Andarin: The Mountains: Spell, cast a spell,

“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'"

He remembered dying. He remembered it as though it had happened just yesterday. He had been starving, exhausted, cold, and yet he had continued. At that time, he was searching for death. Searching for an end, and him continuing to run was near to suicide. Life just didn’t seem worth it without her. Hawthorne had been his life. There was first a small white light, and then he thought he heard Hawthorne calling him. It’s what pushed him more to death, because that illusion of a voice (he still doesn’t know if it was real) beckoned him sweetly into the grim reaper’s hands. After that there was nothing. Nothing but blackness, and he remembers running still, despite the fact that there was literally nothing.

He even remembered the song that brought him back. Fire had encased him, and suddenly he was falling, only…it was different. It was as if he were falling…up. However strange that may sound, that’s how it was. Falling upwards, then landing hard upon the rain-soaked wasteland of wherever he had been, Andraste and Keir cloaking him.

So he had come back.

There were many things that Nicodemus had missed about Andarin in his absence. Faces swam across his mind; Nyota, Skylar, Astarte, Wyvern. There were others, but those were faces long since passed; Requiem, Dorian, Kale. He laughed at the thought that he was among the first horses to bless the Wolfrange as it had once been called. So many had come and gone, and some who had left only to return again. Much like our own Nicodemus. The element was not a hard thing to forget, nor was it something that you could leave behind. It was what kept him coming back over and over again. It was why he was certain that Skylar would return here, to her first and only home.

When he returned, he didn’t expect to see many familiar faces. It was simply the way of life, people came and went, and Nicodemus couldn’t expect any different. And yet he had returned to a handful of those he had once known, and it surprised him.

And soon not only Wyvern, but Icarus as well were before him. It didn’t surprise him as much now as it would have upon his first arrival home. He smiles then. Icarus was not someone he really knew, but Wyvern had been his first student. And now he had surpassed his teacher, by the looks of it. He often wondered what he would do as an Oracle. But that was a different subject entirely, and he pushed it aside, stepping closer to the two. “Wyvern. Icarus.” He nods, then adds, darkly… “It’s been a long time.”

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.

Picture Copyright to Artwithapulse at Deviantart