He Who Remained

[Xarkly 17299]

 

Spoiler

 

 

Villorik’s hair streamed in the wind.

 

It was a warm day. The summer sun beat down on Villorik as he idled by the wildflowers in the forest clearing, where chirping crickets mingled with snatches of birdsong in the air. The wildflowers that dappled the clearing were in the peak of their bloom, their vibrant heads stirring in the soft wind, and the grass itself was warm from the sun’s touch. It was … nice. He did not remember feeling so … light, so oddly contented, in a long time.

 

I should come out here more often, he thought to himself, and lay back on the matted picnic blanket spread out beneath him. He remembered having been worried about something, but that knot of anxiety was gone since he had come out to the woods. It mustn’t have been worth worrying about after all. 

 

He breathed in the forest air, before he pushed himself up and set to work. From the wicker basket he had brought, he began to set out the food; Prikaburren bread with a sweet orange chutney, imported all the way from Balian. Villorik had gone through a lot of trouble to get his hands on that, but he had a hunch that it would be worth it. She loves oranges. Even though he wore only plain woollens, Villorik sheened a light sweat when by the time he had poured two cups of mead, but it made him feel oddly cold. The woollens were comfortable, but they felt so strangely foreign, as if he had stolen them from another man. 

 

He did not dwell on it, though; abruptly, a twig cracked somewhere behind him, and Villorik spun. His hands instinctively shot to his waist, and drew his blade - … Villorik stared. My … blade? There was nothing on his belt, save for a half-empty waterskin. His eyes trailed up to the source of his noise, where a rabbit cautiously poked its head into the clearing. As it locked eyes with Villorik, though, it darted into the foliage with a rustle. 

 

There are no wolves in these woods, fool, he reminded himself with a dismissive laugh. I’ll have to tell her about this when she gets here. She’ll get a good laugh out of that. 

 

Villorik could not say how much longer he toiled at setting up the picnic. It felt like only a few minutes, but by the time he had set the meal out in little wooden bowls and porcelain cups, the sun was beginning to set, and had bathed the world in a deepening golden glow.

 

The crunch of leaves beneath soft shoes marked her arrival, and Villorik looked up from the picnic with a broad grin.

 

“Well, look who’s running late again!” he chided in jest, and planted his hands on his hips. From the trees, Amaya of Venzia emerged, her proud face lit in the evening light, and the jewellery around her neck flashing where it caught the sun. Beneath her silk kokoshnik, her eyes were downcast, as if lost in thought. “Not to worry, though; the wait will have been worth it. Take a look at this,” as she drew closer, Villorik presented the jar of orange chutney - within the blemished glass, its colour was not unlike the evening sky - like a hunter’s trophy. “Tada!” 

 

Amaya stopped a few feet from the picnic. Her eyes did not move from the ground, and she did not speak.

 

“See?” he chimed. “I remembered oranges were your favourite. It was funny, actually, because I -”

 

“How many is it now, Villorik?” 

 

⋅ ───────────────⊱༺⠀☨⠀༻⊰─────────────── ⋅

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Her words, soft and gentle, made every hair on his body stand on end. His eyes widened. His heart thrummed in his ears. “ … What?” 

 

“Since Lumbridge.” Her eyes, he realised, were not just downcast. They were shut. “How many is it now?” 

 

Just like that, the fog that had shrouded his memory lifted.

 

Villorik felt weight in his hands. He looked down to see the long shaft of a polearm in his hands, the blade of which was buried into the dark breastplate of a helmeted woman, collapsed to a knee before him. In the place of blood, a pale mist seeped through the cracks in her plate around his glaive. His breath caught in his throat, Villorik let the glaive drop from his hands with a clang as he stepped back, only to trip on something on the ground behind him. As he fell, his body met the ground with a clank of metal. His plain woollens had been replaced with resplendent mail that had cushioned his fall over a corpse that had appeared behind him - a corpse of a red-skinned Cursed Child, dressed like a knight but for the twisted horns sprouted from her head. 

