howtheyshine | TITLE GOES HERE

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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.

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It's strange to suddenly feel the emotional underpinnings of the landscape around them. To feel the loves and longings that shaped it in this man's mind. But somehow he knows, with the shiver in the air, that he's equally exposed. The fear, the feral intensity he's willing to use to survive. His poorly-buried anger.

For a moment, Zerxus will be able to see/feel/sense the thing the shadow was lurking, waiting to be remembered in all its vastness and cruelty.

Taking this man's body isn't going to be easy. He has unfamiliar power, the same starlight that drew the shadow to him. It shimmers in his bones.

But with the agreement, the shadow feels something else, too. A strange security, an unfamiliar comfort. The world out there can't touch him any more than he can touch it yet.

"Who are you? Why would you help me?"

Edited 2024-05-20 03:59 (UTC)

His head tilts upwards, for a moment, gaze narrowing but not darkening. Everyone has cruelty inside of them.

"Sir Zerxus Ilerez." There are echoes beneath - First Knight, paladin, father, widow - and he doesn't smother them, but he doesn't acknowledge them either. "I'm helping you because that's what I do."

It wouldn't be much of an answer at all, anywhere else. Here the words ring with profound divinity that's older than the world, perhaps older than the gods. He doesn't need to say what he believes, what he's devoted his life to; that conviction is all around them.

Everyone deserves compassion. No one is beyond redemption.

He stares. He feels suddenly strange and small and knows for a fact that he shouldn't. He remembers what he was in the Dark World, even if what came before is a mystery, if there ever was a before.

But the strange small feeling isn't just about the power he can't use here. The way this human all but invited him in, offered sanctuary, speaks as though it's simply right. It makes his nonexistent insides turn over uncomfortably.

"Why do... why do you believe that? The thing that's in the bedrock here."

Edited 2024-05-21 04:16 (UTC)

He's had a lot of people ask him that, over the years. His answer has broadened, deepened, but it hasn't changed all that much.

"Everyone has the potential to do harm. Some do a lot worse than others, but condemning them - it doesn't heal any of those wounds. It doesn't bring anyone back. It just spreads more pain."

The world has enough of that, even in a place like Avalir.

He takes a willing step toward Zerxus, then another, and his form shimmers unevenly, a mirage of indecision between shapes he can show this man.

"What if pain is your purpose? What if causing it is what you're for?"

He does think it is his purpose, not his. But it bears asking.

He'd argue against a concept like that on its face, if this was a fellow mortal asking. Anyone who believed that of themselves had been beat into shape by something else; anyone who believed it of others did so because it was convenient.

But he's talking to something else entirely, so he gives it due consideration. This answer is less rock solid in its certainty, but there's no deceit in them; new belief begins to blossom as he forms each word.

"Pain by itself isn't evil. It's just...a part of being alive." He cares so little about the gods who walk Exandria now, but he can't help thinking of the ones who were thrown away. They were just as fundamental in shaping what mortality became.

The not-a-boy shivers, somehow reassured and unsettled at the same time. Maybe at the thought of gods that he can feel in this place. He doesn't mean to, he doesn't even know it's his influence, but in the far far distance there's a rumble of thunder and the brief silhouette of something horned and taller than a mountain. He was a god of dreams, in his own way, whether he remembers or not.

The silhouette terrifies him the rest of the way to Zerxus. He ducks around behind the human, queasy with shame and furious for being ashamed at the same time.

He is a little closer to what he Was now, in appearance--a ragged yellow cloak, a broken pale mask, a crown of sharp spires resting on the cloak's raised hood.

Zerxus can't quite grasp what he's seeing beyond a strange pull in his chest, aching sympathy and wistful yearning, but he sees the reaction. His sword materialises back in his hand, and he plunges it into the earth in front of them; a statement, a warning, not an attack.

Then he turns his head, and meets the mask's gaze as well as he can. "Fear is nothing to be ashamed of."

"I'm not afraid!"

Snarled in a voice that sounds absolutely nothing like a child's now. It sounds more than anything like the echo from above that he thought was mocking him. Of course, with their sort-of-pact made, Zerxus can tell he's lying--the hum of anxiety that comes off of him is clear.

Cloth tentacles weave themselves together anxiously at their tips, form little clumps and knots then unravel and vanish back into his robes. "...Now what happens?"

Instead of flinching from that voice, Zerxus turns to face him properly; it may not sound like a child to most people, but it does to him.

Again he reaches out his hand, but this time it shimmers with a slightly different shade of magic. Calm Emotions is easy for a being like this to resist, if he wants; it's an offer, not a command.

"I think...now I wake up, and you can see what my world is like."

He touches Zerxus's hand with one long tendril, fascinated by the sense of foreign magic. It doesn't do much, beyond give him a sense of reassurance, but it also... is comforting, in a strange way. A strange way that he isn't going to think about.

