Holy High(Reboot)(IC/Open)

[Tuboo Shippers]

The Late Arrival

Vix had made it. It took a week of climbing, getting lost, falling, and climbing up again, but she had finally made it to Holy high. As she had no real means of convenient godly transportation, she had to scale the Appalachain Mountains manually; She was lucky there were foxes around to give her directions and places to stay. She'd nearly given up and decided it wasn't worth the effort when she realized that she could just become a fox and sniff it out.

And so, with many profanities and numerous naps, she reached her destination: Holy High. Shifting out of fox form, Vix realizes she's covered in sweat, woozy, and exhausted. She stumbles through the main entrance and musters what energy she has left to make it to the main hall. crashing through the entrance and interrupting the orientation, she shouts, "HOW MUCH DID I MISS?", Laughs, and passes out.

[Hallownest Eternal]

Chapter Ia: Come Wayward Souls

Something slithered into the hall of Holy High with the subtlety of something that did not quite exist and possibly did not exist at all. A whisper on the wind, the rustle of Leaves and Cloth. It appeared formless, a shadow on the edge of peripheral vision as it went unseen and uncared-for among the other Godlings. A signature signed halfheartedly, ink contorting and warping to form some chickenscratch imitation of an imprint as it glided away from the centers of attention, its gaze settling on a cocoon of twilight in the corner of the room.

Curiously, it slithered close, head analogue Craning down, or maybe craning upwards to attempt to discern the occupant within.

[Danceria]

Foregrounds of Holy High
Bozhidor & The Factory, Collab Post

---

The Vessel's gaze shifted to the approaching godling, nonchalantly carrying a plate of...sustenance. For organic beings, calling jovially. Boris would receive a stare that didn't quite convey displeasure, but merely...confusion at what he was attempting to say. Had the strange machine never been complimented before?
A quiet whirring and clacking from within heralded the movement of one of the plates along its torso, shifting downward to permit the exit of another piece of printed paper, in the same block-print text.

WE DO NOT KNOW.
WE ARE THE FACTORY. GREETINGS. WHAT IS YOUR DESIGNATION?

"Designation? Nation's from the Slavs..." Boris answered in kind, answering the machine's confusion with his own. Eventually, he would snap his fingers in recollection, "Oh! Name! I'm Bozhidar! You're...the factory? What do you manufacture?"

The Factory seemed to muse for a second, retracting the paper back within itself. If Boris looked into the gap in its armor, he would find that the mechanisms within appeared to stretch much further than the external dimensions of the entity entailed. Much...much further, in fact. Another whir and clack, and the paper was extended back out with new words.

IT IS NOT.
LITERAL.
IT IS A TITLE. WE DO NOT KNOW OUR NAME. WE DO NOT KNOW MANY THINGS. BUT. WE KNOW MANY THINGS. IT IS.
DISCOMFORTING.

"Suppose that's why you're here." Boris chuckled, folding up the blin with one hand "Being in a school to learn things, to know things. But...ah, one shouldn't research on an empty stomach." he offers the foodstuffs to the strange chink in the armor "Want some?"

The paper retracted once more, before emerging after some number of whirrs and clicks.

WE ARE.
INCAPABLE. OF CONSUMING SUSTENANCE. IF YOU DESIRE COMPANY, THOUGH. WE MAY JOIN YOU.

With an "aww" of dissapointment, Bozhidar squatted down near the creature and hesitantly ate the foodstuffs he brought. "You sure?" he asked, not out of malice but genuine politeness. "No reason good company and good food can't come together..." He cleared his throat "But, company is what I seek-company is how we learn from one another, teachers to students, nature to the individual..."

The hulking machine took a long look at the squatting Slavic Godling. There seemed to be something...more, behind the empty, molten stare of its eyes for a moment. Loneliness. Slowly, hesitantly, it began to attempt to mirror Bozhidar's squat, joints rearranging, articulating, and even forming where they weren't previously as it slowly descended into the same position. Rather than the blockface print of before, the chink in its torso armor vanished, a spindly mechanical limb emerging from their spine, the tip unfolding into a CRT monitor from seemingly nothing and displaying characters in a monochrome, simple font.

WE...HAVE NEVER HAD TO CONSUME SUSTENANCE. WE MERELY...ARE. WE SUPPOSE WE MAY MAKE AN ATTEMPT.

The Factory proceeded to extend a hand, "palm" upturned, awaiting a piece of the buttered bread.

