Moved to the point of tears, you hold your ground at the peak of the theater, and call out to Drazhan.
"I was
born out of hunger and pain."
Tugging at your high collar, you rip open the top of your shirt, and reveal a few inches at the top of your chest. There's no shrapnel. Nothing from bar fights or anything so easy to explain. The area above your heart is streaked with a divine scar, swimming with incomprehensible colors. The surrounding tissue is twisted and raised by stab wounds and cuts from when you were just a boy. There is mottled tissue from having burning oil poured over tender skin. Even from a great distance, the demon should be able to make out the work of a man bent on destroying you. He should be able to see every attempt that was made to break your heart.
"I have endured more than any man. Those who were supposed to be my
guardians ran their own
twisted experiments, testing the limits of my
vessel—" Your voice cracks. "The outermost bounds of my
sanity. I have felt the end.
I have survived the Catalyst."
The demon on stage nearly drops every mask in his hands.
Caught between wanting to back away in fear or to approach you with morbid curiosity, Drazhan stays rooted to the spot. An elderly voice leaves him, as he brings a questioning mask before his mirror. "Surely, you jest."
"The 'lord of honesty' is no mere vestige. Neither is my
faith. Divinity has never shunned me. Together with Agriculture, I took the curse of the famine upon myself."
You've never seen a mirror look confused before, but there it is. An object standing wordlessly, somehow staring at you with equal measures of shock and disbelief.
You can barely keep it together, but take bold steps forward. The lights gradually lift as you do so, providing you with just enough to see your destination. The steep stair and all the demons upon it are no match for your height and build. You gently move aside every paralyzed body in your way, and descend towards the master of this domain.
"To live is to serve— but I could serve no longer. I longed for death. I wandered— throwing myself against anything I could find—
anything that would
finally break me
apart. I sunk into the City of Lights. I braved the ruins of Ostedholm. And within it, I did not find my end. I did
not find justice."
You arrive at the base of the theater, and look fearlessly up to the behemoth of a demon.
"I found those just as lost as I."
Drazhan has yet to move— staring you down from his monstrous height— not so much as flinching at your motions.
Confident that you're in no danger, you set your shield aside, and unfasten your Relic.
"I found a cure for the pain of my children."
Within your hand lies everything you believe in. A pair of bent swords protrudes from the small, golden locket; the symbol of your willingness to turn violence to good intent. A pair of clasped hands lies on the other side, for the alliances you wish to share.
Your voice is breaking down, but you fight through it, raising your tone and raising your Relic so that the demon before you can gaze upon its illuminated splendor. The spotlight shines against its exterior, casting gilded radiance in all directions.
"At the bottom of the earth— beneath a blood red moon— I commenced my own test. I EMBRACED the sinner. I accepted the wisdom of Archdemon Idonea." Not a flicker of recognition dances across Drazhan's features. The fact that she and all of your dearest friends may be so easily forgotten has you choke out, "I
allied with Archdemon Yech. I spared, and was spared in turn. I made compassion my CREED—!"
Shame and desperation sticks to you. You practically shake your Relic at the monster.
"The nature of man is not that which
is. The nature of man is what we can BE. The choices we MAKE! Our unbridled
potential! Life is a
stage, Drazhan, and its spotlight is the light of
HOPE!"
Every beat of your heart means what you've said, but the absolute lack of a response has your eyes to the floor.
Your voice is scarcely a whisper.
"You ask for reflection true.
A request most strange.
Deep in suicidal slough,
A foe— a friend— told me,
'change.'
In death, her gold hands gave me a gift.
A reminder to those I uplift.
As They too so oft tell me,
Their love reflects upon me..."
Your Relic is cradled in both hands.
"...and all of Mankind."
Drazhan is trembling. The demon has made no move to attack you, and may simply be speechless. He looks on quietly as you click open your Relic, and present its interior.
A moment passes as a small mirror shines at the demon of theater. Drazhan doesn't raise any mask when he speaks. The same, soft, disembodied voice as before asks, "what is this?"
