epidemiology | Putting heads together

Entry tags:

Putting heads together

CHARACTERS: Laedo Ledo and Achilles
DATE: Shortly before gears are put into motion to kill the goddesses
WARNINGS: Intense muscle flexing if we're very lucky.
SUMMARY: Laedo's looking to round up support to help ensure the Nalawi are protected... and hopes to sway some other voices to sympathy for Nalanni. Achilles seems to be on the same page, so a meet-up is in order.

Laedo had been residing outside of town limits ever since he'd been blown out of the lava tunnels below Pu’ulai. Not only were the Nalawi dwellings laughably small for one of his size, but the other members of ALASTAIR had been growing resolved (or resigned) to the consensus that the goddesses needed to be destroyed, a stance with which he could not agree. The askan was firmly against it, in fact, at least with regards to Nalanni. She had given him an extremely large responsibility before Pomarr had caught him and flung him out of reach, and he did not wish to fail her.

So he had decided to brood and listen to network conversations where people had not learned to seal their lips. That was how he'd begun rounding up those with more moderate ideas, those who seemed to think beyond the tips of their spears to their own survival, and the survival of the deer people. If ALASTAIR had found a way to bring so many of their ilk into the world, they could pool their resources together to find a way to remove the goddesses from it without resorting to barbaric actions.

He'd tracked down Achilles not long after he and the other new recruits had begun to filter into the settlement, wishing that he had enough magic to converse with the human on an eye-to-eye basis. He'd learned that he was intimidating enough to be attacked on sight, and he knew that would do him no favours in making introductions... but maybe eloquence would help him.

The sun was setting over the ocean, marking the peppered clouds above them bright cherry reds and oranges. Shadows stretched, including the large, dragon-like creature's. Laedo settled on his haunches a length or so away and stared intently at Achilles, tail twitching gently as he considered his words. "I would greet you in peace, warrior. Do you have a minute?"

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It was not the brutality of slaughter over which his will stumbled, for by the pitiless bronze of his spear he had watered the plains of Troy with the blood of a thousand men. It was for the target at which his spear's shadow must aim that his heart filled with black dread: for goddesses were not meant to be cut from their immortal vine by the hands of men. Awe for the gods, and fear its equal partner, he had been nursed on as a babe, and the milk coursed through his veins still. This pulled him one way, yet his faith in Gilgamesh would sway him another.

With his mind occupied thus, his body too must be occupied. Along the shore he ran, the pink soles of his feet flashing and kicking up sand as he hurtled from one end of the beach to the other, and back again: here, there was freedom and lightness that could not last when he was still. But pause he eventually must, for with his strength dwindled so too was his speed for which he as equally famed.

That was when Laedo approached, purposing to speak. Achilles eyes flashed as do clouds when Zeus who bears the aegis hurls his lightning, and he assessed the creature which loomed before him: he thought of his spear, which lay some twenty paces away, until gentle words issued forth from that fearful maw.

"What manner of creature are you, that fully possesses the appearance of a beast yet addresses me as would a man?" he asked. "If you are inclined toward civil manner, indeed I may give you audience after you will first give proper introduction. You speak now to Achilles, son of Peleus who rules in Phthia."

"Beast," Laedo muttered, tail flicking with annoyance--but the rumble was muted, and his ears remained forward as he listened to the long introduction. He was growing more used to less than stellar first impressions, much to his dismay, and was better able to cap his frustration... the better to get past such allegations. In the end, he couldn't be certain that he wasn't much more than a beast, but at least Achilles was quick to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"A proper introduction by your merit: Laedo Ledo, son of Laurea Ledo who sits on the high council of Sanctuary. She has the ears of our goddess, Aska, and it is by my familiarity with such delicate interactions that I grow terribly concerned with the plans of those who bray and parade their barbaric plans back and forth among us outsiders. Yet there has not been much in the way of dissent from what I have heard. By silence do those of our number give their assent, or merely cower in fear from the psychopaths who would choose the bloody option before deeper considerations?"

"Son of Laurea, it becomes plain now that you are of a race who establishes households over which to rule as do men, who meets in assembly to hear one another's council, and who offers prayers and supplications to the gods of their land. Thus, I was mistaken in judging so harshly your strange appearance when first you entreated me for my time - for the ways of your nation indeed echo those of mine."

He now regarded Laedo with an air of respect: although Achilles knew him not but for a shadow of his character, his well-shaped speech weighed well in his favor, as did his concerns which reflected the foggy forms of his own. Here was one whose words he would wish to hear.

