Owner Pose
Lydia Dietrich     It's time. She'd been putting it off for a while, but the Book of Lydia just isn't complete until she talks to one last person: The Archangel Michael himself.

    Lydia has pushed the coffee table and the iron chest that sits underneath off to one side so that she can draw a summoning circle on the floor. Well, it's less a summoning circle and more of a polite invitation circle, really. It's one thing to invite an angel into your home and another one to force one to come, and she figured with all they've been through, a polite invitation is more the way to go.

    "I light the candle of the east, the rising sun that casts the light of God's glory upon all of creation," she says, lighting the appropriate candle. "I light the candle of the west, so that all of creation might rest. I light the candle of the south for the winds that give me breath, and I light the candle of the north to send my message:"

    "Come to me, Archangel Michael. I have tea."
Michael Demiurgos     The appearance of the Archangel is not one of thunder and terrible power. But one of soft light and the twinkle of windchimes. The new Michael is as far from the old as one could image. He's still beautiful beyond words, but the appearance leans more toward the androgynous side rather than the hyper masculine.

    His musculature is like that of a swimmer's build than a professional bodybuilder. His hair is black as midnight and falls in a silken wave down his back rather than bright curls resting along his shoulders. His golden eyes of bright amber, rather than the bright blue of sapphires look upon Lydia with calm that rivals the ocean rather than the tempest of anger that resides in the heart of a storm. Even his attire is differnt. A simple long white tunic with golden trim covers most of his form. His shoulders offer the only sign of true armor with a mantle of simple, unadorned gold colored metal. A sword is belted at his side, but he carries a crooked staff, not unlike that of a shepherd.

    He regards Lydia for a moment as he stands in the summoning circle. "You didn't have to go to such lengths, child. I have been waiting for this call for some time. All you needed to do was ask for my presence. For someone as important as you to my creation it would be a simple matter to pay a visit." He smiles and the warmth of a noonday sun resides in the expression. "But I am not without a sense of humor. We can go through the formalities if you truly wish us to."
Lydia Dietrich     Lydia takes in Michael's new form with matching golden eyes and a warm smile spreads to her lips. "I didn't know it would be that simple. Besides, it just felt... right to do it this way." She stands smoothly to her feet and walks over to the dining room table. "You're looking good," she says as she assembles a platter that holds a tea kettle, some cups and an array of fig newtons. "This suits you much better than the old you."

    She picks up the tray and makes her way back to the living room and sets it down on the coffee table within easy reach. "Would you like some tea? It's a lavender blend that I quite like. Fig newtons? You /are/ my guest after all."
Michael Demiurgos     Michael inclines his head and steps from the circle. It wasn't much containment to be honest. "It was very well thought out at the very least." He regards the candles and remembers the incatation used. "Quite poetic." He considers the offers and nods.

    "Certainly. While the food is not necessary, human food has always carried an appeal. The variety amongst your kind creates flavors that many races cannot truly match." He moves to take a seat on the couch. He is still immense in his height but he settles down as if he weighs nothing at all.

    "You wish a final statement for your Book, correct?" he asks politely enough, the emphasis on the subject is implied if not expressly stated outright. The knowing smile on his lips is not mocking in any way.
Lydia Dietrich     "I know what you mean," Lydia says as she fixes them some tea. "I don't need to eat or drink food anymore, but I find that I still enjoy it on an aesthetic level. Especially tea." She hands a cup of tea placed on a saucer with a couple of fig newtons on it over to the angel, while taking one for herself.

    Sitting in one of the chairs facing the sofa, she takes her tea and holds it in both hands, enjoying the warmth. She holds the cup up to her nose so she can savor the scents before taking a sip. "It's a ritual for me, I guess. The warmth, the smell, the taste. It's a little thing, I know, but it was one of the few pieces of humanity that I couldn't give up."

    Now, down to business. She nods, setting the tea aside and pulling out a leather bound notebook. On the cover is a picture of an angel with a remarkable resemblance to Michael as he is now embossed on the cover. "I do," she says. "It's mostly done but it would be incomplete if I didn't get your statement in here as well. It's your story in as much as it is ours."

    "It would be all too easy to write you as the villain," she says, "but I think that lacks the nuance needed to explain your situation." She purses her lips, "I feel... I've always felt you were a victim of circumstance as well as any of us were. "
Michael Demiurgos     Michael considers the words spoken by the vampiress and author for a moment, taking in the scent of the tea. The warmth, a paltry thing compared to his own heat is possibly lost on him but the smell, the feel of the cup in his hand, the spice lingering on it and the small tea cakes, it grounds him in a way that he does not feel often.

