Writely Post.
It had been a long time since Strahan had stood at the replica Seker's Gate in his room, and even longer since he'd used his magics to create shapes in the fire that spat forth from it. In the gate is the image of a man. Someone he'd met only recently: Ruin. And he smiles. An enchanting creature, he thinks as Ruin appears to grin at the one who'd made his replica out of purple fire. I cannot see why the Seker should not like him; he holds much promise. Among many things Ruin also gave him the opportunity to reflect back upon his memories. Memories of the years he'd spent in Homana and Solinde. In Valgaard and even the Crystal Isle. Memories of all he'd done and achieved. Oh, there were moments when his mind reflected upon its failures, but instead of dwelling upon them he reminds himself that unlike others he never gave up. He simply trudged forward with a new plan in his head and the wherewithal to carry them out. And as was his habit, he had plans. Plans that were nothing more than a zygote of thought in his brain, but plans nevertheless. And he'd need help in bringing them to the fore. But first, there was something even more pressing upon his mind. He turns to look at Sakti, sitting on her perch, watching her master with an intense gaze. Almost as though her eyes can see past his own and into his brain. "Yes pet, I have every intention of getting them back," he says, as though she were lir and had silently inquired about what was on his mind. "From the maw of Storr I fashioned them. One I gave to Varien. And to Niall Lillith gave another. But all in their turn came to life and did my bidding, and the Cheysuli were left to recover from another blow to their people." He grins at the hawk, who clearly seems to understand. "I want them back. My wolves. Their task is not finished and I want them back." He turns to face his gate. "The question is how to get them back. Will he agree to give my lovely wolves new life or will he refuse?"
He stares into the fire which had changed from an echo of Gorlim into four snarling, ravening wolves, and he smiles.
"I will have them back..."
Asar-Suti had not seen Strahan for a few days, and he felt the urge to see his follower when he went to the library. The confrontation with Ruin had left him uneasy; nothing and nobody was safe any more. Two gods and a mighty warrior of the First Age had barely suffice to keep two babies safe.
He knocked on Strahan's door.
Of course, Strahan knows nothing about the fight that had taken place earlier. He's been ensconced in his room for the past two days, since the weather was too poor to fly in. Not that he minds, it gives him the time he needs to simply indulge in his habits. Like standing in front of his gate, thinking. Planning. Creating schemes with which to thwart the Cheysuli or at the very least stall their own plans. And he's so embroiled in his thoughts that at first he doesn't hear the sound of knocking on his door. At first. When they become insistant, he turns at last to face the door.
"Who is it?" he says, slightly irritated that his thinking time had been so rudely interrupted. "And what is it that you wish of me?"
It had better be worth my time.
"Sorry, Strahan; I can come back another time," Asar-Suti called through the door. "I just wanted to make sure you're all right."
Getting at Strahan would be one of the most obvious kinds of revenge Ruin could take on him, after all.
Correction. Ruin getting at Strahan would not be so much revenge as a kind of strange and unpleasant friendship for the both of them. Strahan likes Ruin, even though he's only met him the one time. Likes him enough to seriously consider some kind of allegiance with the card.
"My lord?" he says, recognising that voice immediately, though the lifestone should've been his first indicator that the god of the netherworld was at his door.
"You are ever welcome to visit me, you know that. And the door is open, if you wish to come in."
Back to his role of dutiful servant again...
Asar-Suti opened the door and stepped inside; there was that ersatz Gate again, he noticed with a little pang of jealousy. But then, he rarely was purple fire these days, and hardly wanted to live in Strahan's grate, as opposed to being out and about in the bar, and spending his nights in a bed, beside a faun, sleeping like a mortal.
"Is everything in good order with you, my dear Strahan?" he asked aloud.
"As good as they can be," he says, wondering if he ought to be a graceous host and offer the Seker a chair. "The weather is-or was-good and Sakti is enjoying the opportunity to stretch her wings and fly again." He smiles. "And I join her, much to her delight. At first as an owl, then as a hawk in my own right."
Despite intital problems encountered with shapechanging he's never really regretted the learning of the art.
