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silverskye13 · 3 months ago

Text

Angst prompt submitted by @theunderscorwolph

[Part 2 of 2]

[Part 1 Found Here]

[Trigger Warnings for this part: Swearing, blood and gore, religious self-harm, general angst, threats of dismemberment, torture. Read with caution, it gets dark.]

"He's been taken by the Thieves' Guild, for infringing on our turf," the thug had said. "He always hit the main square -- prime real estate -- and we thought we'd scared him off. But then he popped up last week spouting shit about a Gargoyle, and threw a bunch of our guild members off a roof. He needed to be taught a lesson. Figured we would pick up a friend of his for insurance, something to make the threat stick. Nothing personal against you -- honest! He's at the Guild Hall, just past the Watcher's Den."

Helsknight and Tango jogged down the hels streets, silent as grim death. Helsknight, for his part, was trying to keep his thoughts as still as possible. If he could just manage to keep from thinking about the events that had already passed today, maybe he could stop feeling so gods-awful about them. Control of that sort kept slipping through his fingers though, his thoughts like writhing, circling eels that kept breaking free to coil around the feeling of his sword, and the begging voice, and the wrist that looked for all the world far too breakable. Helsknight felt both exhausted and innervated, like at any moment, he might shudder apart. He also, predictably, really, really wanted to punch something. Flight had never really been an option for him. When he was scared, or stressed, or really just mildly out of his comfort zone, his one and only instinct was to fight.

[Good then, that where he was going, a fight was surely about to happen.]

Tango kept pace with him surprisingly well. Helsknight was starting to learn the Hermit was a bit more resourceful than he'd given him credit for. Pragmatic. He didn't know where he was going, but every few streets he would ask straightforward questions about what direction, and what they were looking for, and he noticed on his own that he could see Evil X’s tower from anywhere in the city.

“Landmark build,” he’d called it, when they rounded into the Watcher’s Den, and it still loomed like a shadowy colossus in the distant haze. He paused long enough to shade his eyes and let out an impressed whistle. “BDubs would build something like that.” Then, when he realized Helsknight was waiting for him to follow. “So you and Evil X aren't on speaking terms, huh?”

“He's evil,” Helsknight said by way of explanation. “I'm not.”

“Yeah… right.” Tango looked him up and down, and Helsknight found himself stifling the urge to shift uncomfortably under the scrutiny. “You're really not evil, huh?”

Helsknight felt a hot flicker of tired indignation. Tango sounded so… surprised. Like he was realizing something for the first time. Helsknight thought for a moment about defending himself. Of course I'm not. But he was very aware all Tango knew of him was what Wels had probably told him, and he was very aware the things he and Wels did to each other when they crossed swords were unkind, and sometimes cruel, and not the sorts of things good people did.

“A matter of perspective,” Helsknight growled, and turned to continue through Watcher’s Den.

“I don’t think it’s just perspective,” Tango said reasonably, walking briskly to keep up with his long strides. “I mean! Most evil dudes don't have fits about torture, for one thing. Like, I know everyone draws lines somewhere, but that doesn’t feel like it’s just a noble choice, you know?”

Helsknight sighed and rolled his eyes up towards the sky, beseeching patience from whatever god or saint would deign to listen.

“And also, you gave me your cloak thing.” Tango continued, flourishing the fabric demonstratively.

“Don’t get attached,” Helsknight snorted. “I want that back.”

“Right right, whatever.” Tango waved a hand dismissively. “But you gave it to me because it would keep me safe. That’s also, objectively, not very evil.”

“How uncharacteristic of me.”

“And you clearly care about Tanguish,” Tango continued, ignoring Helsknight’s sarcasm. Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him, trying to figure out where all of this was going. “I mean, the minute I said he was gone, you wanted to look for him. And yeah, you were kinda mean about it, but you let me come along. And when those thugs attacked you, you didn’t yell at me to come help you -- which, I mean, obviously I was going to. But you didn’t expect me to put myself in danger. You went into that fight thinking you were going to be protecting me from something.”

“You give me too much credit.”

“I think it didn’t occur to you to make me take some of the heat.”

“A tactical error.”

“What changed?”

Helsknight sighed again.

“I mean, everyone’s heard you and Wels’s rap battle thing.” Tango said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It was a little dorky -- but that’s Hermitcraft. We don’t do real serious wars or anything. But. The threats sounded. Genuine? Destroying everything someone loves. Being someone’s inner darkness. That’s evil.” Tango looked up at him. “Right?”

“Tangotek.”

“Knight of the Hels variety.”

“Don’t ask questions that have messy answers.” Helsknight rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I’m a redstoner.” Tango’s eyes rested briefly on his sword, before he seemed to decide Helsknight wasn’t threatening him with it, and he met Helsknight’s gaze instead. “Every question I ask has a messy answer.”

Helsknight almost ended the conversation there. He wanted to. He could not rightly describe why, but he didn't like that a Hermit might consider him a good person. It made him squeamish to be looked at and judged on the truths of himself, rather than the biases and fabrications of his other half. At least then, if he were found wanting, or lacking, or cruel, it was because of Wels.

“Has it occurred to you yet,” Helsknight said, “that I can be every bit the villain Wels says I am, and still manage to care deeply for someone?”

“Well yeah, obviously.” Tango answered simply. His voice was so light and conversational, it was hard to tell he was being earnest. But he was. He looked Helsknight in the eye, and didn't flinch. “I just also think there's more to it than that.”

Helsknight sighed. He decided to cut off… whatever this bungled heart-to-heart was, now, before it could escalate into territory where Helsknight felt too raw and vulnerable. He told himself it was knightly: it did not do to arm your enemies against yourself.

“What you think doesn't matter to me,” Helsknight said decisively, glowering down at Tango. “What Wels thinks, or any of you Hermits think, doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is what I think about myself.” Helsknight sighed, and allowed himself a little more straight honesty. “And I care what Tanguish thinks of me as well.”

Tango took all this in, turning it over with ponderous weight, like he were considering a tricky line of redstone coding.

“And what do you think about everything you've done today to rescue Tanguish?”

“I think if I manage to rescue him, and he's in one piece, and I haven't come too late, then I will still be able to sleep tonight.” Helsknight grimaced. “Though I may go to confession when he's not looking.”

“You go to confession?”

“Knights and religion,” Helsknight shrugged.

Tango nodded, snapped his fingers like he'd come to a conclusion, and said smugly, “Antihero.”

“Pardon?”

“You should read comics, Killer,” Tango smiled. “They're up your alley. Might even give you some inspiration for your outfit.”

Helsknight glanced down at his armor, and when he realized Tango kept walking without him, felt foolish as he lengthened his stride to catch up.

-------- -

The Thief Guild was a small basalt compound on the outskirts of Watcher’s Den, one reclaimed set of structures probably stolen from the Watcher itself -- fitting for a pack of thieves. It seemed less like a proper building, and more like a honeycomb burrow someone dug into a naturally formed basalt cathedral. Only the fact that it was surrounded by other dilapidated buildings gave any indication it wasn't a stolen part of the landscape.

They didn't approach by the main road, opting instead to spider through the alleys surrounding the compound. Helsknight kept an eye on their surroundings, making sure they weren't spotted or followed, while Tango navigated them closer to their quarry. Once he knew where they were going, he had a pretty good head for directions -- Helsknight chalked it up to all the times the Hermit had explored new generation, or gotten lost in his own strip mines. Pathfinding was a skill honed just like any other.

At last their alley intersected with the entrance to the compound. Peeking around the corner, they got a glimpse of locked gates and a barren stone courtyard, leading to purple-grey stairs. There was a landing, flanked by a pair of guards, and a closed door. From this distance, Helsknight only knew they had bows because he caught the flicker of light off the tip of a flint arrowhead.

“So, what's the plan?” Tango whispered, eyeing Helsknight as he drew his sword. “And if your answer is ‘storm the castle like an idiot', guess again.”

“I would have stopped at ‘storm the castle’.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm a knight.” Helsknight hissed, scowling. “I don't do sneak-thieving. Even if I wanted to try stealth, I think the clattering armor will give it away.”

“So you've decided your only other option is running death-or-glory for the front gate?” Tango asked, his voice threatening to tilt out of its already over-loud whisper. “They'll turn you into a pin cushion before you run five steps!”

“I have netherite gear,” Helsknight muttered testily.

“On your arms and legs, congratulations! I'm sure that's what they'll be aiming for, and not your big head.”

“You have any better ideas?!”

Tango opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. He tapped a finger to his lips like he was shushing himself, maybe forcing himself to think before he spoke again. “Let me see what I've got.”

Tango rifled through his pockets, found what looked to be a small black die, and tossed it to the ground. The moment it landed, it hissed into the shape of an ender chest, and with a kick from his boot, it flipped open. Tango stood quietly like that for a few minutes, hands on his sides, muttering under his breath as he parsed through the indecipherable contents. Eventually he kicked it closed.

