Hollow echoes, metal on asphalt in rhythmic meter. Desperate to keep pace, keep peace, match the tone of his heart, of his humming being. And failing. A spike, a burst, a plateau of a wave form being masked within. A baffling fought down, given no out and no release. Emotions counter thrust, leaking through like water though concrete. Forces restrained excessive and callous. Refusing to recede, to form back into the background, to become memory more manageable but far more painful. Refusing to just die like it should have so many times before.

Seth disturbed the quiet road that waved and curved through the hills of Northern Kadia. Those same metal talons crunching more asphalt therapy, just with less reverb and fog, and more regretting of action. Though really there was little left to disturb, other than those trailing behind at falsely safe distance. The more things change the more they stay the same. But now though, Seth was fully awake, fulling understanding what he’d done and what he now held to. The flame in his hands was someone else’s fighting out. Wanting to scorch and spread, but meeting higher flame in turn. The eyes at his back could only judge and speculate and invent new reasons to meld these fires. All things that he couldn’t fight, couldn’t change.

Miles of empty forest, towering trees on either side, a river meandering into parallel. Rough burbles and near storming rapids covering the first bits of life reclaiming their rumbled homes. Birds claiming territory in poorly tuned song. Sometimes finding the rhythm and carrying it a nice little jingle, but mostly fading into distant responses to other claimants. An almost… calming distraction. Little darting forms fluttering between high branches, carrying on like the sky hadn’t been ripped open just an hour from their skyscraping canopies. Nature managing better, making the most of distant chaos. The Terrace rushing by more than capable of matching that-

That shrill tone leaking through his grip. That deadening of the world around. The raking feeling across his back. And a familiar ire filling his peripheral like instinctual fight or flight. A preternatural feeling, a ghost perched on his shoulder, a being straining out of its cage in creaking malaise. And just waiting for him to meet its gaze. To acknowledge his failure. To know his futility. To break and break and break and break apart!! To make him face his responsibility first hand. To make him suffer!! To do its worst. To take back what’s MINE!! To scream into the void rather than regret. To make him feel it, to make him break, to make him shatter, to give it back, to make him weak, to to to TO!!! To shut Resent the HELL UP!!!

The right eye lit aflame, bore right into that electrostatic apparition, saw it for what its being was now, nothing but static filtering into his head. Yet saw firsthand true futility of action. An oozing skeleton too big for its own good, a glare brighter than it could manage, and maw ripping toward him wanting- EVERYTHING BACK!!

But receiving nothing as another baffled plateau beat against the confines of existential encompassing tone. This broken terror nothing but another phantom. Another nightmare to haunt him. It just doesn’t give him the curtesy of waiting till he was asleep. And it chooses to be insufferable with its-

“SUFFER!!! DIE!!! GIVE IT BACK!!!”

Screeching.

Translucent claws gripped at his plates, wrang his neck for every word, filled his vision as much as it could. But reality offered no such conflict. Just more serene nature disturbed by even echoing steps. And watchers none the wiser to the one struggling against its binds. That would know nothing of this still wrestling thing within him, this restless spirit curling off his prison in whispering power, this abusive vestigial twin kept on a leash no matter how much it struggled to return to the reality it scorned. Seth kept walking, taking, pressing forward with the screaming cancer in his ear telling him to-

“FUCKING DIE!!! LET ME OUT!!! GIVE!!! IT!!! BACK!!!”

The power inside him roiled like a boiling pressure cooker. Dichotomy of being all too certain. He couldn’t get rid of Resent, couldn’t rip it to shreds like everyone it had killed. Couldn’t siphon it dry, couldn’t crush it down. It was a part of him, and it didn’t like it either. It wanted free, it wanted back its power, it wanted back the physical sensation of being alive. It suffocated on the nothingness it had, it writhed against the emptiness it experienced. It leaked free to catch what it could but found nothing but denying metal too dead to offer anymore. And it was reeled and crushed back for every outburst against the punishment it deserved. That something like this came from him tore at what will was left to spare. Blistered every banshee screech for reprieve. Cracked every beat that struck against his confining being. Raked every slash at his psyche far from replete. Burned every demand to-

“DO WHAT YOU PROMISED TO DO!!!”

That ectostatic skeleton contorted into his face, blotted out road and demanded everything it could manage to feel in concert. Struggling to keep to its torturous screeching.

