[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf [s]Sagramore[/s][/color][/h3][/center]

For his part, Rudolf had quietly collapsed into an almost-unstructured pile once they made camp, his cold granite edifice of a helmet at his side as his hands steepled at the front of his burn-scarred brow. Even knowing that the explanation he had [i]almost[/i] courageously launched into was long overdue for revisiting, now that the treacherous ruins were well behind, the concern seemed almost a world away thanks to that singular, horrifying word that had slotted into Ferdiad's closing remarks:

"Patron."

Why [i]"Patron"?[/i] What could he have possibly meant when he'd said "patron?!" Imir? Had the goddess who watched over the lost and forlorn have found it within herself to not only accept a blasphemous reprobate like himself, but the whole civilization and the vengeful, amoral ghosts it had left behind? Was Lunaris's vaunted moon goddess still out there, lurking in the shadows, awaiting to overthrow Etro's hegemony and replace the Mothercrystal's light with her own?! Had Valheim somehow found a way to worm its claws so deep even into the furthest corners of Edren?

No matter how many of his personal pet theories he cycled through, cobbled together from his own dabbling in archaeological studies or gleaned in armed escort of true [i]professionals[/i] in the field, the result was the same— in the face of such an unprecedented development as the shades of Lunaris manifesting corporeal form, he was at a total loss. And what was more...

[color=c0392b][i]Hey. What the hell kind of "patron" do you have lurking down there?[/i][/color]

...

Even when he tried to accost the second voice in his head for that context he was missing, only silence met him in return. His passenger had been quite thoroughly spooked, or otherwise convinced to clam up as they had in Drana Asnaeu— once Ferdiad had gotten too close to Rudi, and began sniffing out that "familiarity" he'd kept mentioning, it was damn near curtains for any measure of context on the matter. The only token point of direction left to him was the sense that, at the very bottom of their interwoven ties, the spirit was also spinning away at the problem, trying to make sense of all the things it had pointed out were very, [i]very[/i] wrong with what they'd survived.

So given this abandonment, the young warrior was left only with his own devices to work out what the hell had just happened to them all, his own inferences from the piecemeal image of the ruins that multiple millennia after the fact left you with.

It almost came as a relief, Izayoi's harsh tone bidding him away from his newest spiral of uncertainty and back to the revelations he had been so close to finally making.

[color=c0392b]"No,"[/color] he muttered plaintively, a wry thing between a smirk and a scowl nestling itself onto the delicate features of his face, so unlike his pedigree. [color=c0392b]"I'd [i]like[/i] to never have shown the lot of you anything, and for you all to think me a run-of-the-mill swordman forever."[/color]

The words tasted bitter as they flew off his tongue, the barest edges of a chuckle tilting them askew. Like his lungs were choking with ash again, his chest felt tight, his heart seeming to thud against it, a cold sweat upon his skin. That was the most damning part of all this. No matter how hard he worked to build himself up to the task, however many reminders his conscious mind fed itself of how far he had already come———

He felt that same, stubborn impulse clawing at his heart. A spooked bird in a storm, wanting for all the world to bolt into the night as he willed himself to pay the piper. Cowardice, still living in his bones. 

His brow then furrowed, and his gaze left the rest of the group, settling somewhere in the middle distance.

[color=c0392b]"But 'like' has left the picture a long time ago. I’ve kept everybody waiting long enough twice over."[/color]

He took a long, deep breath, bracing his core to stop the quivering in his soul. One hand broke the steeple in half, holding the palm out and flooding itself with an attempt to produce the accursed flame. His gaze hardened further. The scents of camp filled his lungs, the smoke of the fire, the herbs of the stew, the warm blanket of flatbread. He was, naturally, the furthest away from all these heartening things— he had parked himself upon a stump framed by the shadows of two high, old hawthorns. They seemed to grow deep and bold as they draped his head and torso in gloom, masking his features save for what caught firelight.

He let the breath loose. No black flames greeted him. So much for a visual aid. Fine.