"...All right. I'll come with you."

Smiles don't come easily to him, anymore, but reassurance does; his expression is warm and certain with it, as he squeezes that tendril of cloth, or of magic, or of divinity.

"Here we go, then."

In one sense, Zerxus closes his eyes; in another, he opens them.

He's not sure what he expects, and wonders if the pull he feels toward a different plane is what it feels like to fall asleep.

But then Zerxus opens his eyes. They look different, slightly wrong, a tint of yellow gold in the iris, but that's the only visible sign that there's a deity crouched in the back of his mind, peering out through his eyes in fascination at--

Well, the ceiling of his room, but it's a real material ceiling.

At first, he thinks he hasn't quite woken up yet.

Then he keeps staring and nothing brightens, nothing sharpens; he is staring up into shadow, dark and featureless, and blinking rapidly does not dispel it.

It's the first time panic surges through him. "What - "

His panic gets an immediate panicked response.

[What is it? What's wrong? What happened?]

On the bright side, someone else panicking means Zerxus can smother his own; it's a bone deep instinct at this point, being calm and steady for other people.

On the downside he does not have an answer to that.

"I can't - " He blinks again, slow and deliberate, just to make sure. Right, okay. "I can't see. Can you?"

[Yes. I'm anchored to this place through your senses. Through your vision.]

Technically it doesn't have to be Zerxus's eyes, but he doesn't know how to change his anchor now that he has it. And he's not sure he wants to either.

A thought occurs to him and his bemusement turns into an aggressive growl.

[You can't change your mind. You can't. I'll destroy your fucking eyes before I go back.]

Anger and fear would both be a reasonable response to that; instead there's a flare of ferocious indignance and wry aggravation. This time, when he closes his eyes, it's extremely pointed.

"If I really wanted to do it, threats like that wouldn't stop me." He pushes himself upright slowly, focusing on his other senses to ground him - the scent of of wood and ink and steel, the crackling of the fireplace, the cool breeze from the balcony.

"I made a promise, and I don't intend to break it. This is just..." He's been blinded in battle before, but never for more than a few minutes at a time. "I don't know how I'm going to explain this."

Keeping it a secret from the general populace is, theoretically, doable. Keeping it a secret from the Ring of Brass, that is absolutely not happening.

[N-no, hey! Open your-- our eyes. My eyes! I want to see.]

He is whining, yes. Angrily. He is also, on a level he doesn't want to share or admit to, scared of the dark.

This dark is different, it has glimmers and shades of gray, the sounds and smells of a world all around it--faint and fainter, but he can still hear and smell the strongest scents in the room. In this case, woodsmoke and little else. But it's still the dark. It's still an echo of the place he was before and he doesn't want to deal with it.

[Why are you closing them?!]

Edited 2024-07-31 05:07 (UTC)

Zerxus wasn't expecting fear, and that's not what he wanted; even as he murmurs a firm "Our eyes," he opens them again.

Sitting up, he can see the balcony. Tempus isn't here, which Zerxus already knows - he's at least a mile out, probably soaring over the city - but it's still quite a sight, early dawn light making the polished stone and stained glass shine.

[...Oh...]

The awe is unexpected. Tangible, true light would be wondrous on its own, but the morning hues off stone and through stained glass--

[This is where you live?]

What must the view be like from that balcony? He has no idea, no notion what could even be out there except for the glimpse of sky and something that might be a building, impossibly tall. It's hard to tell from this angle.

[Go out there! I want to go out there.]

Edited 2024-08-05 05:52 (UTC)

His lips twitch, the ghost of an indulgent smile that used to grace his features every day. There's a painful twist of regret and yearning to the warmth in his chest, but it's still enough to soothe away more of the anxiety. He doesn't need to figure this out quite yet.

It's not like he needs to see to know it's a beautiful morning; the city wouldn't settle for anything less.

"When you want people to do things for you, it's nice to say 'please'."

There's the distinct foot-stomp sense of surliness, while a god who doesn't know he's a god decides whether or not saying please is an acceptable demand when he doesn't remember ever having to say it before.

[Fine! Please go out there.]

"Thank you. ...Try to be patient, please."

Zerxus pushes himself up gingerly, taking a few small steps to test his balance. He keeps his bedroom neat and simple (or, one could say, cold and barren); there's nothing to trip over, and nothing to impede the warmth of the sun. It's hesitant, and a bit wobbly, but he makes his way in the right direction.

He can feel it beneath his feet when the sturdier stone of the main tower transitions to smoother marble, and it gives him the confidence to quicken his stride until his hands rest on the rail.

The second-hand wonder Zerxus can feel intensifies as they step into the sun. No, he can't feel the warmth of that light, but he knows that it is warm.

And the city... The city.

[I-It's... so... It's so alive.]

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