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Sleep doesn’t come easy anymore; it’s as simple as that. A permanent fixture in Rain’s life that embedded itself two years ago, the first night he spent with the Frostbourne’s assumption of Abigail’s death firmly imprinted into his mind.
(Ceris didn’t approve of his emotional attachment; she voiced as much during the few weeks she spent at Dreadfort to steady the Overworld and the End’s alliance, when it was clear his state of everything was deteriorating.
Maybe it was the three hundred plus years of living influencing her words, or maybe it was the fact he took her last name and was making a fool out of it; Lord Vordus said as much.)
He’s accepted her death since then, and he’s been doing better as well.
(The ache over where his deceased heart is has lessened over time; the black marks, ugly fractures, snaking across his cold, dead skin don’t frighten him as much anymore.)
It’s just that sleeping is hard; he’s had to resort to what’s been referred to by Azura as his “roaming hours” to take whatever edge is preventing him from sleeping.
Heir to the End, they say, invitingly, listen to our tale.
Tonight is one of many nights, and while wandering Dreadfort’s streets, he stumbles across the Elytra Corps’ training grounds and consequently stumbles upon Lyria Zafrir, standing among several torn-up training dummies.
Rain calls out to her, hoping to make his presence known before Lyria’s instincts take over and she slashes his head off next, but the outcome is still less than desirable.
“Rain?” Lyria asks, only moments after she flings a throwing knife at him. It cleanly slices his cheek, just a bit under his eye, before it embeds itself in the cracks of the stone wall behind him. He remains still.
Lyria’s mouth forms a large “O” shape, holds it for a moment, then winces hard. “Did I…?” she asks.
Presumably, it’s dark enough even with the torches that she can’t see whether her aim is a little too good—except Rain is standing in a well-lit corner, right next to a glowstone light.
And despite the mild sting from where the knife definitely cut his face, Rain still swipes at it with two fingers to check if he is bleeding. They come back warm, painted a deep scarlet.
“Yeah,” he nods, “you did.”
“Fuck…” Lyria drawls with a grimace. She drops the rest of her throwing knives and drops her gauntlets to the ground. “I’ll go grab the first aid kit.”
Rain doesn’t think to follow her. It must be the fatigue clouding his common sense. “You do you.”
She comes back swiftly, the aforementioned medical kit in hand, and Rain has an adhesive bandage slapped onto his face in a jiffy. Like literally, slapped on before Rain can do it himself.
“Ow,” he expresses his pain with much emotion.
“Sorry, sorry,” Lyria repeats before sighing. The job done, she walks back to her pile of weapons and retrieves her gauntlets. She fastens them back on, flicks out the blade of her right, and slashes fast at one of the few dummies still intact.
Well, someone is in a mood. “You need someone to talk to?” he asks, just as she stabs her blade into the dummy’s head.
Lyria glances over her shoulder at him, bearing a look of mild surprise. “I…” She pauses, retracting her blade and pulling out the dummy’s brains at the same time, tapping rhythmically on the metal bits of her gauntlet in contemplation after the fact. “No, not really,” she confesses. “Just don’t feel like sleeping.”
Rain hums. “Bad idea, Lyr,” he says, his response being a scoff because, yes: he is clearly a hypocrite.
Briefly, he scans the massacre at Lyria’s feet. He isn’t sure how many training dummies are left, but it can’t be many.
He raises his arms over his head in a stretch, feeling and hearing his dead joints audibly pop. “Any free weapons in the back?”
Lyria turns around to face him fully, intrigue written on her face. “A few spears and swords; a couple of axes, I think, too. Why?”
No better way to tire yourself out, he concludes. “Up for a spar?”
Lyria immediately perks up, beaming.
(They spar until the night’s nearly passed by with the sound of sharpened steel clashing against sharpened steel, both more or less exhausted on their feet and ready to crash on the first comfortable replacement for a mattress they see.
Said “comfortable replacement for a mattress” turns out to be the snow, and two of Lyria’s subordinates find them the next morning, dead asleep.
All four agree to say nothing of the morning; wisely so.)
Heir to the End, they say with cadence, won’t you indulge us?
You can learn many things from roaming a large settlement at night. Rain learns not to come near an unsuspecting Natalie (Kane and Ciara’s youngest and younger sister), accidentally or otherwise.
