three ladders in a trench coat @introboy - Tumblr Blog

Mar 23, 2024

Helsknight showing up bloody at Welsknight’s base please I need suffering 🙏

There was something to be said about the stupid things he was willing to do in the name of self preservation. Damn his fears, and the unfairness of the universe, and the uncertainty of living [and dying] and everything else. The unknown had always been his greatest weakness, his greatest betrayer. Pity it was also one of the few inescapable things about living in general.

To say Helsknight stepped into Hermitcraft would be a terrible injustice of what stepping normally, let alone gracefully, looked like. What he actually did was stagger and drag himself into Hermitcraft on unsteady and shaking limbs. There were holes in him. He hadn't really taken inventory of them yet. Admitting he had a wound [or several] was enough. The minute he admitted the wounds were bad, in certain terms his mind could comprehend, was the minute shock would steal his senses. He was on Hermitcraft for the specific reason of dodging death, and it seemed to him shock, on any level, meant dying. If he wanted to die and roll the dice of respawn, he would have died in hels, in the alley he'd been jumped in, where he could at least take comfort in familiar cobblestones and the knowledge he'd dragged all his attackers down with him. But he didn't want to die, so he was here.

It was dark. He was inside a building. He was bleeding. Wels was nearby. Those were the only things he needed to know for certain. Helsknight looked around, trying to ignore the sluggish tilt his vision offered when he moved too quickly. The double vision of trying to parse memories of a place that weren't his battled with his wounded animal double vision and together they made him feel nauseous, more so than his wounding already did. Helsknight balled a fist against his sternum, like he could hold himself together that way, and concentrated very hard on walking and nothing else.

Helsknight didn't like being this close to Wels. Not while he was this injured. He could feel the awareness of his other half like a spider on his skin. There was a reflex-like urge to shout and try to shake it off, the instinct-like certainty that if it rested on him long enough it would find a reason to bite him. And he knew, in the way only experience could teach, that if he could feel Wels, Wels could feel him. Helsknight had the sensation of walking a tightrope: his body insisted speed was the only thing that could save him, while his mind insisted he must stay unnoticed. He must balance necessity with making his thoughts and emotions small, and it was hard work to do when he was losing blood.

Helsknight blinked slowly, tiredly. He picked a direction and walked, a hand pressed to the wall, keeping himself upright. Wels's potion room was nearby, a borrowed half-memory informed him, he just had to get there. He searched his drifting thoughts for a poem to repeat in his head, to keep fear and uncertainty from rising. His heartbeat was quickening, a symptom of something; panic, or fear, or blood loss, or all three combined. He was fixing one of those things. He needed to carefully manage the other two, before Wels felt them. The only poem he could think of was in Middle English, and mostly gibberish to him, which told him it came from Wels's memories somewhere.

Why have ye no routhe on my child?

Have routhe on me ful of mourning;

Tak doun o rode my derworth child,

Or prik me o rode with my derling!

[Rhyming child with child was a lazy, but this was written back when one could convincingly spell "down" as "doun" so he supposed he shouldn't be overly critical. The real trick was figuring out if "derling" was supposed to mean "darling", or some other archaic word lost to time. He could only figure out so much from context clues. "Mourning" apparently transcended centuries, and that seemed fitting. Everyone knew mourning, in some form or another.]

An ache opened up beneath his clenched fist, or it had always been there, and his body was only just now reinforcing the fact that it was important. It felt like the mother of all cramps in his muscles, and he stubbornly pretended that's what it was. He needed more potassium in his diet or something, and the gods would forgive him the smear he left on the wall when he leaned on it, waiting on the intensity of his pain to ebb. The doorway he was walking towards seemed close, but also very, very far. Closing distance with it was going a lot slower than he thought it would, and it was only one short hallway. He was glad he'd decided to do this, instead of his other half-considered option of attempting to walk across hels to the Colosseum. He wouldn't have made it.

Dread pooled in his stomach. Dread, and other more physical things, like blood, probably, but he pretended the dread bit was more important. He could feel Wels pricking on his skin again, an insistent spider twitching at a breath on his web. Helsknight breathed out the steadiest breath he could manage.

More pine ne may me ben y-don

Than lete me live in sorwe and shame;

As love me bindëth to my sone,

So let us deyen bothe y-same.

[Sorwe. What medieval idiot thought "sorrow" was spelled like "sorwe"? Maybe it had something to do with inflection. Poetry was half words, half rhythm. Maybe "sorwe" was supposed to indicate they wanted the reader to pronounce "sorrow" as a single syllable, so it sounded more like "sore". That's also probably why "bothe y-same" was sitting there like word vomit. They meant "both the same", but wanted it read without a pause between the first two words. It was really the method for the madness that mattered with poetry.]

