Eik strives to always act according to his values and this is the sturdiness on display to those who do not really know him all that well. This is the man of quiet conviction that most of the world sees- and it is convincing because it is mostly built on truth. Only those close to him (or those rare kindred spirits) see the dark smoke roiling in his eyes, and the very closest might even hear the uncertain quiver of his heart.
On his own for long enough, Eik is not at all stable. Wild thoughts take flight and take him over- away flies his sense of time, away flies his sense of self. He'll beat himself bloody, and call it a bandage. Yet he needs a bit of this instability because there is a certain strength in it too, a foundation in the chaos that is more enduring than anything built on hope and dreams and all that other enticing, fluffy bullshit. It is the endless balancing act of his existence- the need for solitude and the need for society. All this to say that he is stable, in his own way. But that stability is derived from wild instability.
He never promised logic to anyone.
“If the gods abandon us, we’ll find another way.” She speaks with complete and total certainty. Eik does not find her words optimistic or naïve at all. She is strong, they are strong together, and if they die trying their strength will be a torch to be picked up and carried by those who come next. He nods because Calliope told him in the heart of the storm to Have Faith and he took her words to heart even though she didn’t say in what or who.
When Seraphina touches him on the shoulder he feels... nervous. Something is different between them. What before had felt so effortless now is overwrought with so much analyzing, thinking, remembering and dreaming. He supposes the truth of it is that they’re both changing, and change is uncomfortable—but there’s something else there in the way she won’t meet his eyes and the apprehension that grows and growls in the pit of his stomach, like velvet bile, like there’s a dark revelation hiding in wait or a storm about to break… it could be something good too, something golden, but. he was never an optimist. And anyway- has she ever touched him like this before? Outside of the arena?
He reaches to her instinctively in turn. Her scent is different in this proximity, intimate in a way he had not noticed after their spar, with blood pounding in his ears and the both of them slick with sweat. It is better when she looks at him again, even when his words- nothing good comes of their meddling- cast a shadow across her eyes in a way that claws at his stomach. But he stands behind what has been spoken, stubborn even in what may wound a friend, just a little.
“What happened, when you met the god?”
He is grateful she is no longer touching him, so she won’t feel the ripple of uncertainty that clenches and unclenches across his weathered body. As he remembers, he loses track of their surroundings. The sky above them, the ground beneath, the impersonal embrace of the wind, they all fall away to her eyes, blue and gold.
He takes a deep breath. "I don't... I don't remember. I think we spoke for a very long time." It was not really speaking as we think of it. The god was inside his head, showing pictures and thoughts and stories. The feeling could only be described as being ripped out of your body and shoved into someone else's- uncomfortable, nauseating, and yet so very captivating. The awareness of time passing had faded close to nonexistence in that sacred glen- it could have been minutes or it could have been years. Surely it was something in between, but he couldn't say for certain.
"When I try to remember the details, there's... a wall." Not so much a wall but the edge of a cliff, no bottom in sight. The only way to see what lies in the darkness would be to jump, and he's just not ready to do that until he knows he'll be able to come back. Eik is brave in many ways, but he is foremost a survivor, and sometimes that takes cowardice.
Although he doesn't remember the particulars, he has broad-brush memories of what it felt like. He remembers the sensation of his mind being blown wide open. All the thoughts swimming in his head, all the possibilities, all the winding paths before him, amplified and repeated in beautiful, cyclical, pulsing patterns. The most complicated ideas were explained in a matter of letters or a few delicate brushstrokes or even just a single note whistled low and true.
For a moment greater than the trappings of time, he was as omnipotent as a god. all the doors were thrown open.
And the moment ended, and all the doors slammed shut. "He answered all my questions, even the ones I didn’t think to ask. He told me the secrets of the universe. When I opened my eyes." The words catch in his throat and he has that noose-around-the-neck feeling as his muscles tighten in resistance to the memories. Unwavering blue and gold keep him from losing himself. He smells the soot and horseflesh and recalls that day in the library with Seraphina where she had asked with the slightest gentleness, with the greatest effect- “Are you alright, Eik?” Her voice rings out in his mind as clear as if they were there in that candlelit room once more, the moon watching them through the bare window. Had they ever been strangers?
“Are you alright, Eik?”
In a time where everything seemed simpler and pure and painted soft and innocent with retrospective. Memory is a weak and untrustworthy and thing. He clings to it. He pushes it away. Had they ever been children?
“Are you alright, Eik?”
