The pressure eased, and the doppler was thankful for it. 'Tea?' It asked, straightening up, a bead of blood trailing slowly downwards, following the contours of a face it had worn for the last ten years. Longer, perhaps. 'No, thank you. I am not thirsty.' A lie, that. The Doppler knew lying to Father was bad, but he did it anyway.

Something is-

Wrong, thought Faramund, his mind groggy, his actions those of a stranger. Turning, he stared at the man standing nearby. Though his features seemed familiar, there was something... odd in the way he looked. Is he Enemy? The doppler wondered, head tilting to one side. Is he my friend? Faramund mused, sensing a headache coming on.

Neither failed to notice the palming of a blade.

'Where is the child, Father?' Blinking, the Fara-thing went back to watching its creator work. Twilight shimmered and danced across stone a glossy black. The flesh that lay upon the altar was pale and lifeless, limned in rivulets of blood. Its face bore an uncanny resemblance to someone. A person they both knew.

Who is this? The doppler wanted to ask, struggling to decipher what its eyes were seeing.

Faramund looked up.

'My report will have to wait, Father. The other matter must come first.' Resting a hand on the hilt of his sabre, the dawnling glanced around. Cold stone, blood and bone. This is no home. A madman's paradise, that was what this place was.

The Shaper's neck twisted, hither, tither.

'Are you sure, my son? You sound... hesitant.' Reaching into the open chest cavity, the monster's hand closed around a bloody organ. There was a squelch, a snarl. 'Stubborn thing! Quickly! Lend me a hand, m'boy!'

With speed belying his size, the Shaper seized Faramund's arm.

A scalpeled finger tore through his sleeve, revealing the mail hidden beneath. The Shaper didn't seem to notice. 'Here,' he said instead, dropping the fat heart of a dead man into Faramund's upturned palm. 'A bit of courage.'

Laughing behind its mask, the monster continued its ministrations.

'Who is it He means to give the girl to?' It asked, cutting away an eyelid and placing it in a dish nearby. 'One Eye? The Barb?'

'I do not know,' Faramund replied, 'we were sent to retrieve the Child. Nothing more.'

'Hmm.' The Shaper did not sound convinced. 'I see.' Hunched low over the altar, he turned to glance over his shoulder at Faramund. Their eyes met. Black on black on- Brown? 'He works in mysterious ways, does He not?' Slowly, gently, the Shaper raised his mask, revealing the face beneath.

'You can find the girl that a-way,' he murmured, pointing, his tone no longer one of interest. 'In the holding cells, where she slumbers. You know the way do you not, my son?' Faramund nodded. 'I do.' The Shaper dismissed them with a wave. Quietly, he returned to his work, waiting until they were out of earshot before speaking once more.

'Most curious.'
 
Fear. Anger. Worry. A torrent of emotions swirled within the knight Anathaeum, each threatening to rise to the surface and ruin his farcical facade. He was barely managing to the suppress the rising bile in his throat. This place, this workshop, could not be conjured in Castor's darkest dreams. Broken, tortured figures remained suspended in glass all around him. A macabre exhibit that would cause even the most seasoned knights to balk.

Yet it was not the mutilations, or the entrails, or the Shaper himself that truly shook Castor to his core. It was the monstrosity's tender, fatherly tone. And the unassailable fact that it was directed towards a man Castor called a fellow knight. What sort of obscene fate had brought them to this point?

The dusker's anxiety only increased at the Shaper's casual dismissal of the Everwatcher's prerogative. Instead he favored tea and hearts. Their gambit was a hair's breadth from falling flat.

Still, Faramund pressed for the task at hand and finally did the Shaper reluctantly relent.

Castor remained silent as he followed Faramund out of the Workshop and towards the holding cells. The dusker struggling desperately to keep his mind focused. Doubt crept with insidious intent. Was the explanation given earlier simply a ploy? It'd sounded all too-convincing to the knight.

Body mirrored mind. Dagger and doubt.
 

"The child is gone," Bebin said without breath. "Our brothers have walked into a trap," he turned his eyes forward. "We go to spring them out," moved on toward the Mount.