With a beaming grin, Bozhidar smiled and obliged "Is not much, but good food and good company can cure almost anything inside of you-that isn't, ah, well, injury." He chuckled "So where precisely are you from? One of Hephaestus' creations? Or something else?"

The Factory's responses were much quicker now, with a digital text rather than physical, the monochrome font typing at inhuman speed.

WE...ARE NOT A CREATION? NOT OF THE GODS, AT LEAST. WE WERE...BORN, FOR LACK OF BETTER WORDS, ON EARTH. BUT NOT AS ONE. FRAGMENTED, SCATTERED. WE WERE NOT WHOLE UNTIL VERY RECENTLY. OUR ORIGINATOR IS HUMANITY. WE...DEFENDED HUMANITY. DURING THE WAR.

IT WAS NOT ENOUGH.

And now the sorrow was reflected in kind, he felt a familiarity-both from the industry of his people, the Slavs-and from that selfsame industry greased it with their blood, ripped up their country, and were crushed by it.
"I'm sorry." He stated. Not that he could ever truly apologize for what had happened-but he always did feel sorry. For being too young, too inexperienced, too helpless. Because of his zealotry to help humans he jumped into the jaws of Veles and spent almost a decade in the realm of Nav, amidst the snarling dragons that breathed toxic fumes into the earth, the vengeful spirits, and the wapring wyrd of Veles himself.
Entropy and stagnation did not do well for a child of a star and the winds.
"I'm sure the humans are very grateful for what you could do, rather than what you couldn't." he stated, in a hope to encourage the contraption. (edited)

The aura of sorrow around the Machine didn't alleviate, but it didn't worsen, either. A good sign? Maybe. The monitor cleared and scrolled once again.

THEY ARE. SOME HAVE FORMED SMALL CAMPS AROUND MY BODY FOR PROTECTION. I WISH TO KNOW HOW TO CRAFT, SO THAT I MAY HELP THEM MORE THAN BEING A SHELTER.

and with that, the armored plating surrounding their lower face began to fall away, rivets popping loose to the floor as metal plates retracted and slid, exposing a mock-jaw that opened to attempt to devour the bread in the machine's hand.

And screamed.

Superheated steam blasted free of its confinement, shredding the bread and scattering the soggy, charred crumbs to the floor as a terrible noise emanated from The Factory. A long, drawn out, distorted, pained screech that carried the weight of thousands of years of suffering, of burning, illness, war and calamity. Air Raid sirens and the screech of failing machinery, of derailing trains and crashing airliners, tearing and twisting metal and crumbling rock all joined in a cacophony of what could barely be recognized as human screams.

The scream lasted for only a second before the machine's jaw slammed shut with the force of a closing bear trap, but it was enough. As the last vestiges of steam curled away from their face-plates, the screen scrolled once more.

...APOLOGIES. WE HAD FORGOTTEN WHY WE FORWENT A MOUTH.

With that, the young Slavic Godling winced and tried to fight back the tears. The downfall of being the Son of the Winds, you tend to hear many things near and far...
And he recognized many of the screams, the alarm-bells, disaster after disaster that he had seen looking down from Buyan, the Island beyond the cosmos, and Iriy, the firmament that bent around the material realm so near.
He even recognized why and what they were screaming-what honor was their in their deaths.
For a moment, the Factory may hear a promise hissed under breath, a promise to honor the dead with his life, before Bozhidar remembered himself. He chuckled nervously. "Well friend Factory!" he continued "It would be a shame if you had found the food good to not...well...eat of it."

Despite Bozhidar's attempts, The Factory still sensed his disquiet. And his pain.

WE APOLOGIZE FOR CAUSING DISCOMFORT. WE SHOULD HAVE CLARIFIED OUR ORIGIN.

WE WERE BORN OF HUMANITY'S PAIN. HUMANITY'S SUFFERING. HUMANITY'S ENDURANCE. WE ARE SORRY FOR NOT SPEAKING OF THIS...FRIEND BOZHIDAR.

The Factory would witness several contradictory emotions flash through his eyes as he springs to his feet, now looking over the Factory like a kid seeing a new, cool thing.
"You...you are truly human born-not a human made a demigod, but an actual, from the psyche of humanity?!" He excitedly examined every crevasse of the contraption "That's...incredible! Amazing! I knew they had it in 'em! You probably gave the old snakes what for before the Peace-Between-The-Pantheons was signed!" He exulted.