“Okay,” Natalie starts, obviously unapologetic and miffed, “this — is on you.”
Rain stares at her, unsure of what emotion to display. “Uh-huh.” He ends up deciding on none of them out of tiredness, but maybe that alone is a sufficient reaction as he looks down at the freezing-cold ice encasing his feet, just barely crossing the threshold of his knees.
He’s stuck, and very much so.
“Nat, seriously?” Elite asks, deadpan. He’s dead, just like Rain, but in the way Kane and Ciara are: an immortal, not heavily reliant on sleep to function.
Natalie frowns, and Rain can just about see her resisting the urge to escalate it into a scowl. “It is! What made you think it was a good idea to sneak up on a cryomancer clearly in a state of focus?”
Well, for one, Rain hadn’t even noticed the pair were there, and secondly, he’s a good ten feet away from them. Sneaking up be damned: Natalie just has heightened senses that get unsuspecting victims firmly frozen to the ground before being blamed for something they didn’t intend on doing.
“Insomnia,” he answers instead, because defending himself with a rant or otherwise sounds exhausting.
His fellow cryomancer scoffs. “What kind of an excuse is that?”
“Natalie,” Elite warns with an exasperated undertone that Rain’s often heard Kane and Ciara fling at each other since meeting them. Nothing follows, and that’s an extended scolding.
“Yeah, yeah,” she rolls her eyes. She turns to Rain, her gaze not fully focused on him. “I’ll get you out, stop squirming—”
Rain already has the palm of his hand pressed against his frozen encasing, robotically chanting, “paзбивать.” He stumbles when the ice shatters into large fragments, just as Natalie approaches, wielding her bō. She stops in her tracks, partially astonished and suspicious at the shards of ice at Rain’s freed feet.
“There’s no Tharaf spell for shattering ice,” Elite explains on behalf of the dumbfoundedness. His eyes are narrowed, brimming with curiosity. Analyse the novelty of it all, first and foremost, apparently.
“There isn’t?” Rain asks, absorbing the confusion circling the area. What’s this pile of ice doing at his feet then?
Natalie’s trying it out for herself in the meantime: a large chunk of ice held in her hand as she repeatedly tries to perform the spell he just did. An overachiever, Rain figures, as the air grows colder around her with every failed attempt.
This time, he thinks of the spell in his head. A second passes, and nothing happens other than the temperature tanking drastically again. Rain almost shivers before thinking, “screw it,” and he mutters under his breath the shatter-ice spell.
The ice explodes in Natalie’s hands (yikes), and they’re all only mildly taken aback. Natalie recovers first, and once she does, she rolls up her non-existent sleeves. “All right, square up,” she tells him, scarily serious. “My meditation’s been interrupted, I’ve been shown up by Slippy Steps over—”
Rain does not know how to feel about that nickname.
“—and now I’m pissed. One-on-one, right here, right now.”
Rain turns to Elite, almost pleadingly, for assistance.
Elite only shrugs. “Not my circus, man,” he says straightly. “But I’m up for referreeing.”
Natalie’s glare becomes paired with a grin as she glances back at the blonde. “I knew you were my favourite brother.”
“Is there no getting out of this?” Rain asks, for desperation’s sake.
Natalie spins her bō around in a singular, fluid motion, firmly shaking her head once. “Don’t be a wimp.”
“How about forfeiting, can I do that?”
Impossibly, Natalie’s scowl deepens. “Don’t be a coward either!”—and she swings at him, swift and sharp. Rain barely reacts in time, creating a layer of protective frost over his hands to catch the strike. Somewhere in the background, Elite whistles, thoroughly entertained, most likely.
It’s going to be a long night.
(The impromptu spar lasts a good thirty minutes, and while Rain puts up a good fight, the fatigue catches up to him fast. Soon enough, Natalie, with her oversized stick, proceeds to wipe the floor with his ass.
He hears Elite give out half of a warning before Natalie’s bō meets his head a little too hard, and he goes down with stars swimming in his vision, slowly fading to black.
Concussions: a one-way ticket to sleep. At least something worked out for him.)
Heir to the End, they say, voices dark and vexed, why do you not heed us?
Rain finds no one when roaming Dreadfort last night; rather, someone finds him.