“I've got an idea,” Tango whispered. “I'm going to make a distraction.”

Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him. “How mysterious.”

“You'll know it when you see it,” Tango chuckled. “Cover your ears.”

He started off down the alley. Helsknight called after him in a loud whisper.

“Don't kill anyone.”

Tango stopped and cast a skeptical look back at him. “Why not?”

“We don't know where their spawns are set,” Helsknight said, squashing down a feeling like guilt that was clambering to life in his stomach. “If I have to fight through an army today, I'd rather only do it once.”

Tango swallowed uncomfortably. His bow was still slung over his shoulder, and he reached up to it now, fingers plucking at the string. “Any uh… any tips?”

Helsknight searched through bitter memories of Colosseum fights for the things he knew he couldn't fight through. Those times when he, and the people he fought against, stopped seeing each other as people and instead as problems in need of solving.

“All the limbs and joints.” Helsknight gestured to his elbows and knees. “Stay away from the thighs, the neck, the body.” He hesitated, then grimaced, the ghost of a memory tangling in his guts. “If you're desperate, and someone won't stop coming at you, you can hit them here, but save that as a last resort.” Helsknight drew a circle low on his abdomen, where organs got twisted and complicated. “It hurts like all hels, and kills slowly.”

Tango grimaced and went a little pale, the flames in his hair and tail taking on a greenish cast. It seemed to be sinking in, belatedly, just how gruesome this whole business might end up being.

“You don't have to go in with me,” Helsknight offered, forcing some steel into his voice, self-assuredness he didn't really feel. “Make your distraction, come back here, and wait for me and Tanguish to come out again.”

Tango teetered on the edge of agreeing to that. Helsknight could see it in the way his body leaned, someone who wanted to run away, to make something not his problem. Helsknight couldn't blame him for that. He didn't want it to be his problem either. There was a world of difference between fighting in an arena, and making war on someone, no matter how justified that war was. But Tango, as Helsknight was repeatedly being reminded, had resolve that was hard as obsidian, and cut like diamond. The Hermit swallowed, took a bracing breath, and shook his head.

“I've come this far, right Killer?” He said, and darted away down the alley.

Helsknight waited. He wondered, briefly, if it had been wise to let Tango go off on his own. He waited longer. He rubbed the side of his face tiredly, trying to stave off the fatigue that came from boredom and a trying day, and, when his mind threatened to wander, he found himself itching the cut on his wrist. It was hard to scratch with his gauntlets blunting his nails, which was probably for the best.

Helsknight's gauntlets were made in pieces. It made them easier to clean, which, after many months of fighting in the Colosseum, was something he'd come to appreciate. The main part of it was a thick leather glove, with netherite plate buckled and riveted over top. There were versions of the gauntlets where the metal plates used fully encircled the wrist, and extended down each individual finger for maximum protection, but he found these also hindered his range of movement somewhat, and given how often he wore armor out and about in hels, his were a bit simpler. The metal plating stopped at his knuckles, and only covered the top of his hands and forearm, cinching underneath with tight buckles that he kept adjusting. It was easier to take on and off, easier to pull apart to clean -- and it meant his dagger had only had to shear through leather before finding the skin beneath.

Helsknight wondered idly as he slipped a finger beneath the cut leather, if he had armored himself better, if he would have been able to hurt himself in his panic. Would he, upon glancing his dagger off the hardened plate, simply dropped the knife and prayed? Or, he wondered with macabre humor, would he have found somewhere more inconvenient to stab? He wore a chain shirt, but it was a simple thing to lift that away and access his thighs, where large veins could bleed someone dry in the seconds it took for pain to travel. He didn't think he had it in himself to kill himself over guilt. He feared dying too much. The deep unknown of whether the universe would devour him in the moments before respawn was a lurking terror that still strangled him on dark nights, and during particularly bloody fights.

[Then again, Helsknight thought grimly, he hadn't thought he was capable of torture, and yet, desperation had driven his hand to that particular blade with startling speed, even if circumstance had spared him the swing.]

Tango’s ‘distraction’ sent him hurdling out of his poisonous thoughts like a man thrown from a second story window. There was a loud explosion, something near-deafening, that shook the air and the ground, and sent sheets of dust cascading around Helsknight. The ground beneath his feet cracked ominously, and the wall at his back groaned and resettled itself, bowing slightly in the middle as something integral in the ground destabilized. Two smaller explosions kicked the air overhead, billowing smoke and the high, tinny whine of spent fireworks. Helsknight's world narrowed to haze, and the pervasive smell of gunpowder.

Tango, a flickering spark that seemed to leap at him from the gloom, materialized at his side. His hands were soot-stained, his grin wide and manic. He reeked of sulfer and salt peter, and the chemical high of ignition.

“Consider them suitably distracted!” Tango keened, his words mangled by giggles. “Time to kick some butts!”

“Was that TNT?!” Helsknight coughed, trying to pull the collar of his tunic over his mouth and nose. The smoke stung his eyes and put a bitter taste in his mouth, and he kept blinking to clear away tears.

“No good redstoner ever leaves home without it!” Tango laughed, shrugging his bow off his shoulders. “After you Killer, before the smoke blows away.”

Helsknight nodded, gathering up his determination. He drew his sword and charged for the gate. The explosion had knocked askew one of the support pillars holding it up, and Helsknight found it relatively easy to kick it open. The lock held, but the cracked stone gave up the hinges on one side, and Helsknight vaulted over the twisting metal as it fell. Behind him, Tango cackled, impressed. The smoke billowing through the courtyard sheltered them, so that the remaining guard by the door only knew Helsknight was there when the knight was slamming the flat of his blade against the side of his head. He crumpled to the ground, and Helsknight shouldered his way through the front door which was, thankfully, unlocked.

Inside the compound, the corridors were dark and close, lit intermittently by shroomlights in the ceiling, casting everything in a dim orange glow. Helsknight paused, tilting his head to listen. Ahead of him, the building split into three hallways, one continuing into some kind of foyer, while the other two branched into long tunnels. There were shouts down one hall, mostly names and demands about what had happened and who was hurt. The other was relatively quiet, emptied perhaps, after the ruckus. The foyer started empty, but as Helsknight watched, a pair of thieves passed into it, looking shaken.

“Get the one on the left,” Helsknight told Tango, and charged in while the Hermit sputtered, and drew an arrow to his bow. Helsknight was on the pair of thieves in a handful of long strides, his gauntleted fist connecting with one’s sternum with the full force of his run behind it. He felt the satisfying huff of air bucking out of their lungs as he winded them, and as they crumpled to floor wheezing, he turned to the second. He caught their drawn dagger on his gauntlet, but before he could raise his sword to them, Tango’s arrow took them in the leg, and they fell.

Helsknight, running on adrenaline and the need for swift action, turned to slam his boot down on the arm of the one he'd winded. He wrinkled his nose at the sound and feel of bone breaking. He took a second to gulp down his revulsion, and then demanded, “Tanguish, the Gargoyle thief. Where is he?”

They pointed him towards a nearby open door. Helsknight narrowed his eyes towards the corridor, not entirely sure if he should trust the direction given. He swallowed, and once again dredged up his dread persona from the Colosseum, the remorseless villain that didn't trust, and didn't relent. He ground the heel of his boot down, eliciting a long shriek of pain.

“Perhaps I should drag you with me,” Helsknight said in the cool, quiet voice he used for villain speeches and threatening monologues, “so, if I find out you've lied, I can break your other arm as well?”

“N-n-n-not lying!” They gasped, eyes wide and terrified. “That hall. Down the stairs. Past the big doors. Guild boss is down there with him.”

Their friend, who was now staring down the point of Tango’s next arrow, nodded fast agreement. “You can't miss it!”

Helsknight nodded. He was about to move, when a clattering sounded from the entrance to the foyer. He turned to watch three more thieves come into the room from where he and Tango had entered. One of them he recognized as a street thug who had ambushed him. That one took a frightened step back, while the other two drew swords and knives.

[Not good odds.]

Helsknight opened his mouth and said something. He wasn't really paying attention to words, only pulled a suitably terrifying line at random from a list of memorized Colosseum threats, and focused on the tone of his voice and the lines of his body. The thug he'd met before turned abruptly and ran. The other two took hesitant steps backwards, and lowered weapons. Beneath him, the thief with the broken arm whined. Tango gulped audibly, and cast him a wary glance. Reassured he wouldn't be followed, Helsknight turned and made for the hallway he'd been pointed down. Tango backed after him, keeping his bow trained on the thieves for a few seconds longer before coming to his side.

“Maybe… I take it back,” Tango laughed nervously. “There might be a little evil in there.”

Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him. “That bad?”

“I mean yeah that was kinda threatening!”

“Wasn't paying attention,” Helsknight grunted. “Glad it worked.”

Tango blinked at him, incredulous. “What do you mean you weren't paying attention?!”

“I kind of just… say things sometimes.” Helsknight admitted, shrugging. “Something that came from my relationship with Wels, I think. Sometimes I focus on what I want, and don't pay attention to the words really, and it'll stick. Comes in handy when I'm improvising villain lines in the Colosseum, though I've had some people ask me not to do it, since it gets a little personal. Red especially hates it.”

Tango opened and closed his mouth a few times in a good impersonation of a startled fish.

“What'd I say?”

“Oh, nothing interesting,” Tango gave a bark of baffled laughter. “Just, you know, something about taking the marrow from their bones before the mercy of respawn. Reasonable threat.”

“Oh. Gross.” Helsknight snorted and rolled his eyes, “Sounds too dramatic to work.”

“It helps that you're like, twice everyone’s size and obviously know your way around a sword.”

“That helps,” Helsknight grunted, refocusing on the hallway ahead as doors began opening up along its sides.

Startled people, thugs and thieves and whoever else happened to have business in the Guild, were peering out to gauge the commotion. Some of them took one look at an armed and armored knight, flanked by an archer, and promptly scrambled to close and bolt their doors again. Several didn't. Helsknight charged to meet them, taking advantage of the closeness of the hallway, and the forced bottleneck it made. Three, four people at a time he would struggle to fight off, if he could fight them off at all. One or two, though, he thought he could manage, if he was quick enough.

Helsknight ducked a knife, parried a hand axe, and punched the nearest throat he could reach. His focus narrowed to his hands, his feet, and the flickering of metal in the dim light. Twice he felt a blade clatter off his armor, the thick grieves protecting his forearms. Once, someone managed a lucky stab at his ribs, and while his chainmail caught the blade, he felt something bruise, and lost half a breath. Someone -- the axe wielder -- slammed their blade hard into his sword and he dropped it. This was not ideal, but Helsknight was a man who preferred a sword in his hand. He was far from helpless without one. He drew his dagger, buried it in the axe-wielder's shoulder, then ripped their axe from their now limp hand and promptly chopped it into someone else’s knee. While he was ducked low, Tango’s arrow caught someone else in the shoulder, and then the forearm, and they fell howling.

By the time Helsknight had hacked and slashed his way down the hall, his arms were bloodied up to the elbow. His breath came in gasps that rattled in his sore ribs in growls. There was a fiery line of pain on one thigh that threatened to make him limp, and a bone-aching bruise on his left arm where someone smashed him with what he thought was a chair leg. Fatigue was starting to worm its way into his muscles, the repeated shocks to his joints made him grit his teeth through increasing aches. His stomach churned, adding to the chorus of discomforts. He was not used to so much blood, and the smell was cloying; so physical it had a taste.

Blood was one of the many things respawn scrubbed away, the universe setting harms to rights. In leaving so many people alive in his wake, all that wounding had nowhere to go, so it clung to him like groping hands, and ran in rivulets down his armor. Helsknight felt mad, a rabid animal barely in control of his senses. His sword, returned to his hand as he'd cleared the hall, was both slick and sticky all at once. It all felt deeply, deeply wrong.

[Confession, as soon as the next one wa held. Or he might just preemptively bleed himself dry begging for forgiveness.]

Helsknight's Saint, it had to be said, was not a squeamish divinity. They were the Saint of Blood and Steel. Most of their prayers were made not with words, but with the opening of veins. But the Saint, for what Helsknight thought were very good, very obvious reasons, didn't condone wanton violence and cruelty. Helsknight’s tenets were so tied up in reasons why not to raise his blade, sometimes he wondered if he shouldn't keep it peace-knotted like the paladins did.

[The Saint, he thought, would not like what he was doing now. He thought he fought with good reason. He thought he wasn't being unnecessarily cruel. But he thought many people probably thought that way, when justifying atrocities to gods.]

[He wondered, distantly, as he reached the stairs down, if Tango thought he was a villain yet.]

Regardless of what Tango thought of him, if he thought anything at all, the Hermit was at his back. His nervous laughter had stopped about halfway down the hall, giving way to exhausted concentration. They were back to back, Tango keeping an arrow trained behind them in case someone tried ambushing them, and from their closeness Helsknight could feel him shaking. He didn't know if Tango shook from horror or fatigue, but he could hear the Hermit’s breath quick and harsh, and his fire had taken on a permanent greenish cast that greyed the red-orange hues emanated from the overhead shroomlights.

They descended the stairs together in breathy silence. Tango fired a warning shot behind them, and whispered something so soft and hoarse, Helsknight couldn't hear it over the sound of his own rough breathing. He deciphered the meaning well enough though, between the tone of voice and the arrow: People were coming behind them.

Helsknight moved quicker, taking the stairs two at a time, until he emerged into anothers at foyer of some sort. There was a pair of double doors -- like the thief had described -- at the end of the room, and past that, another set of doors that he watched close and lock. Helsknight stormed through the abandoned room, past overturned chairs and other signs of haste. When they passed the open doors, Tango stopped.

“I'll make sure no one can follow us,” Tango said, closing them and running for some of the nearby furniture. “You think you can get those open, Killer?”

Helsknight put on a grim smile. “No force in hels can keep me out of that room.”

“Villain vibes!” Tango called to him, only halfway joking.

Helsknight strode up to the closed doors and, reasonably, he thought, tried the handle first. It was locked. Helsknight rolled his shoulders and sighed.

It took three kicks to break open the doors. The first broke the lock. The second bent the latch, and sent a wide crack spiraling up the wood. The third had them thrown open so hard, they banged off the walls and shuddered, and one tilted askew off a hinge.

Helsknight’s eyes locked on someone who looked vaguely like a leader. At the very least, they wore clothing that looked more official, and better kept. Tanguish was at their feet, slumped over onto the ground. Helsknight spared Tanguish enough of a glance to see no mortal wounds, before striding across the room, sword held out wide, the bloody tip ringing as it grazed across the ground. He didn't know what he planned to do exactly. Beating the Guild Leader senseless was probably on the list somewhere, but for now he would settle on looking terrifying and unstoppable.

The Guild Leader lunged for Tanguish and yanked him to his feet, a dagger shoved up against his throat threateningly. Helsknight stopped dead in his tracks, sudden fear shooting frigid lines through his veins.

“There we are,” the Guild Leader said, smiling tensely. “Let's be reasonable here.”

Tanguish was awake and alert in the Guild Leader’s grip. There was an ugly purple bruise beneath one of his eyes, and he breathed irregularly, like it was a labor. His eyes were wide and fearful, and brimmed with unshed tears, his expression a war of relief at seeing Helsknight, and terror of the circumstances.

“H-Helskn--”

“You stay quiet,” the Guild Leader hissed, pressing the dagger against Tanguish’s skin. They didn't draw blood, but the delicate skin dimpled warningly. Tanguish let out a soft, fearful noise, almost too pathetic to be a whine. Helsknight seethed. Anger and fear were snakes in his ribs, his adrenaline a lighting buzzing to life in his veins. He felt like he had when he’d pinned the thug to the wall, desperation on the verge of moving to wicked violence.

“Let him go,” Helsknight demanded, his voice cold and soft as a deadly promise.

“I would love to,” the Guild Leader said amiably. “But see, I'm not stupid. As soon as he’s away from my knife, that sword is coming for me, and I would rather not flirt with the universe today, if it's all the same to you.”

Helsknight heard a noise to his side, the slip of a boot. He glanced over and saw two thugs waiting near the wall on that side of the room. One had a sword, the other, a daunting looking spear. A quick check of his other side, and Helsknight saw a third person waiting, sword in hand.

[Blundering right in here had perhaps been a tactical error.]

“Drop your weapon,” the Guild Master hummed, and this time when they pressed their dagger against Tanguish's throat, they didn't relent until a trickle of blood spilled free. Tanguish, very bravely, did not whine, but he screwed his eyes shut painfully.

Helsknight tossed his sword to the ground, and watched Tanguish flinch every time it clattered. He tried to collect all his helpless anger into the center of his chest, where he could bury it. Anger wouldn't help him right now. He wasn't sure anything could help him, but anger certainly wouldn't.

[Tango.]

Tango hadn't followed him into the room. He didn't dare look back to see if the Hermit had been caught. It would just draw attention to him if he wasn't. Helsknight couldn't hear anything besides the cautious approach of the henchmen he’d stumbled in on. Their footsteps were hesitant, skittish. He felt them more than he heard them, like spider legs on his skin.

“Check him for further weapons,” the Guild Leader said, and as their thugs moved in to do so: “Well, this wasn't how I anticipated getting you here, but you did get here. So, now my threats can have the weight I need them to have.”

