Chapter Text
The rain beats against his skin, cold and unfeeling. The world is dark and blue. The air is stale with blood, fresh and dried. It is just as it has always been.
Then comes the despair. It washes over him, as does the water.
He feels an ache in his head, one that never goes away - one that he simply adapts to every time it comes along. His only comfort is the grip of the blade in his hand, slick with both the rain and the insides of...
He clutches his head again and looks in front of him. There is a man there. He wears a helmet of silver, and holds a greatsword, rusted and weathered; in his other hand is something familiar, a piece of metal, radiating with night. There is another, an armoured one in gold, his blade shimmering with a golden light. And there is a third, a witch in black, her hat obscuring her face.
I am the Fell Omen is his first thought, one accompanied by a rush of anger. Whether it be at the trespassers or himself, he does not fully know. He raises his sword - yes, they were fighting, he remembers now - and prepares a flurry he seems to remember purely out of instinct.
And then the knight raises the object in his hand, and slams it down onto the ground.
A scream. The clatter of a curved sword, dropped to the ground; clutching at his head once more like an old ritual, feeling the stumps of old horns on his face; and his blood boiling, literally bubbling on the inside. He falls.
It appears to have worked, comes a voice to his left. As he opens his eyes he has to squeeze them shut again, the sky far too bright. The howling wind and sound of distant waves greet him. It is unfamiliar, but not entirely. His body is wet, soaked in water - not rainwater, he processes, as a small tide gently pushes at him.
Good sir? The voice comes again. Give him a moment to gather himself, comes another, softer one. Both are feminine, slow. Unfamiliar after what felt like an age of nothing but cries, wails and screams in the dark. As his eyes open again, wincing at the light, his vision focuses. A hand instinctively rises to block out the sun. The high-pitched ringing in his ears subsides briefly as the softer voice speaks again. “Good sir, art thou awake?”
The Omen finds himself on a beach. The fortress in the distance is the only landmark, its crumbling stone walls crawling with vines. Everything else a vast ocean. Slowly he can feel the damp sand between his fingers, in his cloak. He feels bare and vulnerable, his sword nowhere to be seen.
"What..." he begins, his first words in an age that have not been spiteful, hateful hisses. All at once they feel foreign to his tongue, lacking in the malice that had him taken by the throat. "What is this?"
"Take a moment to calm yourself," the other voice says. He looks up and sees the sources of the two voices. One woman wears a white cloak over herself, little of her visible save her mouth. A messenger, then, he surmises briefly. A silver mask covers her eyes. "Welcome to the Roundtable Hold."
The Omen is certain, so very certain, that he has heard those two words before, though he cannot fathom where. The softer voice speaks again. He turns to see a witch in dark, flowing robes. He has seen her before as well. This memory is closer - he can almost picture her floating sidesteps, the glow of magic coalescing around her hand - but he cannot find its source, its context. "Thou wert taken by the Night," she says, her voice like a wisp - like it could disappear into nothing at any moment. "We know little else of thee, except that thou wert Grace-Given."
"Do you remember who you are?" The one cloaked in white asks, as gently as possible. He would be irritated by their treatment of him - like that of a child - but what the Witch said has struck something within him. Taken by the Night. He does not know what this means, but he feels it nonetheless.
"I know I am... an Omen. The Fell Omen - t'was my title," he says with a grimace. "Though an Omen for what, I do not know. And thee?"
The white-cloaked woman gives a small bow. "I am the Priestess. Voice of this Hold's Master." The witch does not respond. "You were taken by the Night - a force..."
"Hold," he says, raising a hand. "Kindly give me... a moment to recollect." He does not need further words. Whatever explanations he hears will go out the other ear.
"I believe I understand," the Priestess says, giving the witch a small nod. "We will be inside when thou'rt ready," the latter says gently. "Take thine time. There is no urgency here." They turn to leave, slowly walking side by side towards the fortress.
The Omen stays seated by the water, running his hand along the beach. He closes his eyes and tries remembering where he was before. He hopes to remember his last battle, what brought him to this shore. A Fell Omen. An Omen of what? The title should have meaning to him, but it is lost.
All of a sudden he is no longer on a small island, but on a noisy battlefield. He remembers bits and pieces - his sword, yes - he had a sword - buried and hidden within a cane. He remembers himself swinging it in a wide arc, sending soldiers dressed in red flying across the golden fields.
He remembers making himself a shadow, taking efforts to conceal his face. He remembers dueling someone - his vision is hazy, but what comes to mind immediately are two curved greatswords, black and etched with gold, clashing hard against his cane; as if he is there, he remembers effortlessly floating through the air, striking his larger opponent with a hail of golden daggers, before striking his cane down onto the enemy's chest, burying him into the ground.
He remembers the opponent roaring, clutching at the cane before it can pierce his armour, when the entire ground shook. He shudders at the memory further as he envisions the following moments, the earth cracking, the soldiers stopping their battle to turn and run, the tendrils of darkness reaching out, his enemy taken by shadow as he stood above.
He remembers the Night taking him. He remembers fighting back, and that is all. He must have lost, then.
He snaps back to the waking world, the light of the sun once again stinging his eyes.
I will have answers.
The Omen rises from the sands, shaking the sand from his tail before trudging towards the familiar-looking fortress, his hand longing for a blade to grasp onto. He is starved, tired, dazed, unsure of who he even is. But he plans to stop at nothing to find out.