"The truth, Drazhan."
The mask of the King falls from Drazhan's fingertips, and harmlessly lands upon the sand. Its owner places his fingertips to the mirror that is his face.
"I could have killed Aetigyin."
"You are referring to the demon of porcelain...?"
"That is what he was, in the end. Yes." The towering demon stares up at the top-most seats, where Father Wilhelm is frozen in place. "I thought us trapped, all this time. It would not have been easy. I may have died.
But I am a monster. With the power I possess, I could have
freed my people." He looks around the seats above, and bitterly corrects himself. "My demons." Another look, down to you. "I do not know what to believe."
You grit your teeth. "We are
all a part of humanity."
Something suddenly has him even more horrified. "You are a priest of the ages?"
"I am."
"What is the year?"
"The year is 606, in the country of Corcaea." Context would likely help the ancient figure. "King Vaughn was the last to precede our current ruler, King Magnus the Merciful. You should know that my research tells me that King Vaughn reigned for nearly 500 years, Drazhan."
Staring bitterly into your Relic, the demon mutters, "the world did not fall. Not since I last saw it." Anger seizes him. "I have been delusional. Caught in a—"
A hard, heavy, and strangled sound leaves the demon. You say, "a Dream."
He looks straight through you. "Yes."
"Humanity has survived. ...you're a demon of Dream, aren't you, Drazhan?"
"If you must phrase it in such a way. You ended the famine. When?"
It feels like a lifetime ago, and like it might as well have been yesterday. "Less than four Harvests past."
A terrible laugh leaves the monster, as he looks wildly around at the theater. "This has not been for nothing. They've been kept safe, all these many years. I have kept us
together."
His laughter verges on hysterics. "Did you find us by happy chance?"
You're the lord of honesty, and give a single nod.
It takes a good, long minute for Drazhan to process everything.
The demon slumps to the ground, with one of his many hands placed against his forehead. "No matter what prosperity you have brought, no matter how Merciful a King...?" You're still slightly below his line of sight, but Drazhan finds a way to look up and just beyond you. To the corpses of the two demons that Father Pevrel killed on the way in. "There is no place for us in the world above. You speak of hope. Hope in a world that has none. You grant me clarity for now, Father, and for your generosity I
mustn't thank you. Not yet."
Drazhan's gaze slowly falls to you. He drops all of his hands to the floor, just barely supporting him. It looks like the weight of what he's done could crush him at any moment.
"To leave these walls would be the death of us. My kin. My audience. We can feel it. My sanity
slipping. Before it does, there is a greater favor that I must request."
He calls out to the very skies. "I MUST perform. Without the ruins of Caligant, I would certainly perish."
"Caligant?"
"My home, or what it once was. I know not of how the world has changed.
I cannot pretend that my actions have not tortured my people for well over six hundred years."
The demon is staring to the sand below his hands, masks, and cloth. Clutching at a handful of the grains, Drazhan watches as the dust slips through his fingers.
"Another question most strange, Father.
What am I to do?"
This is why his power doesn't rival an archdemon. Drazhan is completely dependent on his audience.
The other ruins that I know of are weeks away. Sending him away from his domain, to Ostedholm or even Calunoth's ruins could leave him weak, vulnerable to predators, and at the Mercy of other demons in the woods... and in and of itself, depriving a demon of their Catalyst is a fate worse than death.
Even if we find a way to safely release these demons from their bonds and find some way to not let them filter out into the world above, it would do nothing to help Drazhan's situation.
He needs the theater.
We came here to kill as many demons as we could.
What was I thinking?
>A] Give this demon one last performance. A show that his people will
want to attend. Offer to fight Drazhan to the death. If he loses, you and your allies will kill the rest of the monsters here, too. You'll promise they won't be made to suffer. Abide by whatever terms Drazhan proposes, too.
>B] There has got to be a better way. (Write-in.)
