Back in the mine network, everything has changed; and yet, everything is the same. He can feel it. He knows it.
But right now, Ingressus needs to conquer that which ails him, and find out if there is even a speck of evidence that may just point him in the direction he seeks; but he needs to do it before his mind succumbs to settings that have since plagued his nightmares
Author's note: we're back! big apologies for the unexpected hiatus; life isn't fair and we gotta deal with it. but no matter, I am getting this crap back on track and resuming our update schedule with (hopefully) minimal interruption henceforth XD
we also return to some angsty bois. yes, this chapter was never going to be anything short of angsty based on its sole nature, however fear not; it is only one of few heccin angsty nonsense. memory lane, amirite? XD
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His feet had barely touched the cold hard ground at the base of the ladder in the network when he felt his legs tremble in anxiousness. He had prepared himself for this very moment, yet there was something about the dense, fusty smell and the cold, damp draughts that would periodically rush through the tunnels and corridors, taking his hair from his shoulders and wrapping around his chin, wisping the sides of his face. He brought his cloak around him as a chill ran up his spine and his toes curled into the floor as if gripping to reality.
In seven years, he had expected things to feel different – perhaps even to look different; yet this very place that hoarded a thousand thoughts and feelings was frozen in time, lost. Even after all this time, the Nestoris did not know that it existed.
Or did they?
Maybe they saw no use for it. Ingressus still toyed with the conflicting thoughts between Achillean missing because he had left of his own accord, or missing because the clans had found him; but he thought for a moment that the network had not changed because the clans did not know it existed – that the only people that did were lost to time, themselves, with Ardorus and Aegus dead, Achillean missing and Ingressus feeling as though he never really left; like a part of him was still tethered to that wall, still suffering the years of torment.
Maybe that was why he never felt whole?
That part of him had long vacated his soul and he knew he wasn't likely to get it back.
As another rush of cool wind brushed past him, he took a deep breath in and lifted his head, although his legs still shook lightly as he summoned the courage to continue forth. With the microscopic part of him hoping that Achillean was still here, he felt he should call out to hear a response – to hear the voice that plagued his mind, but in its whole, in its innocence to purge the demonic tones from his head, to rid the sirens as he slept. But he did not utter a sound.
What was he afraid of when calling into the void: the echo, or the answer?
Instead, he listened to the draughts whisper in his ears, carrying the new history that this place held. He gulped and he stepped as if he walked on broken glass, on fiery coals, and he ran his fingertips along the gravel and stone walls, feeling the ice-cold, sunless corridors take to his skin once more. He shuddered, and like touching white hot fire, he wanted to snatch his hand away and cower from what the walls could tell him; but he knew that he had not risked this much, come this far to give into what ailed him yet again.
He remembered the night that he had brought his unconscious brother back here to protect them both from the harsh truths of reality. He could feel everything that the mine network had held for him, yet he had the rush of adrenaline, of determination in the name of his brother to push it down and grit his teeth. Now he had not that net to catch him, and he was freefalling in a decade of anguish and raw pain on his own.
He saw these areas in his nightmares, but as were a lot of details, they had grown foggy – blurry – over time, as though his mind attempted to purge that period of his life from his memories. He knew he was never going to shift it. It had grown the deepest roots in the darkest, most untouched corner of his mind, and every so often, it would lean into the light to shine its existence into his core, and he would remember something once more – the tingling of burnt skin on his front, the red raw sting of cut flesh on his neck, the crackling of angry energy by his temples. Sometimes, he could hear Achillean in his old self – the Achillean that he wanted back – but his voice would be cut off by a devilish laughter, corrupted, and he would be silenced like a clawed hand over his mouth. From his own short time with the Prime Songs inside of him, before he had given a part of himself to them, he knew what they were like. He would feel that part of him cut off and silenced to make room for the Whispers' demands. He could almost hear that very aspect inside Achillean's voice; but he had grown to accept that his mind would regularly play tricks on him. It was when he was caught off-guard and exploited would be when he found himself at his weakest.
A little further along the main corridor, his footsteps still light and careful, and his hand still running along the walls, one side once again gave way to bars as Ingressus reached the cells – one of which, he still felt entrapped in; the one area of the network he knew he had never truly left, despite his returns being his own conscious decisions, each time seeing a broken Nestoris in place of himself. He paused and his gaze fell as his heart sank in his chest, heavy in disappointment. Despite his anxiousness, there was part of him larger than he would admit that longed to look into the cell and once again see the golden markings of a man he had left behind. He wasn't sure how he was to feel if he looked in there and saw Achillean for the first time in four years. In what state he was to find Achillean was not his first thought.
