To avoid suspicion (and because they want to explore as well), Gabriel, Katie and Yue have joined up with the rest of the xenologists, leaving Hakeber and Shojo to stand guard (at a distance) over Tasha and Samael. It isn't clear where the Lapis have gotten off to though, but are probably keeping close to the camp, although it's possible that Liza is in one of the vehicles or temporary structures.
Samael has stopped poking at things for the moment, and sits at the edge of the plaza, dangling his hooves over the abyss below. Which at least means Tasha doesn't have to chase him.
With needing to keep a close eye on Samael, Tasha's own explorations have become by proxy. It feels to her like she's explored every building, statue, and miscellaneous object across the city, although she's sure it's been only the nearby area. She never knew demons had so much curiosity, glad when he finally decided to sit down and give her a break. It's not that she's physically exhausted, it's that she's never sure what he might do with a crowd of people, an ancient doomsome city, and who-knows-what-else.
She almost misses where Samael had just been teasing her.
Almost.
With a soft sigh that reminds her too much of Liza, Tasha walks over and sits down behind the demonic entity, pulling her knees to her chest and watching looking at him from behind and to his right. "Having fun?" She glances towards the edge and adds, "Do you know what this black sea is for?"
"It's a psychic flensing field," Samael explains. "Similar to the event horizon of a black hole, in that the information about what has passed through is recorded like a hologram, while the matter and energy are.. consumed. That information is then used to recreate the people as immortal puppets."
"Oh," goes Tasha. She had assumed it'd be something like that. It's nice to have the details. Scootching a little closer, she peers over the edge and frowns. "I've seen these before, generated by machines." Her muzzle purses. "And so the Stonecutters came here to be immortal, free of all their organic weaknesses, and then they were ... Have you been around when either Galactic civilization fell?"
"Well.. that's a tricky question.." Samael says. "My existence is.. complicated. But what shouldn't be complicated is you telling me why you sought out my master?"
Tasha turns to Samael and gives him a look, which comes off a bit like an aggrevated sister when her brother has said something annoying. "My existence is ... complicated," she retorts.
"I can smell it, yes," Samael agrees. "But why did you seek out the master?"
"I'll tell you why if you tell me what your relationship is to him and why you don't want to go back," Tasha promises, brows arching. "I know it sounds uneven, but if you explain your situation I might explain even more. Thotep is a powerful being, and I might have been suckered in the talking to him by someone I thought I could trust more."
"He's my.. uh.. parent," Samael says after thinking for a moment. "That's probably the closest term that relates."
"I never knew my father, but I think I feel better about that now." Tasha leans back, shifting her hands from her knees to the strange black walkway, leaning back. "Well, see, I actually kind of work for the Progenitors. Or, well, Vril. Not the Vril, Vril. The universe, whom the Vril-ya are created from and return to. The Progenitors. Beings from another universe, a little like you. One of their own, Horus, the Progenitor of Vartans, was supposed to dela with the Ogdoad threat as they recreated Galactic civilization one new uplift at a time. Horus failed, then Horus gave up, and a lot of the others ones did, too. Millions of years later I sort of found the keys and the gate, and Atum, who is the biggest manifesttaion outside Vril itself. I asked how I could help -- I know -- and Atum handed me Horus and told me to make him do his job. He's almost useless, so it's really my job now. I'm hunting the Ogdru-hem to try and stop the Ogdoad from finishing what they started and eating us all.
Tasha wiggles her nose a moment, wanting to scratch it but also not wanting to sit up. "Thotep helped make the ship by traping Tatha-hem within it. The Tnuctipin made the rest. They wanted to kill the Ogdru-hem that chased us off right before we turned to Thotep for help, but they failed. And, um, they died. All of them."
"Oh, you've got that ship," Samael says. "Vril-ya.. never met one, but I know they'd visit every so often. We moved in.. different circles. I didn't realize the Ogdru-hem were actually a problem though. I mean, on a larger scale." We waves his untaloned hand at the sky when talks about scale. "I figured the Ogdoad would be gone by now."
