Desreal: I can't see in this blackness...

“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'"

The only problem with looking into Huyana’s mind was that Nicodemus too respected privacy and liked the idea of it. He never really used his mind-reading abilities on anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. Even then he preferred simply to talk through minds, to not poke around as much as he possibly could avoid. But so far Nicodemus had no reason not to distrust her, and Andraste‘s piercing gaze confirmed that for him as she pulls her eyes away from Huyana‘s and back to him.

“Beware of curiosity, Huyana.” He states it simply, with no air of foreboding about it. Once he is finished he can sense the disappointment in her, however small it might have been. For that he sighs, closing his eyes for a while before opening them again. “I’m sorry I don’t have all the answers. You must understand that the shards are things that were discovered around the time of my…..departure.” He ends it darkly. “Not my most recent one, but a long, long time ago, long before you had arrived here or I doubt even dreamed such a place could exist.”

He can feel her eyes caressing the scar, and already he knows what she will ask before it is even spoken. Without reading her mind he knows that she wonders if that was what pulled him to Solira. Nicodemus was ready for her questions this time. “It does.” He smiles wickedly, a dark thing that didn’t belong on his face. “It was….a nightmare. I was plagued by voices, I wanted to kill Saphira so that I could hold her shard. I wanted to kill everyone that had a shard so I could have them all.” And not nightmares like the ones he gives, not like Iriase. He licks his lips. “And then kill anyone who got in my way.” A sigh. “You have no idea what it’s like to live in fear for those you hold dear to your heart. And not from others, but from yourself.” His eyes travel away from her. “To have that lack of control, is…..its life altering.” His voice is once more so distant, as though talking to a ghost, a murmur and nothing more. “I’ve never been that afraid in all my life. Ever.” He pauses as if collecting his own thoughts.

Soon he looks back to her, eyes burning furiously. “It is indeed why I went to Solira, for fear of hurting my family and my home. But then the power threatened Solira as well.” I wanted to kill you, too. That‘s how powerful the voices were, to make me hate so much. he thinks it, but doesn’t say it. But his thought is loud enough so that she could hear it in her own head. “So I left the Element altogether if only for a little while.

“Only to regain whatever control I could. I came back, a slave still, but perhaps the strongest that Saphira ever held. I fought the voices, the temptation. I made myself see that it was evil. Then I came back to Andarin. Fenrisulfr.” He pauses again. “She freed me very recently.”

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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