"I have met a man who looks like Gorlim, and he has told me that he was in my world when my wolves ran free, to sicken the populace and decimate a race only beginning to recover. In fact I'd say he's been there whenever there's been strife in my world."
He thinks a little, remembering how he'd collected Storr's teeth and fashioned charms from them, as well as creating the doom of the Cheysuli, sending them out into the world in the shapes of white wolves. It makes him smile. It gives him the incentive he needs to ask his god for the return of his pets.
"An engaging person he is."
"He said he was there when Valgaard fell on me; I disliked that idea," Asar-Suti said. "By the way, do you still want your wolves back?"
Asked very casually.
Maybe it's his imagination, but Strahan suspects he hears a note of unhappiness in the Seker's tone of voice. Well, he would take it personally wouldn't he? And he grins inwardly. At least when he died, the world did not literally crash in around him.
"You do not sound pleased to have heard that," he says smugly. "But yes, I do wish to have them back. I have been reminded that I had asked for them in the past, and now, I think, is a time to ask again."
"You have taken control of your hawk very well," Asar-Suti said. "I think you'll be able to control wolves now. Can you call then up in that fire?"
No reason to be overly dramatic about this one. Strahan was due a bit of a reward, to remind him of who the rewards came from.
He turns to look at Sakti, who has shifted upon her perch, staring at the man and his god before her. Her expression was one of casual interest, as though she were weighing something up. "A pity she cannot speak," he says reflexively. "It would be good to hear her opinion on matters."
His attention is once again returned to the fire, where the pack of four wolves prowl about in the violet glow.
"They are there. They only need to have life breathed back into them and they can be summoned forth."
Asar-Suti stepped forwards and reached into the fire, suffusig it with his own substance for a moment. By the scruff of its neck, he pulled out the first wolf who then stood, life-sized and disoriented, in the middle of the room and looked at Strahan for help.
"Does he seem all right to you?" Asar-Suti asked. "Shall I bring the others?"
Strahan places an assessive hand over the wolf. It looks as though it should be white, but a portion of the fire it came from seems to cling to its pelt. Like Sakti it was slightly purple in colour. The stamp of the god who gave it new life.
It whined, recognising its master at once, wagging its tail ever so slightly, head bowed in submission.
"You," he told the wolf, once he is satisfied with it, "Shall like your kin have a name. You were nameless before, but a new life and existance is worthy of giving you a name. From now on, you are 'Fulaingt'."
And he grins, as Fulaingt sniffs at Strahan, memorising his smell for future knowledge.
Asar-Suti pulled the next wolf from the fire - she struggled a bit, was very disoriented, and tried to bite the purple deity.
"She's a snarky one," he grinned at Strahan.
"Peevish," he remarks, satisfied with this one too. Even more satisfied when she tries to take a chunk out of his hand, which earned her a growl from Fulaingt. "You have spirit," he told her, grinning. "And like Fulaingt you will be given a name of your own."
He thinks for a moment, searching for the right name for the she-wolf. Like Shona, he believed that one did not give any name to something, it had to be the name it was meant to have. And once his mind is made up, he places his hand upon the wolf-bitch's head.
"You will be 'Imreas'," he tells her, and her ears flatten as her head bows.
He grins. "I am impressed as always," he tells the Seker. "You have never let me down before, and that is why I have ever been your servant."
"And you have ever been faithful, and deserve your reward," Asar-Suti said. The tone of threat and bargain, though, was new between god and follower. It was a relationship, he mused, that did not fit this place; they were lacking common goals. Their story was over, and they had to find something to fill their lives adequately.
Asar-Suti had Gil, his friends, his garden and his library - would Strahan be content with a hawk and four wolves on the long run, or even animal transformations?
He pulled the other two wolves from the fireplace, a male that looked around haughtily, and a female that belligerently snarled at the others.
The honest answer is likely to be "no". Strahan has never been content with what he has, he is driven to acquire more and more, whatever that "more" might be. Usually it was more power, but there were other things too. And he was the sort to not be dissuaded whenever he was thwarted in his quest for "more".
For now he would be content with his wolves and his hawk, as well as the ability to assume animal form at will, but sooner or later the need for his "more" will overtake him and he will desire something new, something even better than he had before.
