milliways_bar | (no subject)

"I've been in and out a lot, too. That probably doesn't help either." He smiles a bit, albeit a little halfheartedly. "Anything interesting going on with your end of things?"

"There is another Dark God, the one fom Garion's world," Asar-Suti nods. "He's quite demented; poor fellow. A tortured deity; I wish I could help him. But I suppose he'd got to thaw out a bit before I can try and offer help. Unless he' got some agenda of revenge or something, and attacks Garion."

"Uh oh." Ray winces. "Garion told me about him once, long ago. He sounded pretty dangerous. Does he know to behave himself in public, or is he one of those cackling demented types? And what's he look like? I'd rather not get turned into a chicken for stepping on his shadow or something."

"he's not cackling; his insanity is deeper, and more quiet. He is rather singular, a figure in robes and hood, and a beautiful mask of living metal that moves as his face would, and one single burning eye looking out of that mask."

Asar-Suti shudders with pity. "Underneath the mask, his face is burning - not just burned, burning still. It is something that Garion's orb did to him, long ago. Something is wrong with one of his hands, too, from the way he moves. He apparently can't take another shape, although he was quite vague about the reason; I suppose it must have been the orb as well. His life must be constant pain, stuck in that body - nothing truly interests him, and he has nothing to lose, and feels painfully demented, even while he talks sanely, if complicatedly - with 'thee' and 'thou'. Good thing I am able to do so. I pity him infinitely, but suppose if I offered help, he would just sneer, like he does at almost anything else, except the orb."

"Ow," Ray says, one hand going to his face. "There's a tradition in my world that gods don't heal from injuries, since only mortals were ever designed to live in a world where stuff could hurt them, but the thought of the fire still going on after all that time... ow, ow, ow. I'd be sociopathic too, if I was subject to that kind of thing for that long."

"But gods can appear in any shape; we wear them as humans wear clothes," Asar-Suti says, using the metaphor from Tolkien. "Something must have got Kal Torak stuck in that injured shape. I wish I could do something to help him - but not yet. Let this place work on him, and then I will find something to help him. We have so many powerful deities and healers here, there must be something we can do for him. Especially if Garion was helping."

He shrugs. "If he tries anything on, he is toast, of course - I promised Barry I would help if it was necessary to fight Kal Torak. But I hope it won't be necessary."

Ray nods. "It's like Egon said when we had to get rid of Gozer- 'it's whatever it wants to be', were his exact words. Good luck with this Kal Torak guy, though. I think I'll probably stay away from him. No offense, but if someone with that level of psychological dysfunction found out about my career choice and track record I think I'd wind up smeared across a couple of different dimensions faster than you could say 'sheep'. Illyria was upset enough when she found out, although admittedly I could've been a lot more tactful."

"Well, who knows, he might end up just as safe as I am; this place does things to people, even Dark Gods. It would be very interesting to have another one around, in fact."

Asar-Suti shrugs. "Who is Illyria, though?"

"Oh, you haven't seen her? She's blue." Ray smiles. "She's about my height, and she's got blue hair and a blue cast to her skin and stuff. Used to be some kind of god-king of the Old Ones- the same order of being as Great Cthulhu, though he was more powerful than her. She's currently stuck in a human body for reasons I don't quite understand. I don't think she has much in the way of godly powers while she's here, but she's a little cranky and could probably do with some respectful company."

"Oh, I will have to meet her!" Asar-Suti exclaims. "A Dark Goddess, and one that is not obviously insane; that will be interesting. So I won't be the only one here any more even if - if poor Kal Torak doesn't work out."

Ray nods. "She really doesn't like me, and I guess I can't blame her- like I said, tactless. But I think you two would probably get along."

"A Dark Goddess..." Asar-Suti muses. "Perhaps she'll understand that you won't harm us if I explain to her. Erm, you mentioned some called Culloo, though? What is that?"

Another Dark God yet? My, but they were dropping left and right, all of a sudden.

"Cthulhu. He's not here," Ray hastens to assure Sooty. "He, um... he's a nasty bugger who tends to drive men mad just by his physical appearance, if they look too long. "The devour-all-the-humans kind of dark god. Looks like Godzilla wearing an octopus hat, if you pull out of it without going bugnuts. We, uh, kind of had to fight him to a standstill and dispel his physical form in one of the worlds I got stuck in. Illyria didn't like hearing about that and I really shouldn't have talked about it in front of her. I sort of wanted to avoid having her think I was as easy to kill as a dime store goldfish, is my only real excuse."

"Yes, I can see how she would have taken that for a veiled threat," ASaar-Suti says, grinning.

Then, he shook his head sadly at the memory how Kal Torak had ignored all his own veiled threats. That one was going to require work, from somebody, one way or another.

"I didn't mean it to," Ray says, a hint of the pathetic creeping into his tone. "I just... didn't think, that's all."

"She might understand if I tell her so," Asar-Suti says, with a grin.

"So - what else is new?"

Ray thinks for a bit.

"The most important thing is that poor Naraht is sick. He came to my world to help us with a disaster that was going on, and picked up some kind of illness while we were there. Raven says there's power in the illness, but he hasn't figured out what kind yet- he's only managed to slow it down."

"That sounds bad - poor Naraht!" Asar-Suti says, his throat sounding very rough as he says the Horta's name.

"All those things happening to him - first human female shape, now a weird illness. What are you going to do about it?"

He'd offer to help, but he fears Naraht might still harbour resentments from when the purple deity was very insensitive to the poor shape-shifted silicon life form.

"Well, like I said, we got Raven involved," Ray says. "There's no real medical information on Hortas, since they don't usually get sick. Naraht's in the cells at the moment in case he's infectious towards other silicon-based lifeforms- besides, Baby's able to customize to his needs, and his room isn't. We're trying to keep him warm and fed and stuff until we figure out what to do."

"Is there anybody else from his world?" Asar-Suti asks. "Have you asked around for that?"

"Yeah, I did," Ray says gloomily. "The only one with medical knowledge of his species is from a point in time before Naraht was even old enough to join Starfleet, and I haven't seen Commander Data since all of this began."

"So, what are you going to do?" Asar-Suti asks. There would have to be something, would there? "Will somebody have to go to Naraht's world to find out?"

"Maybe," Ray says. "Maybe Raven will have to do something. I might have to go back to my world for reference material or a sample of the stuff he ingested or something. I don't know." He pushes at his face with both hands. "I don't know."

"Do you know what it was that he swallowed?" Asar-Suti asks. What might a silicon life form get food poisoning from? Elderly cement?

"He ate his way through a New York City street, a lot of dirt, some wood chips- that was an accident- some fill, and a bunch of rocks under Central Park that were being used to dam up the flow of a synthetic lubricant that got him drunker than I've ever seen anyone. At first he thought this was all just a hangover."