaea's voice, not quite understanding but also not making light of such a tiny scrap.]

... An ill omen, indeed. And I assume it's her on the parchment you were given?

[ A wry, weak smile stretches across his face as he quietly explains: ] Means death in a different language where I'm from. And...it...was my best friend's name. Saw it before it... It got him.

[ And he was too late. Of course he was too late. Always, always...

Alex's shoulder slump with an invisible weight. ]

'Course it was her. It's already after her. Now, a freakin' Titan?

[ It's too much. It's way too much. ]

... I'm sorry, Alex.

[Again, there's something a little... different, in Aglaea's voice. Sympathy. Understanding. Just the slightest hint of that familiar tired feeling he must feel.

Aglaea often thinks that nothing really affects her anymore. That she's about as empty of a husk as Caenis accuses her of being. But she understands the weight of a friend long gone. And how that never really leaves you, no matter how long ago their death was.

Ah, Hysilens...]

Forseeing death.... [... Ha. So she was right.] That is... a burden none should bear. Especially not one so young.

[ It's the most emotion he's heard out of her. Aside from, perhaps, the argument she'd had with Athena just that night, but that, still, was different. This is...

Familiar. Understood, implicitly.

Not very surprising, possibly. She's supposed to be like, really old, right? Of course of all things to experience, loss would be expected.

...But that familiarity helps, nevertheless. The weight that sits on him, he might imagine it sits on her as well. ]

Yeah. It's not. But here I am.

[ He wraps his hand around the scrap. It trembles just a little. ]

I don't know...why. It'd never happened before, but... I saw somethin'. Like a...vision. Something big, horrible, and, after...

[ He looks at the stars. They still have no answers for him. ]

I changed it. For me...and for a few others. Without even meaning to. Then, I just... I kept seeing. In the every day, [ gripping the scrap, tighter ] or...like this...little bite-sized bit of what it was before. What the first one was.

No one- I hadn't met anyone else. [ Not until here. Not until Wendy. But he is so careful, so careful about what he says about her. She's not as forthcoming as he is about this. ] No one else who could. According to the rest of the world—classmates, teachers, the friggin' cops—I was just...some crazy, dangerous kid.

You would think, after the first few incidents that you saw, some might understand. But unfortunately, many don't want to understand. And that's incredibly unfair to you.

[There's a pause, like something is hanging between them, before Aglaea sighs.]

I understand some of what you feel. Not that I see the deaths of others wherever I turn. [She sees Death, but... Death is a friend. Quite literally. And gods, she hopes that Castorice being in the Underworld means she escaped things falling apart.] But I was given a prophecy too. Not a vision, just simple words.

When I offered up the Coreflame of Romance and took up Mnestia's place as a demigod, I was told how I would die.

[ They didn't, did they? They just wanted to fit him into the little box they decided he fit in. Because he scared them. Because they couldn't understand. Because they were too blinded with grief.

...The whispers he'd heard in the aftermath of their ill-fated trip to Paris, however... Is it better to be dismissed, instead of studied by those who would regard their tragedy as entertainment?

That's a thought experiment for another day. Because the moment he hears Aglaea's admission, his head turns from the stars for the first time— ]

What?

Why?

Why...would anyone do that?

[ What did they tell you? This question is less important. So he does not ask it. ]

Spite, to those who stole their power? A warning? Even after so long, I can't be sure. But all of us have them.

[She sounds... unbothered, honestly. Not dismissive, but. After a thousand years of having a cryptic message of how she would die in the back of her mind, the fear and paranoia has long since faded. Just like many of her other emotions have.]

"You shall have your final bath in warm and radiant gold."

[She huffs out what sounds like it might be a laugh.]

Cryptic, isn't it?

[ He has been, largely, rather...not relaxed tonight. But not actively hunting for signs and omens. But just like that, Alex's brain starts to work. His eyes narrow with thought, darting about. ]

Warm, radiant gold... Like, actual gold? Next to some kinda...mountain of it? Or just the light, like the sun, like the...

[ Alex clams up, very suddenly. ]

Sorry. Shit. I start thinkin' about that stuff, and...

[ He bites his lip. ]

How can you not...be furious? Not wanna punch the- the smug asshole in the face?

[ She looked into the eyes of the person who cursed her with that. And yet, still. ]

[She takes his panic in stride, watching but not trying to stop him immediately. She understands a lot more where all this is coming from now. He has to be able to process things to avoid danger.

It's... a tragic way to live. She wishes it wasn't on the burden of someone who could still be called a child. But she also doesn't want to try to force him to go against every instinct he's had to craft since he began seeing his own visions. That would just make things worse. So she watches, ready to step in if needed, but then he stops himself.]

It was a prophecy passed from Mnestia, who I bested to take their Coreflame. They've been gone for a thousand years, so I have no target for anger now.

[Even when she was younger, still more connected to her emotions... she'd found a dark sort of humor in her prophecy. Of course one who enjoyed indulging in the serenity of the bathhouses would be the one foretold to die in a bath.]

... Besides, I told you before, didn't I? My prophecy came to pass. I've no reason to be angry now, even if I was able to.

[ Yeah. She did tell him. Dead, and knowing how for so long. That's what Wendy's future foretold too, didn't it? That's why those photos freaked her out so much. Was it easier, for it to still be a surprise in the end?

Alex still searches her face for some hint of...something. Any hint of the frustration that's been coursing through him. ]

What do you mean...able to?

[It's hard to really see anything in her face. It's not that it's the face of a doll, or someone so detached from life that they might as well be a walking corpse. But it's just sort of... blank.]

Let's just say... a thousand years can do many things to a soul. Feelings change, and sometimes they fade. It simply a price that comes with a life this long.

[Which might be hard to believe, with how she's clearly showed compassion to Alex and Mutsumi and some of the others. With how, in her own way, she's shown some kind of understanding and empathy with Athena. She's clearly, at the very least, able to still express emotion.]

[ It is. Quite hard to believe. He frowns. Gods aren't afraid to die. Gods don't die. ]

Is that what's supposed to happen with all of us? In Athena's whole...gods plan. [ If, you know, Typhon doesn't take matters into his own hands. ] You said you were...basically kind of a god before. Is that what being a god really is?

[ He asked her a similar question before. But it's with less fire, much less. It's just kind of sad. ]

I don't...know if I want that.

I can't say. We're supposedly already gods now, but we faced no trial to fully obtain these powers. That isn't how it worked for the Chrysos Heirs, so perhaps being a god is different here.

[It's not empty reassurance. She's really not sure what exactly is going on with them.]

I don't blame you at all. It is... a very heavy burden.

[ Alex sits there quietly. He... ]

...I don't want it. I never wanted any of it. I just... I just wanted to...

[Her head tilts to one side.]

Then why accept Athena's offer?

[ His shoulders hunch a little. Like he wants to become as small as possible. ]

'Cause...she was the first thing I could- could feel or hear in...in I don't know. I don't...remember how long.

Before I...

Before it got me.

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Week Two

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