tushanshu_logs | ghost by my side, so perfectly clear. [ catch-all ]

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ghost by my side, so perfectly clear. [ catch-all ]

Who	"Jacob Kane" (Cain) & You
When	Month of September, barring plot explosions
Where	All around Keeliai and various establishments
What	Just one of those catch-all things
Warn	Will update as necessary. Please consider filling this permissions post!

Things were tense around the city. The breezy weather had subsided, and with it went some of the feeling of just waiting for something to happen. Now the air was humid and people were scrambling to collect what they could, prepare not only in case the air dried again but for whatever was to come when the Justicar appeared. No one had any idea what to expect. Cain certainly didn't, but he was more or less okay with that; he didn't need to borrow trouble rather than make sure his own interests would be all right should push come to shove.

To those ends, Cain was being a little more directed in his wanderings of the city. Places where the natives seemed more steeled than frantic, still appreciated foreigners or at least was willing to let individuals prove themselves, anything where he could make himself appear more solid. His carefree attitude was great and genuine, but if things went to hell, Cain wanted to make sure people would look at him and not question if he had to take some kind of control. All hail Romulus, father of the Holy Roman Empire. Ha, yeah right. Not that it would even mean anything to most people here.

He went about his business. There were places to be, people to bother, and plenty of things to keep up on.

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Her expression instantly shifted from open to guarded. There was no easy answer to that question and any evasion would be far too obvious. She simply stared at him, uncertain of how to answer, despite being certain that he probably wouldn't like any answer she gave.

"Do you truly want the answer to that?" She said, looking him steadily in the eyes, noting that though his gaze remained on her, it wasn't entirely focused, "If you do, then I won't lie to you, but you might not like what you hear."

Perhaps unfortunately for them both, Cain was far from the type who would shy away from adversity or difficult subjects. He had little patience for shielding oneself from uncomfortable things just because someone might not like them; that was their own decision to make and it was probably better to put out in the open besides. Valdis' reaction only made him more certain he needed to hear this.

"I'd be a very different man if I ran away from anything I might not want to deal with," he said, patient and stern. Nothing overly powerful but enough to show his resolve. He'd run from things before, sure, but only once they'd become unbearable and he saw no other option. Abel was the exception to that, as he always was. "It won't change the facts whether or not you tell me, will it?"

"No," she replied, "It won't."

His response wasn't what she wanted to hear, but true to her word, she would explain as best she could.

"I've been called many things over the years, one such title would be Soul Reaper." She took a breath, still meeting his gaze, but her confidence continued to fade, "My kind traditionally do not possess souls, so I suppose it was mere instinct that drove us to hunt something that we did not have. We gain a life for each soul we consume and I lost track of mine several hundred years ago."

She had been a monster, and she supposed that, despite everything, she still was.

Traditionally do not possess souls. Cain could tell she was already the exception to the rule, almost like Cain was to other mortals, simply due to the existence of her own clock and... the second clock suddenly made sense. Suddenly made sense and his expression closed, lips pursed and more emotionless than judgmental.

"What happens to the souls you consume?" he asked carefully. He couldn't just believe they would be wiped from existence and yet that seemed to be what she was implying. Every soul was sacred and had its own part in the balance. This was a disruption of that balance, it had to be, and yet Cain wasn't sure how it should fit if it was true that she was some sort of Reaper meant to collect these souls. It was frustrating how he just didn't have enough information.

His expression told her everything she needed to know. He was unhappy with what she had told him, but she had warned him, so it was really his own fault.

"It's complicated."

She didn't want to confirm what he was probably thinking and she had told him she wasn't going to lie. She was starting to wish she hadn't. Lying had been what had enabled her to survive for so long. Not to mention that she was concerned by the frustration she was feeling from Jacob, most people would have simply been horrified.

Unhappy could mean a lot of things. Her reticence to explain further only made things more difficult from there with the half-information he had been given. Without knowing what happened to the souls that she used to sustain herself, it was easy to assume the worst. That didn't mean she wasn't telling the truth: there could easily be more to it that simply wouldn't translate well and make it sound terrible before it sounded better. Maybe it really was just something she couldn't talk about.

Either way.

"The sort of complicated you can explain? Or the kind you don't want to?" he asked. They weren't necessarily different answers, but the way in which she replied might tell him more.

It was definitely the latter, but seeing as he hadn't left or turned against her yet, she supposed she could try to explain.

"As far as I know, nothing happens to them until I need the life energy that they possess."

After that, she was certain that they ceased to exist.

"And that isn't something I can entirely control."

Uncontrolled consumption of energy collected on powerful instinct, possibly beyond her control. It was not a pretty situation and, even though Cain was making heavy assumptions to fill the gaps of what she was refusing to say, there were still things that just did not sit well with him. The frustration sat poorly in his gut, along with the begrudging understanding and a curiosity he would never be able to sate.

"Energy doesn't just stop existing. To use that energy doesn't mean..." He paused, took a breath, found himself leaning on the table once again. Such a tiny wound had taken far too much out of him and he still wasn't sure what was causing the drain when he healed. "I understand things being outside your control. What about releasing them, then?"

She wasn't quite certain what to make of Jacob Kane at the moment, the emotions wafting from him seemed conflicted, but she knew that he was frustrated and she didn't know why. She leaned back in the chair, growing more and more wary with each breath.

"I can't release them," she replied, "because I'm not the one holding them." She took a deeper breath, "There's a creature living next to my soul. That creature is the source of my powers and it is extraordinarily resilient. To put it in perspective, there was a weapon created specifically to destroy my kind, and that weapon failed...if you can't destroy the prison, then you can't release the prisoners..."

