The Eternal Balance

[TheDragonsRoost 113]

“Strength does not come from fear or anger. It is never given freely and must be earned.”

 

Dreycon languished on the roads that he walked upon. The internal struggle within his mind always defeating one side and strengthening the victorious had taken its toll on his physical body. It wasn’t truly as bad as when he had Elvira attempt to remove his bond to September, but to only find out that the bond could not be removed by even Ascended magic. Dreycon’s inner demon, he felt, had smiled with a dark devilish grin as if it knew that the bond was irrevocable to his current knowledge.

 

“You truly thought that the bond could be revoked by those weaker than the Prince? You are a bigger fool than I thought.” It said within his mind, an ever-lasting torment that would drive him insane. He wondered if this was what made dark magic so dangerous-the madness of internal struggle becoming external. Since it was freed upon that day-the day that made him bonded to September-all his demon ever did was truly fuel his own form of torture. This kind of torture was unlike anything that Dreycon himself could do, but he knew that nothing was worse than feeling the darkest emotions take shape within his mind and turn him insane or rendered unable to feel like the gods that watched over them all.

 

There was another method of madness that truly would make Dreycon feel as if his very soul was not there. His mind played as an endless game of strategy, always trying to figure out what kind of scenarios would happen and what they had as potential outcomes. In many ways, he had devised his own type of mental prison without even realizing, but his inner demon did. Akin to a warden that would endlessly come up with varying forms of mental torture, his inner demon wandered this mental prison without the restrictions that presented his good side.

 

This was Dreycon’s inner workings. Without even knowing it at all, he had devised the ultimate mental prison for himself to navigate that was infinite in complexity and size, though however, he wasn’t aware that any mental mage can easily navigate this mind prison as his own inner demon could. In this mental prison always lay madness within madness, insanity beyond comprehension as if this mind was tortured endlessly and always breaking under the strain.

 

“Even inside your own prison, Dreycon, you cannot escape the torture. You cannot hide from the madness. This is your weakness, your greatest failure.” It said, taunting him as it echoed within this mental prison. “Where you are powerless even within your own mind.”

 

In the outside world, Dreycon seemed quite tired. Aging prematurely as if no one could understand how or why. Even to those under September’s thrall could not tell what was truly going on inside of this man’s mind unless they would truly care to notice. This was the eternal struggle made incarnate.

 

Darkness fighting the light and light fighting the darkness.

 

“Yet all I can do is think. I can save people if I tried to just think, to escape the torture for just a few moments. That could ease the pain for a time and that’s all I want.” Dreycon thought to himself. This proved to be right during the battle near Santegia where he met Leyunia, a consul. He had helped to lure a magma giant into the lake where it turned to steam, but it even helped in the next stage of the fight where they met the god Scaldris. He said to Leyunia about breaking the crystal to try and close the portal, but all it managed to do was break off pieces of the crystal and not close the portal. Once the god escaped back through the portal, however, he did not wish to take part in the award of claiming an orb because he already had his reward for the time.

 

He earned a small reprieve from the mental prison he constructed unknowingly and the torture of the madness. It gave him strength and he would need a lot of it to truly overcome the prison and even attempt to force the demon back into its own cage.

 

This made Dreycon smile when he recalled such an event and that memory helped him sleep soundly once he set up camp for the night. He was on his way to the city of Fi’halen where his adventures would begin proper.

 

“Now, I wait to see what the future holds for me.”