Instead, he wondered how he would feel in that time. Seeing him once a moon for two years to check up on him – even if it was in total silence every time – gave him a sense of stability, knowing that a Prime Song no longer tortured them both; but four years of absence and four years of mental decline, the nightmares more frequent, the hallucinations more violent, casting the look on the perpetrator was not something that Ingressus had thought of. He knew that his mental decline had been as a result of Achillean's sudden unexplained absence, and the constant worrying about the what-ifs and the buts of the situation, and that was why he had ventured all this way to the place that he had once believed himself to desire distance from; but looking once more into the golden eyes that once made to hurt him after so long away from them, he wasn't sure what to expect.
Even as he looked to the corner in which Achillean would ordinarily be huddled, he didn't see the shadow of his brother as he had left him, but instead the small shell of a child that he had learned from – much like the anxious Nestoris he had encountered on the surface.
Ingressus shook his head in confusion. He clutched the threads of his cloak in one hand and balled the other to a fist as if holding a sack of supplies as he would have ordinarily done on his ventures into the mine network.
Achillean still wasn't here.
A low-shining light caught his watery glint and he looked to the doorway of the cell, still open and unmoved, and there in the same spot as he had placed it on that night seven years ago, sat Achillean's Aggrobeam Song, a duller shade of red than its usual vibrancy. Ingressus could still hear the light hum of it reverberating against the hard ground, a lonely chorus if ever he heard one, but its shine had dullened over time, lying dormant and unused, untouched. He crouched, hovering his hand over it, letting the dim light taint his palms as he felt its dying heat.
The network always felt infinitely bigger when Ingressus was alone inside – more empty, hollow. At times where his mind slipped away with sleep deprivation, he felt it more daunting, more controlling, like it had grown claws, made to strangle what sanity he clung to; but knowing now that it was just him and Achillean's Song, he felt it stronger than ever.
Ingressus tried to convince himself that Achillean had merely wanted nothing more to do with Songs – as was his stance when they first met, which was ultimately what separated them both, what split them both in the beginning – and that was why he had not taken his Aggrobeam Song with him. That, perhaps with so much raw Aggressium energy inside him for so long controlling his every move, his every thought, harnessing his old Aggressium Song was too terrifying – trust lost to corruption, much like most of him in the end.
But even as he allowed his tension to subside but an inch, that singular nagging reminder flooded into his head, alerting him to the very real possibility that he hadn't taken his Aggrobeam Song because he wasn't given the opportunity to – that the clans had stormed the network without warning, with no signs, and he was left scrambling in terror, his mind in shambles, his body weak and his head flustered in his attempt to hide from them, to run deeper into the mine network, to find somewhere – anywhere – hidden that would grant him the scarce freedom from the wrath of warriors gunning for his life for his crimes under the influence of the Aggressium Prime Song.
He imagined the quaking fear that Achillean's broken mind would force through his veins. If he was even able to break free and run through the network for safety, what would he be thinking? Would he be thinking at all?
And what if he wasn't given that chance? Would he fight the Ardoni who seized him? Would he claw at their tightened grasps as they gripped his arms? Or would he let them take him, knowing that he had only been delaying the inevitable for two years? Would he accept his fate?
But surely, if the clans had him, they would have taken his Song, too? Or would they have left it so that he had no chance of recovering, should escape have been possible?
With every possible outcome swirling around Ingressus' cracked psyche, he found his own stability on the ground wavering and his ankles cave from underneath him. He pulled his hand away from his brother's Aggrobeam Song and shuffled back against the wall opposite the cell, picking up dust as his cloak wafted onto the floor beside him. He laid his head against the wall and closed his eyes, remembering how Nakiri had taught him to breathe through his panic – how to slow the racing thoughts to a manageable speed, to stop his head from spinning. He could still hear the whispers that the walls carried – the broken words of the demonic Tidesinger still lingering in the halls as he concentrated on his aching chest, the delighted jeers of the other Ardoni as he was hit with whatever they had at their disposal that day, the pained cry of his own throat as Voltar killed Markus. It was as though he had a front row seat to the premiere re-enactment of what he had already experienced.
Breathe in... Breathe out...
Breathe in... Breathe out...
One breath at a time...
It isn't real...
It will never be real again...
You cannot break m- No... No more.
He snapped open his eyes to glare at Achillean's Song once more. He remembered something.
On the first day that he had ventured down into the network when he was met with only shadows of an absent Ardoni, one of the first things he had noticed was the Tidesinger's staff missing. At the time, he had hoped for a similar reason as to why his Song was still present – that he had taken the staff and left of his own accord, unwilling to harness the Song anymore, and not because the clans had taken it.
The thought that they would be so cruel as to use it against him as the Tidesinger had done with Ingressus' own broadsword on him... He couldn't put that past the clans. They were not as forgiving as Aegus had taught him they were. He should be grateful that he wasn't public enemy number one and he and his clan could live in some form of relative peace; but when it was his brother in place of him, no such peace was to be had.
Not when his own broken mind reminded him most frequently...
But if he wasn't here, then where was he? Where in Ardonia would he have gone? Where would he feel safest? And after that amount of time alone with his tormented thoughts, would he be okay? Would the markings match the person?
