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[howtheyshine]

There's a break in the howling darkness. It's all he knows or needs to know. There's a break in his endless, roiling, bleak existence, a crack of light under a door that shouldn't exist, only exists because it's been forced.

There's a break in the darkness, and He leaps for it with abandon. Even oblivion would be better than the harrowing monotony of nightmares. He leaps, and plunges into cold and silence.

For a moment He doesn't know where he is, or maybe more accurately he is nowhere that should be. It's paralyzing, skewering, a death-beyond-death nothingness pain that lasts only for a breath--

--and then his consciousness careens into a field of firefly minds, bodies and beings, places to hide from what follows.

What follows?

He doesn't remember.

All he knows is that one of the fireflies is laced with starlight, and he streaks toward the beautiful shimmer of it without a second thought.

Comments

[withintenfeet]

Sometimes Zerxus knows that he's dreaming, but this time he doesn't. He wanders through a vision of Cathmoira as if he's meant to be there, as if they've already landed; it isn't strange to him that no one is out, in the twilight of evening. It isn't strange that he's wearing his armour, shield at his back and sword at his hip.

At the same time he's searching for one person in particular, as stubborn as him and as adventurous as Evandrin, because surely the years haven't taken that away. It pulls him from the center of the city to the outskirts, clustered with ancient groves and depthless lakes, and something catches in his chest - a jagged hook of visceral terror, worry laced with guilt - as his pace shifts to a run.

On the edge of one of those lakes, he sees a tiny figure, and he doesn't hesitate for a moment. Even if this isn't his son, they shouldn't be out here all alone.

[howtheyshine]

The boy isn't his son, even if their ages could be parallel. From his place at the shore, he stares out at the water and then up at the sky with its living starlight, framed by trees, by a forest with more life in one plant than in all of the Dark World. More beauty in that same space. He's awestruck, paralyzed by the heartache relief of seeing things alive in spite of the evening shadows.

Alive. This place, it's alive.

He hears running feet and turns to look, confused and freshly frightened. He should run, but he's confused by the existence of legs to do in with and swamped in tattered yellow robes far too large for his frame.

[withintenfeet]

Between one heartbeat and the next the details sharpen, and he knows this isn't Elias, but that doesn't slow his stride. Not until he's mere feet away, and he doesn't want to crowd a child who doesn't know him.

He slows to a stop and immediately raises his hands. It's a risk, drawing them away from either sheath or shield, but it's one worth taking. "It's all right. I don't want to hurt you." The words are both soft and intent, tender and solid, a tone any paladin worth their salt should master with their first spells.

[howtheyshine]

This man is talking to him. A human man--a living one. The acknowledgement without threat is confusing.

He tries to pull power to himself, to twist his shape into something that can kill the stranger's spirit and give him control of its body, but any power he had stops at the edge of this mind's starlight. He's cut off from all he used to protect himself until now.

Now, he's a boy, a child, who can feel power and not touch it. Who has no choice but faith in what the stronger being says. Helpless in the face of what follows.

What follows?

The question is meant just for himself, but it rumbles through the air around them in a bass thunder, warped with strange power.

He's confused.

He looks up at Zerxus, eyes wide, a strange yellow-green.

"Why not?"

[withintenfeet]

Zerxus may not have met any gods, but he knows divinity. There is power here, he thinks, that could tear his soul asunder if it was wielded fully.

More importantly, though, he knows the confused vulnerability of a lost child. He kneels down slowly, and this is when he fully realises
that this isn't truly Cathmoira. His armour is blurring into a grey tunic and trousers, his cape into a simple blue cloak. (The clasp, though, is seven-pointed star of gleaming brass.)

His sword is gone, but his shield is not.

"I only hurt people who are trying to hurt someone else. Even then, I like to try other things first." This doesn't always mean he does, not any more. The idyllic lakeside dims around them, the vibrance of warm memories sapped away by guilty frustration.

The gentle, patient cadence of his voice doesn't change. "Do you know where we are?"

[howtheyshine]

He gives a quiet, half-hearted growl as Zerxus kneels, entirely unintimidating from the boy, but the echoing growl from the air around them both makes the child-shaped-thing wince in apprehension. The shadow is--who? Him? He's not 'what follows,' but he can't remember-- he can't remember anything but the maelstrom of darkness and violence from before these last few minutes.

"I'm not leaving." A child's petulance with that echo from the sky, and again he winces, this time glaring upward while he tries to decide if the voice is him or is mocking him. "...Your mind. We're in your mind."

[withintenfeet]

It's not something he thinks about doing; he watches a child wince, and his eyes blaze with silver light. Usually, this spell takes its form from his own shield; this time, wings unfurl from above to wreathe the boy in starlight.

"I didn't tell you to leave. But I don't know if you'll be able to stay when I wake up."

[howtheyshine]

It's bright in a way he's not used to, it sears his eyes and gives him a headache, but the distant voice fades out instead of echoing on.

"I'm not leaving." Quieter, but more fierce. It's even less intimidating now that there's no mimic.

[withintenfeet]

"Why not?" His hands are still raised, which just looks awkward at this point. He lowers them both to the grass, savouring the memory of morning dew beneath an unfettered sky. "What will happen if you do?"

