The black and gold Vartan isn't much bigger than Tasha.. just the size of an average Vartan really, and Tasha has seen plenty bigger. Perhaps this what ancient Vartans looked like, before developing into civilian and military offshoots.
"I reserve the right to be annoying," Horus claims. "It is one of the few benefits of being old or young."
"Then I reserve it, too." Tasha turns around to full face Horus, cocking her head this way and that to get a good look at him, really look. Of course it's all a simulation created by the vast and complex systems of the Melchior translating whatever output the hyper-universal being is providing and writing it to Tasha's own visual center or even directly to memory, but she decides that doesn't matter. Once she's got her look, she notes, "There's something I've been wanting to do since I met you." And so she balls up her fist.
"Is this coming from your Vartan half or the wolf?" Horus asks, not trying to put up any defense.
"Beats me. Who knows how I work, except maybe Nora?" And so the young woman steps one hoof back and swings hard in to Horus's chest. Yet, not as hard as she could have, and not where she knows it would have done the most damage, at least not to a male Vartan.
Horus is staggered, and makes an appropriate 'ooof' sound.
Tasha leaves her hand where it lands, biting her lip and looking down. The punch and the stagger required she step forward, turning her body and so angling her head off. She sucks in a breath through her nose, then exhales. With delinerate and mindful effort she straightens, then steps forward to follow her arm, sliding it and the other one around Horu's chest and leaning in to hug him. She closes her eyes.
"There's this, too," Tasha murmurs, wondering if she's actually shaking or simply things she must be, from the sheer weight of nerves.
"So, not understanding this is why we failed?" Horus asks, and gives Tasha a pat on the shoulder.
"Who'se we?" Tasha asks, at first confused and thinking on their immediate mission of dealing with the Ogdoad's servants. It takes her a moment to realize it's something older than that. She thinks it must be the most recent Vril-ya uplifting force, but then decides it must go deeper even than that. The Vril-ya had been at uplift before, after all, she saw the bodies herself. Yet, given Horus's words, they never understood this part of organic beings, the chaos within them. An universe without total order, at least not in the way the Vril-ya know -- or Vril itself.
"I guess so?" Tasha gives a little wag when patted, wondering if that endears her or strikes Horus as at odds with what he tried to make. "Thotep said the Vril-ya are orderly beings, that maybe Vril itself is just all order, all the, um, time. Assuming you have time. But, he also said you're the least orderly Vril-ya who has ever been. Even Atum thought so. He said you'd never happened before."
Horus nods to this. "Order.. required a sacrifice I could not make," he says. "So by not making it.. I have become disordered."
"I fell apart," the old god concludes. "And buried some of the pieces."
"How bad is that for you? I mean, can a Vril-ya keep going if disorderly? I mean, uhm, medically. I know you are what you know, so what does that mean when you know disorder?" Tasha asks. She decides not to let go. She never had a father, making Horus the closest thing in existence who knows about her existence.
"By breaking up my being, I prevented a cascade condition," Horus explains. "It also rendered me incapable of accomplishing the task which was causing the schism."
"So if we recover those pieces you'll, what, try to finish what you started? Or die?" Easrs go down. She doesn't really want to show too much weakness around Horus, but it's much harder now that she's lowered her guard.
"I will let you deal with the pieces," Horus offers.
Tasha considers this for a moment, then nods slowly, rubbing her muzzle against Horus's chest. "I am good at picking up the pieces. It's what I was made for, I guess." She gives a little shrug. "That and making them, but that part's my choice. Well. I will, then."
With that matter settled, Tasha thinks on the last bit she had to say, and ultimately half of why she came. "We'll be going to Varta soon, Horus. Soon in my understanding of time, within a few months, including the world itself and the place where the Marker was stored. The colonies, to find a man. This is a problem for both of us, because I have trouble hiding myself and bringing you along means walking a war machine in to restricted space. You're our uplifter, do you have any ideas?"
"What is it you seek on Varta?" Horus asks. "My old temple?"
