Evander had been leisurely walking Onyx around the fields of the Kingdom of the Flag, keeping watch of the grounds in the early morning. He leaned upon the horn of the saddle as Onyx walked slowly around, pushing the snow around with his nose to find anything edible.
As Onyx walked and ate as he pleased on what he could find, Evander gazed out over the horizon that led in the direction of his hut. His home. He would give anything to be back in its warmth with Alrid beside him. He would give anything for this war to be over.
He patted Onyx on his neck gently, "I am glad to have you, Onyx." The jet black horse shook his head in agreement without lifting it and blew air past his huge lips.
Evander gradually felt an uncomfortable sting in his mind and sat up slowly. Onyx lifted his head to look at his master as he could feel something had changed in Evander's demeanor. Onyx worried for him.
Evander, a male voice formed in his mind. Come home, Evander. I am waiting for you.
The hunter did not recognize the voice at first and it held an eerie feel about it. What's more is that it held a very disconnected familiarity. As one would feel about a place he had never been to but as if he had been there once before, but in a different and distant life.
A conflict arose within him; did he go home and confront the owner of the voice or was it a trap to ensnare him? Should he inform the king or go alone?
You will want to come alone, the voice said, answering Evander's question as if able to read his thoughts.
Evander attempted to reply to the voice since it seemed to be in his mind and aware of his hesitance. This is a trap, Evander tried with great effort to form the words.
No, no trap. The voice said calmly, At least not this time anyway. I only wish to speak with you.
Evander was reluctant to say the least but he gradually began to feel a strong desire to go home. He could not explain why he suddenly wished to meet with the stranger, but he did.
Allow me to help persuade you, the voice said in a gentle commanding voice. It was oddly comforting like a father speaking to a child. The desire grew until he no longer resisted and it felt more as if he just wanted to go home for no other reason than to just be home.
He turned Onyx away from the direction of the keep into a trot toward home but Onyx was having none of this. He had noticed the drastic change with his master and resisted Evander's commands. Shire horses were smart and intuitive already but with the training he had gone through with Evander made him even more so.
Onyx was adamant on not going, he sensed danger and he refused to take his master directly to it. "Onyx, what's gotten into you?" Evander asked with a worried pat on Onyx's neck as he leaned forward to meet the eyes of his friend.
Onyx looked back at him with his deep brown eyes and those eyes were pleading with Evander not to make him do this. He did not want to put Evander in danger. The hunter could see the concern in his steed's eyes but he couldn't resist his great need to go home. Evander gazed back as he understood why Onyx refused to move. "I have to do this. Although I do not understand why." He sat up then and looked off to his home, "It's as if something is calling to me. I don't feel I am in danger. I need to do this. I need to go home." He leaned over again to Onyx, "I need you with me."
Onyx stared intently as he mulled over Evander's words. After a few minutes the giant shire horse reluctantly moved off in the direction of home.
Evander and Onyx had made it to the hut at the edge of Fortune's Woods to find smoke rising from the chimney. Evander looked on in curiosity laced with nervousness. The voice was real. There was someone in his home. He had to find out who.
The hunter slowly began to regret his decision to come home as he approached. Something about the home that stood before him felt subtly foreign. How it felt though made little difference. He had to go inside and face the owner of the voice. As much as he felt that he shouldn't enter the hut he knew that for some reason that he needed to.
So that is what he would do. He swung a leg over Onyx and dismounted. Onyx tried one more subtle attempt to stop Evander with a gentle placement of his nose on his master's shoulder. Onyx exhaled deeply through his nose in his own way of telling Evander that he still did not want him to go inside.
"I know you would have me leave," Evander said softly. He patted Onyx's nose and moved past him gently, leaving his friend behind to watch on, helpless.
Snow fell moderately and began clinging to the ground and everything it landed on. Evander noticed this in kind of a second-hand way though. His mind was still building up the courage to open the door to an oddly unfamiliar place.
He reached for the doorknob and found that it was still locked. Not feeling up to question how whoever was in there and gotten in, he unlocked the door carefully.
"Would you open the door already," the voice he had heard in his head, now sounded from inside. "Do you always take this long to do anything?"
Evander pushed in the door and the warmth from the fire hit him suddenly like a wall. The room was otherwise dark and felt wrong as he stepped inside. Some flakes of snow blew into the room behind him as he shut the door.
The figure that had been watching Evander and the kings for the last few days sat in an armchair facing away from the hunter. He spoke softly as Evander questioned his choice to enter, "Welcome home, Evander."
"Who are you?" Evander demanded.
"We will get to that. Now sit," the man said sternly. "Do you not greet strangers when you meet them? I would have thought that Edmond would have taught you better manners."
Evander cautiously moved over to the chair beside the man. "How do you know my name? How do you know anything about me?" Evander could not see the face of the man as he had his hood up. The only part that was visible was a portion of his chin and not much else.
"I have been watching you," he said. "I have been watching all of you, in fact, for some time now. I must say you creatures are quite dull. You go about your lives believing that there will be a tomorrow. You plan for the future. For a future that may yet never come to see you in it."
Evander's mind raced almost as quickly as his heart as he frantically searched his memories for anything about this man. He came up short. He could not depict which emotion he was feeling. Anger? Fear? Trepidation? Curiosity? Perhaps a mixture of all of them was more likely.
Evander tried to act confident when he spoke, "You speak as though you are not human. Like you are not one of us." He inspected the man more, "You don't look like an abyssal."
"At one point I was one of you, I suppose. But that reality was so long ago now I can't really say that I am one of your kind anymore nor can I say that I remember any of it"
Evander tried his best to see past the shadow on the man's face and get a view of him, but it was too dark. "If you won't tell me who you are then at the very least you can tell me what you are."
