Gloom (Fallon)

[Wrenmae]

When his eyes rested on her, they were not unkind, nor especially joyous. There was a question in them, but one that he didn't speak. The memory was revealed to them for some reason, and that reason was yet unknown to him. Were they kin? Her possession of the wing seemed to suggest it, but it left too many questions, too many uncertainties.

He took a breath and let it out in a sigh, "There are no answers I need to find here, Fallon. I think...maybe, it is you who may be seeking." He walked past her, trailing his fingers along the warped wood of the doors. Some jumped against his touch, like an excited stutter heartbeat. Others remained cold and aloof.

Never fading far from her eyes, he offered her encouraging smiles between the spaces between doorways. One rattled, hissed at him, drawn tight with chains...whatever was behind it seemed to roar dully, without purpose and without rage.

"All these memories," He started to say, and fell silent, thinking. "All these doors are here because we want them to be. Part of us seeks truth and in that truth, we offer our own secrets...a payment, I suppose."

Straightening his back against one of warped oak, he sighed and looked to the inscrutable sky. "My family they..." He paused, somewhere in the maze of doors there was a gasping croak, full of fluid and pain. "Died," He said at last, looking down at his hands, "I don't know if you're real, but I haven't had blood kin since I was ten years old." He caught her eyes again with a helpless sort of grin, "It's terrible, isn't it? To feel alone?"

[Fallon]

x
It was hard not to shirk away, to force herself to retreat from those watching eyes, those eyes that spoke so much but also so very little. There were too many suggestions, too little evidence to start building a foundation of possibilities. It made her falter; it caused her to doubt all that she once knew as true. That she was alone, that there was no others in the world that she could call blood, that she could call family. Her throat constricted, her eyes turning sheepishly towards the surrounding doors.

There was a sharp intake of breath to his statement, a bitter sweet truth in his words. She turned to the doors, their chorus of noise reaching out to her. The dull roar reached her ears, her form creasing and closing up. Instinct and emotion begun to take its toll, her once scattered memories scratching and snarling upon the very maze of doors that surrounded them.

“I was once told it was better to have and to loose, then to never have at all,” fingers tensed as she hugged her arms. A sombre look had formed, a tremble having formed itself in her voice. She knew well of death, she had felt its sting before. And every time she did there was the sickening knowledge that there was nothing she could do. Every time it had left her alone, and every time she was left to pick up the pieces by herself. Both of them were just as helpless as the other, to be thrusted into a world and to be alone. No guiding hand, no thought or consideration from others. Mere children left to follow their own path of bitterness and sorrows.

Heavy feet dragged her around and weaving between the doors, searching for that glimpse of hope, that answer that may come to her from out of its hiding. She stopped before the warped oak next to him, her head held low as she hovered there. She heard the rattling behind it, the quiet hiss of noise coming from beyond.

“I hate being alone,” she spoke in a mumble, “But, despite it, I keep on going forwards. It’s the only thing I know after all. To keep on walking despite the pains. And perhaps, that is why I am going to keep on going.” Fallon reached out her hand to the door, her fingers pressing against it before turning her eyes up to his. She released a croak, “No turning back.”

And so the door to the beyond was opened to the darkness beyond and the trembling roar turned into a scream of pure, unwavering pain. There was her own wincing, the distinct sound of heavy breathing and a weak cry reaching her ears. Her hand of course reacted almost out of instinct and tightly grasped Egyptus’ arm. It was like before, another memory of another time, but not from his child eyes this time. It was from her own.

