There might have been a time when he could enjoy the moonlight.

The night’s peace was one that Golbez always welcomed, back before that raiment of darkness had swallowed up his soul. After a long day’s work, there was nothing better than unwinding into the peaceful night, watching as the sun slipped into beautiful twilight until the calm moon peeked its way through the clouds. He and his father had spent many a lazy afternoon resting from the deeds of the day, watching, waiting, quietly chatting with each other, sharing the stories they had made. Theodor had not feared the dark, so long as moon’s light was resting carefully upon his shoulders.

It was these memories that were mocking him. Why did they have to return and torment him of an idyllic past that no longer existed? Why did they have to simmer within his mind and remind him of a past where life and love were within his reach? It was preferable when they had been buried, locked away to rot and not inflame his mind of passions that will never be quenched. Of course he would prefer to live in the past. To go back to a simpler, more wondrous time would be a dream that would lift his spirits and let them be at ease. It would be heaven if he could just regress, return to the past, turn back tie and never let the horrible events that had transpire to ever happen.

Sometimes, Golbez thought he was a callow and hopeless romantic.

The die has been cast. His fate had long been sealed. The poison that wormed into his mind that fateful, horrid day had done irreparable work to his soul, leaving them tinted with black spots that will never fade. Even now, he could still a whisper of Zemus, trying to cajole him, turn him towards a path he never wanted to traverse. The monster was dead but his hatred was a monster in itself. It was something that would not be easily erased even with the willpower of the gods themselves. He would carry Zemus’s hatred as it once burdened its heart with the curses and accusations he pointed at the rest of the world.

That was his burden and he must shoulder it towards the ends of the earth.

For many, Babil was as far as they could go in traversing their blue planet. That alien tower, piercing the heavens with the might of Lunarian intellect and power, it served as the typical end point for many people, a monument to the end of the world. After that cataclysmic battle between the monster it heralded, the tower was abandoned, left derelict as the rest of the Lunarians enclosed themselves and their affairs from the rest of the planet. After all, it was not only Golbez who felt that atonement should come from self-exile and self-discovery. Perhaps people had hoped nature would take its course and batter down this steel and concrete monster, reducing it into the scrap and ruins that its Giant had been reduced to as well. Perhaps nobody wanted to remind themselves of the bloodshed that had ensued, what had to happen before the ambitions of one genocidal man of hatred had to be quelled. All the lives lost, all the blood spilled, there was no need to torture oneself of what could have happened or how they could have prevented it. Better to move on and let the past rot in the darkness it deserved.

From the tip of the tower, Golbez had a fantastic view of the rest of the world. At first light, he would watch as the tendrils of the sun encroached and reached past the dusty hills and the towering mountains, claiming the world for itself. At night, everything was shrouded in secrecy, a veil of shadow that obscured all sight to all but a keen observer. Even within his mighty raiment, Golbez was not impaired in any sense whatsoever. Everything was keen to his mind, from the fluctuations of the wind as they swept past the tower to the moonlight haunting his steps. The feeling of metal against rock, the feeling of loneliness, of enforced exile, they all cascaded within his mind.

But he will not break. He was better. He knew the score now.

“If only.”

It felt nice to reminisce, to wrap himself in a cloak of lovely memories but they were nothing more than a diversion. The past was immutable, unchangeable, nothing that can be touched and altered even if he desired it so. There was no point to all this rumination, a waste of brain power spent on clinging to the past. He would give his life to have the chance just to watch Cecil grow up, to watch over him and live a life that had not been defined by hatred. Likewise, he wished he could also pound this tower into dust and salt the earth, making sure nothing would grow back from the desolate landscape that he would wreak.

There was no more time for fantasy. Now was the time for action. He was not idle after having left his exile. He had traversed the worlds and seen for himself the stench of darkness that emerged from the worlds, consuming them in a frenzy of debased fury. The eldritch sense of Death had wafted before him and it led him back to action, nothing to have him clad on but in the ghostly armor of the past. He was like a phantom of nightmares best buried but he would rather not hide his sins if he felt that he had done little to sufficiently atone for them. A mage of darkness, that was what he was. No point in shirking away from that fact.

