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Kalokin approached quietly... which, for him, meant in absolute silence. Not a blade of grass bent beneath his coils nor did a single breath of air sigh to the side. He took that silence and wrapped it around him like a cape, stretching it further and further until it swallowed the sounds of the mid-afternoon forest. Khaesho and Shou talked for a few moments more before they noticed the lack of noise so absolute that it weighed upon their hearts like iron. The easy smile Shou had inspired in the Serpent dropped like a stone when he saw the deity over Shou's shoulder. Seeing the merriment plummet from his features, she turned to look, only to be likewise shocked by what she saw.

Physically, she saw Kalokin. He was longer than Khaesho, longer and thinner, with scales as deep as the sun-lit ocean and filled with just as many mysteries. His fingers were thin and nimble, the kind of fingers that belonged on a piano... or perhaps delicately clutching a lock pick. His tail twitched every so often, as he lay there... a movement that she happened to know wasn't accidental; the seemingly uncontrolled movement, as if his tail were questing through the air for something, was deliberate. It was a part of his disguise, for she realized now how that was all his manifestation really was. A disguise; a mask to hide himself in, to lose himself in. A character to play the part until he forgot that he was just an actor on the stage.

It wasn't something she'd known before... she'd known that he was ethereal, a being of spirit, and she'd known that the body he created was more puppet than life, but she'd not yet put two and two together.

When Kalokin had overloaded her ability to control magic, it had, in both form and function, been quite comparable to overinflating a water balloon. Her magic had been the water, her mind, a thin rubber shell around it. With the shell gone, she could freely reach out and affect the world. Not only that, she gained the ability to feel the world with magic... Enthralled by the "sight" before her, she closed her eyes to focus better. She could feel the weight and weft of the world around her... blades of grass were replaced by ghostly threads. Trees were mere suggestions of shape and form. Myriad animals around her gleamed like dull embers... almost nonexistent. She saw Khaesho in a wireframe of fire. Heat worked through his body in a complicated latticework matched only by the blood vessels that guided it. Khaesho turned to her and his face shifted slightly; was it a smile? A sneer? It was hard to tell like this...

"It's the way I view the world. Without a vessel... without pouring all my essence into a single form that I'd only be able to hold together for a few minutes... I get nothing else... I can't hear, can't see colors, can't feel the warmth of a lover's embrace, can't learn the surprises of tasting new food or feel the peace of my favorite homemade cooking. You get nothing... and for the longest time, I didn't know there was anything more to the world."

Her gaze slid back around to Kalokin as she heard his voice. Her newfound sight caused her to shudder in a mixture of awe and anxiety; On the surface, Kalokin appeared similar to his manifestation. Blue energy the exact color of his scales wrapped him in a paper thin shell that -exactly- matched the various contours of his body. But beneath that...

"Kalokin... what... what are you...?"

He shrugged, and it looked like the blue magic tugged on the mask to make it move.

"I'm nothing... inconsequential. I think your real question is, what spirit invaded your mind?"

Beneath the calm blue shell was a roiling ocean of evil. It appeared as a black void visible only as it contoured against itself, writhing within the prison that was a calm, happy mask. Spikes sprouted from it occasionally, attempting to puncture his shell, but none succeeded. Undirected malice fought with petty selfishness and untamed hatred in a vile, black knot that raged and roiled more viciously as Shou continued to stare. Fear turned to horror as a particularly jagged spike tore through Kalokin's eye and shot towards her with blinding speed. Faster than she could register what was happening, it swallowed her whole.

Panic set in then. She was blind and empty and surrounded and the shock of it forced her eyes open. Khaesho's scales pressed tight against her, but they rumbled with a noise she'd never heard before. She'd heard him hiss with all kinds of emotion, surprise at the forefront... but she'd never heard him hiss with as much pure, undiluted loathing as he did now.

