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He comes to slowly in the darkness. For a moment fear rises up within him. He cannot remember where he is and time seems to have slipped beyond his consciousness. A wave of exhausted disorientation washes over him. He is tired. He is so tired, yet he forces his eyes open. The darkness softens slightly, a lone candle is lit, its small glimmer of light illuminates the room. His bed, his table, the chair that he is sitting in, his own hands dim and dark in front of him.
The lines of his corruption like veins of ink across them.
He is in his own room. It cannot be too bad then, he breathes until his heartbeat slows and he tries to recall, how did he get here? What has he done? There is no recollection though, just a blank space in his mind where nothing seems to fit.
He closes his eyes again, he wants to rest. His body craves it with a desperate all-encompassing ache, as if a fever is at the edge of all his senses, ready to overtake him, and yet he needs to remember what has happened to put him in this state. He swallows slowly. It is becoming harder and harder to remember, every time. Every time the magic seems to tear something from him, to cut a little deeper, to ask a little more. He isn’t sure how much he has left to give.
He feels a vague sense of uneasy panic at the blank state of his mind. Had he done something abhorrent? He isn’t sure at what point now he is defining that, where the good in him ends and something else begins.
He has to believe that it isn’t something dreadful. He has limits, lines he will not cross. He will only ever do what is right, what will help, what will make the kingdom stronger. You have to keep your principles, measure these things carefully, weigh up each choice, hold it to a certain balance.
This is a thing that needs to be done.
This is a transgression.
Then there are things that circumstance seems to dictate. Here are your rules, so impeccably drawn, here is blind fate, here it will come tearing at you from the skies, it will leave you helpless and words lose their meanings, become fragile, rules blur.
He is so tired he cannot recall quite where the line he has drawn sits anymore. The fear of its having slipped bites into his heart. You are not a bad man he tells himself, you will not have fallen. The king would not allow it. There are only things that he needs to give, a part of himself he will lose in the process, a never shortening list of things they have to fix.
Balance will be restored. In the end.
He shudders. Sleep washes at the edges of him. It must have been a terrific spell then, something that has drained him completely. It is hard to know the limits of what his body can endure, the laws of it won’t stay fixed, they seem to decay, he deteriorates. There are ways to fix it, but they take time, it seems that more and more energy has to be expended on filling in the cracks in him.
There is a haze around all his thoughts, as if he is moving very slowly through some thick and viscous dream. All he can feel is the slow beat of his heart, the heavy ache of his head, the darkness at the edge of his vision.
He is tired of this, exhausted by everything, he would like to close his eyes, let sleep overtake him. He would like very much to fold into its embrace, to stay there for hours, for days, even forever now perhaps. There is a sweetness to the thought of it, an enticing allure, nothing would matter then, he would be free of it all, he would not need to remember… remember… what does he need to remember?
He fights it, fights to fill in the black void in his mind. What have you done Viren?
The door opens with an unmistakeable creak and there is a moment of stillness, then he hears the tread of feet, a cherished, familiar sound to his ears.
“What have you done Viren?”
His eyes open with a jolt. He knows that voice so well.
“Lissa?” He stares around the room, peers into the gloom, she is standing there in the shadows. She has returned to him, and his heart tightens, becomes full of a strange emotion. How long has he waited for this? How long has she been gone?
“Oh Viren, what did you do?”
She steps forward, walks towards him, her expression full of sorrow. She is more beautiful than he remembered, the sweet soft lines of her face he had almost made himself forget.
“Lissa... I knew you would come back...”
The words are hard to form on his lips, but he has to try, he has to let her know how glad he is to see her again, how happy Soren and Claudia will be, how they’ve missed her. How nothing was ever quite the same after she left.
How he had never really been able to fill that hole in his heart, a cold and bloody place it had become, a place that darkness had twisted its way into and seeped out its tendrils into his soul.
She looks at him and she seems so sad. Had she always looked so sad? Hadn’t he made her smile once, bought joy to her eyes, laughter to her lips?
“Viren...”
There is only sorrow in her voice, he feels it tear at him. Feels the rent of it, the way it breaks within his chest. There has to be a way to rebuild the past, to let the light back in.
“Lissa... I didn’t...” The words will not quite come, “I needed...” He wants to say I needed you, you were the sweetness in me, you were the light. You were all the good things I could have been... for a moment he drifts, fades out of the moment, slips into some other dream that is bright and happy and warm.
He becomes aware that his eyelids are stuttering as if a hand is pressing them shut and he forces them back open, more than anything he doesn’t want to lose her again.
She stands before him, reaches out her hand towards him and he struggles to raise his own, draws it towards her fingers. Her hand light and fair, his own riven with darkness and his fingers slip through her, he grasps onto nothing but the cold air of the room. He shuts his eyes against it. Imagines her hand there at his forehead, the soft feel of it warm against his skin.
“Sleep now my love, you need to sleep.”
And dark waves wash over him, they crash into him, the heavens themselves seem to split and tumble down, and he sleeps.