thread_night.demian_toshinealight

she tried scooping some of the residue into a vial that demian had carried.
nothing worked to contain it.
they had to carry on.
…
following bistro’s instructions, they returned to the docks. demian, ever skilled, figured he could sail one of the boats stationed there, and evidently there were vessels conveniently unowned. so they took one, silent in between their quiet questions and the grunts of small confirmations. night didn’t know how demian had felt, seeing the man’s will waver in his eyes; those doubts were cast immediately the moment he took to the helm of the ship. they borrowed the withered rose. night but stared at her interface as she draped herself across the side of the boat, forearms atop the guardrails.
she’d taken an image of the spill of what became of that npc. she’d sent it unceremoniously to bistro.
bistro: i do hope, at least, you’re not at each other’s throats again.


rough waves carried them over the sea towards the lighthouse; the trip was nothing short of a bumpy ride. despite demian’s expertise, summoned forth from a well of secrets within, their brush against the shore was amidst great effort, for one wrong breach upon the coast at the wrong velocity could send them crashing into the lighthouse itself. he’d suffered from a sea sickness thereafter. wasn’t even aware he could experience such cruelty of the system. whatever he could not expel from within him was only left with him as he gasped on salty chilled air, a hand clenched over his chest, body bent over their bow.
night was the one to stir first from the brine-ridden floorboards, a temple clenched in her hand, the other upon the rails for support. she trudged past the man, a miracle she hadn’t collapsed on her way down the stairs, tracksuit but soaked through from the storm. it was a danger, however precedented, that demian hadn’t accounted for nor considered in earnest, yet he watched the player wander in through the door, giddy and ill, and waited for his figure to cease its protesting. ‘five more minutes’, he supposed, eying the flashes of lighting in the distance.

she stumbled into the lighthouse. her back hit the wall once the interface pulled itself open — a set of instructions. her hand shifted, palm pressing down against an eye, and she shuddered against her heavy clothes, teeth gritted. the thunder outside mirrored the one in her head, and she tossed caution to the wind in accepting that cardinal request — because that was what was expected of her upon her return, either way.
better it was out of her sight so she could pull up her inventory and lose the tracksuit. she buried herself in towels — night sunk to the floor, her face down in them, groaning herself hoarse the agony of the trip. this lasted for as long as it took for demian to walk in through the tower doors; by then, night had tended herself to dry, chucking two towels soaked into her inventory, one strewn across her neck.


any discomfort, he pushed out of his mind.
the objective had them looking for the keeper of the lighthouse. one person amidst the entire tower. there was nowhere else to go, so he thought, though he couldn’t keep the feeling of something amiss out of his thoughts. the only way they could go around the building was up.
so he shrug off his coat and left it up to dry. took night’s offer of a towel refreshed from cardinal’s hold – (“it’s dry now.” / “thanks.”) — and brushed at his hair, eyeing the corners of the entrance hall, before he meant to drag them around the home.
“hold on,” he murmured, just as night was beginning to rise from her spot on the ground. he paced towards the coatrack. his jacket was paired with another. demian took it down for inspection, quiet, even after night’s hum prompting an explanation; he decided to wear it, the dark dusty overcoat hugging him tight.
as he did so, he wondered if he had imagined the harsh coil of fingers around his throat.


she took the hat in turn.
the duo wandered about — they had split up, in search of warmth. night took to the kitchen first, because that’s where she felt the safest, most familiar, despite the ancient memories that haunted her in times prior. her fingers drifted along the surface of its countertops; dust accumulated upon them, staining her skin white, and as the drifting particles were beheld in her gaze, the light from outside poured from the window down onto the pages of a book long lost of a time before their own.
cardinal played the dramatic. once she picked up the book, the fireplace lit itself anew, a small gasp sweeping the room — the recipes fluttered over to a certain number, and from there, refused to change.
night sat on a high stool, poured herself upon the inscription by the flame. then, after finding herself lost in her investigation, she bookmarked the cipher and brought it along with her.