Helsknight blinked. He was in the potion room. He couldn't fully remember the walk down the hallway, but that didn't matter. What mattered was there should be health potions in here somewhere, his salvation. Relief edged his vision in stars, and he once again felt Wels's attention cant in his direction, confused and curious. Wels didn't associate feelings of relief with Helsknight. It wasn't an emotion they felt in each other's presence, and it was far too strong to be muffled by the distance to hels.

[He knows I'm here.]

Helsknight opened a chest and rifled through it. His vision was protesting. Stars and tilting that would turn to spinning soon made a clutter of his eyes. It got hard to distinguish the colors of the stoppered bottles. He picked up one that felt overly warm to his cold and shaking fingers. He was pretty sure it was a health potion. It felt too hot, but he reminded himself he was cold from losing blood, so it should feel hot. Hesitantly removed his fist from where it was balled in front of his sternum, and let his eyes unfocus when he grasped the bottle's stopper. His hands were so unsteady, it took a couple tries just to grab it, and when he pulled on the cork, his fingers slipped off weakly. He tried again, eyes closed with concentration, pouring every ounce of his strength into the act of pulling a stopper out of a bottle, only for his hand to slip right off again.

Frustrated, nearing desperate, he looked down at himself for a clean place to wipe his hand on his tunic. It was a mistake. He knew it as soon as he did it. His eyes were inexorably drawn from the fabric to the poke-holes in it, to the wine-dark stain that flowed down his front and still dripped tak-tak-tak slow and inexorable onto the floor. It was a woeful amount of blood. He was honestly surprised he wasn't dead yet. Chalk it up to fortitude, and ignorance, and size. He had more blood to lose than some people did.

Helsknight's world suddenly gave an awful twist, vertigo and the crescendoing, cramping agony of his wounds, only staved off by how his now shattered ignorance, kicking him off his feet just as surely as a horse could. He slumped against the wall, and then to the floor, and the awful jarring of it hurt him worse. Half a dozen other wounds on him aired their grievances, and the big one near his sternum pushed blood onto his fist when he clutched it. Helsknight sat pinned, unable to breathe for many long seconds, feeling a bit like he'd been struck by lightning. The pain was blinding and numbing and overwhelming all at once.

Why-- have no-- have ye no-- something something...

[Words. Breathe. Think of words.]

[Gods... But it hurts......]

Why have ye no routhe on my child?

Have routhe on me ful of mourning;

[And what the hels did "routhe" mean, anyway? He knew the word "route". He knew the name "Ruth". Neither of them fit, unless his bloodless brain was missing something. There was a chance "routhe" was supposed to be read like "bothe", as a double word slurred together, but that still left "routhe the" which made less sense in context than "routhe" did.]

Right. He was supposed to be doing something other than bleeding to death on the floor. Helsknight blinked, looked down at his hand and realized the health potion he'd grabbed was gone. He must have dropped it when he slumped over. Looking around, he spotted it just to the side of his left boot, unbroken, thankfully, but it might as well be a lifetime away for all the good it did him. Helsknight knew without a shadow of a doubt he couldn't reach it. The idea of tensing his muscles and dragging himself forward to reach was exhausting, and he hurt so much he knew the movement would feel like tearing himself in half, and there were just some things a mind couldn't power through. Helsknight laughed dismally and let his head fall onto his chest. Both motions were white hot agonies, but all his pains were starting to blur together into a smear of overwhelming sensation that took thought away. It occurred to him he was breathing too fast, like he'd run too far too fast, and his fluttering heartbeat agreed.

[... It hurts...]

[Gods and saints it hurts.]

[I'm dying.]

A feeling he could only describe as doom fell on his shoulders, a cold grasp of fear that wrapped stony hands around his heart and squeezed. He'd heard of this. Never felt it himself. The utter sureness that if he didn't do something now, he would die. All the unconscious bits in his body in charge of keeping him working all unanimously agreeing they needed divine intervention, preferably right now, before they started shutting down. It wasn't something he often had occasion to feel, though he had heard people tell of it after particularly grizzly matches and bloody tournaments. Death was normally too quick in the Colosseum, or else he'd won his match, and even if he was falling to pieces there was a health potion too close to hand to let him dwell on his harms. This was so terribly different. Death stalked toward him unhurried and unbothered, waiting on him to finish drowning in blood. He might panic, if he wasn't already so cold and scared.

