Chapter Text
You do not come into existence as much as you wake up.
White fog blankets all you see– all except a singular, ancient chair and the writhing ball of maggots sitting atop it.
It hurts to look at. It is also, beyond all reason, safe .
It is disconcerting. The knowledge floods your head, and you understand that you did not exist until now and you look at your creator.
He smiles at you. Or at least you think he does. It is a nice smile.
His voice is soft. You cannot recall much of what he had said; perhaps he had sealed your memories? But he guides you all the same, so you cannot fault him.
You do remember one thing, though.
“Your name is Merlin Hermes,” He says, his voice as soft as a whisper, the fog gathering about the edges of his robes. “And you will be my proxy to ensure this world continues on the right track.”
You agree. You don’t see why you shouldn’t.
He presses his lips to your forehead, and then you wake up all alone, with only a mirror for company.
The mirror speaks. It is also incredibly rude. It also says a lot of strange words, such as >^< or =^o^=.
It is your Lord’s companion; and now it shall serve you and answer your questions.
You shrug and go outside to see the world, like the voice in the wind requests that you do.
You do not have a reason to turn your Lord down, so you follow his instructions.
You are certain you do it very well, but he tells you off within the hour of your birth that you are, surprisingly, not supposed to turn people into marionettes.
“Is it not convenient?” You ask the wind. The wind does not reply, but there is a faint sense of… some emotion you do not know the name of.
That was fine. You had only been created in the shape of your Lord but a few hours ago; you would have time to learn. You would have a lot of time to learn, if the direction the world was currently heading in was anything to go by.
You peer into the mirror. It rants and raves but you ignore the many words it spouts at you to check your own reflection.
To be quite honest, you had been lying a bit when you had said you were made in the image of your Lord. You were made in the image of your Lord in the sense that you were a human male, as far as you could tell. You pick at a strand of your hair, trying to discern your appearance behind the mirror’s many words.
It should act more like a mirror, you think. Why does it ignore its intended purpose?
Your face is…
You do not know the words.
With a single thought, your face shifts into an ordinary, bland one from the collection of faces you had seen in the village so far. You consider for a second and then shake a cloak into existence, your Lord’s symbol lining its inner hem.
You think you should get this much. There is faint protest from your Lord, but it is, as far as you can tell, not dangerous, and your Lord does not state so as well either.
You ask the wind if you should revert it, and the wind says nothing.
Had you interpreted wrongly, then? You keep the symbol all the same.
You wander in the form of a human boy. Human, to make them less wary, less closed off, and the form of a boy, to make them feel safer, to make them be more responsive to your questions.
You’re not quite sure what you’re supposed to do, but there is a path in front of you so you walk and there is the wind following you so you listen.
Perhaps you had lied a bit there as well. Your Lord was not the wind. He was the fog in the Castle as much as he was the Castle but he was looking at you all the same.
You are fairly certain he could speak to you directly. You wonder why he does not.
The further you walk, the fainter he becomes. You know this is not because of the distance. He is in the Castle, and the Castle is everywhere.
Perhaps he is truly going to sleep, and you shall be left alone.
You make a :( motion with your face. Your Lord notices, and the sense of fog enveloping you thickens. You let your intuition guide you and look up at the sky, far above, all the way past seven lights and you reach to touch the Castle and it–
There is the sense of a finger gently pressing against your forehead, pushing you back, and you stand in the middle of the green plains once again and wonder when you had accidentally walked into the spirit world.
The wind laughs. It is a nice laugh, but it is also a drowsy laugh.
The fog retracts gently, vanishing back into nothingness. You reach out, and it does not allow you to follow.
:<
The mirror in your hand vibrates, and you consider leaving it but it is also giving off lightning and you know from somewhere that it will be caught and kept as a Sealed Artifact and then your Lord would be extra unhappy so you keep it.
You flip it over, and the only way you can describe the mirror is that it is crying.
It is also begging for your Lord’s attention. You consider doing the same.
Your Lord’s gaze vanishes without a world, and you are alone once again, with only a mirror for company.
You continue wandering. There is no reason not to.
Somewhere, between flitting from each village and the next and avoiding the ones that made your intuition go “!!!!!!!! (negative)”, you meet a boy. He is a boy in the sense that you are a boy but perhaps much older than that.
You blink at Him. He laughs at you and asks you whether you gave yourself your name, or if your Lord had named you.
“My Lord gave me my name, of course.” You say, smiling at Him. He is most curious. He makes your intuition go “!!!!!!! (neutral)” and “ getawaygetawaygetaway ” and you are fairly certain that you should run except that He has not shown to be hostile and your Lord has not attempted to smite Him yet. The fog wraps around you, protectively, and you look at the boy and–
Oh.
