Where The Monsters Are

After rescuing Daechir from his prison in the Hells, Aya placed him into the care of the temple of Eluna. Although care for those who are sick was not their particular forte, they took him in at her request anyway. A small room was provided for his care, a largely empty space with little more than a bed within.

At first there was nothing. Daechir stared at the light in his hand until it went dark, and then he fell into a fitful sleep. This did not last long though. Only an hour of rest before he woke screaming and clawing at his throat. It didn't take much effort to restrain him. Within a few moments he was practically speaking comatose once again. It was a terrible cycle that repeated itself over and over again.

During the day he was largely unresponsive to anything. The clerics did their best, tending to the man who did not respond to their gentle words, their gentle hands. He clung to the coin; refusing to let it go. During the night he hardly slept for the screaming terrors locked inside his mind that woke him hour after hour. He never tried to lash out; but he left faint claw marks on himself from time to time. Searching for chains that were not there; fighting demons that no longer existed.

Aya and deities as a group have their differences, with some goddesses having having far more... or somewhat less. Eluna falls into the latter, Aya herself having had an extended stay here once before. As frustrating as that time was... this is decidedly worse.

She is present, and has been so: not unerringly, but for the vast majority. Not that she has much more than assuring words and her presence to offer, which have had no more impact or effect. At best, she aids in gently restraining him when needed, to prevent harm to himself or others. A chair near his bedside has become her post.

It has taken longer than expected for the giver of that coin to return, but earlier this evening, an inquiry had reached Aya from Dolan, in search of Daechir. _Got held up at the Temple,_ the note had read. _I'll be by as soon as I can._

When Dolan does appear, and inquire after Daechir, he is shown at once to the room where Daechir is, and has another in tow behind him. He continues to wear full gear, and looks considerably improved from when they'd left. Certainly clearer and more focused.

He pokes his head in the door, his whole face, and scans the room's contents. "Brightest of days," he offers to any present. "Is this where Daechir is?"

Dolan's redheaded shadow follows behind him, in full armor and with an impressive longsword hanging off her swordbelt. Andelena has not been introduced to the mul'niessa couple that are here, so she looks mostly neutral, if a tad on the sober side, as she's aware briefly of the state of the man--if only through recounting from others.

She nods to anyone and everyone present, letting Dolan have the floor to speak for the time being. He's the Corona, after all, and she's his Sunguard.

This does indeed seem to be the room where Daechir is, for the man himself is currently laid, partially curled on the bed, staring off into space whilst Aya sits at his side. Unlike most mul's his hair is not a shock of white, but is instead as dark as his skin is. Someone looks to have taken a pair of scissors to it fairly recently; reducing it to somewhere near his shoulders with no two sections being the same length. He does not react to the entry of Dolan nor Andelena to the room.

Aya startles at the inquiry. The door opening. Both? She is standing before she recognizes the man, then lowers herself heavily back into the chair. "He is here..." she assures, biting back qualifying how little truth is in those words. "I didn't realize it was day. Come in." She does not consider it bright, either, but she adds, after a thought. "Thank you for coming."

"It's evening, but I didn't want to disrupt their evening service." Dolan slips fully inside, holding the door for Andelena. "Glad I could find you. This is Andelena, my intended. I'm not leaving her alone right now. I hope that's all right."

He turns his attention to the man on the bed. "Brightest of days, Daechir," he starts, turning his full gaze, his head even, in the direction of the bed. It's an odd quirk to watch. "Can you hear me?"

Andelena smiles and murmurs her thanks to Dolan as he holds the door open for her. "I'm a Sunguard in service to Daeus, like Bry here is a Corona in service to Him as well," she says, gently, in Aya's direction. "I'm not as prolific of a healer compared to other Sunguards, but I could potentially help."

She lets Dolan approach Daechir, letting her man take point on talking. "Compassion of the Knight, baby," she murmurs appreciatively. There's a reason she's hanging back and he isn't.

As might be expected from their previous encounter, Daechir does not respond to Dolan's inquiry. Not to Aya's words, Dolan's approach, of Andelena's gentle reminder. None of them seem to mean anything to him. His red eyes are distant things, it is not so much one realizes after a moment, that he is seeing somewhere else, or reliving some memory. Instead more like he has retreated so far into his own mind that returning to the present, to his body, is... a distant thing.

