just stare down the barrel

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

This isn't the first time Danta has found a lonely little soul in the far reaches of the Climb. It isn't even the third time, believe it or not, but these days he's more cautious when it comes to instantly offering his assistance. You never know who you might find up here, and he's not in the mood for old ghosts to start haunting his present paradise.

Having come to hunt (a necessity) and to hassle some of the pyrina (a hobby) whilst a downpour plagues the Hollowed Grounds, this is an unexpected surprise to say the least. Only time will tell if it's a pleasant one.

The Maverick hauls himself up to perch on a flat expanse of stone before the statue of the Ancient, wondering if it - she, he realises - has been up here all this time, lost and unnoticed, or if the ever shifting landscape has revealed her like a geode cracking to reveal the crystal within. Dressed today in a pair of dark pants, steel-capped boots and some burgundy thing that desperately wants to be a shirt, but seems to be lacking a back, he's a very casual welcome wagon as he tilts his head and inches closer to see if he recognises her.

He doesn't.

Good.

"I guess this is your lucky day," he chirps to the statue, conjuring a ribbon of flame into his hands and blowing on it dramatically, willing it to swallow up the body of stone and thaw it out.

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //

and i was thrashing on the line

The fire reaches her first.

Not the heat - that came later, like a slap that missed and hit on the backswing - but the movement of it. The way it crackles, hunts, devours. A hunger that claws its way up through her ribs, raw and unstopping.

Her eyes snap open.

Light, blinding and wrong. The world is too much. Everything feels peeled back — skin, nerves, memory. The stone around her doesn’t crack so much as give up, sloughing off her spine like it’s been trying to hold on too long. A slow, seeping throb rides up from her bones to her teeth. She tastes grit. Blood. Ash.

She gasps, a ragged sound - part snarl, part scream - dragged up from somewhere too deep to name.

She staggers forward and trips, body heavy, limbs uncertain; like she was poured into the shape of herself too fast. Her skin is slick with molten residue, glistening like wet clay pulled fresh from the kiln. The remnants of her prison cling to her in curling, ash-thin sheets - not clothes, not exactly, but enough to veil her with the modesty of a half-burned shroud. Hair hangs damp against her back, smoke-wreathed and clinging.

Something drags behind her - a weight, a pull - and she stumbles, disoriented, as a long, ridged tail slithers free from the last of the crumbling stone. It whips once, then coils low and tight, like it remembers more than she does. Horns throb against her temples, pressure blooming behind her skull like fresh bruises.

She blinks. Blinks again. Her mind feels like a whiteboard someone had scribbled on in ink, then tried to wipe clean. Smudged thoughts. Incomplete. Ugly.

There's a man.

Standing there like he’s been waiting in line for this moment. Calm as a priest. Shirt open like it's Sunday in summer. Something in his eyes, but what?

She stares at him.

A heartbeat.

Two.

She looks down at herself - at the tail, the bare skin, the strange weight of her own body - and lets out a sharp, ugly laugh.

“Oh great. Perfect. Just woke up naked in some asshole’s cave. Amazing.”

She points a trembling hand at him. “Tell me who the hell you are before I- I- I'll take your fucking head off!” She stands shakily, chest rising and falling hard, eyes sharp and wild. Not unlike a cornered animal trying to make itself bigger, louder, more dangerous than it felt inside.

somewhere between desperate and divine

Zairah

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

"Good morning," Danta announces, pleased as you like, and he steps back in time for her stumble forward as if he's leading her in a waltz where neither one of them has realised they're dancing. He seems on the verge of laughing as well - though his is a deal more genuine, and he glances around at the little cavern they stand in. "Oh, this isn't mine," he says, "this is much nicer than mine was. There's even a view."

Turning, he gestures to the hazy opening and the craggy landscape of the Crust beyond. But then she's making with the threats, and don't get Danta wrong, he's all about beheading, but not when it's his own neck on the line. Turning back towards her, hands held up as if in surrender, he offers a roguish bow of greeting.

"My name is Danta - I found you up here having a little snooze as a statue, so I thought I'd do you a favour and bust you out. You're in the Climb, and it's... let's see, 319 PC? That sounds right. The season is Leafchange." Not wanting to overwhelm beyond what's necessary, he figures location and time are a good start.

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //

and i was thrashing on the line

Zairah’s eyes narrow, darting between Danta and the rocky horizon bleeding into the smoky sky beyond the cave’s mouth. The cornered-animal posture slackens just enough for her to lower the accusing finger aiming his way, but her gaze doesn’t soften. Instead, she drinks in the heat clinging to the air. It's a warmth that surprises her by settling like a dull ache beneath her skin, less a threat and more a reluctant comfort. Each breath she draws feels less foreign, slowly stitching itself into the raw, unformed lungs she is just beginning to claim as her own.

Danta had said his piece, told her his name and where they were, but the tight crease between her brows only deepens. Nothing about it makes sense yet. Still, the chill of suspicion isn’t enough to shut the door on him completely. On a whim born from the jagged edges of survival, she decides to trust him... at least enough to ask questions, to pry open the silence between them. Meanwhile, her eyes flick discreetly for an exit, memorizing routes in case the quiet turns violent.