"Mostly that, to see if you left anything behind, anything useful. And personally, I wnat to see the homeworld for myself," Tasha replies.
"You don't need me for any of that, and Varta is not the Vartan homeworld," Horus claims.
Tasha blinks at this, leaning her head back to peer up at Horus's own face. "What? It's not?"
"The birth-world of Vartans was no longer suitable, although it should have recovered by now," Horus says. "I relocated the pre-sapient Vartan ancestors to a new world. That became Varta, with none of the history of their original creators to contaminate them."
Tasha squints, a step up from blinking bemusedly. "So there were other creators and the old homeworld was bad enough to evacuate? Contaminating? Oh, I want to hear this story." She leans back further, ears rottaing to lock the man-god in.
"The world where my Marker was found is the original world of the Vartans, a world once owned by the Kwackoo of the previous Galactic civilization. The biosphere was in a state of flux, and the Vartan were the most promising of the creatures left there. I removed them before they could mutate into something unusable."
"You meas those Kwackoo? Humanoid, a little like Humans in shape, but with beaks? Kind of grinning like they knew the secrets to the universe and weren't going to tell you, you silly mortal? About this tall?" Tasha holds out a hand, having to remove it from Horus's chest, indicatingly. "Those Kwackoo? I think I met one of their dead on Encante, in some old ruins under the sea. Yue was transporting them for study by the Terragens."
"That may be them," Horus nods. "Beaked bipeds were not uncommon. Some used beaks for hands, even. They were responsible for the creation of the Vartan forebears."
"Well, how about that. Yue better buy me a drink. Several." Tasha snorts in a breath, then finally lets Horus go, stepping back. "Yue thinks they might originally be from the inner worlds, but she doesn't know for sure. I just know she's interested in them, and now, so am I. But! But. That's not what we are here for." The young woman clears her throat, straightens, and places her hands behind her back cadet-style. "T'Throgga-hem and Urgo-hem are no more. Tatha-hem, the core of the Dark Horse, is a complete dagger, ready for use against any of the Ogdru-hem. I believe the Null is now also aware of us."
"That leaves a little over three-hundred to deal with then," Horus says. "The dagger. But not the sword. You don't have to sacrifice souls to Tatha-hem I take it?"
"Er, I don't think so. I mean I wouldn't put it past Thotep, I'm really not comfortable with something like him being ultimately in control of the ship and therefore us, but it's the best thing we have right now. Unless I join the Titanians or try to marshal the Galactics, nothing else available to us even comes close. Maybe we could use Sifran technology, but they want us dead just as badly." Tasha shakes her head. "Tatha-hem just want to fly. To move. She's so sad in her prison it's heartbreaking, but at least with us she can do something. Beyond that I have no idea how the Horse works."
"A spirit of movement, perhaps," Horus reasons. "Not like the larger, more physical ones. How were those two large-scale Ogdru-hem defeated by what I assume is a small weapon?"
"I thought maybe she was a spirit of annhilation, but movement sounds more correct. She didn't sound hungry to destroy, but to move." Tasha unfolds her hands and taps the fingers of one hand against the palm of the other. "T'throgga-hem was destroyed by Has-- erm." She looks pain, wincing. "I mean, you-know-who after I made the bargain to fix our worldlines. Urgo-hem we killed by ... ramming, it. Fast. Samael suspects we broke causality, exceed C somehow. Maybe the chain reaction forced the universe to fix the crack, erasing Urgo-hem in the same way it pretended to ignore when He-Wh-Moves left our reality and took its doors with it."
"What's this about a deal and worldlines?" Horus asks. "You have clearly not been updating me often enough."
Tasha snorts indignantly. "You were being difficult and I was being a man. I had problems, okay?" She heaves a sigh, then waggles her taloned hand at her body, as if that explained much. "T'throgga-hem took a shot at us, used its worldline-alterting power to change our souls so our allies wuldn't recognize us. That probably includes you, by the way, maybe even Mel too, which would include you anyway because I wouldn't be able to reach you. Samael was the only one who noticed, and I didn't realize what was wrong until after I was back to normal. Gods I --" She blinks, then lays her ears back, sheepish. "Sorry. Uhm, well it really makes me angry, right?"
