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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.

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[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?"

[withintenfeet]

"That's it." What else is there, really? He can protect his friends and their city without making deals for it. Evandrin is gone, and Elias is thousands of miles away.

[howtheyshine]

"Then... I swear I will never use you to hurt anyone."

The echo is back, more distant, a sullen rumble like thunder instead of sharply mocking. Something about the words and their repetition feels like bands of iron being secured around his neck and wrists, even though he knows on some level that a neck and wrists aren't even a part of how he normally appears.

He mimics the way the man is holding his hand out, but doesn't know what to do beyond that.

[withintenfeet]

Zerxus leans forward to curl his hand around the boy's, and he can feel something like thunder in his own chest, rippling out and making him shudder. It doesn't hurt, but he can feel it changing him, somehow, leaving him exposed in some deep, fundamental way.

That's all right. He's already been hollowed out and left to keep going.

[howtheyshine]

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?"

[withintenfeet]

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.

[howtheyshine]

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."

[withintenfeet]

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.

[howtheyshine]

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.

[withintenfeet]

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.

[howtheyshine]

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.

[withintenfeet]

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."