The night found him out of the safety of his frozen wilderness. His breath puffed around his nose as testament to the cold he wore like a shawl, or perhaps proof of the beast within; he moved through its clouds roughly, haste nipping at his heels. There was a touch of worry too, evident in the crinkling of his 'brow as he glanced up at the bloodied heavens. He squinted as the Sun sank, trying to recall within his head which day he was on, but with little luck. Some of the recent storms had obscured his stars and thus his counts.

I think i can make it, he tried to reassure himself, shuffling back towards his hovel in the Basin before he was caught out in the dark. Not this dark, he would never make it in time, but it wasn't this night he was worried about, or so he thought. The night's descent was noticeable, and not half because of the darkness it brought. For Öde it tended to bring something special, something reliable; a token of his mortality that he so brusquely tried to deny.

Pain.

That is how the night met him. This night. This cold, moon-less, awful bitch of a night. "FUCK!" he swore as agony rippled through his skin and settled into sinew and flesh, ate against muscle and burrowed into bone. Blood painted the obsidian of his side where a spire of ice had once impaled him, and there his lung fell again, his breaths abruptly ragged. Skin bubbled and peeled along his back and his chest where divine blood and saliva had eaten at him like flame on logs, the fire real enough to his nerves that screamed beneath the memory. Meat flapped with every stride against his chest where the Moon's puppet had carved him a grave - the very one he descended into now.

Staggering, drunk on torment, Öde slipped into the recesses of the cave network, where he figured to suffer alone in silence as he did every night this occurred back home. You'd think he'd loathe the darkness for the hurt it caused him, but it's familiarity held a certain comfort. Even the things that hurt us, so long as we know them, aren't so terrifying as the unknown.

His weary, bedraggled momentum finally sank against the gnarled trunk of his death tree. His right shoulder, in better shape than his left, slouched against the wavy bark while his head hung in despair between his forelegs. As if physical assault wasn't enough, being here again, like this, reminded him of his mother. His heart clenched at the thought...

---

['tis a new moon as this is written so:
:: [ Magic: DarkxLight (P) | able to live forever, though all pain is still felt and a killing blow will cause unconsciousness for several days as the body recovers ]
:: [ Restrictions | can be killed by complete decapitation only; recovering from an injury the scars are left and in moonlight the wounds are revealed as new; during a full and new moon they are felt as fresh ] ]

He hears his name, and it's as if the darkness is calling to him, the word bouncing around off the cool, damp walls where little could be seen. He peers into it anyway, squinting against the eerie glow of the various crystals and his soul-tree, trying to discern something, anything. It could be Oblivion again, he thinks excitedly. Or perhaps his mother, this is where... the thought trails off as he hears sounds.

He's been holding his breath and it whistles out now, a rugged gasp that reminds him of his pain. He tenses up, teeth grit while his ears spin still trying to figure out the echoes. His eyes give up their search amid the swamp of low-light, falling into half-lidded submission of his mortal torture instead. He shifts, trying to get comfortable against the tree, and groans again as it irks his returned injuries.

His ears have still been attentive though, their red bodies spinning amid his crown and mane. There is someone he thinks defensively, or something some other part of him warns with a dark humor. Never fond of being found in this state of heightened weakness, much less by something strange or unknown, Öde bristles.

"GO AWAY!" he roars back at the sounds, at the darkness, at the despair and its kin, agony. The bellow leaves him gasping for air, his sunken lung useless as his one remaining one works that much harder. He wheezes when he draws breath in, and he hates the sound of that, the sound of his demise.

He see sit then - a wolf, or so his pain-hazed mind tells him. A normal horse might have been afraid, but Öde smiles. "So it is you," he mumbles to Oblivion. Yet, Oblivion doesn't speak, but rather whines and crawls. Even in his foggy state, Öde can't believe the DemonKing would lower himself to such a state. Was it a sign that Öde had superseded him? No he thought roughly, squashing that faint hope. I've done nothing deserving of such, came the more honest, rationale thought. Grand as the DemonKing was to him, Öde's greed was not above dethroning him - but only if he was worthy. Some day he would be, but that day was not today. He wasn't a child any more thinking he would wake up with a crowned head and force clouds to kneel.

There was something else happening here.

He hears his voice then, and as much as he wills it to be the sound of his god, even of his mother, the echo it leaves in his mind is decidedly neither of them. It's familiar, but so long ago he doesn't remember it. Öde squints through the light, seeing movement. She comes into his focus as her words continue, and there's a brief moment of disappointment, swiftly followed by relief. No Oblivion, not October, but no one else bad either. If he must be found int his moment of weakness, then at least it's by the filly from the boat.

The sight of her, the smell of her, the sound of her all combine to strengthen his memory. "Vitani," he mutters with a wheeze as the recognition settles into place. He would never forget a name, such was the legacy of a memory. Names were important, they were everything. The wolf, he now saw clearly, was her hellhound. He frowned, at himself, for being so willing to sink into false illusions. She whispers something nearly inaudible, and in his state of disrepair he doesn't catch it, but he still hears the earlier questions and with noticeable raggedness he answers.

"Nothing has happened," he clarified like an ass, "because it already had happened." He must have been spending too much time with gods, speaking so cryptically. "Just the cost of carelessness, a reminder of my mortality lest I forget it... nothing to be done but to endure the night." He grunted as he shifted, sweating in the creases of his body as pain chewed on his nerves. "Herbs," he croaked after a moment, "that numb and heal. They help." He couldn't use a healer, the magic useless on him, but plants and their natural tendencies were always nice. He had a stash at home, but nothing close enough for this night. Maybe he needed to invest in a murse...

"Talk to me," he went on after a moment, hoping she might distract him from thinking about all his aches. It could equally prove annoying, but after spending so many nights like this alone, he wondered if her presence might prove helpful. "Why are you down here?"