( now, more than ever, he yearns to spread his stolen wings. to gather dead air underneath their grasping talons and whip and churn it into eddies and currents that would take him aloft, where he could slip himself into the seams between the prevailing winds and survey the city down below — the city and everything that afflicted it. the enormous, snaking roots which spread like a disease from the Great Tree, splitting through streets and choking entire city blocks, causing the still air to ring with voices raised in panic, terror, and uncertainty. in hell, those wings had been new to him, and he'd been like a fledgling in using them. why, then, when he looks into the sky, does he feel such entrenched certainty that, had he been able to unfurl them, he would be able to do all of this and more without any fear or hesitation?
he's done it before. he knows he has, even if the memories are odd, vague, half-realized things that form and then fade like phantoms in dense fog. it's these same half-remembrances that caused him to go out into the streets of springstar and find a weaponsmith to place a special order with. he would have never had need for such a thing in hell — in that place, where perception of power is what constructs its very real architecture and the only thing that could promise a permanent death is the misuse of a name, physical violence was a tawdry side-show and a sultry delight. but walking the streets of springstar had given him an unnatural wariness; it had been one which had made his hands itch towards the outside line of his thigh where he knew he should have a dagger holstered, and he had full well known how to use it.
he would have never bothered with such a thing in hell. how strange and new a creature he had developed into in horos — and he can still feel the trappings of that other self wrapped up within himself, persisting even though he has trouble recalling any of that time (had it been weeks? months? years?) with any acuity or accuracy.
if he were that different version of himself, he knows he would not be stuck in this situation. and perhaps if he were still the demon he had been in hell, freshly decided to bend his master into loving him in order to guarantee his pained destruction, he would have made the much smarter decision of simply staying close to the heliopolis until all of this insanity finally bothered to settle down. but he is the bastardized median of the two, too unfettered by caution but also too restricted in ability to do what he knows he should be able to. he feels as though both of those other selves would be embarrassed by him as he is now, furious at his impotence, but he can't seem to find any willingness within him to accept Harmonization, even if it was his only path to regaining what few abilities he had.
because the strongest through-line of what he does remember about horos is that he had been used. he had been manipulated, influenced, and dominated, turned into a pawn of a power he accepted but not to the extent that it had bent him to. he refuses to allow that to happen to him again.
and so, because of that stubborn refusal, he is now trapped. he had been walking down a street, a passing-by observer of the very real anguish of others motivated by little more than casual curiosity, when one of the mammoth tree roots had extended down the road he'd been traveling along. given its speed, the only path open to him had been to the side, into the waiting, open door of one of the abandoned buildings there. it's miraculous that the structural damage and the falling stone and mortar hadn't already done him in, but as it is, he's stuck. the doors and windows are blocked. the stairwells have collapsed. he has no pathway upwards or out.
there is only one viable pathway to freedom that he has found. just above the huge vine-like root, there is a section of the ceiling which has crumbled away, revealing the skyline of the still-standing buildings on the other side of the road and the vast blue beyond. it's into this makoto stares, thinking of how all the barriers he faces now are self-imposed, yet too furiously stubborn to do anything about it.
though, if any movement passed by that narrow window into the outside world, he would start and shout out to it, not so ruined by pride that he would sabotage any and all ways he might find his way out of this. or, at least, not yet. )
closed to set:
he's done it before. he knows he has, even if the memories are odd, vague, half-realized things that form and then fade like phantoms in dense fog. it's these same half-remembrances that caused him to go out into the streets of springstar and find a weaponsmith to place a special order with. he would have never had need for such a thing in hell — in that place, where perception of power is what constructs its very real architecture and the only thing that could promise a permanent death is the misuse of a name, physical violence was a tawdry side-show and a sultry delight. but walking the streets of springstar had given him an unnatural wariness; it had been one which had made his hands itch towards the outside line of his thigh where he knew he should have a dagger holstered, and he had full well known how to use it.
he would have never bothered with such a thing in hell. how strange and new a creature he had developed into in horos — and he can still feel the trappings of that other self wrapped up within himself, persisting even though he has trouble recalling any of that time (had it been weeks? months? years?) with any acuity or accuracy.
if he were that different version of himself, he knows he would not be stuck in this situation. and perhaps if he were still the demon he had been in hell, freshly decided to bend his master into loving him in order to guarantee his pained destruction, he would have made the much smarter decision of simply staying close to the heliopolis until all of this insanity finally bothered to settle down. but he is the bastardized median of the two, too unfettered by caution but also too restricted in ability to do what he knows he should be able to. he feels as though both of those other selves would be embarrassed by him as he is now, furious at his impotence, but he can't seem to find any willingness within him to accept Harmonization, even if it was his only path to regaining what few abilities he had.
because the strongest through-line of what he does remember about horos is that he had been used. he had been manipulated, influenced, and dominated, turned into a pawn of a power he accepted but not to the extent that it had bent him to. he refuses to allow that to happen to him again.
and so, because of that stubborn refusal, he is now trapped. he had been walking down a street, a passing-by observer of the very real anguish of others motivated by little more than casual curiosity, when one of the mammoth tree roots had extended down the road he'd been traveling along. given its speed, the only path open to him had been to the side, into the waiting, open door of one of the abandoned buildings there. it's miraculous that the structural damage and the falling stone and mortar hadn't already done him in, but as it is, he's stuck. the doors and windows are blocked. the stairwells have collapsed. he has no pathway upwards or out.
there is only one viable pathway to freedom that he has found. just above the huge vine-like root, there is a section of the ceiling which has crumbled away, revealing the skyline of the still-standing buildings on the other side of the road and the vast blue beyond. it's into this makoto stares, thinking of how all the barriers he faces now are self-imposed, yet too furiously stubborn to do anything about it.
though, if any movement passed by that narrow window into the outside world, he would start and shout out to it, not so ruined by pride that he would sabotage any and all ways he might find his way out of this. or, at least, not yet. )