RP:Unmasked

From HollowWiki

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc


Summary: As dawn paints a grim picture of Cenril's suffering in the aftermath of Kahran's attack, Pilar protects a very different Lionel from his own emotional shock.

War-Struck Cenril

Lionel | Choppy waters smack against hundreds of corpses along the Cenrili shoreline as the first specks of bold blue dawn appear along the eastern shores. First responders -- ranging from medics to fishermen to dockworkers and even some of the disaster’s wounded survivors -- have worked tirelessly through the night, tending to the injured and helping grieving loved ones identify the dead. A low rumble sounds across the city, not from thunder but from mourning. One cannot enter Cenril on this fateful early morning without hearing it. The tears echo in the streets, echo in sad homes with cold hearths because their families haven’t the strength left to light the fires. A bell chimes periodically among the towers, a solemn sound ringing for this harrowing loss of life. No one speaks of the man who did this, nor his wicked army. None of the corpses of orcs and trolls and their ilk have been touched. Not yet. Grief may yet spring forth into anger, but the people here in Cenril aren’t there yet.


Lionel | Except Lionel. Standing in wet sand as the choppy waters crash into his legs, Catal’s Last Prince is nearly toppled over and over again. Whenever the waves come, he shudders, chilled to the bone from their icy temperature. Occasionally, someone approaches him and begs him to please take shelter; his face is too pale, his eyes are too bloodshot, his hands are shaking overmuch. He doesn’t hear them. He just stares, out at sea, like the day he lost Alexia. All his deepest, darkest fears, confirmed in an instant to the din of hundreds dying. Men, women, even children, dead and all around him, dead because of a war he could not finish. The blood on Lionel’s hands is immeasurable. As is the wrath in his heart. It’s the only thing keeping him from crashing with the waves, the only thing keeping him together at all.


Pilar's dreams had been visions of horror. Destruction, slaughter... Cenril. She woke with a start. The bond with Daermon pulsed in her head. Those visions had not been mere dreams. She climbed out of bed and began getting dressed immediately, pulling on a pair of brown cotton pants, brown boots, and a light blue tunic. Yozenra stirred, but did not awaken. Pilar wrote a note to explain where she'd gone, then hurried outside. It was still dark as she opened the door to the stable. “Emielle, wake up.” The coiled couatl lifted her head and looked to her partner. ~Is something amiss?~ The couatl's voice sounded in Pilar's mind. “Something's happened in Cenril. I saw it through Daermon's eyes. I, I think he's safe right now, but... I need to see. I need to help.” Emielle slithered from the stable and unfurled her wings. ~Let's go, then.~ Pilar mounted the winged serpent and they made for Cenril. They flew until the sun began to peek above the horizon, then flew some more. It didn't take long for them to find the site of the carnage. Pilar gasped in horror. “Oh gods...” Emielle landed on the beach, one of the few clear places, and Pilar dismounted. She stared out at the sea of death, shaking. It was so much worse than she'd expected. Tears came to her eyes and she leaned against Emielle.


Pilar | As her eyes scanned the scene, they landed on Lionel. Relieved to see a familiar face, she carefully picked her way through the bodies to come to his side. “Lionel...?” she murmured. No reaction, like all the rest. “Lionel?” She said again, louder. She stepped in front of him. She recognized that look in his eyes. The thousand-yard stare. “Lionel, snap OUT of it!” she shouted, and slapped him across the face.


Lionel is miles away from Pilar. He’s standing there on the shore, legs buckling but refusing to yield, like some warrior of legend beyond his years. He’s standing there on the shore, arms shaking but refusing to find warmth, like some child who never matured. He’s standing there, alone and afraid, surrounded by people who are alone and afraid. A fishwife named Aartha wraps bandages around a dead man in the distance, her eyes locked on him as if willing him back. The man was her son, and he’s gone now, but maybe the bandages will ease his passing. It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. None of these people will find rhyme or reason in why this happened to them, why it happened here, why it happened now. But Lionel, old and young, wrapped in such heated hatred that the only thing he knows is real is the frigid feeling in his ankles from the waves, knows the answers to these questions and more. They’re all he’ll think about now. He is miles and miles and miles away from Pilar. Until her slap sends a popping noise through his ears and force his legs to give way at last. He falls to his knees, placing a hand to his cheek where the pain stings most, and looks up at the woman. His stare remains, but a flicker of recognition is intermixed. “Pilar. I’m glad you’re alright.” Lionel’s voice is hollow.


Pilar hadn't expected him to buckle. She knelt before him, uncaring of the freezing waters, and placed her hands on his shoulders. His voice broke her heart. “I wish I could say the same. You look unwell, in more ways than one. Come.” She stood, taking his arms and attempting to guide him back to his feet. If he refused to stand, she wouldn't force the issue. Not at this juncture, at least.


Lionel rises with her guidance, not through conscious effort but inability to decline the invitation. If the slightest wind blew upon the man come dawn, he would falter. If the weakest creature held his hand, he would go where it bade. If Kahran were here now, he would be another corpse. Too great is his state of shock, too pure is his anger, too deep is his sorrow. Whatever anyone or anything wills of him, Lionel will follow. He is in shambles. “He killed them. He killed them all.”


Pilar wasn't sure who “he” was; the visions had been unclear, chaotic. “Who, Lionel? Who did this?” she asked as she put one arm around her shoulders and wrapped hers around his waist, just in case he should stumble and fall. She began to lead him away from the scene, toward the city. She would carry him from building to building until they found shelter, if she had to.