Aya rises again as Dolan approaches, partly out of delayed politeness and partly to... hover as she looks to Daechir. "You gained his attention, some spark of it, before..." she comments quietly towards Dolan. "That is more than I have managed, more than the priests here. I hope-" She pauses at that word, eyes shifting to Daechir directly. "I am here, Daed. We are here." A reminder for the uncounted time. Back to Dolan. "It was something. Perhaps there will be something again?" _Anything_

She then looks to Andelena and nods, stepping towards her to give Dolan some space with Daechir. "I asked him here for that, and not for your god. No disrespect, but I hold no faith in them."

The statement earns Aya a momentary stare from Dolan. "I pity you." That is all he says, instead coming around the side of the bed to sit on it, at its foot. "I'll see what I can do." For the moment, Andelena is forgotten, and he fishes another copper from his belt pouch, as he did before. This, he murmurs a prayer over, and touches, causing it to glow with a warm, sunny blue-white light. He sets it on the bed where Daechir can see it, and waits.

"Wasn't coming in here to preach," Andelena replies, more stone-faced than anything. "Just coming in the event I could be of help or assist Bry."

She watches the copper glow the light and her steel-gray eyes light up with a familiar sort of awe, a smile finding her face to watch Dolan blessing the copper coin. Then she looks over to Daechir to see what his reaction will be.

The reaction is subtle, but Dolan is looking for it. Daechir's eyes slide irrevocably toward the coin. Drawn to the light like a flower. There's no further reaction but that. No words, no movement of his body, just those red eyes drawn to the light. This time however, unlike the last time, there is a flicker somewhere of recognition. Or maybe last time the recognition was lost in the heat of the moment. Either way; it's there now.

"I don't deserve pity, but he-" Aya starts a comment to Dolan, but cuts it short with the copper's glow. Her focus turns fully to Daechir. To watch. To listen. Possibly to hope.

Dolan is indeed watching most intently, his hands resting in his lap, and when the eyes move, he at once looks up and around, at the featureless stone walls, at the bareness of the room. "Brightest of days, Daechir," he repeats again, quietly, sparing no attention for anyone else in the room. "Bet this room doesn't look all that different from the one you were chained in, does it?"

In truth, Dolan's heart goes out to this man. _What did he endure? I don't even want to think about it._

Andelena studies Daechir carefully with his reaction to the light and to Dolan's words. She peers at how he's drawn to the light in eyes alone, the recognition registering in that tiny notion. She almost wants to speak, to provide her own light--but Dolan's the man in control here.

Dolan's words don't draw a verbal response from Daechir. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't respond at all. Eventually, very hesitantly, slowly; his hand sneaks toward the coin. It's the one that he's been using to hold the coin that Dolan gave to him not so long ago. It stays hidden in his palm, but his forefinger reaches tentatively to the light, reaching for it.

Aya inhales sharply when she sees Daechir starts to reach. She also leans in his direction, reflex wanting to be at his side... yet she overrides it to halt. She does not want to distract, ruin it... frighten him? Even the breath taken is held within as she stills completely.

Dolan merely waits, watches, intently, noting everything. He doesn't seem to be in any rush. He lets Daechir touch the coin on the bedspread, grasp it if he wants. "Has he seen sunlight since we got back?" he asks of Aya, without looking at her.

Eventually, Daechir manages to touch the little bit of light. For some reason the little bit of contact causes a soft sound to leave him. Half sigh, half... something else. He can't take his eyes off the little glow. He is completely obsessed with it.

Aya had hoped Dolan might achieve -something- and this is very much that. It takes a moment before his question registers, or for her to dare respond as she watches. "No? He hasn't left the room that I know of, and I brought him straight here." She didn't think to stop to go for a walk along the Tornmawr in the sunshine... At one time, she would’ve added that aloud, with and edge. Now, it stays withheld, though that edge is still present, cutting inward. "I can bring him out after sunrise, if it might help?"

"Sunlight makes all the fucking difference in the world," Dolan admits, still watching Daechir. "There's not a whole lot of difference between stone walls in a prison and stone walls in a healing room in a temple." A shudder ripples through him. "I don't know where he's gone, but my best guess is to give him a reason to come back. Something to come back to. There was barely any light in there at all." Where _there_ is that he refers to, isn't wholly clear.

"And thankfully, we're coming up on the season with the most light," Andelena says softly, looking at Daechir and watching how he touches the light. Her steel-gray eyes are soft, a sort of ache in her voice. "But... hard to say how he might act if you bring him out into a field of flowers on the brightest day of the year. Always be ready."