"They're not gone. They have their agents, the Ogdru-hem, and as long as they exist the Ogdoad will eventually get free from Erebus and will then probably eat us. I was told this by several of them; even the Progenitors dreaded it. It's why so many of them gave up, why Atum tried to recall them all and why they stopped making new uplifts. And just as bad, the Xilfrim still wnat everything to themselves as well." And so Tasha turns up a hand in a shrug. "So right now it looks like one of those two groups could doom us all in the near future. The Xilfrim aren't my responsibility, though, so I just need to work on the Ogdoad. The old Goat knows how the ship works and will tell me how in exchange for you."
"Ahh.. so he's counting on me not telling you then," Samael says. "That is useful to know. When I went to.. sleep.. the Xilphrim were no longer active. How do you know of them?"
Tasha reaches up and taps her head with the same hand that had been shrugging, shifting her weight the the other. "I was born on Sinai, in the Primus System. It's a Xilphrim system, one they used to attract new clients to test out. Except the Xilphrim were crippled by their war with the Galactics and -- especially -- the Vril-ya, so they're not able to just obliterate us like they probably want to. Well," she cocks her head to the side, " ... after they pick out their favorite."
"Ah, so they require servitors," Samael says. "This is the real impetus for clearing out the Ogdru-hem then - the Xilphrim may choose not to keep the Ogdoad imprisoned, if they cannot spare the power. Or.. may simply decide to release them after they've eliminated the food supply."
Tasha pauses, blinking, but then nods slowly. "That's one of the concerns we have. They could also die out, then their technology would fail anyway. That's what really upset the Vril-ya, they couldn't end the threat of thr Xilphrim to their children and they can't end the threat of the Ogdoad, either. If one is taken down the other one gets an advantage, and they're both endlessly dangerous if not restrained."
"There is another option, however," Samael points out. "Once freed, the Ogdoad may abandon this universe to obscure their tracks."
"They're fighting with the Waymakers, aren't they? I've met one of them," Tasha inquires, head cocking the other way. "Fighting across universes, times, probably stranger things. I wonder what it's like."
"The Waymakers? I suppose that's one name," Samael says. "They aren't the ones fighting the Ogdoad, however. They're just the.. trackers. They fight the Ogdru-hem usually. And the Ogdoad aren't exactly fighting their opponent because there is no fighting that opponent. When they are found, and its attention falls on them, they cease to exist. Perhaps to ever have existed. Time is a variable in these things."
Tasha inclines her head to that. "I noticed." She rolls her shoulders, then turns to nod her head towards the abyss. "The Waymakers call their god the Null and warned me against empty places. I think they understand how close I work with some of Ogdru-hem, how close I get. The Null isn't something I understand even a little, and it's hunting what I'm hunting. It could show up anywhere we go." She looks back, eyes a little wide. "Sometimes I can't believe I'm playing this game beside beings like that. Like you, even if my part is tiny. Even Horus is hard to understand, but you all keep listening to me, keep helping. Or, well, helping yourselves. Using me."
"You and I have the same advantage," Samael claims, and holds his thumb and forefinger very close together. "We are tiny. One does not notice the burning candle when they are looking at stars. Being beneath their concern gives us far greater leeway in our actions. Even the Ogdru-hem do not notice us, unless we make ourselves known first."
Tasha grimaces, baring teeth. "I think it's too late for that. The Waymakers, Vril, even the Ogdoad have noticed me. Know of me. One of Ogdru-hem even said it recognized me, knew I'd come some day. What does that mean? If you're beneath their notice, why did they notice me?"
"Well, how did you come to it?" Samael asks. "Do not assume an Ogdru-hem will separate entities from circumstances. Circumstances have much higher probabilities than individuals."
"Come to my situation? A lot of luck, and following trails left for me by others. I had a lot of help, even from beings who wouldn't have helped me while they were alive." Tasha puts her hand back down, shifting her weight back to both, clicking her hooves together in thought. "I met a civilization once that told me I was entwined with an event. I thought it was meeting Atum, but maybe it's something else. The Ogdru-hem said it recognize the mark on my, uh, soul. It's a little strange now that I think about it, the Waymakers letting me in to the Way when I was marked. When I have a ship like I do. Maybe they know something, too."
