#ya'll cant just drop a phrase like 'im a waking hell and the gods grow tired'

[silverskye13]

There’s a saying: Character is what you are in the dark. Its meaning is simple. Anyone can be a hero when the world is watching. When the world isn’t, when you could get away with murder or mercy and it wouldn’t matter, when there is no one to point and judge… that matters. That is the measure of your humanity. 

Helsknight is sharpening his sword. He has been sharpening his sword, alone in his home, for over an hour. It was already sharp when he started. The edge hasn’t seen enough wear to be anything but. It’s been days since his last bout in the Colosseum. He made a ruthlessness of himself there, in front of hundreds -- thousands of people. He shouldn’t have done that. He remembered the showrunner criticizing him as he fled down the steps into the cells below.

“You could have at least tried to put on a show, Hels!”

He hated when people called him that. Hels. It felt… wrong. The place, hels, was the pit of everything left behind and unwanted. Stuck in some facsimile of the nether, inhabited by the dark unvirtues of a thousand different worlds. The place, hels, wasn’t even important enough to warrant a capital letter. It was a proper noun wasn’t it? A place. Calling it hels made it feel like something lesser, made it feel like a nonplace. Not the World, land. Not a God, deity. Not a living Hels. 

He was knighted for a reason. 

Knighthood puts a lot of stake by character. Doesn’t matter what kind, really, as long as it follows rules, and Helsknight is good at following rules. Putting order to the universe feels… nice. Like scratching an itch. That’s another good saying: scratching an itch. An itch on the skin is so easy to underestimate. It’s just an itch, until you can’t scratch it. Then it’s agony. Then it’s skin crawling off skin crawling off sinew and bone. An itch can be anything. It can be an allergy, an insect, a mortality. Once his only warning before a respawn in the Colosseum was the itch that told him a hit to the back of his head had gone through his skull instead of skipping off his helm. The itch had been blood running down his neck, before realization and void. Finding order felt like that; the itch from a trickle of blood, felt like scratching the itch and mending the wound.

It’s an interesting exercise in restraint, not scratching an itch. It’s also an exercise in madness, futility, and pain. The itch gets uncomfortable until it hurts. Sometimes it spreads. Your body twitches. You start to convince yourself you’ve never known what it's like to live itchless. You start to feel empathy for people that you’ve never met -- those mystical people with skin diseases or allergic reactions or plant rashes. You start to wonder if pain is really, actually the worst thing you can inflict on someone.

Sometimes, Helsknight itches underneath his skin. That is real madness. An itch so deep even peeling your skin can’t scratch it. 

Helsknight takes his sword off the whetstone, holds it up to a lantern to inspect it. The blade is sharp. The netherite is pristine. The enchantments glitter. He tosses it none-too-gently to the floor, listening to the ringing clatter as it tumbles across the floor. One of the tiles chips and goes plinking off like a dropped penny. The netherite stays sharp. It’s a good sword, the kind that feels indestructible. He was told once by a smith that a good netherite sword with the right enchantments can cut through iron like a knife through butter.

Helsknight always has a sharp sword. It’s expected of him. It isn’t a knight’s expectation, not really. Knights do more law keeping in hels than the lawmen, and less dangerously. There’s something to be said about a person in plate armor. No, people just expected Helsknight to have teeth. He couldn’t blame them, when he reacted the way he did on the Colosseum floor. Temperamental people have teeth, get dangerous, and bite. Even people who like him treat him like he’s rabid, only docile and slow right before the lunge. He doubted any of them had ever really seen what a rabid animal is like. Uncanny. Or maybe they had, and that was why they tiptoed like that. Maybe he is uncanny. 

Helsknight stands and runs his hands through his hair. He doesn’t like sleeping in this house. It’s too quiet. That’s why he’s awake, sharpening his sword, but it doesn’t feel right staying in the Colosseum cells. Unwelcome. People talk about him, or they don’t. It’s hard to tell. People just kind of… fall silent. Paranoia dictates they’re talking about him. A rabid animal itching in its skin longs to bite and spread the disease. They watch him like he’s about to bite.

He doesn’t know how to smile, put them at ease. It feels weird on his face. Besides, it’s not expected. Helsknight doesn’t smile. When he does, surely it's a bad thing. Helsknight doesn't talk. When he does, he must be angry. Helsknight carries a sharpened sword. If he doesn't, something is wrong. Helsknight is. Hels isn’t. 

Helsknight was knighted for a reason. He’s good at following rules.

Helsknight crosses to his lantern and turns out the light. In the dark, he stands alone in an empty room, listening to the world outside, and suddenly very aware of the sword he’s sharped and cast away so carelessly on the floor. He could stand here forever and it wouldn’t matter.

Outside, a group of people laugh uproariously as they walk down the street. It’s night in hels, or a late hour at least. They sound happy. They talk so easily to each other, conversations rolling around hiccups and stutters of joy, rivers running. There truly is still water in hels, nether or not. There’s an itch under Helsknight’s skin.

There’s a saying: Character is what you are in the dark. Its meaning is simple. Anyone can be a hero when the world is watching. When the world isn’t, when you could get away with murder or mercy and it wouldn’t matter, when there is no one to point and judge… that matters. That is the measure of your humanity.

In the dark, Helsknight wonders if he even exists.

#the barking writer #helsknight #character study #loneliness #kind of #i dunno #vent #kind of? #its been a complicated weekend emotion-wise #sometimes you just feel trapped and lonely you know #i spent too much time as a kid being happy for solitude #now people expect me to enjoy it -- and i'm too awkward to prove them wrong #anyway this is somewhat inspired by sleep token #ya'll cant just drop a phrase like 'im a waking hell and the gods grow tired' #and expect me not to get emo about it every time i have 3 seconds to myself