For Johan, it will be so unlike any other.
He didn’t need years to know the truth of the moment. He didn’t need time to recognize the obvious.
This is his moment. Not the last day. Not the last year (although both did help greatly).
He is a child now, a boy regressed into the past, just as the last year had pulled him into the future. For every tear shed by Nixon as he carried off on a far northern breeze, Johan cried ten and then ten more. It was his home. They were his family. It is his right.
When the screams became whispers, the eyes ran dry and the unrelenting sadness became something more akin to unbridled rage; the afternoon had long passed, the moon was up again, and the evening was quiet.
There would be no scouts this night, although they were around. No clicking orbs or mechanical sentries.
Not tonight.
Something in his pain and loss transcended the space he lived in. It caused the world to recognize his situation and tilt its axis just enough to spin whatever trouble there was nearby away and avoid him.
There was no fire. There was no need. All feelings of hot and cold were lost to him. There would be no sleep, as sleep was apt to bring about that moment of wakefulness that recalls something that has happened without focusing on what it was. Such a momentary lapse and eventual realization was too much to endure again. He wanted to remember it all. To even forget for a second was an act beyond disrespect.
He would not sleep. He would not eat. Yet the world, in its infinite mercy, would continue to tilt and bend in such ways as to spare him the exhaustion and hunger he would have felt. The new day would see him strong and ready as if he’d slept for thousands of years and ate until the world ran empty.
The morning would see him for who he would be forevermore.
Two men. Brothers in arms against all the evils Hell saw fit to release on them. Now, one was likely dead.
He would carry only what he needed. Remember only what he must. Go to where he could do the most good and inflict the most damage. But now, the night must simply carry on. He could not slow time. He wouldn't even if he could. The farther from that moment, no matter how significant it was to the great and powerful man he would be, the better.
The Army of the Old were close now. The destruction they wrought was in the palm of his hand. There would be no mercy. There would be no draw. There will be no quarter given and none received.
But first, the night must come to allow the day ahead to follow.
Sitting in the wake of his suffering, Johan had only the faintest idea that it was all true. That small, powerful idea drove him forward and forced him to endure the pain.
He would endure. He must. For Tan Torna Qu-ay.
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Nixon could have very well carried on forever, winging his way to wherever it was he was able to go, but the larger one stirred. The one he was created and sworn to kill. He opted to touch down and let the inevitable flurry of useless questions and monumental arguments begin. The moment had to come eventually; it may as well be now, in the dark and stillness of the aftermath.
He went to the foothills of the Great Range before turning east and following the line the majestic rock towers created. If Crystal was still alive, it was a safe assumption that she would be in the same place as always, so that’s the direction Nixon turned.
He touched down in an open patch. The ground was a mix of grass, jutting rocks, and mossy surfaces. Not the most welcoming place to talk, but the sword-bearer wasn’t worthy of nice places in Nix’s mind.
He placed the lucky one down first, sure to make him as comfortable as possible. Judging by his breathing, it may be a while until he came around. It appeared his brain would require a little more time to reboot itself after all that had happened.
The other was a different story. He walked across the open space and set him down against a rock, back to a closed-in space to limit his chances to escape.
Nixon hadn’t understood much of what had happened to him since he’d awoken, but what he did know was that this was the sword-bearer, and young and inexperienced or not, he would not give him an inch until he had more information. Just because it appeared one way rarely made it so. Centuries of this hunt had made him far more suspicious of every situation as far as the target was concerned.
Once down, wings pinned beneath him, Nixon went the final step and removed the sword from his back. Nixon had no desire to keep it, his being just as powerful. He wanted it to give himself that much more of an advantage should things go south. He then walked back to the first boy, sat down on a small rock ledge, and waited as the other awoke.
The start of the groaning and twitching meant he would not have to wait long.
He removed his sword from the sheath softly, careful not to make any sudden movements. Held at the ready before him, Nixon took a deep breath and prepared himself for yet another situation he was completely unfamiliar with.
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Before there was anything else, there was pain. Deep pain unlike any he'd ever felt before. His ears