"Do you have venomous insects on your world?" Samael asks.
"Oh, lots." Tasha's eyeroll is knowing. Sitting on the deck of an airship near giant beast all day, on a world where routine bathing is a luxury rather than a standard, she has had more than enough experience with Sinai's insects. Besides: "Horribs are awful, I sometimes had to chase them away from the pteras or off the ship when docked in Babel."
"How about tiny ones, the sort that are only really noticed if they swarm?" the dark hybrid asks.
"Those too. Bloodflies." The memories suddenly make the hybrid woman grateful for a world without ambient life. "Are you saying we're like bloodflies, sucking the blood out of the Ogdoad, or giving them diseases?"
"More that we are like single bloodflies," Samael says. "If a single bloodfly was barely noticeable. We may not bite, but at the same time we are not worth swatting. It is easy to feel generous to a single insignificant bug than to a swarm. I doubt even the Vril-ya register much on the awareness of such beings."
"I think I feel better and worse about being tiny and insignificant." Tasha exhales, then scootches around to match Samael's alignment, laying down on her back and turning her eyes to the one thing that isn't strange -- or as strange -- around here: the sky. "Katie said she thought a god was a being so immense it doesn't even notice you. I guess that's the Null, but maybe not the Ogdoad. Well. Um. I'll keep fighting, you know? Keep fighting." The last is said with a kind of wistful apprehension, a woman set in her task, however ominous it might be. Perhaps out of obligation, perhaps out of momentum. "And you're tiny, too. How tiny are you? Between, oh ... Remy uses one through ten. If microbes are one, animals are two, near-sentients are three and sentients are four annnd the Null is ten, where are you?"
"I'm not on the list, because I'm not alive by the standards of the beings you're concerned with," Samael says. "You see, for the Ogdoad or Ogdru-hem, we are beneath notice on our own merits - it's only when we are paired with a threat that we are noticed. It is the opposite for the Stelya-rhian - your Waymakers - and the Null. The Waymakers are physical, living beings, and so are biased towards physical living beings. You rate higher to them than the energy-based Vril-ya do. The Null is only concerned with souls. Since you have one, you are therefore worthy of notice, while I and my ilk are not. That is why it needs the trackers - it can't sense our sort of existence. So.. I am less significant than you are in the broadest sense of things, as far as gods and fundamental archetypes of existence are concerned."
Tasha listens, and for a long moment she chews on what Samael said. She isn't sure why, but it rather makes her a bit sad. That she chews on a while more, trying to suss out what it is in such an apparently uplifting description that's bothering her. It comes to her in a flash: Katha-hem, born alone in the dark. The Source, traped for aeons. And now Samael, too small to notice in more ways than one, yet a tool for his insignificance. "I'm sorry," she finds herself saying. Even if they're alien, or her enemies, she can at least sympathize with feeling trapped and insignificant, knowing you were created for a purpose as a tool.
"Why?" Samael asks.
Tasha exhales, wiggling her hooves and blinking up at the lonely sky, still comforting despite being so far from home. "Because I'm sentimental? I don't know, I just feel bad for the Ogdru-hem, sometimes. The Source, stuck in his hole, so much greater than me but unable to do anything. Hungry to escape, yet he spared me. Katha-hem has been doing his work for aeons, sitting and waiting, born alone to be a tool. Yet, he sends his monsters to help 'make the mortals overcome'. Even Horus, who makes me so mad sometimes, he tried so hard and he cared so much he couldn't take it anymore. The Vril-ya can't handle chaos, or loss, and they want so badly to be like the Wayfafers but can't understand how."
And so Tasha rolls her head, frowning at Samael. "And now there's you. Tiny little demon, insignificant. I thought you were trying to annoy me, and you were, but the way you look at everything and how you talk to me, I think maybe you're lonely, too." Her head rolls back, to the sky. "But what do I know? You heard me, I don't really know. It's just I grew up feeling trapped and insignificant, strange, like an outsider. Then I learned someone made me. I was a gamble, like dice. And if I failed? Oh well, next Tasha. Remy says it's why I sympathize with my Titan's AI. With them all."