Kalokin's manifestation had rich black eyes with a few scattered streaks of blue, but the eye that had cracked open was a white more pure than the freshly fallen snow, more perfect than freshly knitted wool, and more uniform than an untouched canvas. If was a precise shade of carefully crafted white that reflected every individual photon of light, because not even the slightest scrap of luminescence would ever escape the pit she'd just witnessed if it happened to fall in. Kalokin's mouth opened and he made an odd sound as if he were choking, then he peeled back on the exact same way that Khaesho had peeled out of a skin. The cheerful, playful blue deity she'd known was peeled off to reveal a stranger with scales like ink and muscles like hard obsidian. The specter before her had a visage so unyielding and dominant that it took Shou several moments to realize she was looking at a woman.

The odd figure shuffled her coils and shrank slightly, compacting until she was thinner than Kalokin and shorter than Shelandra. Her body was a uniform matte black, both belly and backside, but her arms faded outwards towards her fingertips, giving the appearance that she wore gloves made from ashes. Tension strained the air with a palpable force that only increased as Khaesho's hiss gained several layers of venom and disdain. Shou's breath caught in her throat as the black snake... shuffled her coils into a more comfortable position.

Something itched at the back of her mind... like something she knew she'd forgotten. It itched again, then received a gentle kick that she suddenly doubted came from within her own mind. Something in the face, something in the form... in a flash of recognition, she wrapped her arms around Khaesho and broke the curse-laden air with a slightly more polite speech.

"Don't worry Khaesho... we've met before."

A brief smile lit the stranger's face, and her scales shimmered. For a few moments, she was a rattlesnake, almost unrecognizable now that she wasn't painted with her own blood and decorated with exposed bits of her own bones. She had the same face though, and when she spoke, she had the same voice. It was androgynously low, somehow fitting the hard-looking creature before them. The shimmer ended, and she was once again dark as the void between stars. Her eyes were pale and blank, blind from cataracts... or from a lack of will to see. She was beautiful, in a haunting way. There was an elegance about her, a composure that seemed at direct contrast to the horrors contained within. She might have been a perfect nightmare, but she dressed as a daydream.

"For a moment, I wasn't sure you'd recognize me... Kalokin insisted it was better you not know..."

Her voice was soft and smooth, with an elegant tongue that pronounced each syllable and consonant with clarity that many native speakers failed to reproduce.

"And I was right you know... it would have been too much at the time... That's why you agreed with me..."

A soft whisper danced along the air in Kalokin's unmistakable cadence... but it lacked something. It lacked mirth, or smug happiness, or sorrow... it was empty. She'd heard machines muster more emotion. A glance to the side revealed Kalokin exactly the way she'd seen him... nothing more than a snakeskin. His head and arms appeared solid, but from the collarbone down, his body was split open and spread wide, a two dimensional sheet of energy that fluttered with the wind.

"Of course you were right Kalokin... you always are... Khaesho, stop that hissing. The past is buried in the sands."

"My left cock it is! You-"

Khaesho's voice very suddenly stopped working as Kalokin casually reached through the air and squeezed directly into his vocal chords.

"Your history is well known, my friend... but Shou has asked many times to know the truth... she has a right to the truth, now that the time is right. You may talk... once Nikolak is finished."

He whispered the name but it reverberated through the air. Khaesho flexed with tension, holding... or perhaps protecting... Shou with his well-known grip. The men Shou loved glared at each other, and she got the feeling each communicated an entire conversation in just that moment before Khaesho relaxed enough for her to clamber free and step closer to the god she had thought she knew.

"Kalokin said your name was... Nikolak?" Her voice was twisted with that confusion, because this was her rattlesnake - except she wasn't. She was something else. And so was Kalokin. At least, he was more than the deity he'd painted himself as.

"His name spelt backwards... or rather, mine spelled backwards is his. He was to be my antithesis, my greatest foil... he was to control me when I couldn't control myself."

"Ma'am... I'd ask questions, but... I don't even know where to begin."

"Then let me tell you a story. A story of gods and mortals, of betrayal and loss... the story of how my failure saved your world.