[url=https://youtu.be/appZt1lSvBA?si=gLNGR8yo33rM2id7]He crushed the thought, and used the hand to slick his hair back, it and the sweat on his brow forced away from his eyes as he met the expectant stares of the party.[/url]

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[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Shilage[/color][/h3][/center]
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[color=c0392b]"Let's get into it, then. I surmise some of you have already put most of this together, between the way I've been acting and the events of the past few days. From where I'm standing, at least, the whims of fate have already laid out enough of the hints. If you think you have the basic gist of it, we can probably both assume you're right."[/color]

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His gaze flickered between the faces before him— first to Galahad, who had hunted him down for his many withheld truths the longest. By all accounts, he had held to his words, that night in the forest when Rudolf had finally broke. He hadn't told anyone else.

[color=c0392b]"I'll start with laying out the obvious: Rudolf Shilage is weak. He is craven. He is dishonest. He is weak. Too weak to stand and meet expectations, too weak to hold faith that he can do anything on his own, too weak to face a fundamental truth if it's painful. That is how I am, and that is how I've always been. A dim spot on the family name, ever since an illness tried to take me in the cradle. I lagged in my study, I lagged in my training, there was no part of being the second son of a knightly house that I didn't make into a struggle."[/color]

They flashed to Esben next. His oldest companion, here from before the very beginning. He, surely, had always known Rudolf was lying. Good liars, the kind that became accomplished SEED Infiltrators, knew all the tells. They knew how to spot dishonesty while it was still brewing in your head. It was how they had learned to iron them out. Esben had skipped that first step. He had the ability to sniff out the truth while always telling it. It wasn't even remotely fair.

[color=c0392b]"So, naturally, knowing this fundamental truth of who I am began to grind me down. For fourteen years I'd lived with it, and despite every effort I had made to the contrary, I could never really get over feeling powerless. Runt of the litter, unable to save himself from loss after loss."[/color] He dismissively waved his hand. [color=c0392b]"Spinning my wheels without end, and watching the world I was living in pass me by. Before I knew it, the call to war had come knocking, and I wasn't up to par. Rather than joining my father and brother on deployment, I ended up being sent here, to Lunaris, to further my studies and training until I might one day become [i]useful[/i]."[/color]

To Chisato, who had narrowly missed his being there by a couple of months. Maybe sooner, depending on how quickly she had been thrown behind enemy lines to swipe enemy bargaining chips. With how fast the Shilage Cavalry liked to move, and how stubborn Rudolf had been about accepting being sent away, it wasn't the biggest stretch of the imagination that Izayoi might have known of one of her approaching enemies quickly— quick enough that the little hare was already inside Edren when Rudolf had finally been convinced to go study on the other end of the country.

[color=c0392b]"As it happens, I was no swifter a learner or bloomer there than I was at home. The breadth of my mind may have expanded, but the depth of my ability was still a shallow puddle. I grew sick of myself. Sick of knowing that I would, inevitably, have nothing to show for all those that placed their sincere hope that I would finally get it all together. That I might become somebody to be proud of. Not at Castle Demet, not at Sagramore Village, nowhere did I see any breakthrough. Anything to pull me out of the pit, as I kept despairing, kept losing, kept failing. I always trend down. So down I ended up going. Into the deepest, darkest pit I could find, where the gods could no longer remind me of their 'cruel ambivalence'."[/color]

He spat the words out, clearly disgusted with his own thoughts, as he slid his gaze to Izayoi now. Izayoi. She had terrified him for so long. Existed in his head as a demon, to twist his skull from the spine and drink the marrow from his still-wet bones. Surely, even after knowing her, breaking bread with her, and sharing the road with her, that fear had somewhat quelled— even if it still flared to life, however briefly, when he met her steely, demanding gaze. In a way, this had started with her. When he had first, in the heat of the moment, decided that her life that terrified him was worth more than his safe, comfortable masquerade. All to try and not let somebody he knew down, one more time.