At first, it was out of focus a blur of bright colours almost as if created by a fevered heat. There was the sound of a woman, angry, upset, distressed the distinct foot falls upon earthen ground. But there was no actual screaming, the noise had all but fallen into silence short of that ever low breathing. The woman turned for a moment, the unsteady features falling into focus as she approached. A hand came in, touching briefly then snapping back just as quickly with the low muttering of curses under her breath, wonderfully blue eyes staring at her, “This is all my fault. All my fault. I just… I just…”

She pulled away for a chime, pacing once more back and forth with her fingers lace around a chain. The small hand reached out for a moment, the vision returning and growing sharp before the woman almost instinctively returned once more, “Hush… hush, it’s going to be alright. Don’t worry… it will be okay…” there was a swallow, “It will be over soon,” A hand reached down to smooth down the hair before she released a sharp intake of breath. Eyes pulled away for a moment and looked down upon the chain in her hand before it was so carefully looped over them. She held the tip of the wing and presented it to the blurred eyes. She held it there for her to see.

“Now… when I… well… your father and I were more acquainted,” there was a long pause, “He said to give this to you so you would remember who you are, and that you should keep it close because… well it lets you know that somewhere out there is blood related to you. And that you are not alone,” the woman pulled away hand cupping her jaw, “And that… well… somewhere out there is the partner to that wing. My son… your brothe-“ the necklace was released, the vision beginning to darken and blur once more. A hand reached down and shook her, and then pulled away, disappearing once more into the gloom, “I’m sorry… I just… I just wanted you to meet them. I didn’t want this. Gods why this?”

The door slammed shut.
x

[Wrenmae]

"Very touching."

It was not Egyptus who spoke, but a phantom that passed between the doors. It was a paler man with a shock of Egyptus' brown hair his same jaw and likeness. But the eyes were glittering, arrogant pits, hardly eyes at all but inscrutable twin-shadows.

Egyptus put a comforting hand on the one that clutched his arm and moved between the two subtly. The phantom stopped, pulling the cloak around himself with a pale hand. It wasn't that he looked sick, persay, but more that he was carved of alabaster, perfectly sculpted and shaped. Gone was the ruggedness of Egyptus...this was more refined.

From another corner, a child peeked out from the darkness of the doors. It could have been Egyptus' younger brother...or perhaps him.

"Not to worry, not to worry my young rapscallions," Came a voice from above, another Wren in cape and satin, wide brimmed had obscuring his eyes and a wide grin across his face, "We're only at the shock of revelation. Worry not, the story goes on, always on."

"Enough." Egyptus spoke this time, "You're not here."

"Aren't we?" The phantom sneered and crossed his arms "Who are you to decide that? You're not even the whole story, just a snippet of a fantasy of who you wanted to be." Scowling, he brought out a hand. Fire leaped into it for a moment, growing and then vanishing, "Weak, powerless, playing host to strangers for a life calling...hardly what I'd consider worthy of me."

"There is wisdom in that," The child spoke up shyly, "Let him be what he wants to be."

"How tempting! Indeed!" The wide brimmed storyteller laughed, balancing on top of a door, "Leave it off at that, hmmm? The dusty tavern, play a low song, lived happy ever after perhaps? How delightfully trite, but then...there is something to be said for crowd favorites."

"Humans are simple creatures," The phantom insisted, something slithered under his skin, "They want blood and tragedy, death and rebirth. Without trial, there is no reward. You think happy endings simply float out of nothing...but we suffer to get where we are. I have suffered. We all have suffered and this..." He gestured at Egyptus, "Thing...fantasy...illusion, whatever it is, this is not what we became."

Egyptus tugged Fallon with him through the maze of doors, "Come," he whispered to her, "Do not listen to them...they are not real."


They turned down corridors of knobs and portals, of a thousand doors to a thousand memories. But it was when they turned the next corner that the pale wraith awaited them, standing in front of a cloth door, like the back of a caravan.

"Not real." He didn't look upset, simply grim. "Perhaps our dear sister would like to see what happened to her family...hmm? Why not? Blood sees blood, let her decide which one of us is real."

He tore open the door and they were looking through half-lidded eyes at the blood little Egyptus had vomitted onto the snow. He was going to die. His father was gone, perhaps for help, perhaps attacked...and his youngest was dying.

There was the smell of rich cigar smoke, something alluring and yet cloying.

"No!" Egyptus stepped forward and tore the doorway down. The wraith only smiled. "That is not what happened. We made it to Alvadas. We all survived."