Oh, that made a lot more sense.
You wonder how long ago your Lord foresaw this.
“What should I call you?” You ask, blandly. He simply caws His laughter and flies away, without flying away because perhaps this incarnation of Him wasn’t a bird but He vanishes all the same.
“That was interesting.” You say to the air, and your Lord disagrees and it is now that you feel just how much danger you had been in.
You wonder what changed His mind. Or what made Him stay His hand.
Your Lord sends down the faint sense of “family”.
Ah. That would make more sense, you supposed.
You continue walking through the village, gently taking the strings of the ones who had been wearing a monocle on their right eye and were now standing stiffly, and cut them neatly. Your Lord does not approve in the way that means his heart hurts, but he does not disapprove either.
You make them walk all the way over to the cemetery and wish for them to have graves.
When all is settled, you leave the village– but not before visiting the well.
You peer into the water in the well, and push some of your hair behind your ear.
The face that looks back at you is perfectly ordinary, but it is only now after the visit from the boy that you notice it is too ordinary.
Hm.
You think you might’ve missed the pores humans have on their faces.
You sit by the well and consider, the only traces of your Lord the incredibly faint link he has established with you.
Oh.
Of course! You could simply bother the mirror instead of asking your Lord.
You reach into your cloak and look at the mirror.
“DID YOU FORGET ALL ABOUT ME?? >:(“ The mirror says.
“Yes.” You reply, simply. “What was the name of that boy?”
The mirror writes the letters A-M on its surface, and then it suddenly pauses.
You look up to the sky. You feel the sky looking back down at you.
You frown a bit. What would come from you simply knowing the boy’s name?
But if it is what your Lord asks, then you have no reason to refuse.
Perhaps you looked suspicious standing at the well all by your lonesome, because an old villager walks up to you and demands to know who you were.
You consider for a moment. Your Lord had told you to start acting at… some point.
“My name is Merlin Hermes!” You declare with a sweep of your cloak. You put enthusiasm and childishness into your voice. You feel none of these things. “And I grant Miracles.”
You make a :D face.
The villager is taken aback for a moment, before sighing.
“Look, kid, it’s not safe, alright? Get back to your family or something. Damnit, I wished these woods didn’t have those horrid mosquitos…”
You perk up.
“Is that your wish?” You ask, lacing them with the emotion called curiosity.
The villager glances at you before shrugging.
“Sure, kid. Now let’s go, I’ll bring you back to town.”
You snap your fingers. You feel the powers of the wish creeping underneath your skin, and with a sweep all of the mosquitos within the woods are expelled. The man simply glances at you and shakes his head.
You follow him, but not without tossing a coin into the well. It is gold, and the faint scent of your Lord still lingers on it.
“I wish for this village to prosper.” You mutter under your unnecessary breath.
By the way your spirituality does not decrease, it does not come true.
What a shame. Your Lord should be displeased by how weak you are. You wonder why his affection bleeds over all the same.
You continue wandering as the man gawks at all of the small insects suddenly plaguing the village and maybe the significant amount of people that were missing.
Distantly, your Lord stirs, his consciousness turning to you.
You leap through the flames within a second, and perhaps someone sees because soon after you hear the story of a boy with the laugh of tinkling bells.
You are fairly certain that is you! It does not portray you positively! That is not good! Your Lord does not think that is good either!
You do your best to act as a Miracle Invoker. What wishes you cannot grant, you borrow your Father’s items. What you do not know, you ask the mirror and gently rap against its back when it asks its questions that your Lord deemed inappropriate.
You change your appearance to match as well. People were more comfortable with children; however, they did not trust them either. Certain sacrifices have to be made.
It is while you are acting that you meet that boy again. He is not in the form of a boy this time. You think that this is most likely His original appearance.
“You don’t get it either, do you?” He asks the moment He appears within your vicinity, and despite the fact that you have not held a conversation with Him before it is simple enough to understand what He means.
“I do not.” You say, because your Lord said that lying was bad. Or at least heavily implied it. Or at least heavily implied the withholding of information without reason and deliberate twisting of facts to make something else appear worse without good cause was.
You sit and watch as a group of children run by, their laughter bright against the gloomy town. You turn to frown at Him when He reaches up to nudge against His monocle, because your Lord said possessing people without reason was bad and there was no reason for Him to try and do that, especially not in front of you.
“Why is it that your God did not teach you?” He asks, and he stimulates curiosity much better than you do despite the fact that your pathway is the one with control over how one appears.
You laugh. You do so because it is a nice sound. You also do so because your Lord likes it. You do so because you are unsure what to answer and your Lord had said or thought or had given you a memory at some point that laughing was a way to not answer the question for a while longer and put people at ease.
