horizon tells the truth?

“I arrived on the island as myself. Doctor Eirin Lemezza. I haven’t been... as sharp since I changed into what I am now, but I still had enough to masquerade as a proper archaeologist. I met your friends somewhere along the line. Insinuated myself purposefully into their number, come to think of it.”



Here comes the first part that Horizon doesn’t want to mention, doesn’t want to talk about, doesn’t want to be accountable for. But they have to, because they have to, because they are, like it or not. “As your friends went about their business, I was eventually left alone with one of their number. An elf. Old, handsome in a gray fox kind of way?” Horizon tentatively smiles, seemingly embarrassed by the admission. “Well. There’s no way to put this gently. I interrogated him, and then choke slammed him unconscious. He told me very little of value, I stabbed his living bag and drank all the potions he was keeping inside of it in order to restore the damage done by said living bag.” Eirin traces their fingertips over the underside of their right arm, which has since been overtaken by that skin-plating that covers their throat and jaw. “Its teeth were sharp enough that it nearly nocked the bone.”



After a moment of deliberation (and realizing it only gets worse from here,) they add: “I also broke several of his possessions out of spite.” A gentle throat clear. It all sounds *juvenile* out of context like this.



“I took my leave at that point to pursue quarry deeper in the island. I choked quite a few more of the number there, though I swear on my honor that I did not create some undue bloodbath.” Horizon scowls at their own suggestion that they would, and spits into the fire. “From there, I went about my business for a bit. Nothing of note occurred save for aforementioned brutalizing of a few adherents.” They draw back a bit, to emphasize that they are not in fact planning on attacking Quickstep. “We re-united in a chamber deep under the island. Your little collection of guild members somehow managed to anger somebody I can only assume was a vicar, who then made a large wasp appear from the walls. I, of course, was hidden behind one of those lovely hidden panels that the architects seem overly fond of. The walls began to close in, and I was thrust from my hiding place into the fray.”

“The drow shot me quite badly, puncturing a great deal of the...” Eirin looks down at their stomach, and motions to the area around their bellybutton. Their abs are pretty plainly visible, considering all of their feats of core strength they do basically all the time. “Painful but non-vital parts of my body.” There’s a scar roughly the size of a pancake to the left of their bellybutton, surrounded by a dusting of nearly faded scorch marks. “I was almost fully perforated before I availed myself of the nearby vespoid assistance.” You know. When they choked out a wasp for a bullet shield.



“It died, I did not. The room at this point had been filled with enough smoke that I simply lay down among it and let the walls escort the guild-folk out of the vicinity. I gave chase once I was sure I was able.”



They rub at their cheek as they prepare for shitty bombshell number two. “Things came to a final head in a chamber deep, deep under the earth, connected to the sea. By the time I made my entrance, the fellow in the mask had found a blade, and that particular blade was sharp enough that it did this.”



Horizon motions now to what was once the largest scar on their body- which is saying a lot, given the marks their latest brutalization has left. It’s partly covered by plating, but it’s so obscenely brutal that it’s still clear against their skin. From their inner right collar bone to their left hip is a scar so deep, and so *surgical* that it’s practically uncanny. It’s like something ten times their size tried to make an incision across their chest with a scalpel.



“And they began to leave. Leave me to die, specifically.” Their voice falls to a nervous, disconnected hollow. “I found myself angry. Awash with adrenaline, skating the binary switch between alive and dead. Angry enough that I was able to dredge something... *hideous* out of myself. A malice so pure that it’d be wrong to call it hate. Just a desire for nonexistence. A disdain I didn’t think my heart capable of holding.”



“I... took that impulse. That fury. I took it, and threw it after them, and that’s the last thing I remember seeing of them before the force of whatever I did threw me into the channels below.”



“So that is the truth, unadulterated, as I remember things happening. As far as I know, nobody was killed except for the great mechanical thing- and while I’m no expert, the thing didn’t seem particularly cognizant of itself. I don’t know what became of your guildmates beyond that point.”