The man lowered his head some and slowly brought his hands up to the sides of his hood. In a calm motion, he threw back his hood and revealed the man beneath. The first feature Evander noticed was the pitch black eyes, they sat sunk into the man's skull. The skin around them was a deep sinister purple, pulled tightly across the bone.
He looked mostly human but still visibly twisted by the abyss. "I was human," the man said and looked at Evander. "But not anymore." His voice sounded regretful and the light from the fire revealed a bit more of his face. The veins in his neck were black as they shown through his pale skin easily. In fact, now that Evander studied his appearance further he could see now that all of his veins were black. His hands were the most visible as they rested on the arms of the chair now. It's as if his blood was not just infected with the abyss, it was the abyss.
Slowly, Evander began to put the pieces together in his mind. The man had a special interest in him; he had been watching him after all. The man was in Evander's home and he had an aura of knowing. Despite the veins of black, he looked similar to Evander.
Evander's eyes narrowed as he asked the question he feared the answer to. Just one word was all that was necessary. "O'Leander?" his voice was bereft with reluctance as the words left his lips.
The man's eyes pierced Evander's heart as the man spoke, "Now you're catching on, brother." His voice altered to hold a more hollow and empty nature, "I have returned. But not in the capacity in which you might hope. You would have me join forces with you but that is not the case. As you can see from my appearance, I am no longer your brother in any sense of the word save the fact that we are both born of Cassandra. That feeble woman."
Evander's heart beat faster even though it was already beating out of his chest. He remained quiet as it seemed O'Leander hadn't finished speaking quite yet.
"You seem...timid, brother. You fear me, don't you?" O'Leander smirked maliciously. "That is good. You should fear me. I have waited forty years to show you what I have become."
"What happened to you?" Evander found his voice finally.
O'Leander exhaled sharply from his nose, "I suppose telling you my story would make no difference at this point, would it?" A pause, "Very well. You see, when I was taken by my master, I was at first terrified as any child would be."
Evander's hope for O'Leander shattered at the word, Master. His heart sank even deeper.
O'Leander went on, "I was afraid of my new environment. I had no mother or father to save me. I feared no one would save me," another pause as his eyes bore into Evander. "Not even you. My own brother deserted me. I looked up to you." O'Leander became angrier as he revealed his life, "You left me to die, brother." He stretched the last word in a heartfelt betrayal.
"I did not abandon you!'' The words left Evander's mouth without a thought as he stood out of his chair. "We searched for you for years. We lost a great many men to try to bring you home!" He was pissed that his brother believed he was left to the vices of the enemy. "You were deep within the grips of Varamont!"
O'Leander moved with blurred speed and sent Evander into the wall behind him with a powerful shove. "That is Lord Varamont to you!"
Evander hit the wall so hard his vision went blurry for a few moments and his head pain from his injury returned in full force. He reached up instinctively to his head as O'Leander knelt beside him.
"Oh, what's the matter, big brother? Is your old war wound acting up? Pity." His demeanor had developed to be much more heartless and vacant of any tangible human emotion. "Trust me, keep going down this path of resistance and you will have plenty more wounds to worry about."
Evander looked to his brother with hazy, teary eyes, "What did he do to you? You used to be a good soul."
O'Leander regarded his older brother with disgust, "Do not lecture me about good or evil. You know not what you speak." He looked to the sitting hunter, an anger beyond any other simmered at the surface of his eyes. "You don't get it do you?"
Evander's expression changed to one of questioning curiosity.
"It matters not what my master did to me. What happened cannot be changed. It is too late to fix that now." O'Leander stood from his crouch and moved to sit back down in his chair. His gaze dropped to study the markings on the floor. Evander remained seated against the wall.
"He broke me, Evander," his voice became softer but the rage remained. It seemed as though he still retained some humanity but it was dwarfed by the darkness he hosted. "He tortured and starved me." A paused tension formed around him. "I have died countless times during the torture over the past forty years and every time I was revived. I was not allowed to die. I could not escape. Not even death to save me." His gaze met Evander's, "We have not shared the same blood for many years now, you and I. My master drained the blood from my body until my soul left it. He then replaced it with his own, forcing my soul back into the twisted form you see now."
Evander felt as if something was about to happen and it didn't sit right with him. "So why have you come back? And why tell me all of this?"
"Because you asked me to and your death will be that much sweeter if you knew that in some way you allowed this to happen to me. I wanted you to know that in some way, this is your fault."
Evander's heart could not take any more of this and it shattered at his words but he maintained his outward appearance as one of confidence. "So if you've come to kill me, why not just do it then? What are you waiting for now?"
O'Leander clicked his tongue, "You misunderstand, I am not here to kill you now. Oh, no, no, that would not be fun. I want you to have to look over your shoulder everywhere you go. I want the paranoia to eat away at you every waking hour. Tear at your mind before I decide when and where I will exterminate you."
O'Leander stood from his chair and slowly made his way to the door. His movements resembled that of an apparition, slow and controlled. His thin, bony fingers gripped the handle of the door and he gingerly heaved it open. Cold wind swept inside and as he stepped out to leave he stopped and looked back, "Watch out for your friend." He winked and clicked the door closed silently.
Onyx could be heard neighing wildly outside, pulling Evander out of his stupor. He ran to the door and threw it open.
O'Leander was gone.
Onyx looked to his master with wide, terrified eyes. It seemed that O'Leander had just vanished into thin air. The field in front of the hut was vast and open, there was nowhere for him to hide.
Evander was just relieved that Onyx was alright
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