"You have to find your place in the universe on your own, as part of living," Samael says. "I.. and those like me.. have the advantage of already knowing our place. We have no illusions. The Vril-ya are beings of Order. That is why they fail. Life is too messy for them to really ever comprehend. It doesn't do what they predict, and so they blame themselves for the failure instead of grasping that the task itself was impossible - you can start a boulder rolling down a hillside, but you cannot know what path it will take. So when it breaks apart, or crushes a house, they cannot cope. Tell me, Tasha - how would your life have gone if you knew from the start what you were meant to do? Would you have been less frustrating or confusing? Would you have found reassurance, or would you have felt trapped? It's a rhetorical question, because you cannot answer it objectively. You have your life experience, and that biases you."
Tasha's response is to grunt, like she'd been punched in the stomach. She then sits up, staring at nothing at all for a long moment before rising. "I think I've had enough of this abyss for a while. Why don't we walk around and see how many ways you can make me wan to throw you off a cliff?" Despite the threat, there's no malice behind her words, no edge, just a kind of tiredness that seems to come from far way.
"Well.. do these wings actually work?" Samael asks as he gets up. "I suppose we can't test them on the surface though. Does my physical appearance still make you uneasy?"
"They work. Or did, I've been inside ships so long I think they might fall off." The young woman rubs her upper arm with the other's hand, looking around, as if she were suddenly cold. She's slow in answers. "Maybe a little. The last being who tried looking like me tried to rape my mind and turn me in to his puppet, and the woman who looks like me is my creator. It's not just you." She sniffs, then glances back, just barely. "At least teasing me is what I'd expect from someone who looks like me. Nora is a smartass. It makes me self-concious, though. Do I move like that? Am I that short? Are my hooves not awesome enough?" Her smile is wry. "At least it's a good trick."
"I'm short?" Samael asks, and then nods to Hakeber and Shojo.. who still keep a respectful distance, but don't let their charges get away from them. "You keep interesting company."
"You're short for a Vartan. I'm short for a Vartan. I look at you and think, "As a man I'd think of myself as being really unimpressive," and somehow that makes me self-concious. I don't even know why." Tasha's shrug is broad, hands out; she turns as she does it before moving her hands behind her head. "Hake-bear and Shojo? They are kind of different, even for their own kind. My crew is made of people who needed somewhere to belong, you know?" She nods towards Hakeber. "Didn't you say something about her back when you were aggravating me?"
"Yes, I did," Samael says. "Where did you find her?"
"Under a stack of pizza boxes and books." Tasha cracks a smile at that, turning to glance back again with more than token effort. "Hake's from Abaddon, one of the other planets of Primus. We became friends, and her research helped me reach Atum. I've dragged her along because, I think, maybe she needs direction. Except now ... Now ... " Her hands fall and she resumes rubbing her arm. "Now something's wrong with her. Katha-hem did something to her. We try not to talk about it, we don't want to upset her even more or make her feel like she's some kind of bomb or spy, but we're worried."
"The Ogdru-hem can affect one another," Samael says. "Katha-hem put information into her. It can't affect me, however. But neither could I access it."
"Wellll, that's better than what it could be." Tasha exhales, watching Hakeber for a moment before asking, "Do you sense anything in Shojo? What about me? Hake made a weird remark about Tatha-hem sounding like my name, which doesn't make any sense, except Hake knows things, now. We even asked Tatha-hem, and her answer was ... Was spices. Taco. Spices."
"So, she knows things, and you do things," Samael says, looking this way and that as they walk. "Perhaps that is enough to goad an Ogdru-hem. I do not know what taco spices are." He pauses, then stops. Then turns around in a circle before.. continuing on in the direction they were already heading into the city.