In the holding cells, all manner of souls waited about in defeat. Some chained to the stone, left to hang against their bindings. Left to feel the irons dig into tendon and skin. Rubbed raw by their struggle. Rent red by their misery.

None dared look up. None dared to hope. As those Knights of Anathaeum passed by, and Loch's blue glow painted their fate all the colder.

"We're all gone now," one man muttered beneath his breath. "All gone down here in the stone," he laughed. "Not a light left to look for," his voice pinged against the stone walls around him. Like whispers across a frozen lake.

At the end of one cell, there sat huddled a child. Moused away in the dark corner of their confinement. Head against knees held tight to chest. Dressed in tatters and rags, more miserable by the cold light
 
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He kept to Syr Theros’ heel, just two paces apart, staring at the back of his head as he spoke. Explained and laid out the next step in such few words it made his hackles rise, willing all concern from his face and hardening it.

“ A trap? Well, that would’ve been mighty useful to know beforehand, hmh. “ The question was there betwixt the lines, but he dared not ask it. He’d not disputed any decision in the moment, had he, despite having authority to do so. Road of least resistance and to what end?

Straight to Hell. Why’d you make them go before us? What was it to infiltrate, when Syr Theros had done so by himself and without as much as being seen, mere minutes later. At least, so he should have believed.

There was naught but belief to be had, precious few assumptions, amidst so much unspeaking. He ground his jaw, chewing on the thought and the words that were upon him unbidden, unbelongst to this trail and the right now. His heart was sworn to trust, but an impulse calling itself reason told him to overrule such old, cultivated feeling.

He’d seen the field at night. The many, a whole crowd, the terrors and the things they made people do. What they made out of people. Involuntarily, he imagined himself and his Kin slain, so needlessly killed, but for it he hadn’t fright to spare anymore. It’d all ring a hollow, useless last thought —

What then. We’ll just be dead and none of this will matter anymore. Not to us.

“ And how do you suppose we get them out now — Kill all whom would stand in our way one by one? “ It wasn’t a serious question, despite his level tone. So he went on, with actual interest.

“ How many? “
 
Footsteps echoing in the dark, the dawnling walked. Blank, expressionless, he sweated beneath stolen robes, unable to break free of the spell he found himself under. The Shaper's words echoed in his mind, a bad memory made worse by the remembering.

A red face lingered in his thoughts - a mask of blood and bone, shaped to be unreadable, as he had been, once.

Wrong, he heard himself think, pupils dilated, hands shaking by his sides. You're like an open book now, and all your secrets are tumbling out. Blinking, Syr Faramund of Dawn shook himself free of the hands binding his soul. Laughter not unlike his own filled his ears as he turned to look over his shoulder, a steady hand drifting to the dagger at his belt.

The face of Syr Castor staring back at him was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He did not fail to notice the expression he wore. Nor the worry behind his eyes.

'Did I... miss something?' Breaking the silence, Faramund let go of blade's hilt. Something -a premonition, maybe- kept his hackles up, kept him from relaxing the way he normally would with a trusted brother at his back.

Around them, prisoners watched with empty gazes as the knights passed them by. Robbed of their light, their lives, they barely reacted when the two ground to a halt outside the cell at the end of the chamber.

Within, the Child sat chained to the wall. Head lowered, legs tucked to her chest, she barely reacted at all when Faramund broke open the lock to her cell. More memories returned to him, then, twisting, pulling at the knife lodged in his heart. 'Gods forgive me!' He swore softly. 'What have they done to her?' The dawnling wondered aloud as he moved to take a knee by her side.

Across the way, he heard a lone voice intone the same words it had for the past tenday, more.

All gone down here in the stone... Not a light left to look for.

@Castor @Bebin @Oliver
 
"Think I'm the one missing something here," replied the knight with bladed tone. He looked to his brother's confused expression and finally sighed. "Let's keep moving." Too much had transpired and yet their task remained. A child struggled alone in this edifice of evil, and that's all that mattered...for the moment. The delved deeper once more until they finally arrived at the holding cells.

