Solitude {Character Study}
It’s the dull pain in the back of his head that first awakens him. Something struck him, hard enough to break skin; he can feel the blood already drying in his hair. His eyes flicker open and he’s greeted by more darkness. For a moment he panics. His eyes aren’t working. Are his eyes still there?
Assessment: Yes, they are.
Relief for a moment, then panic again. He’s kneeling, arms held up by shackles. Two. They didn’t secure his ankles. He notes that before carefully shifting, feeling the raw pain in his wrists. He’s been like this for a while. The lost time troubles him- the last occasion that this happened, he was waking up with a cold hand around his throat, the grip tightening, lungs shattering-
Assessment: He’s fucked.
His throat feels ragged. Perhaps from the memory, perhaps because he’s absolutely parched. He shifts once more, darting his foot to test the boundaries of the room. Four by four. It takes iron will to push back the dread welling up in his chest. There is no antimagic here. He can break out. There will be hell to pay.
Even then he can’t shake the feeling.
Keep steady.
His own thoughts startle him for a moment. Keep steady.
He promised, remember? Promised that you would be safe. He’s probably on his way already.
It sounds childish even as he thinks it. As if Wezel hadn’t been the one to grind him into the dirt in the first place, as if he hadn’t sold him out for the final time-
Allister wonders, dully, what he would be sold for this time.
That’s ludicrous. You’re more valuable close to them. Quieter, the voice adds- Besides. That wasn’t real. It was a bad dream. They keep you safe, remember? They promised.
The chains are real, however, and he adjusts himself to take some of the strain off them. His thoughts wander, unbidden. It feels exactly the same.
He’s back in the tiny cell, with Luca lurking outside, the man’s hands made of knives and needles, his face splitting into a horribly wide smile-
Perhaps he never even left.
It hits him like a brick, a deep-seeded fear that he had managed not to confront for months. Here, in the dark, it’s unavoidable.
They never really let him go.
He supposes that it’s obvious. A quicker way to break someone; catch and release. His mind reels, trying to sort this revelation into a neat box, but it’s impossible.
Assessment: He’s not breathing.
Objective: Breathe.
Air hits his lungs like a shock. He’s going to kill them. Each one of them, slowly, painfully. He reaches inward, toward the well, and feels it’s shallow depths. Energy siphoned off to slow the void taint that was tearing him apart.
Philos- unchain my well! He practically shouts it into that place, voice echoing and bouncing back at him. She doesn't reply. She never does, not since that meeting in the marble Pantheon, where her hands dug into his face and he felt the domains being torn away, replaced by a horrible, aching void. The Void.
It calls even now. Not for the first time, he considers Loreth’s offer.
Objective, revised: breathe slower.
He hadn’t realized how ragged his breath was. Each inhale was a stab to his chest, and he distantly wondered how many ribs were broken.
Allister withdraws into the mindscape. It’s cold here. The fire has long since gone out, every surface covered in a thin dust. His footsteps lead him out of the parlor and into the kitchen. He’s been too afraid to set foot in this place. His own mind had become a sort of prison of late, each memory jumbled apart in scattered boxes on the floor. The boxes were new. A more efficient way of containing unwanted reminders.
There had likely never been any choices of his own. It was unlikely that there ever would be.
He’s exhausted.
His fingers trail the cold stovetop. This place is a memory, turned into something more solid. Elwain Miander had once stood here, a patched apron tied around her waist, directing Joshun here and there while she minded the stew pot. Allister remembers watching it. He recalls sitting on the far left chair, head nestled in the crook of his arm while Lonna practiced her letters. She would have been around 5 or 6 in that memory, her red hair standing out like a beacon among her siblings. He remembers how she hated it.
The door bangs open and even where he stands, reliving this moment, Allister flinches. It’s reflexive.
Reeves Miander never beat his children.
Allister sometimes wishes that he had, just so he could rationalize his reactions to the man. His gaze trails him as he steps- stomps- over to the table and drops into a chair, metal plates creaking.
“Get up and help me, boy.”
He watches his younger self stand in some amusement, trying to recall a time when Reeves had called him by his given name. The name he had given Allister. It seems an awful shame to pick a name and never speak it, he muses. Graves Miander, Allister Miander, assists his father in loosening the maze of straps which keep the knight’s armor in place.
Allister steps from the kitchen and back into the living room. His idle thoughts had summoned memories, never a good sign. Joshun sits on the carpet before the fireplace. His fingers are tangled in Lonna’s hair as he braids it. She holds a mirror, looking absolutely enthralled. Joshun always did enjoy making people smile.
