Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nocturne chuckled and leaned his head slightly to the side so that lengths and lines of indigo hair fell over one eye, it was as if he was literally looking at Tomorrow in a different way. "You know...I've had people worship me for their entire lives, sometimes beyond, and yet most never have as much faith in my influence as you do within minutes of meeting me."

He straightened his head, and brushed a few hairs out of the way letting both eyes shine like neon violet lights. "But your faith is misplaced."

The child leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees as his invisible chair lift him so that he could meet Tomorrow eye to eye. "I'm not making him do anything. I dont make anyone, do anything."

"'Control' and 'Destiny'", and he made the appropriate air quotes. "...are not among my functions. I lay paths, people make choices. But even still, only if they come to me. I cant go to them its all complicated divine magics and side effects of my predicament."

He extended a hand toward Maximos without turning his head and continued. "I didnt make him choose this. I didnt even influence this. As dear and close as it is to my heart, our home is entirely closed off to me. This is his doing. His quest. I'm just as much of a tag along as Raven or anyone else."

Small pale lips spread into a soft smile. "Your a good friend for trying to do this John. But if you want to go, you have to ask him."

His tone actually softened as he spoke, as if he was trying to be comforting and let Tomorrow down softly. But then as he began he picked right up being as chipper as he was before. "Dont worry though! He'll never be the Destroyer again. Its physically, spiritually, even magically impossible. The chances are about the same as you being electrocuted by poking your finger into an outlet. The reason is too."

And with that he flopped back into his chair, and rolled the pearl between his hands. He imagined Tomorrow had more questions, and Nocturne so very much loved questions. It showed in the size of his grin as he said, "What else?"

Nocturne just smiled and made a sort of waving motion in front of himself as if just dusting away the entire thing. The misunderstanding, who blamed who for what, who hated who. Just waved away. One might imagine that for a dark god he strangely seemed to enjoy conversation more than darker things like arguments, hatred, grudges and the like.

And then it was story time. Or in this case, it was Tomorrow's time to tell him a story. With the calm set of his eyes and smile combined with his relaxed posture on his chair, hands folded in his lap, legs crossed, Nocturne almost really looked like a very old father listening to children speak of things they barely had an understanding of. But there was no haughtiness about him, no hint that he might start tossing his age around like a power level. No...Nocturne seemed honestly content to just listen.

And when it was all said, in truth and honesty, the Shadowfather leaned his head back and said. "Ahh, you see that too, huh?"

"Well, the first thing you have to understand is this." He lift up both of his hands and pressed them together. Black dripped from his palms, and then he spread them apart as if parting something unseen in the air. Symbols, shapes and lines like smoke unfurling, or licks of flame captures in place filled a space across and between his hands. They hung on the air solid like black ink. It would have seemed a random fancy image if not for how some of the small curlicues and swirling symbols seemed to repeat themselves...like words, or language.

"This is Lunoc." He said, laying his hands back down and letting the symbol hang in the air. "It is my creation, it is the language of the shadows. It has no verbal translation as shadows are silent. With it, a mortal I have touched may write out and command shadows and darkness. Raven was given a mastery of this with her title."

"It is not to be confused with this." A stubby white finger reached up and poked the symbol, and suddenly it changed. The core curls and twists stood the same, but other symbols were added to it. Circles and sharp lines filled with small text or runes, some almost seemed Norse, others hailed from other cultures. "This is Lunaic. Much the same only this was created by the Paladin here, unconscious and unable to hear me praise his work. It combines several text based magic forms, from draconic all the way to your Aesir cultures. I'm sure you've seen the marking he's covered in, yes?"

"But neither Lunoc or Lunaic should be confused with this." He snapped his fingers and the image changed entirely. Before Tomorrow was the pale white image of a man in a suit of steely white full plate armor, wielding a glowing weapon and sitting atop a horse. It looked very much like the Lightwatcher General from the vision earlier. "These are the Luminai, the chosen not children of my brother, Luminous, the Lightwatcher. His hands amongst the Arian mortals, the only to be given golden hair. And finally they..."

"...should not be confused with this." His small hand ran through the image, the armor was lost, its hair turned green, its muscles shrank. It was a completely ordinary person in ordinary clothes. "These are the people. The closest thing Aria has to human beings, they are Luminous' first creations. They are ordinary and available across almost all of Aria."