He didn’t wander far in the first place, just up until one of the larger frozen lakes (the same one he fell in a while back). The night was as dead as he, silent and slow, and he thought ice skating would lull him easily to sleep.
It does, after some three hours of gliding around in circles, the occasional spin and attempted flip every thirty-minute intervals, and he remembers dozing off on something cold and light. That turns out to be snow.
Kane tells him it’s half-past five in the morning when he finally wakes up, the immortal undead having unceremoniously shaken him awake by the shoulder.
“You’ve been asleep out here all night?” Kane states rather than questions, although it is definitely a very judgmental question.
Rain, as tired as he is with a numb cheek and snowy bedhead, stares and answers with a question of his own: “You’re willingly awake at 5:30 in the morning?”
“It’s hard trying to sleep in when you’re living with seven younger siblings in the same house, okay?”
“Uh-huh…” Rain trails, sitting up. Given how often the other begins each morning with a concerningly impish “rise and shine, bitches: it’s morning time,” he’s almost certain that he’s the one preventing the entire household from sleeping in.
“But seriously,” Kane audibly turns the sarcasm off, settling beside him, “were you here really all night?”
He huffs. The cold of the tundra air makes his breath visible, and Rain watches as it dissipates before breathing the cold back in. “Probably.”
Absently, he regales Kane in his little skating session done sometime between midnight and 3 AM. He forces out some emotion when detailing the four times he attempted to backflip on the ice and miraculously didn’t break his neck evey time he failed to stick the landing; y’know, for the theatrics. And the funsies. Kane seems to appreciate the retelling well enough.
“And then you fell asleep on the snowbank?” he guesses, just as the story reaches its end.
“And then I fell asleep on the snowbank,” Rain nods. “Apparently.” He doesn’t remember walking towards the nearby tree and curling up under it like those stray cats Stella tries to wrangle every now and then.
Kane visibly fights back a snicker and fails; to Rain, the noise vaguely sounds like Ciara’s deranged cackle, except less…well, deranged. He supposes the laugh must have been inherited from someone in the Netherbane.
His thoughts on inheritance of all things (science stuff) are disrupted when Kane suddenly tousles his hair, brushing the snow out of it but also tangling it and making his bedhead without the snow noticeably worse. “You look like you could use a few more hours,” Kane notes.
Rain just blinks. “Maybe.” As if intended, a yawn escapes his throat. The timing is slightly horrifying, given the social circumstances, but the heaviness of his everything overrides it.
“So,” Kane starts after, “snowbank bed or bed-bed?”
Rain throws a handful of snow at him. “Bed-bed.” He moves to stand up.
“Are you sure you can still feel your limbs?” Kane asks while dusting off the snow, his doubt very much uninvited.
“I don’t need you to carry me,” he insists, ignoring the returned “I didn’t say that?”
And then, because yes, the second he stands on his two feet, he stumbles, and Kane has to catch and hold him steady by the arm. “Fuck you,” he curses.
Kane’s tone of voice is the same one he used when Rain last caught hypothermia. “I can just let you fall, y’know?”
“Okay, fine.” He huffs again, thankful that Kane wears those compression gloves of his 24/7 now: he’s as cold as the walking corpse that he is.
“Is that a ‘fine’ for me letting you go or?”
Rain can only find so much energy to sigh. “You’re insufferable.”
“I aim to please.”
(Rain tells Kane not to carry him, and the second he falls asleep while walking, he decides to carry him the rest of the way.
He only finds out the week after when Ciara mentions it, and they both end up tackling and biting each other—mainly because the next time he wakes up, it’s already late afternoon.)
Heir to the End, they say, creeping a harrowing chill up his spine, why do you test our patience?
The night’s too cold to wander, so he limits his quest area to Dreadfort, the castle itself; so far, he’s gone up and down the stairs nine whole times, and while his legs are certainly aching, and his eyelids every, his everything is still annoyingly restless.
Sometime past 1 AM, Rain debated whether to go to Kane or Ciara, seeing as they didn’t necessarily need sleep to survive. But when he checked, both of them were fast asleep, and he just felt guilty at the thought of waking either of them up; all because he couldn’t sleep (although Ciara would have definitely deserved it for unnamed reasons). He really wishes he could be them right about now.
“What are you doing?”
Rain snaps out of his “roaming trance,” the trance he enters when roaming, the trance of the roaming, at the tired but strictly stern voice aimed at him. He looks up, and oh—it’s Patrick.
