The Observatory

What was once ruins was something else, repairs enacted, debris removed. The chamber was spartanly furnished, little more than a few chairs scattered about. Various documents and maps, pilfered from different cities of Terra, tacked against the walls. No pattern to their placement, the random chaos making the eye wander in confusion.

And seated in the center of the room, staring at these pages, some stained with age, others fresh, was Messor, draconic eyes flickering through the unorganized mess, the track of his mind providing the links. An immortal returned to this world, stained by experience.

A literal metaphor, now.

Kianna appaered in the doorway, arching her brow briefly as she looked over the maps and documents adorning the walls. She couldn't seem to place any sense of order to Messor's madness, and so she chose not to try.

"The girl, Host, was released from Aschen custody years ago. There's no record of any further involvement with the child."

Straight to the point.

Messor betrayed nothing of his feelings as he rose, stepping around his chair to look at Kianna. "One would suspect a curio, discarded past its shine."

As the woman chose not to comment on his collection, neither did he. Some of what he had gathered was not even written in a human language, after all, and some maps depicted nothing of the realms that existed. His web was growing, however. Reconstructing pieces of past time. A question, that needed an answer.

"I've put more thought into you, Aschen. That familiar sense might have nothing to do with what eyes percieved." Nostrils flared again, a chilling smile crossing Messor's face.

"Is that so?" Kianna asked.

She leaned lightly against the doorframe, watching Messor with a carefully guarded expression. He was unstable, and from the look of things not entirely in his right mind. That made him dangerous, and so she remained cautious in his presence.

"Yes." Messor tilted his head to the side, vanishing without the usual ripple.

To stand between her and the door. The smile on his face acquired fangs, lips curling back. "Tell me, does she see more clearly now?"

Gauntlets keened softly as he drew forth his claws, the talons sparks as he drew edges against each other. Contrary to appearance, the war within him was no more. The Dark had forced this change, else he would be no more than just another beast, possibly even a rival to the throne at this point. Messor's sanity, on the other hand, was still suspect. A singular obsession, his answer was. Yet for all that, sometimes the need for distraction was...necessary.

"Or is she still as lost as she ever was?"

Kianna turned to face Messor, her back pressed against the doorframe as he loomed closer. She was cautious, but made no move to provoke the unstable entity. She leaned back against the frame, keeping her posture relaxed in an amiable display of passiveness at the hostility he was exuding.

"I told you, there are no records of any further involvement with the child. She was released from Aschen custody years ago," Kianna reminded him.

Her eyes glanced towards his clawed hands briefly, while that light smile played at the corner of her lips once more.

"I wasn't speaking of Host anymore, Aschen." Messor made no movement, but then again, he didn't need to. His natural speed was simply breathtaking, and thus far, he'd seen no reason to augment it. Yet.

"No, this friend is a woman. Blind, if my hints weren't enough for you." These last words had a tinge of growl to them, the draconean blood stirred awake. Appropriately enough, it was the disembodied entity's crooning that spoke the name.

Whisssspeeer."

"Whisper?"

That was not a name she expected to hear out of him. It didn't shake her though, and she remained calm and collected under his questioning.

"What do you want with the girl?" Kianna asked. "She's a terrorist."

"Hah. Hahah." Laughter was likely the least expected sound to hear from Messor's throat, yet there it was, no doubt further cementing the thought of his apparent insanity. He stepped from the door frame, once more entering the place he had claimed, this monument atop a ruin. And then, the noise simply stopped.

"Don't make me laugh. If Whisper is a terrorist, you know what that makes me?" Claw reached up, slipping underneath blindfold and flicking outward. Red silk parted, sliding from his face to the floor. Glancing back, the lone eye visible was bizarre.

Black sclera, white slitted pupil. A dragon's eye in reverse. "One of the longest free mass murderers of Terra. Host was my charge and my friend. I killed your people to keep her from you and still they stole her from me."

"And now an Aschen comes to me, the faint scent of Whisper on her robe. Another friend? I don't think so."

The lizard regard was all the more chilling as cold, rational malice bled into sight within it. "Where is she?"

"She's in our custody," Kianna replied. "She has a great deal to answer for. The Terran's want her as well, but the Emperor wishes she be tried for her crimes on Langara."

Kianna moved away from the door-frame and stepped inside the room after Messor.

"It would be best if you simply forgot the girl."

She approached the table Messor had been studying at earlier, curiously shifting one of the documents about to get a look at it, some hint of what it was Messor was doing here.

The document in question was a supposed witness report of a man wielding a scythe. A woodcut accompanied the page, the depiction showing the man as robed, yet one hand mangled and scarred.

The content itself was rather obscure and led nowhere, seeming to be mad ramblings of one or another. Messor had strode closer to Kianna, yet silently. A hand etched around her, claws curling towards her face but halting a few inches away. The hybrid's whispered.

"I never forget, Aschen. And if she dies, know this. You are always within my reach."

