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Silence filled the beat up Junker for a moment or three before Shouyousei broke it with a tentative question.

"He'll be alright... won't he..?"

Khaesho sighed as he squeezed her softly... her body bound in his had always managed to soothe him, even when they first met. "That's a complicated question. Kalokin is... *sigh* how can I put this? Kalokin has trouble adapting to new circumstances, difficulty reacting to things he doesn't expect. He hides it well... one of the reasons you almost never see him surprised is that he's the smartest of the four by a long shot. He can track a hundred constantly changing variables and still predict each one's path... but if something happens that he can't foresee, something that catches him off guard? He panics... just like with crow boy. Just like with you. That's one of the reasons why he trades in secrets... he likes to collect as much knowledge as he can to ensure that he can always predict what will happen next."

She was a first? Shou had known Kalokin had been horrified of trying to fix her, but this added a new angle onto things. "How was what he did to me any different from claiming a normal Vessel?"

He sighed softly and searched for the right words before he answered. "Becoming a vessel means more than just having a gods essence in your body. It's having that deity's identity bound into your soul, worked into every fiber of your being. Anyone with a decent amount of magic could take a single glance at either of us and know that Kalokin is a part of who we are. When Kalokin... had his way with you, inside his soul, it injected his soul into yours. Not only that, but a decent amount of his essence got trapped in your body. It was literally done exactly backwards of what should have been done: first, a deity bonds its spirit. Second, it mixes its soul. Third, it pushes essence through you. By skipping the first step, things went catastrophically wrong... as you well know."

It made a bit more sense, put like that... but she still didn't understand the full extent of Crow's condition, so she said as much. "And Crow? What about him?"

"I don't think Kalokin's ever corrupted a soul the way he did just then. More importantly, souls are far more powerful than you might think. A massive chunk of the power they hold is occupied with the continued function of a mortal body; creating emotion for the spirit, holding the spirit to the flesh... it takes more power than you might think. What he's going to have to do is drain all the shards of Crow's soul, then artificially bind his spirit to his body long enough to piece his soul back together... The theory is sound, but theory doesn't quite work with magic... it has a way of reacting in ways you wouldn't expect. If he succeeds, it'll be a grand moment to go down in history as a new method for helping people with fractured souls. If it fails, he'll have yet another innocent death on his conscience..."

That scared her more than a little. Yet another death? It made it sound like Kalokin had killed before... many times. She dreaded the next question, but she asked it all the same. "Khaesho... how many people has Kalokin killed?"

Kesh realized at exactly that moment that he'd made a grievous error with his choice of words... not that they were incorrect, but he hadn't intended to let on about his patron's dark past.

"I... nobody knows, except him. You'd have to ask him yourself..."

A frown; not an answer that she'd wanted, it only made her anxiety grow. "What cause did he have to kill for?"

Kesh shuddered and thought for several long moments before responding, as was his norm. "Shou, what I'm about to tell you is a legend, an old story passed around on dark nights, when the moon is empty. None of what I'm about to tell you is officially recorded in the annals of history." He as silent for a time again before speaking in a soft voice. Ordinarily, he'd never gossip about Kalokin behind his back, but... it was a legend that everyone in the deserts knew, and Shou deserved to know it too. It began as most legends did... "Long ago and all too near... back when we were a fledgling species still learning how to irrigate crops and how best to survive the desert's wrath. Your kind didn't even exist yet... but rumors tell that one day, Kalokin went insane. He spread dissent amongst the people and began a war, a war that ripped our nation asunder. People flocked to one cause or the other, and the sands were stained red with blood... The farthest western regions of the desert have red sand, because of the high content of iron, but legends insist that they're red because of the blood spilt over them. Kalokin led the attack of every battle... all of them. If there were five skirmishes being fought across the nation, you would find Kalokin at the forefront of each of them, bathing blood until his scales turned black with it. The other deities don't know how he managed the trick of being in several places at once... it's something that only he's been able to do. Ever."

"That's... that's horrible."