“My Lord would give me neigh anything in this world,” you tell him. You speak the truth. Your Lord is not fully conscious. He cannot be– and yet his will follows you all the same. Watches over you all the same. Loves you all the same, which is strange, because you are not your own person but rather an extension of him.
“He would give me all the options that are available.” You tell Him. “And yet He will never decide anything for me.”
It had been disconcerting to realize. He had never taken action against you. He had never forced you to interact with people you did not want to even if your intuition had not been telling you not to and he had not ordered you to do anything, he had never even phrased an order, had never tried to suppress you, he had only ever made requests as though you had the “freedom of choice ”.
He is strange, like that. You would not trade him for the world. In fact, the world could die for all you cared.
And herein lies the problem; you do not care, not about anything, so if your Lord made you you think you would sacrifice your Lord, just because he told you to do so.
Your Lord must surely be one of a kind.
You feel the way He tries to parasitize you, and surely He is aware of the way you are picking at His spirit threads.
Your Lord stirs. Just enough for Him to notice. Just enough for you to be protected.
He flies away, and you turn and leave the other way as the town collapses around the both of you.
You think your Lord is disappointed in you. You are unsure what to do. There is faint indignation from him that you spoke with the Angel. He was also the one that told you leaving right when someone spoke with you was rude.
He quickly corrects this statement and says this applies only to people whom would not immediately kill you. You express that the Angel was not going to kill you, because you did not feel danger, and your Lord sends down a “long-suffering sigh” and goes :( and that is not nice, so you endeavor to not make him be like that again.
You build your reputation. You make sure it is as positive as it can get, and your Lord approves the strengthening of your anchors. You wonder why your Lord gently encourages you to make new anchors when he is the best anchor you can get, when he is and has been your anchor since you were born. You could also make yourself your anchor if you decided to make the marionettes for it, but to be fair you did not know where to place them and as far as you could tell your Lord had angered two Seer Angels and they were rather insistent on hunting you if not your Lord down.
Your Lord sends a faint sense of “carefulcareful” which you endeavor to follow, but does not otherwise respond to the anchor comment.
You wonder why, when he could make himself eternal and unchanging because by worshipping you you would be worshipping a part of him, and he himself does not have enough anchors but still–
Your thought is cut off by the gentle thickening of the white fog. You frown at the sky, but all it sends is feelings of “love”.
You get back to work.
The Angel visits more often, and you teasingly give Him the nickname “Monny”, because He does not tell you His name even though He knows yours, which is rather unfair. He asks you why you did not simply divine His name. You do not tell Him you do not know why either but you get the feeling He knows as well.
How strange. That you feel as though you understand Him the best out of anyone else you have ever come across, even including your Lord, despite the fact that you had only spoken to Him three times. Your intuition tells you He feels the same.
Good! Wonderful! You are on the road of dooming yourself, except you had never had a future in the first place so it doesn’t matter, does it?
Your Lord disapproves, gently. You go :(. He retracts his disapproval but his concern for you remains all the same.
You wonder why he is concerned for you when he could just make a new you if you really died and failed to revive. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t. You were just an extension of him, a tool or a marionette or something along those lines, depending on who was defining you.
He remains quiet.
You cannot tell if he was pulling the “escape from conversation” card, or if his slumber was affecting him again.
You are Merlin Hermes. You are a born Mythical Creature. You are an extension of the Fool, and that is really all that matters.
Your Lord is the Fool, and rather unfortunately, he has quite a few enemies.
It is an ordinary day. It is by all means an ordinary day if you exclude the Lord of Storms acting out again.
And then your Lord stirs and you feel dangerdangerdanger and–
That is an Angel. That is a Seer Angel, to be specific. That is a Seer Angel that looks quite mad and your intuition tells you He had been Sequence 1 or at least close to it except your Lord is the Fool so there are no Sequence 1 Characteristics anywhere beyond him.
This was unfortunate!
The gray fog envelops you, and you run, your Lord urging you into the spirit world where his power is the strongest.
The Seer Angel clearly anticipates this, and pulls someone from the Historical Void who you cannot recognize but is clearly also an angel which is very :d.
You are Merlin Hermes. You have never really gotten into any battles at your level before. You knew how to run and how to hide and how to overpower but not how to fight because your Lord had not really given you the corresponding memories for it.
You could rely on instinct, but you are fairly certain that is what the, hm, Zaratul, wanted as well.
You duck under a blinding attack and leave a gap where something shoots at you, and your Lord gives you his blessing and you can feel a point in history light up.
You reach into the historical void, and pull out something called a “gun”.
Zaratul stiffens even though He does not recognize the thing, and He does not turn to flee but you can feel Him become more wary.
You split yourself apart and reform yourself and you shoot at the Angel.