The wraith did not address Egyptus, clutching to that tattered doorway with fierce, white-knucked grip. Instead he strolled by Fallon, pausing for a moment to fix her with those dark, angry eyes. "This must be confusing for you...if you truly exist. But rest assured, you want nothing with this one. Kin or not, he is no family of yours."

And it stepped into the shadows of the doors...and was gone.

[Fallon]

Her head turned to the new voice that spoke from the foggy gloom, the shadow of the man that she clung to. If it could even be called that. A pale ghost approached and stood the dark eyes boring down into her very ego. Then the second and the third appeared, a chorus of words ringing out above the groans and cries of the wood. Eyes looked upon the back of Egyptus’ as he stood his ground against the forces that existed before them, created for what purpose though was unknown to her.

Yet, he pulled her away despite their jeers of torment, discarding them off as false. Fallon followed him blindly, mind racing through words and thoughts. A lie? Another side? What was real and what was not? The corridor of doors beckoned them, standing as a darkening maw in which they had little choice to tread. It was their path whether they liked it or not. Their road through life and ever on. The pale ghost returned, a leering smile the door to the past ripped open and the scene plaid before them.

It came as a wave, thick, nauseating to the senses, a distinct bitterness that clawed its way up to produce that taste of bile. Fingers numbed, the cold ice creeping up into her arms. But just as quickly as it came was the door ripped down and discarded. Fallon pulled away instinctively, her back bumping into the door that was behind her. The ghoul’s eyes locked upon her, the dark words rolling from his tongue with ease. Her knees buckled as she slid down the door, defeated easily by words.

The potential was so close, the dream and the knowledge that she was perhaps no longer alone was within reach. In an instant it had been brushed aside, destroyed and left to ruin. Her head hung, her jaw trembled as words failed her. She knew what she had seen, she knew what she had heard, and there was no denying it. Her head was placed in her hand. Gods this was confusing. But it was with a low tone that she managed to release some words, a response almost to the gloom beyond and the wraith that lurked within, “I will be the judge on what I wish to have nothing to do with. Not you or anyone else.”

Eyes bore back for a chime, staring defiantly through the fog, and then promptly turned back to Egyptus. She regarded him silently, looking between the fingers of her hands her nostrils flaring as she tried to think through. There was a blink, and the hand lowered, a brief clenching of fists, before she pulled herself up. Her hand extended towards him, held open with a single phrase upon her lips, “Come, walk with me.”

She did not wait long, even if he took the hand or not. Already she was making steady pace through, her head turning between the doors as she looked and searched almost for an answer. One would come, she knew it would. It was simply finding the correct one. And then she stopped, eyes fixed upon the cold iron that stood so silently, unlike the others.

Fallon gave a glance back to Egyptus, her eyes tracing up his form then shifting away. She gave a mumble, fingers rubbing at her brow watching the shadows dance upon the still frame of the door, “What is it that you want? Or perhaps more importantly, will you have me?” there was a pause shortly followed by the shake of the head, “No… no. That was wrong. What is the truth? What is the real fate placed before you?” Her forehead rested upon the cool metal and she whispered a murmur to it, “No, it is not time to open you. Not yet. Not until I hear what must be heard.”
x

[Wrenmae]

Egyptus took her hand and she led him through the graveyard of memories past. Yawning gates and tiny windows, all snatches of life and memory that existed between them. Perhaps...perhaps their blood had called them here, to this place. Perhaps this was the will of his father, a ghost that heard the splashes of the mizas he commemorated each year for the sacrifice he'd made.

What sacrifice?

What-

And just like that, the illusion had ended. There was only one door in all the world now, and it was the iron one that Fallon rested her head against. The others had shrank, diminished, been banished back to the minds to which they belonged.

There was no Shroud, no Weaver, no Egyptus...just Wrenmae. He changed when she turned away from him, casting aside the neat clothes of the kindly barkeep for the ruddy cloth of his journey. The scars on his face, the edge of an angry red mark poking up along his neckline, the steel cloth cloak with a rip in one shoulder where an angry Akalak had almost ended him.

