eyemind | (no subject)

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Uh guys? I'm pretty sure that this whole 'Twig Man' thing? Is Slenderman. Like the creepypasta meme that definitely became a thing a few years ago for me and then became even more well known when a couple of preteen girls who were extremely mentally ill thought he was real and that they needed to end up sacrificing their friend to him.

Slenderman is a nightmareish overly tall man who wears a suit and has no face and who in the story was often found around tragedy involving children. He was supposed to show up in pictures and on video. This is probably really, really bad. Be careful if you do go looking. Seriously. If he's around he can make you sick, like physically ill. And not only that but he causes electrics to go shorting out and we don't know what that might mean considering we're connected to our partners and Navi.

But none of it sounds like a good idea.

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I have. Of course, often, it can be quite subtle. Easy to miss.

[It isn't a lie, though he's certainly obscuring a thing or two.]

Huh.

[Alex knows he’s being evasive. After all she’s been working with Richard Strand and he’s a master of it. Of course Alex herself has also become a master at getting things out of him too. ]

What kinds of subtle things should one be keeping an eye out for then?

Excessively convenient turns of good fortune, sometimes disguised as bad. Late for your bus, that bus later encountered an accident. A stranger holds you up just a little too long, then police arrive where you were due to be. Faces you cannot quite remember the details of, nor anyone else around you, yet they offered words of comfort when you needed them most.

Sometimes a gut feeling is just a gut feeling. Sometimes it isn't.

[Still elusive, but this he can offer. After all... it has been so very long since anyone recognized the calling cards of angels.]

Why are they so much more difficult to see when the things that demons do are so damn obvious?

Most likely it is a matter of different goal and purpose. Angels are to guide and protect unobtrusively as a background influence. Depending on their intent demons would rather you know they're there.

Huh. I’d say someone were like...use demons to take over the world then where would the angels be? Shouldn’t they be there just because their mythologies are so intertwined?

[Ah, he has a feeling she has encountered a terrible fate. One that, unfortunately, he doesn't have a satisfactory answer for.]

Should man choose to embrace chaos, it falls to man to correct his transgression.

[It comes out a little colder than he perhaps intends, though it's hard to say with how monotone his voice tends to be regardless. Still...]

That isn't to say they won't get involved. Once again, however, likely indirectly.

Okay, and I don't mean to say this to insult you or anything, but that fucking sucks. Demons go after kids, and angels don't save them. Demons are trying to end the world using the backdoor Lucifer made when he fell from heaven to try and end the world and is using it to take this kids and angels are just like "teehee, we'll try and help through things that could be brushed off like 'oh how lucky for me.'" Jesus. No wonder the demons are fucking winning!

Why would I be insulted?

[Totally not an angel over here, no ma'am. Nope. Man this ruse is really not going to last long at all.]

Regardless, I do not disagree. It has been a point of significant contention for some time.

[Millenia, really.]

Yeah? And yet it keeps fucking happening. Jesus. I mean hell I don't even know if I believe in god, but I do know that I believe in demons and what they're trying to do and all of this is bullshit.

Again, I do not disagree. And yet, therein you have touched upon a very interesting concept. The capacity to divide presumably related things from one another.

It's a simple matter, to acknowledge evil exists. Even to go so far as to believe a malevolent force of temptation, wickedness, and cruelty not only exists but continuously influences lives. Yet, to believe in the opposite seems harder to grasp, much simpler to dismiss. Even obvious to dismiss.

Why is that?

Because I’m mired in what demons can do back home. And praying to anything doesn’t seem to do a god damn thing to help those kids.

Interesting.

[He is going to file that away, it's useful information. While he alone cannot make such sweeping policy changes as to bring his well-hidden brethren back into the light he can certainly try.

It's more than they do.]

For what it's worth... For what you're having to deal with. And that it seems you're forced to deal with it alone.

[Again it's not something he can necessarily fix, unfortunately, despite any amount of desire.]

I’m not really alone with it back home. There’s Strand and Nic and Simon, I suppose.

[Simon, the Cheshire Cat who always seems to be both protecting her and dragging her further into the dangerous mess she was just in.]

That is well. To face such trials alone I can only imagine would be an imposing task.

[Imposing enough with allies, he imagines.]

Would you care to share more about your allies?

Strand... [The word is followed by a pause and she tries to put this right.] I guess is the reason that I've gotten involved in this. I was working on a story on interesting people doing interesting jobs and the first job we were doing was on ghost hunters/paranormal researches. I interviewed several and one name kept coming up: Dr. Richard Strand of the Strand Institute. He's a ghost hunter who doesn't believe in the paranormal so much to the point where he offered a million dollar prize for proof of the supernatural. He disproved thousands of cases over the last three years.

But then there were other cases, ones that he kept housed in old Black VHS cases, and those were the cases that he couldn't disprove scientifically yet. Those and Strand himself were what I started investigating. There were other things in his past that he was keeping secret, and they were things that aren't... [A pause, and a shift before Alex sighs softly.]

Strand doesn't believe in them, to the point where he's sort of an irrational skeptic. But his life has always been mired in this sort of thing because even if Richard himself doesn't believe them, people around him did. And there's cults that do.

They believe he's The Mantle of the Dragon.

Your Richard Strand does sound like a fascinating individual. I think I might have liked him, had we ever met. Clearly he possesses an affinity for truth to go to such lengths to disprove even that which he cannot.

[He does nod, letting out an amused huff.]

It's always interesting, those ones who still cling to their skepticism no matter how much evidence is placed before them.

What is this Mantle of the Dragon?

We’re not exactly sure. But we think [At least Alex thinks anyway, that much is clear. ]

It has to do with the cult of Tiamat that his father was mired in. Tiamat is the dragon in Sumerian mythology. A thonic goddess who is both creation and chaos.

Yes, I am faintly familiar with the mythology. Cults being what they typically are, what did they appear to hope to bring about with this Mantle?

The normal.

[Alex just sighs.]

The replacement of humans on earth with shadow people. The end of the world.

Of course, what else would it be?

[There's a distinct sense of being unimpressed in his tone, of exasperation.]

It's always the annihilation of the human species. One has to wonder what benefit that would be to them? Would they not also be destroyed? Or instead do they choose to rule alone over a dead world? Illogical.

I guess they just like chaos shadow demons more than people or something.

I suppose there is an argument to be made there. Perhaps we're not meant to understand the destruction minded.

I am not someone who can ever imagine wanting to end the world honestly.

No I, though I suppose there have been times where I believed that if it were happening I might choose to do nothing to stop it.

That's not quite the same as active malice, however.