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.
12.28.2007
12.25.2007
Happy Holidays
Rien's winter season may have been disrupted, but he still wishes for a wonderful winter for you and yours.
12.24.2007
The Night Before Reckoning: Part 2 of 2
It was the warmth that had driven him from the thoughts of religion and reality, the lack of chill alarming him to the presence of the other long before she would've made a sound. Eyes focusing finally on the stylish black leather boots within his perception, Rien found himself making a series of certainly false predictions as his gaze traveled up the female form before him. The premonitions, for once, turned out to be the sort of true that even his eyes did not deny.
Shaen was standing before him, dressed exactly as she did for her press conferences, truly a sight for an awkward late-teen. Despite the snow falling around them, she wore the corset ensemble without a coat. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that the snow that was falling around them was only doing that...it did not actually get to land on her pristine shoulders, nearly as pale as the snow falling around them. She wore the sort of smile that chilled his bones despite the heat that she was exuding. It called Rien, even before she spoke, and he did not resist the urges that filled his body.
As the distance between them closed, questions seemed to exit from his mind. The rational being that normally inhabited the ungainly nineteen year olds body vanished without a trace, replaced by the sensation of pure pleasure. Yet it was not even that her presence caused these questions to just leave...she answered them so wholly to his mind that before he understood the response, he had already dismissed them, knowing that she could never lie to him. Finally, there was no distance between them, and her fingers slid against his naked chin.
Time stretched and compressed around them in a way similar to the snow. She had him willingly as far as the Council would be concerned, anyway. He had started walking towards her. All she had done was appear. Rien understood that her intentions for him even then, with her ruby nails sliding against the delicate skin on his throat. It was unnerving. She still hadn't said a damn word, but he knew almost as much about her as she knew about him. The only difference was he simply didn't have the storage capacity to accept the transfer of information she had offered him, and had to take only the most crucial elements to avoid causing a dump of crucial memory functions.
Of course, he had also allowed her to bypass some of the safeguards that would have protected an accidental dump...even as she downloaded his files, she uploaded replacements to some of those locations, giving them the same name to replace them. Strictly speaking, he didn't forget anything. But the files that he possessed now were full of corrupted data that would perpetuate whenever he called upon the old data, affirming itself without appearing corrupted to his person.
By Reckoning morning, he was sitting in the Lair, knowing it was the Lair, and knowing that she had created him again. Rien Thomas Ofphilly would be introduced to the world only as Ritophe now, his heritage erased and replaced with a creation story that had made him a demi-God.
Shaen was standing before him, dressed exactly as she did for her press conferences, truly a sight for an awkward late-teen. Despite the snow falling around them, she wore the corset ensemble without a coat. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that the snow that was falling around them was only doing that...it did not actually get to land on her pristine shoulders, nearly as pale as the snow falling around them. She wore the sort of smile that chilled his bones despite the heat that she was exuding. It called Rien, even before she spoke, and he did not resist the urges that filled his body.
As the distance between them closed, questions seemed to exit from his mind. The rational being that normally inhabited the ungainly nineteen year olds body vanished without a trace, replaced by the sensation of pure pleasure. Yet it was not even that her presence caused these questions to just leave...she answered them so wholly to his mind that before he understood the response, he had already dismissed them, knowing that she could never lie to him. Finally, there was no distance between them, and her fingers slid against his naked chin.
Time stretched and compressed around them in a way similar to the snow. She had him willingly as far as the Council would be concerned, anyway. He had started walking towards her. All she had done was appear. Rien understood that her intentions for him even then, with her ruby nails sliding against the delicate skin on his throat. It was unnerving. She still hadn't said a damn word, but he knew almost as much about her as she knew about him. The only difference was he simply didn't have the storage capacity to accept the transfer of information she had offered him, and had to take only the most crucial elements to avoid causing a dump of crucial memory functions.
Of course, he had also allowed her to bypass some of the safeguards that would have protected an accidental dump...even as she downloaded his files, she uploaded replacements to some of those locations, giving them the same name to replace them. Strictly speaking, he didn't forget anything. But the files that he possessed now were full of corrupted data that would perpetuate whenever he called upon the old data, affirming itself without appearing corrupted to his person.
By Reckoning morning, he was sitting in the Lair, knowing it was the Lair, and knowing that she had created him again. Rien Thomas Ofphilly would be introduced to the world only as Ritophe now, his heritage erased and replaced with a creation story that had made him a demi-God.
12.23.2007
The Night Before Reckoning : Part 1 of 2
A little background on someone that's only been mentioned in passing thus far...
