Songbreaker

Chapter 13: Hopeless

Achillean remembers one fateful night during the Great War that he tried so hard to forget. When he is shocked from his abyssal thoughts, he makes a trade that he isn't so sure was the right one

***************

Achillean tossed and turned on the ground by the campfire, sweat dripping from his face as he scrunched it in frustrated confusion. He frequently slapped the side of the tree trunk he laid next to, frightened of what was happening to him. He couldn't shift the pain; he couldn't stop the agony – he wanted to scream at what he saw inside his own mind; memories he had buried for so long for a reason. He had tried so hard to forget what happened that night. He had tried so hard to forget what he did to his own brother that night.

The night he found Ingressus in Kaltaria.

The night he stopped Ingressus in Kaltaria.

The night he... killed Ingressus in Kaltaria...

But even his death was not what plagued Achillean's nightmares for years. It wasn't the loss of his brother. It wasn't the fact that he killed him and ran away. It wasn't even the fact that he couldn't hide his actions from Master Aegus.

It was how he killed him.

He didn't know that it would go down like that.

He didn't know that Ingressus would try to fight it. He didn't know that the Deathsinger was so determined to cling onto the Prime Song that his body would fail before Achillean would. He didn't know that he was killing his brother by trying to save him. He just wanted the madness to stop.

Even when it did, the nightmares came in place of the madness. They taunted him every night until he stopped feeling the pain, until his sleep became nothing but another way to escape the real world. Aegus knew what he did and understood that his motives were pure, and he tried to reason with the Tidesinger to try and get him to stay, but it was no use. He had already begun his descent into numbness by the time news had reached his aged ears. Instead of allowing Achillean to suffer in his grave mistake – even though no one else saw it that way – he gave him refuge in the cave between Nestoria and Northwind. When Aegus passed away, the nightmares stopped. Achillean relaxed more, knowing that he was all that was left standing of a history that no one would ever accept. They couldn't hate him for something that only he knew about.

This was the first night that he found himself under the pressure once more in a long time. It didn't help that he did not trust the people around him that knew.

Even they didn't know the full story.

If Achillean could help it, they will never find out, either.

They will never find out what he did...

*****

"INGRESSUS!"

The intensity of Achillean's voice as he called to the Deathsinger across the plains of Kaltaria was enough to make his hair stand on end as he had never heard the Nestoris fisher yell with such vigour. Ingressus stopped in his tracks and smirked as he leered over his shoulder to spot the righteous golden glow appear from between the mountain pass. He stood up straight and unsheathed his weapons, staring back into the Tidesinger's eyes, filled with fire.

"Achillean!" he called back, unsurprised. "I was wondering what I would have to do to get your attention!" His smile grew half an inch as the Tidesinger strolled towards him with his staff poised to strike, the enchantment fluttering strongly around the diamond blades. Ingressus was not afraid of him. Not yet.

"Not a lot, Ingressus; but you have already done too much... Please stop..." Suddenly Achillean's voice lost its intensity and turned to sadness as he looked at what his brother had become. His heart broke at what Prime Songs had done to the only other person in his life that helped him to see the world in the eyes of someone else – the eyes of someone stronger.