he didn’t really need a fire.
still, the bedroom was a decent guess as to where a hearth might be located. he trundled into the room after knocking upon the door twice, hearing silence, and then turning the knob, tentative. every so often, he guessed that there would be some horror, akin to what had happened to the blossoming man, awaiting him behind one of these turns, his vision momentarily obscured.
there was nothing in the bedroom, only all manners of children’s toys, and he thumbed over the petal of the dried flower as he took his time, scanning the room for clues. ‘not here’ was all he was familiar with; the puzzle amongst the mess was a surprise.
he hadn’t the opportunity to decipher the jumble of letters at the side; his eyes were drawn instead to the shades of grey, highlighting letters in an odd repetitive trio. he counted them, inscribing words onto the paper with the use of the available pencil, and was only interrupted rudely by—


night burst into the room.
“hey,” she said, to demian’s apparent chagrin, “can you make anything of this?”
she showed him the book. he was only halfway through the hurricane.
“all i can tell at a glance is the picture of a camel, and the word ‘cyclops’ misspelled.”
demian hummed, shaking his head. he took a glance at her, before his eyes fell to the puzzle. the words he muttered under his breath were nigh inaudible, the roar of the thunder outdoors masking his voice. in swift strokes, he added his findings to the side of the page he was working on — then, he took the book’s page and flipped it.
skill issue, night despondently thought to herself.
“it’s a recipe book,” demian said aloud, then squinted with the brightness of lighting filling the room. his brows furrowed, voice corrected.
“no. i can’t read this.”
night took the book from his hands once he was past grumbling, wanting nothing to do with it. she looked down at the page he was analyzing. sure enough, it was illegible.


she had, at least, waited until he was done with his own cipher, before asking a question. “so what did you find out?”
he looked over his own clues — the first word had been rainbow. the next few, a similar nature, and he compared his list with the one he drafted from night’s recipe book. he noticed the pattern.
“is there a combination lock anywhere?”
“huh?” night faltered outside of his vision. “a combination lock. like one that uses numbers?”
“and bring me any other puzzles you find,” he added, cutting off night’s train of thought. demian felt her burning stare leave his back as he heard the player shuffle around to leave. he glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was gone, before pulling up his inbox, his forehead pressed against his fingers. he had day’s messages pulled up. reticent; they both were.
“what else has cardinal been keeping from us, do you figure…?”


somewhere in the tower was a study, wall to wall with shelves full of books, in that square room carved out of its circumference. unlike the room demian had temporarily inhabited, this one seemed discerningly tidied, clean; favourable to conditions facilitating focus. that left the upset cup on the table in the center of the room further emphasized in its oddity. night picked it up, setting it upright. then her eyes were led, following the spill stained on the desk towards the newspaper left wrinkled to soak it, a puzzle left unfinished.
she ruffled through the papers. found nothing of note on the other articles. it seemed like a daily report from miremore, about the gossip haunting the village. an affair here, a political scandal there. a few reports of missing people, and a shadowy cryptid in the woods upon their bluff.
night thought nothing of it, despite her readthrough of the last story twice, thrice even. coming up deductionless from her examination, she folded the newspaper up and tucked it under her arm, seeking out demian.


he stayed not in the bedroom. the moment he had regathered himself, he took towards the living room; they had passed through here moments prior, not giving it a second look. perhaps, if night had taken to the other halls, then he should put himself to work here as well.
he took the notepad with him, alongside its pencil. couched the latter upon his ear as he circled the room. the time was fixed at an odd hour; he had figured it meant the evening, but the passage of time lacking in the lighthouse was something worth investigating. demian jotted it down on the open page; if he had time, he’d better move ahead to dismantle it later.
there were the other ornaments in the room he busied himself with, hoping something would catch his eye. demian snarled, shutting the lid of the music box after prying it open, finding it a taunting creation of their jailor. then his gaze drifted over to the nonogram.
bingo.


