Solo A Dialogue with deception.

[Alexander Faircroft]

Timestamp: 15th Winter 516AV

Location: Illusionary Ravok (Alvadas)

Description "Alex Common" Alex thoughts "Myrian" "Fratava" "Others"


The cold winds of the ocean spray blew as Alex stumbled his way through the city. The swirling city Alex had learnt in his four days within the city that id didn’t want to let people have an easy time navigating around the place. This became abundantly clear as the steps upon the cobbles seemed to transition into a very familiar sound. The soft footfalls of leather on wood. The light lapping of water against the docks as into view the city of his youth began to fade in. The swirling mass of churning chaotic mists began to give way to the oppressive and towering spires of Ravok. Though there was something off.

Alex could recall that feeling of the city the awe-inspiring beauty of his home city but he could feel now the twisted undercurrent that washed over him and almost made him retch with revulsion. He could feel the Goosebumps on his skin rolling over and through, and even beneath the thick leather of his coat he still could feel that building chill. His hands instinctively went to the hilts of his blades. The sound of footfalls picked up once again as he glanced off into the distance. They weren’t his own this time. Rather quite the opposite they sounded almost exactly the same however he wasn’t the progenitor of them. No instead what walked free of the mists of darkness was a figure much the same height and shape as himself but skinnier. Gaunter in the features with muddied brown eyes and jet black hair. The colours of his adoptive parents.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t what the cat dragged in.” The figure spoke magnanimously dressed an air of superiority surrounding him. A stark contrast to Alex’s slightly grimier and less well-off appearance.
“And who are you exactly?” Alex spoke in his usual reserved and soft tone again a contrast to the figures much more commanding reverberations.
“Alexander. You should know who I am, I’m you.” Alex took a half step back almost willing to flee the figure and the whole damned space. “Oh come now. I’m the you that could have existed had you not clung to your petty hopes of reprise and salvation. I’m the you that still can speak to our loving mother.” The black haired Alex smirked as he rolled his fingers over the edges of his belt loops. “So how’s clinging to your obsession of doing good playing out for you? How many people have you lost and let down on your “path of Righteousness”? Less than I’d think more than you’d like?”

Alex curled his hand into a fist within his jacket. “What do you know? You’re just a piece of my mind…The what if.” Alex snapped back biting through the emptiness.
“Precisely. I’m everything you long for. All of the things you hoped you’d never lose. And all I had to do to get here was say “screw everyone else.””

[Alexander Faircroft]

Description "Alex Common" Alex thoughts "Myrian" "Fratava" "Others"


“No.” Alex spoke with a resolution in his voice that hadn’t been there prior. “You’re the person I’d of become had I simply said I’m in it for myself.” The contrast between them was stark, black and gold, mud and jade.
“And there you have the right of it. You could be me. You could be the man before you had you simply forsaken everyone else. If you’d of followed in our mother and father’s footsteps.” Alex’s had made a motion for the blade at his side but before he could get there the figure his darker mirror tutted. “Please you’re going to strike down yourself? Don’t make me laugh, I’ve been living up there forever.” Alex’s words were normally light and airy with the feeling of a summer breeze. His darker images were a rolling scent of a sickly sweet wind, the feeling of oil and temptation dripping off of them.

“Out of the pair of us who has it in the right eh?” The shadier version spun on his heel lightly and began to pace. The cane in his hand tapping against the smooth stonework. “The self-sacrificing hero breaking off a piece of his soul every time he fails to help another. Or the one of us who is, happy and content with their life taking what they want from whoever they want and not giving a single solidity petch as to who he hurt in the process?”

Alex gritted his teeth almost feeling them grinding against each other as he did so. Everything this apparition said was digging into him lacing hooks deeper into his mind trying to pull him across and as resilient as he was it was taking an effect and a toll.
“But I’m not you.” Alex finally managed to get out. The shaky anger at the edge of his words minute but evident. “I made my decision and I will see this path to it’s end.” In a singular motion Alex ripped his blade dree from their sheaths as his doppelganger drew a blade from the cane he held.

“So ignominiously noble. Makes me sick. You could have had this power, this feeling of self-fulfilment had you only succumbed to what was offered you.” The gaunt clone spat with a venom on his words.
“And yet I didn’t. I chose to rise above what was offered me. I chose the path that was less travelled. The one which bastards like you refuse to walk. I refused the light, and spurned the darkness.” Alex spoke with a hardened edge the cold fury pouring off of him like an icy lake.
“And this is what you could have become had you simply accepted the feeling of depravity and darkness into your heart.” His doppelganger roared out a flood of heat washing off of him.

[Alexander Faircroft]

Description "Alex Common" Alex thoughts "Myrian" "Fratava" "Others"


Between the pair of them stood the no man’s land. Neither moved taking the time to appraise the other.
“You said the right of it.” His doppelganger began. “But you got it wrong. You were spurned by the light yet you were too afraid to accept the dark.” A subtle almost creepy laugh escaped his darker copy.
“You’re just an illusion what would you know?” Ales spoke with a word of anger lining his voice, he couldn’t deny the right of those words. He’d never seen hide nor hair of the light, but the darkness was always just behind him biting at his heels threatening to swallow him the moment he stopped moving.

“It’s simple.” The doppelganger slid the sword back into the cane with a soft glare. “Just because I’m an illusion of the city doesn’t mean that I’m not right. After all it’s called the city of illusions not the city of lies. I believe that moniker lies in our home town.” His limy and infinitely more twisted doppelganger stepped off quietly into a subtly and slowly building mist before he faded from view.

Alex closed his eyes slipping the blades back into their sheaths. He tilted his head skywards.
DAMNIT! Alex swung his hand with a force into the wall next to him. Slamming it with the meat of his hand. He couldn’t deny a single word. He couldn’t refute a single syllable, and he couldn’t argue a single letter.
Whether the air of nobility and goodness he put on was simply a veneer to hide his own self-loathing and guilt was something he always questioned. And he always wondered if it would have been better to just simply accept the darkness and live within those walls, to follow his adoptive father’s teachings and become a member of the ebonstryfe like his mother. To accept Rhysol and his word into him. And then as usual that small glimmer of light that tiny flicker of a candle began to pull his thoughts away from that spiral. That one spark that never left him no matter how dark the world around him seemed. His personal spark of hope. So tiny, so fragile but so bright within his own never ending darkness. Even the faintest trickle of light was enough for him to reach out for it and stand on the precipice.

His hand slid off the wall as he calmed himself and spoke with a soft word.
“You’re wrong.” He dug his fingernails into his palm as he tightened his grip and started to march back off out of the ravokian nightmare he freed himself from years ago. And found his feet walking a path absent of his mind. Wandering eastward towards a blindingly bright light.