Their conversation seems entirely unimportant to Daechir. It is difficult to tell if he hears them at all. His fingers shift. The coin that Dolan had given him before slips free. It's clear from the motion that he means for the two coins to touch, but all grace has left him. His fingers fumble the coin and instead of connecting the two coins together the one that he'd held rolls off the bed and jerkily Daed tries to capture it. For an instant he is suddenly thrust into reality; into the moment.

The coin rolls off the bed and his fingers jitter over the surface of the bed after it. In reaction his body follows, but Dolan is between him and the edge of the bed. Everything stops for him as he stares at this unknown man before him. His reactions narrowed; fear is first, then confusion quick on its heels. For an instant, for a moment everything stops.

Aya would not have considered that. An open space over walls? Yes. Light over darkness? Why? There is very little distinction to her, and never a negative one (for darkness, that is). But this isn't about her, and what she believes ... has been of no help at all.

She watches Daed's focus, his obsession, him manipulating the coins... "If the sun will help him, sun he'll have. Whatever he needs, he'll-"

This time, his jerking movement of his body causes her to dart for the bedside. He could fall. It could be another convulsive thrashing. She's not going to let him harm himself or Dolan (not that Dolan cannot mind himself). "Daed!" it is call of concern instead of a call to him, per se.

Dolan hadn't taken his eyes from Daechir since the man first responded, and he's about to respond when the coin rolls off the bed. The intent had been clear enough, and he just starts to retrieve it - when Aya moves, with impossible speed. Instinctively, he throws himself backwards off the end of the bed with a scream of, "NO!", a move that leaves him sprawled face-down on the floor at the foot of the bed, staring at the stone, panting.

"Shit!" comes the murmured hiss from the Sunguard. Andelena goes to pick up Dolan and hold him, her hand finding purchase in his hair to rub and soothe him. "It's okay, it's _okay_. I'm here, baby. We're in the Temple of Eluna. It's the seventh day of Bernfleur in 1025."

She looks at Aya. "No more sudden movements, please," she asks. Firmly, but politely.

Dolan isn't the only one to react like lightning to Aya's sudden movement forward. Even as Andelena moves to protect Dolan, Daechir does as well. He's so fast, and since no one expects him to be able to move at all... It's all the more shock when he spins in front of Dolan; drawing Deliverance from Andelena's belt and holding the weapon between Aya and the huddling form that Dolan has become.

Fury is lit in those red eyes as he faces his beloved, and she might realize from the slight glaze in his gaze that he does not in fact see _her_ in this moment. "I WILL NOT LET YOU HURT HER ANYMORE!" He screams, his body tense with the readiness to fight, the need to protect. His breathing is heavy from the pulse of adrenaline, but he is wholly prepared to fight to defend... did he say _her_?

One moment to move in worry. A second to blink in confusion. By the third, it seems that everything has gone to the Hells? They -just- got out of there! Aya's thoughts are not so quick as her feet in adjusting to the wholly unexpected events. "I didn't mean-" _to startle Dolan?_ She barely gets that much out to the sunny couple before she is facing down the unexpectedly mobile Daechir and a drawn blade. "Daed...?"

Her hands are brought up: not at a ready, but open at chest height in placation as she takes a step back from him. "I'm not going to hurt anyone..." That he is aware and acknowledging her presence, even with fury... is still acknowledging her? Even if it seems like it isn't really Aya that he sees; that she has a very good idea of whom he might. It is both warms and breaks her heart, at once.

But it is something.

It is as if Dolan is unaware of what is happening above him. Even the touch of the redhead barely seems to reach him. "Not again-" he gasps out, clinging unexpectedly to the woman he loves, shaking with pent-up sobs. He doesn't really seem capable of doing anything about Daechir at the moment.

"Daechir."

The word is said... from within the sword that the man holds. Which glows with light, gentle and lovingly so, as she speaks. It's a warm and maternal voice, like how a child might come running to the sound of a voice that is just so comfortable and promises love like the warm breeze of a summer's day rustling through the hair.

"It's alright," the voice of the blade promises. "She is safe. You are safe. I bring you the light. My name is Deliverance."

Andelena beholds her blade, glowing with light of its own accord, with wide steel-gray eyes. She continues to comfort Dolan, running his hands through his hair. "It's okay, baby, it's okay," she murmurs into Dolan's ear. "The year is 1025..." Murmuring the names of objects and people in the room, encouraging him to name them, too.