Lionel | As Pilar carries Lionel away from the beach, the blue of a brightening sky becomes a light gold. The gold paints a stronger picture of the devastation left in last night’s wake. The wreckage of the SS Turnt lifts up above the water, its massive stern cracked and shattered in a hundred spots. The Tranquility rests safely at dock in front of it, but her deck is filled with wounded and her crew looks swollen sick with exhaustion. The rows of corpses stretch farther than they first appeared. Some of those corpses are still in terrible angles, with dead orcs grasping their necks in the last instant before Krice’s sword sliced them, or some other brave soul intervened. The devastation reaches the entry point to the city proper, down paved roads where battle was waged, well into the poorer district where a child’s doll rests torn in two and a trail of blood snakes off into a shadowy alleyway. Lionel doesn’t process this or anything else. It’s an almost insurmountable challenge just listening to Pilar speak. “I did.” A moment passes, cold as the grave, before he expands. “Not… me. Not literally. But I may as well have. If I’d done my job…” It may prove difficult for Pilar to keep her grip on him now, with his shaking growing worse while he talks. “If I’d just… if I… I will kill him, I swear it…”


Pilar briefly wondered if Lionel was yet another case of multiple minds in one body. His trembling grew worse, and Pilar herself was having trouble keeping her emotions under control. That bloody, ruined doll... She swallowed hard as tears leaked from her eyes. She said nothing. What could she say? She'd need more information before she could offer comfort besides the tired old “it's not your fault.” But for now, he needed warmth, and rest. Her grip was strong, and she managed to lead him west, away from the carnage. She looked around for an inn, or a tavern. Anything that might welcome them at this early hour. She managed to find a small shop with lights on in the windows, and she knocked on the door.


Lionel | The door swings open to a boy of ten with dusty black hair. He’s too skinny for his age. He holds a knife in a shaking outstretched hand, terror plain upon his face. When he sees Pilar and the traumatized man beside her, the boy looks them up and down before lowering his knife and biting his lip. “Another? Put him beside the rest. We don’t have food and we don’t have clean water. He’ll have to be out by midday.” The boy lets them in, putting his knife down on a messy countertop where several of his family’s potions and poultices lay scattered and half-used. The far wall is lined with wounded, coughing and bleeding but being cleaned and treated by a black-haired woman -- probably the boy’s mother.


Pilar nodded. “Thank you.” Pilar entered, by now practically dragging Lionel. “He, he's not injured, I don't think. He mostly just needs rest. He's, he's been out all night.” Okay, that was a bit of an assumption, but a safe one. She found a space for Lionel and had him sit, allowing him to lean on her. The fireplace had naught but glowing embers left, so Pilar held out her hand and the fire sprang back to life, sustained only by her magic. She remained sitting by Lionel's side, her concentration split between keeping the fire going and caring for Lionel. She held his icy hand in hers, and gently coaxed him into lying down. “Lionel, do you hurt?”


Lionel might have laughed at the question in another life, but that life ended hours ago. Instead, he stares at Pilar, confused, while a few of the wounded gathered along the wall draw deep breaths of gratitude at the newfound warmth. The boy’s mother spares the chance to nod her thanks, too. When at last Lionel has registered what he’s been asked, his eyes narrow and he looks at himself as if for the first time. “I was… thrown? He threw me. Kahran… threw me, either before or immediately after admitting to the slaughter of my entire homeland, implicating himself in the murders of my battalion in Frostmaw and the terrorist attack that followed, and making himself the one and only suspect in everything that has transpired since.” It’s far more than Pilar had asked, but there it is. Still in this state of shock, the words come more easily than he might have expected.


Pilar | “Oh... Lionel.... I... I'm so sorry...” Pilar placed her hands on his chest and shoulder, allowing her magic to enter his body, searching for injuries. She checked his bones, his muscles, his organs. She found nothing serious, thankfully, but his back was one big bruise. There was little she could do, new as she was to arcane healing, but she did know a spell to numb pain. The flames flickered and shrank as her magic was focused on Lionel, but returned as strong as ever once she was done.


Lionel might have feigned control, shrugged things off, and told Pilar that he appreciated her kind words and helpful healing… in that other life. But his mask is broken now. The veneer of cool confidence, wielded as surely as Hellfire itself save for rare and delicate moments of passion and pain, is all to pieces. It will never be mended. Lionel’s true self, hurt and humble, protective and vengeful, heroic and flawed, so deeply flawed, is what Pilar and all the rest of them will now see. So instead of thanking her, instead of filing away the levity of the moment for some other time, some far-off time, Lionel simply collapses into Pilar’s arms and cries. Others in the crowded shop-turned-clinic, who had listened to him when he’d named Kahran and his sins, can’t resist keeping a watchful eye on him while the tears roll down his cheeks. Some from sympathy, some from caution, a few from resentment. Those few, whose minds are as bitter as his, have weighed the things that Lionel has said and reached the same conclusion he has: this man, this crying, broken man, somehow brought calamity to their shores. It is the same man who once brought an army to save the realm upon their shores, but time flows strangely in a world so quick to change, and for many that deed has been forgotten. If Lionel is to survive the wars to come, he’ll need to remember it. But for now, shaking and sobbing and scared like the boy he never was, the only past he knows is the one in which the Dark Immortals were destroyed but not all their legions were destroyed with them. Whoever this Kahran is, whatever rank he held in that bygone era, Lithrydel is not ready.


Pilar's heart broke all over again, and she held Lionel close, her fingers stroking his hair. She didn't believe for a moment that this was his fault, and she was willing to fight anyone who said it was. For now, though, she would simply stay by Lionel's side, for as long as he needed her.