“Grandmaster,” he greets blearily.
Patrick is either glaring at him or staring at him. “That doesn’t answer my question, Alala.”
“How about,” Rain offers, “you tell me what you’re doing so I can relay it to Azura when she gets back.”
“...”
“...see, this is why Azura’s given up on us getting along.” He yawns immediately after, and he has to stifle it with his hand because dignity. “These are my roaming hours.”
Patrick slowly nods in recognition. “Yes…those.”
Rain blinks at the tone and faintly scowls.“If that’s all, Sire.”
He takes one step to walk past, only for his knees to buckle, and he collapses right there in the hallway; embarrassingly, Patrick and his reflexes catch him before he crashes hard onto the wood floor.
“Did you not think sleep was a good idea?” Patrick queries, and Rain just about catches a glimpse of the Grandmaster showing concern for a split second before it returns to that stern indifference; maybe it was a trick of the minimal light in the hallway, who knows in his state.
“I’ve been trying for—” he steals a glance at the nearest window, seeing only a black sky and dusky clouds, “—for four hours.”
“...”
Deafening silence, how nice? Something Rain hears whenever he takes his hearing aids off!
Gods, the insomnia is depleting his sanity.
Patrick sighs and pulls Rain up to his feet. “I have paperwork to finish.”
Rain nods along listlessly. So that’s what he’s going to relay to Azura when she gets back. (Also, hypocrite.)
“If you’re still planning on not sleeping, you can stay in my office until I finish.” Patrick then adds, “Better you bother me than scare someone else in these halls.”
Oh.
“Oh,” Rain blurts.
“Your answer?” the Grandmaster asks.
Rain mulls it over quickly and eventually comes to this conclusion: being on his lonesome in the dead of night is not appealing.
He accepts the invitation and makes himself at home in Patrick’s office when led there. He spins around in one of the chairs, listening to the rustle of Patrick reading reports and the scratching of him writing. Then he rests his head on the desk, eyes growing heavy.
He’s still awake when he hears Patrick get up from his chair and feels something thin but warm drape over his shoulders. He drifts off immediately after.
(bad idea bad idea bad idea bad idea
he fell asleep in patrick’s office
he was too close to the End Crystals
the cold got colder, air turned thicker, Their demands grew louder in echoes
he wants Them QUIET
he wants Their voices GONE
Then come to us, Heir to the End, they say. Listen. This is all we ask.
Fine, he tells them screaming, his ears ringing. Fine.
he gives in)
Heir to the End, they say, finally returned to the calm of the first night, you finally give in.
He sneaks in after dark, at the hour he knows all of Dreadfort is asleep. He checked that Kane and Ciara were asleep, too.
The End Crystals seem to laugh, bemused, once he enters. They weren’t talkative earlier that day, when he and Stella and Lance, stuffed in his jar, were running more tests on them.
“What do you want?” he whispers, softly shutting the doors behind him. They may be on a different floor, but he remembers Ciara stirring and mumbling incoherently when he cracked her door open.
Come closer, the twin End Crystals beckon, and listen.
He abides and sits at the foot of the observation stand where End Crystals hover. A low laugh echoes through the room, and next, a tune fills his ears.
It’s bland, the melody forgettable, nothing dynamic about it at all. But it’s soothing that way; a repetitive lullaby that bores one to sleep.
“This is what you wanted me here for?” he murmurs, just barely able to hear himself over the song.
The End Crystals don’t give him a verbal response, merely silence.
he swears he hears another laugh. he thinks he sees a silhouette when he blinks.
The music continues, soft and charming—coaxing and gentle.
He falls asleep.
(Rain wakes up with Nostra standing over them with their black everything and a new mask, similar to the one they lost when they were in the Deep Dark. He doesn’t see their face [not that he remembers what they look like] but he knows for sure he’s being judged—and being judged by Nostra is inherently worse than being judged by anyone else, and you can’t even see
Nostra doesn’t say anything, which is just as bad, but they just shoo him away from the Crystals so they can carry on with their own research. That day, and the days after, the End Crystals remain silent, and Rain is relieved beyond words.
He doesn’t notice how the fractures across his chest have darkened, how there’s a purple tinge to the heart of the fragmenting.
He feels fine.)