She snapped her fingers and they stood together on a black plain, surrounded by an infinite void. A cautious toe still felt dirt beneath her feet though... an illusion then, but an illusion that gained credence as Nikolak kept painting. She faded into the backdrop, replaced by the world she recreated... a vast desert and a grand civilization that sprawled within. Her voice narrated the scene as it played out miles beneath them.

"We do not know, how the world started... indeed, much of what I tell you now, I learned from others. For as long as we have known, there have been Deserts, with Naga to fill them. Your world had mountains and forests and rivers, and different breeds of Naga to suit them all, but the desert was the heart of their world. They were then as they are now; simple. Peaceful. Content. Happy to love one-another and grateful to share of what they had, so long as it was earned through honest work. In those days though, they worshiped a single god, god of the sun and the sand. He had a name then, but his name is long lost to the flow of time. All that we know is that he loved the Naga, and that his hand protected them. His wisdom guided their discoveries and his hand stymied the sandstorms that would otherwise have plagued them. They had peace, prosperity, and relative comfort... until they learned that their god was not alone in the heavens... nor was he without enemies."

The legendary vast deserts of the west stretched out farther than the eye could see. She raised a town beneath them, baked clay buildings jutting from the ground like so many round teeth. An impossibly large snake with soft brown scales mottled in a chaotic pattern circled the entirety of the city, holding his precious devout safe. The dull, brown sand was brightened streaks of color that had to be individual Naga.

"The Naga did not know where They came from. The Naga did not know who They were. The Naga did not know what They wanted. All they knew was that four demons of unholy strength had come to play havoc with their peaceful lives."

The sun tilted towards sunset before it was eclipsed as four truly terrifying serpents bore down on the town. None were as big as the first, but each was differnt, each unique in its horror.

One in the back was the color of molten rock and liquid fury. "He was Hatred, and he instilled passion and violence in the peaceful Naga."

One to the left was the color of bleached bones, skulls picked clean by the desert sands. "He was Despair, and he taught them sadness and hopelessness."

One to the right was the color of rot, a sickly mottled green. "He was Anguish, and he gave them suffering and regret."

As she spoke, each serpent gained definition and detail, but Nikolak paused before she described their leader. Khaesho knew parts of this story, but never the whole tale. He hadn't been ready to hear it... he still wouldn't be, if not for the wolf he was wrapped around.

The leader remained nothing but a silhouette, until Nikolak's voice resumed, much quieter than it had been. "Their leader was darker than black, her scales a void that devoured light like the eternity between the stars."

Nikolak took her place at the head of the unholy crusade, but she looked different then. Her scales then were dark as they were now, but it was her eyes caught Shou's attention. Looking into those eyes, she saw a void like what she'd seen beneath Nikolak's mask. More than just devouring light, that void devoured souls, and it called to her. It tugged at her mind, pulling not with force, but with a tantalizing yearning that eclipsed all else. It was the call of the void, and it commanded her. Step forwards. Come to an end. Learn true peace. That void called to her, pulling her forwards, coaxing the light from her eyes until Nikolak looked away.

"Her name was Fear. She led the other three, leaving panic and insanity in her wake."

Shou bit her tongue with surprise when her mind cleared, hard enough to taste blood. The compulsion she'd felt was alarmingly similar to what had pulled her up the mountain just a few short days ago. Shock and interest warred within her, and interest won. Here was a legend that had gone untold for who knew how many hundreds, if not thousands of years. She already knew she wanted to immortalize it in a painting, but to do that, she needed to see every detail. For now, she kept her voice to herself and nursed her injured tongue, content to soak her eyes in the landscape before her, to fill her soul with the abstract portrayal of the past.

Khaesho, for his part, was equally surprised, but for different reasons. He'd known the truth about Nikolak's character for a long time, but having her story spread out beneath him like a map... it drew from him a curiosity despite the repulsion he felt. This was hidden knowledge, kept only to the "gods" he worshipped, and neither Kalokin nor Nikolak gave secrets lightly.

