Amaravati

[bufudine]

Who: Serph and YOU
Where: In the Plaza
When: On the 12th!
Style: [action] preferred, but I'll match!
Status: OPEN

[It's been a long time since Serph's disappearance. Maybe it seemed like he wasn't going to be coming back to Vatheon.

But if you happen to be passing through the Plaza, there's someone appearing out of thin air and... falling into one of the fountains with a great splash. If you're curious enough to look at the water, it's gaining a reddish tinge.

...Yeah, that's blood mixing with the water.

But wait long enough, and there's a guy pulling himself out of the fountain, looking like a drowned rat. There's a break in his abdominal armour. But while there are some stubborn bits of blood at the break's edges, there's no wound in the flesh underneath; the skin is unmarked, like it had been healed perfectly.

Serph's back. And he's alive.

...And totally dripping water all over the Plaza again.]

Comments

[closedcircuit]

[Ky inclines his head and crosses his chest before he recites Second Corinthians, 5:1 and 6-10. While funereal enough to be appropriate for the dead it's as much about there being a purpose in their lives as in their deaths.

Ky thinks it might fit, at least a little.]

[bufudine]

[Serph listens intently to the recitation. When Ky speaks of heaven, Serph looks upwards, to the oceanic ceiling. He remembers the harsh, yellow sky of the real world, but the sky he imagines is blue, like the sky of the island. That's what the heavens is supposed to look like, isn't it?

When Ky finishes, Serph turns his gaze back to him.]

Thank you. I don't know what my judgement will be, but your prayer is... soothing.

[The judgement is out of his hands, anyway.]

[closedcircuit]

None of us can really know, but at least...

Faith helps with that, and it is soothing, like you say.

[bufudine]

[Serph nods. Belief is a powerful thing. He starts walking again, leading the way to the base.]

When I returned, I was in a world different from what I knew.

[The sky, a harsh, glaring yellow, and the sun, a pitch black. People turned to stone under the sun's rays. Malignant data, they said.]

Though people know of God [more than he does] there is little faith. Some believe humans' inability to walk under the sun is punishment from God.

[closedcircuit]

Time passed in your world between you being in Vatheon and returning there? Or this place returned you somewhere wrong?

If they believe that He would punish in him then it's a kind of faith. Missing most of the point, that He is there to support us, but it's not quite the same as not believing either.

[bufudine]

[Is that so... Interesting. He'd been under the impression that faith was more a positive belief than a negative one.]

The world I came from, the Junkyard, had been destroyed shortly before I first arrived here.

[Accidentally on purpose.]

I hadn't known the Junkyard was connected to another world.

[closedcircuit]

[It certainly is more of a positive belief, Ky would say, but like anything it has the potential to be misinterpreted or applied in a way not true to the actual words.]

What's the other world like? Who were you battling with there?

[bufudine]

[What's the other world like? Serph thinks over his words for a moment as they walk, before he responds.]

The sky is a harsh, glaring yellow. Humans without demons are turned to stone under the black sun's light.

[Humans are hunted as food for the demons... but Ky doesn't need to know that.]

Humans live underground, fighting against the Karma Society, who've turned soldiers into demons like myself. The demons seek out the underground humans and kill them.

[So... not much better than the Junkyard, really.]

[closedcircuit]

If they can't live aboveground, then why do you simply not go underground, so there wouldn't need to be conflict?

[bufudine]

[It takes him a while to realise Ky has associated him with the Karma Society, not the Lokapala. Hah... people of the underground had thought of them as Karma Society demons, too, at first. Either way, he can't tell Ky the main reason for the hunting.

Serph shakes his head. What had Cuvier said...?]

The Karma Society's leader believes there are some who deserve life, and others who do not. [A pause.] Although my Tribe are part-demon, we are not allied with them.

[Most of the Tribe isn't, anyway. Heat...]

[closedcircuit]

Oh. I didn't know.

I'm sorry.

[He should really know better than to assume that just because they all have demons that they're all the same.]