"There isn't much in the outside universe that can affect me," Horus notes. "What about this deal with someone I'm supposed to know?"
"I can't speak His name or else I'll subject you to his 'meme-virus' or whatever it is. His form of worship is madness, and knowing his name or symbol causes madness. I made a deal with him in his realm of Carcosa to fix what T'Throgga-hem changed, he wanted some say in my future as a return. Something about how I speak to many voices, and he wanted his influence on me, too. He gave me a Marker like yours, only dark as in D-Space dark, and told me to show it to Thotep, which was some sort of power game between them. I think Thotep had planned to influence me himself, but the other one beat him to it." Tasha shrugs with her hands. "Politics."
"Hastur?" Horus asks. "Corcosa was banished to the void. How did you find it?"
"I used my amazing ability to stumble across the lost and mysterious." Tasha's look is flat. She then rolls her eyes. "I think maybe I'm some sort of magnet for lost and confusing things in the universe. Like, I'm the crack in the deck boards where everything falls in to." She shrugs again, this time with her shoulders. "Samael said the only way he knew to fix us was to dive in to T'Throgga's-hem's body and find the right worldline ... path ... thing. Instead we found Carcosa and Has-- ... Hastur."
"Is he still in his yellow phase?" Horus asks.
Tasha rolls her eyes again. "He really does seem to love yellow. Yellow this, yellow that. Oh and black and whitem but I feel like that's just extra somehow. I mean, sure, yellow is a great color -- I'm yellow, you're yellow -- and maybe not as good as red, but it's good, it's just I've never met anyone who defined their existence by one band of visible light."
"A single pure color can hold a universe," Horus claims cryptically. "And hypercolors can cause many physical effects in biological beings."
"Oh, wow, hypercolors? I need to paint with those -- did I tell you I paint? I do." Teahs leans in, ears all focus. "And a whole universe ins a color. So, have you visited a color-universe? And what's a hypercolor?"
"A hypercolor is a true, pure color," Horus explains. "One that exists without light, because it is only color."
"Can you show them to me?" The young woman asks, tail wagging slowly. "I think maybe I've seen them, or something like them. When I spoke to He-Who-Moves. There were colors there that don't exist in my world. But, maybe these are different?"
"You cannot see them," Horus says. "You're eyes are designed to see light."
"You're not talking to my eyes though, you're tlaking to my brain. Maybe my soul. I hold in me a piece of the Source, through which I can speak to Tatha-hem, the Niss, and He-Who-Moves. If my eyes aren't enough, if my brain isn't enough, you could use that," the young woman offers.
"A piece of darkness to see with?" Horus asks, one eyebrow raised. "I still can't show you, because I can't produce the colors. I'm not sure what produces them, but what they reveal is.. sometimes disturbing."
Tasha leans back, throwing her arms wide. "Oh. No," she deadpans, fingers wiggling at the featureless sky. "I might. See. Something. Diiis-turb-ing." And then her hands fall and she sticks her tongue out for a second. "My whole life right now is one disturbing thing after another. I am literally talking to my legendary, long lost creator whom I met outside of time while talking to a big guy made out of living fire and a super-advanced space whale. Two weeks ago I was a man, a week before that I has having heated words with a Ogdru-hem, then I had snacks with some Titanians who fly around in a big skull. Oh. No."
"Those aren't disturbing," Horus claims. "They're large. It is the small things that are most disturbing."
"Like Hakeber and Yue? No, you mean smaller, like fundamentals. I still really don't have any idea what someone is talking about when they use the word 'quantum', you know. I just nod." Tasha cocks her head to the side. "Or is this some kind of smaller-than-you-get-in-a-universe small, like pan-universal fundamental, like the Null? Who, by the way, I also don't understand and am kind of afraid of."
"Small like.. bugs," Horus says, reaching for the word. "Insects."
"Bugs," Tasha repeats, nonplussed.