At the female he looked, and placed his hand upon her head. "You. You will be 'Éadóchas'," he told her as she submitted to her new master. And to the final wolf, another male, he walked over to. "And you, oh arrogant one, you will be 'Scrios'."
And he smiles as the wolves simultaneously seat their rumps onto the ground, looking expectantly at Strahan, intelligence shining in their eyes.
"Will I be able to converse with them?" he asks casually. "As warriors do with their lir? As Sakti would if she were able to?"
A thinly-veiled request? Maybe.
So, for one more gift. Asar-Suti reached for his Blood that still shared Strahan's veins, as it had done ever since he'd first drunk it, turning his own red blood black. He twisted and tweaked a tiny parameter in his own gift to his follower.
"You will be able to talk to no other animal than your five while you're in human-shape, though," he said, sternly. "For other animals, you have to assume their shape. And don't complain if what they say sometimes sounds insane. Guppy's black tomcat can be very odd and silly, for example. He has no deep wisdom to dispense - nor will your wolves have that. They are not lir and aren't meant to be."
Strahan nods. No, the wolves and the hawk were not lir nor could they ever be, for all that the wolves held their origins in the mouth of Finn's lir, the silver wolf called "Storr".
"I am thankful to hear that," he says, walking from wolf to wolf, repeating their names as he passes them, and stops finally at Sakti, whose intelligent look seems to have intensified slightly. "And grateful. I cannot thank you enough. I will be able to hear them even as an animal myself?" he asks, then looks back to the wolves, smiles and grins. They are no longer disease-carriers as they once were, but it doesn't matter. Their temperaments are unpleasant enough to make up for what they now lack.
"Magnificent all of them."
And like the wolves he bows his head in submission to his god.
There is a hierarchy to be acknowledged after all.
"Take a wolf-like shape, and you will speak to them in their own tongue; take hawk-shape to speak to Sakti," Asar-Suti said. "But did you not discover that before? Well, perhaps the blatant lack of other giraffes in Milliways obscured that possibility."
"No I had not," he says tensely, frowning inwardly at such snark from his god. Perhaps a reminder of something, but he could not think of what. "But then, you have told me and I will remember."
He recovers enough though. It's unlikely he'll be able to assume every animal form known to exist, but he has enough shapes to his repertoire to be able to converse with enough animals to satisfy him until the need for his "more" overcomes him.
"Again I thank you. For the gifts you have bestowed upon this humble vessel of your power."
He waits to see if there is anything else his god wishes to say - snidely or otherwise.
Asar-Suti nodded; that formality was bad. "Ultimately, I want to see you happy, my dear, faithful Strahan," he said. "Enjoy the company of these magnificent creatures."
He smiled, and slipped out of the room to continue his way to the library. This had taken, what, all of ten minutes of unlimited bar time?
He stares into the fire which had changed from an echo of Gorlim into four snarling, ravening wolves, and he smiles.
"I will have them back..."
Asar-Suti had not seen Strahan for a few days, and he felt the urge to see his follower when he went to the library. The confrontation with Ruin had left him uneasy; nothing and nobody was safe any more. Two gods and a mighty warrior of the First Age had barely suffice to keep two babies safe.
He knocked on Strahan's door.
Of course, Strahan knows nothing about the fight that had taken place earlier. He's been ensconced in his room for the past two days, since the weather was too poor to fly in. Not that he minds, it gives him the time he needs to simply indulge in his habits. Like standing in front of his gate, thinking. Planning. Creating schemes with which to thwart the Cheysuli or at the very least stall their own plans. And he's so embroiled in his thoughts that at first he doesn't hear the sound of knocking on his door. At first. When they become insistant, he turns at last to face the door.
"Who is it?" he says, slightly irritated that his thinking time had been so rudely interrupted. "And what is it that you wish of me?"
It had better be worth my time.
"Sorry, Strahan; I can come back another time," Asar-Suti called through the door. "I just wanted to make sure you're all right."
Getting at Strahan would be one of the most obvious kinds of revenge Ruin could take on him, after all.