It is surprisingly effective.
He is caught off guard by the speed of which the bullet travels; you are caught off guard by the recoil.
It is rather lucky you had good balance, else you might have tripped.
You continue running and shooting behind you whenever possible and Zaratul is rather annoyed as far as you can tell and your Lord is suppressing as much of Zaratul as he can but even you can tell this fight is going nowhere.
Hm.
Would it be funny?
Zaratul does not seem like He will stop giving chase anytime soon, and you do not seem like you are going to deal significant damage anytime soon, and you are currently unable to escape even if you can avoid damage and you have no desire to find out for how long.
Your Lord gives you his grudging approval and you beam.
"The Clock-Hand that Tampers with Time,” You hum under your breath in Jotun. Zaratul pauses.
“The Shadow that Roams across Fate,” You continue, cheerfully, as Zaratul focuses His attention on escaping except really, it’s useless, He followed you to your Lord’s domain and even if he could not kill Him right now and could perhaps grievously injure Him at most that did not mean he was powerless in his own domain, no less.
The Embodiment of Deceit and Trickery!” You declare with a flourish, and you reach into the Historical Void and grab out a man in classical robes and a black witch’s hat.
He takes out a monocle and wears it on His right eye and smiles, in an entirely nonhuman way.
You wonder how it is that He does not try. Does not bother to try.
“What’s this?” He asks, turning to you. “Did you get me a gift, Merly?”
You pout at Him. You go :c to be specific.
“It was an interest check!” You proclaim, and He takes amusement in this answer.
And even if your Lord detests Monny for whatever reason he does not attack Him all the same, continues keeping the three of you trapped within the spirit world where his power is the strongest. Cheerfully, you tie up Zaratul’s spirit threads as the Angels He summoned all slow down and stop, before wearing a monocle on their right eyes.
You send them back into the Historical Void as Zaratul resists, but considering He is up against two Angels backed by a deity in said deity’s domain He does not do well.
Eventually, at some point, after an amount of indeterminable time, Zaratul’s expression falls blank and He puts on a monocle on His right eye.
“Would you like the Miracle Invoker Characteristic?” He asks, inhuman amusement laced in His voice. His eyes gleamed like the birds’ eyes did in the night. You like it, but not on this face.
“I’m not calling you Monny when you insist on talking to me with that face.” You complain.
You let go of the Amon whom you had pulled from the Historical Void, but considering the fact that He was wearing His monocle He was probably controlling it remotely.
He allows the avatar to dissipate all the same, and Zaratul transforms into Monny.
“Is this better?” He asks, throwing His arms out dramatically. You can faintly hear the rustling of feathers now.
You give him a thumbs up. It’s a body gesture your Lord had left in your memories, where you made a fist aligned vertically but left the thumb out and pointed upwards.
You leave the spirit world immediately, your Lord masking your route. You laugh as you run, and you feel as though the bells in your throat are chiming the loudest they have ever been.
The white fog surrounds you, gently, when you escape back into the real world. You shake a paper figurine into the shape of an Angel and allow it to act as anti-divination. Your Lord watches, quietly, slowly slipping back into slumber after his strength had been used up.
“He’s not that bad, not really.” You tell the wind.
There should be no wind in a cave but this one ruffles your hair all the same, the exasperation in the action evident.
You don’t see Monny again until much later, where He asks you if you would like to go bother Antigonus.
He looks different, now that you were really taking in His appearance. You could still see the gleam in His eyes even if it was not real and just your intuition speaking, and the rustling of feathers still follows His every movement but there is a sharpness to His teeth that was not there the last time.
“Do you understand them?” You ask instead, making your voice soft. He tilts His head, a common indicator of curiosity that neither of you possess.
“No.” He shrugs. “I understand the logical chain of events and their reactions, but I do not understand them.”
He smiles at you, baring all His teeth. You think that birds don’t have teeth, but these suit Him.
You laugh, and the tinkling of bells rings gently across the cliff where the both of you sit.
“Me neither.” You confess. “I can tell what they are going to do, even if I do not rely on my divination. But I cannot understand why , even if I am capable of listing all the emotions present.”
Strangely, He has not been attempting to parasitize you during this whole conversation.
To be fair, you had stayed your hand as well.
You turn to Him, and He looks at you unblinkingly.
You reach out and touch His hair.
It is as soft as a feather.
He looks at you strangely. You wonder what He is thinking, because unlike Him you could not steal other’s thoughts.
You’re not sure you would understand even if you had His thoughts, though, so you continue twisting and curling the hair around your finger.
The strangest part is that He lets you.
He leaves without fanfare this time. There are no swarm of ravens and crows drowning out the night. There are no mass movements of villagers where they put on monocles and turn to smile at you.