Helsknight was still listening for Tango, trying to figure out what, if anything, the Hermit might plan to do. He decided the best way he could help was to be distracting. [It would give the Hermit time to escape, if nothing else. There was no point in everyone getting killed here today.]

As well as he could, Helsknight shoved his emotions down in favor for his Colosseum theatricality, to make himself threatening and dangerous, even disarmed. One of the only perks to being drenched in blood, was ir proved not all of his pretense was an act.

“Watch yourself,” Helsknight murmured to the brave thug who reached him first. They watched him warily, freezing halfway to reaching for his belted dagger. “I bite.”

They took a rather large step back away from him, and he flashed his teeth in something that was more snarl than grin.

“Don't be ridiculous.” The Guild Leader snorted. “Put your hands over your head or something.”

“I would rather not.” Helsknight splayed his blood-spattered hands, a motion that startled one of the three thugs trying [and failing] to search him into jolting back a step. “For obvious reasons.”

“Not my fault you decided to cut your way through half the compound.”

“And I'll cut through the rest of it before I'm done,” Helsknight said levely.

“I don't think so.” The Guild Leader said, and nodded to one of the thugs.

A boot planted itself in Helsknight’s knees, and he dropped to the floor. He caught himself with his hands, but the flicker of metal at his eye level kept him from springing back up again. The swordsmen were flanking him, their blades crossed over the back of his neck, the tips intruding on his peripheral vision. He had to force himself to breathe slowly, to ignore his panic as it crawled to life in his chest and set his heartbeat racing.

With Helsknight secured, the Guild Leader finally released Tanguish, shoving him roughly to the ground. Helsknight had to bite his tongue to keep from calling out to him. He didn't like how weak Tanguish seemed to be, how easily these thugs yanked and tossed him around. But he worried showing his concern would make their situation worse, or at the very least, give their captors vindication. Instead he glowered, and searched Tanguish for anything that could be wounding.

Their eyes met, and Tanguish flashed him an agonized expression. His voice was small and broken as he whispered, “I'm sorry.”

Helsknight found his resolve breaking almost immediately. His gaze softened, and he whispered back as comfortingly as he could under the circumstances. “Don't be.”

The Guild Leader flourished their dagger, a motion that set the metal flashing in the dim light. Tanguish flinched at the motion. Helsknight only watched it warily, waiting for the blade to find a reason to bite.

“I do pity you swordsman. I didn't want to get you involved--”

“A wise decision,” Helsknight growled. One of the swordsmen hovering over him tapped the back of his neck warningly with their blade.

“--but you see, we here at the Thief Guild, well, you've heard the saying thick as thieves I'm sure. We built this place to protect each other. Hels is a very large, very dangerous place.”

They flourished the dagger again, and this time, Helsknight caught a flicker of something in the reflection of the blade. He couldn't be sure, but for a brief second, he thought he saw what he thought was firelight ducking back behind the wall.

[Tango.]

Why was the Hermit still here? Surely he should know to cut his losses and run. There was no saving them from this. No way Helsknight could see, anyway. Helsknight couldn't run, even if his tenets didn't keep him from it, he didn't think he could break away from so many blades. Not now while he was pinned. And even if he could somehow fight through these four thieves, with no constricting hallway or element of surprise to aid him, he couldn't go back out the way they'd come in. Tanguish still had no reflection to leap through, and Helsknight didn't think he could get him one in the time it would take his captors to remove his head from his shoulders.

Dread and helplessness were poisons in his stomach, weighing him down, draining him. Helsknight realized, now that his blood had a chance to cool, that he was exhausted. The cut on his leg still burned. His arms throbbed, both from bruises and from his rough use of them. His back, shoulder and neck hurt from swinging his sword, and the contact of bodies. A bone-deep weariness was settling across him, and he was pretty sure just getting here already had him borrowing strength from tomorrow. If he were the sort of person who gave up, he could very easily see himself laying down here on the cold ground and waiting for the inevitable. There was only so much fight a body could muster.

Helsknight pinned his gaze to the floor beneath his hands. His brow creased in a slight frown. Slowly, praying the movement didn't draw attention, Helsknight shifted his hand over to rub at the smear of blood on his gauntlet. Netherite was not nearly so reflective a surface as iron or gold, but it did have some luster. He could see his own eye reflected back at him, and the hazy shapes of the swordsmen overhead.

The beginnings of a plan tumbled together in Helsknight’s head. He thought there was a large chance it wouldn't work. He thought a lot relied on Tango being clever, and good at timing, and pragmatic enough to not make stupid mistakes.

[He thought, if the Hermit had proved nothing else today, he had proved he was good at those three things.]

Helsknight let out a derisive noise in the back of his throat, cutting off the Guild Leader halfway through their threatening monologue. They had been pacing, and now they stopped, flourishing that dagger in their hand again.

“Can we speed this up?” Helsknight asked, disdain thick in his voice. “I'm not sure if you idiots have looked in a mirror lately, but you're not exactly scary, and I'm getting tired of kneeling on your stupid floor.” He narrowed his eyes daringly at the Guild Leader and spat. “Whatever you're planning to do, get it over with. There are a thousand things worse than dying here. Listening to you blow hot air for the next hour just might be one of them.”

The Guild Leader blinked at him, caught somewhere between incredulous and irate. Helsknight actually watched their face redden with anger. They stalked over to him, kicking aside Tanguish as they went. Tanguish who, as soon as Helsknight stopped speaking, immediately started making excuses for him.

“He didn't mean it! Please, leave him alone! He's got nothing to do with this--!”

Tanguish started to crawl to his feet, but the spearman was over him in an instant, harrying him back down.

Helsknight twisted his arm so that the reflection on his gauntlet faced Tanguish. He knew Tanguish needed the physical touch to leap through, but all he or Tango needed to make the jump from the other side was the ability to see their other half--

The Guild Leader grabbed a fistful of Helsknight's hair and yanked his head back, twisting him uncomfortably so his throat was bared. Fear, cold and relentless, washed through him like ice water, radiating from the point of the knife as the Guild Leader hooked it beneath his chin, and all thoughts he had fled him.

“You know,” the Guild Leader hissed, “you're entirely too smug for a prisoner. I think you could use some humbling.”

Helsknight suppressed a shudder, if for no other reason than he feared the jerking movement would slice him open on the knifepoint.

“I was informed you threatened to take off one of my thief’s hands,” the Guild Leader said. “I don't know about you, but I don't think a swordsman is quite so effective without both of his either, wouldn't you say?”

Helsknight's mind went very still, and very cold, emptied of any ability to reason and plan. He felt as though he'd been very abruptly shoved underwater. Fear smothered him, made him senseless and slow. What was it Tango had called it? Shock?

He thought [N…]

He thought [No…]

Someone shoved him down roughly. A boot stepped down on his gauntlet, holding his arm still and outstretched. The joint at his elbow was exposed, that diminutive gap between armor and mail.

He thought [He didn’t want this to happen.]

Tanguish was shouting.

He thought [This can't be happening.]

The people holding him down were discussing the best way to go about their business. Helsknight tried to thrash, tried to break free, but his angle was awkward, and he was tired and sore. The second swordsman pressed a knee against his back, pinning him down.

He thought [Is Tanguish worth this?]

One of the swordsmen passed their sword to their leader.

He thought [He has to be worth this. Because otherwise it was for nothing.]

The blade gleamed as it was drawn back. Low light flickering. Helsknight's heart beat so fast he thought it might give out and stop. His ears rang, his head full of empty fear and animal panic and void static.

He thought [

He thought [S

He thought [Stop]

He thought [Please]

He thought [Saint of Blood and Steel]

He thought [Any God.

He thought [Any Saint.]

He thought [Anyone.]

He thought [Anyone!]

He thought [Please.]

[Don't let this happen.]

Tango sprang out of the sword’s reflection just as it began its arc downward. His bow was in his hand, the arrowhead a blazing smear of reflected light. His flame was the blinding white of fear, and the anger that chases fear, and the fear that chases anger, and the anger that chases fear. He was, for a moment, weightless, timeless, frozen. He was, for a moment, the will of gods, and divine intervention, and the fumbled attempts of someone who lacked all heroism trying his best to be help.

Tango’s arrow took the Guild Leader in the chest. The shot was terribly close. The full force of the bow and the air and everything that made arrows work couldn’t work at such a short distance. Shouldn't work. But it was a very powerful enchanted bow, and the Leader was unarmored, and Tango was desperate, and a Hermit, and whether he knew it or not, the universe loved him deeply.

The shaft sank halfway to the fletching in the Guild Leader’s chest.

