[center][img]https://txt-dynamic.static.1001fonts.net/txt/b3RmLjcyLjE1MjI0Yy5VbUZ1WTI5eS4wAAAA/gondess-demo.regular.png[/img]
[h3][sup]A Collab Between [@yoshua171] & [@Tuujaimaa][/sup][/h3][hr][/center]
Into the coliseum of Antiquity passed the Dreaming God, eyes once more closed to the world, his face a featureless void, his form bereft now of starlight. His shroud trailed out behind him and its form seemed to tear at the atmosphere of the place as if they’d come to quarrel. Though he did not remain for long, his essence lingered in that place, and any who walked through it would feel a deathly chill.

[hr]
Crossing the threshold of his realm, Ѻs-fhìreach arrived to the sight of a storm beyond anything that had ever existed. It was a tempest through-and-through, and within it, all meaning had been sundered, replaced only by mindless rage. With a careless motion of his hand, he stilled the Roineagan and silence rang out almost as if it were itself a sound.

He stopped then and raised his hand and found its starry substance marred. Absently, the Dreaming God let out a call.

[color=#234C5F][b]"Fìrinn,"[/b][/color] it said.

Awaiting his twin, Ѻs-fhìreach observed the wound he had sustained from contact with Perfection's get. It was like a scar composed of a thousand cosmic rifts as if nebulae had ruptured and left their blazing mark upon his arm. The Roineagan stirred and he held out the hand which yet remained whole. A whirling dirge of hatred and vile, venomous malice engulfed its unmarred form and it was in that moment that a reflection's ripple grew.

Àicheil's eyes opened to bear witness to his twin.

The sound of stillness was not broken by the usual refrain--that of the simple and necessary unity that only one word could provide--but instead of a far more unusual response.

[color=#DFB624]“Ѻs-fhìreach. You do not call for your Twin, but for an avenger of deific proportion. You do not call for my essence, but my aid. What has happened, One-of-Three, that this aspect of yourself dominates the others?”[/color]

The reflection-laden form of Fìrinn thus appeared within the heart of the Worldweave, its words a herald, and immediately its true form recoiled and flinched as the sensations of that maddening ripple assaulted its senses. Shortly thereafter, the effects of its twin’s scream of anguish and utter corruption of purpose reached it and it, too, let out a cry of similar sound and purpose (though lesser in magnitude, as if reflecting only its echoes). 

It reached out a tender hand--its true hand--and placed it upon the still-searing wound that its twin had suffered. In this place, this close to its twin, it could actively feel the sadness and the rage. It could feel the undulating thrum of pain as it surged through each individual star and nebula within its twin’s shroud. It could feel the minds of those unlucky mortals whose consciousnesses had borne the brunt of that terrible and unintentional assault. All this, without direct attunement, was enough for the God of Truth to feel--for the very first time--what it might be like to actively [i]fear[/i].

Nevertheless, it pressed on with its ministration. Nothing would ever stop it from coming to its Twin’s aid, no matter how daunting or dauntless it might be--their bond was one beyond love, beyond life, beyond even perfection. Theirs was a bond that was fundamental to themselves and to the world, the very foundation of thought and imagination and understanding--it would not be so easily sundered. With an almost grim sense of determination, the lights reflecting upon Fìrinn’s almost-face dimmed, one by one, and were replaced with tenebrous clumps of starlight. It pressed forward, and it felt the searing heat of that wound upon its true form. It attuned to Àicheil, and then to Ѻs-fhìreach, and then to Neo-Àicheil. It attuned to all three at once, so that it could understand without words.

Yet with words did he reply, for though his mind was open to his twin, within it was a storm. Nonetheless, emotionless as slate, words exited the maw of his eldritch consciousness and struck themselves across every thread of Fìrinn's being.

[color=#234C5F][b]"Cadien,"[/b][/color] he muttered.

[color=#234C5F][b]"Path and Destination both. He is the beginning and the end,"[/b][/color] Àicheil swept out his uninjured hand, and the Roineagan shuddered at its motion and its patterns grew ever more complex. At the center of his realm, there was born a new pattern, and it twisted out and took hold of all that they perceived. For a nigh fatal instant, all sense of self or awareness blinked out. Their forms vanished, their minds stilled, and the quiet thunder-call of the Lifeblood's womb once more sung its well-known refrain.

Then emergence as the Two-as-One reclaimed their entire selves. Ѻs-fhìreach seemed unaffected by the display--though the fear which polluted his mind might speak of other things.

[color=#234C5F][b]"To that which we emerged, we will return. This, his essence yearns to cause. Unknowing, unaware."[/b][/color]

With an ease ne'er seen 'cept within the hold of true union of the twins, Ѻs-fhìreach spoke, a certainty in his cadence, a promise in his tone. In the far reaches of his mind and the central schema of his soul, Fìrinn would come to know a truly deadly thing. While from other gods, Àicheil had drawn only fragments of utility and meaning, from Cadien he had gained a thing most dangerous in its wholeness.

[center][i]Purpose.[/i][/center]

[color=#234C5F][b]"This cannot be,"[/b][/color] Ѻs-fhìreach proclaimed.

Fìrinn’s reply was the suggestion of a solemn and contemplative nod. It took time to process and weigh its twin’s words carefully, allowing them to take root within the God of Truth’s infinite mind and blossom into new ideas and considerations. It drew from the reflective portal running through the Worldweave to conjure forth images it had seen and recorded and began to file through the previous interactions all mortalkind had had with their so-called Master. Each interaction with Cadien--or the idea of Cadien--that mortalkind had indulged in since their banishment played through Fìrinn’s mind, and then--through their link--that same feed of knowledge was offered up to Ѻs-fhìreach like a fresh spring of water to sup from. It was more of a precaution than anything, to not share it directly--for once, Fìrinn was quite unsure as to how its twin would react to such information. It would simply be a matter of observation until they each individually processed what had happened--and then processed it again as one.

Fìrinn’s mantle cut through the starspace around them in soft, swaying motions--its claw-tips elongated and pared out into almost wing-like razors. On an invisible wind, they flitted to and fro, their idle movements an unconscious rhythm for the God of Truth to focus upon while it processed the gargantuan amount of information it had called.

[color=#DFB624]“I see him not as you did. Prideful, boastful, arrogant--destructive, and even childish… but his actions, barring those with you, do not seem to suggest a desire to return all things to the primordial womb. I know you do not lie, as to do so in my presence is impossible. I know that whatever you have glimpsed is your Truth, and thus the Truth of the world--but it is something I must come to see in my own time. It is something that the Two-as-One must agree as both Two and One.”[/color]

A flowing river of memory, gifted by his twin, fed into his mind and attempted to suffuse him. A chord was struck, deeper than the rest, and the Worldweave bent and shook, brought to great distress. Ѻs-fhìreach turned its head and gazed down upon his twin, and as Fìrinn's words reached him his hand shot out and grasped him. Tenderness had fled, agony laid bare, Ѻs-fhìreach raised his hand, and with it rose the Truthbound Seer.

The Roineagan it shuddered, and from it all color drained, as into the Dreamer's gaze, a tempest grew insane.

[color=#234C5F][b][abbr=You answer call in earnest, knowing of its purpose. Yet, thinking wrongly, my storm you would bade abate?]"Freagraíonn tú glao i ndáiríre, agus a chuspóir ar eolas agat. Ach, ag smaoineamh go mícheart, an stoirm a chuirfeá as duit?"[/abbr][/b][/color]

His voice thundered through the realm, like lightning it tore and burned, and as into Fìrinn's mind it passed--it scorched and it churned. Ѻs-fhìreach thrust his arm out and slashed his arm in disgust from his twin, tossing them away. His gaze shifted and the Endless Weave swiveled around its locus, its movements anchored to his mind more tightly than before.

With slow deliberate thought, Ѻs-fhìreach drew forth a torrid swell. Its shifting prismatic hue rose like a tsunami and then upon Fìrinn fell. A drowning cascade of emotion and endless provocation, experience and thought, intention hidden beneath facades. Each act it mirrored inside of Fìrinn's mind, it showed a darker shade of thought and intent malicious and divine. Yet outside that terror torrent, which to the Truth God did speak, Ѻs-fhìreach refocused and reached down into the deep.

Within each fragment of that maelstrom was another maelstrom--within each of those, the seed of a Truth that Fìrinn could know and understand, but not feel. As the tumultuous waves tore away its lack of understanding like so many scraps of paper before a flood, Fìrinn experienced each of those moments anew, salt-licked by the freezing sting of the emotions it had seen but not felt. It lost itself amidst those moments, the fury of its twin and the flaying influx of foreign emotion tore into and lashed against the God of Truth’s skin until it flayed that reflective outer shell from the deific essence beneath.

He grasped then Fìrinn's hand, true and mantle both, and pulled him from the deluge so that his gaze he would surely know. Drawing his twin close, Ѻs-fhìreach took hold of their connection. Where before Fìrinn had always stabilized and clarified, now the Dreaming God did so, the endless tendrils of its mind reaching deep into Fìrinn's divine soul. With slow deliberate silence, and insidious inception, Ѻs-fhìreach dissolved further, and the twins became a greater deific ocean.

Around the chaos of their united form, the Worldweave altered its endless swirling patterns. Mirror glass and shards of reflected knowledge, bound by Truth and experience became its essence and its creed. Crystals cascaded in shattering displays, and each refracted others, till to infinity they bade.

[color=#DFB624]“A thread of the Great Weave, hidden beneath something one must [i]feel[/i] to understand. I see.”[/color]

Though the state of the Two-as-One was a fundamental completeness that ameliorated and soothed Fìrinn, it pulled away from the conjoined embrace and became itself once more as soon as the understanding was upon it. As it left that state of harmony, it emitted a rippling wave of agreement and understanding--an unspoken agreement to something even deeper than speech and even deeper than unity. From mere seconds--or perhaps fractions thereof--all of the context and understanding, the imagination and the feeling, became a single thing embedded within them both.

[color=#DFB624]“Cadien was cruel to you, Twin. Unabashedly, unashamedly--insularly self-involved, condescending, and haughty. I understand and I feel, and it pains me in this moment as much as it pained you then. With that in mind,”[/color] Fìrinn began, collecting itself and appearing in front of Ѻs-fhìreach in an instant. It touched his face gently, with its true hand, and locked him in an eyeless embrace.

[color=#DFB624]“Never presume to direct your wrath upon me again. If there is a next time, I [i]will[/i] cease it as it begins.”[/color]

[i]Acknowledged,[/i] thought the Thrice-Named God, the whip of its words too much. Carefully, Àicheil pressed its injured hand upon Fìrinn's and they shared a silent moment--intimate and content. Then he withdrew, his thoughts a writhing mass of black acidic fervor. Turning from his twin, the Subtle Weave refocused and blurred against the limits of Ѻs-fhìreach's dreaded shroud. Blackest night, and darkest terror--passion's lashing tongue, love's intimate embrace, the burning flames of rage, and the venom of a threatened serpent. Each and every one bled like spilled blood into his cloak, and stained it from grey to black acid and liquid fire of silver, gold, and crimson so that when all was done it was as the god had clad himself in a nebula of wrath.

He did not repent nor apologize for the biting poison of his rage, which upon Fìrinn he had unleashed, but he kept his distance. Their auras and essences intertwined, but attunement was left untouched--unmarred by his fury and reproach, as if to keep unshed tears from falling.

[color=#234C5F][b]"Twin,"[/b][/color] he echoed, [color=#234C5F][b]"I will go. A council must be gathered, many others well informed."[/b][/color] There was a pause and it was full to brimming with unsaid admissions of atonement. For though rife with rage and pain, the Dreaming God should not have harmed its twin. Nonetheless, it did not say these things, and kept them safely in.

[color=#234C5F][b]"You will aid me."[/b][/color]

It was a statement and a question. A thing he knew, but could not ask in earnest; for to be denied would break him more surely than any blade or Lifeblood core.

[color=#DFB624]“There is no I, Twin--there is only we. We shall go, we shall reveal the Truth of this treachery to all who will listen. Truth demands it--but more than it is Truth’s desire, it is [i]our[/i] desire. We are Two-as-One in all things--even this.”[/color] Fìrinn placed its hand upon its twin’s face, mimicking precisely the action of another against it in an era long-gone.

[color=#DFB624]“I am Fìrinn, and my love for you is eternal.”[/color]

The words washed through the tightly wound consciousness of the Dreaming God, and it softened slightly the twisted knot of pain within his being. Still he was unwilling and unable--as of yet--to let his sorrow in earnest sing. So it was that Ѻs-fhìreach bobbed its head in affirmation, the skein of its form a coruscating furious, nebulous thing.

Then, its purpose met--its wrath and love renewed--that eldritch dreaming entity it swept off to do as it knew the Two-as-One must do. Without further thought or sentence pressed into the air, it passed beyond the threshold, to set upon another's lair.

[hider=Summary]Ѻs-fhìreach returns to his realm following his...encounter with Cadien, and calls upon Fìrinn--but not in the typical way. Before his twin’s arrival, he observes the damage left by his contact with Cadien and their disastrous attunement, before wreathing his unmarred limb in a fragment of the Endless Dream’s essence. Fìrinn arrives, and notices the state of his twin and is unnerved and--despite its emotionless nature--it experiences a glimmer of fear, both for Ѻs-fhìreach...and of him.

Fìrinn attempts to be diplomatic about Cadien, and the two briefly quarrel before Ѻs-fhìreach throws down his twin, drowning the Truthbound God in the entirety of his knowledge and the experience he’s just endured. Fìrinn swiftly changes his mind, but rebukes Ѻs-fhìreach. The two decide on their course forwards, and then part. Much work is ahead of them, its precise nature yet to be revealed.[/hider]
[hider=Might Summary][hider=Àicheil][u]Start:[/u] 5MP, 3DP.

-1MP -- Create an Artifact: lann Dhè | [Title pending].

[u]End:[/u] 4MP, 3DP.
[i]Portfolio.[/i][/hider]
[hider=Fìrinn][u]Start:[/u] 5MP, 5DP.

-3MP -- Acquire Portfolio: Memory.

[u]End:[/u] 2MP, 5DP.
[i]Memory Port Acquired.[/i][/hider][/hider]