Enver collapses when finally released, the last fingers of pain in his scalp receding. His feet harder to unclothe with a knife than the rest of him, so wherever he wound up was more a benefit in the moment for them. He's left surrounded by the remains of his robes, aware of every gaze in the dark, even ones he is certain he cannot see, wanting nothing more than to make himself smaller, but something in him fights that desire to shrink.
It doesn't leave him in a very defiant stance, as those feelings remain very much at war within him. The demand to be strong and fight back has very few defenses against the suffocating terror of what may be about to happen to him. Perhaps not on the altar, but at this point it is one more thing in the face of so many witnesses. Some twisted mirror image, in his mind, of a king uncermoniously dethroned. Reflected in a hellscape and the parts acted out by horrors. Only instead of it ending with his head on a pike -- this.
The Dark Urge's voice comes down on the image forming around him like the crunch of a blade, and he almost freezes again.
Not just because visually, for just a second, it looks like he is stepping off into nothing.
But the warning, even if unspoken, is clear to him immediately. Because perhaps too much of this feels too much like Avernus that he is finding something familiar. Something he doesn't want but in the center of that he found a way to survive, and he has to hold onto that right now.
He rises just as he feels in the air that a second longer and someone would have moved to correct him. He doesn't know what he would have done if that happened, how he would have reacted. But he follows, uncertain of anything but the Dark Urge as a central focus, the one part of this landscape he fully recognizes. The sound of his bare feet on smooth stone echoes and each step downward sends that anxiety in his stomach sinking further.
He avoids the stream in the center, and his stomach turns. He has to ignore it, even more aware of how straight he has to keep his gait, not to betray another weakness and very cognizant of the fact that if he falls over the side he has no idea when or where that ends.
For now, the tears are left unaddressed, like the blood running down the steps. It's not his blood, and for now he has to tell himself the tears are not his either. Some echo of a boy that is no longer and nothing more, if that is what is going to get him through this alive.
no subject
It doesn't leave him in a very defiant stance, as those feelings remain very much at war within him. The demand to be strong and fight back has very few defenses against the suffocating terror of what may be about to happen to him. Perhaps not on the altar, but at this point it is one more thing in the face of so many witnesses. Some twisted mirror image, in his mind, of a king uncermoniously dethroned. Reflected in a hellscape and the parts acted out by horrors. Only instead of it ending with his head on a pike -- this.
The Dark Urge's voice comes down on the image forming around him like the crunch of a blade, and he almost freezes again.
Not just because visually, for just a second, it looks like he is stepping off into nothing.
But the warning, even if unspoken, is clear to him immediately. Because perhaps too much of this feels too much like Avernus that he is finding something familiar. Something he doesn't want but in the center of that he found a way to survive, and he has to hold onto that right now.
He rises just as he feels in the air that a second longer and someone would have moved to correct him. He doesn't know what he would have done if that happened, how he would have reacted. But he follows, uncertain of anything but the Dark Urge as a central focus, the one part of this landscape he fully recognizes. The sound of his bare feet on smooth stone echoes and each step downward sends that anxiety in his stomach sinking further.
He avoids the stream in the center, and his stomach turns. He has to ignore it, even more aware of how straight he has to keep his gait, not to betray another weakness and very cognizant of the fact that if he falls over the side he has no idea when or where that ends.
For now, the tears are left unaddressed, like the blood running down the steps. It's not his blood, and for now he has to tell himself the tears are not his either. Some echo of a boy that is no longer and nothing more, if that is what is going to get him through this alive.