Desreal: I'm not so sure;

“This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.:
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save Us!'...:

...and I'll look down, and whisper, 'No'"

Nicodemus and Saga were so different. He would have given his world for the safety of his family. Even if it meant sacrificing ever seeing them again. He had proven this, he thinks darkly then of Saphira and her Shard, back when he had been a slave, and for fear of not controlling the hate that was Shards, he had fled. First to Solira, and then to the middle of nowhere, in a world far distant from the Element. He knew that there were terrible things in this world. Nicodemus knew it better than most. His eyes saw the filth, the politics and sex that raged on, corrupt, diseased. Parents that abandoned their children, men who raped women. All had dawned on him so long ago it seemed. It sickened him. It made him want to destroy it. It made him want to end himself, because he knew that it was what he once was. Somehow he had seen that there was dysfunction in Illiana and her children. Back then he had thought it was no more than his own jealousy. The disorder, the simple way that she uncaringly looked at them, it was what made him flee to the Element only to find it reborn once more. And he had never once looked back. How could he? Could you, if you had been dumped so harshly upon cold wet floors? Nicodemus had given his heart and soul to Lily, and what had he gotten out of it? Heartbreak. Rejection. And now this?

Millions of memories he didn’t truly care for flooded him with the presence of Saga. Laughter, running through the mountains. All in quick flashes that would blind sight him when all he wanted to do was stand alone in Desreal. If it was too much for Saga, then it was agonizing for Nicodemus. He wouldn’t, couldn’t look at him for fear of what similarities he would find. The memories of what might have been, and that perhaps Saga would have looked more like Nicodemus than Illiana if only things had come out a bit differently. But then you wouldn’t have Hawthorne, Nico. You wouldn’t have Skylar. Andraste’s gentle words prodded him. To which the stallion replied-True. and what he didn’t think was how less the pain was that he would have felt. He keeps that locked away from her as best he could from the bird that shared his own mind. He felt his flames around him, encasing all that was him. What if Illiana returned from the dead then, and saw him today with Skylar? He notes then a butterfly upon the bark of Hawthorne’s tree. It is said that a single flap of a butterfly’s wing might cause a hurricane thousands of miles away.

He felt for the two only children that Illiana had ever bore. He knew what it felt like, what they felt like. As hard as that might have been for them to understand, she had done it to him as well. Illiana’s heart….was a rather fickle thing it seemed. Illiana had never spoken to him after their last encounter, but Nicodemus had never left her side. Nicodemus, as he had with everyone he cared about, had followed her to Phlegethon on lonely nights, and with a jealous and pained heart had watched her and Benediction together. He had often glared at the other stallion, his youth obvious in that time. It should have been him down there with her, he had often found himself thinking. And when he began to see that her belly swelled with Saga and Shay, well, it had been only him to stand watch over her on the nights when Benediction was not there, guarding her where He could not.

Did he truly care then, if Saga stayed or left? Nicodemus smiled inside at the thought. I don’t think that he did. But did he want Saga alive? That was a question he could not honestly answer yet. Not until he thought long and hard. He didn‘t think he wanted him dead, but like said, he couldn‘t be so sure. He couldn‘t trust himself to pass such judgment so quickly. “I haven’t decided yet.” He chuckles then, running his tongue over parched lips. He brings his eyes painfully to him, then finds that he cannot hold it and gazes just to the side of him. “And your sister?” He asks. “What of her?”

SEER
**NICODEMUS**

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us.

FIRE III

Emissary of Andarin, Phoenixsong, Iriase, and Kaikua'ana

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