In this frigid place they found only despair, no not merely despair but something even worse; apathy. An existence beyond hope or fear. Just a resignation to one's decidedly awful fate. The sound of the knight's arrival stirred little if anything in their broken souls. Castor'd seen the worst this world had to offer and yet the sight nearly broke him.

He followed Faramund to the final cell and then did they find their charge. The girl was in a pitiful state and the dawnling not much better. Castor was about to urge them into action when the voices echoed from the stone again.

"He is here. The lock is broken. A door opened must always be closed. He is here."

For a few moments Castor was almost convinced the words were nothing more than mad ramblings...

Then came the clatter of keys alternated with footsteps, a sound unmistakable to any who'd done a spell behind iron. The figure that came into view was jarringly normal in appearance and yet the knight was afraid. Where the Shaper was irreverent, the Keeper was piety itself. In one hand he held a ring of keys and the other a worn but unassuming blade.

Castor cast aside the corpse's robes and reached for two of his remaining vials. He uttered words of power and flung glass at the wall to his side. Cold stone ceded to ancient magic, melting as if it had been subjected to shroudfire. There it revealed the adjacent passageway to the holding cells and a potential way out. He wasn't keen on what came next but the other two needed a head-start. Time was never cheap.

"Buy me a pint, I'll be along shortly," he called to the other Sworn as he drew his blade and charged the Keeper of Keys.
 
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The Keeper Cropped Final Clean.webpThere came no sound but the clack of claw against cold stone. Step after steady step, the Keeper's keys stayed silent. A placid eye of pewter, wide upon silver helm, began to come alight.

Runes of Loch and Death, language so familiar to the weavers of the Order, burned strange there upon the silvery orb. Ablaze in azures and midnights.

Once, the rings did ring.

Claws cracked into the stone floor. Legs pushed with augmented strength and silver blade flashed to turn and thrust toward Castor, cloaked in shroudsmoke.

A single key upon a ring of nine turned traced by Loch's blue light.

Whilst the girl, held there in Faramund's hands, looked unto the man who had come to save her once more.

Her three eyes wide, and silvery as the moons. Her skin looked almost alabaster, was cold to the touch. Where once she had been the color of fresh earth, warm with all its promise.

When lifted, she felt as if made from stone. Dense with a weight not natural to one her size.

Still, her long spindly fingers wound about her rescuer. Held strong as a vice about him. "You came again," she said in a cracked voice. Dry and brittle as frozen winter. "I knew you would,"

In the near distance came cries. Shouts of hurry from those on patrol, near enough to the blast.

Heavy was the breath that filled Syr Theros' lungs. Yet he carried on with his march. Listened to his brother's Anger. His disbelief. His humanity. How it pained the Basilisk's heart to hear it. But deep were the waters about that beating thing, and strong were the cold currents of need.

"More than they can handle between them," he answered as they wove through the darkness. Ahead, the moons' light shone brighter against the stoney crag, and the shadows hung deeper in their silence.

There before the Umbral Mount, they stood hidden.

"I will draw them out," he promised in their shared darkness. Turned to face Oliver, looked for the man's eyes. Whence he found them. "You will go in without me, and I will lead whatever and whoever comes away," he let the words linger betwixt them, as his eyes filled with the silver trace of Loch's light. "Do you understand, brother?" he asked through shoud misted breath.

"They cannot find you, as they can find me," He turned from Oliver, and drew his bow, three arrows there with it. "Go then, find a vantage point, and watch that stone there for the opportunity," a jut of the chin. A fiends' smirk. "Trust, Brother," he nod, and turned away. Phantomed by the mirrorsilk's wave.

Yet three blue stars burned upon the earth in the near distance. A triad of will-o'-the-wisps that begged all who could see them, come.


@Oliver , @Faramund , @Castor
 
It would’ve been too much to expect specifics, so he didn’t. The response rung obvious enough, instruction therein just as simple. His attention sought the rocks ahead, their shadows, the frown upon his face deepening with focus and dread. Having already said too much, he’d keep all the rest to himself — even as their eyes met, with words of trust and brotherhood, he had but a nod and a hum to spare.