Conflicted really was the best way to put it. Here in the Dreaming, there was a lot Cain couldn't do in the face of many things that weren't actually possible. He wasn't going to turn away from the difficult truth despite that, yet he was finding a sort of helplessness he hadn't felt in quite a long time. There was no option to take but to listen to what stories he could and maybe, eventually, figure out what to do with them.

"Would this creature be responsible for your current status in the first place?" asked Cain. Although he was specifically referring to her having a soul, there was a chance she might assume he had inferred something else. There was probably more he still didn't understand, and teasing the information out wasn't unknown to him.

She shook her head, "Every member of my species has this creature, called the Void, inside of them. No, the weapon I mentioned..." she reached across to draw Revelations from it's scabbard and put it on the table in front of her. The blade glowed softly, the red gem flashing until she released it and then the glow faded. "This sword, somehow pulled my soul from within the Void, put it back together and created a barrier that protects it from being consumed by the creature again.

"My kind are not supposed to possess souls, it is a disruption of the balance. Those with the powers granted by the Void are too strong to be allowed to be compromised by human emotions and morality. There are many in my world who think I should be destroyed because of it..."

"So the weapon that was made had an unanticipated side effect," Cain translated. He eyed the sword suspiciously. Part of him said he could reach out and touch it, test what it might do in the face of one with a soul that could apparently repel death. That part was easily under control, but his impulse was still there and he found himself watching it with distinct interest for what it supposedly could do.

He nodded slowly at her information, eventually looked away to regard her with the same interest as the sword. Admitting she was a disruption was interesting. From what he was gathering, correcting that disruption was nowhere near as simple as killing the one creating the imbalance. "There are creatures in my world with a similar role to that," he said eventually. "Reapers that collect human souls once their bodies have failed according to the time allotted by fate. Those Reapers, however, only escort the souls on to the afterlife where the energy continues in the cycle. That's the balance. How does your kind determine what souls to collect?"

She watched him as he stared at the sword, feeling his curiosity, and part of her almost wished he would touch it, if only to see if the sword would reject him. He was an enigma, accepting what she was telling him with little protest, anger or horror. The existence of Reapers in his world explained part of that.

"Officially my kin and I were tasked with hunting down the souls of those condemned to hell. The sinners who had not yet repented. But the definition is very grey, easily twisted..." She met his gaze, wondering how he had managed to draw so much information from her. "I appreciate the fact that you haven't decided that I'm a monster yet, but at the same time, I am quite surprised by that same fact."

If Cain knew he had Valdis' blessing, he would have tried. It was less out of decorum and more out of common sense that the owner would likely intercept any sort of interference with the same tool that was granting her sanctuary from whatever creature forbade her kind their souls. If her soul was even something to call her own; he really didn't know enough to make that call, either. So many worlds and so many laws, and so many people with their own rules and exceptions.

That continued explanation actually pulled a smile from Cain, something wry but genuine all the while. What she was describing sounded like a mix of what were actually two different jobs where Cain was from and he was infinitely closer to the idea of Enforcers than he was to the necessity of Reapers. They were his family, after all, his brother and descendants all recruited after their death where Cain could not follow. "What you are or are not isn't up for anyone to decide but their highest power," Cain said, head tilted in acknowledgment that his reaction must not be very typical for her. "You've already admitted to being against the natural balance of your world and yet there doesn't seem to be any way I can see of it being easily fixed, either. Not fun, and I won't ask if you'd fix that balance if you could.

"All of that said? The more you explain, the more parallels I see which only makes your existence seem more and more unfair. For who, I don't know. Those who hunt down the souls escaping judgment, or their time of death depending on how you see it, are called Enforcers where I'm from," he explained. Still only common knowledge he'd already shared in parts and pieces to others in the City. "They aren't the same as Reapers, they're the subordinates, but what makes it interesting is that they're the souls of dead humans. Enforcers can't exist as soulless beings."

He was smiling, another odd reaction, this man really was strange. Part of her wanted to cut in, but she listened until he was finished speaking. She honestly didn't know if she would fix the balance, because it would mean giving up everything she had gained, her morals, her emotions, her ability to form friendships.

She sighed, "I have not hunted since regaining my soul, all I wanted was to be left alone."

The idea that her existence was unfair to anyone but her was hurtful. Just because the common perception was that she upset the balance, it didn't mean that she actually did.

"My kind are not like your enforcers" she continued, shaking her head, "these humans did not escape judgement, they were judged and found guilty by my species, not some higher power...But being soulless, they also have no emotion or morals, which makes them almost better suited to judgement, at least in their eyes."

It came with Cain's pragmatism. After a point, everyone was responsible not only for themselves but for the lives they touched in their time. Whether or not they allowed themselves to be dragged down by that responsibility was the actual trick to it, one that Cain had discovered long ago. He was curious but not cruel enough to ask if Valdis understood that. She wasn't under interrogation even if Cain continued to ask what questions he could.

"Without morals, there's nothing to judge," said Cain, simply. If someone had no emotions or morals, what exactly was the metric of the weight? Reapers cared not what kind of person lived or died; all that mattered was that they succumbed once their time was run up. If evil people lived longer than good, then so be it. Judgment was not the call of anyone remotely near an earthly plain. "Your kind must have been following orders from somewhere, right?"

She was silent for awhile as she contemplated their conversation. His world seemed less chaotic than her own, with the races sticking to their job and apparently following the orders of some higher power.

"If you believe the demons," she said finally, "Then my kind is supposed to follow their orders, but when we are as strong as their leaders, why would we listen to them?" She sighed, lowering her eyes from his to her sword, "No, my kind mostly follow their instincts...and the orders of their King and Queen."

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ghost by my side, so perfectly clear. [ catch-all ]

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