The room exploded into motion and sound. Tango landed heavy on the floor, and was immediately ducking a swung sword. The spearman lunged for him as well, and the one unarmed thug was busied trying to keep their dying Guild Leader from collapsing. Helsknight, all panic and anger, and the need to fight anything if it would stave off future helplessness, came lunging off the ground. He barrelled into the spearman, his shoulder planting itself squarely against their chest and sending them off their feet. Helsknight's sword was in his hand -- he didn't know when he’d picked it up -- and he turned on the swordsman and crashed his blade into theirs before they could stab Tango.

Their blades met once, twice. His arms hurt. His chest hurt. His leg hurt. The edges of his vision were blurs, and the only thing he wanted was to make these people gone, now, before they could kill anyone.

The Guild Leader was dead.

The second swordsman had picked up their dropped sword, and they came at Helsknight with grim ferocity. He slapped away their lunge with neither finesse nor calculation, only the knee-jerk and instinctual power of the frenzied. Helsknight backed up a step, and his boot kicked into Tanguish’s tail. Tango was trying to help him to his feet, but when Tanguish tried to stand, he whimpered in pain. Behind them, the spearman was retrieving their spear, a hand clutched to their winded chest.

“Get him out of here!” Helsknight snarled at Tango.

The Hermit looked at him, looked for a moment like he might argue, and then to Helsknight's infinite relief, he yanked an arrow from his quiver. The metal arrowhead glinted as he turned it in his fingers.

“No!” Tanguish argued, horrified. “Not without--!”

Tanguish reached for Helsknight a second after Tango reached for him. They vanished.

Leaping towards Helsknight from where they had been, came the spearman. Helsknight twisted, hacked away the spearhead, and lost his breath when one of the swordsmen lunged and jabbed hard at his ribs. What once was bruised, broke. Helsknight’s breaths, when they finally came, lanced him with pain, and that pain focused him, grounding his wits momentarily. This time when a swordsman lunged, his blade snaked out to drive into their shoulder, and they fell back bleeding. The second swordsman and the spearman attacked him in tandem and he back-stepped hurriedly, focusing on parrying the spear. His shoulders touched the wall behind him. The swordsman leaped for him, victory spurring them into a headlong rush. Helsknight’s sword sheared through their throat, and as they fell, the spearman lanced forward.

The air was driven from Helsknight's lungs again as the spearhead plunged into his stomach, punching through a few weakened rings of his mail and burying deep. Helsknight’s entire world narrowed to white, hot, electric pain, and the intimate wrongness of intrusion where nothing was supposed to be able to reach. He doubled over, his hands groping for the spear shaft, his sword dropped and forgotten. Before he could grip it, the spear was ripped from him, and he would have screamed if he had the breath to.

Helsknight crumpled to the floor and curled in on himself, fists bunched against the wound. He didn’t know if he was trying to stop the bleeding, or simply trying to shield himself from the awful sight of it. Touching it made his hands shake, lanced him with another wave of pain, and a feeling of wrongness so intense he nearly gagged. He had taken wounds like this in the Colosseum only once or twice before, and that experience didn't help him. It was every bit as breathtakingly painful as he remembered, and it seared his thoughts raw.

Out of the corner of his eye, a hazy silhouette loomed. The spearman was watching him.

A shattered thought, more instinct than coherency, made Helsknight search for his sword. It was within reach.

He wanted to reach for it, but fear stayed his hand. His wound was terrible, but it was in the deep, complicated places of the body that didn’t kill with immediacy. Helsknight, above anything else in life, feared death. He thought he would rather suffer here on the floor for the next hours, hels, the next days, if there was a chance he would live. That someone might bring him mercy, and healing, before he had to face down the maw of the universe and respawn. But if he picked up his sword… if he made himself threatening…

There was no one left here for him to protect. No one to distract from any coming wrath, or vengeance from the thieves in the hall. It was just him.

He was alone, and he was dying.

Fear sank its withering roots deep into him, twined in his ribs, where his already haggard breathing grew tight and suffocated. It wrapped around his spine, commanding him to be still. It commanded he wait, and suffer, and hope and pray and be helpless, for the barest chance death might pass him over.

The spearman moved slowly, stalking around so that Helsknight could see them better. They were not anyone Helsknight recognized, though there was a detached coldness in their gaze he didn’t think he’d ever forget.

“You’re so quiet,” they informed him, as he lay on the ground and bled. “Even when you’re threatening people, or in pain. It’s uncanny.”

Helsknight took a breath, and tried to muster enough coherent thought to speak.

They kicked him.

They only did it once, but they kicked him where his fingers interlaced over the wound in his stomach. It was a cruelty driven by frigid curiosity, someone pulling the legs off a spider to see when the squirming would stop.

If they expected Helsknight to scream, he didn’t. He would have, if he could. Between his fear, and the broken rib, and the intrusion of his diaphragm on the wound in his stomach, breath was a thing Helsknight could only sip shortly and painfully, in hitches and gasps. There wasn’t enough of it in him to scream properly. But every muscle in his body contracted in agony, and a gag ripped its way up his throat, and when the little breath he had left him, it left him in a whimper that shook and strangled out when blood pulsed with his heartbeat onto his hands. Helsknight’s vision contracted, edged in black, spangled by multicolored stars.

The spearman seemed unimpressed. They took their spear in both hands and studied him, considering.

“I can’t tell if you’re trying to be tough, or if you’re just pathetic.”

[Pathetic.]

[Pain made heroes of no one.]

The spearman moved, pointing their bloody spearhead down at him. For a moment, Helsknight feared they had decided to kill him and be done with it. They lowered the broad spearpoint down towards his hands, as though they expected to probe the wound again. Helsknight’s hand snapped out with a suddenness he didn’t even know he was capable of, driven by one last faltering, frigid spine of adrenaline. The dying ghost of self preservation. He gripped the weapon shakily, and hissed in fleeting gasps.

“Touch me again, and when I come back here for you, I will bring every knight and paladin in hels with me.”

Helsknight didn’t speak with sureness or authority. His voice was a weak and wincing thing that threatened to break at the end of every word. But he meant it. He meant it with every fiber of his being. A place like this, with people this cruel, could not be allowed to exist. Not if he was allowed the chance to leave. If no one else, he knew his Saint wouldn’t abide cruelty like this.

Helsknight had never been a paladin. In truth, what the paladins went through in their blind service scared him almost as much as dying did, but he would unleash their fury on this place in a heartbeat.

The spearman laughed at him and yanked their spearpoint out of his hand. It cut his palm, but it was such a small hurt compared to all the others, Helsknight barely felt it.

“Really? And how are you going to do that, huh? Knights don’t listen to people like us.”

[People like us?]

“I’m a knight,” Helsknight gasped.

They laughed again, “Really? And did you leave your cloak at the cleaners when you went on crusade?”

“It’s on loan, you asshole.”

The spearman startled, turning on their heel towards the voice. Helsknight didn’t know when Tango had returned. Probably it had been just now. He didn’t have time to wonder how Tango had made it back to him again. Wels stood behind Tango, a look of horror and fury on his face. The resplendent silver and diamond of his immaculate plate didn’t gleam so brilliantly in the dim red of hels, but he was an imposing figure nonetheless. Wels’s own fist was balled sympathetically against his stomach, like he could feel the ghosts of Helsknight’s pain through whatever connection they had. His double’s empathetic rage washed over Helsknight like a wave, buried his own dread and fear beneath a wall of righteous fury. Breathtaking.

Wels moved like a hawk swooping, quick and arrow-point keen. The spearman, caught off-guard, barely managed to lift their spear.

Then Tango was kneeling beside Helsknight, cutting off his view. He swore bitterly when he saw the wound, and clasped his hand against Helsknight's, as if he thought the extra pressure would help. It didn't. Or if it did, it paled in comparison to the spike of pain it wracked through Helsknight. He must have made some pathetic noise, because Tango keened fearfully back at him, yanking his hand away.

“I'm sorry! Just hang in there, Killer,” Tango said, rifling through his pockets for anything reflective. “I've got like-- like six health potions with your name on them brewing back at Hermitcraft. Just-- just-- you know. Keep it together.”

Helsknight didn't think the ‘keep it together’ was directed at him. He must have looked pathetic indeed, because Tango clasped his hand in Helsknight's in an attempt to be reassuring, and shouted for Wels to hurry up.

[Had the little fool really come running back here so fast, he forgot to bring a reflection to escape with?]

After what felt like a small eternity, where Tango mumbled awkward reassurances, and all Helsknight could do was breathe, and try very hard not to bleed to death, Wels rejoined them. His armor was pristine as always, though he had a new cut on his cheek, and a disgusted expression on his face. The emotions radiating from him were of the purest contempt, probably directed at the spearman he’d killed. They softened to pity and nervousness when he laid eyes on Helsknight again, like colors bleeding in water.