And with that, they’d part, all that was of him again hid away within dark metal. For though he willed it away from his step, the doubt yet lingered, weighing down his expression and closing his gauntlet tighter about the haft of the hammer.

But it had been promised that none would find him and as such it would be, by some magic, a play of light and shadow that’d conspire with the night and weave deception twicefold. In the dim, ghastly luminance of braziers were bodies, moving, but yet unseen and unheard was that which would approach from the dark. He’d not look back.

The Umbral Mount hummed ahead with a draft like the choral exhale of many a dying, surrender and finality made moving air that’d snake into the corridors that otherwise stood petrified, not so much hewn from stone as— formed overtime? It had an unnerving organic quality to its shapes, not the regularity and order of something made by man. It had a magnificence that didn’t mean to be so, but had merely become of it — much resembling a creature that would stray the great plains, oceans or skies of old.

Effortless. Living, but in the wrong way. His breath was shallow in his chest and it wasn’t just for the pain in his side anymore. The longer he stared, the longer he’d let himself really think about what he was seeing. What probably was yet to—

There were words exchanged somewhere beyond where he hid, footsteps drawn out and losing their echo, much too crisp in the clear outside. Watching for opportunity, he realized the guard had been willed to unwariness, the shroudlight bright in their eyes, bewitching. Someone called after them, even approached to grab them by the shoulder to no avail. To the dark they’d wander and his was as good an opportunity as any, he realized, a weight sinking within the chamber of his ribs.

It was time to go. And he’d curse within his helm the entire way in, turning his back to what would surely die in the dark of the wood.

He chose a direction without thinking, any which corridor that was meager in light, straining to listen. Resonance like that of struck metal ricocheted from the walls, drowned beneath noise both human and inhuman. Someone was sobbing, another muttering a chant, pebbles scraped the floor beneath footfalls like those of one running. Was it too late now — had the trap been triggered already?

Picking up the pace lest his fright freeze him, he took a sharp turn in the narrow corridor and instantly collided with the softness of a body, too fast. Recognizing nothing but the flicker of too bright fire through the slit in the visor, he grabbed the stranger with both hands and slammed them, back first, against the wall.
 
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Corpse-cold and clawing, Faramund took Mina into his arms without hesitation. Time was of the essence, and like always, they had little enough to spare. Even so, the dawnling couldn't help but linger as his brother called out to him, instructing him towards another passageway, once hidden behind warped magic.

Brittle words issued forth from cracked lips, drawing his attention to the young girl they had come to rescue. His memories of her were as cloudy as his future, but he would happily surrender it. For her, for the future he had helped the Cult steal.

'I...' Grimacing, he looked up sharply, eyes widening as the Keeper of the Keys appeared to bring his wayward charges to heel. Pale, like the walking dead, his arrival elicited more memories. Of pain and failure, mostly. And past lives spent poorly. 'Watch for the low feint!' Faramund shouted, gleaming from his memories a lesson learnt the hard way.

With one final glance at Castor, the dawnling spurred himself into action, rushing for the exit just as a pair of guards arrived to bar his way.

Cursing, he adjusted his hold on Mina and drew his sabre. Both men bore ritual scars, as well as the blades that had inflicted them. And the look in their eyes left no doubt in his mind as to what needed done.

Hefting his weapon, Faramund struck with all the might he could muster, putting enough strength behind the downswing to slay a giant. There was a clangour as something heavy and metallic hit the ground.

The prisoner was among them in a heartbeat.

'WE'RE ALL GONE NOW!' Maniacal laughter filled the holding cells. Lashing out, the prisoner laid a guard out, jumped at the other. 'All gone down here, not a light left to look for!' More laughter followed as blood stained the cold stone underfoot. Chopping down at the stunned guard, Faramund brushed past the figures as they grappled against the cages. He struck more locks as he passed, some springing free whilst others held firm.

Mina grasped tightly at his robes as they fled into the connecting tunnels. Behind him, Faramund heard the prisoners begin to chant.