Rien Thomas Ofphilly possessed the sort of last name that came from the Great Disaster that had shoved all of the people from the Great Cities together. His grandparents had foregone their proper surname in favor of one that told the world proudly where they were from. There were many like this and thus, common last name rarely told of genetic correlation these days. Particularly since those from what once was Philadelphia and was now a rather vacant land void of all but the most stubborn corpses were those who most proudly latched onto where they were from, rather than their own heritage. Besides, after the Great Disaster, that was how you introduced yourself, even if you had a proper last name. "I'm Greg Dean OfSanFrancisco." That sort of thing. Though if Rien recalled correctly, Mr.Dean had moved on from San Francisco long, long before San Francisco stopped existing. It was just the only famous name he ever came up with on first shot, really.
But, regardless of common last name or famous people from the past, Rien was spending Reckoning alone again. Given that all the Ofphillys he knew had their own families, he had been hard pressed to find anyone worth spending the holiday with anyway. The young man sighed, feeling, for all the noise of the City, terribly alone. When the acid rains had left this time, they had already taken the roof he had claimed, and the snow that floated down to turn into slush on the hot asphalt managed to chill the warm-blooded descendant of Pennsylvania winters. Wandering the near-empty streets as time sped onward towards the anniversary of the arrival of the Others.
Once, the day had been celebrated for bringing a savior to a people who had needed one desperately. But though the Christians still insisted on remembering it, with their Christmas trees and cards and the like, most of the progeny of the Great Disaster remembered much more clearly the day that the Goddess...and others like her, revealed their true forms. There had been those that had worshiped her and her lackluster army of familiars since the dawn of time...but now, she walked the Earth like one of them, and yet not.
Shaen intrigued Rien like nothing in the world. He couldn't really make any sense of her and what she meant. The majority disregarded her claims to ownership of the world, most religious-minded individuals thinking that, at most, her existence was only to try their faith. The young man shivering on the snow-covered streets hadn't made up his mind yet. His folks had been convinced that she was not a demon, but a Goddess, and it was the ignorance of the others that had brought so much doom to the people of the City, and had brought the Misshapen into prominence.
But he wasn't certain that either was entirely correct, or even why, necessarily, the two excluded one another absolutely as falsehoods.
Later, he would think back on the naive thoughts that had filled his head with amusement of someone who knew precisely what Shaen was. Of course, the only reason he had any idea of what she was was that the ambiguity of the thoughts floating through his head that night seemed to call the self-proclaimed ruler of the City.
Rien Thomas Ofphilly possessed the sort of last name that came from the Great Disaster that had shoved all of the people from the Great Cities together. His grandparents had foregone their proper surname in favor of one that told the world proudly where they were from. There were many like this and thus, common last name rarely told of genetic correlation these days. Particularly since those from what once was Philadelphia and was now a rather vacant land void of all but the most stubborn corpses were those who most proudly latched onto where they were from, rather than their own heritage. Besides, after the Great Disaster, that was how you introduced yourself, even if you had a proper last name. "I'm Greg Dean OfSanFrancisco." That sort of thing. Though if Rien recalled correctly, Mr.Dean had moved on from San Francisco long, long before San Francisco stopped existing. It was just the only famous name he ever came up with on first shot, really.
But, regardless of common last name or famous people from the past, Rien was spending Reckoning alone again. Given that all the Ofphillys he knew had their own families, he had been hard pressed to find anyone worth spending the holiday with anyway. The young man sighed, feeling, for all the noise of the City, terribly alone. When the acid rains had left this time, they had already taken the roof he had claimed, and the snow that floated down to turn into slush on the hot asphalt managed to chill the warm-blooded descendant of Pennsylvania winters. Wandering the near-empty streets as time sped onward towards the anniversary of the arrival of the Others.
Once, the day had been celebrated for bringing a savior to a people who had needed one desperately. But though the Christians still insisted on remembering it, with their Christmas trees and cards and the like, most of the progeny of the Great Disaster remembered much more clearly the day that the Goddess...and others like her, revealed their true forms. There had been those that had worshiped her and her lackluster army of familiars since the dawn of time...but now, she walked the Earth like one of them, and yet not.
Shaen intrigued Rien like nothing in the world. He couldn't really make any sense of her and what she meant. The majority disregarded her claims to ownership of the world, most religious-minded individuals thinking that, at most, her existence was only to try their faith. The young man shivering on the snow-covered streets hadn't made up his mind yet. His folks had been convinced that she was not a demon, but a Goddess, and it was the ignorance of the others that had brought so much doom to the people of the City, and had brought the Misshapen into prominence.
But he wasn't certain that either was entirely correct, or even why, necessarily, the two excluded one another absolutely as falsehoods.
Later, he would think back on the naive thoughts that had filled his head with amusement of someone who knew precisely what Shaen was. Of course, the only reason he had any idea of what she was was that the ambiguity of the thoughts floating through his head that night seemed to call the self-proclaimed ruler of the City.
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