Number 7 for the prompts, with any character you want? :0
7. “Why do you think they call me that name?”
Saberon Flaetor had absolutely terrible luck, by his own standards. Everyone at every tavern always told him he must be an incredible adventurer with a whole lot of luck to survive all the things he did. After all, they’d hung off of his every word for several weeks after the beginning of Sliske’s start of the Sixth Age God Wars, even though he’d been trying to see who he could organize into a proper fighting force.
But of course, becoming Sliske’s favourite toy was exactly what he got for helping a Saradominist.
Despite everything, he was pretty well aware of what the title of World Guardian meant to everyone. He’d fooled them all, and accidentally so, and he didn’t even know why he’d done it in the first place. He’d been the one there, vaguely interested in Guthixian ruins if only to tell Juna about them later, and he’d been the one in everyone’s way. He was the only suitable candidate there to become World Guardian, so when Guthix had asked him all those questions, he had never answered truthfully.
Lying came easily to him. Everything from how many cookies he’d stolen as a child when the chefs of the Kinshra weren’t looking to why he was interesting in helping out the Temple Knights. Yes, Guthix had asked his opinion and he’d wanted to make Guthix proud, but he was not a person Guthix would naturally be proud of, so he’d made it all up on the spot. S. Larius the World Guardian came after.
The gods themselves looked upon him, and he made a persona up on the spot to explain why he was there, what he was up to. Stories and history were one thing, but it had been millennia since any god had come to Gielinor, and any one of them could have been an ally or a target. He was reserved, a little shy, more than awestruck at their presence.
Saradomin probably took it as deference to his authority. Zamorak recognized the anxiety of a mortal way in over his head, and likely noticed the almost-stereotypical growth and confidence from it. Zaros still had no idea how badly he’d been sabotaged, and still thought that he’d had to grow into the role Guthix had bestowed upon him. Armadyl had swallowed the lies but seemed to know he was doing his best either way. Seren only saw him as a saviour, and the only possession Guthix had given the world upon his death. Icthlarin had probably been the only one to know that he was being lied to, though he hadn’t known exactly what the truth was.
He could hear Sliske’s thoughts as well as his own, now, though he had never had any difficulty in knowing which thoughts belonged to whom. He’d forced himself to stay standing after Sliske’s death and his subsequent possession. Sliske had forced him to lie more, and he still didn’t know if he was grateful for the lie or not.
He’d never expected anyone to really figure out what the truth was. Sliske knew, it was hard to keep his thoughts to himself these days. The last person he ever expected to figure out how much he’d lied was Amascut.
Mah was dead, and with her death, Amascut’s insanity had eased. Saberon had stolen the Kharid-ib from her again and stuffed it somewhere reasonably safe, and the disappearance of it had helped a little. He wasn’t exactly helping her because he enjoyed her company - it was difficult to do so in her condition - but he had wanted to make Icthlarin happy, especially now that he’d realized that if anyone would know something about the Elder Gods, it would be her.
He’d taken her out with him on slayer missions, challenged her not to use her destructive magic. She wasn’t the first mage he’d helped rehabilitate after they’d fallen wayward, and she seemed to enjoy the challenge of doing things a different way.
They’d gotten drinks together after a particularly difficult mission, a few bruises still on her face but healing well. He’d not dared bring her to anything really horrific, lest she panic and fall back into her old ways. They sat outside, watching the setting sun of Ardougne fall over the far horizon. She’d started talking, and he hadn’t known what she meant to talk about at first, but he quickly figured it out.
When she and Icthlarin had gone to Freneskae, they found out quickly why mortals wore masks in the desert. When she had been afraid, as death gods could be in a place without an afterlife, he had been there. But when he had been offering the Mahjarrat a place in Gielinor, she’d found Mah.
She stopped short, then, incapable of forming the words to describe the warped and screaming excuse of an Elder God.
“It… she… she was…”
“Horrific,” he answered, after a few seconds. He had faced Mah twice. Once, while realizing he could use it to his advantage to sabotage Zaros, and twice, when he had proved in front of all of the Mahjarrat that he was better than them all, and deserved to be there as much as they did. It had felt so real, to sit there before the setting sun on a clear day, and still lied through his teeth facing an elder goddess herself. It was the closest he had ever been to his blood, and he still screamed his lies like they were true. “Screaming that made you want to put it out of its misery just to make it stop, but there would be no way, because you are still an ant looking at the front claws of a dragon.”
She nodded silently, mouth still open a little. “A face you never stopped seeing, screams you never stopped hearing. The senseless desires and destruction of a delirious child with more power than even Guthix could have dreamed of. Until there was nothing left but the screams.”
“I became like her,” Amascut whispered. “I couldn’t get the screams out of my head. If I made her happy, would she go back to sleep? Would she go to sleep? I knew it was all a lie. I knew I could never please her.”
“They made me the World Guardian, and never considered what it meant.” Guthix, ancient and wise Guthix, who had either put his faith in the wrong person or admired his commitment to living a lie. “So I would never be anything but a lie again.”
“I don’t know who I am, anymore, and I don’t remember enough of who I was to try and rebuild it.”
“I know who I am, and who they need me to be, but I never wanted to pay the price.”
“You’re the World Guardian, though,” Amascut said, almost as if she’d realized what his lies were all over again.
“Why do you think they call me that? I will never be anything else to them,” he replied, his voice more bitter than he’d wanted. “All I ever wanted to be was my father’s son. He will never see me as anything but Guthix’s last toy.”
“I wish I could be free of her, as you could be of his ghost,” she whispered.
“She’s dead,” he said, short and blunt, as if he had said ‘good day’ or ‘that would be a floor, yes’. “Seren put her out of her misery, and her ghost doesn’t scream. The silence before us made us realize just how vast the universe is, and how little we know. If you stand up there now, where she used to be, it’s still silent.”
“Take me there,” she said, and he held out his hand, fingering the Sixth-Age circuit with his other hand. She took it.