“You know what they will do… You know this will never end… You would rather be corralled to their whims than fulfill what you were always meant to do…!”

His eyes tried to glaze over, defocus and see this false thing scrunching into his face. This thing refracting thoughts it barely understood. It barely knew firsthand. But he denied it so much effect, buffeted it back down to the spike it rippled out of. Turned it to caustic mist only wincing his mind’s eye. The road stretched on again. But it was a long walk home.

“They see no peace…”

More whispers following on as trees went by, like tendrils spreading slower and shadows growing darker.

“They are too weak to keep it…”

That leak oozing between the cracks of his pressing hold, plucking at threads and memories it shouldn’t know.

“They are too afraid of us… Of you…”

That apparition crawling back over his back, hazing away what it obfuscated and seeking an in. A… commonality?

“And yet you are too afraid of causing more pain!!”

A wisping contortion, crimson glare retaking its place in his face. Trying to draw and hard at what it found.

“I could have taken all that away, burned it all to cinders and given you the peace you wanted… But NO!! Your own fear kept you weak! Kept you from fighting to survive! Kept you from healing all this pain away the only way there was! By ending it all… So now it’s all on you… So fulfill that promise!”

A slight hunch, a coiling grip. Seth couldn’t keep his demeanor in check. The pull dredging what had been built upon and buried by guilt.

“Your too afraid to take me in, to end me like all the rest, so what do you even plan on doing?!”

Those shadows between the trees grew darker, that glare trying to burn into his face again only making them deeper.

“You’re nothing! Just a scared child given too much to deal with, so you rage and shout at everything to make your way! But you still won’t END IT!!”

A sting on the wind like memory allowed replay, a wince and growl hidden barely by all this armor, those even steps finding more weight to crack the asphalt.

“You have power enough to tear everything apart! To make it yours! To fulfill that fucking promise!! And yet you’re too scared to even fight for the life you want!!”

The tar at his feet tried to melt, the world tried to whirl, that glare tried to multiply in every darkened hole.

“You’re nothing but an undeserving hypocrite!! A weakly given what you never deserved!! A coward!! A disgrace!! An insult to everything we all died for-!!!”

*CRAAKkkkkk*

That even gait snapped to a standstill. The world broken hard as even that ghostly second soul was caught in the loss of velocity. And feeling a confusion rippled out of drawn thought. It had plucked one too many a string. The road started to glass between armored toes. The birds fleeing to silence this fork in the road made poignant and literal. A sign demarcating it. A path overgrown and abandoned. A blaring message burning a hole in Seth’s peripheral vision like so many reminders before. The shadows, the darkness, the eyes on eyes on eyes on eyes. Everything this crimson pain in the ass never saw for itself. Never knew for itself. Only fondled at looking for commonality it… had found.

“You really want me to keep that promise now?”

A growling echo, no spared thought allowed to this menace. But all of its being made to feel what it had risen.

“You want me to stop being afraid!”

That spiking tone flattened to crunch, that adversarial resonance made to feel everything it had brought forth.

“Fine!! Then let’s end our fears together!!!”

The road, the silence, this offending intersection, all of it shattered and signaled his breaking of pace and every barrier in his way. The tar and lines, the ground and trees, all that coiled tension springing out and crushing it to pillarous back blast. A towering wave, a buffeting shower, chunks and dust and everything else made into obfuscation and done-with-this-shit display!

Those tailing heroes, those irking ires, those inflaming egos thinking they could even manage a scratch. They received nothing but chocking rain and a disparity of pace made supersonic. Received nothing but a cloud of dust and an open road to run after their quarry as pitifully as they could manage. All the while that abandoned sign was torn perpendicular. Dashed to the arbor by sheer force of air pressure not in line. A forgotten place all too remembered, and what it meant to him throttling his own fire to full towering bore.

The shadows still growing darker flew by, eyes blurring to lines, but that metered step still kept in its bass line metronome. Even if its gait was expanded to excessive percussion. Bends and curves shattered as velocity changed direction. As they kept that beat in cracking buildup, ebbing away that initial burst of distraction. All the while those shadows grew restless and ignored. A crunching deceleration, a destination all too set, but that menace will-o-the-wisp trapped in the lurch. And made to see a truth it never knew.