she followed the haunting song tentatively, jumping at the loud thud that ended it, and was only relieved after she found demian sitting on the couch, fixated on a sketchbook. a second pencil was in his hand, tapping at his cheek as he mulled over the puzzle.
“i found another one,” night offered, handing him the bundle of newspapers.
he glanced up from the past time, passing out the sketchbook towards her. “oh good.”
night tilted her head reflexively.
“i was getting stuck on this one. here, you try it.”
he took the newspaper, right as night took the seat beside him, the ambient air between them filled with the pouring of rain upon the lighthouse walls and windows, and the creaking of the boat left alone outside. night watched as demian regarded his new puzzle with bemusement, and then penciling in notes on the side of the page.
night just stared blankly at the grid and the numbers.
“uh… what’s this supposed to be?”


“a nonogram,” he stated, pulling himself away from his instructional guesses. he had in mind to have a duplicate of the puzzle, undone, stored in his memory just in case his theory for tackling it would fail, but beyond that, he looked over to night’s puzzle. the expression on her face told him she had no idea completely what they were trying to achieve. “the numbers on both the rows and columns indicate filled spaces that exist in the corresponding tiles. it’s usually a picture of some sort.”
he hadn’t checked the other pages of the sketchbook, but it made sense that other examples appeared once night flipped through them, noting the different iconography that existed out of the other puzzles that went solved. she hummed in understanding. “like sudoku.”
“like sudoku,” demian nodded.
“i was never any good at those,” night admitted, and yet she still put her pencil to work.


she toiled away at the puzzle, shading in the cells lightly where she thought the shapes were supposed to go. first, she expected an animal. then, a symbol of some kind, one undecipherable. when she was finally done, she showed it to demian to the backdrop of a distant rumble.
the man hummed.
“that’s what i thought i’d end up with, too.”
“how?” said night, withdrawing the sketchbook to look over the puzzle herself. “you hadn’t even marked anything in here.”
demian’s dismissive silence was all it took for her to examine the numbers involved. three empty boxes lined the sides of the fields supervising rows. something was missing.
“this puzzle’s unfinished,” she ultimately decided. demian seemed to perk up at that declaration.
“how so?”
her index outlined the gaps.
“what do you think should go in here?”
demian’s gaze remained cool on the page. “as far as i’m aware, without knowing the picture it ultimately leads us to, it’s hard to guess on what the result would be.”
“seriously…?”


he gave her no reply after that. perhaps the one he was working on – which seemed like a prose – would prove to be of more help. he checked off the letters as he guessed at the probability of each word that could appear within the fields. and at the end —
“ah…!”
he turned his head to the side. towards night, what he saw was a puzzle completed, the empty gaps scratched in with a makeshift number, and the result was…
“demian,” she started, the expression on her face deadpanned, “i don’t think this is a picture.”
“so it isn’t,” he conceded. and yet he jotted down her results on the collective page of answers for prosperity’s sake. in the interim, night had been checking the sketchbook for additional puzzles incomplete for further assistance — there were none.
“don’t tell me that’s how you concluded that there was a combination lock.”
demian offered her a look at his own conclusions. he was partway done. “are you up to helping me work through this one?”


they were still missing the last number.
“we haven’t gone up the stairs at the entrance hall,” night piped up, once they’d verified nothing else could be reaped from the rooms they had ventured into. for each the other had explored separately, so too did their counterpart thereafter — they found a number of knickknacks, tchotchkes and toys. but no puzzles, and certainly less answers.
“the last place we look,” he calmly agreed with a nod, before taking the lead on their expedition upwards, just as prior. it was here, then, in that familiarity of their setting that night found it in herself to recall what had happened prior. the ascent, the build up towards finding a warped entity at the top of the tower, at the end of their journey. she looked up towards demian’s back, and wondered if he had processed the same thing.
footsteps filled the void, in which she searched for the heart to reach out.


