The Other
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"I must be stupid. I mean, look at how long it took me." -- The Other
The Other is a character first mentioned in Quoth the Raven Issue 32 in the story "A Darkness Falls".
Background
The Other was created in the now-sunken Doggerland[1] on the same parallel Earth that spawned the Divided States and Vieuxlyons. Rather than being born naturally, the Other came to be when a Shaman 'bifurcated' her own soul into two independent creatures in an attempt to escape the grasp of death after having seen her own father murder her mother - and having killed her father before he could make her his next mate. Whereas the Other's counterpart, the One, inherited the majority of their progenitor's memories and emotions, the Other inherited most of her capacity for logical thought and magic. Being unable to move on to the afterlife in their bifurcated, incomplete state, the two spirits would seize the nearest corpses, bring them to life, and move on to new vessels once the previous one was killed.
Suffer the Child
The Other was content to follow the lead of the One for thousands of years, travelling and killing together as the mood took them. She was noted for being more clinical and precise at the latter, though, making murder a 'craft' where the One made it an 'art'.
Their relationship was nevertheless loving and harmonious - until the Other grew frustrated due to her unfulfilled desire to have children. The two spirits were capable of conceiving together, but the souls of their offspring were inherently instable due to their own incompleteness, leading to each child in turn to die at a young age. Angered by the One's lack of concern, the Other created a spell that forcefully bound her latest son's soul to his body, prolonging his life indefinitely - unless the magic were ever dispelled.
While the One doted on the child once it was so preserved, and both parents took pride in his growth and development, their son proved to have inherited their worst qualities. Having grown to a man and graduated from a prestigious university, the son returned to the Other, staked her down and ate her heart out of her chest.
Predictably, this act of matricide did not hold the Other down for long, but she was horrified by the realization that she had birthed and raised a voracious cannibal. Joining hands for the first time with the Men in Black, the Other hunted her son, captured him, and assisted in imprisoning him in a subterranean jail complex he would never be able to escape himself.
Suffer Conscience
The Other participated in the American Civil War on the side of the Union Army, planning to cleanse herself of her feelings of pain and regret through engaging in mass slaughter and bloodshed. With the One manipulating the Confederate army, the two spirits caused the Civil War to last twice as long as it did on 'our' Earth ... and it did not make her feel any better.
Gradually, the Other came to the conclusion that most (though possibly not all) of the killing she had done during her existence had been ethically and logically unjustifiable, and she grew ashamed.
Taking charge in their relationship for the first time, the Other travelled to Harvard University, where she studied rare texts and started to learn how to draw while awaiting the signing of a peace treaty between the Union and the Confederacy. Having developed a desire for change, she resolved to become a positive influence on human development, a teacher, and asked the One to join her in this new enterprise.
Sadly, it turned out the One had her own plans for the signing ceremony and the future: bombs and spells planted throughout the college, ravenous zombies to be unleashed, a war to be re-kindled. For the first time, the two spirits actively quarreled, and the Other imposed her will on the One to save the peace treaty from destruction, then teleported away.
Suffer Purpose
More than a century would pass before the Other and the One met again. At some point during this time, possibly after the destruction of Washington D.C., the Other joined the Men in Black full-time as she had decided they were the best option for her to uplift humanity within the Divided States. As she later explained, the Men in Black had 'inherited' the surviving files collected by the FBI, the CIA and the alien creatures that had identified themselves as men in black before they were banished from the land and up to the moon, and still evoked some respect from the people at large.
Personality
The One mentions that the Other made killing a 'craft' as opposed to an 'art', being quick, efficient and adverse to acts of torture.
While its actions were supposedly guided by logic rather than emotion, the Other's love and desire for the One were strong enough that it let its mate take the lead in their actions and travels for thousands of years. Eventually it started showing a depth of emotion that was greater and more consistent than that of the One, as its yearning for a child was the cause of their first real argument, and it was later stricken with grief and horror at their son's actions. It was the Other who showed a capacity for amassing wisdom, as its reflection on its sorrow and its actions brought it to the epiphany that it had been wrong, and made it desire a chance to make amends to the point that it ended a love affair older than most human nations on its native world.
Even after its breakup with the One, the Other displayed parental instincts and wisdom. It stated that it now saw humanity as a whole as its child, and wished to raise the species up as it had once wanted to do with its biological child, and challenged the One as to its motivations, leading its former mate to doubt its own desires for possibly the first time ever.
Combat
Although it is equally as indestructible as the One, the Other never displayed quite the same enthusiasm for melee combat. In A Darkness Falls, the One gifts its then-mate with a sniper rifle, implying it assumes that the Other would prefer ranged to melee combat.
Powers and Abilities
Between the One and the Other, the Other is noted to be the greater spellcaster by far, being able to construct spells of "Magick" the One had thought to be impossible. It also appears to be far stronger in the art of hypnosis; while the One proves capable of easily suppressing the will of any creature that meets its gaze, the Other is capable of suppressing the will of the One by simply eye contact. It also proves to be a skilled and experienced sniper.