He was whole and he remembered.

Part of him wanted to reach out to her, take the girl and gently turn her around into an embrace. That part of him ached to do the same to Kit, even as she lunged away from his touch, as if a fundamental part of her feared him.

In that moment there was recognition between them. He saw her and himself, and he could read the features of their similarity off their bones, their flesh. Another part of him wanted to grip her with both hands, throttle the life out of her. End this mad nightmare here and now. No more links, no more chains to humanity and their damned weaknesses. She was weak, they all were weak. Everyone withered and fell to dust, and the worthy did not remain behind.

He was the worthy, and she...like Kit, like Alric, like Rayage, like Ana, like Philomena, was a weakness scuttling through his bones and gnawing on his resolve. Gods...Vayt, Rhysol, Sagallius, all their powers and interest felt like so much wasted effort on his shoulders.

In the end, he was just like the rest of them. He bled, he longed, he lusted, he cried, he suffered as they would inevitably suffer.

Shroud was the dark part of him, that essence of pessimistic hatred that allowed him to distance himself from all that. Weaver was how he forgot reality's weave, likened it to a story...and Egyptus was his guilty conscience, confiding and advising.

The shattered bits of his indecision and coping, now thrust back into totality.

And in the end, what did that make him? Was he Wrenmae, the storyteller, the child who once hoped to sing words to sway the ear of a god? Or was he Wrenmae, the agent of three dark gods, spreading influence into a world already sick with stagnant inadequacy?

Perhaps he didn't know.

"We were strangers once." His voice curled around her, a little darker, a little bitter, "Perhaps you were better for that knowledge, perhaps not." He did not move from where he stood. Instead his eyes drilled into her back. "All those close to me have perished in the long years, and I thought I had no one left."

A lie...there were others, but none he thought he would see again.

"But you are my blood, Fallon, you are my sister...that door will show it to us as I know you know it will. Perhaps that is fate, for you to cast aside this loneliness that hovers over you. Perhaps this dream was sent to warn you of me, of the calamity I may bring."

He fell quiet a moment.

"All I know, Fallon, is that you are my sister...blood I thought nevermore existed. I will come to you, I will find you."

He almost was swallowed by the darkness around them, "You are not alone any longer."

[Fallon]

Her eyes turned and met his, pale arms giving a tremble as they touched the cold iron. He changed, he revealed, he showed his true state. The ideals were discarded leaving behind what he really was. Darkness begun to close in, the black unwavering fog hovering there within sight. It begun to lap at their feet, clawing its way around them and up. Smothering almost. But just as he was revealed, did she herself begin something similar. She felt the scars beneath shift and turn. Eyes turned to the dark words, jaw tensing, fingers clenching. There was nothing left now.

She looked at him from behind her fringe, meeting those drilling eyes with her own unwavering ones. There was no turning back now, the die had been cast, the strings of fate had begun to intertwine and firmly pull. Fallon turned to face him, shoulders back a hand reaching out and firmly resting upon his tired, weary shoulder. Regarding him, she spoke her tone rougher and lower than before, “Then I will wait for you.”

Fingers held firm, brown knitting deeply as she gave one last solid look at him. She would remember the eyes; she would remember the jaw, the subtle similarities between the pair of them. There was a pat, a final release of him whilst the other hand reached for the door handle. There was a low snort, a wiry smile before she turned it. One last look, one last memory between them before they would be forced into waking up and facing the world around them.

There was little else to say, little else to do. She turned the handle, the groaning of locks crying out, the dull beat of worn bolts moving out from their position. Her head hung low, her other hand now pressing against it almost for extra leverage.

“We seek the truth and will endure the consequences. And whilst we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the outcome of our actions,” the hinges complained as she pushed against it. She placed a foot down, teeth gritting as she pushed against it one last time. It gave in, swinging open and a piercing white came filtering in, blinding and startling. There was a wince, her hand raising to shield her eyes as she gave Egyptus – if that was even his name – one last look, “After all, nobody ever did or ever will, escape the consequences of their choices.”

