The Absent

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Kossathi blood and burning flesh permeated the air as the last of the Kossith retreated from Haven - the ground was cracked and dry, crunching beneath his feet before ambient blooms seeded everywhere that Diarmad stepped. Smoke still clung to the trees like a mourning veil, and he walked through it - unfettered and unafraid of the retreating, horned beasts. His hands, blackened at the fingertips, hovered outstretched ahead of him as vines lashed and entangled the wailing beasts of men.

"Too slow," he murmured, voice like ash over coals. "Too proud. You should have run when she gave you the chance." He crouched beside one of them - a brute whose skin now peeled in wet layers, sloughing from muscle already dissolving into mush. Necrosis crept like a tide, leaving behind glistening bone and the sour stench of the Kossith's failure. The eyes were cloudy now, pupils rolling as milky film spun across them like trapped oil on water.

Diarmad remembered Kiaransalee - the agony, the betrayal, the debt - etched into the marrow of his bones. The dark remembered him well, but she and these Kossith were a reminder that there were many paths to walk through the night. If the Dark One wished to claim the genath'asir, he would find that Diarmad was for himself alone.

"You’ll live," he whispered, tilting his head with characteristic and malevolent deadpan. "Longer than any mortal ought to. As your lungs collapse, my rot will breathe for you. As your blood blackens, I’ll flow in your veins. Until, one by one, every cell forgets your name and remembers only mine."

And then it began as the red bloom took root beneath the brute’s ribs, blooming outward in slow, spiraling corruption. Not exactly a flame, but the illusion of it - threadlike bacterial fronds igniting through the body like living embers. Capillaries burst into crimson webs. Skin blistered and calcified as the microflora, hungry and engineered through Diarmad's instinct, found their host and made it a hive.

"Live in agony." Their screams rang sharp and bright - then snuffed to a wet choke as mycelial threads sprouted through their throats, blooming into corpse-pale fungi that spread across the jaw like lichen. Diarmad rose, indifferent, already stepping into the smoke again. Into the earth they sank, their corpse-blooms all that remained visible, peaking from the ground. Diarmad was in the air, in the trees and wherever warmth lingered, wherever breath dared persist - he followed. “That is the last of them,” he said, looking to Njal as Diarmad rose to his feet - satisfied with his work, though there was little inflection to his candor to indicate as much.

"I hear nothing from the South." Diarmad commented, "Even the trees go quiet at the border of Itzcoatal." The genath'asir had always been curious, it'd get him killed someday, fortunately today was not that day.

A weathered breath fell from Diarmad's frame, a rattling sound that persisted even after the healing. Again and again he saw her face, in the waking hours, in his dreams, he felt her threads slipping under his skin, heard the question repeated on a loop.

Do you want to be Gray, Diarmad?

Now and then her face would change, while he slept she'd trade places with Belladonna, Deimos, or Njal. Sometimes Agnes or even Prospero, but the pain was always the same, the memories beyond the faces unchanging. He'd tried draughts, meditating, rituals, but the dreams always returned. The Dark One had turned his gaze upon him since his return, and as the genath'asir watched the Kossith mill about within their fortifications, he looked for the connection between that night.

cw: violence, torture Softly, softly from the shadows.

A suffocating air permeated the chamber, thick with shadows that slithered and curled about like a living thing. The only light came from the strands of gossamer-thin silver webbing stretching across the ceiling, glowing faintly. From these webs, you’re suspended, a traitor struggling, limbs caught in silken strands holding you like iron. Your breath comes in ragged gasps, but even in this, the air is thin and laced with something sickly sweet - it makes your thoughts sluggish, and your body tremble. 

She steps from the darkness next, through shadows that curl around her like an old friend. She’s pale, with black curls frame, a face that’s far too composed - high bangs and a look that speaks of endless calculation. You might have noticed her before, clearing plates in the Tower, purchasing grain in Westreach, kneeling at the altars of Hestia’s Cove. A vestal somedays, a traveler others. 

"Do you know what happens when a Darkfriend betrays their oaths?" she asked, her voice smooth as glass, sharp as the edge of a knife.

You could not speak, your jaw tightens, the webs - tethered through your skin, your limbs, your very essence - constrict as you’re stretched further apart. Drawn and quartered. “Did you think you could run from this? That the Dark One would simply forget? You are His. Ours. Mine.” She stepped close enough to breathe against your ragged frame, “Erased… enthralled… consumed… no more turns… no more chances.”

She exhaled, almost amused. With a flick of her fingers, the webs tightened - not just binding, but digging in deeper, slicing like a thousand tiny blades. A strangled cry escaped your lips, even you could not stop it.

“Oh, but you will serve - and you will suffer - but you will not be allowed to die until your pain has served its purpose.” She lifted a hand, and suddenly, a cold unlike any mortal winter crawled up your veins. Not the crisp bite of frost, nor the merciful numbness of deep freeze - something else - a suffocating, creeping emptiness, like your very soul was being bled dry. 

You convulse, and your breath catches in your throat. 

“Neither light nor dark.” She whispered. “Not truly alive, tell me, would you like to be Gray?”

You thrash, you beg, you plea and the webs constrict. 

She asked again before the shadows kissed her and swept her away, smiling, pleased.

“Would you like to be Gray?”

The air was so sickly-sweet that it clung to the back of Diarmad's throat like spoiled honey. His limbs hung slack in the silken strands that bound him, but every breath, every twitch sent a ripple of pain through his body - the genath'asir was many things, had done worse but he wasn't a sadist - he was reformed to walk this path. To stand apart from the Dark One's influence, he should have known that it would come with consequences.

He had lost track of time, but he heard the tide overhead, smelled the ocean, saw the water as it dripped from the molded stones of the ceiling. The cold had seeped deep, past skin and sinew, curling around his bones, whispering something worse than death. Somewhere nearby, a ragged breath. A shudder. The faintest stir of movement.

He forced his head up. The web shifted slightly, tightening, biting. It took all his will not to groan. A genasi hung to his left, a druid to his right... Based on the woman's words, he'd understood that the man must be a darkfriend, and the woman had a similar thought to him. Their bodies, pale and trembling, were caught in the same gossamer chains that held him. His voice came rough, cracked. "Still alive?"

There were curses in this world that even he had not seen, but there were rumours from the Age of Darkness of Forsaken with the power to create something truly vile - but all things had conditions. "Whatever she asks, don’t say yes."