"Ah. This makes some sense, anyway."

Helsknight, who had stopped seeing the world in front of himself without really closing his eyes, refocused his vision on the open doorway. Wels stood there, an angel of death in azure and silver, his sword in his hand. His eyes were the ruthless blue of hels freezing over and lifeless corpses, and Helsknight thought there was no one else in the world he would rather not watch him die. But the universe hated him, so here Wels was, just as surely as if he was fated.

"I didn't think all that fear could possibly be for me."

Helsknight tried to reply, but all he managed was a dying-animal noise that strangled itself out when he tried to breathe a little steadier. He tried again, and this time managed a very weak, but vaguely defiant, "Fuck off."

"Rude," Wels said chastisingly. A glow of something like smug satisfaction prickled Helsknight's skin. The feeling came from Wels. "Especially given I'm the only person who can save you."

Helsknight chuckled, and then stopped when his body seized painfully around the motion. "We both know you don't want to save me."

"No," Wels admitted. "But I don't want to do a lot of unpleasant things I agree to do anyway."

"How... charitable."

"It is a virtue."

"Sure."

Wels didn't move. Well, he did move, but only to sheath his sword. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, the image of patience, as though they had all the time in the world.

[Hungry spider. Waiting on a web for something to struggle.]

"If you're waiting on me to beg," Helsknight informed him through staggering breaths, "I won't."

"Too prideful?"

Helsknight searched himself momentarily for pride, and came up short. Pride would've dictated he die in the alley, instead of here where Wels could lord it over him. This was something different than pride.

"No."

"Then why not?" Wels asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's easy. Just say, 'Welsknight, please give me a health potion'. Or if you're feeling monosyllabic, just 'please' will work."

Helsknight managed a smirk. "Why not help me out of the kindness of your heart?"

"I don't have any kindness for people like you."

[People like you. What a loaded phrase.]

Have ye no routhe on my child?

There was an entire philosophical debate that could happen in the phrase 'people like you' that Helsknight had neither the time or the energy to bother with. Besides, it was all words Wels knew. Wels pretended to be a chivalric knight. Chivalric knights helped the weak. Chivalric knights saved the defenseless. Helsknight, for all the grievances of his existence, was both right now. Then again, the chivalric knights were also supposed to make war against their enemies mercilessly, so he supposed Wels would be in his rights, as a chivalric knight, to walk away and let him die slowly and painfully on the ground.

As if sensing his thoughts, and likely because he could actually sense his thoughts a bit, Wels said, "You are always going on about how I need to be a better knight. There's something ironic here. No matter what I decide, I think you'll owe me an apology regardless."

The feeling of doom, of bone-deep, agonizing dying mantled over Helsknight again and Wels stopped existing to him. His sense of urgency, of desperation to live clawed its way up his throat. He tried to move his arm, his leg. He got his fingers to twitch. He tried to lean forward, to drag himself with willpower alone towards that stupid potion just out of reach. The potion he wasn't even strong enough to open. His vision collapsed in quickly, and he only knew he'd cried out because he was breathless. But he hadn't moved, besides managing to lull his head forward onto his chest again. Cold fear crawled around in his empty guts, a relentless, caged animal that refused to stop squirming.

[I'm dying.]

[Breathe.]

[I'm dying.]

A shadow fell over him, a presence freighted with hate, and deserving, and dissonant guilt. Wels had come forward, only to stop short when Helsknight's terror swept over him like a wave, and he stood baffled by it, and guilty for it. The fool knight probably thought Helsknight was scared of him. If only. Helsknight thought he would prefer that. At least then he could manage to die gracefully. Wels's fortitude bricked itself up against him then, a bitter soul trying to will itself to be cold and cruel, and Helsknight was thankful for it. It staved off his fear, if only a little.

"What did you do to bring this on, anyway?" Wels asked breathlessly, trying to recover his resolve. Looking for a reason to hate him.

"I was... walking home."

"That's it?" He sounded so skeptical, it was almost funny.

"I committed the terrible sin..." Helsknight laughed out a breath, "... of being fearless when I should have been cautious."

"Hubris."

"Habit."

"Yeah right."

"If I got stabbed like this every day, I wouldn't have come crawling here."

Wels glowered, parsing this statement for truth. Helsknight might have mustered some hate in him for it, if he wasn't so scared. His vision had taken on a permanent blur, and he was getting cold. He hadn't gone numb yet, which was something he found profoundly cruel. He wanted to be numb. To stop hurting. To stop fearing.

[Breathe.]

