15 . JOHNUARY

[necrolord]

Who: John Gaius and company.
What: All around him, John's friends and loved ones begin to shed their skins. Also: Riteoir.
When: January
Where: Gaze and the new city.

Content Warnings: Tagged in headers as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

[necrolord]

[ It's funny: this is the kind of ally he would've killed for, a year ago. Back before he threw start small out the window; back before he got really mad. When the risks seemed less like risks and more like the inevitable.

Now he just sits in the same familiar bar and listens to the same familiar plan for deicide. John drinks his beer. ]

Blood might be the crux of it. Here I thought I was an expert, and that's gone out the window... I've yet to crack the system. [ He hasn't really been trying for a while now. ] Every time we turn over a new stone, we find puzzle pieces.

[ Brings them back to Riteoir, really. The things you can do with local magic; the ways you can turn the system in on itself. ]

[anbaric]

Put enough pieces together, and eventually, an image starts to take shape.

[ it took him most of his first life to defeat one false god, and now he's exploring the idea of talking on several, so he knows this isn't a sprint. asriel maintains a pace that's more like a machine than a person, though, which is easy for the low, low price of working to the exclusion of all else. ]

There are answers in that city; it's just a matter of getting them. The rest is testing, but that will take time. Equipment and samples don't appear overnight.

[ asriel already likes to hear himself talk, but the beer loosens him up to a bit of thinking aloud as well. ]

Does that mean I'm counting you in? You can say no, but you should still teach me some of those tricks of yours. It would be a shame to waste them.

belatedly wraps this

[necrolord]

[ In one sense, John hasn't really had conversations like this— all rigorous ambition and disregard for the limits, a minute from demonstrating theorem mathematics on the back of a napkin— in lifetimes. It's been a hell of a long time since he was in this position: men with nothing to their names but underdog enthusiasm and necessity, untested magic and the fire to use it. He's been feeling the old days more and more, since he washed up on this shore. Remembering the first stumbling steps of a fledgling empire.

In another, this is the same conversation he's had twenty times, except he's usually the guy waving the war banner. His banner-waving has been getting weaker by the day. The empire's wheezing its last, these days, and clawing his way back towards it hasn't won him anything but bruises. He's had a bad go of it, taking potshots at the bastards kicking them down. It isn't a popular opinion, and it's looked a hell of a lot like a hopeless one, too.

But what else can he do, right? Chara has always had the right of it: what the fuck else can people like them do.

John finishes his drink. He sets the glass down with a final, decisive click. He resolves himself, for probably the twentieth time, to ill-fated deicide. ]

Let's get testing.