"We were... different back then. Primal. Feral. I remember almost nothing of that time myself... all I remember is my own pain, and that I caused pain ten thousand fold in an effort to ease it. The lonely god did his best to protect his people, but our combined might was too much, and we forced him from the land. He fled, far from the deserts, abandoning his faithful to save his own existence; not out of cowardice, but out of desperation, for he knew that if he fell, the world would succumb to an eternity of evil."

The brown snake of sand rapidly vanished into the distance, and the four demons fell in and, laughing as they circled the city. Time lapsed as eons passed in seconds, and the proud city fell into collapse and ruin. The people within were gaunt and haunted; there was no happiness for them. There was no joy. There was nothing but sorrow and pain and bitter survival.

"They lost much during these dark ages; art, tradition, even the remembrance of their loving god was wiped from existence. Over time, the cruel rose and the good were put down, until kindness was removed from their souls. Thousands of years passed, and our dark reign went unchallenged... I knew he was not gone forever, but in my victory, I grew proud and careless. While we grew fat feeding off of the souls of the subjugated, he was preparing to take back the nation he had once protected. Rumors began to trickle in from the eastern cities of strange creatures, animals that walked on two legs and spoke in their own harsh, guttural tongue. We ignored such rumors, confident in our strength, but one among us was curious. Hatred, the youngest, left our desert palaces to travel far, curious to see if the world we had razed to ashes had borne new life. If such a thing had happened, he could spark a war between the two peoples and grow stronger yet on the hatred strewn from the conflict..."

They flew, high and fast over seemingly endless sands until the sands faded into soft plains, plains into forests, forests into stark mountains. Past these mountains, they found Hatred cackling gleefully, as he overlooked the simple people below him. A shadow of white sand rose behind him, unseen and unnoticed.

"He arrived in a land of forests and mountains, fields and grasses, and for some time, he simply wandered, gasping at this world that was entirely different from what he knew. He found the beginnings of a civilization, bipeds building communities of wooden huts and rough farmlands, and was instantly enthralled with the discovery of new playthings. In his excitement, he failed to notice the Sand looming behind him. The lonely god had created a new people, and he would protect them where he had failed his Naga."

The lonely god, now a Bipedal wolf made from churning sand of all colors, struck with all the fury of a desert sandstorm. With one fell blow, he shattered Hatred down to the seed of his soul. They saw there, a tiny flickering ember wrapped in darkness with an inner light that struggled to break free.

"The Sand had fled from them earlier because he had recognized within each them a seed of divinity, of real, actual godhood just like the one he kept at the core of his soul. With Hatred crippled, he sought, and eventually found a way to purify that seed, to restore the corrupted soul to its former sheen."

Black shattered around the seed, revealing the molten core beneath. Fire flowed outwards, shifting and cooling into gleaming metal plates of copper. Shou recognized Shelandra now, albeit an unusually masculine Shelandra, coiled on the valley floor, stretching as if awakening from a deep sleep.

"He had little memory of what had occurred... He remembered being divine, god of fire, and he remembered losing a ferocious battle against three vicious demons, but the thousands of years afterwards were a dream, swiftly fading in his mind. The god of the sand told him of a great evil that had befallen his land, the same evil that had corrupted him. It took but a mention of the demons who attacked his people to send Fire blazing off like a comet towards the desert, Sand close at his heels."

A twin streak of earth and flame streaked across the noon sky to shatter the throne the demons had built for themselves. Fire was young, and newly reborn, but hell itself could not reckon with the fury of a parent whose children had been attacked. The Hatred that once defined him consumed him still, but mixed through it was a righteous fire, a burning need to right past wrongs. When they hit the sand, the ground shook with their impact, tumbling buildings to the ground in a mighty quake.

"Fire attacked Fear with such all the fervor and malice he'd once inspired, achieving a holy bloodlust that could only be sated by victory. So vicious was his assault that Fear, once stronger that the ember god, fell back immediately, unable to even hold her ground beneath the onslaught. It bought Sand just enough time to grab hold Despair and Anguish and wring the misery from them. Mere shades against Fear and Sand's power, they collapsed, quickly rent down to their cores by Sand's power. Fear, ever selfish, abandoned them to their fate. They'd held no meaning to her... they were toys, and they'd apparently outlived their use."