There are few moments like this, he knows, where he saw Joshun like this. His older brother was reserved within the house, only cracking that exterior when their parents were away. The two of them had spent long, late hours at the tavern, long before Allister was permitted to leave the house on his own. It had been their secret; Allister would keep his mouth shut about where Joshun went, and occasionally Joshun would bring him along.
“There. Think it’s pretty?” Joshun asks, leaning back to study his work.
“Aye!” Lonna exclaims, and Joshun practically glows with pride. He had wanted to be a father, some day. “Just wait till I get a ribbon aye? If yer good I might even buy two!”
It hurts. Not in a particularly gripping, agonizing way. It’s dull, distant, and aching.
He recalls a particular night in the tavern where Joshun was particularly drunk. Drunk and angry. Allister had felt it coming off him in waves, too afraid to ask what had happened.
“I ain’t no one’s mutt, least o’ all his.” Joshun spat, slamming his tankard onto the bar with a resounding thud. Allister had nodded, rather frightened. Frightened that something in Joshun had finally snapped.
“Dun’ give me that look,” Joshun says, a bit more reserved. “Listen ‘ere. Never let anyone think yer their pet, aye? Ye dun’ bark- hells, ye dun’ bite fer anyone other than yerself. Got it?”
“Got it!” Graves Miander said, hoping his enthusiasm would cool the boiling anger that seemed to stew in his brother.
The next morning, Joshun was gone. He was gone for weeks, and Allister grimaces as Elwain’s sobs echo in his head. Reeves' quiet anger. Lonna and Signet, unsure what to do without the trio’s fearless leader. When Joshun did return, he returned with a note and a stoney expression.
“I found a lass.” he said, simply, to Reeves.
It’s the choked anger in his father’s words that makes Allister shudder. “Yer no son of mine. Ye can’t even stay committed long enough to finish yer squireship- ye useless fuckin’ sack o’ shite. Dun’ come crawling back when she ruins ye.”
Much to Joshun’s credit, he hadn’t.
And so the attention had shifted to the second oldest brother. Graves Miander had started his training the next day under the relentless gaze of a father who just lost his oldest son.
Allister shakes himself from a daze and realises that he’s on the porch. The lake outside shimmers, a vague memory of the real thing. One day, he had hoped to make that his Well. His Source. The beautiful lake that Elwain had loved so much.
The rocking chair creaks next to him. His gaze shifts to it, and he exhales at the sight of the Cat upon it, staring up at him with golden eyes. Instinctively he waved it away. Allister hated those eyes, hated that his eyes had changed to match them when he ascended. The Cat had once held a name, but whatever meaning it had was long since lost. The Cat was the only object of his mother’s affection in her later years. No recognition for her children- but the damned Cat made her coo soft reassurances.
It was unfair to blame her for it. Guilt. Regret. Anger.
Assessment: He was getting pissed off over a fucking animal.
Reassessment: He was getting angry because of an animal.
Final assessment: Censoring the assessments was pissing him off, too.
He turns his gaze back to the lake. Calm. Serene.
Reeves held only the highest expectations for his sons, and they redoubled onto Allister when Joshun left. The pressure had hurt. It hurt worse when Reeves gave up on him, though.
That was where Endol had swooped in. It was Elwain’s idea, of course, that the weaker, sickly son should become a mage. Allister had resented it. Resented Joshun for leaving him in this mess.
Even then, he ached to return to it.
Endol, at least, held low expectations. Allister rips that train of thought apart, anger bursting into the forefront of his mind. That had been what Endol wanted, after all. Him to feel at ease. Unpressured. It’s why he quietly changed Allister’s failing grades, why he never asked much of him.
Until he did.
Allister turns and steps back inside the house, slamming the door behind him. It’s childish, but these small outbursts allow him to feel a certain amount of control. Choice. He scoffs. Choice had never been his domain. He had never made his own choices.
But being spiteful granted him that illusion.
Spite, when Valthos had died. Spite, when Wezel had not gotten all the information he wanted. Spite, when he had not broken for Tristan Schwarz. Barely. It had been close. Too close.
He had only, will only, break once. And that had been well-earned.
His hand splays against the log cabin wall as he catches himself, heaving unsteady breathes. It was a mistake to come here. Now he was too afraid to leave, and the walls seem to close in, mimicking the tight cell he knew he sat within. His fingers twitch involuntarily.
They will not find him. They did not find them before.
He’s fucked.