[howtheyshine]

He doesn't strictly know. He knows it would be bad. He knows it would mean death or worse, and he knows what worse is.

"I'd get... dragged back to the Dark World." He closes his eyes against the brightness of Zerxus's spell, the irony not lost on him, though he couldn't explain the feeling if asked. "Where I came from. If I'm not destroyed or captured by some mortal magic. If I don't have an anchor on this plane, I can't stay."

He doesn't know why that's true, but somehow he knows it is.

[withintenfeet]

Zerxus isn't stupid, despite various claims to the contrary; he hasn't heard of a Dark World specifically, but if it's not another name for the Abyss it's probably something close. Whatever this being is, it was either formed or influenced by an evil place.

They're in his mind; it's entirely possible they chose this form on purpose. Just because it feels like a reflection of something true, something real, doesn't necessarily mean it is.

A very long time ago, he took an oath that meant risks like this was always worth it.

"Then we'll keep you anchored here." He raises a hand, and carefully offers it. "But I'd like to set a few ground rules, if you don't mind."

[howtheyshine]

He pauses right before touching Zerxus, hovers there in uncertainty. There's a ritual air to the way the human holds his hand out, like there's some part of the gesture the shadow himself should know and react to.

"What rules?"

[withintenfeet]

He knows, instinctively, that he needs to use his words carefully and sparingly. It would be nice to have Quay's voice in his head right now, or Patia's - but then, they'd probably be telling him not to do this, so he'd have to ignore them anyway.

"Never use me to hurt anyone." Not never use me at all, or don't hurt anyone yourself. Some choices need to be made freely.

[howtheyshine]

The tension in him drops abruptly, and something tight in the air around them, like a thunderstorm, starts to fade.

"That's it? That, and you let me stay?"

[howtheyshine]

Inhabiting the hodmedod is hard. It's not much more than cloth and materia with rigid internal structures covered in spells, which is fine, it's set up much like a short human would be, but possessing the thing and getting all the limbs to move in concert isn't as easy as everyone around him makes it look.

In the end Zerxus ends up carrying him part of the way back to the tower, balanced in his arms like a toddler as he turns the head this way and that to both get used to the motion and also take advantage of being able to turn the head himself and look at whatever he wants.

His voice is slightly muffled, like he's wearing cloth tied over his mouth. In a way he is. He squirms in the knight's arms with zero concern for dignity.

"Wait, why are we going back? Why are we going straight back? I want to explore."

[withintenfeet]

It's thrusting him back over a decade, but fortunately he's blinking in the midday sun anyway. Everything is so vivid.

He can't imagine how much that compounds with time, which is why he's doing his damndest to balance keeping his grip and maintaining the view. Maybe, if he just doesn't think about how easily he's fallen back into this sort of thing, about how rusty he isn't -

"I know, but you need practice and I need food." Warm and stern, one more habit he hasn't lost. (But then, being a city's knight isn't entirely different than being - ) "The city will still be there."

Besides, he's only avoided setting off arcane alarms because his friends are being extremely tolerant and helpful. Probably because they think he's having an emotional breakdown.

[howtheyshine]

Oh right, food. He forgets about that. Taste is a sensory input this body doesn't have, but he's too distracted by all the senses it does to be disappointed or jealous at the moment.

As evidenced by the fact that he's using the hodmedod's stubby hand to pat first Zerxus's cloth tunic and then any metal he's wearing, over and over and over again. He's focused enough on that to sound slightly distracted.

"When can we go out again?"

[withintenfeet]

Zerxus has to bite his tongue on "you're going to hurt yourself"; this isn't a human child's flesh, easily bruised and scraped. (Really, it's more like the youngest dragonborn kids at the Sorcerer's University, when he steps in to tutor those born with divine magic.)

"That depends. Do you ever get..." Would tired even sound like something vaguely familiar? "What does it feel like, possessing something like this?"

[howtheyshine]

He considers that, flexing the structures inside his cloth fingers so he can watch the hands move. "Strange. Difficult. It requires... focus. Delicacy."

He's pretty sure he couldn't manage to walk and touch things at the same time, not yet anyway.

"It..." What's the right word. "It aches a little."

He has no way to compare it to sore muscles or physical fatigue. 'Aches' is the closest he's got.

[withintenfeet]

It's certainly enough to get a thoughtful nod from Zerxus.

"This is only a guess, since we...inhabit our bodies very differently." One of his bigger understatements. "But that could mean you need to rest, until the soreness fades."

Now, whether that simply means remaining still as the hodmedod or retreating back into Zerxus, he really doesn't know.

[howtheyshine]

He growls.

"I don't need rest. I never have."

He will NOT take a nap!!!

[withintenfeet]

Uh-huh.

With a wry arch of his eyebrows, "You've never been a hodmedod, either."

[howtheyshine]

It's probably hard to take his glare seriously.

"I am still a god. Whatever form I take."

[withintenfeet]

Zerxus at least manages not to grin back. All those years of barely smiling, finally paying off!

"Yes. I don't see how that changes anything."

[howtheyshine]

Zerxus might recognize the feelings pricking at the entity's being, even from the outside. Anxiety, self-consciousness, fear.

"I'm not that weak."