Andarin: The Mountains: Her;

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'"
There were stories of love unrequited that Nicodemus could recite on a second’s notice. Stories that he had been told as a boy, stories that he had witnessed and narrated now for the sakes of their own souls. He smiles sadly, for his own stories that he had been there for firsthand….

Illiana had been his Lily. Since the day that they met and the day that they had so bitterly departed she had always been Lily. He remembers pouring his heart and soul into her, and she had shattered him to pieces. He remembers the nights spent speaking with her, living only for the splendor of her voice. Illiana’s heart….was a rather fickle thing it seemed. Illiana had never spoken to him after their last encounter, but Nicodemus had never left her side. Nicodemus, as he had with everyone he cared about, had followed her to Phlegethon on lonely nights, and with a jealous and pained heart had watched her and Benediction together. He had often glared at the other stallion, his youth obvious in that time. It should have been him down there with her, he had often found himself thinking. And when he began to see that her belly swelled with Saga and Shay, well, it had been only him to stand watch over her on the nights when Benediction was not there, guarding her where He could not. Perhaps it was what made him so hard now.

And now this….

Now it was all playing in a vicious circle. It was like Lily had come back to haunt him even more than she had before. But it couldn’t be…..

…It wasn’t…..

Love.

He felt Andraste then, her mind chiding him. You know you do.Nicodemus shakes his head, because it could not be. Icarus was there, all over her, in every essence that was her. He could kill the flame stallion for it, Nicodemus knows this. He knows that even in this simple act he might be there in the shadows, his eyes bearing so harshly into the red. It does not frighten him like perhaps it should. What would he fear when he had always lost everything in the end? What would he fear, this knight who so passionately defended those wolves he did not even know, the stallion who fought in the most chivalrous of wars at one point in his life, who had conquered death itself? No. He is not afraid.

Love came and went, but for Nicodemus, it was a constant. He never stopped loving them, who had all grasped at his heart at one point in time. No, Nicodemus would remember them all, lovers wonderful and terrible. Lovers who had broke and mended him. His love was unending….even for Lily, and it would always be there.

He feels her sudden tremble, and he brings his eyes back to her. It is only then that he notes the tears, and his face clouds with an uncertain concern, one that he tries in vain to hide. It was unspoken, but it was there, and it was enough for him. She knew….he knows that. It was no fool that was Nicodemus. But if it need be spoken then he would not be the one. His heart could not bear it anymore. Instead he smiles faintly, his flames caressing her sides tenderly. “Are you ok?”

Andraste comes to them now, her wings curling into his back as she rests upon his withers, her eyes so piercing to Astarte’s own. A glare, and it is all that she can do to hold her jealousy in her mind….it is all that she can do not to kill the Oracle because she would if it meant that He would look at her that way, that He would yearn only for her love….

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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