31. The Others

A whirof crackling shadows howled around Auren as he clutched desperately at himself, shivering from the scathing cold. He'd been here for days. Years, perhaps. He didn't know anymore. All he knew was that he had stumbled on and on, desperate for light and warmth, for a time that felt like an eternity. The whispers had taunted him all the while.

The Others.

He knew them now. Not by name nor what they looked like. But he felt them. He felt them all around him. After a time, he realized that they had always been there—since long before his demon had attached itself to whatever amounted to his soul. He understood now that as with everything else in the universe, evil could be objectively measured and quantified. And he had had the singular and profound misfortune of finding the source of it out in the void.

Or rather it had found him.

But not just him. It had found them.

Auren strained against the cold blur of his surroundings, wincing as the shadows lashed out at him with icy claws. They rent and tore at his sanity, always pulling him back to his darkest thoughts, his most shameful memories, and the only solace they offered in any of it was the prospect of violence—of vengeance.

"I'm not like you!" he screamed for the thousandth time, his voice cracking in the dark.

You're worse, they howled.

"Let me go. Please just let me go!" he cried.

Now, where have we heard that before? they taunted, and an image burned into Auren's mind: him taking the hand of the man who had dismembered his brother so brutally.

"That's different! I was protecting my brother!" He was ripping at his hair now, desperate to feel anything but the powerlessness that had become his sole emotion.

Ah, so you're both selfish and underwhelmingly human! the whispers chided. Weak. Foolish. Pathetic.

The chill grew even more formidable, and Auren had never felt more vulnerable than he did then.

"I do what I need to protect the people I love. To survive!" Auren sobbed.

He collapsed to the ground. It was cold and empty like everything here—as he himself had been for as long as he'd been trapped in this place.

And how are you any different from your foe?the voice said.

To his surprise, it had consolidated. It had gone from a plurality of mocking whispers to a singular, velvety tone. The unprecedented change drew Auren's attention. And for the first moment in all of the countless time he'd been trapped here, a form began to apparate before him. It was horrifying and demonic. Its slim, horned head and skinless face were a mask of absolute unreality. He stared in awe, feeling his consciousness begin to shatter. Auren screamed. And as he did so, the thing screamed back. It threw back its head, and its call caused the shadows around them to explode with such loud and enveloping rancor that Auren imagined himself back on Vesperion, awaiting the enemy drop pods. The thing reached out to him with a bony hand, closer and closer until?—

"Leave. Me. ALONE!" Auren cried out, surprising himself with his fury, using the last of his strength to defy the creature as he flung himself past the demon and out into the unknown.

And then, all at once, he was back in reality. The whispers fell silent. Lupo was holding him down on his bed as he frothed at the mouth, struggling with all his might against his lover.

Fengári was the first to speak as Auren slowly grew still.

"Are you… you?" he asked.

Auren had to think about it for a moment before answering.

"I… yeah. I'm me," he said, looking to Lupo.

The older man wrapped his arms around him and pulled him in, and the warmth of his embrace after the endless cold he'd just endured nearly broke him.

"How long was I gone?" he asked.

"About a day," Lupo answered.

Auren grew nauseous. He felt he'd been there for months. Years, even. The disquiet of knowing the shadow could reappear and drag him back at any time made him choke up in fear.

"Don't let me go," Auren whispered.

"I won't," Lupo soothed. "Not ever. You're safe now. You're here. With us."

But Auren knew they weren't safe. None of them were. Not at all. They were coming. He didn't know how. Or when. But he knew that they would. And soon. Evil had reached out and stained him when he'd been cast out into the void. He had somehow dragged it back like a stigma from whatever hell dimension he'd crossed it in. He knew now that it found his reality far more appealing than where he'd had the misfortune of meeting it. After all, there was so much more pain to be caused here—so much more entropy to sow. And he had experienced the delight it took in its work firsthand.

He buried his head in Lupo's chest and did his best to convince himself that he was merely going mad, knowing all the while that the truth was far, far worse.