Correction. Ruin getting at Strahan would not be so much revenge as a kind of strange and unpleasant friendship for the both of them. Strahan likes Ruin, even though he's only met him the one time. Likes him enough to seriously consider some kind of allegiance with the card.
"My lord?" he says, recognising that voice immediately, though the lifestone should've been his first indicator that the god of the netherworld was at his door.
"You are ever welcome to visit me, you know that. And the door is open, if you wish to come in."
Back to his role of dutiful servant again...
Asar-Suti opened the door and stepped inside; there was that ersatz Gate again, he noticed with a little pang of jealousy. But then, he rarely was purple fire these days, and hardly wanted to live in Strahan's grate, as opposed to being out and about in the bar, and spending his nights in a bed, beside a faun, sleeping like a mortal.
"Is everything in good order with you, my dear Strahan?" he asked aloud.
"As good as they can be," he says, wondering if he ought to be a graceous host and offer the Seker a chair. "The weather is-or was-good and Sakti is enjoying the opportunity to stretch her wings and fly again." He smiles. "And I join her, much to her delight. At first as an owl, then as a hawk in my own right."
Despite intital problems encountered with shapechanging he's never really regretted the learning of the art.
"I have met a man who looks like Gorlim, and he has told me that he was in my world when my wolves ran free, to sicken the populace and decimate a race only beginning to recover. In fact I'd say he's been there whenever there's been strife in my world."
He thinks a little, remembering how he'd collected Storr's teeth and fashioned charms from them, as well as creating the doom of the Cheysuli, sending them out into the world in the shapes of white wolves. It makes him smile. It gives him the incentive he needs to ask his god for the return of his pets.
"An engaging person he is."
"He said he was there when Valgaard fell on me; I disliked that idea," Asar-Suti said. "By the way, do you still want your wolves back?"
Asked very casually.
Maybe it's his imagination, but Strahan suspects he hears a note of unhappiness in the Seker's tone of voice. Well, he would take it personally wouldn't he? And he grins inwardly. At least when he died, the world did not literally crash in around him.
"You do not sound pleased to have heard that," he says smugly. "But yes, I do wish to have them back. I have been reminded that I had asked for them in the past, and now, I think, is a time to ask again."
"You have taken control of your hawk very well," Asar-Suti said. "I think you'll be able to control wolves now. Can you call then up in that fire?"
No reason to be overly dramatic about this one. Strahan was due a bit of a reward, to remind him of who the rewards came from.
He turns to look at Sakti, who has shifted upon her perch, staring at the man and his god before her. Her expression was one of casual interest, as though she were weighing something up. "A pity she cannot speak," he says reflexively. "It would be good to hear her opinion on matters."
His attention is once again returned to the fire, where the pack of four wolves prowl about in the violet glow.
"They are there. They only need to have life breathed back into them and they can be summoned forth."
Asar-Suti stepped forwards and reached into the fire, suffusig it with his own substance for a moment. By the scruff of its neck, he pulled out the first wolf who then stood, life-sized and disoriented, in the middle of the room and looked at Strahan for help.
"Does he seem all right to you?" Asar-Suti asked. "Shall I bring the others?"
Strahan places an assessive hand over the wolf. It looks as though it should be white, but a portion of the fire it came from seems to cling to its pelt. Like Sakti it was slightly purple in colour. The stamp of the god who gave it new life.
It whined, recognising its master at once, wagging its tail ever so slightly, head bowed in submission.
"You," he told the wolf, once he is satisfied with it, "Shall like your kin have a name. You were nameless before, but a new life and existance is worthy of giving you a name. From now on, you are 'Fulaingt'."
And he grins, as Fulaingt sniffs at Strahan, memorising his smell for future knowledge.
Asar-Suti pulled the next wolf from the fire - she struggled a bit, was very disoriented, and tried to bite the purple deity.
"She's a snarky one," he grinned at Strahan.
"Peevish," he remarks, satisfied with this one too. Even more satisfied when she tries to take a chunk out of his hand, which earned her a growl from Fulaingt. "You have spirit," he told her, grinning. "And like Fulaingt you will be given a name of your own."
