Eternal Sins

•Chapter Twenty-Three•

They were beyond help.

Izabelle may sit, folded over earth, still struggling to walk in such stride as the rag tag group of gods with her. But she was not as misled about an earthly world as they seemed to be.

They were disconnected, no longer with the ability to reach, command, conquer at the swirl of an abstract hand. They were all touched with a piece of mortality and that meant giving up common luxuries from the deepness. This caused obtuse silence among them all.

Ilanna was the first to attach to her host, the bark and vine of the forest accomodating her, cutting out the shape of a body and allowing her to walk through. She looked like her usual self just with more local fauna adorning her. A tall, branch like woman filled with leaf, wood, vine, and clammoring insects. Her hair was of willow branches, dropping down her back, tied with a dandelion.

It was here, in the field of descendants, Ilanna pulled Izabelle from the dirt crater she had created while falling. Placing the fragile soul of flesh on Breem's resting space where she knew he would want his assistant, she went to help Yana.

Yana pieced herself together in her forever dormant host, black fluid once more shelling her eyes, filling her lips and changing her silver hair to jet black. A solid ghost like woman, she functioned in the hues of gray until the night. As Ilanna dug for her with the help of the trees surrounding the clearing, Yana reached back and was swept up to the surface.

Next was Doirnon, flowing hair of sun and fire pushing itself through the earth without any help. In his full suit of dripping embers, as usual, he moved with the casualness of someone who emerged graves in regularity. Dusting himself off, he joined the gods that awaited. It took a few minutes but his flames did die, resting a smolder that hovered above his shoulders, ashen brown from head to toe.

When Callan emerged it was with a roar, a flash of lightening igniting a phantom in the sky. He flew down and with quick movement he was before them, ready, fists blazing.

Izabelle sat on a flat patch where there was an indent in the earth, a permanent disruption in the dirt in the shape of sharp wings. Beneath that marking was the small uncoverings of a set of armor, hollow in the ground.

In sudden vigor that armor filled beside her, Breem coming through as the last of them. When his hand clasped onto her thigh, reaching for anything to help himself up, she jumped back with a small squeal.

"Hush, little one, it is me," he assures her, head craning up, dark sheening eyes glinting in the slit of the head armor. He was a man of metal, something Izabelle had never seen.

Leaning fully up, he yanks the armor off of his face, his arms, stripping off each piece to place them back into the ground as they were before.

She can only stare up at him, watching his precision.

Breem looked like himself in the face, just warmer, with a mortal beating heart. The glow to him could not be mistaken and it was a curious choice.

"You are human," she whispers to him, eyeing the other gods who looked rather.. remarkably like themselves. Where were his horns? His wings? The black splattering stains on his hands?

He looks to her, a curled ball beside his resurrection and laughs. "If I so choose to be," and like a flash of light, the human is gone. She can see him, the real him. Fangs displayed with his smile of amusement, horns hanging forward from his head, wings stretching behind him, shadowing them both. With a blink, it is gone again, leaving a man of crisp inked hair, warm skin and black twinkling eyes.