 

He stifled a cry as he clambered to his feet, and, in his haste, almost tripped over a long white cloak draped from his shoulders. His head whipped around, and he stopped himself from retreating further at the sight of more corpses strewn near the picnic basket, their faces filmed with death. He could recognise each and every one of them; a Dragonkin he had impaled in a garden; a Vampyre whose throat he had scored; a Warlock with a bloody ruin of a face. There were more corpses than Villorik could count.

 

“That’s right,” echoed Amaya’s voice, solemn and weary, as she gave voice to those very thoughts. “You can’t count them. You’ve lived a long life.” In the light of the setting sun, the corpses lay strewn everywhere, as if a battle had been fought within the clearing. They lay piled on the ground, slumped against trunks, and hanging from nooses atop the branches. His blood froze when he saw they were not just Shadowspawn, either; he could spy no shortage of slashed and torn burgundy tabards that belonged to Veleztian soldiers he had killed as a much younger man, in a war long long ago. “A long life, and a bloody one.” 

 

His jaw clenched to the point of aching, Villorik fixed the warped memory of Amaya with a glare. “I do not deny it. I have -” 

 

“- your reasons,” Amaya finished. “And what have you got to show for it?” She took a step forward, and lifted her head. Malflame - pale and sickly - waxed around her, smouldering her clothes and parting her flesh like paper. “To what end have these corpses served you?” 

 

Slight as she was, Villorik could not help but recoil at her approach. Anger and fear alike bubbled in his throat. “I -” 

 

“You swore to make Andrey strong,” she went on in that soft, yet somehow overpowering, drawl, “but all you did was nurture the seeds of hate in him until they ruined him.” The malflame flared, peeling away more of her flesh, as red and bloody thorns began to curl around her right arm. “Your vow to Reza was doubly betrayed; first, you let Ailred die, and then you abandoned her to despair.” 

 

Behind Amaya, a body of a warrior - of Ailred - levitated in the air, before dissipating into motes of glowing ash, leaving his hammer to fall to the earth. “That … that’s not - …” Villorik began weakly, but the words failed him. His legs shook; he could barely stand under the weight of his own armour. “It wasn’t - …” 

 

“You forbid Tatiyana from following you into battle, so that you might keep her from danger.” There was a mocking edge to Amaya’s soft voice, now. “Yet it was not on the battlefield that she died, Villorik. You were not even at her side.” As Villorik backed up, his plated boots bumped into Tatiyana’s own body, her eyes brimming with malice as she glared up at him in silent accusation. “You were her father, Villorik, and you left her alone to die.” 

 

Rooted to the spot, he could do nothing but watch as Amaya raised a hand wreathed in burning Malflame towards him. “You promised Sermi you would grow stronger than she.” The skin fell away, leaving only bone fingers extended gently towards him, like a hand reaching in an invitation to dance. “And you promised you would find a way to free her soul from the Hells.” The fingers lingered mere inches from Villorik. “But what was it you did?” 

 

“ … Nothing!” a roar bubbled through the fear that petrified him, and he clenched his fists so hard that the seams of his gloves began to creak and pop. “I couldn’t do anything! I - I couldn’t free her, I couldn’t even kill her!” 

 

The Malflame climbed high along her body, gradually reducing her to a skeleton before him. Of her face, only her eyes - her eyes rife with hate - remained, glaring at him above a skinless nose. “That’s right,” she cooed, though her skeletal mouth did not move. “For all your power Deia gave you, you failed once more.” 

 

“ … That is another who you have failed, Villorik, isn't it?” There was a drip, a flow of thick liquid, as something appeared in Amaya’s bony hand. It was a decapitated woman’s head oozing a paste-like blood, though a child’s drawing covered her face like a cloth. “Another that you promised to save, but could not?” 