Why have ye no routhe on my child?

Have routhe on me ful of mourning;

Tak doun o rode my derworth child,

Or prik me o rode with my derling!

[Derworth... "Dearworth", probably. Beloved. So "derling" was probably "dearling", which turned into "darling". Middle English was strange. Just slightly to the left of normal. He didn't think "tak" was a word anymore, except where it existed as pieces of words. "Tak" to "take", to take hold, maintain, maybe. "Tak" to "tack" like a nail. "Prik" also, like "pricking" flesh, like a point digging.]

"Hold down the road, my dearworth child," Helsknight muttered. "Or pick me a road with my darling."

"What?"

"Stupid poem."

"How much blood have you lost?"

Helsknight laughed, and his whole body flinched, and for a moment he couldn't breathe because his pain was so alive and electric it almost stopped being pain. The concern from Wels was laughable. He wished Wels would make up his mind about whether or not he cared. Then he could get on with dying, and the terror would stop, and the universe would take him or it wouldn't, and if it didn't, he would respawn and sleep for a week. He felt Wels's hand on his wrist, which was its own kind of hilarious.

"Trying to figure out how many heartbeats I have left?" Helsknight asked.

It would be nice to know. If Wels figured it out, he hoped he would share the information. Then Helsknight could keep count.

"Your heart's too fast."

"That happens."

Wels stood up and paced, all nervous energy, back and forth across the room.

"You don't deserve my help," Wels told him scathingly, angry for how conflicted he felt. "You don't. You've been nothing but cruel ever since we met."

More pine ne may me ben y-don

Than lete me live in sorwe and shame;

["Pine", like pining. Or pain. More pain? Punishment maybe. "Don" to done. Something like: More pain to me could not be done than to let me live in sorrow and shame.]

Helsknight decided whoever wrote this poem had never been stabbed. He'd felt both sorrow and shame, and neither of them packed quite this amount of punch, in his opinion.

"It probably goes against my tenets anyway," Wels continued, still pacing. "And yours too. Aren't you the one who follows some crazy death god?"

"... Saint... of Blood and Steel."

"He probably thinks dying in a puddle on my floor is glorious."

"... they."

As love me bindëth to my sone,

So let us deyen bothe y-same.

[Maybe he was just getting better at this, or maybe this part was just easy. "As love I'm bound to my son, so let us die, both the same." It didn't flow very neatly when it was simpler. Maybe Middle English wasn't that stupid.]

"I can't help but think you did this on purpose to... I don't know. Test me somehow. Prove you're better. Weak again, Welsknight! For helping your enemy when you should have let him die, or speed him along. Don't you know knights are supposed to be cruel?"

Helsknight tried to call up his own tenets, or Wels's tenets, or anything to do with knights and their duties. He got a little lost on his way, his thoughts meandering and dying, and gasping back to life again when they remembered they were supposed to be searching for something. Something he was scared of. Dying. A wave of fear crashing over him that made Wels flinch, and bid Helsknight keep breathing, because any agony was worth not confronting that one, great, crippling unknown.

"What would you do in my place?" Wels asked him suddenly. "Answer me that, perfect knight. What would you do if the person you hated most showed up one day bleeding on your floor?"

That... was an excellent question. Helsknight searched briefly for the answer, and found it wasn't very hard to find.

"I would help."

"You're lying," Wels said guardedly.

"I... can't lie."

"Then you're dodging the truth. What would you do?"

"I would heal you if I could. Or I would kill you if I couldn't." With strength he didn't know he even still had, Helsknight leaned his head back against the wall. It was easier to breathe that way. To talk.

"Why?"

"No creature is deserving of dishonor or pain."

"That's not a tenet."

"It's not a chivalric tenet." Helsknight shrugged one shoulder weakly. "Chivalry states you can hang my guts from the ceiling if I'm your enemy."

"It does not."

"It might as well."

Wels didn't seem to have a ready reply for that.

"What is routhe?"

Wels blinked down at him, guarded and confused. "Routhe?"

"Routhe." Helsknight repeated, as though it were helpful. "Middle English."

"As in?"

"Poetry."

"Use it in a sentence."

"Why have ye no routhe on my child?"

"Ruth." Wels said, a bit too quickly, like he'd known what Helsknight was asking and was trying to avoid the answer. "We don't use it as ruth anymore. It shows up in rue, like regret, or sorrow. And... ruthless."

"Merciless."

"Yes."

Why have you no mercy on my child?

"Why are you asking about Middle English while you're bleeding to death on my floor?"