He thinks for a moment, searching for the right name for the she-wolf. Like Shona, he believed that one did not give any name to something, it had to be the name it was meant to have. And once his mind is made up, he places his hand upon the wolf-bitch's head.
"You will be 'Imreas'," he tells her, and her ears flatten as her head bows.
He grins. "I am impressed as always," he tells the Seker. "You have never let me down before, and that is why I have ever been your servant."
"And you have ever been faithful, and deserve your reward," Asar-Suti said. The tone of threat and bargain, though, was new between god and follower. It was a relationship, he mused, that did not fit this place; they were lacking common goals. Their story was over, and they had to find something to fill their lives adequately.
Asar-Suti had Gil, his friends, his garden and his library - would Strahan be content with a hawk and four wolves on the long run, or even animal transformations?
He pulled the other two wolves from the fireplace, a male that looked around haughtily, and a female that belligerently snarled at the others.
The honest answer is likely to be "no". Strahan has never been content with what he has, he is driven to acquire more and more, whatever that "more" might be. Usually it was more power, but there were other things too. And he was the sort to not be dissuaded whenever he was thwarted in his quest for "more".
For now he would be content with his wolves and his hawk, as well as the ability to assume animal form at will, but sooner or later the need for his "more" will overtake him and he will desire something new, something even better than he had before.
At the female he looked, and placed his hand upon her head. "You. You will be 'Éadóchas'," he told her as she submitted to her new master. And to the final wolf, another male, he walked over to. "And you, oh arrogant one, you will be 'Scrios'."
And he smiles as the wolves simultaneously seat their rumps onto the ground, looking expectantly at Strahan, intelligence shining in their eyes.
"Will I be able to converse with them?" he asks casually. "As warriors do with their lir? As Sakti would if she were able to?"
A thinly-veiled request? Maybe.
So, for one more gift. Asar-Suti reached for his Blood that still shared Strahan's veins, as it had done ever since he'd first drunk it, turning his own red blood black. He twisted and tweaked a tiny parameter in his own gift to his follower.
"You will be able to talk to no other animal than your five while you're in human-shape, though," he said, sternly. "For other animals, you have to assume their shape. And don't complain if what they say sometimes sounds insane. Guppy's black tomcat can be very odd and silly, for example. He has no deep wisdom to dispense - nor will your wolves have that. They are not lir and aren't meant to be."
Strahan nods. No, the wolves and the hawk were not lir nor could they ever be, for all that the wolves held their origins in the mouth of Finn's lir, the silver wolf called "Storr".
"I am thankful to hear that," he says, walking from wolf to wolf, repeating their names as he passes them, and stops finally at Sakti, whose intelligent look seems to have intensified slightly. "And grateful. I cannot thank you enough. I will be able to hear them even as an animal myself?" he asks, then looks back to the wolves, smiles and grins. They are no longer disease-carriers as they once were, but it doesn't matter. Their temperaments are unpleasant enough to make up for what they now lack.
"Magnificent all of them."
And like the wolves he bows his head in submission to his god.
There is a hierarchy to be acknowledged after all.
"Take a wolf-like shape, and you will speak to them in their own tongue; take hawk-shape to speak to Sakti," Asar-Suti said. "But did you not discover that before? Well, perhaps the blatant lack of other giraffes in Milliways obscured that possibility."
"No I had not," he says tensely, frowning inwardly at such snark from his god. Perhaps a reminder of something, but he could not think of what. "But then, you have told me and I will remember."
He recovers enough though. It's unlikely he'll be able to assume every animal form known to exist, but he has enough shapes to his repertoire to be able to converse with enough animals to satisfy him until the need for his "more" overcomes him.
"Again I thank you. For the gifts you have bestowed upon this humble vessel of your power."
He waits to see if there is anything else his god wishes to say - snidely or otherwise.
Asar-Suti nodded; that formality was bad. "Ultimately, I want to see you happy, my dear, faithful Strahan," he said. "Enjoy the company of these magnificent creatures."
He smiled, and slipped out of the room to continue his way to the library. This had taken, what, all of ten minutes of unlimited bar time?