"They're only visible with the proper hypercolor," Horus says. "But that color illuminates normal matter to them as well. They'd see you for what you are, just as you'd see them."
"As a tough, confident, extremeley attractive one-of-a-kind being with a amazing ship?" Tasha inquires, trying very hard not to grin. "Or, at least, not as lunch?"
"Do you want to be a ship, Tasha?" Horus asks, out of the blue.
"Being a Titan has been good for me, so I don't think I'd mind being a ship. It'd take getting used to, but at least I wouldn't almost die all the time. And, and, I'd live longer, and not get older -- I mean my boobs are down to here," the young woman indicates, " ... older, not 'ugh the universe is so sad and I know too much' older, which I'm doing anyway. I did soent a few days being connected to a starship, using remotes to incarnate myself, letting my senses drift through the sensors internally and out. She showed me whatit was like to be her, be the ship. Mel showed me, too, once. It's the cloest thing I've come to knowing what it's like to be godlike." She then gives a little shrug. "Could be worse, is what I'm saying. I always wonder if I'll end up something else, anyway."
"I wasn't making an offer, but what if you found out you already were a ship.. just as you are?" Horus asks.
"I'd feel self-concious, surrounded by way better ships," Tasha replies, though not seriously. She then considers a moment before giving a more serious answer. "Well, I guess it'd be disturbing, but the Doctors Remiel and Eli explained to me I'm already sort of a ship, we all are, made up of little cells and other life forms that are necessary for us to live, or at least not usually trying to kill us. Um, unless you mean you think I'm Tatha-hem. Hake-bear sort of suggested that, once."
"Perhaps I need a better metaphor," Horus says, and seems lost in thought. "You were a sailor, correct? On your ship, there were the crew and others that were meant to be there.. like the cells and flora living within a body.. and also there were vermin. Stowaways. Creatures that did realize they were on a ship that moved with purpose, but merely got on, and got off somewhere else."
"You're saying the color bugs are these ... vermin? And they don't really see me as a being, just more like a ship that goes places and then they get off? Like a breeze, I guess?" Tasha cocks her head again, tapping her lips with a finger. "Ehh, I guess it's okay. I mean, I already do that with other little things, and I tend to do that with larger beings without really intending them harm or even being aware of them. Mmmmmm, yeah, it's okay."
"So understanding that, you don't still want to see them, do you?" Horus asks.
"What, and miss my chance to be an enigmatic god?" Tasha replies, eyes widening. "Where are you going, Tasha? Why do you do that? "I cannot explain it in a way you'll understand. Build me some temples. Gods love statues and stonework."" She squints again, muzzle twitching upward. "I'm an explorer, I like exploring."
"If you are set on this, then give me your hand.. it doesn't matter which," Horus says.
Tasha makes a show of holding out her taloned, Vartan-style hand. "If it makes you feel better, I'm still wonderign why Vril would come and be fascinated by us, even if we're small and disturbing. I guess maybe the answer is the same, aye?" She extends the hand.
"Now, I'm going to try and show you what I see when I look at you.. and everything other natural thing in this universe," Horus says. "It took some time before I realized your kind didn't see this." He turns Tahsa's hand palm up, supporting it from underneath, and just.. stares at it.
"God-vision. Well, this is going to be something." Tasha otherwise doesn't move, afraid she might disrupt the ... signal? Encoding? What do Vril-ya use to process visual information? Even visual is metaphorical, she knows Horus is from outside her reality entirely. His rules are different, and now she's about to step from her world in to his, from her rules in to his, at least partially. It's the kind of daunting, heart stopping experience she and Gabriel live for. Also, that often puts her in Med Bay, but at least she can hope for the best.
There's movement in Tasha's palm. A ghostly figure crawls up out of her flesh, looking like a.. spiky, hairy thing with far too many legs. It has a face like a skull. It keeps coming out, like a centipede, and moves towards her wrist. There it slices down with blade-like forelegs, and drags another little monster up, this one like a worm, but covered in more horrific faces. There's a struggle, and the skull-face of the first creature opens up to become a multi-part mouth, and starts eating the still squirming worm-monster. There's more motion.. everywhere. Worms, maggot-like things, what might be moving plants.. they all pop in and out of Tasha's flesh.