All was as she told. The snake of bones and the snake of rot fell, and as Fear vanished over the horizon, they slowly shifted into two Naga Shou didn't recognize... one green, massively large and made from unyielding stone, the other a shock of purple lightning that never stopped moving.

"His gambit had succeeded... Sand had restored the three to their former glory. Reborn into new souls, they chose new names. If they had names previously, they could not remember; so, they became the three deities most well known in Naga culture: Shelandra, Fire and Passion; Ghozamel, Gravity and Pride; and Bhalxash, Lightning and Ecstasy. They rejoiced in their renewed life, but Sand held no joy in his heart. His Naga were a twisted race, crippled by greed and racked with disease. Fear would return, and he knew not what he might do against her."

Nikolak's voice cracked halfway through. Shame tied her throat in knots, shame Khaesho hadn't seen until this moment. He'd never seen her weak before. He didn't think she had the capacity for it. He knew what she was, but he'd not been told this story... not like this.

"I could not be saved, for I had no soul to purify. I was no deity... there wasn't a drop of happiness in all my spirit. Not a single memory of anything but suffering... except for one... one memory of happiness that I killed billions to try to restore... I remember the peace... the silence... I just wanted it to be silent again."

Nikolak lost the semblance of composure she'd had and fell to sobbing. Kalokin drifted over and wrapped over her like a warm blanket, complete with the absolute lack of emotion most blankets show.

"Shall I finish the telling for you?"

She coughed softly before clutching at him and pulling him tight around her. The illusions returned, and her voice was almost as strong as it had been.

"N-no... I am strong enough to tell of my own sins..." Her 'mask' quivered, threatening to fall apart, but Kalokin squeezed a little tighter and held her together. "They... my influence had been widely cast... and by the time Sand returned to his desert, most naga were evil enough to worship me... evil enough to enjoy the mayhem I'd brought... those that would not willingly choose redemption had to die. The three renewed gods and the one ancient raised an army of bipedals and fought a long, bloody war just to try and get to me... and they lost..."

Vast armies marched across the sands, but a black streak bolted ahead of the Naga force. It dove face first into the assembled ranks of the bipedals, spreading blood and death where it went. Morale collapsed as terror shocked through the ranks. Wicked blades adorned her fingers, metal reinforcements protected her fangs, a jagged knife tipped her tail, and her girth was armored with spikes. Every part of her body was a weapon, and she killed, and killed, and killed.

"The gods were newly reborn... Now that I was expecting battle, they could not hope to defeat me. Alone, I had defeated each in the height of their glory. Now, they were like weak hatchlings... and Sand had spent too much strength renewing them. They could not fight me, and their pawns could not either... until Sand did something that none of us expected."

In the midst of the tumult of battle, the Lonely god poured forth what remained of his might into the largest form he could. All his strength fit into a small serpent no longer than Fear's arm. Nevertheless, he slithered forwards to combat her, to fight her evil like he should have long ago... she laughed, and paused to converse with him, but mirth turned to confusion.

"He... offered himself as sacrifice. He offered the entirety of his being, spirit, soul, and seed, in trade for his people's freedom. I couldn't comprehend why he was willing to die for them... but it didn't matter. I was sure they'd not survive without him, I could regain my lieutenants and leave. I got what I thought I'd wanted... but he was the sun, an unending source of light. I was the nightmare, a bottomless void of sorrow. He gambled that his seed would be enough to purify me... that even if he died, his divinity would heal me... and he was right."

Fear's inky black scales faded... first to ash... then to sand brown... then back to a black not quite as deep as it had been.

"He was too weak to fully purify me. I gained a conscience, but kept the loathing. I gained the capacity to feel emotion, but retained the desire for evil. I gained his regret, but my spirit still yearned for destruction. I hungered for the lovely, peaceful silence even as his seed sought the chaos that is life."