"You're not going to tell me about my ship, are you," Tasha prods as she follows along without seeming to be following an invisible entity, or else just having gone mad from her trip to the temple. The walking in a circle does not help. "Let me guess, you're angling for some advantage or working to make yourself more valuable, maybe trying to figure out what Thotep will do."
"Oh, do I have to do that?" Samael asks. "I thought you might just enjoy having me around." He sniffs the air (which of course has no scent on this world) and makes a slight alteration in course, heading towards a rather small structure near the very edge of the city - on also 'hanging' by a few thin support struts.
"I always want more." Tasha follows along, doing her best to look like she's walking this way intentionally. She does eye the flimsy looking passage, shifting her path so she'll arrive dead center, wings spreading instinually for balance. "And having you around? You're already around. That sounds like you want to be around more, but that would cost."
"I see that females have not changed much in the last few million years," Samael comments. He steps out onto the narrow bridge.. and starts jumping up and down on it!
"Hey what does-- ahh!!" Tasha hops back, actually beating her wings for distant, what little distance the motion might give. She lands in a crouch, teeth bared. "Maybe you don't care if you're soul-flattened but I do!"
"What?" Samael asks. "Oh, you can't fall into it from here, there's an invisible shield," he claims. Then he heads into the small cylindrical building.
"Invisible." The doubt practically drips from her words. She walks closer, but slowly, with her wings out. Eventually she heads inside as well.
There's a single chamber in the building.. with a fancy looking rug. The pattern woven on it seems oddly biological though, if not exactly anything familiar. There's small pedestal to one side of the room, with an odd device on it that Samael fiddles with.
Tasha makes herself present, if not useful, by idly wandering around and looking at things. "In case you're wondering, I think that's an ancient rug, and the device you're holding? I have no idea what that is."
"It's a brain trap," Samael says as he fiddles with the dials on the device. Finally it produces a periodic ticking sound, like a metronome. "Now, could jump up and down on the middle of the.. rug?" he asks.
Tasha gives Samael a flat stare. "Are you trying to trap my brain." It sounds more statement than question. Her arms cross; she remains unmoving.
"No, that would require removing it first," Samael says in a reasonable tone.
Tasha's sigh is long and suffering. She throws up her hands. "Fiiiine, fine. I may as well ride the crazy train, since I got on board. And made the train." That doesn't mean she walks over with great gusto, however. At first she eyes the rug, then Samael, then the rug, looking increasingly doubtful until she just suddenly hops. Once, twice, and with more effort. "I feel stupid and I hate higher and lower beings everywhere."
The ticks from the device don't change. Samael tries banging on it with his taloned fist, before declaring, "Well, he's dead. So much for eternal torment."
This stops Tasha's jumping. "What? There was someone here? The rug?" And then she hops right off the rug, tapping her hooves to the ground as if to get any dead tormented being off them.
"Well, his nervous system was mapped onto it," Samael explains. "The brain was virtualized in crystal, with only the higher functions needed for experiencing pain and anguish. It either broke down or was still intelligent enough to have been wiped with all the others."
"Well that's horrible." Tasha stabs a finger at Samael. "You're horrible, too, actually!" She does not mention, not want to think about, how she's been assigned by Atum to be Horus's tormentor. Then she'd be horrible. "Don't you have anything better to play with than tormented people? Find something useful, maybe!"
"I was seeing if the brain pattern survived," Samael notes, and looks at Tasha after her outburst. "I didn't do this to the person. He did.. something.. that the worshipers of T'thogga-hem decided he deserved eternal punishment for. But they didn't just send a continuous series of pain signals. Stomping up and down was part of the rite of Communion for some reason."
"That's a very odd rite of Communion," Tasha insists, ears laying backa and tail swishing. She edges a little farther away from the person-rug. After taking a moment to gather herself, she asks, "So, uhm, the sentients were destroyed, but do their copies still exist in the system? And why do they hate things that fly so much?"
"Religious reasons.. or else they had nasty flying things in their past, perhaps," Samael says, and looks at the rug. "I doubt checking the other twenty-seven eternally-damned will bear different results. T'thogga-hem probably remembers the sacrifices, but they are likely not in 'the system' anymore, since they are not walking around."