Talons retracted, Messor moving away. What drove him was no clearer than it ever was. But whatever Kianna might think of his threat, it was all very real. Silvertongue had, in the end, succeeded brilliantly. The Dark had grown.

And it was reluctance to release its embrace.

Kianna dropped the document back onto the table before the gleam of his claws so close to her face drew her gaze. She shifted her head to the side, to look at Messor out of the corner of her eye as he whispered to her. The movement left her throat exposed to his menacing gesture, but her expression was fierce and full of mischief, not fear.

As he withdrew his hand she adjusted her cowl and moved to depart the room. She paused in the doorway and cast him one last look.

"I look forward to our meeting again," Kianna offered in parting before she was gone from the room.

Eyes slowly opening, stirring the dust that had settled on the figure in their stillness. Months of dormancy, of dwelling on memories, examining emotions, critical choices. Evaluating the self, and more. Plans, plotting. There had been times of great anger, yet with a creak, the figure rose from the chair in the center of the room. Looking once more at the maps, the documents, pictures plastered to every wall of this barely repaired ruin.

Gaze traveling downward, the watcher perceived his own hands, scaled talons meant for ripping, slashing, and little else. His self examination drew a narrowed look, as what was seen was not as remembered.

He had changed.

A growl sounded from his throat, with a strange gesture a retort's stand and an iron bowl lazily rolled through the air toward him. These he took, settling them on the floor before him. Before he continued, he turned, sweeping out his hands against the floor in either direction. Then he turned. With grating screeches, furrows burrowed into the ground, the motion of their paths twisting to link them together. A moment later, he was complete in this task, creating his circle. In other lives, this would have drawn attention, for as he returned his attention to the vessel before him, he murmured. Glyphs appeared within the scattered threads of the circle, gleaming on the floor with an eerie brilliance.

Blood held power, and so with a twist and minor prick, he rolled a drop of his own into the bowl, directly in its center. Still murmuring the cant of the summoner, he reached for the image and name of the one he sought within his mind, holding it there. A new glyph appeared, this under the bowl's base.

For a moment, he paused, debating his own wisdom in this, the calling of ascended beings. What might the one he was poised to call say, being reminded that a being such as he remained on this plane? Once blood of angel, soul of demon. Now reincarnated, death stolen to place him in the form of rage and cold intellect incarnate. Draconic, and elven.

With a snarl twisting his face he released his power, the final glyph erupting with white light, the arc of lightning striking the base, heat boiling the drop of blood into ash and smoke in an instant. This released power he grasped, sending his resounding call through the planes.

Taima. To me, for I summon you.

With the echoes fading in his mind, Messor, once guardian, harbinger, friend, enemy, waited.

Now not all gods are inclined to appearing at request, but Taima was not as many gods. Unlike those born into their station, or those who took their crowns through the worship of mortals, Taima had earned her place among the gods through her valor and unwavering devotion both to Terra, and to Ahuma, the patron deity of the draconian people.

Perhaps it was Messor's draconic nature that drew Taima to him on this day - though surely one of Taima's station would know that Messor was not born into his current state of being. Perhaps it was echoes of a time past that drew her eye - a time when they stood as enemies. Perhaps it was simply a thread of mortality that still clung to her, and the willingness to answer those who call to her, those who might have need of her. It was perhaps this very same thread of mortality that kept her from attaining true godhood, but one could only speculate into what it was that made a god a god.

As the echoes faded from Messor's mind they were replaced by the deafening crack of thunder as a bolt of lighting struck the observatory. The window shattered beneath the concussive sound and littered the floor with broken glass as an arc of lightning found entry via the open window where it struck the floor within. As the flash of light cleared, a looming warrior knelt in its wake atop the scorched rock with her halberd embedded into the cracked stone.

Though humanoid in form, her features were unmistakably draconic in nature, and her face was the visage of a dragon snout complete with a mouthful of vicious looking fangs and bony protrusions. In place of skin she had scales, crimson red. Her startling visage did little to abate the sense of divinity that permeated her body though. Armored head to foot, she had the look of a warrior, a champion. Raising her gaze she looked upon Messor before pulling her halberd free of the stone floor and rising.

"You who were once foe, why have you called for me?" she asked. Her voice was a deep growl, rough and gravely.

It had been many years since the days of the Orsa of Terminus, many years since she and Messor had stood as enemies - but years oft did little to ease such memories. Taima had played hand in casting Nyx down during the recovery of Elante from her grasp and Messor had stood among those who had played part in Whisper's fall which in turn led to the death of Taima's charge, Dallas Reiger.

His own features were distinctly reptilian, faintly gleaming scales of dull grey armoring his figure in its entire. Tail lashing behind him as he rose, his wings stretched slightly for a moment before settling against his back. Molten red was the hue of his eye as his lips peeled back in a sneer, the sight of a once foe bringing a rise of remembered rage.

For a moment, he merely watched the ascended demigod. Then Messor crossed his arms before him, leaning back on double jointed legs. "Enmity past, and believe me, Taima, that I have suffered enough retribution for what occurred in those days. Not one of my companions is left at my side, so save your breath if you wish to chastise me."