    When he speaks its soft and with a great deal of reverence. "To take this you must first understand that while I share the name and the essence of who he was... I am not that Michael. I can give you his memories. I can give you his motivations. But when you put them to page, they will be as if two steps removed. Not one."

    He eyes, such a mirror of her own shift to take her in. "I hope that does not diminish your desire for the words I can offer." His lips finally go to the rim of the cup and he takes a sip.
Lydia Dietrich     "I know," Lydia says softly. "I don't know if the previous Michael would have granted me this audience, or would have been so receptive to having his experience put down on paper." She lets out a small sigh, "I wanted to talk to him, but other attempts hadn't gone so well."

    She flips open the journal to the first page, plain white ready to be filled by words, just like the rest of the book. "One of the things that I'm struggling with," Lydia says, falling into her author mode, "is where to begin. Do I start with the Papal killings and work chronologically from there, filling in the background as we learned it? That makes sense if I'm writing a novel." She shakes her head, letting the curls of her hair bounce on her shoulders, "But that's not what I want this to be. It's a history, so should I start with Michael's creation of our universe? Or perhaps his first attempt? Or go even farther back to when The Presence first tasked him with this job?"

    She poises her pen over the blank page, and looks up at her guest, golden eyes meeting golden eyes. "Tell me, in your opinion, where should this begin, and why?"
Michael Demiurgos     Michael nods solemnly. "Unfortunately your assessment of his willingness to speak in this manner is likely correct" he replies taking another slow sip. He bites into the newton and considers the taste as he chews.

    "I cannot decide for you. But my council is thus, rather than relegate the secrets of the universe to paper... why not catelogue the events as they transpired. A record of history does not always have to begin with the Absolute Beginning. Besides, I do not think many will take your words seriously if you claim the secrets of Creation in your rectiation, however true they may be. Dogma will blind many to the truth... such as it was during the war itself." He pauses and looks at her for a moment in silence. "Start, rather, with what led to the sitatuation. The fear in a single man's heart, and the drastic steps he took in order to preserve his life and the lives of those he thought in danger: his family."

    He shakes his head. "Tragic as may have been the outcome his motivations were pure. It will help explain the truth better than any tale about the truth of my Father and his interests, or lack thereof, with the experiment tasked to our kind."
Lydia Dietrich     "Hmm," Lydia says softly, scratching a few things down. "You have a point, but sooner or later I'll need to delve into Michael's motivations, and I don't think I can do that without recounting some of those cosmic truths. I mean... tangled in all of this is the death of a man so his soul can go into the Duat so we could fix what was wrong with Ammit. Anything I write will be apocryphal."

    She taps the end of her pen on the edge of the journal as she thinks. "One of the things that I don't understand is /why/ Michael allowed himself to be bound by Chas in the first place. He could have started with the invasion. Hell, if he had wanted to he could have just wiped the slate clean without giving us a chance. Why go this route?"
Michael Demiurgos     Michael nods in agreement to Lydia's necessity to delve deeper into the mysteries of the universal truths. But her question is his more pressing focus. "An imperfect wall. Put in place by a mystic whom your former faith regarded as a prophet and rabbi, and who's students spawned a religion of its own." Michael need not speak the name, Lydia can put the pieces together herself.

    "The Nazarene was a powerful individual even if his follower's claims were imprecise. He sought to do what you managed to achieve through a sacrifice of himself to fuel the erection of the wall that separated the Silver City and the rest of the universe. To give humanity the chance to guide their own destiny. We could not directly interact without a threat equal to our own in strength--such as the invasion of one of several Adversaries--or the call of a righteous soul for our aid."

    He takes another sip and sets the tea tray on the table before him. "Francis was righteous enough that he served as a conduit and my predecesor..." he pauses before deciding to call a spade a spade in continuing, "high-jacked the call for his own ends."
Lydia Dietrich     Lydia nods along, scribbling things down, occasionally pausing to note down some thoughts. "So he was able to us this crack in the wall to get himself into the mortal plane. How was he able to get the Host through the wall as well?"
Michael Demiurgos     Michael responds plainly. "Once free of the confines of the Silver City we are able to exert out powers freely. Taking down the wall from this end was a simple matter," he smiles at her. "at least at the time." He nods once. "Once down the Hosts were free to come when called by one greater than they..." he gestures to himself. "Namely by siblings and I."