Eyes turned to the light and the calling beyond. To where their answers lay, despite them already knowing them.

“I will wait and then, maybe, when we meet,” she gave a shrug, “There will begin a great saga of an adventure that will last for eons to come,” there was one final raising of the hand, a pale worn one at that, serving as one final gesture for him to take, “Ready to see the other side?”
x

[Wrenmae]

It wasn’t as though he’d expected her to say yes. In a way, his life had been about refusals…overt or subtle. While the gods bent to say yes, the mortals in his life refuted him with their bodies and minds. So would this be any different? In his heart of hearts, the answer was always no, but somewhere between reality and complete delusion there existed that cunning tongue of flame called hope. And when Fallon spoke, it fanned into new life. There was no link between them besides the memories of dreams, the possible fantasy of it all. Wren admitted to himself, plainly, that there was a distinct possibility Fallon had never existed at all. Certainly he did not dismiss the coincidence of her location. She lived in Syliras, the seat of civilization and order. Of all the cities Wren could have brought himself to, it was Syliras that may have posed the most threat.
Had he not nearly killed Imass? Had he not offered him to Rhysol? Had he not attacked the Knights with sickness and plague in the journey to Sahova? Did he not conspire against them at every turn?

Perhaps their magic tree had set a trap, cunning in its immobile state. Perhaps it called to him over the long leagues with proffered roses and acceptance, only to reveal the roses were serpents and acceptance just a thin veneer over wrath and loathing. There were a thousand possibilities here, each one with their unique consequences. She was right, of course. One paid for their decisions. He paid his entire life for the breath of vitality stolen at too steep a cost. Each one of them was a collection of their experiences, their choices, their failings and triumphs. His skin melted in resistance, his soul trying to pass from his body and out to her side. There was a chance for family again, true kinship. Kit reviled from his touch and the others…were long gone.

Was this not, in a way, what he yearned for?

He found he could no more resist her offered hand than he could his own breath, stepping over to take it. Her touch, he could almost feel it, imagined as it was in this strange clash of dream and memory. There was warmth here, and his fingers tightened around hers as both stepped through the door.

There was no final memory, only a vast open sea of stars, the thousand, million instances that made them who they were. At once they could see the grand tapestry of their lives laid out in points of incandescent purity…but only for a moment.

Wrenmae awoke with his hand clutching nothing, cold sweat soaking his bed. He lay back and put a hand to his forehead, taking a deep breath and rolling over on his side.

He would to go Syliras then…and pity those who got in his way.

[Fallon]

And so the end came. There was no doubt, there was no anger or rage, no denial of what had been before them. The flame of life, the tiny spark had grown into a roaring flame. Loud, burning, a piercing sense of peace having consumed. There was no trickery here, no illusions here created to deceive the mind. A chance was given to be built upon and the dying kindles turned.

There was only a brief, warm smile, the fingers squeezing tightly around his. There was nothing more to say, the cards had been placed before them, the final one drawn at last and revealed to the world. She felt the warmth, the brief flutter of hope that dwelled within, not just him but herself also. There was a chance; there was a slither of light that perhaps no more the pair would be alone. Of course there was the fact it could be little more than a story, a fantasy made up to please the mind.

But at least it was a good dream in the end.

The sky was ignited with stars, a moment within the vast sea of memories. Flashes came and went; a wall of knowledge and thoughts, of screams and hates, of losses and gains, all there in the blink of an eye. She gave only one last look at him, imprinting the silhouette of his face in her mind. But that moment did not last. The dream crumbled, breaking down and flowing free like sand. Her hold on his was lost, slipping free. The blinding black of the night consuming.

When Fallon awoke, she had found her fingers knotted in her sheets, and a strange, hollow emptiness resting upon the edge of her mind. It seemed so cruel, said her mind between breaths. Her fist gave a strike against the fabric.

Time will be the one to reveal this truth. For better or for worse.
x