Even if he had to face his brother once more under the cold cloak of darkness then that must what transpire.

---

POST EXP - 995
THREAD EXP - 995
NOTE: Dammit, I forgot where the Tower of Babil is. Any admin who reads this and knows, would you kindly move to the appropriate place?

There were things in everyone’s past they would rather forget.

No one wanted to have bared before them their sins, to be forced to acknowledge the crimes they committed, no matter the excuse. Cecil knew this, and waged war with his own demons. His own past was impossible for the knight to forget. Could he have erased his heinous crimes from the past, he would. Could he have but saved the King, had he known of Cognazzo’s possession… The things Cecil would change had he only the opportunity, these were the thoughts that ate at the man’s heart.

He’d followed such cruel orders, murdered innocents for what he thought was his king. Night was the witness to his crimes. And the moon his confident. 'A coward'. He’d called himself that once, knowing he had stained his very being with the blood of innocents. Now he knew that only a coward would shirk from their mistakes, hiding from the world. Cecil was done hiding. He would forever live with that guilt. However, he’d shed the once black armor, and his crimes had been atoned for in the eyes of others. He’d tried, putting forth all he had to amend his mistakes.

Would his brother be able to do the same? The knowledge that Golbez, the man he himself had sworn to defeat, that man was his brother had shaken him. Golbez had left him in the woods as a mere babe, his soul already tainted by Zemus. Would things have been different if KluYa had not been killed, and Golbez had not borne that seed of darkness as a result? If Cecil had been raised by his rightful family, he’d probably be an entirely different person. He’d not have Rosa by his side. Perhaps Cecil could appreciate that darkness that had once lurked in his brother’s heart. But he’d shed that darkness here. Here in this tower, Cecil had learned the truth, and Golbez had finally regained his senses. And now Golbez stayed hidden from him. Would he never try to walk in the light again? Would his brother never embrace the sunlight, see the dawn, both metaphorically and physically? This decrepit tower held his brother, the mage who was trapped in his own darkness. Cecil was determined to open his brother’s eyes.

Golbez had committed heinous acts, murdered many, this was true, but it was not of his own will. Golbez—Theodor, would be forgiven. At least in his younger brother’s eyes, Golbez had hidden long enough. Climbing through the tower to see him brought memories to the Paladin. Battles that seemed to go on for eternity, though in actuality last a mere moment, Rosa’s gentle healings, and the battle with Golbez- no, not Golbez’s archfiends, but Zemus’, lingered the longest. This tower stood for much, it was a Lunarian structure, reaching for the heavens, and in a way the very moon those people had once inhabited. It stood for both the good, and the bad, having once housed an abomination of steel and metal, a creature that had created havoc, destroying all around it, but even then, Cecil had his doubts the tower should be eradicated from the surface of the earth. It was a symbol to him of his friendship. The sacrifices made by those he could trust with his lives, everyone had banded together to fight the Giant that had once been sealed within the tower.

No, it was not a symbol of turmoil for the young man. It was a symbol for unity and honor. But not all saw it the same way. There were things that had to stand for something. And now Cecil would stand for his brother.

Golbez had not acted out of personal desire when he’d sought out the crystals, but had been listening to the stain of evil embedded in him by the cruel Lunarian. The light in Golbez did exist. Of that, Cecil was certain. And for that, he had sought his brother out to ensure his brother would find peace with himself.

"Golbez." At long last his eyes met the shadowed form of his brother, deep within the tower.

He’d found him, after searching long enough to end his brother’s exile, he’d found him here, in this tower so hated by many. It was now, after looking for so long, that Cecil found himself lost for words. What did one say to the man who was once his enemy, how did was he to assure Golbez hope was not lost, and the light in him would again shine, as bright as the sun Golbez shied away from?

"Brother, I’ve found you."

--
Word Count: 772
Experience: 772

There was so much left he had to say to Cecil. So much left unsaid as the years had driven them apart.