 

“S-she …” Villorik’s entire face quivered. “She chose -” 

 

“A demon over you, yes,” she cut in. “So hopeless was the alternative you offered, Villorik. Do you truly blame her?” Slowly, one of her eyes burned away into smouldering flakes, leaving only the other remaining of her original face, while the rest was burning bone. “Even Caius, the man you swore your fealty to, the man with whom you honed your blade as a hunter of the dark … what must he see, as he looks down from the Heavens, to see his faith in you squandered? To see not a single great enemy vanquished in the name of your shared cause?” 

 

The evening light had begun to fade as the sunset ebbed below the treeline, casting sharp shadows across the clearing of corpses. The bodiless head in Amaya’s hand melted away into formless sludge, sluicing through her fingers. “How could Caius do anything but lament?” Even without lips, Amaya somehow seemed to smile mirthlessly. “Worst of all, what about -” 

 

“You?” finished Villorik. The fear that had writhed within him was still there - slicing and raw - but the retort came easy to him nonetheless. “I have failed you most of all, haven’t I? Failed to avenge you, failed to honour you as a Saint so that your kindness would form the foundation of a gentler world. I do not deny it,” he seethed at the visage of Amaya, who only stared back with morbid curiosity. “I … I don’t deny any of these failures.” 

 

As he stared into Amaya’s one remaining eye, it seemed to shift. One moment, it was Amaya’s own, but then … its shape shifted, and welled with the pride of Andrey. Then, it became Rezalisa’s, marred with concern. Then it was Tatiyana’s, full of life’s fire. Sermi’s calculating ambition. Deia’s innocence. Caius’ regal surety. The final eye it shifted to was narrowed in a determined glare, burning with cold fury, and Villorik knew it was his own gaze, before it finally burned away with the rest of Amaya’s ghostly flesh. 

 

“ … So,” Villorik challenged the Malflame-cloaked skeleton. “Is … is this some death dream? Am I to die now?” As the last of the sun’s rays faded from the clearing, leaving only moonshadows to light the strewn corpses. “I am the only one who remains. A relic of a bygone era. A defective champion. So, if I’m to die …” He swallowed a lump in his throat. He felt tears well in his eyes as he glared down the skeleton, but what he longer felt was fear. “ … then fine.” 

 

For a moment - a long moment - Amaya was silent. The glow of the Malflame that snaked along her bones was what lit the clearing now that the sun had gone, but that light grew strangely soft as she reached down, and took one of Villorik’s own hands. The Malflame did not burn him. “Villorik,” came the whisper, an amalgamation of Amaya’s voice with all the others, “of course not.” 

 

Before he could answer, he felt the ghost gently press something into his chest. When he looked down, he watched the Malflame's sickly glow reflect on the polished surface of his winged helmet, parted from Amaya's hands into his. " ... You still have work to do," the torrent of voices croned, "it is because of your failures that you must see it through."

 

"Three of those you must slay remain."

 

The words seemed to blur together in his ears, becoming distorted, distant. Villorik's eyes snapped back up to the ghost, but so too did his vision seemed to bleed away in a greying swirl of colours, decaying into nothingness.

 

"Kill the Three, and die in peace."

 

⋅ ───────────────⊱༺⠀☨⠀༻⊰─────────────── ⋅

 

Spoiler

 

 

Villorik woke with a start.

 

He did not remember falling asleep out here in the woods beyond the walls of New Valdev - at the shrine of wildflowers that marked the spot Amaya had died - but he sat slumped in a moonlit forest clearing. The trees around him swayed in a brisk but soft wind, and the din of noise from New Valdev itself was even faintly audible over the occasional hoot of an owl or distant howl of a wolf.

 

" ... A dream," Villorik said shakily as he pressed a gauntleted hand to his face, and sighed exasperatedly through his fingers. He certainly did not feel rested; even his nerves were frayed from the ordeal. No ... he corrected himself after a moment. Not just a dream.