“It's a bad wound Tango,” Wels said hesitantly. “It might be kinder to help him respawn.”

Tango shook his head briskly, “I promised.”

“The trip through the void--”

“If you won't bring him back for me, move your metal butt closer and I'll bring him back myself,” Tango snapped. He grimaced and said a bit gentler, “They're scared of respawn here for some reason. I don't get it bu-- but-- just-- I'll owe you one. Okay?”

Wels sighed and looked down at Helsknight. It was not a hateful, cruel, or wary look. It was an expression like someone trying to make his way through hard choices.

“Wels--” Tango started again, but stopped when Wels knelt beside him.

“This will hurt,” Wels warned, and then pulled one of Helsknight's arms around his shoulders. Tango grabbed his other arm, and Helsknight's world was consumed by fire in his stomach, and a blurring of star-filled black and breathless pain. He must have cried out again, because Tango was babbling apologies beside him, and Wels radiated the kind of nauseating determination one acquired when about to embark on a holy war.

“Hold onto him tightly,” Wels instructed. “If we lose him between worlds, I doubt we'd find him again.”

They fell.

----- ----

The Universe was a living thing.

It muttered, and felt, and spoke.

It was not human.

It understood, in broad strokes, human concepts like emotion and religion and thought and living and art. If it had a mind for metaphors and analogies, it might describe its understanding as the same understanding a human has for ant pheromones, or the way a sea slug hunts for certain chemicals in the water. A human hears the word pheromone and knows, to an ant, it is probably a sweet and enticing smell, like lavender or fresh bread, but a human will never smell an ant and smell something desirable. A human will hear the word chemical, and know whatever the slug is hunting probably has a taste, and to a slug, that taste is like honey, or sugar, or, again, freshly baked bread. But a human could never sift through the ocean floor and taste something enticing.

The Universe liked the idea of bread.

The Universe thought, in the closest way the Universe could think about anything, in thrums and chords like discordant melody, in tapestry and weave and time, that the things it loved most in itself were like bread. They were molded and shaped, and through fire and heat, they rose. And they made something that smelled desirable, and tasted enticing, and the Universe, above all else, loved to devour. It devoured bits of itself every instant, and through that devouring, it remade itself again.

And the Universe said: nothing is separate from any other thing.

There were two bright stars falling through the Universe, and they smelled to it like baking bread. Between them, held in hands that clung for life and limb, was a dark spark of dying and nothing and never should have. It was a familiar never. It was a spark of flame made so one of its best loaves could rise. A bright star.

The Universe didn't want to devour that flame of never, and shouldn't have been. The Universe could not want, as all it needed, it was.

The Universe liked to set itself to order. It liked the making of bread. It liked the things inside of it that set its world to order, and made with their hands, and rose. It liked things that were like itself.

And the universe said: you are a flame of what never should have been

And the universe said: I feel nothing for you, for you came from nothing

And the universe said: you are weak and small and failing

And the universe said: your heat may not be strong enough to form a rising

And the universe said: you are disorder, and chaos, and change for the sake of changing

The jaws of the universe neared, wide, and hungry. It liked to set things to order. It liked leavened bread. It liked two bright stars, very like itself. Between them was a dark and dying thing, that never should have been. It was a dark and dying thing that they should not hate, because nothing had no substance to despise. It was a dark and dying thing that they should not love, for nothing had no substance to enjoy. But it was a dark and dying thing that they clung to regardless.

The Universe clung to many things it should neither hate nor love. Things like stars, and orbits, and worlds. Things like code, and making, and living.

And the universe said: you are creating change

And the universe said: you are creating chaos

And the universe said: someday you must be set to order

And the universe said: but the bread has not finished rising

The Universe let them pass. It did not decide to let them pass. If the Universe were able to speak in metaphor, or even in words that the pieces of itself could hear, it would say it could not decide to let them pass. Just as the lungs do not decide to breathe, and the heart does not decide to beat, and the spine does not decide to hold. As a heart that times itself to another, so that two bodies close together might feel comfort and belonging, the Universe timed itself to their movement, and they passed.

And the universe watched those bright stars and said: I love you

And the universe said: Even the absence of something has purpose

And the universe said: Rise

Helsknight must have passed out somewhere between hels and Hermitcraft, or if he didn't, he faded so close he had no memory of the crossing.

He awoke on a bed that wasn't his own, hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. Everything ached. There was a persistent pinching and cramping in his stomach where healing hadn't quite finished its work. He was hungry -- or nauseous. He was thirsty. He was exhausted. He itched with dried blood, and itched again where links in his chainmail pressed uncomfortably against his body. Someone had done him the kindness of taking his gauntlets and boots off.

There was a cold hand clasped in his, a soothing reassurance against his own feverishness. That simple touch alone made him, inexplicably, want to cry.

[It hadn't been for nothing.]

Helsknight opened his eyes and looked over to see Tanguish sitting in a chair beside him. The arm that wasn’t reaching to hold Helsknight’s hand was pillowed beneath his head. If he wasn’t asleep, he was well on his way. Worry, sluggish to wake through his tiredness, rose slowly in his chest. How long had he been out?

A flicker of light highlighted the doorway to the room he was in [one of the Hermit’s bases, probably] heralding Tango’s arrival. The Hermit was balancing three health potions in his arms, still warm enough from the brewer to be bubbling slightly. His eyes passed over Tanguish first, a look of weathered contentment on his face. He awkwardly shuffled the potions in his arms so he could run a hand through his hair, a small, worried motion that made him seem… very human. Helsknight didn’t idolize the Hermits -- if anything, he disdained them for what they were. But in that moment, he had never related to another person’s care and weariness so much in his life.

“Oh,” Tango said quietly, eyebrows raising. “You’re awake.”

Tanguish’s eyes opened immediately. He sat up quickly, moving so he held Helsknight’s hand in both of his. “Praise every god and saint in hels.”

“Was I out long?” Helsknight asked, his voice a rough rasp in his dry throat. He started to sit up, and let out a painful breath as the twinge in his stomach shocked him still. It wasn’t nearly the unbearable stab from earlier, but it stiffened his spine and threatened to take his breath. Tanguish’s hand was on his chest pushing him gently back down.

“Easy does it, Killer,” Tango said, offering half of a laugh he clearly didn’t feel. He passed one of the potions to Tanguish, who got to work uncorking it. “That was intense.”

“I’ve had worse,” Helsknight said dismissively, not entirely sure if the statement was true. He may have had worse wounds before, but he didn’t think he’d ever had worse circumstances. He sipped on the potion and sighed with relief as the intensity of aches and pains across his body soothed. The lance in his stomach dulled to a bitter, persistent throb. He looked down in time to see what was left of the wound knitting itself back together, and then grimaced, when he realized the blankets he was on were spattered in blood. “Uhm… sorry for ruining whoever’s bed this is.”

“Blankets needed washed anyway,” Wels said from the doorway. Just about everyone in the room startled -- apparently Helsknight wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard him enter. He’d taken off his armor, and stood in only a blue tunic and breeches, his empty scabbard cinched around his waist. The cut on his cheek was still there, though the blood had been washed away.

[Enough time to get rid of his arms and armor, but not enough time to heal himself.]

[Intentionally defanged.]

Helsknight curled an arm around his stomach, shielding a hurt that was no longer there. Wary.

“What happened? I have Tango's side of the story but...” Wels asked quietly, soothingly. It was not the quiet of violence or anger. It was the quiet of someone trying very, very hard to be nonthreatening. He looked to Tango first, and when the Hermit looked away awkwardly, not sure how to answer, he looked to Helsknight. “Please.”

“I-it was my fault--” Tanguish started nervously.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Helsknight interrupted. “A group of thugs took Tanguish captive. When Tango and I realized what happened, we went to get him back.”

Helsknight briefly toyed with the idea of taking responsibility for what had happened. He found himself… somewhat protective of Tango. Something noticeable in how he saw the Hermit as a person had shifted. He didn’t have time yet to untangle just what or why, but he thought if Wels was going to get high-and-mighty about what had happened, he might try to spare Tango from the brunt of it. It wasn’t like Wels could hate Helsknight any more than he already did.

“A group of thugs?” Wels queried, his voice taking on a slightly more grim cast.

“I didn’t know they existed before today.” Helsknight answered honestly. “They will not exist for much longer.”

Tanguish looked at him, startled. “You… you can’t. Helsknight they almost--”

“I know people who can,” Helsknight said. He downed the rest of his potion, and this time when he sat up, he did it painlessly. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, grimacing at how gross he felt. He scowled disgustedly at himself, at his gore-splattered clothes. His arms were strangely bare now that the gauntlets were off, two swaths of unmarked skin surrounded by havoc.

“We should get you cleaned up,” Wels observed.

“I will take care of myself at home.”

“Tango said your house was trashed.”