"Are you trying to get its attention, then? So we can talk to it? Or ... " The hybrid's eyes widen a little. "Or are you trying to blow up the world? I'd really prefer if we got everyone off it before we start doing that. The people up top, the ship, they all need to get away. And we need to work out if we can reduce T'thogga-hem in to a smaller fragment."
Samael stares at Tasha for an uncomfortably long time. "Did you really think that jumping up and down on an ugly carpet could destroy the world? What are the carpets like where you come from?"
Tasha leans back, ears flicking and arms folding. "How should I know what destroys the world? I just got done talking to spinning geometry that wanted letters from home and contained who-knows-how-many souls, and now I'm talking to a demon that looks like me while he investigates a torture rug that's used to talk to a earth-spirit that steals and copies minds."
"This? This can't talk to anything, it's just connected to the carpet," Samael notes. "No, to destroy T'thogga-hem we have to do it the way beings like us usually get things done."
"By us you mean you and him, right?" Tasha confirms, leaning in a little and peering at her double.
Samael comes up to Tasha and puts his hands on her shoulders. He then gives her a very charming smile. "I mean you and I.. and your friends," he says. "And possibly Tatha-hem too. We're going to cheat, of course. You do know how to cheat, don't you?"
"On everything except Gabriel," Tasha replies, albiet dubiously of both Samael and, a half second later, herself. She's pretty sure Katherine doesn't count, being a woman and also having been OKed by Gabriel. "I'm still not comfortable with being part of your 'we' though. Just because Horus called me his devil doesn't mean I'm actually a devil."
"Everyone's a little bit devilish," Samael insists, letting go of Tasha's shoulders. "At least, the people worth knowing are." He heads for the entrance, noting, "Your two friends will want to know what happened in here. Are they alright knowing the truth?"
"Why would they want to know about a torture carpet? You made it sound unimportant," the half-Vartan woman asks as she follows along. "As for knowing, well, Shojo doesn't really show his feelings. Not because he can't, but because he also doesn't like to. Hake-bear's a little fragile right now, but she's not exactly tough, either. I once found her asleep on the floor under a pizza box because she drank too much, got up, and then passed out."
"So, they're fine with knowing you thought jumping up and down could destroy the planet then," Samael notes with a nod. "Sounds like you are not the only with strange habits at least."
"I only asked about that af-- You know what? Never mind." Tasha huffs, but keeps following. Her feathers, however, end up more poofed than they otherwise might be; Samael is very aggravating sometimes. "Uh, the crew is all very different, with different experiences, but they all are either outsiders or unusual people looking for a home, even if they don't know it. Even Lacci, who looks nice and normal and Galactic, she decided to stay on despite what we are. I have a nose for it, I guess. People who are missing something, who want more, or who are left out."
"Does that include meeeee?" Samael asks as he turns and walks backwards over the bridge so he can face Tasha.
"Uuugh," goes Tasha, somewhere between a sigh and a groan of put upon disgust. She folds her arms, standing center of the bridge. "You've been annoying me all day. Even your friend the pyramid-eyeball was easier to deal with. Looking like me doesn't help either; sometimes I hate me." She sucks in a deep breath, muzzle raising such that she looks down it at Samael, even if he is taller. "At least you fit the 'different', 'weird' and 'unusual outsider' part. Definitely not the 'looks normal' one. Whhhy, are you looking for a home?"
"I'm just looking for fun," Samael claims. "And a little bit of chaos. You seem fun and chaotic for now. Just think of the wonderful messes we could make."
"I make my own wonderful messes just fine. Ask anyone on the crew," Tasha notes, head shaking. "If you want to sign up, I'll need three things from you: You'll have to swear to never harm the crew maliciously -- or out of boredom, because it's funny, and so on like that --, I'll need to know how my ship works, and I need some way to prevent or make peace with Thotep so he doesn't get his horns in a twist and decide to obliterate me. Only then would I accept." She lifts a hand, gesturing they continue walking. "Think about it."