Helsknight let out a breath. It hurt, but everything did. "Stupid poem."

"Can I hear it?"

"I'm busy bleeding to death on your floor."

"Tell me and I'll heal you."

There it was again, asking for an excuse. That was Wels's real cowardice, his failing as a knight. He was scared of making decisions. Scared of dealing with the consequences of his actions. Paralyzed by indecision. He wanted to hate Helsknight because it was justified. He wanted to watch him suffer, because hatred allows suffering. He didn't want to label himself cruel, nor be accused of weakness, or softheartedness, if he showed mercy. And he didn't want to pick up his sword and kill, if it meant killing someone defenseless. He wanted Helsknight to give him a reason to act, so he could blame it on him later if it turned out wrong. Given it would likely be Helsknight rubbing his nose in it later if it was wrong, he couldn't really blame him for that.

Helsknight closed his eyes and counted his heartbeats, and pretended he wasn't scared.

"Do what you will."

An hour long minute ticked by. Helsknight felt the time moving like it was physical, like he was falling through it and he couldn't catch himself, and he was nearing his limits. He thought the only thing stopping him from begging for it all to stop was the crushing weight of his fatigue, the exponential strength it took to take his next breath, and that stupid poem, skipping in a circle in his head. It kept his thoughts away from his fear, from bearing the weight of the unknown that came next. It was still there, a nameless, formless anxiety that formed the undercurrent of his thoughts. But he didn't have to think about it when he was busy being annoyed about a poem stuck in his head.

Wels moved. He stooped to pick up the potion Helsknight had dropped and unstoppered it deftly. He was surprisingly gentle as he helped him drink, aware that every movement could cause pain. Helsknight could feel Wels's caution in the air like wings, like a bird hovering before it lands. The first potion wasn't enough to heal him completely, so he got a second from his chests and helped him with that as well, one hand hovering over Helsknight's wounds, waiting on the skin to knit back together. Helsknight got to his feet, shaky, and feeling like he'd been wrung dry of all vitality. There was no pain to speak of, but he was thirsty, and hungry, and exhausted.

"You should rest before you go anywhere," Wels said, words of pragmatic care that sounded stilted coming from him. "I can get you some water."

"I'll be fine," Helsknight told him, allowing himself some hesitant pride now that the smothering pain was gone. Even exhausted, he could think so much more clearly now -- think at all, really. And he thought the longer he stayed here, the higher the chance Wels would come to regret his decision to heal him. They were not made to like each other. They didn't even respect each other as enemies. And Helsknight knew if they fought now, he would lose, and he might lose very badly, if Wels decided to leave him to bleed out again. It was something Wels had never done before, but if he could convince himself Helsknight deserved it, he would.

"Do what you will, then," Wels said, bitterness creeping into his tone. He probably thought he was being coy and ironic. Helsknight mostly thought it was annoying.

"The poem isn't mine," Helsknight said. "It's one you've read before. Middle English. Why have ye no routhe on my child. I don't know the title. It might just be the first line. I think it's a lament."

"... I see."

"Next time you find yourself bleeding out on someone's floor," Helsknight snorted, "Pick something stupid like that. It makes things... manageable."

"Right... manageable."

Helsknight gave a helpless sort of shrug, as though what he'd just said were perfectly normal.

Wels mustered an enviable facsimile of concern when he said, "I've never felt terror like that before."

Helsknight felt his already parched mouth somehow go drier. The sympathy he felt rolling off of Welsknight was sickening. Literally. He could feel himself becoming nauseous.

"What are you so scared of?"

Shame, red hot and searing, clawed at the inside of Helsknight's ribs. He wished so badly he could hide it. Distract himself from it. At least turn it into anger. But he was tired, and he didn't know how to bring his emotions back to heel, and Welsknight was already giving him an open, piteous look like maybe they'd stumbled onto something significant. He could feel hope there, like maybe there was a reason they hated each other like they did, and if Wels could figure out where that fear came from, they could find common ground -- or at least the leverage Wels needed to make Helsknight relent.

"I don't need your pity, white knight," Helsknight snarled. "Go sate your savior complex somewhere else."

Wels scowled. A cold wall of loathing, resigned and inevitable, closed itself around anything else he could possibly feel.

[As it should be.]

Hours later, home and safe, Helsknight cracked open his journal and wrote:

Why have you no mercy on my child?

Have mercy on me, so full of mourning;

Take down the road my dearworth child,

O give me a road with my darling!

More pain to me could not be done

Than to let me live in sorrow and shame

As with love I am bound to my son,

So let us die then, both the same.