They saw her coiled up in an ocean of blood soaked sand. The three deities looked down at the one they had once called master... One looked with sorrow. One looked with contempt. One looked with fury. For a moment, it seemed that they might seek vengeance for her destroying their worlds... but they simply turned and slithered away.

"Do you have any idea what that feels like? To have emotions not your own? To hold shame for something you are proud of? To hold scorn for something that you love? His seed, the core of his being, was fused unto my spirit, and I was unable to separate what thought or emotion belonged to who. It almost drove me insane... until he appeared." She nudged the spectral wrap that coated her inky scales like a fresh blanket of snow. "He was as I used to be... a spirit without a soul. A ghost. A specter of something long lost. He was simple... clear headed. Calculating. Cold... as emotionless as the stone at the heart of the mountain. He wrapped his essence around me, and then the noise stopped. All the noise... all the clamoring of ten million souls, all the petty greed and caustic anger, it all vanished. He enveloped me, and I knew the kind of peace that I had sought to regain for twenty thousand years. He sheltered me from the chaos of the world, and I in turn gave him what he needed; with him layered around me, he gained my heart. My emotion. My strength."

The thin form of Kalokin cracked a wry smile, the first facial expression he'd used since he split apart. "It's almost funny, in a way... she wanted the kind of Solitude that I alone could provide, while I sought the life and emotion she had too much of. We fit together like matching halves. Perfect. Simple. She already had a name... Nikolak... A death suffered in a dream. I had no name, but since I seemed to be her inverse, I put her name backwards, and gave it a meaning. Kalokin... a lock which has no key. A binding to contain something that may never be set loose, lest the entire world burn. She knows regret, but there are still several billion souls worth of anger and fury in her heart." Nikolak hissed softly at the reminder of what she was capable of, guilt striking deep.

It was in that exact moment that Shou put two and three together. "W-wait, back up a moment... Nikolak. You said that Kalokin... he's incapable of feeling emotion?" The dark snake shrugged and looked to him, leaving it up to him to describe.

"Shouyousei, would you be able to describe color to a blind man?" Confused and off guard, Shou could do naught but open and close her mouth silently. "Now Khaesho, can you describe to Shou what heat looks like."

"Oh that's easy, Heat looks like... uh... well... it looks kind of... like red, but less color and more... well, warm." He finished weakly. Kalokin nodded, and his slight smile tweaked ever so slightly larger. "Just as a blind man can see no color, and just as you, Shou, lack a Naga's delicate thermal sensory, the concept of emotion is so foreign to me that, not only can I not experience it, I cannot understand it. I lack the ability to fathom pain, or joy, or passion. It is because of this, I think, Nikolak and I are so... compatible. I know how it feels to lack a heart."

His words drove home a spike of pain and loss that would have dropped Shou to her knees if she'd been standing. "K-kalokin... do... do you not love me?" The smirk left his face in an instant. It wasn't replaced by sorrow, or regret, or pain. It was replaced by a blank façade, a sculpture as vacant as the empty sky.

"I do." Nikolak's words surprised all three of them. Keeping Kalokin huddled close in much the way a child might hold a safety blanket, she cautiously slithered forwards. The unwarranted action brought a soft hiss to Khaesho's throat, but he made no outward threat. "His emotions... his love for you... they all come from me." She shuddered, but managed to continue with her words. "Even to this day... I am a legend amongst the Naga people. My dark past is told in hushed voices around hearth fires, whispered on the night's lips as a ghost story. From the time they hatch, every naga hears countless stories about me, about how my spirit was never truly vanquished... about how I may one day return to overthrow the four deities and burn the world to ash. I can count on one hand the number of Naga I've entrusted with the truth, and they all turned their backs on me."

She reached a hand out to caress Shouyousei's face, only to have her essence shredded by Khaesho's lightning fast talons. "That's close enough. You don't have the right to touch her, not without Kalokin shrouding you." Shou's shock at the sudden outburst from her mate was almost as great as her shock when Nikolak agreed with him.

