Duir goes without complaint at Wessex’s suggestion, making his way towards the crafting caves at a swift, head bobbing walk. I watch him, because it’s something to look at other than Weaver’s useless scowl, or Erebos’ depressingly dark eyes. The request for stories of the first Rift battles draws an ear, but not my gaze at first.

It’s the second question that does, a dryness netted to my tone that implies just how thick the walls I’ve thrown up for the time are. I won’t allow myself to become emotional. Nothing ever goes well, when I do.

"Likely weeping somewhere," I say, almost in time with her appearance, stricken with tears. Looking at her with a gentle nudge of my horn, as if to say, see, I follow it with my eyes, which are soft at the sight of her pain. I had not expected her to come, as much as I had expected this: she was gentle, Tiamat, gentler than I had ever been, even as a boy. Never in my life had I met a single soul who was a set upon the path of the Light and Just, and it left her hopelessly adrift in a dark sea, such as this.

Wessex takes more action than I do; the sound of the mirror breaking in the cavern meets my ears and shoots through to my heart like a knife, but I swallow down the sound of pain that wants to rise to my lips, instead clenching my eyes shut, and bowing my head to it all. Tiamat’s crying, Weaver’s nonchalance, unaware of the danger impending, Erebos’ strange calmness; the fragments sliding across the stone, and Wessex’s hateful answer to the problem (abandonment is nothing to cry over, bitterly says one who has never been abandoned). I don’t want to hear any of it, not anymore.

The abysmal well looms dark, darker than I remember leaving it: suddenly there again, right beneath me, all my flimsy covers cast off by the cold wind that blows hard through my heart. When I open my eyes, I’m falling. I don’t even reach for the sides anymore. I barely look up for the light at the top.

Abandonment: it rings through my head.

"Come, Lady Tiamat," I ask her, softly, turning lifeless eyes in her direction, gently touching her face and then her neck, as she has done for me, before, hoping it fills her with the sense of belonging it had me, that it does not hurt as it had for me, too. Not sure why I’m being so gentle, I reason that its just easier to deal with someone else’s feelings than my own, and only one of us here is visibly distraught… not to say Erebos’ still face impends good things, either, but still. As a man, I’d be embarrassed to be coddled by anyone in front my peers. "You can cry all the tears you must, but we must also be ready, to prevent the worst. We have each other, still. This is only a place."

I tell her, feeling the words crush me, looking around me at my home, my birth land, with an inner rage beginning to broil in the desolation yawning within me. This is bullshit! I think to myself, turning away towards the crafting caves, to hide my sudden emotional fluctuation, ashamed that I’m not strong enough to be like Deimos, father, or even mother.

"Duir’s at the crafting caves. I’m going to go meet him," I tell them, and prowl away.