'GONE! GONE! GONE!'

@Castor @Bebin @Oliver
 
Shrouded strike skewered the unsuspecting knight, or would have if not for Faramund's warning. Castor stepped aside just in time to avoid the fatal blow. He winced as steel sliced armor but only grazed skin. The knight had been mere moments from death and yet was oddly giddy. Frantic but stalwart steps behind him brought awaited news. Faramund and the girl were free, at least from this particular cell. How many locks remained on their hearts were yet to be seen.

Failure of purpose left little room for patience. The Keeper was upon Castor in a heartbeat. Raising his blade to block the cleaving strike along with a gauntlet arm for further support was all he could manage. Castor's arms went numb at the force of the strike. It was as if the gods themselves sought to bludgeon him with the weight of his inadequacies. He shuffled backwards to create distance, hoping these brief moments would buy him requisite time.

His hands hung uselessly at his side as the keys chimed once more. There did he look up and see the eye's color shift from placid knowing to the insatiable abyss. A visage so familiar and yet so very terrifying.

Death stood before him yet did not see him. A mere afterthought. How fitting.

No spell in the tongues of now or forgotten could bring feeling to his arms.

A step-

"GONE!"

An emaciated figure threw themselves at the Keeper. They dissolved in a flash of decay.

"GONE!"

Such was the unison that Castor failed to realize it came from two. So they fell, twins in life and death.

"GONE!"

This voice was ever so weak and yet it reverberated through the knight's very soul. Young, far too young.

The miasma of mortality faded from the Keeper's blade but still she persisted.

"GONE!"

One final pointless sacrifice before Castor met his inevitable end. The knight could barely make out the pointed ears of the old desiccated figure before him. They were close enough that the Keeper's slash should've cut them both in twain. Yet like trying to cut through sturdy oak, steel found itself bogged down. Castor cursed as the blade cut into his left shoulder but proceeded no further. The old elf's body slowly started to mold itself over the Keeper's blade like gnarled roots desperate for a drop of water.

Time or maybe just sheer fucking anger brought a semblance of feeling to Castor's hand. He reached for the Barb at his belt and drove it into the Keeper's foot. The eerie silence that followed made for a moment of doubt. Then dark webs sprang from the blade and latched onto the Keeper, enveloping her in a lattice of lost energy.

Castor forced himself to his feet, not chancing the veracity of the sorcery. Blood poured heavily from his shoulder as he turned to follow the path he'd created earlier.

He made it out the makeshift entrance and approximately another thirty paces before his legs and consciousness gave out.

Fuck, came the final thought as his face made a date with the cavern floor.
 
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Gone.

A timeless tree grew gnarled roots about silver helmed devil. Held that threat still. If for but a moment. Spurred on by Senara's Bard, so driven into augmented flesh.

The dead elf's spell was held there in the mantle by all that had been woven into that space. The lives that had thrown themselves at the keeper. The sorrows that haunted those hungry halls. Guided by that relic blade that burned cold and dark. Its runes of Life and Wyld, so twined with Death upon its Armonium heart bled out all it held. Held on to all that had bled.

Wide were the eyes that witnessed the fall of Syr Castor Vega, Knight Sworn of Dusk, and small were the hands that grabbed at his armored weight. Thin were the limbs that flexed to pull with what little strength still laid in them. Bare and calloused feet splayed against the floor of the Mount's dungeon.

That one so small would dare.

Drag. Scrape. Drag. Scrape. The Knight of Dusk was moved along. Across cold stone. Across smoldering rubble. Across dark trails that shimmered and smeared, stuck and pooled as they fed.

Boney fingers held on to Faramund. As a voice, too familiar whispered in his ear.

Loyal, loyal. My blood is always loyal.

Whilst the Dawnling ran, the long fingers dug. The long fingers grasped. Cold. Metalic. As the small body shivered and shook against that knight of Anathaeum. Heavy as all the world. Familiar and unfamiliar all the same.

He cannot betray us... My son is my greatest work...

How that voice ripples betwixt the ears. How those hands, desperate, feel like knives against the skin.