Devoid of emotion, his voice cut a clear tenor, yet there were undercurrents of a growl. He turned for a moment, casting his gaze around the room once again, lips curling back. He had his answer, at last, no help to these.

The remnants of a life lived too long.

Glancing back, his regard was one of a predator. "I called you to simply inform you I am no longer a dormant player. What you deified do for the sake of your balance, I will deal with. Those these mortals can no longer handle are now my prey, and I would warn you to stay out of my way."

Claws unfurling, he gestured about the observatory, his voice rising. "This is all that remains, mere evidence of this life I've lived, and now I possess nothing. Purpose has abandoned me, and so I find purpose."

"It is not for me to chastise or to judge the weight of ones actions in life," Taima told Messor. "Nor is it for me to interfere with the free-will that reigns within Midgard. The time for me to champion Terra has come and gone," she continued. "That mantle was handed on when I passed from this world."

"Your warning falls on deaf ears - for too often the gods do not heed the voices of those within Midgard. This world is for mortals to shape, and though you may not think it, your place is here among these mortals. For all of your power, and your long life, true immortality yet eludes you. It was only by the hand of another that you draw breath once more."

Taima looked to the observatory as Messor gestured to their surroundings, and her eyes seemed to soften to what might have been a smile - had such an expression been possible upon her draconian visage.

"You are mistaken. Purpose does not abandon us, we abandon it. To reclaim it, all one needs do is recall the spirit that lay beneath it all. That spirit is immortal, it is indomitable and it will never die."

There was a rumble of thunder outside as Taima offered an open palm to Messor. Within her scaly hand was nestled an amber stone gripped within the talons of a dragon.

"The Stone of Visions," Taima explained. "It served me well in life, perhaps it too will serve you now."

Taima's offering drew a narrowing of eyes from the hybrid, lips curling back in a sneer. Yet for the show of distate, he stepped closer and reached forth with a claw. Messor paused, however, studying Taima far more closely.

He sensed no animosity, no enmity, yet he knew that he bled anger and darkness like a vapor. His rage seemed less than nothing in the face of this demigod, and it aggravated and confused him all at once. He words he flung away, for he knew otherwise. All those he'd watched over the millennia, and either time had taken them, or they had simply left the guardian behind. He had made of himself a shield, and now that shield was discarded. He had chosen this, a new course.

And he took the Stone anyways. "Visions. So another artifact of seeing the ever changeable future."

Messor snorted, withdrawing his arm to study the stone more closely, turning it in long talons. It brought back memories of the last artifact he had held. And with the memories, came once anew the pain, dulled as it was. He shook his head, sighing. "And how, precisely, will this shiny pebble aid me?"

"The future, the present, and the past," Taima replied. "The stone shows its bearer many things, but how it will aid you in your path is something that even I cannot know," she explained.

As her hand fell away a sense of vertigo hit Messor and the observatory faded from his perception only to be replaced by events already gone and past.

He was standing atop a rooftop and all around him chaos tore through Wing City. Cyborg abominations threw themselves against hastily erected blockades that the defenders of the city used to try and stem the flood, and the roar of engines and the whirring pulse of helicopters filled the air in an effort to lend air-support to the battles below. Overhead a Reverence loomed as for a time anyways even former enemies put aside differences to face a common enemy.

It wasn't this that drew Messor's attention though. It was the sensation of lustful glee that filled him and the words that snaked their way free of his lips.

”Denizens of Ásgarðr, Be wary.”

In those moments, he wasn't just observing the speaker. He was the speaker. As the vision began to fade from his mind's eye his sense of self separated from the speaker atop the roof, and for a moment the face of Hatchet hung before him before that too was gone.

With his senses returned to him, Messor would find himself alone in the observatory with no sign of Taima remaining - and only the stone of visions in hand to suggest she had ever been there at all.

A lip curled upwards, the effect unsettling in what was to Messor a wry smile. "One would almost think the gods dare play the games of manipulation with me. If so..."

Holding a talon at his side as he banished the stone into a pocket dimension wrought by his magicks, electricity roiled in arcs from his palm, molten metal rolling from his scaled hide to stretch in the air. Within seconds, he lifted a heavy, triple bladed scythe in hand, screaming faces smoothly etched into its surface. Whispers kissed the air, their echoing voice the hiss of a serpent.

Malevolence crooned. "Than we ssshall play along. For now."

The whip crack of thunder, the blinding flash of white light, and a detonation ripped apart the repaired interior of the observatory, burning to ash the remnant documents of a life no longer lived. A dwelling became once again a ruin, and the smoking hole in the ceiling was the only testament to the passing of its occupant. As a storm raged into being overhead and began to roll inexorably away, the hybrid watched through eyes of lightning from the skies, grimly pleased to set about the task of bringing to heel a monster.

I come, dear Hatchet, for you. Distract this one for a time, if you will. After all, it makes this game all the more pleasurable.