He simply vanishes. One second He is there; the next He is not, and your hand lingers in thin air.
You wonder why He let you touch His hair, and you do not divine the answer because you are fairly certain that He knew you would not divine it because if you had chosen to divine it you were fairly certain He would have tried to parasitize you again.
…How fun.
The statement is not true, because “fun” is subjective and you are a being without the ability to feel, so you should not feel fun but just this once you think it might apply.
For some reason your Lord is as elated as he is disturbed. You act out the actions of “worry” and “concern” about it but your Lord eventually waves it off and makes you promise to him you will be extra careful when you talk with Monny but he does not stop you!
You go :>.
You do not know why. You cannot tell why. But, but!!
You wonder when you will see Monny again.
A few hours later, you have a sudden premonition. You go to your Lord’s castle and divine what happened to the “Antigonus”.
You wake up from the dream wondering just how many things were on fire and who Monny had framed for it. Your Lord does not approve and is quite disappointed not in you but in Monny but he is amused all the same.
Hypocrite!! You call, in your mind, even though you were also a hypocrite and that wasn’t surprising since you were a part of him so if he was a hypocrite you were too but–
Since you are in his Castle, your Lord has control over the fog even if he is in slumber. He makes a fog-hand and flicks your forehead gently. You understand that it is a chatising action.
You weren’t the one laughing at the image of Antigonus having all his doll-marionette-people burnt down!!
You flick at the air as well. The fog parts under your touch, gently.
You were already here; you might as well complete the entire visit.
The fog parts before you, leading you, guiding you to its owner. It is not surprising you are capable of controlling the Castle to a certain extent; it was your Lord’s Castle, after all, and you were a part of him.
It does not take long for you to come before a chair engraved in a pupil-less eye with half-contorted lines.
You sit at the foot of the chair, staring at the slowly writhing ball of maggots under the black curtain that your Lord had obtained from somewhere.
You place your forearms where the chair is and lean on it so you can look at your Lord at eye level. He seems to be slumbering peacefully, you think, and you stay like that for you-don’t-know-how-long until your Lord stirs, just the tiniest bit, to push you away from him.
You do not touch the writhing ball of maggots that consist of your Lord, but you wave at it all the same as you drop out of Sefirah Castle back into reality.
You wake up to Monny’s face, and you realize that perhaps you had not chosen the best hiding spot for your body as you feel the way His hands run through your hair, your head on His lap.
“Good morning, Monny!” You say, as charmingly as you are capable. Monny stares at you and you are fairly certain He is unimpressed, which is not fun because being unimpressed is a default reaction and not an emotion.
He huffs dramatically.
“It’s evening!” He says. “And you did not even give me an answer last time!” You think His tone is sufficiently dramatic. He could probably join one of those human theatre troupes and make a living!
Monny throws His head back and laughs and it is clearly inhuman and therefore you should not care for it because you are not supposed to care for things other than humans but you do.
You think it is a nice laugh.
No, not nice.
A cruel laugh.
But it is a pretty laugh, all the same, and even if you liked His laugh no laugh would ever beat your Lord’s small huffs of amusement.
“An answer for which question?” You ask. “The one about Antigonus?”
“No.” He states. “The one about the Miracle Invoker characteristic.”
You stare at Him unblinkingly. He stares right back. There is no point because the both of you are Angels and therefore neither of you need blinking but you hold His gaze anyway.
“What do you want for it?” You ask, conversationally. He tilts His head thoughtfully and hums.
“Show me that weapon you used against Zaratul.” He decides.
As far as your intuition can tell, He is telling the truth, and it doesn’t really matter to you even if He isn’t because neither of you were really honest with each other from the start.
You reach into the Historical Void and pull out the gun as a reply.
You hand it over to Monny.
“Why, thank you, Merly.” He says, His tone pleased. You cannot tell why he bothers to add emotion to His voice in your company.
His hands leave your head, which is slightly less nice, but He takes one of the crows perching on His hat and crushes it and you now have a second Miracle Invoker characteristic you are unsure what to do with.
You decide to ask your Lord later; you will simply put it in the Castle for now.
“Why are you here?” You ask Him.
He smiles at you.
It is not a :D smile or a :) smile but more of a :] smile.
“You left your mirror from last time.” He says, instead.
You pause.
“Oh, so that’s what my intuition said I forgot!” You say, surprise coloring your voice except that even if you have applied the color there is nothing but hollowness where it should originate.
You reach for the mirror. Monny puts it above His head. You make yourself grow taller to reach it. He makes one of His crow Avatars pick it up instead.
You stomp your foot and reach into the Historical Void.
The mirror appears obediently in your hand. It instantly explodes into words.