Helsknight shot the little Hermit a glare.

Tango only held his hands up in surrender. “Didn’t think it was a secret, sorry.”

“Tango,” Wels said, his voice still that cool, soothing quiet, “I have some food cooking. Make sure Tanguish gets something warm.” He rested his gaze on Helsknight. “Come on. I’ve already gotten started on your armor.”

He disappeared into the hall. Helsknight, Tango and Tanguish all exchanged glances.

“If… if he tries to fight you,” Tanguish stammered, “come back here. I’ll get us home.”

Helsknight studied the empty place Wels had been standing.

“... I don’t think he wants a fight,” Helsknight said cautiously. He hesitated a moment longer, then stood and followed after Wels.

Helsknight’s other half had gone outside. He lived in a small castle away from the other Hermits, though he was within easy sight of one of his neighbors in the river. He had moved several tools outside: cauldron, grindstone, and a drying rack among them. Helsknight’s gore-streaked sword was propped up against the grindstone, his gauntlets and grieves in the grass beside it. The gauntlets had already been scoured once, though looking at them, Helsknight knew he’d probably be scrubbing them down with a toothbrush for the next few days before he got out every bit of blood.

“No one’s on this side of the server besides xB, and he’s probably half a league underground right now, diamond hunting,” Wels said, grabbing up a rag and dunking it into the cauldron. “Get your chain and your shirt off. No one will care -- and if you care, no one will see.”

The bitter creature of animosity he always held for his hermit wanted to crawl to life and argue. You will see. But Helsknight was tired down to the bottom of his soul, and while Welst’s emotions seemed muffled and odd to him right now, none of them seemed to contain bad intentions. Helsknight did as he was told, peeling off first his tunic, then the chainmail and padding underneath.

“Leave your chainmail here,” Wels said, picking up one of his grieves and getting to work scrubbing. “Though I recommend taking your shirt to the water with you.”

“I know how to clean my gear,” Helsknight muttered.

Wels shrugged. “I didn’t say you didn’t.”

They side-eyed each other for a moment, gauging reactions. Helsknight sighed and waded into the water.

The river was cold. That was something Helsknight had to admit he wasn’t used to. Running water in this much quantity in hels was already a rare thing. This much cold water in hels was practically impossible. It sent goosebumps sprinting across his skin, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from squeaking ingloriously when it swirled up to his waist. Satisfied he was deep enough to suitably clean himself, Helsknight got to work scrubbing everything he could reach.

He had hoped it would be soothing. At the very least, he hoped getting the blood off would ease the persistent nausea still squirming around in his stomach. Watching the water slowly redden around him, though, only made him feel sicker. What started as calm, scrubbing started to get rougher as a tremor worked its way into his hands. Every pass of his touch across his clothes, his skin, all earned him more blood. Helsknight found himself taking long, intentional breaths in an effort to keep himself calm. It was his hair that broke him. He carded his hands back through the messy locks, only for his fingers to snag on mats and tangles, and when he knelt down in the water to wet the ends and comb them out, a clot of brown-black ugliness came out onto his fingers.

Helsknight’s hands were shaking. What had started as low-level nausea suddenly twisted his guts in something much more intense and immediate. He stamped it down as best he could. He was the Champion of hels, for helssakes. He’d seen blood before. He’d seen more than blood before. He shouldn’t be acting like this, feeling like this. What was so different between what he’d just done, and fighting people he knew in the Colosseum?

[He’d never maimed people with the express intention of leaving them alive, in the Colosseum.]

[No one had ever kicked his wounds, purposefully, because it seemed like a fun thing to do in the Colosseum.]

[No one had ever held him down while he struggled and thrashed, and threatened to dismember him in the Colosseum.]

[And in the Colosseum, he’d never done that to anyone else.]

Helsknight didn’t know what repulsed him more: the den of snakes this whole fiasco had revealed, or himself. The thought of going back there, of leading knights and paladins to the place to clear it out, sent a pang of dread through him so fiercely, it squeezed his chest tighter, and made it hard to breathe. Helsknight shivered, and shivered again, and couldn’t stop shivering.

[He needed to get the blood off.]

A sense of calm and serenity suddenly blanketed Helsknight, washed over him like the cold water of the river. It draped itself over his thoughts, slowed them to a halt. Tenseness in his shoulders and spine relaxed almost against his will. The shuddering in his hands stopped.

[Wels.]

Helsknight turned to look at his other half, who had doubled over the cauldron, a look of deep concentration on his face. He was breathing in long, slow, deliberate breaths, and when he exhaled his mouth moved as he counted. Wels, with determined intent, and no small amount of sympathy radiating from him like smears of sunset color, was anchoring Helsknight like a port in a storm. Forcefully, by controlling himself first.

“You did what you had to do,” Wels said quietly, but honestly, and that honesty was golden light. On anyone else, it would have been a binding shackle, an imposition of will. On Helsknight, who was immune to that from Wels, it was a display of sincerity. “You are the perfect knight, Helsknight. You’ve said so yourself: Knighthood is ugly, and unkind.”

Slowly, like a storm cloud passing over, Wels’s blanket of assuredness rolled off of him, and when it did, Helsknight realized he was crying. They were small, contained tears, the kind of thing that came from fatigue more than anything. Shame and bitterness crawled to life in his chest, and he did his best to stamp them down.

“Fuck I’m tired,” Helsknight said, the most self-aware thing the thought he was capable of at the moment. He should have seen this coming. The exhaustion after a long fight, the emotional fallout of finally coming down from fear and adrenaline.

“I didn’t think it was wise to let you rest for too long,” Wels said somewhat cautiously. “I know us.”

“Needed to get cleaned up before everything rusted anyway,” Helsknight muttered, finally dragging himself from the river. His clothes would need another wash at some point. There were still stains that he hadn’t managed to scour away. But the blood was off his body at least.

He looked with disgust at his sword, his stomach twisting again when he saw it. He forced himself to take it in hand and, when Wels offered him a rag, began wiping it down. Wels had moved on to his chainmail, running over it with a bristle brush to clean the links. Laid out beside him were pliers and a box full of rings -- apparently he intended on repairing it as well.

They worked in silence, broken only by the small, lethal noises of cleaning and polishing and scrubbing. Blood had gotten underneath the leather wrapping around Helsknight’s sword hilt, so he unwound it to re-oil the leather, and seal it with wax. Wels moved on from scrubbing the chain to repair, and the air filled with the soft clatter of the links moving, and Wels occasionally discarding links that didn’t fit back into the box again. Intermittently, when Helsknight’s mind had been still for too long, anxiety would make his hands shake, and the ghost of the boot against his stomach would twist like a knife in his guts, and his world narrowed to the quickness of his breathing and the determination not to vomit into the grass. Every time it happened, Wels stopped what he was doing and breathed, and counted, and, when the fit passed, repeated, “You did what you had to do.”

With a single-minded purpose they put Helsknight’s world back to order. It was as efficient as it could be. It was relentless, and determined, in the way two knights focused on one goal could only be. It was the slow, methodical purging of discomfort, seeking normalcy. Helsknight felt that Wels was trying to put him back in the box he was meant to live in -- force him back into being something he expected to see. Helsknight wondered, if their situations had been reversed, if he would react the same way. If he would piece his other half back together, purely because seeing him ripped apart was too uncomfortable.

[He thought he might.]

“What happened?” Wels asked quietly, as he bent another chain link in place with his pliers. He paused in his work, watching Helsknight with those frigid, sky-blue eyes. Helsknight thought they were carefully neutral, the wind holding its breath over a lake. “What happened to cause the panic, specifically.”

Helsknight looked down at his sword. He had polished it to a shine again, though he’d had to rinse the rag a few times to do it. The edge was marred with chips and dents. He would be sharpening it for ages.

“Tango said you go to confession,” Wels said at length, when Helsknight said nothing. “I don’t know how yours works. Mine mostly involves two people sitting in a room, talking. Normally they can’t see each other. The anonymity is important. We could set our stools back to back.”

Helsknight shook his head. “You wouldn’t like how my Saint takes confession.”

A ripple of discomfort broke the intentional, smothering placidity clinging to Wels. “Tango, uhm, also said you cut yourself.”

“Prayer.”

“Ah.”

Wels snapped another link into place.

Helsknight picked up a whetstone Wels had laid out for him in the grass. He propped his sword against his knee. Before he ran the stone across it, something prodded him gently in the shoulder. Helsknight took the knife Wels offered him. It was a small blade, a tool, not a weapon, but the edge was sharp. Helsknight stared at it for a long time, while Wels patiently bent stubborn links into place.

“I’ve never chosen this for myself,” Helsknight whispered. “The Saint is supposed to tell you your penance.”

“What did you do that was wrong?”

Helsknight took a long breath.

