Enter the lancer

[mist_the_point]

Who: Foulques and anyone
When: A little while after the Good is the New Bad event
Where: Starting amid the Doomstones, eventually elsewhere probably
What: Foulques arrives on the Isle from the moment of his death.
Warnings: Dark thoughts, mentions of canon death, suicidal ideation

This was not Alder Springs. Unaware of the cliff edge behind him, he'd stepped back and then... falling. The adventurer, to her credit, had reached out for him, but too late. Too late. The last thing he saw was her face before the mist around the cliff obscured all, then suddenly, a bright flash of light... and a much gentler landing than he by rights should have had.

It was no longer mist, trees, and stony cliffs above him; instead he saw sky heavy with threatening storm clouds. The air had lost the faint chill of the spring breeze and instead hung heavy, humid, and still as the height of summer. But instead of the sweet, earthy smells typical of the Twelveswood at that time, it smelled not unlike a morbol had emptied its innards somewhere nearby.

Yet foul as the air smelled, Foulques couldn't help but take deep panted breaths of it. The exertions of battle combined with mortal terror had left him struggling to catch his breath. His heart felt as though it were simultaneously lodged in his throat and trying to forcibly hammer its way out of his chest. Could a person have two hearts? The mad thought drifted through his mind only to be swiftly banished by another; he should not be looking up at the threatening sky, breathing this foul air. He should be dead. Not even the sturdiest of Roegadyns would have survived such a fall.

And yet he lived. After a moment, he levered himself up into a sit despite his trebling arms, and got a better look at his surroundings. A litchyard of some kind, littered with refuse and absent any offerings. To one side, a large run down mausoleum. To the other, a wall of dark and forbidding thorns, greater than any the Bramble Patch had ever boasted; the only growing thing in sight. All else was hard ground and stonework done by those with no respect for their craft or the materials they worked. Numerous colors of clashing paint, one scrawl over lapping another to create a nonsensical jumble. A place more desolate and oppressive than even his cell in Gridania's dungeons had been.

...So that was it. It was the only explanation that made sense. He had indeed met his end at the bottom of that cliff, and this? This was to be his eternity. 'It's no more than you deserve,' his mind hissed at him. 'Coward. Weakling. You were bested by the Lord of the Bramble Patch, and now you've been bested by the very adventurer you claimed as you so-called pupil.'

He clenched his fists, trying to force that voice back behind the wall of certainty he'd built within himself. Certainty that only he knew the path to true courage. That his efforts had made him the one true master of the Lancer's art. That he would one day prove all this to that nest of cravens in the guild and see it shuttered and barred forever more. But that wall had been cracked after his defeat in the Bramble Patch, and now? Now it had been shattered completely by that woman. He had been defeated utterly, his surety exposed for the folly it was. And he had no defense against the pack of self-loathing thoughts that battered and tore at him like ravenous wolves.

'Fool of a man. Worthless waste of air. All your plotting and toil, your anguish, sweat and blood has come to naught. You thought you could change anything? Nay, even petty revenge is beyond you; your mad quest has left you broken on the rocks, hated and unmourned, where your body will be torn apart by wild beasts. Nightcrawler! Ashkin! You are everything they claimed of you and worse. It was always your destiny to be ground into the dirt and tossed aside on the midden heap. Your parents were so proud when you took up the lance, but how they would despise what their son became. Liar! Thief! Murderer! Madman! Craven from a house of cravens! Nay, an eternity of punishment in a stinking litchyard is too kind a fate for you!...'

The leather of his gauntlets creaked fainty, so tightly did he clench his fists. Why couldn't he make them stop trembling? He was caught, pulled taught between the impulse to laugh madly and the impulse to weep hysterically, but denied either form of release, and so just shaking, trembling in every limb. Mayhap.. mayhap if he could find his lance and fall on it in some way? Perhaps he could dissipate his aether properly and spare himself further torment. Unclenching his fists, he felt about him half blindly until his hand finally closed on his weapon's shaft... only the weight was all wrong.

This drew his gaze from its blank, horrified stare, and he saw that his weapon had been replaced with naught but a padded sparring pole. Ironically, the sight prompted enough indignation to break through the snarling and snapping thoughts, giving him something other than himself to focus his anger on. So this place was not content to merely torment him, it would mock hm as well? Treat him as though he was such a rank novice that he was not even fit to hold a real weapon? He snatched up its mockery of a lance and managed to get to his feet, trying to ignore how his limbs still trembled faintly. Whatever else awaited, this affront to his one remaining scrap of pride was one he would not allow to stand. There had to be some proper weapons- or some weaponsmith condemned as himself- in this gods-forsaken place, and he intended to find them. Mayhap he would even learn something about his eternal gaol in the bargain.