"You speak now of Nalanni who delights in volcanoes and of her sister, wave-ruling Ryba. Indeed this business stirs in my breast great trepidation. My strength and my arms I vowed to gold-clad Gilgamesh, who in this cause finds justice, but my heart cannot yet commit to the murder of goddesses: I know not whence victory might be found in darkness so barren. Those who speak not on the matter may too do so for want of a plan that is better to their liking. And what say you?"

"Gilgamesh," Laedo spits, "that chest-pounding vanity. He who will bend all to kiss his toes for nothing more than the flush of power it brings, of course. He attempted to mount me for his own pleasure, saw me as nothing more than a beast to be handled." His lip curls and his tail flicks, but Laedo manages to rein in his annoyance. Of course, he's not telling the whole truth: it's not as though the man in question leapt up between his wings, but to Laedo, merely making a suggestion is as good as trying. His ego is too delicate and his pride too fierce to consider such a degradation of character.

"I have spoken long into the night with others, and where some believe that murder is the only rightful act, there are those who, like me, think other options might prove just as well. I have sat in conversation with Nalanni herself," he thumbs the fire opal flashing in his breast-plate, a stab of guilt pushing straight to his heart. "She understands her presence is eroding this planet's spirit, though how I have no idea. I believe that removing her from this place might do the trick. Ryba... it is less obvious if anything but murder is likely to stop her endless march."

"You must be worthy indeed for the goddess to have taken you into her audience. The gods hold in their hearts knowledge which no mortal could grasp, for their eyes see farther than do ours. Then the great volcano-dweller must understand her fate which is tied to the fate of this land and its people, who are her suppliants. How strange it is that immortals too can find the limits of their time in this world: is truly nothing boundless?"

In his question there rang melancholy for all that which he had held to be true yet here was scattered as if by a squall's sudden winds. These were the cares which made heavy his heart while his godlike strength wilted.

"But Gilgamesh too is a god, and the council of the gods is not so trifling a matter that it can be thus dismissed. Still, what you suggest is not at all to my disliking. Then I must ask - to where would you have Nalanni removed? It was the devious-minded son of Chronus who in the pitch black pits of Tartarus sealed the Titans that he may rule from high Olympus, but we have not the might by which to follow his example."

Of course Laedo had little idea of the names that Achilles was throwing around, his early world being filled with its own truths and legends, but he could understand the gist of it. Similar had been done on Avengaea, though it was the established goddesses who had recently entombed one that they suspected of fledgeling powers. These were events he had been present for, and which currently weighed so heavily on him that he couldn't help but get deeply invested in the current goings-on.

"We have not just the depths of the sea or the heart of a volcano to work with," he considered aloud, "but the entire fabric of space and time, if our superiors can find it in their incompetent hands to work with us." He had very little faith in ALASTAIR, if not because of their uninspired speech at first impression, then because of the way that he'd been summarily dumped in the caverns below the island... even if that had led to finding Nalanni.

"Surely there is a planet of pure fire that Nalanni could be escorted to, where she might regain her strength and free herself from the tethers of this land. And Ryba, too, though it pains me, could find some home better suited to her maw." Perhaps flung out of an airlock into the depths of space, though Laedo is reluctant to consider shooting Goddesses into voids of any kind. Zenite, the Ryba analogue from his own world, had been left to fester on Avengaea for so many generations that she now had a legion at her beck and call. Better the devil one knew, it would seem...

"We've all the possibilities of the stars, if anyone with any eloquence could see it in her or himself to step forward and negotiate, yet we fall in line like sheep to the loudest, self-tooting horn."

Laedo thumped his tail one more time. "We were unanimously told to defeat Nalanni. When I spoke with her, she was obviously already defeated, chained and barred away from her world. She would go willingly to escape the cold, dark hell she's been trapped in. Killing her would be so easy I would not live with myself to have gone through with it."

The son of Peleus considered this counsel and as a creature which tries to hold its balance upon the narrow edge of a stern-faced cliff, leaning one way and then the other to find where the footing is sure, so too did his heart waver. He was a man of convictions as forceful as was his fierce spear. Even in withdrawal he acted decisively: when he had denied his aid to Agamemnon's army, it was done with the unassailable certainty that his worth as a man demanded respect greater than what he had been given. Even mired in the darkness that had draped him like a thick pall upon the news of Patroclus' death, he had known viscerally what next should come: bloodshed enough to drown his very senses, crowned finally with his violent revenge.

Yet now he could grasp nothing so sturdy, but for his frustration which grew ever more as time passed.

"I too feel sorrow's touch when I try to imagine a goddess as great as Nalanni enslaved thus by spiteful Pomarr. But even supposing that you could sway the hearts of those who seem as firmly rooted in their decision as are trees in the soil, such a strategy is dependent upon the cooperation of these cowardly sons of Alastair who allege to lead this crew. Do you earnestly trust their ilk to listen to your counsel? They who stole us away like slaves and feed us lies to keep complacent our hearts?"