 

He knew Amaya - the real Amaya - would have been incapable of cruel words, no matter how true they were, but that did nothing to change the sentiment born from his own soul. His own sentiment, his own guilt. From battlefield to battlefield, from defeat to bitter defeat, he knew he had seen more in his life than any one man ought to.

 

"A relic of a bygone era," he repeated, and permitted himself a joyless smile. Through his fingers, he looked to the circle of red flowers; to Amaya's memorial. In front of it was where he had shed his helmet, the wings of which glinted in the silvery moonlight. His aging body ached as he struggled to his feet, and scooped it up. He held the winged helmet in his hands, and stared down at his own reflection in the gilded visor. His face was lined with age, and his hair was as grey as ash.

 

The helmet creaked as he slowly fixed it back over his head, obscuring his face once more. Through the helmet's noseguard, he inhaled deeply.

 

He had three heads left to take. Three enemies left to kill.

 

Then, he could die.

 

As he started back towards the city, his steps were heavy, for they were weighed down by the souls of those he had failed.

And those he had loved.

By @ivery

 

 

[sarahbarah 7110]

A soul of a bygone era yearned to intervene, to comfort Villorik as she had in life. 

[winterblood 11181]

 

Leagues away, there sat an elf of lavender skin and dark messy locks of hair that veiled over scarlet eyes that rarely knew the peace of slumber.  In her palm was a black feather, that of a crows.  It’s been years, droned a voice from within.  We are so close, yet so far. . . is it hopeless?

 

The eyes of Ilaria were near sightless in her solemn reflection, and she curled her fingers over that feather.  “You’re falling back into your old ways, Ro,” she uttered in return to that soundless voice.  “You’d best not infect me with that thinking.”  Gently, she sought to settle that feather along her windowsill that looked out over one of the streets of Caurost.  Even in the small hours of the night, figures roamed in the shadows; they always did for her.

“You saw the same as I,” she continued as her harrowed gaze traced over those listlessly roaming souls of the night.  “He persists, even if buried beneath corruption.  There is hope.  We simply need to find the right people to help us.”

[graveyard_bones 213]

Spoiler

yo this goes so hard, actual peak writing. it was a nice read

 

[Cat Evocation 3728]

Spoiler

This was an awesome read. I wish more people would take time to write about their characters like this. Stuff like this captures what it means to roleplay.

 

[Chimeraof1999 1194]

Spoiler

How is this dude a mod and not a ******* author? Jesus christ, beautiful read bro!!!

 

[Herod 1417]

Amongst a silent valley of honourable and grizzly souls one proved older in death than most, it's dim light was present and visible throughout that dead realm of warriors of fallen eras.


For amongst its greatest woes, was bitterness overcome by mistrust and hatred of the shadow. It crept the darkness closer as the soul transcended in careful watch over the mortal plane.


The soul lived and died as creed commanded yet failed to foresee the pain of those persisting in woven tapestries of destiny, glory and fate.


Within the realm of the Templars of Malchediael did this lost soul of combat lamented in grief, and used all of it's paralytic powers to pray for a better tomorrow.

"Light everlasting, light everlasting, protect those who stand against an ocean of darkness..."

A light in the high halls at the Basilica of Whitespire grew brighter for a moment, then dimmed. Wishful blessing.

[Mady 3771]

An aurum blade of Raevir make would rest at the hip of a traveller, scriptures of Providence lining its fuller. As she traversed the realm with newfound freedom, the wind seemed to sing for her. 

[Frostdrop1 1843]

Sat on a bridge, well out of the way of others, was a young devil. Dark, rust skin covered him - but red is what most saw. His lower arms, often hidden, were on full display: a pale orange which faded into a dapple up his arms. Deep, sable feathers covered the back of each, apart from one where a mangled, ugly burn-like scar laced his skin. It was even paler than the rest of him, and those downy feathers left the area barren. The white shirt he usually wore rested over the edge of the bridge, along with his right glove, as they caught the breeze that blew by; for both were still wet, though now cleaned to some satisfaction, and both, in varying capacities, were shadowed in what remained of his ichorous blood. A sublety now, for his glove merely had odd, slightly darker patches and his shirt one smudgy, grey cuff.