“so about earlier…”
he had stopped. then, he kept climbing.
“what about earlier?”
“the man — er, creature, we fought. what do you think that was?”
bile filled his mouth. the grip around his neck tightened.
“does it matter? … it’s just an enemy.”
“cardinal has done many things in creating its enemies,” night said, and demian could feel her glare upon his figure, “but none, so far, like that.”
“what’s so different about it then?”
“it swapped me,” she continued. “my consciousness, to where it was.”
demian stopped again.
“no enemy’s ever done that before.”
“cardinal’s got new tricks,” he thought to try.
“you don’t always have that look in your eyes,” the player returned instead. “that killing intent. in every other scenario, you’ve always been calm. so this—”
“—how would you know?”
silence fell between them.
demian whirled around.
“how would you know what i’m like in battle? … you’ve never seen me try.”
just once, they’d quested together. an accident, their incident. night carried that ferocity in her eyes more than he did, one that spoke of life and light; he was just an agent asleep at the wheel. she was the one to pick the fight first.
night’s visage when he turned around was one of perplexity, confusion, surprise. night was easy to read. but it was just as their mutual would have said —
“would day know?”
— she was one to surprise them.
“no,” he said, turning around slowly to continue their ascent. “no, she doesn’t.”
but he couldn’t help but feel as though she was trying to make a very important point.


the lantern room here was nothing like the one she’d visited in the zero. there was a proper lens, for one, and a catwalk where there was a door to exit from one of the sides of the building. the glass provided an explicit view of the void that laid before them; the ever hungry sea, maw of the deep, tide after tide lapping hungrily at the surfaces, efforts futile.
she checked the distance for shadows. demian, who stood beside her as she spent her time gawking but turned his head upwards, before taking a couple of steps backwards. night only turned to look when he started to read the sentences aloud.
there, in the ceiling, was an inscription on its own —

“so there is a lock,” demian had said, and just as well that as he turned, his boot had kicked against the latch of a door below them. he stepped back to examine it, squatting, just as night studied the words engraved upon the white concrete.


“why does it rhyme?” night queried aloud. demian but rolled the answer in place, jiggling at the padlock and hoping it would give. it wouldn’t. given the lack of their final number, all he had to do was run through the digits from 1 to 9 until it would give way.
the entire time, night had murmured the riddle under her breath. twice, and he had made it to ‘4’. no luck. on ‘5’ —
“i’ve got it.”
demian moved aside, handing her the lock as she drew in close. he hadn’t seen her answer, but he must’ve been close, he figured, if night had taken only seconds to get the hatch open. the woman stored the lock in her pocket, and gave the handle a tug. nothing. too heavy? she was supposed to be stronger than most.
“move over,” he ordered, as he realized she was just unfamiliar with how to pry it open. one forceful pull in the right direction was all demian needed. they peered into the hole together.
there was a faint glow radiating from within.

demian had decided not to let her move first. it was on his shoulders, after all, to ensure that she was returned to her owner perfectly intact.
so she watched him clamber down the ladder, following suit. the floor beneath them was of dusty cobble. the room was dark in every other corner of the room, save the torch at the base of the ladder and the one desk littered with candles, their wax never melting. demian shifted in the shadows, allowing it to envelop him, his eyes shining through it, piercing the unknown. when he breached the surface on the other side, night watched his fingers find purchase on a stack of magazines, their covers too distant for her to have identified its contents. he brushed them away, scoffing with a smile, then paused when he found treasure, and pulled out a yellowed parchment at the bottom of the stack.
shadows cast themselves over his eyes. he read it aloud.


HE FELT IT.

HE FELT THEM.

WHY DID HE DO IT?

