apostatised | [log] and we'll learn politics and some new party tricks

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[log] and we'll learn politics and some new party tricks

New York is as easy to get to as about anywhere is when your main method of getting around is teleportation (every time he uses the pinpoint, Martel puts 'stables' higher on his mental priority list of necessary projects). He doesn't even argue the point about changing his clothes for the outing, even if he does spend altogether too much time fastidiously pulling at his cuffs and fixing his collar.

All in good time, he ushers Candice into the 'establishment' Ethan gave him details of, standing out about as much as a 6'3" man of military and noble bearing with long white hair tends to regardless of what he's dressed in.

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"I was recuperating," Martel says, innocently, although his follow up doesn't help matters, "at a bar we have in common."

"The bar is called 'Stigmata,'" Candice supplies, "It's a quiet place, not very many people in it, usually. It used to be run by a--werewolf, something to that effect."

Werecoyote, actually, but she doesn't know the specifics.

"Interesting. I haven't heard of it. I just wondered with you coming from so... far away."

More scotch. He likes scotch.

Maybe he'll even get drunk.

Later.

'Far away' makes Martel half-laugh like it's a private joke, something sort of odd behind his eyes when he looks up over the rim of his glass. "I do a lot of travel," he says, the kind of bland that usually thinly veils brattiness (not, grant you, the word Martel would choose to describe his behavior--for all its accuracy). "You could call it religious work, though I'm--let's say--retired."

Candice looks rather skeptical of this fact, Martel, or perhaps just otherwise disbelieving; she says nothing once more.

"Oh? Are you knocking on doors bringing the word of your lo-- lady?" He smirks, and sits back, resting an arm camply over the seat behind him.

Sometimes he likes others to talk, too.

"Not hardly," Martel laughs, low. "Aphrael doesn't need my help with her thieving." When he speaks of her, it sounds more like familial affection than devout worship, but then, that's how she tends to prefer things. "I've meandered through a religion or two, started in a military order for the church of my homeland."

"Aphrael has a way of ensnaring people even when they think they've converted otherwise," Candice observes, mildly, "I've met her."

"She sounds intriguing. Gods very often are, in person. Sadly they find themselves let down by imperfect mortal spokesmen, at times."

"Amen," Martel says, mock-piously. His experience with religion is an interesting one. "The holy mother church's definition of heresy gets a little more grey as applied to the militant orders," he goes on, neutrally. "Aphrael's one of the four gods that the church has an 'arrangement' with, so I grew up with her, after a fashion."

"She's certainly more hands-on than the Christian God," Candice says.

Mind you, He hangs around the Nexus sometimes, too.

"Do you have any background in chaos, Candice?" he asks to be polite.

Martel's actually rather interested to hear the answer to this, cocking his eyebrow at her in an unspoken back up query.

Questions she didn't anticipate today: that one.

"I hadn't thought of it so concretely," she says, carefully, "But yes, I suppose I really do."

"Oh? How so?"

He smiles. The slightly feckless uncle you know you shouldn't trust but probably would anyway. Because he's more fun.

Or so he likes to think.

Martel's understanding of Candice's religious practices is...somewhat nebulous, which probably explains the sharp-eyed following of this conversational tangent. (That or he just tends to have conversations centering around religion, politics, violence or some combination of the above. Maybe it's both.)

Candice is currently exercising the sort of methodical steadiness that means it's being actively calculated. She doesn't talk about her abilities very often, and keeps what she does with them clandestinely swept under the rug--dirty little secrets involving the dead's energy and demonology. Martel's scrutiny is only compounding her internal awkwardness, and she makes a mental note to address that some other time.

For now, she smiles, just slightly, and waves a hand, dismissive of herself.

"I have certain religious obligations of my own. Yielding to a lack of order is a part of that." And that is a decidedly limited explanation of her actual involvement, but it wouldn't do to talk about herself too much, would it? "And you, have you got background there...? I'm just guessing."

He senses the... restraint. Very well. He won't push. Not at the moment.

"I have been... well. Called a Chaos Worshiper in the past, and it's not entirely inaccurate." A wolfish grin.

"As far as anyone can be, of course."

"Where I'm from," Martel drawls, "'chaos worshiper' would as like be synonymous with the worship of a particular god--now deceased--and it always struck me as a delightful irony, the organized worship of a god devoted to disorganized excess."

He takes a drink, adding with a dry tone he's too good at, "I have a feeling that's a very different thing."

Everything about Candice tends to be carefully controlled all the time, which is possibly the basis of her current faith's appeal, honestly.

She rests her elbows on the table top. "I hope so. What sort of tribute does Chaos take?"

"There's no order. Well. I do take bits and pieces of other 'orders' and use them to my own device. But part of the joy of worshiping chaos is... the unpredictability."

Another drink, he thinks. "There are no rules. But I do enjoy causing... disruption. And twisting things on their head, too."

"Sort of the point, wouldn't it be?" Martel asks, halfway between 'yes, I think I'm hilarious' and genuinely thoughtful. "It seems as though something that needs its opposite to balance it out."

Candice mulls that over, but to herself, tracing her fingertips along the wood grain of the table.

"Without chaos, there would be no life. Without order... much the same."

"But... balancing itself is a notion of order, so you can see how... chaos, true chaos, is something of a... mindfuck to be involved in. It's... counter to everything the mind likes."

"Granted," Martel agrees, tapping his fingers against the side of his glass, "but in a world wholly without order, chaos unfettered, undefined, would only be a new form thereof."

See, these are not concepts he could've got across with his limited grasp of reading and writing in English. He's a quick study, but not that quick.

It sounds suspiciously like something he's given thought to the practical applications thereof, rather than pure philosophy. FYI.

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