The man who replied is different from the Eik before her now, but his words still echo true- “I- I don't like to remember, sometimes.” And Burning One, how has she changed as her kingdom bled and her gods took form to walk the earth?
Even blue and gold are lost to him now as his mind replays memories. He used to see them every time he closed his eyes, but now they only come to him in dreams. "My memories were gone and the snow turned to ash. Everything was burning." he would discover not just the taiga but the tundra too(-- have you ever seen ice burn?) The fire raged for days consuming earth and beast alike. Once its enormous appetite was sated, it simply sputtered out and left in its wake a cavernous silence beyond description. Not a single sound other than the soft huff of his breath. “Everything. There was nothing I could do.” Eik had been spared only because his curiosity had pushed him to the farthest edges of the forest, where he met the one-eyed god, and his cowardice kept him from diving too deep into the flames in search of friends and family.
For a time in that sacred place he had all the answers and they were ripped away in such a violent way that more questions grew from the scar tissue. Questions innocent as a child’s, mostly, but darker ones too. And the feelings that came afterwards- his mind had been awakened to emotions he had never felt before, but upon opening his eyes he had lost the words to describe what it was he was experiencing. It would not be until later that they all crystalized into different colors of the same thing. Guilt.
(It must have been my fault, I must have done something, said something, thought something. It was me who struck the match that started the fire that burned the world. Me with eyes closed, with infinity in my veins and a fire too big for the heart of one man.)
It should give Eik a sense of relief to tell his story, but he only feels more anxious in the quiet that follows. He is sharply aware there is no real conclusion, no takeaway, no answers to be found in the wake of the gods’ interference. Sometimes he wonders if all his memories, not just those of his divine encounter but all the years before it, are all just the paper-cutout constructs of a madman. What hurts the most is that he’ll never know.
“Change is coming…” He repeats the omen because he doesn’t know what else to say. He is quiet a few seconds more and in this time he’s suddenly aware once again of the mournful sky above them and the breeze tugging at his tail. Where does it come from and where does it go? “Do you ever wish you could just turn away from it all. Start over someplace new.” It may be a poor attempt at deflecting attention from himself, but he thinks she’ll understand. Besides, his thoughts are genuinely on Ravos and the Rift and all the other realms out there. There must be a quiet place where the gods can’t follow. This world is so vast, surely there’s some peace left to find.
It did me good to have a secret,
E I K
which I carried within me like a conviction and like a seed.
On his own for long enough, Eik is not at all stable. Wild thoughts take flight and take him over- away flies his sense of time, away flies his sense of self. He'll beat himself bloody, and call it a bandage. Yet he needs a bit of this instability because there is a certain strength in it too, a foundation in the chaos that is more enduring than anything built on hope and dreams and all that other enticing, fluffy bullshit. It is the endless balancing act of his existence- the need for solitude and the need for society. All this to say that he is stable, in his own way. But that stability is derived from wild instability.
He never promised logic to anyone.
“If the gods abandon us, we’ll find another way.” She speaks with complete and total certainty. Eik does not find her words optimistic or naïve at all. She is strong, they are strong together, and if they die trying their strength will be a torch to be picked up and carried by those who come next. He nods because Calliope told him in the heart of the storm to Have Faith and he took her words to heart even though she didn’t say in what or who.
When Seraphina touches him on the shoulder he feels... nervous. Something is different between them. What before had felt so effortless now is overwrought with so much analyzing, thinking, remembering and dreaming. He supposes the truth of it is that they’re both changing, and change is uncomfortable—but there’s something else there in the way she won’t meet his eyes and the apprehension that grows and growls in the pit of his stomach, like velvet bile, like there’s a dark revelation hiding in wait or a storm about to break… it could be something good too, something golden, but. he was never an optimist. And anyway- has she ever touched him like this before? Outside of the arena?
He reaches to her instinctively in turn. Her scent is different in this proximity, intimate in a way he had not noticed after their spar, with blood pounding in his ears and the both of them slick with sweat. It is better when she looks at him again, even when his words- nothing good comes of their meddling- cast a shadow across her eyes in a way that claws at his stomach. But he stands behind what has been spoken, stubborn even in what may wound a friend, just a little.
“What happened, when you met the god?”
He is grateful she is no longer touching him, so she won’t feel the ripple of uncertainty that clenches and unclenches across his weathered body. As he remembers, he loses track of their surroundings. The sky above them, the ground beneath, the impersonal embrace of the wind, they all fall away to her eyes, blue and gold.