"You're right... I've spent too much time anyways... the noise... the chaos eats at me... Kalokin..." her hand remained something between shredded cloth and condensed smoke until Kalokin slid his own hand over hers like a glove. "Of course." He'd been laying against her, but now he truly enveloped her, encasing her body in his as easily as Shou might have shrugged into her favorite shirt. His ghostly white mixed with her ink black until it mellowed into the oceanic blue she was familiar with. Story done, the illusions vanished. The mid-afternoon sun returned with a vengeance, painfully bright after so long in darkness. Kalokin remained coiled on the ground, shaking softly, leaving his vessels numb in the aftermath of what they had born witness to.

"I do love you, Shouyousei... but Nikolak is right. The emotion is hers. I'm nothing without her. Empty."

It took a while for Shou's head to catch up... she replayed the soft feminine voice in her head. Heard the revulsion. The disdain. The anger directed towards the universe at large for the fact that she'd been born at all. Her story had been entrancing, but with the spell of silence over, the first tears welled up in her eyes as she clambered out of Khaesho's grasp. Despite her change, her hybridization, the tears started to fall. The Naga couldn't cry, but she could certainly cry for them. And cry she did.

They were quiet, trembling sobs. More heartbreaking for their softness, for the subtle nature of them, though they wracked her body and left her curling over warm scales. Shouyousei rushed over to the soiled form of the God; A stumble, and the dancer fell to her knees, scrambling the last foot or so to Kalokin and tugging at him, attempting to pull him into her arms as much as she could. Burying her face against his scales, she cried for him, because she knew he never would. Tears slid against his scales, and she held him tightly. He shivered in her grasp like a leaf caught in a summer monsoon, but she held him all the tighter for it, as if the serpent would vanish in her hold... something that she very well knew could happen. Then came her voice, soft hiccupping sobs that barely translated into words.

"Sorry... so sorry... should never... understand... dear heart... sorry... forgive me..."

Forgive her? What was she asking forgiveness for? It was hard to say, or if that was even what she had meant as her words were garbled and muffled against his scales from her crying and her breathless sobs. Still, Kalokin shrank in her grasp until he was just the right size to spill out over her arms in a messy pile. It felt good to be small, to be held tight, because for all the sorrow that he felt, the woman holding him was a balm against that burden. "Shhh... Don't cry Shou... it's just ancient history."

He was trembling with sorrow despites his words. Four thousand years had done nothing to dull the guilt. The genocide of four cultures and the death of the nameless god was on his hands, and that was blood that had never washed off. For once, he did not wrap around her as he and Khaesho so commonly did, he just squeezed himself into her arms. Khaesho followed Shou, at a much more stately and reserved pace, but when he got there, he just slithered a loop around them both and squeezed. He didn't know what to say, but Kalokin didn't need words, he needed comfort, so he squeezed them both as Shou cried into a sloppy pile of Kalokin's scales.

He might have been calm on the surface, but as Khaesho looked at them both, emotions raged within him. He personally bore the scars from Nikolak's savagery, and yet... so long as Kalokin was there... they used his name when together, but the composite was radically different from the parts. Kalokin was his best friend, his mentor, his patron, and his guardian all rolled into one. He knew of Nikolak's past, but... it had happened so long ago... maybe... just maybe... this time was different... He'd been played a fool before, but just maybe, this time was different. He wanted to believe that it was. Despite everything he'd been through, he wanted to believe that even a black sun could shine. To him, for now, that alone was enough.

He coiled tighter around them both, resting his head on Shou's shoulder to lick at her neck. "You don't need to cry Shou... we have sorrow enough already."

"But you're so sad..! You're both so sad!"

She had given his feelings words, and more than that, she had given him tears. And she hugged him tight, her tail curled around him and her as much as she could manage. As she felt Kalokin begin to calm, her own tears slowed... though she refused to release her hold of the Blue Racer in her arms.

"You know... y-you've been going about his sacrifice all wrong."

"What... what do you mean? He died, for the sake of a fear monger."