EVERY SENTENCE HE UTTERED, HE FELT THE WORDS DIE IN HIS THROAT. HE SPOKE THEM ALOUD. NIGHT HAD HEARD EVERYTHING. BUT TO HIM, THE WORLD FELL SILENT. TO HIM, WHAT SPOKE THE LOUDEST WERE THE EYES THAT FLICKED OPEN BEHIND HIM, EYES THAT BORE UPON HIS BACK. IT WAS NOTHING LIKE THE GAZE OF A PLAYER. IT FELT HUNGRY. IT FELT MALICIOUS. AND HE WAS DESPERATE TO BUY TIME BEFORE HE NEEDED TO TURN AROUND TO LOOK AT IT.
SEEING IT WOULD FEEL LIKE HIS END.
HE HAD FELT A SIMILARITY AGES AGO. WAS PREPARED FOR IT, EVEN; SHOULD’VE FELT MORE DESPAIR POOLED AT HIS FEET WHENEVER HE GOT CARDINAL’S MISSIVE. HE KNEW [DEMIAN] HAD FELT THE SAME AND MORE WHEN HE HAD SENT THE RECLAIMATION NOTICE. NOW [DEMIAN] RANG HOLLOW. HE SUPPOSED IT WAS KARMA THAT CARDINAL WOULD EVENTUALLY MAKE HIM FEEL THE SAME WAY.
THE LAST WORDS DISSIPATED IN THE ETHER. NIGHT HAD SHIFTED, LIPS MOVING, POINTING AND GESTURING TO SOMETHING, A SILHOUETTE BEHIND HIM. HE DIDN’T NEED TO HEAR HER WORDS TO UNDERSTAND IT WAS FATE LOOMING OVER HIS SHOULDERS AS HE SLIPPED THE PAPER BETWEEN THE MAGAZINES AND THE TABLE SURFACE. NO SHADOW CREPT UP ON HIM. HE TURNED, GODLESS, AND HIS WORTH FADED WHEN HE MET THE EYES OF [                              ].


HE SAID NOTHING.



WAS HE ANGRY? HE SUPPOSED HE WAS. THIS MUST BE WHAT IT HAD FELT LIKE, TO BE EMMETT, TO BE THE IDOL NOW VICTIMIZED GIVEN HIS FOUNDATION TORN AWAY FROM HIM WITHOUT CONSENT. HE WAS IN DARKNESS SHROUDED, VISION GLAZED AS THEIR VICTIM STARED BACK AT THEM, LUCID, DETAILS SHARPENED AT THE EDGES OF HIS OWN MIND. BREATHING BECAME UNBEARABLE. THE WINDS SHIFTED AGAINST THEM. ITS EYES THAT FELL UPON HIM SPOKE OF MANY WORDS, AND ALL COALESCED INTO ONE SINGLE WILL.
PAPERS WERE THROWN ABOUT. THE CANDLES SHUTTERED OFF ONE BY ONE. THUNDER RESOUNDED IN THE DISTANCE. THE ROOM BUT SPUN AS HE TOOK ONE STEP AT A TIME.
DEMIAN WAS HYPERVENTILATING. HE SHRUGGED OFF ITS COAT, AND TORE HIS BLADE FROM THE ETHER.

CARDINAL WOULD NOT MAKE A MOCKERY OUT OF HIM, NOR HER.
IT WOULD NEVER TAKE THEM BACK.