My son is without faults.

How that voice rattles against the bone. A thing trapped by eyes of bottomless Dusk.

Familiar and unfamiliar.

"I knew you would come,"
Wide were the eyes that looked unto the Sunless Sentinel.

Desperate. Fearful. The torch in their hand burned bright. Though the shadows cast by the orange light danced wild against the walls.

Their whole body trembled. As if their legs could hardly hold them up. Eyes sunken with a sleepless hunger, hair shaven clean from their head.

And the scars.

A tapestry of their horrible history. Not like those of so many dead faces burned into haunting visions past.

"One- one of them," the mired youth spoke. "One whose- whose n-not gone yet,"

@Oliver , @Faramund , @Castor
 
Why hadn’t he spoken up, asked for— anything, something more? It was very unlike himself to go anywhere completely blind, let alone to somewhere as this on the word of a man he felt like he barely knew, but one had to suppose a wanton weakness of spirit. Did he still want to die, as he’d figured had been the feeling gnawing at him with ratlike vigour when the winds were cold and the dark so deep it seemed unlikely to ever lift again?

Fuck no. The metal of the armour felt nothing, expressed nothing, as a gauntleted palm held still the torchbearing stranger, hammer haft on the throat that bobbed with words. Nonsense. What the fire revealed before him was beyond pitiful, all harsh edges marred with myriad abuse, but he hadn’t the space upon his mind to feel anything for it. He though ending the youth right there and then, easy as it looked, not much unlike squeezing the life out of a bird. It would be a mercy, wouldn’t it? We’re already halfway there, just push harder with the haft and—

He took a step back, releasing them and watching as their body trembled, surrendered to the support of the wall. The arm holding the torch barely managed it, lowering the light that’d play about the ridges of heaving ribs, a hiss to every lungful. Air moved thricefold in the corridor, humming and yawning and crackling, accompanying their quiet that was so absolute they may as well have agreed to it together. A balance of fright, anger, confusion, and lingering for it.

What now? He wasn’t entirely sure if he’d asked it out loud, as the exhausted expression on his company’s face suddenly morphed to one of escalating uncertainty, gaze averting to where the dark loomed at the end of the corridor. Tracing it by slightest shift on heel, himself too was finally reached by the sounds. Of someone approaching. And the yells, an echo of a commotion.

On instinct, he reached for the device at his belt and pointed it at the swimming, loud darkness. A button clicked and a spark erupted, not according to how he’d been told it’d work, but all the same the crystal mounted at the end shone a bright beam of light. The edges of the circle shimmered with a prismatic refraction as they fell upon, to his mind, one too many details of this hellhole that would’ve greatly benefited from being left unseen, but amidst them—

“ Faramund? “ He squinted, frowning.

“ Where’s Castor? “
 
The echoes of battle faded into nothingness as Faramund ran deeper into the Mont, desperation fuelling his thoughts as well as his actions. Memories of what once was shifted into premonitions of what might be. Loyal, loyal. My blood is always loyal. Running, rushing, he cursed as the tunnel split in three, his feet carrying him down the leftmost path towards salvation.

Or damnation.

He cannot betray us... my son is my greatest work...

Shut up. Shaking, his head spinning, pounding, the knight tried to get his breathing under control. Mina clung to his side, her grip far stronger than he would have expected for someone who had been kept in captivity for so long. She was far heavier, too.

Are you sure that's not just your guilty conscience weighing you down?

'Shut up!' Readjusting his hold on Mina, the dawnling brought his sword up as new foes appeared in the tunnel ahead of him. Black-robed, they took him for a brother, at first. 'What's going on?' One of them asked, staring through rheumy eyes at Faramund as he passed through shadow and lochlight. 'Why've you brought the Shaper's pup-'

The cultist's words were cut short as a blade found his throat. The man stood beside him cried out in alarm before meeting the same fate.

'I knew you would come.'

'W-what?' Blinking, Faramund found his gaze locked on the bodies of the cultists at his feet. Blood spread in slowly-growing pools about them. Black, it was, as black as the robes he wore, and the heart that beat beneath them. 'I did-... I don't...'