"But he isn't dead, not really. You remember him, remember the values he held strong, remember the truth. He lives. Right here."

Gently she prodded his chest.

"He didn't die because you were evil. He died because he knew you weren't. He died to raise you up and show you something greater. No, that's not even the right word... because his soul still lives on, right?"

Kalokin nodded, then licked at Shou's eyes. Black, smoke-like magic flowed from them, and she regained the ethereal magic sight that Nikolak had blocked earlier. She looked Kalokin over, but he pushed her gaze inwards, towards her own heart. She searched within her heart and found the spark of her life... and nestled right beside it, a warm grain of sand from a distant desert lit by the sun. "His soul still thrives... I keep it right next to yours, exactly where it belongs."

The sight brought unexpected joy to her face, even if her grip never for a moment relaxed. "I- I think if he really wanted... I think he could have removed your need to cause fear... Because as much as we need all the good things in life... we need fear too. Without it we don't learn courage, or how to overcome trails. You don't need anything else to feed you. Fear is what makes us strong... But if you wanna try it, I'll try feeding you love and we'll see how it goes."

Kalokin laughed softly and slithered up a little, coiling once around their necks while leaving enough for Shou to hug. "Fear always has and always will be my domain. That said, even if love may not power my soul, it goes great lengths to heal it... Th-thank you... both of you... I was so afraid... afraid that you wouldn't understand... that you-"

His voice caught on the last syllable, and he squeezed her arms affectionately. Khaesho's face was of an odd slant, unreadable, but his words were sincere enough. "No... thank you for telling us, Kalokin. I know it's hard to tell a secret that's been buried a long time, especially when it hurts. For what it's worth though... you're far from the snake you were when we first me. You've changed, I've seen it. You can change further still, if you want. Your past may be dark, but it was selfish of me to judge you for that. You can change your stars, and I can mend my name."

Silence pervaded the air for a moment before Kalokin whispered back. "Some things can't change though." Kalokin gingerly removed the last grips he'd placed on Shou's mind. Slowly... ever so slowly, he eased it fully open until Shou once again felt overwhelmed by her new extrasensory, and all that she felt from it was love. Love from the snake wrapped around her and love from the one puddled in her arms. She'd felt her own love for Khaesho before, and she'd felt all the warmth from the love they'd shown, but now...? She lacked words for the comfort it provided. She felt like a blind man who was finally able to see, and the first thing she saw was the two loves of her life.

Shou smiled softly as a thought occurred to her. Her arms stayed tight around his scales, a pile of not-quite-flesh that stayed cool despite her warmth. She could feel her heart beating against him, and with a sigh, she relaxed into Khaesho's coils. All the tension... all the stress from the last few days had been weighing on her, but for right now, she just wanted for the warm sun and her snakes' arms.

He was a god of fear... a being sustained by feasting on the terror of others, yet it was his own fear that had crippled him. He'd been poisoning himself, with fear of betrayal, fear of abandonment... As her thoughts drifted, Kalokin took notice, and a little of his anxiety returned. She hadn't noticed it before, but she recognized it now... there was a kind of anxious tension that seemed to never leave him... except for when she squeezed him tight and whispered his name. It had been his own fear that had been his biggest enemy. He was far from conquering that omnipotent force... but she vowed in that moment that she would help him heal, at whatever the cost. He had done the same for her.

"You don't need to change Kalo... you just need to find peace. I like you being you... it's been too long since I had a family..." And she tilted her head towards the sky for a moment, her words soft, measured. "And... you know... I think if I needed to, I could describe color to a blind man. All I would need is patience. So I'll slowly fill you and.... and Nikolak... with that color."

He smiled softly, faintly, and whispered with a voice that seemed to echo at an exact right angle to reality itself. It was the voice of the sands, but he spoke it to her soul, and he made sure that she understood. It was his blessing. She was his vessel, so him blessing her was tantamount to lending flour to a wheat farmer, but the words mattered just as much.

*May the ever changing moon lend steadfast peace to your journey. Shouyousei.*