"Wow," goes Tasha, in horror and fascinating. It's not like she's unused to horrible, even terrifying beings great and small. She crossed that stretch of sky months ago, and now it's fairly routine. It's just she's never seen them enter-and-exit her like she were a bag. Her first reaction revulsion, which she also has experience with, since it's often some part of what she feels meeting the less asthetically pleasing entities of the multi-verse. She does what she always does, tries to see herself from their perspective and by their natures. Their worlds. It's still really disturbing, but at least she's keeping it together. "So these are color-bugs? Or something else? What do they do?"
"They exist inside all natural materials," Horus says. "Meat, plants, stone. They have their own ecosystem it seems. And they are squirming through your brain right now. I am uncertain what influence, if any, they have on living things. But perhaps you will sometimes catch movement out of the corner of your eyes, or feel the fur on the back of your neck rise up.. or drop dead for no discernible reason. I call them intruders."
"Well they are unexpected, though when I think about it they don't seem that different from bacteria and viruses, at least not from what Remy told me. Can they see me, now?" Tasha leans in closer, peering at a slow moving one with a skull head and a fuzz-like body that moves up her arm. "I guess I'd be like ... Like a Ogdru-hem, to them? Or like Thotep."
"No, you are seeing what I see, they are not," Horus says. He finally lets go of Tasha's hand, and the visions fade.
Tasha flexes her hand, rubbing it with the Karnor one. "Well, that was enlightening, anyway. I never knew. It feels like there's layers and layers to eeverything." She tehn looks up and asks, "Can you teach me how to do that? Show others?"
"No," Horus says. "And you should not mention it to them either."
"Aww," goes Tasha, who gives Horus a pout. "I'm sure Hastur would think it's a great idea if I could drive people crazy with colors and little body-monsters. Oh well." She exhales, standing straighter. "I'll have to settle for the usual way, then."
"Trust me, you only saw your hand," Horus says. "Imagine looking into a mirror, and seeing them in your mouth, behind your eyes.. in the face of your mate, wrapped around his genitals.."
Tasha winces at that. "That would be a bit much, normally I only let Hake-bear do that sort of thing, though she is a tiny little smart monster. I love her, thought." And so the young woman shrugs. "Well, lets see. We made up, I filled you in, learned some new things, saw I'm full of monsters and so is everyone else. That sounds about right for one of my days. Our next stop will be back on Caltrop, since I still am not sure how to hide on Varta, and we're also looking in to leads on Vulcan and Sedu-hem, who is in Daltoona Station. House Khomen owns Daltoona, and they're also the very same House that tried to use the Primus system and the Silent-Ones in a power struggle, so we don't like them. They'e powerful, though. As powerful an enemy as any in the Galactics. It might be nice to have a mortal enemy, at least."
"You are an optimist," Horus notes. "Please keep me better informed. We need to visit the Kwackoo ruins."
"It's hard to be sometimes, but I guess it's better than being sad. Also, I guess sometimes all this madness makes me laugh, and that makes me feel better." Again the young woman shrugs. She inclines her head to Horus, respectfully. "I'll put the ruins in the itinerary as the primary target in that region, then. It should be easier to approach, and Yue's going to be thrilled. Humans get all wrinkily when happy, it's kind of funny. But, I shouldn't tease my creators." She winks. "Anything else?"
"Don't trust Pharol Xexanoth," Horus advises. "No matter how useful it seems."
"He did want to eat my brain. Or, well, have it ride around in ... him. And really I don't, though ... He did sort of save us from losing everything we were." Tasha bares her teeth in an uncertain grimace. "I'll watch him, anyway. Well, I'm off, can't stay in here too long or I run low on brain juice. I'm glad we made up -- we'll talk again. Soon."
The white plane and it's sole inhabitant fade away as Tasha's mind returns to her own body..