"Now!" He clapped his hands together and the entire image vanished leaving nothing in its wake but quickly dissipating black smoke. "What does that have to do with your question? Absolutely nothing. I just didnt want you going to my home, and call one of my brothers holy warrior by the shadow tongue. That could end badly."

He smirked, "In answer to your question however...faith." He nodded, slowly but absolutely. "I trust that he sees the same issue you do, and does not honestly intend for something so drab as my solitary reign, or as fairy tale as my brother and I suddenly 'making up". I have faith in him. And her. Sometimes I think Lilara knew, all along."

Maximos would be going about his duties as usual, until, suddenly, he would get a tingling sensation in the back of his mind. He'd begin to feel a familiar presence seeming to stay in his conscious mind, but also seeming to hold back, not unlike someone dialing a phone and hearing the ringing on the other end, or someone knocking at your door.

"Exactly that." He nodded and grinned, and let John continue. Afterwards, Nocturne just shook his head and laughed. “Oh John, did you just tell a being quite literally runs on faith, that you cannot run on just faith?”

A chuckle. “Your doing it again. You give me too much credit.”

“I never said there was no plan. I said I don’t have a plan. As I said earlier, I am a passenger in this ride, not a pilot. I have faith in him, his plan. I’m sure he has one. As sure as I am that he hasn’t shared it with me.”

"Dont worry, I'm sure he'll explain it all rather easily when, if, you get there." Then as if he honed in on something, Nocturne shook his head almost nostalgically. “Ahh…the hero talk. He hates that. In the very last moment of his quest, he faltered and one of his other party members had to finish the job for him. I spun a web of sorts which depicted him as slaying the Destroyer as opposed to being the Destroyer. I dont expect him to suddenly pick up that lie and wear it proudly. After all he's...”

The boy put his fist to his mouth and gave out a small cough and then spoke in a voice John was sure to recognize, speaking a certain catch phrase. "...just a humble shadow."

He laughed, proud of himself, then leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap again. "Now John, I know Aria seems like a pressing concern with all that you've just experience but, you have to have at least one question about something else. Dont you?"

--- Several Weeks Later?|

It was funny how very exactly this was like a phone call. Ryugi would move to tap into the connection and would find exactly the group of sounds surrounding Maximos at that moment, blaring through the necklace as if it was a telephone receiver. There was banging, voices that sounded like chants, and the crackle of some sort or sorts of magical energies ebbing and echoing all over. "Renil, listen to me! I need you to adjust the metaphysical filter to polydimensional travel! If sound comes through jarbled, how do you them we are going to go through?! Its the circle with four lines and a sideways cur --hold on, somethings vibrating. I think I'm getting a call."

For some reason, it came across as if Maximos was speaking with some sort of foreign accent when he had never been known to have one before. Then there was a pause, a ruffling of cloth, and a clicking sound not unlike a cell phone being slid open. "Hello? Maximos speaking. Hello? Lucind is that you, hello...I'm holding it upside down again arent I?"

The truth of the matter was that this was exactly like receiving a phone call. Maximos had no psychic abilities to speak of so, it would be a minute or two before he finally said. "Oh."

Rasping, as Maximos hand clasped his own matching necklace. "Dragonface...who was dragon face. Oh! Ryugi! Ryugi is that you?"

((I have just about no idea what happened in HoH and how long it took, so I'm going with Tomm's guess here and we'll likely be continuing this at the shop, so just quote this so its not confusing and pop your reply there k?))

John sat still for a moment, looking down at Maxmos wearily, wishing he was in his place. To sleep....it felt like such a good idea right now. He'd fought with his brother, had lunch with his brother, traversed his brother's mind, memory and past, and now he was talking to the God of Darkness....at least, the Arian God of Darkness.

"...I..." He started tiredly, rubbing the bridge of his nose before rubbing his eyes. "...I don't know. There are a million questions running through my head...ranging from the obvious to the downright idiotic..."

He looked up to the boy. "Like....what do you think of Gaia? What do you think of Hono'o? What do you want in life? Have you ever met another god on Gaia before? If you run on faith, how can you live when nobody worships you?"

He looked down at his hand, lying limp in his hand. "Do you....do you think I could ever take down Maximos? Does Hono'o ever talk about me? Whats your favourite food? If you could change one thing on Gaia, what would it be?"