He found her hands with his and squeezed them carefully. "It's only a legend. The other three will laugh it off before telling their own legends, but Kalokin... any time you bring up the Naga civil war, his eyes just go straight to the horizon. He spaces out, gets all soft and quiet... but he refuses to say anything. He only ever says that there are many secrets buried beneath the sands... and that some secrets should remain buried. It is recorded that there was a rebellion once, but the annals and the other three dictate that none of the gods took an active role in the war. The rebellion was started by people upset with the system, and it would have been wrong for them to use their strength to crush it out; a rebellion means dissent, and dissent means the current government isn't doing its job well enough."

"But then, where did the legend come from."

"From Kalokin's Vessels. They'd pieced together enough inconsistencies in the records, and that was they think happened."

Shou shivered as a chill slid down her spine. She felt like a young pup telling ghost stories around a campfire, and was suddenly quite thankful for Khaesho's warmth around her. "Do you believe it?" His answer came swiftly and without hesitation.

"Yes. The Civil war was four thousand years ago, give or take, and it marked a change in our governing body so radical that started counting years anew. We count numbers differently from you... but it would translate roughly as the year of 4,013th year of peace. There aren't any records of what happened before the war though... none. We're told that they were destroyed in a fire that leveled the palace. The deities claim to remember what happen, but their stories don't quite match up... and there's something else as well. The other three make references back to that date almost as if they were born during it. They claim that its simply because the war altered the way they view us, in a significant enough way that it changed them."

"Changed them? How so?"

"That's the question, and they can't answer it... they use the term "Rebirth" a few times, but they never really explain it in a way that makes sense."

"You said the 'other three' make such references... what about Kalokin?"

"To hear Kalokin tell it, it's been five thousand years since his last 'Rebirth.' No evidence or clues on why the numbers are different. There isn't much to go on... but many people, myself included, think that they're hiding something. Think that they've spent four thousand years heaping time and sand atop their secrets in the hope that they stay buried."

She shivered again and had the distinct feeling that she was being watched. A chill of unreasonable fear grabbed at her throat in a way that she hadn't felt since she was just a pup. Eyes... eyes watching her, despite the fact that she was entirely swaddled in Khaesho's body. She chalked it up to the unnerving conversation, but she couldn't shake the feeling of being observed.

"Kalokin said he wanted to talk to us tonight though... perhaps we'll learn some of the truth then?"

Khaesho swallowed audibly before responding. "I have no doubt that we will... but every secret has a price... even if we're not the ones to pay it. Kalokin has a mantra he'll repeat every now and then, especially if you ask him why he only accept payment in secrets." He spoke again, but there was a whisper of undercurrent to his words... as if someone was trying his... or her... absolute best to perfectly match his tune and cadence. Shou only heard it with her astoundingly sharp ears, it was doubtful Khaesho heard it at all. "Everybody owes, and everybody pays."

It sounded tantalizingly familiar, yet entirely unknown. She pressed her body against his before squirming out of his coils. "That's enough gossiping... Kalokin's going to come clean with us tonight, and if I even suspect that he's not being 100% honest, I'll open a can of kickass on his tail." Her fiery attitude banished the dark specter that seemed to be looming over them, letting them both laugh and breathe easy once more. "We're not too far from Jackie's house if you want to keep going. We've still got a lot of daylight left."

"We can get a bit closer, sure, but I think Kalokin will be wanting some privacy with us for his big talk... he always likes to manifest when something important comes up, and it'd be hard to do that in civilization. Let's find some place out of the way where we can relax and talk, and we can break into Jackie's house in the morning." He said the last line with nonchalance, as if he was suggesting what they should have for dinner. He maintained a straight face and his voice didn't quiver a single quantum.

"Works for me." The ballerina could go for terrifying the bird, especially after the history they shared. A small, playful grin curled her lips, and her ears perked up. Then she glanced around. The rest stop was nice, but it wasn't secluded enough... the pine forests that stretched all around would offer good cover, she just had to find one of the many unnamed dirt roads that occasionally cut out into the wilderness. It didn't take long at all to find one and turn the junky old clunker down the dusty path. It was good that they'd escaped the watching eyes of the world; not three minutes along the path, something odd happened.