Ink, thought most people. It's why he hadn't bothered to clean it before. A cry, too, though he would never admit it: help.

Uncovered, his pale right hand, tipped in ashen claws came to scratch at his cheeks. He pulled the feathers there, until they were loosed with a wince and drifted to sail away on the current below. Raw, off-coloured scratches remained in their place - another piece of patchwork to the darkened bruising on his face, and the hidden discolouring of his back. 

He struck a match, and lit a cigarette, and set it between his lips, and drew from it. Craning his neck down, his forehead came to rest on the back of his hand as smoke filed out from his lips, and the world gradually came to seem a little calmer. He was worn and tired, scarred and tattered, and only fourteen. More than ever, the world was confusing. It was easier when he was littler, and he didn't question what he knew; he didn't question even though he was running and hiding from the moment he was born. He was too little to be called a Darkspawn Sympathiser, at least then. But he was never too little to be mangled, or killed. At no greater time had he understood what that truly meant for him than in the past few years, as The Light continually revealled itself as one with the Dark.

"See, the world isn't that bad." 

The words rang in his battish, scabby ears like echoes: quiet and fleeting.

Everyone was bad. They were tangled in vices of honour and pride and valour. People were liars, and greedy; he himself had become a liar.

"Choose."

Weightily, did Reinhard's pale, green eyes come to be half-lidded. The thought gave him a repulsion that he couldn't place, a dread of the future; everything just seemed wrong. Those same eyes pulled up to focus on the city of Nau Valdev. The home that reviled him, the home that wanted to forget him, the home that wanted him dead. The home he thought could save him. A stupid, stupid thought. His hand drew up and over his head, both the gloved and ungloved interlocking behind as his eyelids squeezed tightly shut and he craned his neck low.

"Everything has a cost." 

A truth amidst everything else. The cost of home grew each attempt he made, and no longer was it worth it; yet, he had already paid. Perhaps the mistake of his mother was no longer such a inconceivable thing, when he truly thought about it. He had shackled his father to that lonely, mountain-top priest. He had done so for no return. No different was that man than the creature that tainted his soul; the boy was a simple piece of leverage to both. He had been cursed for a false deal; he had endangered his father for a false deal.

The Dark and The Light were of the same cloth.




 

[Petsch2k 1851]

Spoiler

Great read +1

 

[ivery 591]

Half a world away, Deia sits by the hearth. Sleep has escaped her. For all her contentment, it has for some time.

 

Yes or no, she mouths to herself, lost to memory. The breath is lost beneath the crackle of fire, and the ghost that haunts her is only for her to see. If she closes her eyes, she can watch it as though through tinted glass- murky and dream-like.

 

"You are dreaming," something whispers in the back of her mind.

 

"That's alright," she whispers back. She remembers what it was like to wake. The agony of being torn apart, friend turned enemy-

 

"-A glimpse of white flame," it reminds her.

 

Grief yawns wide in her heart; it aches fiercely, so fiercely that her hand comes up as though she might pull the pieces back together.

 

Tiny footsteps creak against the floorboards and she turns her head, breath ragged. At the base of the stairs is a child, rubbing at the monstrous horn fused to his eye with one malflame-tinted fist. "Miss Deia?" she can barely hear him sniff, and that's enough to make her stand. As she murmurs soft nothings to soothe him- a nightmare, this time- she cannot bring herself to regret her fateful choice.

 

And yet that phantom ache has yet to leave. And yet she tries to imagine it, even now.

 

"And yet, and yet, and yet," something echoes, urging. She does not let herself reply.