[Log] "We want ANSWERS, corpse." pt 1.

Campion shows up in the same full armour Lark saw him in the FIRST time they clashed. He tugs on a gauntlet and eyes the death knight.

( "Has he woken up or come back to life or whatever the hell yet, Ley," he mutters. )

[Log] "We want ANSWERS, corpse." pt 2.

(  Aleyna waves a hand over the space where Larkspur used to be. "He's all yours." )

Year 2: Blind

It started to rain as Auroran walked away with his eyes, the sounds of the priest's crying dissolving into the plash of raindrops hitting the waves.

The boardwalk overhead wasn't watertight and afforded ill protection from the wet. Drops rancid with dust and the day's refuse pattered against his skull, washed the sea-salt from his hair, trickled down his ears and the back of his neck and curves of his battered face. It stung where it seeped into the Light-burns, igniting anew the pain of ruined flesh trying to knit itself back together only to fall apart again. Some of it began to pool where his eyes had been and this wasn't nearly so painful, just strange and unwelcome.

He tried to blink, as futile and stupid a reflex as breathing.

It was so dark.

A moth refolded its wings with a velveteen rustle in the dry haven beneath his discarded breastplate. Around him a thousand raindrops raced toward the sea, each dribbling and dropping and plinking along its own path in a fluid cacophony. Across the bay a captain yelled at his clumsy deckhand; in the rooms above, a pimp at his clumsy whore; somewhere, a woman dropped her last precious teacup and burst into tears over the pathetic wreckage. Metal ground against metal as he shifted his bound hands enough to pull Terminus Est closer to him and lay his face against her haft, skin-covered bone against leather-wrapped metal.

He could taste the monstrous remains of himself bound into the runeblade. Fever and fear and righteous indignation of the unsleeping paladin in the apartment above trickled down with the rain. There were goblin-smells, living-smells, jungle-smells saturating the air besides: Blood and breath and sex and food, heartbeats and viscera, green and growing things.

He should have gotten up. He had his 'blade and his wits and needed nothing more to free himself. There was no reason to linger and wait for the Kamil to take a second blood-price and drive a blade between his unprotected shoulders.

It was so dark.

Now there were no colors, no glimpses of motion at the edge of vision. No familiar smears of red and black, smelling like Krenyn or smelling like Kae. No blue--green--when, if, ifwhen he could bring himself to stand in Merosiel's presence again.

'Sorry,' he had said to Auroran, 'sorry, sorry, sorry,' an avalanche of apologies, piling on each other; once he'd begun he found he couldn't stop his traitor tongue from spilling the words. 'Sorry,' as if it could be an anodyne for the terrible scent of grief and shock the priest wore like a dead woman's blood ingrained into his slept-in clothing. 'Sorry,' even after the deed was done, and Auroran wasn't the one losing the eyes.

At least he wasn't so stupid as to say what he was sorry for; the awful, evil trick that they had played. It was wrong and nothing would convince him otherwise. Nothing would convince him it wasn't necessary, either, not when the paladin denied outright ever harming Merosiel in his madness and his bitch-jailor smelled of glee at the news and spoke of whores and objects.

He had told Auroran to smile. Be magnanimous in victory. The priest enjoyed exacting his blood-price; it came as no surprise, though, that all Merosiel's friends were predators.

Even maimed, stupid predators who would likely be dead by morning.

(He had promised Krenyn he would be alive when Krenyn found him.)

If he would know when morning came, robbed of light.

(Krenyn would surely be here before morning.)

[Log] He just needed to arrive. And he did so before morning.

Larkspur is seated near the edge of the boardwalk, soaked to the skin, pieces of his armor strewn about him. He's folded around his runeblade like a drowning man clinging to a piece of wreckage, cheek pressed against its haft, face turned toward the sea.

Krenyn approaches, footsteps on the board. His scent should be familiar enough. The footsteps stop nearby. He hadn't had to search. He just needed to arrive. And he did so before morning.


[Krenyn] says: [Thalassian] Get up.


Larkspur would ordinarily respond to Krenyn's presence long before his partner got this close. It takes the other death knight actually speaking before Lark so much as twitches an ear, this time. "...sir," he replies numbly, automatically, to the order.


Larkspur drags himself to his feet, still clutching at his runeblade with bound hands.


Krenyn steps closer, giving Larkspur a cursory once-over. Concern for ailments, chains? None at all. "A pitiful state. And that I have to come here to fetch you home," he notes dryly. "What have you to say?" 


Krenyn is heard pacing forward even as he speaks, seeking face to face with Larkspur.


Larkspur can't muster the energy to object, to defend himself, to do so much as lay his ears back in distress or distaste. Or even avert his face to hide the fact he's...maimed. "Nothing." His voice is flat, devoid of emotion. "I failed."


[Larkspur] says: [Thalassian] The only...mercy...is that I did not fail as a Blade. Just as myself.


Krenyn reaches out, two gauntlet-clad digits extended to brush against the empty sockets, without remorse for any lingering pain it might cause. "Hm."


Larkspur doesn't move, other than a reflexive sort of ... failed blink. His hands tighten on Terminus Est. "I'm sorry," he breathes.


Krenyn scrapes slightly. Some form of... something best left undescribed is left on his fingers as they pull free, is rubbed with thumb and sniffed at. "Mm," he states again. "Is this the best they could muster in retaliation for your actions?"


[Krenyn] says: [Thalassian] I suppose you should be thankful. Your punishment from me for your failure to follow my orders will not be as light.


Krenyn reaches down to pick up a piece of the discarded armor. "It's time to leave, Plagueheart."


Larkspur cl-- he doesn't have EYES to close anymore. Is he trembling? Possibly. "They would have killed me. Or done worse. The priest Auroran took my eyes at my...suggestion." No mockery for how easily he got off. No acknowledgement of the threat of punishment.


Larkspur is just restating the facts. "...yes, sir." He'll...have to set his runeblade down to pick up the rest of his armor with his hands bound like this.


Krenyn won't allow it to be set down. As Larkspur kneels to retrieve the armor, Terminus Est is grasped and held upright. As if claimed by the commander.


Larkspur has in no way just been sitting here for hours clinging pathetically to his runeblade for comfort, so this certainly isn't a disturbing and unwanted separation. ...He gathers his armor, unable to shake the numbness.


Larkspur tries, though, to show the proper respect the dreadplate deserves. A surprised moth flutters out from under his breastplate as he picks it up, vanishing under his cloak to hide.


Krenyn is silent while waiting for each piece of armor to be gathered. Another disgrace is pardoned; in that Krenyn allows Larkspur to know when he has found the last piece. "Now."


Larkspur gets to his feet, balancing his armor carefully, and obediently follows Krenyn through the death gate.