[color=c0392b]"That lead me to those ruins. A great place to get away from everything that hurts, really. Stony, gloomy, dead, silent. If you want to be alone to wallow in your disillusionment, Old Lunaris has you covered. If a dozen guiding hands can't help you, to the point where they begin to fall away, you may as try camping out in isolation before you trudge home to deliver the bad news to a returning war party."[/color] There was a snap, as the firewood split somewhere in the middle of the blaze. [color=c0392b]"Only you're never [i]alone[/i] there. There's always a taunting voice, beckoning you down, below the earth, towards a chance to rewrite the rules, to take the rails you're stuck on out from under you. It's at the edge of your hearing. You think it might just be your mind playing tricks on you at first. Like you're just jumping at shadows. But as we all saw— the shadows are jumping too. It's all too real. More real than ever, apparently." [/color]

To Miina, to whom he owed more explanation than anyone else here, if only in that he had promised she'd get it when they came. It was hard to read her through the cloak of shyness, stuttering words, and fraying nerves, but she was the only naturalborn mage here— he doubted that she hadn't felt the similarities between Ferdiad's essence, and every big expression of the blackflame Rudolf had brought into the world. With the time they had taken to put the ruins behind them once the demonic jester had scurried off, he was sure that her arcane intuition had ample time to put the requisite pieces together.

[color=c0392b]"Your senses,"[/color] he began, each word heavy and final, impossible to catch and stuff away once they had dropped from him. He looked between her and the two points of light orbiting Esben, a green and purple duo that had pinch-hit for his dumber ideas almost as much as the Red Mage had. They were part of the team too. [color=c0392b]"Don't lie to you. That clown's aether and my own are of the same kind. Demons, the vengeful ghosts of the Lunarian Empire that vanished in a single night. When my faith in the Gods bottomed out, I followed those voices down into the abyss. Into the shadows, until..."[/color]

The briefest glance to Eliane. In truth, there seemed nobody in the world less concerned with what was going on regarding Rudolf's unholy bent and insincerity as her— she was always, simply, assured that he was working towards the same goal as her, and that it was enough that he contributed to her eventual victory, for the glory of Skael. He wished he had that in himself. For all he weaselishly grumbled in his own mind about the way she wielded that self-assurance, it was also true that he wished he could be more like her, in that simple, pure way.

He stared into his palm again, his expression a stony, austere knot. Tight around the eyes, mouth a hard, dispassionate line, he would throttle that little fool if he could ever walk back to that moment of nadir and undo this mess he'd made of his future. But the depths had taken it from him. He had given it away. With that same upturned hand, he had held out his soul, his life, and his fate. He had been a beggar. A servant. A knight swearing fealty. A vagrant accepting alms. A man at the end of his rope, making a payment in quiet desperation. All of these. None of them.

There it was again. That knot in the gut, like they had all stabbed him while he had weaved his whinging tale.

[color=c0392b]"I forged a contract with the demon that now resides within me. They are not manifest the way Ferdiad is, but they [i]are[/i] the source of the black fire that stains my sword, my armor, and my aether. I burn away at the luck that was ordained to me and house its soul upon my own, our essence intertwined. In exchange for my ties to Mother Etro's will, I gained the power to do what you all have seen me do. Obviously, right?"[/color] A rueful chuckle came as he shook his head. [color=c0392b]"It's not through any mundane means that a reedy half-rate son of cavalry raiders can summon a barrier strong enough to withstand a blow from Izayoi's teacher wielding the greatest blade Kurogane produced, or that he can put a spear through the scales of Leviathan, or that he throws around Black Magic so primordial it can structurally break down Materia for greater effect at the cost of rendering it inert, or that he could throw a ball of clinging black fire [i]into his own brother's face because he's mad he's still the nail and not the hammer and he thinks nothing's changed.[/i]"[/color]

Without realizing it, the bitter, loathsome tone in his voice had grown stronger, fiercer, [i]rawer[/i], until he was all but shouting his final words. His veins throbbed behind his skin, and the burns felt newly hot, remembering the fire he had forced through his eyes when he began to use his own blood as fuel. One breath, shaking, quivering. A second, likely saving him from spewing his guts out right in front of dinner. A third...