A cold rush came from the tunnels at the end of the corridor and Ingressus shivered from his thoughts as the breeze caught his hair with the dust that he was sat in. In a sudden sense of overwhelming panic, he scrambled back onto his feet. With a quick whirl to check his surroundings as if having woken up in an unfamiliar place, Ingressus ran back towards the ladder as though his freedom depended on it – as it once did. He could hear something chasing after him, the sound of a thousand voices calling his name, the clattering of cold steel with his blood first on the list.
Yet not even a mouse stirred.
The stones were still.
He wanted to get out, like he had ventured too far underwater.
He needed air.
When he forced open the hatch at the top, he gasped as though he had been starved of oxygen for too long, and his face ran with sweat as though he had run for his very life. After he had hauled himself up from the ladder, he slammed shut the door, forgetting that he was not meant to be drawing attention to either himself or the mine network, and birds scattered across the moon. He was grateful for the fresh cold breeze that took to his skin, cooling him from his sudden stifling anxiousness.
He had been down there for longer than he wanted to be.
In getting lost in more questions than answers, Ingressus had begun to doubt his venture to find what had become of his brother. In convincing himself that he was ready, he had come out vastly underprepared for what he may or may not find in his attempts to uncover four lost years. His mind had omitted so many details of his capture for a reason.
And he just gave it one more reason to bring them back.
He panted on his hands and knees, gripping the grass almost by the roots as he counted his lucky stars that he found himself in one piece. He should have known better than to make this venture on his own, with no support. He gritted his teeth, biting back his whimpers for fear of sounding weak to himself, when he knew that he was stronger than this.
Until he heard the soft crunch of the grass behind him that he knew was not him; then he held his breath and slowly turned.
Behind him with his legs crossed, the Nestoris child remained where Ingressus had last seen him, only more comfortable as he fiddled with the foliage beneath his legs. The child did not make eye contact, or even seemingly acknowledge Ingressus, and continued plucking at the blades on the ground. With that, Ingressus exhaled quietly and rose to his feet, his head still spinning, and his balance having taken a shot with the rush. He took one last look at the child, feeling as though he should say something, before tutting himself and walking back towards the dirt path, albeit unsure of what he wanted to do, now.
"Y-you scarwed the-the bwirds ag-again," the child uttered under his breath, still not lifting his head to look at the other Ardoni.
Ingressus stopped dead in his tracks and turned back to the Nestoris. He looked around for a moment.
"I am... sorry?" He wasn't sure who he was apologising for.
He turned and continued walking.
"Whe-where awe you go-go-going?" the child asked, still stuttering. Ingressus wasn't sure if he was anxious in his words, or not.
"What I am doing could be dangerous," Ingressus replied reluctantly. He wasn't sure of what use it was telling a Nestoris child the truth, but he could not bear being held accountable for the loss of another one so young when he could prevent it. If he decided there and then to go hunting for Achillean, there was no telling in what state he would find him.
Having a small Nestoris boy clinging to him so needlessly was not something he was prepared to risk. Plus, this boy had no business hanging around with a Voltaris – the Deathsinger, no less. Ingressus could not think why he had chosen to linger near him; had he no clue?
"So... a-an ad-advwenturw?"
Ingressus was rather taken aback by the boy's eager words, and he froze on the spot yet again. When he turned to face him, he was on his feet and bouncing on his tiptoes; but Ingressus couldn't help but notice that he was still pinging something linked around his wrist, snapping it against his skin repeatedly.
He ignored the keen response from the Ardoni boy and continued making his way back to the dirt path; until he noticed that the child continued to follow.
"You should go home. It is late; would your parents not worry for you?"
This seemed to calm the boy as he almost sank into the ground.
"I h-have not see-seen my m-modew in yeaws... A-and my fwiends-s make f-fun of-f-f my speech-ch..." He pinged the elastic on his wrist even harder as he spoke. "I c-came hewe so d-dey would not s-see me cwy..."
So, this was how he spoke normally?
Ingressus sighed.
"But what of your father, Il-" He cut himself off, lest he give away that he was once friends with this child's father and alert the boy into revealing his identity to the Nestoris, for that was still very much a risk. He only needed to breathe the Deathsinger's name, and they would be onto him.
The boy looked up as if he wanted to press the red Ardoni into continuing what he had cut off; but he knew better than to ask for what was not initially granted to him.
"Fadew d-does not know I a-am hewe. He will b-be sleeping-g."
"You should be doing likewise," Ingressus retorted, thinking that he should be following his own advice, but knowing that it would be more so a struggle on this night than any other.
The child looked away and pinged his elastic harder, still. Ingressus smiled wryly and, with another sigh bringing out his breath like fog from his throat, he sat back down on the grass in front of the boy. The boy sat down shortly after and smiled brightly, crossing his legs and staring at the mysterious red Ardoni that he had never seen before...
And desperately wanted to call a friend.