A fluffy manticore was a warm manticore, and Jigano appreciated Remi's silly puffed up mental image, more chicken than kitten, but holding a bit of both (and hardly any scorpion at all, thank goodness!). He mentally chuckled back, even if it felt strange to be laughing with the alchemist in something that resembled - or actually was? - camaraderie.
There was a bittersweet note to that realization; that several of those he had been close to before were now at a distance that he had created, and that there was no telling how much longer he would be able to enjoy laughter and jokes like these before what made him Jigano warped and twisted beneath the weight of the blight that bubbled in his blood, and only rage remained.
If you can transmute the plants back and show the Fae how to do so, so the Greatwood can be strengthened, it might at least slow the spread of the blight, he offered, suspecting that the alchemist's thoughts were with his husband, who was unfortunately made of meat, not vegetation. Even if it doesn't help those already infected, if it can prevent others from joining us it would still be a great gift. He held back from mentioning Aoife, the toddler's protection linked to Arduinna, who in turn was linked to the Greatwood, but despite their earlier mirth the maybe-goddess was a source of pain for Remi that didn't bear lingering on.
Not when there were other things to dig up bad memories waiting in the wings, so to speak. The prompt earned a croak from his beak rather than an immediate thought, and Jigano shifted uneasily against Remi's thick fur and feathers, fluffing up his own plumage unhappily at the reminder of a past he knew he would have to revisit in the coming season. Not... exactly, he admitted, a flicker of shame underlying his mental voice. I would not say that we were controlled so much as... manipulated? Yes, our emotions were manipulated. Not unlike the blightrage, actually. In some ways, at least. He fell silent again, musing - brooding - over how to describe what had happened. He spoke slowly when he was ready, sounding a little uncertain at first but growing more confident as he went on. It was not as though we were forced to feel anything that was not already there, but that they reached into our minds and hearts and... and stoked what already existed, stirring up the tiniest flickers of resentment or annoyance and amplifying them, magnifying them, until they were an all-consuming rage that could only be sated with violence. It was more sudden than the blight, more focused, but... there are similarities, yes.
And as unsettling as that thought was, it led into another scrap of evidence for the hypothesis that crystallized in the cold Leafchange night, horrifying and far too terrible to be true.
Right?
The portal wasn't nearly as important as the rest of it, the connections between a goddess as twisted as the first Iron God of Jigano's world and the unquiet souls that sought vengeance against the living. Ghosts in the machines, amid the fallen monuments of a civilization that had sailed the stars as humans sailed the seas... and ghosts among the lightless time between the old year and the new. Would Ronin's starshine serve to keep them at bay when he himself had already fallen to the blight?
Would Ronin still be alive - his mind, the essence of who he was - when Long Night came?
Steady, Remi, the raven urged, unsure whether he could soothe the alchemist when his own temper flared and sparked unpredictably at the nightmare possibility his mind had conjured. He tensed as well, wings half-open and risking being swept from the manticore's back as he fought to steady himself, reminding himself as much as Remi not to lash out prematurely. It's just a guess. Not even a hypothesis, really, just wild speculation. There's no proof, none at all. Scraps of information with little context and guesses to tie them together, not facts. And even if it is more truth than fantasy, the current Ascended aren't to blame. The lost souls might not even be Ascended, not as we know them... not entirely. Not if the Voice experimented on Accepted or even Abandoned and Attuned as well. If I'm right - and gods least fortunate, I hope I'm not - then these would be the souls of those lost long ago, maybe even before the barrier was raised, not those still living. Had the Demon been an Abandoned, once? Had the Prince been Attuned? Or had they been something else entirely, never human at all, but artificial souls placed in artificial bodies? Questions, questions, so many questions, but the answers might prove to be even worse.
And not necessarily survivable.
There was a bittersweet note to that realization; that several of those he had been close to before were now at a distance that he had created, and that there was no telling how much longer he would be able to enjoy laughter and jokes like these before what made him Jigano warped and twisted beneath the weight of the blight that bubbled in his blood, and only rage remained.
If you can transmute the plants back and show the Fae how to do so, so the Greatwood can be strengthened, it might at least slow the spread of the blight, he offered, suspecting that the alchemist's thoughts were with his husband, who was unfortunately made of meat, not vegetation. Even if it doesn't help those already infected, if it can prevent others from joining us it would still be a great gift. He held back from mentioning Aoife, the toddler's protection linked to Arduinna, who in turn was linked to the Greatwood, but despite their earlier mirth the maybe-goddess was a source of pain for Remi that didn't bear lingering on.
Not when there were other things to dig up bad memories waiting in the wings, so to speak. The prompt earned a croak from his beak rather than an immediate thought, and Jigano shifted uneasily against Remi's thick fur and feathers, fluffing up his own plumage unhappily at the reminder of a past he knew he would have to revisit in the coming season. Not... exactly, he admitted, a flicker of shame underlying his mental voice. I would not say that we were controlled so much as... manipulated? Yes, our emotions were manipulated. Not unlike the blightrage, actually. In some ways, at least. He fell silent again, musing - brooding - over how to describe what had happened. He spoke slowly when he was ready, sounding a little uncertain at first but growing more confident as he went on. It was not as though we were forced to feel anything that was not already there, but that they reached into our minds and hearts and... and stoked what already existed, stirring up the tiniest flickers of resentment or annoyance and amplifying them, magnifying them, until they were an all-consuming rage that could only be sated with violence. It was more sudden than the blight, more focused, but... there are similarities, yes.
And as unsettling as that thought was, it led into another scrap of evidence for the hypothesis that crystallized in the cold Leafchange night, horrifying and far too terrible to be true.
Right?
The portal wasn't nearly as important as the rest of it, the connections between a goddess as twisted as the first Iron God of Jigano's world and the unquiet souls that sought vengeance against the living. Ghosts in the machines, amid the fallen monuments of a civilization that had sailed the stars as humans sailed the seas... and ghosts among the lightless time between the old year and the new. Would Ronin's starshine serve to keep them at bay when he himself had already fallen to the blight?
Would Ronin still be alive - his mind, the essence of who he was - when Long Night came?
Steady, Remi, the raven urged, unsure whether he could soothe the alchemist when his own temper flared and sparked unpredictably at the nightmare possibility his mind had conjured. He tensed as well, wings half-open and risking being swept from the manticore's back as he fought to steady himself, reminding himself as much as Remi not to lash out prematurely. It's just a guess. Not even a hypothesis, really, just wild speculation. There's no proof, none at all. Scraps of information with little context and guesses to tie them together, not facts. And even if it is more truth than fantasy, the current Ascended aren't to blame. The lost souls might not even be Ascended, not as we know them... not entirely. Not if the Voice experimented on Accepted or even Abandoned and Attuned as well. If I'm right - and gods least fortunate, I hope I'm not - then these would be the souls of those lost long ago, maybe even before the barrier was raised, not those still living. Had the Demon been an Abandoned, once? Had the Prince been Attuned? Or had they been something else entirely, never human at all, but artificial souls placed in artificial bodies? Questions, questions, so many questions, but the answers might prove to be even worse.
And not necessarily survivable.