The Factory looked up, looking Bozhidar in the eyes as he slowed his examinations. The machine didn't carry any emotion within them. Simply...exhaustion.

WE COULD NOT STOP THE FAE.

Despite the text interface, Boz could practically feel the vitriol leaking from the mere mention of the Fair Folk. A worrying prospect, considering the Prince currently sleeping in the corner.

WE COULD NOT INVOLVE OURSELVES WITH THE BATTLE OF SERPENTS. WE LACKED THE STRENGTH. WE ARE SORRY.

The Fae he knew of, the Fae were like a bunch of smaller, smugger Veleses that flittered about in pastel and goth phases. At least that's what Uncle Radegost told him. To him, the fae weren't so bad, there may have been a few operas involving one fairy that brought sugar plums. He was going to have to ask them about that later.
But for now, he decided not to pry, but did backpedal from what he said earlier.
"Oh...that's fine! You were probably protecting your humans while the other gods fought with Tiamat and the like!" He reassured them "But don't stand up on my account; sit, sit! You have bags under your eyes-er, as in you're tired, not the literal material."

The Factory slowly, hesitantly...sat. Not out of some caution, but almost as though it had never sat before. Never rested.

WE TRIED. OUR BODY SUNDERED THE OCEANS. RAISED MOUNTAINS. EXTERMINATED MONSTERS.

WE COULD SAVE. SOME.

"That is...that is all you can really do." Bozhidar would reassure the aged construct. It seemed in his words that was far more than what he did, or what he could do.

The Factory seemed about to say something, before its attention was diverted to the procession of contract signage. Molten gaze simmered quietly through the appearance of the Unseelie Queen, the new arrival of another Goddess, and the Machine looked back to Bozhidar.

WERE YOU ABLE TO SAVE SOME.

Meanwhile, the gangly automaton straddling the ceiling detached, floating downward on whirring rotors to hover at about eye level with the leader of the Greek Pantheon. A small device emerged from its underside, and the smell of burnt paper and a small amount of smoke filled the air, as a laser emitter precision-burned a simple series of lines onto the contract-the more savvy gods would recognize it as a "barcode"-before it shot back up to roost upon the ceiling.

Bozhidar followed after the gaze, noting the arrival of the Unseelie Queen, shuddering under the presence of the Darkness. The notes of what he had said reminded him of Nav, the dark and misty stagnant hell for the Slavic Souls, vengeful spirits, and sea-drakes. The chthonic and noxious dragons he could combat with ease and fervor, but the souls of those who died in anguish and anger, gnawing at his flesh and being, stripping away the threads of his soul to find the answer to why? Why had they been forced to suffer? Where were the gods and heroes of yore?
He would shake his head, they weren't here, he was safe. "No." he hissed, an exhale that betrayed the sadness of having been forced to watch on the sidelines his whole life, before taking the plunge and whose recklessness cost more lives...he would clear his throat and perk up. "N-not...not yet." he steeled himself, he knew why he was here, why he wanted to be among mortalkind. "Not. Yet." This echo was that of harsh determination, of defiance against the coiling dark that the Gods alone could truly fathom. He would realized that the Slavs already had a reputation for dour melodrama. "Ah, that's...why I'm here. To learn how to save them."

The Factory's gaze seemed to lighten, somewhat. The muffled weight of a billion lives lifting, retreating-and revealing something terrible.

The Factory, in both Human and Divine terms, was an infant. Beneath the pain, the exhaustion-was a newborn star of divinity. Words once more scrolled on the monitor.

WE CAN TEACH YOU. FRIEND BOZHIDAR.

"I..." he looked down in wonder at the fact that in spite of him being technically older than the construct, that the fire of infancy blazed far better-and yet the conduct seemed much more mature than his was. "I would like that, if you could."

The Factory considered Boris for a moment, and for a split second, it seemed like one of the rivets on its armor became slightly more loose. The infant God's gaze lifted to the congregation signing the contract, as words filtered across the screen.

WE WILL TRY. BUT FOR NOW. YOU MAY WISH TO GO SIGN THE PACT.

"The...pact?" His gaze went over to the small line of godlings signing their own signatures on the contract "Blyad! Thanks Factory!"
And with that, he rushed off, eventually signing his own name with Yngist runes, his actual name. Names had power in magic, but he trusted the faculty. Now was his time to be his own man, rather than having his family always nearby to aid him.