For a Sunguard and her blade can both exercise Compassion. That is their purpose.

The sound of that name, Daechir makes Daed's eyes tighten. "You are not my grandmother." He states coldly, but entirely out of place. "I will never again allow you to-" And Deliverance begins to glow. Daed turns his red eyes toward the light and falls utterly still. He blinks at the illumination. It is out of place in his mind and memories. Confusion drifts across his face.

"Will you... help me protect her? Mother... She is so afraid. I... I am so afraid." A tear slips down his cheek, his fractured mind revealing to Aya and to these strangers bits of himself that might normally be well hidden. "She has hurt Mother so much. I have to make it stop."

No, Aya is not Daechir's grandmother. Not even close, even at Aya's worst. Even Aya's ...fiendish counterpart might need stoop to new lows to emulate that woman. Or it already has. She just keeps her distance and her non-threatening posture. If that is who he sees her as, trying to convince him otherwise won't help. If not... she isn't sure what to say that might help, anyhow. Given how well her attempts have proven so far, saying and doing nothing seems the best choice. For everyone.

"Coin. Bed. Andie. Aya. Daechir." Slowly, slowly, the litany that Andelena is using on Dolan begins to bear fruit. He's still clinging to her like a pillar in a windstorm, but he's at least showing signs of coherence. His breaths come in shuddering gasps. "Damn it. Where's that coin he dropped?"

"I know you're scared, my dear," Deliverance says softly to Daechir. Her voice is still that rolling and gentle warmth, the kind of voice a mother uses to read her children their bedtime stories and soothe them when they are so scared of the dark and the creatures that they believe to lurk in it. (And in truth, sometimes there are--but when Mother is here, there is nothing to fear.) "I know you are. It's okay. Nothing will hurt you or her. I am here to protect you. I am here to keep you safe."

She hums softly, the first few notes of a lullaby. "Sleep for me, Daed," Deliverance says. "You've earned your rest. The light will be with you in the morning, too."

Andelena continues to stare at the blade until Dolan asks the question. She looks around at the floor. "Livvie's doing a _great_ job of talking to him, and I don't want to make any movements to grab for the coin," she murmurs softly.

The words do in fact seem to comfort Daed, he slowly relaxes as he stares at the sword of light in his hand. The arm is shaking a little bit. His body isn't used to carrying such a heavy weight for such a long time. "You... you will protect her?" It's the trust and worry of a much younger man than the one that Aya knows him to be. "I... I do not want to sleep."

Daechir seems largely unaware of the conversation going on around him. But then, a glowing, talking sword does seem a thing to draw one's attention easily. "There are monsters there." A confession almost whispered to the blade he holds.

Aya wanted to be seen by him, recognized by him, so desperately before. Now that she has been, to a degree, she wants to disappear? No, that isn't it at all: it's not what she wants, but at the moment it's what is needed. What she wishes is to comfort him, for him to be comforted. She can only help with the latter, by doing what is needed.

Patience. That is her challenge, she was told. It isn't about her, it's about him. So she stays silent. She may as well be a part of the wall. Biting her lip as needed to keep it from moving.

_There are monsters there._ The words cut through to Dolan, and he sits upright, slowly releasing her, wiping the left side of his face. "Damn it," he mutters, very, very slowly getting to his feet.

As Dolan releases her, Andelena gently steps forward. She looks at Deliverance in Daechir's hands, the mother-sword speaking so gently and lovingly to this broken man in need of a mother's words. A mother's tongue.

And it's time for her as a Sunguard to soothe. Her sword can't keep doing all of the work.

Her hands touch the back of Daechir's neck, to grab his attention. "But there aren't monsters here, Daed," Andelena says gently, says warmly. "Just us.

Andelena's touch is like... a syphon. The light of recognition, of sorrow, confusion, and fear written in his eyes and on his face dies. The sword clatters from nerveless fingers, and like a switch Daed is gone once again. His voice is that of the dead when he speaks. The cold finality of the damned. "Yes Mistress."

After that, there's nothing that can be done but to put him back in his bed, to offer him the coin which he had sought. For such a brief time he had been alive again. If not wholly himself, then a part of himself that proved there was something left. Something that could be pulled out of the dark places in his mind.

Eventually he will sleep, and Deliverance's promise of protection is a thing that can not last, for Daechir had not lied in that moment holding the sword of light in his hand.

There were monsters there.

-End