[PUBLIC CHANNEL] DAY 51

[criticallyfucked]

Has anyone found anything substantial?

Because I've been reading for hours... every day, mind, and all I'm finding is peas.

Just... peas.

And I know there's more.

[Pause.]

We're dozens of eyes, at least some of which are... looking for relevance.

[Shima.]

So if you've found anything to share, it might be faster to combine what we do have, rather than combing over the same things multiple times?

[Listen. No one said he was good at team work.

But if everyone's combing out individual peas and grains in the dirt, then at least combining them might make some sort of passable salad.

Or maybe someone is holding out.]

Comments

[criticallyfucked]

Without a soul?

[Foster did not interpret the text that way, and upon consideration, it.... still does not sound right. Even if he connects this to the text Strange talked about--]

Why should the soul actually be taken rather than simply wiped clean?

A soul uplifted from tainted existence to realise its 'true potential'--

[Just the thought leaves him breathless with excitement. To him, it wouldn't matter either way. In the end, something essential would be erased, creating something of greater worth to serve in its place--!]

[prazerbutterfly]

That sounds almost unnatural. To be purged, purified... it's unheard of. No man or creature can be absolved of their sins, their taint, so easily.

[You freak. Foster sounds so excited and he can't help but sympathize with such... passion.] You speak of ascension?

[criticallyfucked]

Of course.

[Foster replies with unusual ease.]

Isn't that the dream of every unworthy soul? The only dream for an existence born tainted beyond repair....? Ascension. Absolution. To be taken by the hand or throat by a higher being, a greater power, and raised from that wretchedness... or given purpose in essential worthlessness?

[He gets increasingly fervent as he speaks, and though it's not as uncomfortably wet as once it might have been, there's still an intensity, an ardour not generally associated with sanity that grows with every breath.

He does, however, calm down almost as quickly:]

Isn't that the point of a miracle?

[prazerbutterfly]

I wouldn't know. I've never considered myself unworthy.

[Because he caters to no one, not even God or any other being out there with any worth their weight in souls.] But I can understand to a point yet I can't at the same time.

[It sounded almost like an Akuma. A soul given form after being stolen from whatever afterlife and peace it held in death. Used, repaired as new, and given a purpose of destroying human after human, feasting until satisfied. Then even further ascended into something large, then destroyed all over again to create something greater.]

Miracles. It's just a pretty word until it actually presents itself as reality.

[criticallyfucked]

I never said it was pretty.

[Foster doesn't expect 'pretty,' at least not the way others might define it. He knows he's.... perverse.]

No... something truly horrifying is also beautiful...!

[Just thinking about it gives him an invisible shiver of delight and revulsion. The more horrifying the idea, the more appeal it holds to him--!

If a miracle were something so terrible, then perhaps even he could be moved by it, changed by it--!]

[prazerbutterfly]

But I did.

[Like that is all that matters. Tyki can't see Foster and how he's reacting but neither Foster see how delighted Tyki looks right now at something so perverse and true. It's honesty down to the core of his being.]

I'm not disagreeing. Even if twisted if it was made with the barest hint of someone's passion it doesn't matter how it appears. So tell me, would you still ascend even if that meant losing yourself completely? [When he became a Noah, his viewpoints, his life changed but he doesn't care. Even against his will, it was worth it.]

[criticallyfucked]

You have to ask?

[That is the only way he would--Tyki is asking him only for the most basic, most obvious answers, asking him the questions that do not need to be asked.]

That is ascension. Destroy my desires, wipe out my ideals, use me, kill me, raise me up from my own filth to burn the blood from my bones and take my ashes as fertiliser!

[Are you listening, Herbert?]

[prazerbutterfly]

I always have to ask, Foster.

[What he implies by that can't really be determined. Permission was the basis of everything. Without it, one could never have the voice to call upon the damned soul.]

You understand then what ascension means. Not many do. Sadly, I don't think anyone here can offer you such a thing.

[criticallyfucked]

And why is that?

[He asks with a coy kind of congeniality, pausing only to note:]

.... I think someone can.

[But Foster is all too aware of how few understand--

He has realised somewhat belatedly that this conversation was entirely public, and he has a short twinge of regret--but had he remembered that more quickly, he supposes he probably would not have censored himself. The idea that he should have to is like drowning himself, like holding a struggling body underwater and being drowned all at once.

If he could only drown others in truth.

In the end, what he regrets is the awareness he failed to have, not the choice that came without it.

Probably.]

[prazerbutterfly]

Maybe. [It's because he knows someone who can, without a doubt, do what Foster wants. All Foster is going to get is a heavy doze of laughter.

He's in too deep for such a public transmission.]

I think that's enough for now. We're off topic.

[criticallyfucked]

[He meant the Ringmaster, Tyki.]

Mmmm.

[Just a quiet sound of agreement.

He's still thinking, though. About ascension, and the Mother of Invention, and the Winter Court.]

[prazerbutterfly]

[Oh, he knows that's who he meant but since when does she indulge in his wants? He's heard their O so public conversations.]

I'll leave you to your thoughts, either way.