    He takes up another cookie. "Hence why I call it imperfect. It was strong enough to keep our kind out, but only from one end. Once called... a sufficiently powerful Host could tear it down with ease." He smiles softly. "I might prefer the wall you erected."
Lydia Dietrich     "That makes sense," Lydia says with a nod. "I figured it was something like that."

    She rereads some of her notes, and purses her lips. "The barrier I erected only prevented your previous aspect from entering the mortal plane. It... didn't really do anything to keep the Metatron and the rest of the Host out." That still kind of stung. "How is this better than what the Nazarene put up?"
Michael Demiurgos     Michael regards Lydia with an expression of confusion. "You don not fully understand what you did, do you?" he asks with a shake of his head. "I suppose you wouldn't, it was never fully explained was it. The archangels are all tasked with Divine Purpose. We govern specific areas of influence over the world. You would not call on Zadkiel the Jailor for healing, you would call on Raphael the Physician. You would not call on Gabriel the Trumpeter to protect a child's dreams, you would call on Sandalphon the Ward. There is overlap for most areas, Gabriel -could- protect a child's dreams but he is not the best suited for it."

    A pause is given to let that point sink home. "One area in which overlap is limited however, is command of the Host. There are only four of us who can do such a thing. Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel, and myself. Metatron is a scribe. A record keeper. The Voice of God. When he commanded troops, he had no personal input in his actions. He drew upon my influence to do so. When you severed my connection to the plane of the material, you removed the source of his instruction... and it drove him mad." Another pause as he levels his golden gaze upon her.

    "Your action--brazen as it was--nearly led to a Second Fall that would've been beyond catastrophic to the Silver City and might've given any number of Adversaries the opening needed to topple the very foundation of Heaven. Had it not been for the damange inflicted by Red Robin and influence of Uriel in calling Metatron back to the Silver City well,..." he shakes his head. "My predecessor's actions were terrible but they did not try to consume reality by simply existing. He pauses again to move to his true point.

    "It left instruction and command to Uriel, Gabriel, and Raphael. The three other generals were, unbeknownst to my predecessor, already securely on your side of the war. Recalling the Hosts was a simple matter for them and essentially stopped the war. You... did that, Lydia. -You- stopped the war." He smiles at her to let her fully take in the magnitude of her actions.
Lydia Dietrich     At first Lydia is nodding along and scribbling her notes and thoughts into the journal, but as Michael goes on the pace in which she writes slows. If she could pale any further than she is, she would at the mention of a Second Fall. That would have been a calamitous consequence she could never have foreseen when drawing up the great seal. It would have been disastrous to say the least.

    And there it is. She stopped the war. Not in the way she had envisioned, sure, but she stopped it nonetheless. Her brows furrow and she hastily turns back to her notebook, scrawling down her thoughts. "That's... whew," she says, pausing only slightly. "Though I still don't understand what I did compares to the original barrier. Is it something like I patched the breech that had been made when Michael had first been called?"
Michael Demiurgos     Michael shakes his head. "No, there was no breach the seal. My predecessor answered a call that could have gone to anyone of our number. When he arrived, he tore the wall down completely. Utterly." He takes up the tray with the tea and sips again. "No. Your seal was simply stronger. Powered by a source magnitudes above what Jesus of Nazareth had made. When he placed his seal, he used his blood and the belief of power in sacrifice to do so. There were other factors involved, sure--a solar eclipse, for instance--but they only added fuel to the blood sacrifice he used."

    He takes another fig newton. "You used the energy of the living and breathing planet itself to power your seal. The life of a man at 33 is absolutely -nothing- compared to the continual existence of over 4.5 billion years and the sustainability of over one trillion living things at a single giving point in time." He smiles and sips his tea again, finishing it and setting the tray down.

    "I looked at the seal you made" he says softly with a soft shake of his head. "I cannot do anything to it. There is no way to improve or modify it in any way. It's perfect for what it is meant to do. I have erected other safeguards against my kind tapering with the universe further. Most of us can only appear in dreams now. But your seal is the true barrier against interference from creatures of my level of power."

    He looks a bit wistful for a moment. "This," he gestures between them, "exchange will likely be the last time one of my people set foot on the Earth physically. At least, I pray it is so. We stand vigilant against the Adversaries that would consume reality. Should the walls to their prison shatter, we will be there to protect and sacrifice all that we are. But I doubt those walls will fall for some time." He's talking about the heat death of the universe. The end of all things, including himself.
Lydia Dietrich     The sheer magnitude of what Lydia has accomplished comes crashing down upon her. She knew when she was designing it that it would be big. Bigger than anything anybody had done in a while. Sure she had help but...

