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Sometimes, Vylad feels like he is burning from the inside out.
Little tendrils of fire will snake from his back and chest, from the stab wound, throughout his body. They’ll ensnare his joints, freeze his muscles, make it incredibly difficult to move quickly and quietly.
Once when it was raining, Aphmau said she could see steam rising off of him.
The fire tears through him ferociously, and some days it’s the Nether calling him to come back home but he obviously can’t do that and so the flames inside him only grow hotter. He’d made a somewhat impressive amount of enemies within the Nether, and the last time he was there he was held prisoner for what he was told was over 15 years, and he can’t go back there he can’t—
Other days, Vylad wakes up and he almost feels human again. A fresh forest breeze ruffles his hair gently, cooling his skin and inviting him into the depths of the trees. He feels like a child again, even allows a small smile escape onto his face as he hears the birds sing sweetly at the first sign of light.
Those are the good days.
Vylad is 8 years old and his father has just told him for the first time that he would kill Vylad’s biological father if he ever found him.
He’s too young to completely understand. He thinks it’s a joke at first. Then he notices the frigid glare, devoid of emotion, that is gracing his father’s eyes and he knows that he’s telling the truth.
As Vylad gets older, his father begins to grow less tolerant of him. He starts getting in trouble for leaving his book in the wrong place, for stumbling over words, for getting dirty after playing with Garroth in the courtyard.
He’s locked in his room for 2 days after Zane told their father that Vylad had pushed him over in the mud (he had tripped).
In those 2 days, he was only brought food once. He’s pretty sure that his father had forgotten about him.
Sometimes, Vylad wonders if Garte hates him just as much as he despises Vylad’s real father.
Vylad is 19 and he’s been walking through the forest for 3 days.
He’s completely lost.
Somehow, every direction he walks, he ends up back in the same clearing, and he’s growing extremely frustrated. He ran out of water on the second day, and food is difficult to come by given the oddly skittish nature of the wildlife.
Finally, the evening of the fourth day, Vylad runs into an old woman who kindly offers him shelter in her extremely secluded house. He’s a bit desperate at this point, so he agrees and decides he doesn’t regret it as soon as she places a warm bowl of soup in his hands.
The woman introduces herself as Hyria. She’s a witch, she says, but Vylad could tell that based on the pure magical energy he could feel surrounding her. She recognizes what he is, too. But she doesn’t care, and for that Vylad is incredibly grateful.
He stays with Hyria for a while. She helps him understand what he is just a little bit more, and she says that he’s not a monster. (He’s not quite sure he believes her.)
Just before she opens a path for Vylad to leave the forest, Hyria asks him a favor. She wants him to take a fancy magical staff and put it in a place that needs the blessing of Irene.
The staff is cold in his grip, and it radiates a strange and powerful energy that intrigues him.
He agrees.
Often, Vylad doesn’t feel like he really left the Nether. It feels like he’d been there for eons, slowly deteriorating in his tiny isolated cell.
Sometimes he asks himself if it was worth it to close the portal for Aphmau. He eventually decides that he doesn’t care, because it won’t change anything.
On bad days Vylad will open his eyes and see fire surrounding him. The water tumbling through nearby rivers or creeks transforms into scorching lava. Trees twist together to form monstrous formations of fiery red rocks, and the sky goes dark. It rains ash.
He absently wonders if he’ll ever wake up from this nightmare. It slowly becomes more difficult to distinguish delusion from reality. He hides his face with his scarf, covers his ears, and slowly sinks to the ground. He stays there until the skies return to a brilliant blue.
Those are the bad days.
Vylad sighs. The fire burning through him returns.
Vylad is 12 years old and Zane grows more cold and twisted with each passing day. He has begun to wear a mask everywhere and Garte starts sending him on expeditions that cause him to return with a bloodied sword and increasingly empty eyes.
When they were young, Zane was the spitting image of Zianna, and Garroth took after Garte. Now, when Vylad looks at Zane all he can see is his father’s unforgiving glare.
He hears the rumors begin to spread of the coldhearted nature of the middle Ro’meave child. He does nothing to stop them.
Vylad grows closer with Garroth. He’s always there when Vylad wants to tell him about the new book he just read, or when he’s upset because their father hasn’t acknowledged him in a week, or when he wants to go explore the forest. Garroth tells Vylad about the cute girl he saw in the city that day, asks him if he wants to train, and when he panics because their father mentioned him getting married soon Vylad is there to comfort him.
They start to rely on each other. Zane notices.
Vylad has been stuck in the Nether for… he’s not really sure how long. Time passes differently there, each second and minute and hour stretching into an eternity.
Laurance is the only one willing to talk to him when the others aren’t trying to get information from him. He’s nice, and Vylad regrets the fact that he was trapped too when he closed the portal. Laurance asks him about possible exits from the Nether besides a portal; Vylad doesn’t say anything because he knows that the others are always listening, but Laurance doesn’t care. He tells Vylad that they will escape together someday, and Vylad is naïve enough to believe him, for a little while.
Just before Laurance leaves with the wyvern, he tells Vylad that he’ll come back for him.
He won’t.
Vylad doesn’t blame him.
Vylad has been watching over Phoenix Drop for a couple weeks now. He’d used the staff there and it had summoned an amnesic girl, which was unexpected but not unwelcome once he realized she had healing powers.