She shifts, gaze flickering over the volcanic wasteland that stretches and cracks like its own awakening. “Is this it?” Her voice is a low, rough thing, as raw as the ash underfoot, “Is this all there is of the world? The... Climb?”

Not that Zairah hates it. The heat feels bone-deep and familiar in a way nothing else does. But there’s something in her, buried and inexplicable, that aches for more. As if some part of her had always expected… something else. Something bigger. Different.

Her eyes snap back to Danta, sharper still, the weight of something like dread tightening her throat. “Are… you and me the only ones?” The words hung heavy, laced with that unspoken fear: Did she have to be trapped here with him for the rest of existence? Not that Danta was bad company... but hell if she was thrilled about the idea.

somewhere between desperate and divine

Zairah

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

Her suspicion and silence are met with raised brows, though there doesn't exist a reality in which Danta can't fill an awkward silence. "And you are...?" He prompts her easily, a hand curling through the air as if to help encourage her to finish the question with her name. He steps aside for her - not just to let her see the aforementioned view, but also to provide a way out if that's what would really tickle her pickle. He knows what it is to be cornered, and it's the sort of feeling that quickly puts blood on his teeth.

"Is this... it?" He repeats, the words spoken through an airy laugh. "Were you expecting something different? What's the last thing you remember?" As for the status of the world and the people in it, that really does have a laugh rumbling up in his throat, Danta scrunching his nose and shaking his head. "Gods, no," he tells her.

"All Ancients originally come from The Climb - that's you and me, in case your memory is a bit spooky there," he explains, tilting a head crowned with crystalline horns and lashing his tail for good measure. "But I lead another region - a place called The Hollowed Grounds. There's a portal from here right to the Grounds, if you'd prefer to be a bit more comfortable. Speaking of which - here."

Dragging his excuse for a shirt over his head - he's tall enough that it ought to cover her modesty if she gives enough of a shit about it - to reveal pale skin marked with silvery scars, he offers it out for her to wear. "Not that I'm not enjoying the view, but it'll be cold in the Grounds if you do decide to come."

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //

and i was thrashing on the line

He asks her what she remembers. Zairah doesn’t answer, though her face flickers with... revulsion? Fear? Something in her recoils not from the question itself, but from what bubbles up when she tries to grasp at the answer. Flashes of a voice she doesn’t recognize, screaming. Heat, but not like the Climb’s comforting furnace; this is heat with teeth. Stone underneath, something sharp in her chest.

None of it makes sense. Is any of it real?

So instead, she pulls the shirt over her head in one rough motion, leaving Danta’s question hanging in the ash-thick air like smoke from a dying fire. His shirt drapes around her smaller frame like a dress, and she gently shrugs her shoulders in satisfaction.

"Zairah," she answers, sharp and spare, like she’d just given up a secret. Her eyes linger on him a moment too long, taking the measure of his pale, scar-crossed skin, the crystalline horns, the easy confidence in his voice. Her fingers drift upward, brushing over the stub of a horn at her temple, as if needing to confirm with touch what her eyes already suspect; they are alike.

"You lead a region?" she echoes, brows arching high, “You look more like someone who gets kicked out of places.”

But her words are all smoke. There’s no real heat behind them anymore. Just that flickering, hungry edge.

She steps closer to the cave’s mouth, letting the ash-heavy wind tug at her damp hair, nostrils flaring as if scenting something more than sulfur. Her eyes sweep the jagged landscape, the red horizon. It doesn’t feel small, exactly. Unfinished, maybe.

“So there’s more than this,” she says quietly, “Good.”

She pulls the shirt tighter around herself but doesn’t quite leave the cave just yet. Her eyes lock on Danta’s, searching, wary but curious. “Why did you wake me? If I was just some statue, and you're not alone, why go out of your way to pull me out? What do you want from me?”

somewhere between desperate and divine

Zairah

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

"A pleasure, Zairah," Danta says breezily, resting a hand in one of his pockets and rolling his shoulders as the warm air kisses his now bare skin. Her remark about the sort of man he seems to be is met with a broad fanged grin and a dip of his head. "Why thank you," he croons. "I really am, honestly. But nobody wanted the Grounds, and I did not want this place, so here we are." He shrugs. If it helps - as she'll soon find out should she accompany him - he's not a particularly conventional leader to say the least.

Staying put as she approaches the cave mouth, his shirt draped about her enough to cover the important parts, Danta scoffs his agreement. "You can say that again," he drawls - good, he means - and with a flick of his tail, he steps up to join her in gazing over the fiery landscape. "Don't get me wrong, this will always be the place I was born, but gods if there isn't so much more out there." More and better, honestly.

"Oh, you aren't the first I've woken with fire," he adds easily enough, cool blues flashing sidelong towards her. "I was stone for centuries up until a few years ago when our great lady goddess awoke. Since then, if I come across a fellow brother or sister, it only seems right to set them free. Unless, you know, I recognise and dislike them from long ago." He grins. And even then, depending on how funny he thinks it might be, he's still done them that favour.