And he grew still.

[color=c0392b]"[i]That's[/i] why I was warning you all away from paying anything in there any heed. I made that mistake already, and now I am a walking totem of ill omen. Right down to the fibers of my being. That's the dramatic way of saying it— the plainer way is that you've all been trusting a craven idiot with your lives, the whole way through."[/color]

He regarded the group as a whole hollowly. At this point, he would live with whatever they made of this— if Galahad were any indication, it just as well might have ended up that the most foolish part he had played in it all was of the man too scared to tell the truth. If that was he case, he gave up. If they reacted the way he'd feared, and excised him from the group, he could accept that too. It didn't really matter, did it? He'd finally put it out into the open. He had cast another die, the way he had when he first forged the pact, when he had first accepted the redirected call to action, when he had first revealed that something was very, very [i]wrong[/i] with him.

If he had come up snake eyes on all of them, so be it. What was done was done. He had boiled the whole thing down, only leaving the complete basics.

[color=c0392b]"I turned my back on the light we're now fighting to save because I was a scared, hurt child, looking to appease my own ego. There's no justification at the end of this. I wanted to feel like I could win. There's no misunderstood or misapplied noble intent. I wanted to tell the way of the world to go to hell if it kept letting me lose. Just a stupid boy with a stupid decision made for the stupidest reasons. I'm not asking any of you to pity me. Don't get it twisted. I'm not a victim. I made my bed and I've been lying in it for five years. This isn't about any reconciliation or sympathy. It's about getting this useless lie off my back. I was selfish then, I was selfish when I told you all to believe I was just some bum from a swordsman village, and I'm being selfish now."[/color]

He barely registered his own words, but out they came. Was this catharsis? He hadn't felt much when he had first told Galahad most of the story. He'd chalked it up to the Knight-Dragoon's acceptance and reassurance, in hindsight a practical choice to keep an able sword arm around when he had lost so many in the span of a week. But maybe this empty feeling was that 'lightness' he'd always heard it described as. Maybe the weight coming off his shoulders had only revealed a fine, unrecognizable powder beneath, this lie a grindstone for the fragments of his life that he had hid beneath it. What else could possibly be under there, at this point?

[color=c0392b]"What else. As far as I'm aware, the clown manifesting the way he did is a very recent development."[/color] he dully explained, noting Izayoi's [i]other[/i] demand from their skirmish near the Pillar. [color=c0392b]"My passenger knew of him previously, though they were adamant that any of them popping up and putting claws to our necks was on the same tier as waking up next to a river and having a face-to-face chat with Danube herself. It was the whole reason they took residence as a shadow overlaid onto my soul. And I suspect their taking my luck as payment for these ill-gotten gains has something to do with it too— luck is the Divine ordaining the flow of the world. Black Magic is rooted in destruction. Like we discussed, I'm not a 'proper' mage. I can make vague guesses and associations, and I was [i]really[/i] hoping I'd be able to confront all this with more answers than I have."[/color]

He wiped his hand against the red of his armor's tabard. He had drawn blood when his fury spiked a few paragraphs ago.

[color=c0392b]"But as whatever's even [i]left[/i] of my luck has it, I've now got more questions."[/color]

He sat back, pressing his spine into the trunk of the nearer tree. His arms folded across his chest, and he looked up, away from everyone, towards the moon as it hung in the sky overhead. The nightfolk, they were sometimes called, so venerated that thing...

[color=c0392b]"I imagine there's also some you all have that I've missed while [i]indulging[/i] in writing my little autobiography. Go ahead and hit me. Do your worst. If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that I just [i]love[/i] talking. Let's break it all down while we have the time. Once we hit the border, I imagine more immediate deceit's going to take the stage from me."[/color]