you have forsaken all the love you've taken
sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
During the years that Beqanna was plunged into darkness, Dacian, too, had allowed himself to be swallowed in shadow.
Being allowed to walk through the gates of the afterlife had always felt like some kind of trick, and every step he took while among the living was guarded, like he expected the ground to crumble beneath him and leave him standing in the land of the dead again. The eclipse had been an unsettling thing, then, and it planted an unease in his chest that he simply could not shake.
Much as he could not shake the idea that it was partially his fault.
He was not one for brash decisions, but that is exactly what going to the mountain when Carnage called them had been. It had been stupid to think the mission was anything other than exactly what it was—a Sisyphean task, a breath of entertainment for their resident dark god, to watch all the different ways they might fail.
He did not like being the playing piece in anyone's chess game, but the idea that their excursion had played a part in unleashing the creatures that accompanied the eclipse had been enough to send him back to the darkest depths that he could find. Away from Silver Cove, and away from even Aurorae, the current object of his obsession. It was all entirely uncharacteristic of him, but he did not know what those creatures were, and should they have been some kind of hellhound meant to drag him back to the afterlife he had every intention of evading them for as long as possible.
When the sun returned it was met with caution, and it would be a long while before he dared venture into the light again.
Today is the day, he decides, though there is no special reason for it.
The shadows did not crawl the way they once had, did not tremble and breathe like they had during the endless night. They shuddered only with the old monsters that have always been there, since Beqanna has never been an especially tame or docile creature. Today when he haunts the treeline he finally breaks away from it, to find where the sunlight glitters off the surface of the river.
He looks the same as he always had—a rich, dark bay, though his eyes seem harder, the set of his jaw more tense, if either of those things were at all possible. From the top of his neck and across his back and haunches there is an armor of obsidian positioned in a barding-like fashion, creeping across his face and down the slant of his cheeks. At the back of his throat he can feel the familiar fire, can taste the lingering smoke of it; it has not been used in what feels like ages, but he tempers that inferno of longing, for now.
And, much as he would have before, he largely ignores anyone that happens to be nearby, save for a flickering glance in their direction only to indicate that he saw them.
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking
nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on