“Young Master, please take this servant away!” Is highlighted in bright gold. You squint at the mirror. You were fairly certain it had only ever referred to your Lord as “master”.
“What did you do to it?” You asked Monny, warily, just so He understood you might not be pleased with His answer even if you did not feel the emotion.
He shrugged. “All I did was ask it questions!” He said, throwing his arms around you dramatically.
“I’m fairly certain it was never this polite.” You comment.
The Historical version of the mirror continues pleading in your hand. It is sort of pathetic.
You do not feel pity but the latent subconsciousness of your Lord must because eventually at some point he requests you retrieve Arrodes or at least make it so that it is no longer crying and sprouting ToT faces.
Monny grins at you. It is an action which he puts the muscles of his face into so you can see His shiny white teeth, and you can feel your Lord’s wariness and disapproval but you are enraptured all the same.
“I don’t know, Merly, maybe you can ask it yourself.”
You ask the mirror what your Monny asked it.
It tries to tell you. It really does. You watch it scrawl the first few words across the surface, before it shudders and falls silent.
You flick Monny on the forehead. He blinks at you. It is a slow blink.
“Why are you here anyway? Weren’t you terrorizing the Empires or something?”
He just smiles at you. The :) smile not the :] smile.
You consider pouting. It would be an in character action.
You decide against it.
“Did you find yourself understanding humanity more?” You ask Him instead.
He continues smiling at you, and you know His expression is not strained because He is an Angel and of the Marauder pathway so He has a lot of control over how He appears but to you it feels strained anyway.
The rustling of feathers intensifies, nevermind the crows already in flight.
He does not answer. He does not need to. You know it already.
You laugh at Him. Perhaps you are also laughing at yourself.
You wave a hand at Him and leap into the spirit world. He does not follow.
“Try taking a carriage next time.” He calls after you, something in His voice not quite amusement but not not cruelty either and you look at the mirror in your hands and wonder when He replaced the Historical one with the real one.
Arrodes proceeds to scream/cry/yell at you in text. You consider shoving it back into Sefirah Castle, except that is probably also what it wants so you tuck it into your cloak and ignore its existence as it attempts to smite you with lightning.
You see Monny again. You see Him again a lot, in fact. This was not strange, because the both of you were Angels of the Mysteries pathways but to be quite fair you had not run into Antigonus before and had not even seen a hair of any of the other Marauder Angels.
You do run into quite a few demigods! You do not kill those, because your Lord disapproves, but you do incapacitate them and send them home with a nice letter.
It is a nice letter not because the contents contain kind words but rather it is a nice letter because you put effort into making it look nice. You wonder what their families’ reactions will be.
He drops by on one of the demigod ambushes, the ones where they cannot tell you are an Angel because of the Fog but they can tell you are something special all the same and attribute it to an artifact and think with their greed rather than their heads. It was one of those unpreventable ones where there is some bloodshed. Your Lord had been disappointed. Not at you, more at your ambushers, but the point still stood.
…What was the point again? Back to Monny.
He is watching you as you clean, the mop swiping across the floor and spreading blood and going “skreet-skreet-skreet” and He does not offer to help and to be quite frank you do not expect Him to either but–
You see, the thing is, you do not hold conversations as much as one of you asks the other their view on humanity and whether they had realized anything and the inevitable answer is a non-answer and then you either go on your way or Monny tries to provoke you for some reason and you cannot quite say that you have every tried starting a conversation with Him.
So you do.
“I took a carriage.” You confess. “I do not understand what the meaning of it is.”
And that is the truth. You still recall the ride– you remember seeing the scenery, all the different shades and patches of the countryside, all the flowers you had passed and the people whom had been working and the way the sun shone on the ground but you didn’t really get it because you could have simply just walked through the spirit world. It would have been faster, even. And free.
Monny throws His head back and laughs. You think you know what He is thinking.
He probably wouldn’t have understood the meaning either, would He? You wonder why He suggested you take a carriage when He Himself did not know what He could learn from it.
Perhaps this is why neither of you understood humanity.
He does not say anything, because your conversations never extend past the questions. You do not update each other on anything because neither of you share the same project or ambition.
You simply want to understand humanity. The both of you are failing horribly at it.
How ironic. You hear His Father had liked humanity as well.
He flies off into the sky, and you look at Him as He vanishes on the horizon.
He had always been dramatic like that, you think, perhaps not fondly because you did not know fondness and perhaps not lovingly because you did not know love but for the first time you are surprised to admit it is something , all the same.
You continue cleaning.
You look for Him rather than let Him come to you, this time around. Apparently the War was going great, because there had recently been a big upheaval so now you had to avoid some villages you usually visited because even if your intuition did not work against the other Seer Angel as theirs did not against you your Lord could still tell and you did not enjoy the experience of being hunted unless you knew you could deal with it.