"I want nothing more than for you to thrive, as Dygra would want. How you choose to do that is entirely up to you. I will say, though, that most people do tend to leave The Climb."

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //

and i was thrashing on the line

Zairah stays where she is, her gaze fixed on the horizon. Centuries. The word echoes in her head, bigger than she can hold. She feels it is a long time, but how long? Longer than the time she’s been stone? Longer than the flicker of life that burns inside her now? She doesn’t feel like she’s slept for centuries. She feels… new. Like her skin and bones hadn’t finished stitching together.

And then there's the goddess. Dygra. When Danta speaks her name, something deep inside Zairah pulls taut, like a thread she didn’t know was there. It was familiar and strange all at once, warm in a way she couldn’t explain. But she still doesn’t understand.

She doesn’t ask. She isn't sure how.

Instead, she glances sideways at Danta, the borrowed shirt hanging crooked on her thin frame. Her tail flicks once, and the words come out rough but certain. “Fine,” she says, “I’ll go with you. To the Hollowed Grounds.”

She pulls the shirt tighter not for modesty, just for the strange comfort of being contained, and finally tears her gaze away from the Climb. “I want to see it,” she adds, the words quieter but no less fierce, “and everything else that's out there. I want to understand what it all means.”

She hesitated, brows knitting as she turned his words over again. Something about the way he’d said brother or sister. She looked back at him, her voice softer, almost uncertain.

“So… you’re my brother? And I have other... brothers and sisters?”

She didn’t add the other questions circling in her chest, the ones that felt too big and heavy to speak aloud.

somewhere between desperate and divine

Zairah

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

Luckily for Zairah, Danta has spent a great deal of time cultivating the Hollowed Grounds into a place as welcoming as it can be for the Ancients that find their way to it, and that includes resources, comfort, and a closeness to their lady goddess that can only be rivalled here. She won't need to ask - the Grounds will give its secrets freely.

"Fine," he agrees, the word almost trilling from his lips, and he wastes no time in nodding agreeably to her and stepping out of the cavern to make his way down the rocky incline. "That's the spirit," he adds, grinning over his shoulder; the sun dazzles down upon them, though the heat from it is lost in the searing haze of the rest of the region, something that warms Danta to his very bones.

"Once you've had your fill of the Grounds, if you do want to go exploring, we have a port with ships and skyships - which do exactly what you think they would," he says, turning to walk backwards and peer up at her, heedless of missteps or obstacles. "And of course the portal from there to here is always open, should you get homesick." He scoffs at that.

Brother, though, softens his smile, and he offers her a half bow. "That's how I like to think of it," he agrees. "A sister in fire, if not by blood. You have plenty of community I can introduce you to where we're going."

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //

and i was thrashing on the line

She doesn't entirely understand what a port is, or how something could fly that isn’t a bird, but she files the words away—skyships—and follows him. His ease with the world is strange, like everything he names just is.  She watches him walk ahead, light-footed and unbothered, and wonders what it’s like to move through the world like that. Certain. Unafraid. She trails behind not just in steps but in understanding, like a shadow still learning how to belong to the shape that casts it.

He calls her sister, and something quiet shifts in her chest. Not heavy. Not painful. But present. A thing she thinks she might have wanted, even before she knew what it was.

Zairah blinks toward the horizon, molten rock stretching like cracked bone under the sun. She looks once more at the cave mouth behind them, then back to Danta, already in motion, tail flicking, sunlight flashing against his horns. She follows, her feet sure despite the uneven stone.

“I don’t think I’ll miss this place,” she says, meaning the Climb, the cave, the dust of whatever she used to be. “But I might want to come back someday. Just to see if I remember it different.”

Her tone is mild, thoughtful. She doesn’t expect an answer. Then, after a pause:

“Show me the way, brother.”

somewhere between desperate and divine

Zairah

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

"Believe me," Danta says, his voice lowering ever so slightly, "when I tell you that I understand the sentiment." Not wanting to return but at the same time not wanting to forget; it's a familiar feeling that has branded itself behind his ribs over the past few years. It - and the heat - are part of the reason why he comes back so often to dip his toes (sometimes literally) into the lava.

But then she calls him brother, and it's with a broad, fanged smile that he ushers her down the incline.

They dip into the Burrows and through craggy tunnels and walkways veined with magma, until coming upon a warping in the stone; a shiver in reality. Wreathing them in fire he conjures with little more than a force of will, Danta steps through the portal to take them from The Climb and into the Hollowed Grounds.

The reasoning behind the shield of fire becomes apparent after stepping through - the portal that connects the two regions opens, on the Grounds' side, directly into an enormous bonfire. Danta parts the flames harmlessly enough, though, and they arrive in the bustle of the Inner Quarter; stalls and streets and businesses, the chill of the Leafchange air, and the towering silhouette of an enormous temple overhead.

It's to this latter building that he leads them, hurrying Zairah along before either of them get too cold. "Our priestess Charlie will be able to take care of you, I'm sure," he says. "You're gonna love her."

~FIN

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //