IM(Mortal, moral)

Regular updates should resume soon, but until then, more Rien!

Immortality. For most of human history, it had been the primary goal that had driven many men and women to their doom. It was right next to endless wealth and everlasting youth on the "Please God Grant ME" list. Though pursuit of it changed as time continued, becoming more about finding ways to preserve the body for longer, or in some cases, to forget bout the body and preserve the mind, immortality always loomed over the heads of people, hovering just out of grasp.

That is until the Goddess showed up. Then it was quite real, or at least apparently real. Suddenly, certain individuals were outliving their offspring, and the offspring of their offspring, and even further progeny. They were always the closest companion of the Goddess, the one that Called to her and was Called to her. Of course, no one ever knew they had outlived their families for certain, simply because becoming immortal meant becoming Shaen's, and that meant the past was erased from those who had raised the new immortal. It was this last part that people never understood, when they hoped for the Goddess to grant them such a gift.

It did not take Rien very long to find out what the mixed blessing aspect of the situation was. Though she had renamed him publicaly, the young man could not refer to himself by the made up contraction. It had little appeal to him. The first time she allowed him leave after making him her own, he had sought his parents. That had been...an ordeal. Even thinking about it now saddened the redhead, so he did it rarely. But now that he had betrayed her, he often forced himself to dwell on those moments, when he felt such powerful anger himself. Rien had to know the emotions she would be harnessing before she harnessed their true powers against him.

Of course, as far as mixed blessings went, there was the entire matter of his attempts to usurp the Council. Apparent attempts. There was something about the Misshapen that Shaen called Chael that bothered the hell out of Rien, and he had had no intention of turning over her power to the ugly thing. But his position on the Council had been tarnished by his attempt, rendered by the manipulative cock as an evil coup. The orchestration wasn't too far off from the truth, in all actuality, but really, Rien did intend to relinquish power to the Goddess eventually.

Maybe. He'd thought about it, anyway. Still, as he once more wandered the snow laced streets, a pariah during the season in which it was the most painful to be alone, the immortal knew that he would make a better God. A more benevolent one, in any case. If he only had more powers than just not ever dying, that was. Maybe.