He takes a deep breath. "I don't... I don't remember. I think we spoke for a very long time." It was not really speaking as we think of it. The god was inside his head, showing pictures and thoughts and stories. The feeling could only be described as being ripped out of your body and shoved into someone else's- uncomfortable, nauseating, and yet so very captivating. The awareness of time passing had faded close to nonexistence in that sacred glen- it could have been minutes or it could have been years. Surely it was something in between, but he couldn't say for certain.
"When I try to remember the details, there's... a wall." Not so much a wall but the edge of a cliff, no bottom in sight. The only way to see what lies in the darkness would be to jump, and he's just not ready to do that until he knows he'll be able to come back. Eik is brave in many ways, but he is foremost a survivor, and sometimes that takes cowardice.
Although he doesn't remember the particulars, he has broad-brush memories of what it felt like. He remembers the sensation of his mind being blown wide open. All the thoughts swimming in his head, all the possibilities, all the winding paths before him, amplified and repeated in beautiful, cyclical, pulsing patterns. The most complicated ideas were explained in a matter of letters or a few delicate brushstrokes or even just a single note whistled low and true.
For a moment greater than the trappings of time, he was as omnipotent as a god. all the doors were thrown open.
And the moment ended, and all the doors slammed shut. "He answered all my questions, even the ones I didn’t think to ask. He told me the secrets of the universe. When I opened my eyes." The words catch in his throat and he has that noose-around-the-neck feeling as his muscles tighten in resistance to the memories. Unwavering blue and gold keep him from losing himself. He smells the soot and horseflesh and recalls that day in the library with Seraphina where she had asked with the slightest gentleness, with the greatest effect- “Are you alright, Eik?” Her voice rings out in his mind as clear as if they were there in that candlelit room once more, the moon watching them through the bare window. Had they ever been strangers?
“Are you alright, Eik?”
In a time where everything seemed simpler and pure and painted soft and innocent with retrospective. Memory is a weak and untrustworthy and thing. He clings to it. He pushes it away. Had they ever been children?
“Are you alright, Eik?”
The man who replied is different from the Eik before her now, but his words still echo true- “I- I don't like to remember, sometimes.” And Burning One, how has she changed as her kingdom bled and her gods took form to walk the earth?
Even blue and gold are lost to him now as his mind replays memories. He used to see them every time he closed his eyes, but now they only come to him in dreams. "My memories were gone and the snow turned to ash. Everything was burning." he would discover not just the taiga but the tundra too(-- have you ever seen ice burn?) The fire raged for days consuming earth and beast alike. Once its enormous appetite was sated, it simply sputtered out and left in its wake a cavernous silence beyond description. Not a single sound other than the soft huff of his breath. “Everything. There was nothing I could do.” Eik had been spared only because his curiosity had pushed him to the farthest edges of the forest, where he met the one-eyed god, and his cowardice kept him from diving too deep into the flames in search of friends and family.
For a time in that sacred place he had all the answers and they were ripped away in such a violent way that more questions grew from the scar tissue. Questions innocent as a child’s, mostly, but darker ones too. And the feelings that came afterwards- his mind had been awakened to emotions he had never felt before, but upon opening his eyes he had lost the words to describe what it was he was experiencing. It would not be until later that they all crystalized into different colors of the same thing. Guilt.
(It must have been my fault, I must have done something, said something, thought something. It was me who struck the match that started the fire that burned the world. Me with eyes closed, with infinity in my veins and a fire too big for the heart of one man.)
It should give Eik a sense of relief to tell his story, but he only feels more anxious in the quiet that follows. He is sharply aware there is no real conclusion, no takeaway, no answers to be found in the wake of the gods’ interference. Sometimes he wonders if all his memories, not just those of his divine encounter but all the years before it, are all just the paper-cutout constructs of a madman. What hurts the most is that he’ll never know.
“Change is coming…” He repeats the omen because he doesn’t know what else to say. He is quiet a few seconds more and in this time he’s suddenly aware once again of the mournful sky above them and the breeze tugging at his tail. Where does it come from and where does it go? “Do you ever wish you could just turn away from it all. Start over someplace new.” It may be a poor attempt at deflecting attention from himself, but he thinks she’ll understand. Besides, his thoughts are genuinely on Ravos and the Rift and all the other realms out there. There must be a quiet place where the gods can’t follow. This world is so vast, surely there’s some peace left to find.
It did me good to have a secret,
E I K
which I carried within me like a conviction and like a seed.
art by Pherigo
@
Time makes fools of us all