Also Aunt Evernight apparently had a stake in the whole Antigonus problem and you would really hate to inconvenience Her when you would one day inevitably need to hide in one of Her cathedrals.
So! Without anything to do and the violence in the rural areas escalating and a lack of things to do and miracles to fulfill you go fulfill Monny. Tracking Him down is easier than it should be.
You see why when you appear in what appears to be a study in a rather fancy mansion.
There is a man standing by the window, looking up at the moon. He looks at you, and His eyes are–
You think you rather like His eyes.
“Abraham, I presume?” You ask, laughing gently. He does not respond to the sound of bells that lingers with your voice.
“Hermes.” He says.
“Why didn’t you greet me first?” Monny complains in the cage He is locked in, and you’re pretty sure that’s not His main body but rather a demigod avatar so you decide to ignore Him for a bit instead and study the angel in front of you.
This one was still building His might, wasn’t He? And call it intuition, perhaps, but you knew. You knew , beyond reason, without a doubt, that this one would reach the pinnacle of Sequence 1.
Fun!
You think He should have at least two of the characteristics or at least the Uniqueness. Either way, He was a King of Angels.
You go to the birdcage at the side of the room containing Monny and you poke at it.
…Ow. That hurt your finger. Which was impressive, honestly!
“I was looking for you.” You say. “Why were you here, anyway?” You push the lilting whimsy into your voice, and let it be as light as the wind.
And if your scarf sways a bit quicker than usual, Monny does not comment.
Mr Door looks at you.
The crushing weight is alleviated by your Lord’s gaze.
You laugh.
“Oh, I see.” You say, conversationally.
“I know, right?” Monny chirps, the bird avatar inside poking at your finger.
Mr Door does not get it like you get Monny and Monny gets you but He does not stop you from leaving. You’ll visit again, soon, really, and–
You pause.
“You” open “your” mouth.
“How long?” “You” ask, and it is gentle in a way that “you” genuinely mean.
Mr Door twitches slightly at that, and Amon does not flinch backwards but you think He might have tried to bare His teeth if He was capable of being in human form.
Mr Door looks at you, through you, and to “you”. He is called Mr Door for a reason, after all.
He does not answer, but the vivid crimson that suddenly drowns Him is telling enough.
“You will not last,” “You” chide, “your” voice as gentle as it will be able to get.
“I believe in myself.” He says, as a final statement, and there is a cold gleam to His eyes that you do not quite like but amuses “you” in a heartbreaking way.
“You” shake your head gently.
“I will not ask you to believe in me.” “You” say. “But if– and if you ever change your mind, you will be able to find me.”
Mr Door does not trust “you”. ‘You’ cannot quite blame Him, either. “You” hope His family will not suffer much. “You” know it is a futile hope as well.
“You” let the body and yourself vanish into the Historical Void. He does not attempt to stop you.
You walk back out from the Historical Void through the Spirit World and back into the real world, where Monny is waiting for you with His hand outstretched.
You pass Him the birdcage, and He does not reach through it as much as He devours it and the avatar.
“What was that?” He asks, the gleam in His eyes back to being that of a bird of prey’s.
You laugh at Him.
It is not a cruel laugh, and it does not ruffle His feathers but it does make His gaze sharper.
“I think my Lord pities Him.” You say, honestly.
You can still feel the crimson tide in the back of your mind.
Monny smirks.
“What a strange Lord you have.” He says, and you consider warning Him but you don’t because He did not mean it in a negative way and to be fair your Lord was rather strange considering the standard for deities, which was not very high.
You sit down instead. Monny offers you a candy apple. You eat it.
He blinks at you.
“Aren’t you even the slightest bit worried that I could parasitize you?” He complains. You think it is the lack of reaction that gets to Him, not the show of trust you do not believe but also do have in Him.
“You won’t try poison.” You say. “And also if you wanted to parasitize me you would make a grand performance out of everything for your own amusement.”
“I could try poison now.” He offers, ‘helpfully’, and you consider whether you can get away with flicking Him in the forehead again. From the way He is looking at you that probably means He is also currently peeking at your thoughts, which is incredibly rude.
He stares at you, offended.
“I did no such thing.” He says, solemnly, except He has the :] smile so you do not believe a word out of His mouth.
It is nice, you think, chewing on the apple. You sit at the edge of a cliff; you think you had been at this one a few times now. You kick your feet, and the dandelions fly with a rush of the wind. You look up at the stars– the distant universe, and ignore what looks back. The grass rustles, as do Monny’s feathers that He doesn’t really have in this body but exist to you anyway, and you think it is perfect.
You look at Monny. He has moved on from the candy apple to apple slices in the shapes of a rabbit now, chomping on each of them rather aggressively.
“Did the rabbits offend you in some way?” You ask, conversationally.
Monny makes a face.
“Not you as well,” He says, nudging the monocle on His right eye. “They’re not rabbits.”
How childish, you think, and your glee must be apparent because Monny starts throwing the slices at you.
“Ow.” You say, as one of the rabbits hits your forehead and shatters. “I wish there were apples in the shape of a rabbit.” You say, and then you grant your own wish.
The next second, there is in fact an apple in the shape of a rabbit in your hand. Amon looks at you for a second, considers, and then storms off in a flurry of feathers.
You laugh, alone on the edge of the cliff watching the sunrise, and the wind carries your laughter and it carries Monny’s back, and it is not a nice laugh or a beautiful laugh and is a cruel laugh but also not really and you think, you think for just a second that you–
…You don’t know.
You don’t know the word for it. There is no adjective in the mortal tongue that describes it. No words in your Lord’s language that convey the exact… exact–
It is not an emotion because you do not feel emotion and it is not a thought because it is more than that and it is most certainly not humanity because you are an Angel and an extension of the Fool and you had given up being human to protect everything but still, but still –
This is horrible.
You do not love Amon. This is a fact. But maybe, just maybe , this is what they call an obsession.
You do not know the words for what you feel. You do not even know what you feel, because you shouldn’t feel.
So you tie up the memory neatly and dump it in a corner of your brain and pretend it does not exist.
Your Lord attempts to disapprove but he is also approving, just a bit, so you let him sort out what he feels as you follow the wind.
You return to Mr Door. You do not quite know why; your intuition had simply deemed it a good day to do so.
You walk in to Monny playing with His hair.
You tilt your head at Him. He nudges the monocle on His right eye as Mr Door continues sitting at His desk, probably doing some boring bureaucratic work.
“It is rude to not make an appointment.” He says, but does not otherwise move.
You’re fairly certain His body is the only one that is actual real here, because you are in the form of your Historical Projection because you weren’t insane and that was probably another one of Monny’s disposable Avatars but even so this does seem rather funny to you.
Or your Lord at least, because the wind carries his huff of laughter and the fog thickens lovingly.
Mr Door tenses a bit at that, before relaxing.
“I see.” He says, simply, and you look at Him and consider and realize that He has all the Sequence 1 characteristics and the Uniqueness, so it is a wonder He is not undergoing the apotheosis ritual but that was probably Him suppressing Himself.
A wonderful application of His abilities!
“You should shut Monny up.” You say. Monny sticks His tongue out at you in protest.
“I wasn’t saying anything.” He says, His feathers ruffled. “In fact, perhaps we should seal your mouth!”
Mr Door does not otherwise react but He is also not kicking you out so you continue to hover in His office and bicker with Monny while He worked.
Your Lord does not otherwise stir.
Hm. So Mr Door had made His decision, then.
You look at Him and wonder why it is that your Lord feels pity for such a man, nevermind the crimson tide that smelt of fresh blood and the crimson moon.
Mr Door tells you before you leave that Antigonus looked for Him to request help to hunt you down but He had refused. He makes it clear that He does not do it for you, but the stress on the “you” part really just means, and you are fairly certain, that He did it for your Lord.
You wonder why.
(His family is His anchor, your Lord says, lovingly, miserably, and you wonder how one can feel such emotions for “family”.)
Monny follows you not soon after, and on a whim you decide to travel around the country with Him.
“The fourth epoch is coming to an end.” He says, as He throws fish bait into a well.
“I know.” You say as a reply, making a few nearby insects your marionettes and making them leap into the well and transform into colorful fish. “I do wonder what happens next.” You say, even if you could divine it, even if your intuition tells you enough even if you choose not to divine it.
“I’m sure it’ll be an era most interesting.” Monny muses, like the philosopher He isn’t, and He laughs as the fish in the well eat at the bait.
He gives you a kiss on your cheek as He vanishes, and you do not love Him and it is not close because you do not know love at all but still, but still .
You let the fish jump into your palm and wish for a gold coin instead.
Expressionlessly, you throw the coin into the well.
“I wish for this village not to suffer.” And your spirituality drains, and you laugh at the fact that you would still be unable to wish for it to prosper.
Your Lord simply watches on in his slumber.
“Do you think He is my friend?” You ask the wind, and the wind holds no reply.
You are not particularly surprised. You had never been friends, after all. You had never trusted each other, not from the beginning.
You look back at your own fate again.
The expiry date for the tool named Merlin Hermes is still a thousand years away, so you put on an expression of joy which you have never felt and let your voice chime with the sound of bells as you make your way back to someplace safe to accompany your Lord.
You’re sure the mirror wants a visit as well.