Khaesho screamed a particularly vulgar curse at Kalokin as he scrabbled at the back door latch before he flung himself out of the car. Shou wasn't going too quickly along the dirt path, so he didn't do more than bounce and roll. Shou quickly slammed the brakes to go check on him, but of much more immediate concern was the fact that he was on fire... not a happy, cheerful campfire, but a dull, muted burn that colored his scales cherry red and scorched the dirt around him with raw, almost flameless heat. He stretched himself over as wide an area as he could and just barely managed to start cooling his body by blackening the road to ashes, but even Shou could feel the stream of magical heat that was pouring out of him in amounts far greater than she thought he would be able to produce. She had just enough time to inhale for the purpose of asking a question when she felt the exact same thing he did

A surge of raw, unformed magic rushed along the ling to Kalokin's mind and hit her with the force of a freight train made out of... other, smaller freight trains. Her breath caught in her throat and all her muscles tensed up as the extraordinary surge filled her mind to the limit, and far past it. Her body began to glow weakly with light, the only magic she'd learned how to shape, but it wasn't enough, wasn't nearly enough. A pressure increased through her mind, like her entire body was about to explode with the metaphysical force... and then, that exact thing happened.

As a mortal, her mind had felt closed, boxed in. She thought her own thoughts and they stayed there, separated from the rest of the world. To make her a vessel for him, Kalokin had wedged a pipe into the edge of her mind, a faucet, if you would, and it was through this exit that she'd been able to cast magic. Now, the surge of power stretched her mind like a water balloon before the boundaries that had isolated her shattered in an explosion. No longer confined to her soul, magic coursed through her. Power, raw and undefined, begging, pleading to be given a purpose. In that moment, Shou could feel everything... every breath of wind from the heat currents Khaesho had created, every droplet of moisture in the air, every subtle charge that bound the world together. An overcast of clouds had rolled in while she'd been driving with Khaesho, and she could feel their weight, above her. A hazey instinct guided her mind, her body; she lifted her arms to the sky and pushed, and the sky pushed back. Lightning arced out from her fingertips to meet the clouds, connecting her to the sky with a living tangle of lightning. It was no single strike either, but a continuous flow that surged through her, surged with her, as if the sky was screaming in shared elation with her. Pressure, force, concentration, her will pushed energy out and forced changes on the world. The clouds overhead darkened, then blackened until they seemed to consume the sun. A torrent of rain burst forth all at once, a waterfall of upheaval that rocketed towards the ground for an impact that would shake the earth when it hit. It didn't though... the winds picked up around her, guided by a clarity of focus that she didn't know she had, catching the rain and spinning it around her.

In that moment, time seemed to stop. Everything was lit in the unnatural white light of the lightning's burn, fiercly illuminating every single droplet of rain like they were diamonds scattered from the sky. Wind tugged at her fur, begging her to join the dance with the rain as sparkling singularities flitted through the sky. She felt more powerful than a queen atop a throne, more alive than a skydiver at terminal velocity, more free than a comet striking through the heavens, more overjoyed than at the moment of the audience's applause. The power of a lightning bolt, the freedom of the wind, the joy of the rain... she was the storm, bathing the land in her radiance, washing away filth and soot and grime in Nature's greatest spectacle of a lightshow. As the cold rain washed the worst of Khaesho's trouble away, he managed to look up and see her, see her body flowing with the wind, dancing with the raindrops. She had always been beautiful when she danced, but watching the rain flick from the bead on her tail, watching the wind hold and carress her like a friend... it struck an awe at him that shuddered through his form. Admittedly, he'd almost hoped that she would be a heat magi like he was, but seeing her alive and free as the storm around him, he couldn't think of anything more suited to her.

It was but a moment, and no moment lasts longer than the one before or after it. The sensation lasted mere seconds before whitewater river of energy Kalokin forced through them slowed to a stream, then a trickle, then stopped altogether. The lightning stopped, dancing amongst the clouds occasionally still, but no longer flickering from her fingertips. The wind no longer caught and held raindrops like diamonds, now blowing only with the storm itself. Rain continued to fall, but the clouds would exhaust their burden before too long.

She'd had the presence of mind to ensure that a healthy portion of rain soaked Khaesho and the ground around him... and just barely in time. The scorched earth reached almost to the matted pine needles at the roads edge, and a forest fire would not have been pleasant. The rain extinguished his unbearable heat, though he and the ground still steamed noisily with every drop that touched him.

Well, that was unexpected.