Sometimes he wonders if Aphmau is actually Irene, or if she’s something else entirely.
Garroth continues to hide his face.
Time passes. Vylad locates the son of the original lord and decides that Aphmau would be the most equipped to take care of him. He’s right.
Vylad is worried that Zane will find Garroth now that Pheonix Drop is growing in size and power.
He waits.
Vylad is 15 and he’s dying.
It hurts a lot more than he expected. Fire burns through his body, the obsidian sword driven through him glittering with demonic power. He’s been stabbed in the back, figuratively and quite literally.
He wonders if he’ll go to heaven, or some version of it. He’s scared.
His vision is starting to fade.
Through the window, Vylad can tell that it’s a nice day outside. He wonders why, of all things to be thinking about, that’s what he’s focusing on.
He’s on the ground, doesn’t have enough strength to move. His hands are red.
The last thing Vylad sees before he dies is a single blue eye glittering coldly at him. There’s no remorse in his brother’s face.
Vylad feels at home in the trees. There’s something about being in the forest that speaks to him in a way nothing has before.
It’s not like the violent pulling of the Nether, always present in the back of his mind. It’s a gentle beckoning, that calls him to dip his hands in the rushing water of a nearby river, or climb that gnarled tree, or just run, bow grasped tightly in hand.
Trees, animals, deadly berries and beautiful flowers, large roots and detached branches, they all pass him by as he flies through the forest. He can hear the beautiful chirp of a nearby songbird, and he almost feels like he could laugh.
The Nether might call to me, he thinks to himself, but it will NEVER be where I belong.
Vylad has been held prisoner in the Nether for years now.
Sometimes, he wants to die. Reach that afterlife that he wasn’t able to before.
But it’s futile, because even though he never became truly immortal—he would have had to kill Garroth and the thought of that alone made him sick—Shadow Knights can’t be killed in the Nether regardless.
(He’s tested the theory for himself a couple times).
He’s done with staring at the wall every hour of every day, unable to tell the amount of time passed, waiting for something, anything to happen.
He’s done with waiting for Laurance to come back, because he isn’t. Vylad will not be mad at him for the unfulfilled promise, because he wouldn’t have come back for himself either.
What he wants to do is see trees, feel the touch of the sun and the wind on his face, swim in a creek. Even just feel cold for once, rather than the scorching stuffiness that constantly fills the Nether, suffocating him and stealing the air from his lungs.
He’s tired.
Vylad is 15 and he is dead.
When he wakes, all he sees is red, and his body burns. He thinks that he’s probably not in heaven. Hell, then?
He realizes that he’s still breathing. When he puts his hand on his wrist, he feels a pulse there. That’s not right, is it? Dead people don’t have beating hearts.
To double check he puts his hand to his chest and instead of receiving confirmation that he had a heartbeat, he instead felt the burning hot texture of something he was definitely not wearing before he died.
Lifting his arms to inspect, he discovers that he’s wearing armor. It’s ugly and red and uncomfortable and hot, but it fits perfectly like it was made just for him.
Upon closer inspection he realizes that amidst the angry red, small strands of blue entwine his arms and legs. He’s given a strong impression of twisting rivers, and it gives him a moment of solace despite the confusion and fear rattling around his head.
His eye feels weird.
It takes him a long while, but eventually Vylad is able to get up. When he does, all he can see is red in every direction, waterfalls of lava spilling over steaming red rocks and horrific perversions of hills twisting around the landscape.
He calls out, waiting for help, but nobody answers him.
In the distance, he can see a castle (fortress?) made of the same red rock as everything else. He begins to stumble his way in that direction (he can’t tell if it’s east or north or south or west because there’s no sun and he’s starting to panic more now).
His way is blocked by a small stream of lava. He feels like he’s going to be burned alive (alive? dead?) by the heat, but somehow his body isn’t failing him.
There’s a small patch of red sand that’s been turned glassy from the temperature. Leaning over, Vylad can see his reflection, kind of.
His right eye is cracked and red, unhuman. Monstrous.
He screams.
Laurance and Vylad stand together on the beach, feet digging into the sand, taste of salt on their tongues and an ocean breeze gently blowing Vylad’s scarf.
Ever since they reached the island, Laurance and Vylad have been meditating together every morning and night on the beach. Laurance has made real progress in controlling his Shadow Knight form and Vylad is proud of him for it.
They’ve grown closer, over the weeks. Sometimes they talk about the Nether and what it means to have been reborn there. Other times they talk for hours about inconsequential topics, because they both know they need a distraction. Then there are the days where they talk about nothing at all.
The sun is beginning to set over the horizon. It showers the sky in beautiful, fiery oranges and reds. Vylad’s ocarina rests by their feet, his fingers tired after having played it for so long.
Laurance reaches for Vylad’s hand. He reaches back.
The sky isn’t an angry red. In fact, the color creates a rather beautiful glow in contrast with the crystal clear, icy blue water.
The burning heat in Vylad’s chest subsides.
It’s moments like these that remind him he’s still partly human. Laurance has helped Vylad in that regard just as much as Vylad helped Laurance with control. Truthfully, they’d grown to rely on one another.
With the lack of daylight, Vylad’s beginning to feel a little cold. He leans his head on Laurance’s shoulder.
For the first time since he died, he truly feels at peace.