    She stands and shakily walks towards the kitchen. "My God," she breathes, pulling a small cask from a cabinet. "I can't... I can't put that in the book. Not in the published version, at least." She taps open the keg and pours a red sticky substance from it into a wine glass. The liquid smells sweet, coppery, and alcoholic, and those with the sense can tell there's a bit of magic to it too. She downs a couple of fingers of this liquid with a gasp. "The hubris alone of comparing my work to..." She quickly pours herself a second helping and downs that.

    "I need to burn my notes," she says, corking the cask back up and putting it back into the cabinet. "You might not have found a flaw, but that doesn't mean that if it gets into the wrong hands somebody can't find a way to dismantle it from the inside."

    Having steadied herself with the blood wine she makes her way back to her chair and sits down in it. She reopens the journal and is silent for a while as she writes down what Michael has said, and her own reaction. It gives her a way to refocus on her interview.

    "One of the things that I had been thinking during the fight," she says, drawing the topic away from the seal, "was that I had a suspicion that Michael, at some level, wanted us to win. Why else agree to give us a chance?"
Michael Demiurgos     Michael watches her with a slightly amused smile on his face. "What you do with the knowledge you have gleaned is for you to decide. Whether to reveal the truth or limit its dispersion is also up to you as an author." He pauses to consider her question for a moment. "You are correct... to a point" he replies slowly.

    "My predecessor did not want to destroy all that he had created. And more than any artist wishes to destroy what they consider a masterpiece" a sadness settles on his features. "He could have simply wiped the slate clean started over... but that wouldn't have solved anything. Our kind is limited, even with imbued with the power of the Presence. We lack... creativity. We can learn, we can grow, we can expand, but everything we do is copied from some other work. He copied the Presence in how it shaped and created some of the first universes when creating this one but tried to do too much. Which led to the imbalance."

    He sighs. "But he did want you to suceed, yes. He could not fix the issue. But if mortals could find a way and fix the problem that he could not see... reality could be spared and his masterpiece could live on as it should. Properly."

    The sadness settles into a small smile. "Even if he could not be here to see it."
Lydia Dietrich     The corners of her eyes crinkle as Lydia grins, her suspicions validated. "I knew it. But that leads me to another question. Once the problem was fixed, and the barrier erected, why continue? Was it a matter of pride at that point? An... unwillingness to let things go?"
Michael Demiurgos     Michael's expression remains somber. "He had to die and give up the power granted by the Presence. He could not do it himself and should he remain as he was, likely the problems would rise once more." He sighs softly. "We are not capable of ending out own existence. We have to be either reclaimed, remade, or destroyed. Those are the only recourses for our existence."

    He pauses for a moment, letting his words come with ease. "Once the problem fixed with the Devourer and the war over... he had no choice but to keep pushing to drive you further and further against him in order to ensure the final confrontation happened." He shakes his head in sympathy. "And so he played the villain. As cliched and vile a villain as he could construct."
Lydia Dietrich     Lydia nods again, the pieces of the play starting to come together, filling in the gaps of her knowledge. Their discussion ranges on for several hours into the night until, at last, her journal is full. Their tea had long gotten cold and the Fig Newtons have almost all been ate.

    "Well," Lydia says folding the leatherbound journal closed. "I think that covers it. Thank you so much for coming to see me. You've given me a lot to work with. Now it's just a matter of putting it all together as a cohesive whole." She drums her fingers on the leather as she thinks, "I've already decided that there will be two versions of this book. There will be the one that's published that will be... easy to digest. But there will be another one that fully exposes the truth, one that doesn't shy away from talking about the greater cosmology and the deeper truths of the universe." She purses her lips. "It'll be there, for people who are bold enough to look."

    She shakes her head from her musing and stands. "I have to admit that I'll kind of miss you, the archangels, when you're gone. As frustrating as it was, it was nice knowing that a bunch of you had our backs."
Michael Demiurgos     Michael smiles as he pushes himself to his feet. "Of course. Again, what you disperse is your choice. I simply provided answers as I was asked." He moves over to her and inclines his head. "Your hospitality has been beyond exceptional, Lydia and your company even better. I thank you truly for the experience and comfort of your home."

    The smile that he graces her with has all the warmth of the sun and none of the detriment to her form. "Do not miss us. We are always there and always watching you all. The experiences we've shared good and bad will live on and play in the hearts and minds of my people for aeons to come. And... if you truly need us... we will be there for you again." He shakes his head. "But I do not forsee that coming to pass for a very. Long. Time." Another tinkle of a windchime and the Leader of the Heavenly Hosts is gone.