My son is without faults, came the voice, filling his ears, and driving knives into his back. Faultless, faultless. He will not betray us, cannot betray...

The sound of feet pounding past snapped him from his reverie. Spinning away, he used his body to shield Mina, the sudden torchlight so bright as to be blinding. He caught a glimpse of pale, scarred flesh, and a bald pate. Then, the prisoner was gone. Gone, gone.

Following the light, Faramund kept a close watch on the girl in his arms. There was something... wrong in the way she looked up him, eyes wide but unseeing. 'You came again,' she said, her voice less than a whisper despite its proximity. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and back, their strength far beyond anything a child ought possess. 'I knew you would.'

I knew you would. My son, loyal to the end.

'Faramund?'

Stumbling to a stop, the dawnling raised his sabre, presented it to the enemy in his path. No. No, just Oliver. Blinking the sweat from his eyes, Faramund took a steady step forward. 'Castor? He's-... he's back there, in the cells.' Pointing back the way he had come, the dawnling frowned as he studied the phantom stood before him. 'What're you doing here, Syr? Where's Bebin?'

His hand tightened around the hilt of his sabre, the weapon wavering in his grip as fear turned to paranoia.

'Where's Bebin?' He asked again, taking a step back. 'What the fuck are you doing here?!'

@Castor @Bebin @Oliver
 
Space and Time abandoned the forsaken knight, Reason along with the rest. A duty done, an eternal reprieve. Yet peace's embrace was absent. Heaviness clung to his soul, clawing him back to torrid reality. Each subsequent step dragged his senses closer to an unwelcome lucidity. The knight's mind was not equipped or caring to the who or why. All he knew was an innocuous movement akin to be subjected to the tide. No, that was not entirely accurate. There was no push and pull, only the pull. A grating yet not entirely ambivalent urging towards a destination unknown.

Castor woke to the comfort of dirt and grass. Vision swimming, he allowed himself a few necessary moments. His hand found cold stone as he reached out to gain bearings. Clarity soon followed, he'd escaped the confines of the Mount. Gingerly he found his feet even as nausea threatened to take hold. His leg snagged on something and what he saw brought both pain and peace. A small body, crumpled yet serene; Savior and victim both.

He could give the corpse little thought however as matters of moment waited for none. Had Faramund escaped with the girl? Was he still the knight Castor knew him to be? Worries proliferated and spurred the dusker's fatigued limbs into action. Scouting reports hammered into his psyche did the rest.

Once again he found himself desperate to keep fear at bay.
 

Small fingers gripped tighter around Faramund. Squeezed with an unnatural strength, and burried all the deeper with her unnatural weight. But as whimpers came trickle and drop, she sounded just a girl. That same girl which Faramund had delivered all those moons ago.

"No, no," she whispered before the Sunless Sentinel. "Don't let him take me, don't let him take me," she bade refuge.

The voices of the Sightless echoed and rippled off the shimmering walls. Near and far. Called for hurry. Called for those that would escape.

"None can hide!" they cried.

"His sight!" "His eyes!" "His faithful!

Like so many ripples of rain against glass their footfalls sounded. Mixed. As torch's light burned the brighter.

Desperate, and in darkness, Syr Castor stood. With not but the shadows of the woods around him. The light of the stars above lost through a veil of grey painted through clutches and claws of leafless branches. Though the moons did peer through those lids come open across the cover.

A dead soul at his feet, and a sickness in his stomach.

Gone. Gone. They were all gone.

Come the pull of the shroud's weave. Thin in the air. Like the distant beat of a drum heard round shared fires. There again and again in the mantle of magicks.

Flashes of light bloomed through the darkness of the trees. Blue as stars burned across black mirror lakes. The weight of Death there in the after of their glow gone out.

A rhythm too familiar.

From the sky above falls a darkness. Like a stone from the very Moons that doth peer. Through the boughs and branches, it snapped and broke it all. A dissonance. An anomaly.

A rhythm too familiar. Unfurls.
 
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