During that time of madness, when his mind was in the grip of his own hatred and Zemus’s manipulation, Golbez never spared a single thought for the only family he had left. Why would he? He was far too concerned with gathering the keys that would lead to the fulfilment of a madman’s wishes, wishes that Golbez must have genuinely shared if he had gone along with such a plan. The whispers of Zemus had clouded his mind, sharpened it to focus on one singular goal. He did not have any time for trivialities, any superfluous thoughts that would impede his progress to the fulfilment of his plans. Nothing remained in his mind but the domination of one goal, one task that he must accomplish.

It was a shock to find his mind suddenly be filled with more. With the voice of Zemus long gone, it was jarring to hear his own reign supreme within his own mind, controlling his own thoughts and dictating all that he needed. How long had his natural voice been drowned out by Zemus’s droning bass? There was none of the cold tendrils or long weights that had pressed against his mind, forbidding any sudden movement that was not the dictate of Zemus’s will. There was no force grinding the nerves that created Theodor Harvey, no insidious influence that choked his will and gave birth to the man of sable, the dread Golbez. The winds of the earth around him, the cold wash of moonlight upon his shoulders, they were unheeded and unchained from the once monotony of his mind grappled against a stronger will, his desires sublimed into the desires of another.

Golbez let out a heavy sigh. More excuses. More gauze to paper over the faults that had let him astray into darkness and madness. Zemus would never have exercised incredible control on his mind if the thoughts were not already there. His emotions would not have been assimilated to the Lunarian’s hatred if he had not shared that self-same hatred himself. That youth who stood over his mother’s corpse, if he had been stronger, if he had not let his emotions and his will be guided, weakened, turned aside and allowed to embrace what his mind and heart was drilling into his ehad. He had imagined those thoughts. He had seen in his mind’s eye just how it could be done. The humans who rue them for their talent, crushed under the boot of Lunarian might. Their sufferings and tribulations paid forth in blood. His parents and their untimely demise, avenged for the shame of having been cast out and abandoned by the people they had sought to care for. The future that had been abruptly cut off, restored to its glory. He would not feel those awful feelings of regret and fear, those maddening hours when everything around him caved in on itself and it looked like Theodor was going to be abandoned for the flies. Those days would be over once the Lunarians had taken the planet for their own and he would stand tall with his brethren, safe and secure as ever.

That dream was the true poison. The canker that drove his veins black with rage, his mind choked by the insidious dreams of another, infinitely more alien and yet more personable foe. For is it not true that the hatred Zemus shared to him was also Golbez’s? That his rage merely fueled another, feeding off each other, his control only growing stronger as Golbez allowed it? He had let the worms grow within his heart, who else could he blame for Zemus’s ease at taking control? Who’s fault was it but his own?

”And what do you intend to do now?”

Golbez turned to find his brother, much unchanged since their final moments together within the ancient moon of Lunarian might. Yet there was a bearing upon him that suggested more. The bearing of a king, a royal, a man with burdens to shoulder and a man who has learned and grown from experiences past. A jab of warmth and pain entered his heart but Golbez gave no sign from within his dark helm. He would not stand irresolute in front of his brother, even if he had shown himself to be the weaker sibling in every way possible. He had grown to the mantle of ruler well from what he had observed.

But there was still that naivety. That longing in his eyes which hoped to peer into a similar pair to be uncovered from the rivets of steel and darkness. Golbez had long hoped that during their period of separation, Cecil would have long ceased to dream of that impossible day when the light would shine favourably upon his like without the feeling of never belonging to anything. He had his duties, his responsibilities, his life to order. He did not need to pay any heed to a brother who had long lost the way. The mind would be better exercised by excising such nonsense away. But no, it was plainly clear in Cecil’s eyes what he expected from this meeting.

”You do me a disservice to expect so much. To believe I deserve enough.”

Cecil may not be able to see Golbez’s own eyes but perhaps he could feel them on him. Feel them and see how he longed to release himself from this suit of sables. To cast away this nightly cloak and take his place alongside his blood, his one last shred of family. To return from the shadows into what he hoped would be truly home.

But not today.

”Either way, we have far more pressing matters to discuss.”

---

POST EXP- 991
THREAD EXP- 1986