Raking claws clung to that armored back, holding for a dear life that it had no more. Its questing had born fruit but touched a nerve still ringing, persisted like an earthquake only felt by two. A matched resentence, a hummed in existence. Shared feelings raking their own bloody path in. A thrum like a heartbeat quickening in absence. Both of physicality and intrinsic stimuli. Yet persistent and wanting, demanding. A feeling like something baring down from all sides. A feeling… like eyes across his back. Resent had bitten off more than he could metaphysically chew.

Yet suddenly detachment, a releasing, a loosing. That iron grip over his flame spread wide and dropping him out onto the world that had feared him. No more baffling over his being, no more stifling resistance to keep him down. Phantom steps hitting hard road in step with that still metered advance. But lost into a hollow landscape that offered no escape. Bereft of power and space to carry him. Of infrastructure and generation to feed his pull for more. Just stumbling out into a thinning forest, hurriedly catching up, trying to keep in range of the only thing that could feed him. Still wisping off strands of his taken full power, an ambient excess to keep him fed, whole, and feeling this… dread.

A flaring, a familiar feeling, another confusion laced reel finding a thought that shouldn’t be his. But all of it outmoded and overshadowed, made to regret and made to repent. Those trees, those shadows between, something becoming visible that just shouldn’t be. Eyes filling the darkness. Filling every space possible. That freed red translucence turning a slow fall out of step. Senses overwhelmed, being overwhelmed, transient familiarity burning holes into his back, and something he shouldn’t be afraid of ripping its way free of those encroaching shadows.

Claws and teeth, burned scales and blackened gleam. Towering predators and maniacal contortions. And eyes upon eyes upon eyes upon eyes. All familiar and demanding that same promise. Tearing open the tree line now flooded to bursting. The road disappearing into a true sea of scales, into terror made manifest by going too far. A hoard, a swarm, a true return of horrid form. An army alone, locked away from the waking world, yet loosed in purpose and too long ignored call. A march of laceroids to Seth’s unshakable beat. And Resent made to feel the terror he’d found for all the shared sins that had gone unbound.

A caving, a breaking, this commonality burned in by refracted prison glass. That vaunted idyllic, that looked to perfection, all turned to dreadful condemnation blaring down on its last vestige. Those eyes, that blue and green and brown and grey, all of Seth’s town looking down on the tormentor of their memory. Crushing his half dreams of reality for himself. Pouring their disdain, their scorn, their hate. All the pain they felt on blast and en masse for this thing to know and fear. For him to reel and scramble, to press back and run away. But finding only that armored back it had wriggled free of blocking its path. This army, this marching true menace, this returning hoard filing into step with their shining real paragon. All advancing, all making way, all continuing their course… As that metallic meter stopped dead to mark an end coarse.

A final lurch like death had truly found him, a pressing into that solid armor refusing to let him back in. The downpour of all this refuting totality, coming straight for their true disgrace with justified finality. That red gaunt, that over stretched skeleton, this menace made to feel true unquenchable fear at last. He scrunched, huddled, fell into his hollow being. Body refusing to let him just disappear. Simulated being made to feel every approaching gaze. Made to feel the rumble of every step, the heat of every fury, the tremble of that matched form stopping his-

Seth was scared too. Terrified beyond what his power could alleviate. Frozen in his step like a dear before the proverbial oncoming train. And yet he was not collapsing in. Not breaking down, not failing to stay. Shining still as the towering terror at the front of this… this passing army. Resent uncurled in shock at continued existence, at rumbling steps leaving him in the dust and disappearing into the nothing they always were. The memories that tied, the twisted results made pain, the fear and anguish haunting ever still. All just figments, refractions, carried sentimentality made wrong by reality. Like him. Like the little form huddled at the feet of a giant, still staunch amid the tide ebbing it way free. Still trembling and yet burning brighter than possible.

The last of that scornful parade marched to oblivion, that reverted child of more reasonable proportions forced to take the disappointment of its elders. And left to its own terrified devises. Its own lonely emptiness. It wanted back, it wanted restitution, it wanted to stop being afraid and alone. Resent scrambled back up, trying to get back to Seth’s graces. Get back to himself. Back to knowing he wasn’t just a pale shadow made wrong. But instead he rounded that terrified statue in his way… and slammed face first into the true source of all this mind racking fear. Right into the shadow

Of The Wall.