His brain was beginning to hurt, and he raised his hand to touch his fingers to his temple, rubbing it around and around in circles. He didn't recognise when a droplet of blood fell from his nose to splat wetly against his dirty, torn jeans, mixing in with the dried blood of himself and a million dead souls. "Where do your people go when they die? What did Maximos do with my arm? When will i lose this damn guilt? Do you ever like to act like a real boy? When...when do you think I should give my soul to Hono'o? Do...do you think she'll..."

He had to stop, shaking his head slowly, his permafrost eyes glazing over for a moment as if catatonic. His brain, torn and useless, mending itself in less then a minute, the torn fragments scabbing and scarring over almost faster then the eye could see - before he blinked, as if suddenly awakening, lowering his hand from his temple to his nose, smearing the blood off his face. "Ah s**t..." He whispered. "Not again..."

"Oh, n-nothing....i think I just had a stroke..." John murmured, splattering the boys chest and knife with his own blood as he spoke. "Damn, sorry, I got your...knife dirty."

He giggled a little crazily, his head lolling loosely in the boys grasp, his eyes unfocused as blood ran freely from both his nostrils. If Nocturne could look into his head, he'd see the massive trauma his brain had taken, almost completely fused together into a wad of scar tissue due to having tried to use his mind-wipe power with only one arm, running scared and wounded from what he'd thought was a Maximos on the warpath.

"I can hack it...i'm...the god of thunder..." He slurred, his eyes half lidded, not even seeming to sense the pain - before suddenly becoming lucid, grasping Nocturnes tiny arm in his mighty grip. "Meryl...get me some...uuuuuuh....water....and a battery....biggest you can find....there's a good girl..." He said, his eyes focusing on the boy before him for a moment before he patted his arm, smiling bravely. "Its okay, just...do as daddy says...."

"Good girl..." John repeated, his mind blurring the memories floating within...it was over forty years ago, he was in a small village standing beside a dead woman clutching a little girl's hand....he watched the little girl walk away and felt tears roll down his face, his hands on his head, unable to think of a way out -

Then suddenly, everything became white, pain surging through his shattered brain until there was only white noise, that blissful place where nerves reach their limit and you have surpassed pain.

He had no idea where he was. His mind was blank. Then a little boy's voice spoke, and his eyes focused on Nocturne's gaze.



"A-aye..." John muttered, wondering exactly what he meant, fighting through the fog to retain focus.

Things were beginning to dim, his world shaking as Nocturne delivered his next lines.



There may have been no malice in Nocturne's voice, but there definately was in John's. His face, originally twisted into a grimace of pain now merged into a sneer of rage. "Fffffffuuuuck you!" Was all he could get out, slurring the insult, but insult delivered none the less. Nobody would ever accuse him of ruining Raven's life, and he would give his life freely before considering such a thing. Wasn't the fact he wanted to give her his very soul not enough for the god?

But the sheer willpower needed to form the tiny sentance caused John's senses to snap, and finally he drifted into brutal unconciousness.

His brain was unique. There used to be a time when he could rework it, shape it to suit his needs - he could erase and replace memories with the proper conditioning and time - and his life could begin anew.

Most people with long lives just forget things after a time...but Tomorrow doesn't. It piles on, everything on top of everything, and eventually, he has to clean house. Scrub out the stuff that pains him, leave behind the sutff that is useful. This is typically done by a carefully placed electro-shock to his brain, powerful enough to rewire his networks. Eventually, new networks are created over old ones, new memories rewriting the old...

But this was the first time he'd ******** it up. Truely ******** it up.

And now it was biting him in the a**...

...And then life slowly melted back to view, and John's head didn't hurt anymore. His body didn't hurt anymore. The exhaustion from going Berserk with his brother had left his body, leaving him feeling disturbingly empty inside...like he had used up something and was running on empty.

He blinked hard, several times, and lifted his hand to rub his eyes, which were hurting from the light - and realised that he was holding the pearl. He looked at it, letting his eyes focus on it, and realised he was holding his own soul in the palm of his hand. The thought frightened him a little, but then he realised that he had been carrying the thing for months, so it was no worse for wear...he would just have to be more careful with it.



He lowered the pearl to see Maximos sitting at the edge of the bed. John's eyes were wide for a moment, Nocturne's words still ringing in his ears. "...He'll see you soon. Nocturne...Nocturne will see you soon..." John said slowly, his voice croaking like he had just awoken from a day long sleep. He shook his head and rubbed his face, trying to mull the words over in his mind. "What the hell does that mean?"