night knew things had gone awry the moment she noticed that demian hadn’t heard her.
“what is that?” she had said.
demian never needed to speak.
‘does it matter?’ he had said earlier. ‘it’s just an enemy,’ so he had believed.
but she had heard its wishes and watched it shudder, the breeze that traced around the room but an echo of its horror expressed in its fate. no poker was necessary when they both had swords.
when he drew his from the ashes, so too did she pull oathkeeper from the light. the unremarkable blade hit the sun in her hands, and in his eyes she saw once more that murderous intent.
he had meant to kill again.
“no,” she whispered, and repelled demian’s sword from their clash.
he came down on her again, another blow to a glow manifested. each strike was precise, almost critical — it had caused oathkeeper to ring uncharacteristically, like a pawn obeying his commands, ripple after ripple after ripple. each time her sword sung, it but flooded the room with illumination; there, the shambling mess became visible.
that thing was never meant to be seen, night soon realized. it was built tall of blinking eyes, caged in rusted banded metal, the door and subsequent lock to free it from its gaol unseen. the blood on the weapon it had once used had long dried. it was hard to pay attention to it against an onslaught, but night swore she caught the hue of it a dark velvety red.
she pulled her blade away from a defensive stance once demian had decided to switch patterns. a sweep that would knock her away from his target — she followed through, rolling with it in a feint, before tackling the man in a rebound just as he raised his blade in a familiar sunder. night crashed into him — they skid and rolled, wrestling in a frenzy — night had struggled to fight his blade away and yet he had made oathkeeper come undone from her hands. the sword clattered to the floor once it bounced off the walls and dipped — she pinned his wrists to the floor thereafter, and his sword freed itself from his grasp at the unfolding violence.
eyes of a beast unknown stared back at her. night straddled him in a way she was familiar, trying to ensure he wouldn’t perform a rolling maneuver to knock her off.
he didn’t.
“demian,” she tried. “demian. demian, what are you doing?”
“you don’t know that thing,” he hissed, fighting out of her hold with his hands instead. “you don’t know what it could do!”
“demian, it’s locked up inside a cage,” she returned, “i don’t think it could do anything.”
“there’s something wrong about this floor.”
“there’s been something wrong about this adventure ever since we started it,” she argued. “why did you have to take day’s place anyway?!”
“what does it matter?”
“why wouldn’t she come?!”
“why can’t she just tell you herself?!”
“well, that’s what we’re trying to find out here,” night yelled, “aren’t we?!”


they were plunged into darkness immediately thereafter. only the torch had remained kindled after flickering out, its feeble glow gently washing over the bodies on the floor. demian had watched her like a hound, having flinched at the dip in light, discovering her eyes too reflected no sheen of white nor purple the same way his would do so.
lost in pitch black, he was sunk momentarily into the darkness that he would become.
when her figure emerged, warmth hugging her form like an old friend, demian felt a surge of emotion. he wasn’t sure where the well of tears were threatening to come from. he had felt his heart swelled, as though enlightened by a saint of some kind from her presence, even though he knew night had nothing, nothing to do with any of his inclinations.
day had put her faith in her. and, despite his own loss of trust in players, couldn’t he do so, too, just this once?
he knew the gemini was not behind any of the adaptations in the lighthouse. but in that mellow glow, a sunset lustrous, he felt as though she had arrived but to speak to him directly; to intercept cardinal, as she once did in times long past.
he swallowed. he allowed the sear of embarrassment to swallow him whole. but once he was done eating through his feelings internally, he released his fear and grief both, relaxing the expression on his face, once scrunched up in agony.
demian would surrender this once to their mirrors.
“... i’m sorry.”
because the alternative, to return to an oppressor familiar and known, would be worse.
“no, i’m sorry,” night returned, slowly pushing herself off of him. he let her. he closed his eyes and wondered in the moments that passed thereafter if this was what it must be like to be day.


“we’re not killing him,” she breathed, after scrambling to her feet. the enigmatic creature stared at them unwavering. “and that’s final. this is the keeper of the lighthouse; we both know this. we’ve found him. and that has to be enough for cardinal, right? this has to count for something.”
she was reassured by the grace of the system, once that final flame went out, and the room was flooded with white. a stroke of lightning amidst the heavy downpour, and a rumble that followed but came as their answer. then, as the lights returned to them — all of them, candles alit once more — night found that the system had decided to mark their quests complete.
“oh, thank goodness,” night sighed aloud, walking over to demian who seemed to have fallen asleep, “it’s over.”
demian didn’t stir until night offered him a hand up. almost instinctively, he reached out for it, one eye open, before clambering up to his feet, weapon returned to his inventory. she did the same for oathkeeper. and though the storm carried on, and the shadow of the figure behind them eyed them warily, night found relief in the ability to text their allies.

	to: day
	night: we’re okay.