For still he refused to believe ALASTAIR could be anything but the vilest of scoundrels. Thus, he sharply shook his head.

"No, whatever strange power they possess, it is not ours and thus we can rely upon it only as well as we might grasp the images reflected in water. Where then does this leave your proposal?"

Laedo, no particular staunch defendant of ALASTAIR himself, can only heave a sigh and arch his long neck, such that he can bring his arm up to scratch with frustration behind his ear, under glinting golden armor that is only slightly dented and scratched from his time in the lava tubes below the island.

"I can propose little more than to shelter the Nalawi from what fallout may come. It is not their destiny to die here because of our inability to coordinate our morals. If we incite the wrath of the goddesses they will be the ones who suffer most, defenceless as they are now that their guardian deity is enslaved. We've been tasked with saving a world, but without its inhabitants, what good is it?"

"I understand your fears, for they are echoes of the fears which too have clouded my heart. How can man continue absent the protection granted by the gods? So too the very earth itself: who shall tend forevermore to its cycles, that rain may fall, grain may grow, and man may sup? However, I have begun to wonder if this earth truly is sister to my own native earth. For just as men of different nations hold different customs, might it too be so that the gods of different earths hold different roles?"

His grim countenance drifted toward the sea, whose foaming waves bled all the colors of the sunset. His voice dimmed to pensiveness as in his head he once more turned over Ryba's words, like a stone whose heft sits in his palm.

"Wave-ruling Ryba, who is sister to Nalanni, proclaimed that there must exist land and sea both, or neither one. With Nalanni and Ryba both this earth shall endure, but then perhaps with neither sister so too can it endure. Do we not have her word then that the Nalawi can prosper yet, even barren of the benison of goddesses? You claim to have spoken with Nalanni - what said she of this matter?"

Turning his ears back as he folded one arm over the other, Laedo kept one eye on Achilles as he lowered his muzzle to nose at the layers of armor and bangles he wore on one wrist in thought. "She was resigned to her fate. I did not realize, at the time, that she seemed to understand that this might be the end for her... but looking back now, knowing what I know, she seems to have come to make her peace. She seemed desperate to ensure that somebody worthy could see to the continuation of her children, but she would not have been so quick to pick an outsider if she thought she might escape a fate larger than she could weave, would she?"

"The gods know better than any mortal which is the right course to take. If Nalanni has dedicated herself to this grim fate that the cloven-footed Nalawi whom she favors may find peace, then what can any do to turn her from her choice?"

Achilles asked not only the dragon before him, but himself too. For he would not choose such a path that forks from that which is familiar, yet here he could see no other opening through the tangled thicket in which they had become lost. He too had begun to resign himself to the steady march of Fate, as he had when in Troy he understood that the price of his glory would be his life: it was not that he welcomed death, but he could deny its inevitability no more than he could the inevitability that light must cast a shadow.

"All across Hellas, it is men who offer sacrifices to the gods: we slit the throats of oxen and sheep and over the altar we pour their blood that the gods might listen to our entreaties. Thus, we give what we have that we might prosper under the benison of the gods who watch from on high Olympus. Never have I heard of a goddess who would offer herself as sacrifice that her suppliants might prosper in her absence. My admiration for the volcano-dweller only grows, such is the nobility of her nature. Her life, which was meant to be as eternal as her glory, shall be reaped far too soon, yet from the seeds scattered thus hope for the Nalawi is reborn. Still I grieve the loss of a goddess so ripe with honor and love for her nation."

Laedo abruptly made a fist of one hand and slammed it into the sand, frustrated beyond reason. "Resignation is not in my nature," he growled, voice rising into a feral snarl. "I fight for those who cannot. I don't make decisions that greater minds can!"

It was an admittance of his own faulty nature more than anything, which was probably why it rankled worse than the acknowledgement that if Nalanni wanted only to pass on, there was nothing he could do about it.

Still, he calmed his ire in the face of Achilles calm reasoning, strange customs and context aside. "In that case there is only one course of action, moving forward. I will not be the hand that slays, here... but maybe I can be a hand that helps to sow." It's so against his nature, to consider turning his back on battle, but when faced with cowardice on one shoulder and the burden of guilt on the other...

Laedo pushes himself to stand, looking down on the human. "Your counsel is well received, human."

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Putting heads together

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(I freaking adore your narration, it is quite truly the tits)

(hehe thank you, I'll flash my narrative titties any day)

(beads for you~)

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