“... I was cruel.”

Wels snapped another link into place.

“... I was… cowardly.”

There was the rattle of metal as Wels searched for another link.

“... I was wrathful.”

The pliers clicked as Wels pulled the ring apart, twisting it deftly, a practiced craft.

“... I served myself, and my aims, instead of my Saint’s.”

Helsknight turned the little knife in his hand. He let out a slow, steadying breath. He ran his thumb down his forearm, tracing the direction of the vein there. He stumbled through memories of going to confession, of what price the Saint had asked of him for similar sins. He decided on a cut to his sword wrist, something painful and inconvenient, that would take time to heal.

“Your Saint,” Wels said, and Helsknight paused before he could draw the blade across his skin. “Does he have more knights?”

“They have many, yes.”

Wels nodded. He pried another link in place and sat back, running the chainmail beneath his hands. He hadn’t completely patched the hole the spear had made, but he was getting close. A few more links until the gap closed. He ran it over his hand again, making sure all the links were laying in the right directions.

“I heard you speak a little… before we came through to hels.” Wels admitted. “Something about bringing every knight and paladin in hels down on the place. Does that include your Order?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell… your Saint… everything that happened today, when you ask them all to come?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure your Saint will lend you hi-- their knights?”

Helsknight let out a slow breath. “My Saint doesn’t suffer cruelty.”

“So then, your Saint would approve of what you did today.”

Helsknight shook his head almost immediately. “No. They can’t.”

“You… uhm… you just said…”

“That was cruel,” Helsknight said. “That was terrible. I was terrible.”

Helsknight felt that smothering blanket of calm start to drape over him again, and he tried to shake it off.

“I threatened-- I almost-- I would have--”

“They took your friend hostage. They tried to take you hostage.”

“I cut through so many people. You saw me. I was-- I was a bloody mess. I was a terror. I was a ruin.”

“They held you down and tried to disfigure you.”

“I would have torn that place apart brick by brick. I was one man, and I would have razed that place to the ground. I was the wrath of gods, working under my own will.”

“They stabbed you in the gut and tortured you with it.”

“Stop-- stop--- stop acting like I was being reasonable.”

“Then stop acting like you deserve to suffer for it.”

Helsknight flinched at another touch to his shoulder. He glared at Wels, and then blinked in puzzlement. Wels held out a hand to him, palm up, waiting patiently. Helsknight really must have been tired, because it took him far too long to realize Wels was asking for the knife back.

“They tortured you once already,” Wels said quietly, sternly. “Don’t retread the ground for them.”

Helsknight’s chest felt tight. Something like panic welled up inside him so fast it was nearly blinding. He was scared. He was terrified. Not just by what he’d done, but what he was capable of doing. No man, no matter how desperate, or for how good a cause, should be allowed to do what he had done today. Not on their own. Not without divine intervention, something holy telling them what they’d done was right. He could not be trusted with the responsibility of starting his own crusade. He had no right to be judge and executioner, but he’d done it nonetheless, and it terrified him. And it terrified to know that, after doing it once, he now knew he could do it again. That couldn’t be right. That wasn’t allowed to be right.

Helsknight and Wels both moved at the same time. Helsknight, on the sudden unstoppable impulse to punish himself for what he’d done. Wels, feeling his intentions the instant they focused themselves into something actionable. Wels lunged at him, one hand a vice on his wrist, the other catching the knife before he could use it.

“Helsknight,” Wels commanded, his voice glory-gold and relentless, “your Saint doesn’t abide cruelty.”

Helsknight scowled. He wanted to say yes! Exactly! He wanted to say that’s the entire point, you idiot! He wanted, very badly, to feel the blade running across his skin. He wanted to do something quick, and painful, and immediate to alleviate his guilt. He wanted--

“Does that include being cruel to yourself?”

Helsknight managed to twist his hands free of Wels’s grasp.

“Answer me.”

Helsknight shook his head.

“Is that a no?”

“I don’t-- I’m not being--”

“You are.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“It does!” Wels snapped, his composure finally slipping. “A good knight abides by his tenets.”

Helsknight sprang to his feet suddenly, his panic exploding into something white hot and angry. “You don’t know my Saint! You don’t know my Saint’s will!”

Wels rose to his feet as well, and this, this was familiar. This was normalcy. This was the world set to order and correctness and--

“You’re right,” Wels said, stern and determined, but not angry. “I don’t know. But you do. So answer me. What does your Saint say about being cruel to yourself?”

Helsknight shoved him. Hard. Hard enough that Wels stumbled back over his seat and fell to the ground. Then he turned, angrier now that he’d acted, and kicked over the grindstone. Helsknight paced, full of angry, anxious energy. The rage and fury that chases fear. He wanted to run. He wanted to bite and kick and punch. He wanted to-- he wanted-- he wanted--

Wels, still laying in the grass, started counting again. Counting, and breathing. He was trying so, so hard not to spiral. To not give in to the way their emotions circled each other. Beneath the determination to try, to keep a grip on his sanity, was a depth of sympathy and compassion that was nauseating in its intensity. Someone who had witnessed atrocity, and for once, didn’t blame Helsknight for it. It hurt. It ached. It pushed its way into Helsknight’s chest, and begged him to relent, to be kinder. It was so different. It was so human. It wasn’t how the Hermits were supposed to be. He needed them not to be kind. He needed-- he wanted--

Helsknight realized he was crying again, only because he blinked and realized his world had blurred beyond recognition, turning to smears of blue and green. A sob hiccupped its way up his ribs, and he felt so stupid. There came another, thick and harsh and ugly, and then he couldn’t stop himself. He stood there in the grass like an idiot and he cried, loud uncontrollable sobs. It was the kind of cry he hadn’t had in years, maybe never. The kind that made him feel like a child, with emotions too big to keep in his body.

At some point, Wels crossed to him, and very gently, as though trying his best not to intrude, he took the knife from his hand. Then he righted the grindstone, and finished snapping the links into place on Helsknight’s armor. By the time he’d finished, Helsknight had managed to pull himself back together again, little by little.

“U-uhm. We all, uh, we all alive out here?”

Helsknight swore colorfully. He passed his hand over his face, and demanded hoarsely, “How long have you been here, Tango?”

“Who, me?” Tango asked, a nervous laugh in his voice. Something behind Helsknight shuffled -- Tango grabbing up something to take back into the house with him, maybe. “Not long. Definitely. Probably. I wasn’t-- you know. Keeping tabs on you two in case you got a little too knightly or anything. I wouldn’t do that. I trust you. Implicitly.”

Helsknight snorted.

“It’s just, uh, you know. Food’s done.” Tango continued. “And uh. Also if anything else bad happened today, I think Tanguish would break in half.”

“We’re fine,” Wels said, calm, quiet. “We’ll be inside shortly.” He paused, and then added, “Uh, knight’s honor.”

“Right.”

Tango retreated, footsteps cushioned by the greenery. Helsknight was not used to the sound of grass. Stone, basalt, netherrack, hyphae. He had the sound of footsteps on those memorized. Grass was a rushing, soothing noise, almost like water in its consistency.

“I think your armor is as clean as it’s getting, without going over it with a fine brush,” Wels said. “I have more netherite plate. Spare stuff, in case I lose sets in the End.”

“Keep it.”

“It’s not charity. I owe you a set, from when we last fought, and you fell in the End.”

“It’s not… because of the charity.” Helsknight crossed his arms. “I haven’t worn plate for awhile.”

“Hm.”

“Why.”

Wels tilted his head to the side questioningly.

“The calm. The kindness. The…” Helsknight gestured broadly. “We hate each other.”

“We do.”

“So why.”

Wels looked away from him, quietly considering the ground. At length he said, “Apparently… your Saint isn’t the only person who can’t abide cruelty.”

Wels reached a hand up to his chest and sighed. “When Tango came and got me… I didn’t want to come and help you. I could feel… something. Struggle. But you’re right. We hate each other.”

He sighed again. “And then I stepped into hels.”

Wels chuckled bitterly. “Fear. And helplessness. And desperation. And Pain.”

He looked up at Helsknight. “I thought I was going to respawn on the spot. And I wasn’t you.”

“We hate each other,” Helsknight repeated.

“We do,” Wels agreed. “But… I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

Welsknight offered Helsknight an ironic smile, “Not even you.”

The two knights watched each other. Nervous. Awkward. Worried. And underneath it all, an undercurrent of surreality and ridiculousness. Two enemies forced to admit some things could be worse than their rivalry.

“Anyway,” Welsknight said, “when you go back and storm the place, you have my sword, if you want it."

#the barking writer #rns angst prompts #rns ficlets #helsknight #tangotek #welsknight #tanguish #redstone and skulk #tw blood #tw gore #tw wounds #tw torture #tw whump #tw a lot of stuff okay

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