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It was weirdly peaceful, the way the sun illuminated the dust particles in the air. The sun doesn’t belong here, though, and its presence planted a feeling of wrongness in the room.
The line between Dema and Trench had become blurred.
Clancy could only ruminate on that glimpse of uneasy serenity for a brief moment, though, as his body fell against the cement walls with a thud. He snapped his eyes onto the face in front of him, a sense of defeat culminating in his chest. The old man stood there, Clancy’s antlers in hand, black and white paint peeling from his wrinkles, eyes as dead as ever. For a moment he imagined a million ways he could still defeat Nico, but it was of no use. There was little he could do now, and the slim chances of his survival snuffed out the dimming flame of want- the want to get back on his feet, the want to run and fight and scream.
As Nico pulled out the antlers from his shoulders, he slid down the wall, head lulling to the side as everything became suddenly too heavy. The air was heavy in his lungs and the bones were heavy in his limbs. The pain came with a delay. It blossomed sharply in the wounds in his shoulders, but the numbing, dull kind of pain that shortly followed, seized his arms from shoulder to fingertip.
His consciousness had been drifting off, detaching itself from this world, almost as if he had been watching everything through a screen, but the pain brought him back, tethered Clancy to the world; the rocky vallies of Trench, the rough waters of Paladin Strait and the apathetic concrete of Dema. Pain is too physical, too real. Whether he liked it or not, it grounded him, made him real.
Pain was how he knew he existed, it was the shadow he cast on the world.
Instead of fighting it, he embraced it, focusing on the ache and agony, the way it made his fingertips tingle and how it seemed to slice open his very being.
Bit by bit, he collected the last remnants of his strength, his power. It was still all too surreal, but he found the will to stand up. Time seemed to slow down, the air thick with defeat, the sounds of battle below the tower getting drowned out by the vacuum enveloping this cage of a room at the top of the tower.
He formed his fingers into a symbol he didn’t know he had learned, which seemed to hurl Nico backwards, but before he could register if Nico got back up again, a velvety blanket of nothingness, that had been tugging at Clancy’s subconscious for the second half of the fight, finally won and pulled Clancy into its embrace.
He was exhausted, yes, but he had been fighting the darkness for too long. The pain emanating from his shoulders spread all over, swallowing him whole. This might not be like all the last times, this darkness might be eternal.
He would've accepted this as the end, and he would've been glad to do so as well, but his peaceful non-existence was interrupted by the muffled yet distinct sound of boot on concrete reaching him through a thick fog of semi-consciousness.
Did I not defeat him? Did I lose?
His heart began picking up pace as he prepared himself for what Nico could do. For reasons unknown, the bishops always seemed to want him alive and death really was the preferable option now, after all he's been through.
The frantic steps got closer and closer, as did fate. Reality crept in and the loss of peace became apparent. He will never see the ending, he's bound to this painful life. His punishment wasn't death, it was life. There seemed to be no way out of this cycle and tears welled up in his throat, forming a knot. He hadn't cried in a long, long time, though, so he wasn't entirely sure if he still could.
As the steps got louder, nearer, they also became more cautious, anticipatory. Uneasiness returned to the air that he was still forced to breathe.
Then, someone spoke a name, grabbed him by the shoulder, but a bit too harshly and the wave of pain that washed over him began dissipating the near-serene blackness. He felt the wet and cold cement under his cheek for the first time in forever and it hurt. The jolt was followed by a shift in the air and he was pushed onto his back.
From under his half-closed eyelids, a strangely familiar colour appeared before him. Yellow. He hadn't seen that shade of stubbornly alive yellow in ages. An eternity had passed, yet he could still swear that he had seen it before. Through the yellow-tinted thick fog, a voice was now yelling.
It's that name again, the same one from before. Desperation filled the air, as the name kept repeating. He was shaken by his shoulders and each time pain reared its head, it hurt more, and each time, the world reconstructed itself under him. The cold air, the pale sun, the four walls that held the entirety of human misery within them.
More footsteps, more yelling. He tried to see meaning in it all, but couldn't bring himself to. He was lifted up, wrapped in something soft and warm, and carried away, an odd sense of… satisfaction sprouting along the way. It was unexpected, really, this was supposed to be his end. Still, it allowed him to drift - this time to an uneasy and temporary sleep.
He woke once, maybe more, but not that he could remember. A funeral progression of defeated soldiers stretched as far back as he could see without lifting his head from the stretcher he was being carried on. The sky was a mix of cautious reds and yellows, as if it did not dare to burst into a sunset just yet. Jagged cliffedges framed his view, as he laid there, staring upwards. They were in some sort of valley and the smell of charred wood made it safe.
The sway of the stretcher and the quiet humming of one of the two carrying it pushed him back into unconsciousness.
The question of why the bishops were taking him outside the city walls died with his consciousness. A frail voice within his chest thought that if this is his fate, then it might not be so horrible after all.