ALONE

Written on October 28, 2024 (♏︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 28: Denial (Exposure).

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Vormav’s mind had always recoiled at the wilderness: the places beyond the ordered world of the island–those realms where saints had their trials and soldiers died without rites. When Lesalia bade even Mullonde’s sons march east, he showed no outward distaste for the Ordallian countryside, but there was disquiet beneath his quiet. He hated the desolation of a world given over to beasts and heathenry. He hated the strangeness of foreign plants and birdsong.

Vormav had not, during that summer of Denamda II’s last push, been separated long with his unit. Delacroix's men chanced to find him and set him back to the march, and he had been able to forage enough to keep flesh on him.

Still, in those days of abyssal solitude, Vormav had come into fear. In the horrible quiet of nature, with the only human voice being his echoing prayers, he found the space between him and the divine grew hourly. Outside of the holy city, outside of the rites and rules that had enclosed him, Vormav grew in daily apprehension that he was a man alone–nothing in the heavens above him.

Upon his recovery, he determined that he would never allow himself that lapse again.

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