A little while later, Eirwen found himself waiting again.
The section they had been pushed into was not calm in any way. The walls still trembled every few breaths, dust kept falling from the ceiling in thin grey lines, and the distant noise of the siege never truly stopped.
Sometimes there was a low roar beyond the stone, sometimes the thunder of ballistas firing, sometimes the metallic scream of something enormous scraping against the outer walls, and sometimes it was simply people shouting orders.
The chamber was a long, low room built between two corridors. It had benches along the walls, crates of Soul Shards stacked in the center, supply racks shoved into corners, and several soldiers sitting or kneeling wherever there was space. Some were recharging Essence. Some were being stitched back together by healers. Others just sat with blank faces, staring at the floor as if rethinking all the choices they had made in life that could have brought them to this situation.
Eirwen stood near one of the support pillars, turning a broken claw between his fingers.
The thing was ugly. Long, thin, slightly curved, with a dull blue-black colour near the base. He had ripped it from one of the creatures before leaving the eastern tower, and he was not entirely sure why he had done so.
Now, he rolled it between his fingers, pressed the point against his thumb, then dragged it lightly over the iron-silver plates of the Steel Shroud.
'You are far too arrogant, boy,' Leviathan said inside his Soul Sea.
Eirwen did not move, but his mind shifted inward.
A moment later, he appeared inside his Soul Sea, surrounded by a boundless sea of black flames, with a radiant white star hanging in the sky above.
"What was that?" Eirwen asked, his eyes immediately finding the tall figure standing in the middle of the sea of flames.
"You are far too arrogant," Leviathan repeated, hundreds of voices speaking at the same time. "You are weak, and yet you preen over every scrap of attention thrown your way. Focus on becoming stronger. Devour. Learn. Grow. Stop strutting like a starving gull perched on a whale carcass, shrieking as if it owns the sea."
Eirwen's brow twitched in annoyance .That, annoyingly, was not wrong, but he didn't feel like admitting that.
People had been looking at him differently even here now. Obviously, not everyone. Most soldiers had more important things to worry about than one strange Sleeper. But enough of them had seen the way he regenerated and the way he fought like some rabid animal. And those who had not seen it first-hand had heard enough from the others. Curiosity was mixing with caution now, and Eirwen had never hated that.
Being treated like cargo had been irritating, but being stared at like something dangerous and amazing was much better.
"Is it arrogance if it is deserved?" Eirwen replied, trying his best not to get riled up.
Leviathan's face did not change, but something in his answer carried amusement, "Yes."
"Well then, I'm arrogant. So what?" the boy's face twitched. "Deal with it. You chose me yourself."
"You ought to get a beating," the ancient being answered with a clear chuckle, and Eirwen almost smiled at that.
Across the room, Seraphiel sat on a bench with his back straight and two Soul Shards in his pale hands.
He looked better than before, but not by much.
The bluish tint beneath his skin had faded slightly, and his breathing had steadied, yet sweat still clung to his white hair and the sides of his face. His white attire was torn, stained, and patched in two places where healers had wrapped thin strips of cloth around his arm and side. The chain of his short sword hung loosely from his wrist, the blade dismissed for now, while the Soul Shards between his fingers glowed faintly.
He had not complained at all, unlike Eirwen, who had been furious on their way here. He had kept mumbling to himself just loud enough for everybody to hear, too.
Miro had ordered Seraphiel to recover Essence the moment they reached the chamber, and there had been no softness in the command. If someone could stand, breathe, and hold a weapon, they were part of the defense. If their Essence was low, they recovered it. If their bones were broken but still aligned in a way that made them easy to fix, someone wrapped them up and sent them back.
The fortress was very a efficient but also a damn terrible place.
Eirwen rolled the claw over the back of his knuckles and felt several gazes on him again as he returned to reality.
Three Awakened were sitting near a crate not far from him. Two men and one woman, all older than him, obviously, and all wearing battered armour. One of the men had a bandage around his head, blood already soaking through the cloth above his left ear. The woman's right arm was in a sling, but her left hand still held a spear across her knees. The last man had no visible wounds, which either meant he was fine or that he had internal injuries.
They had been pretending not to stare for a while, but eventually, the bandaged one gave up and asked, "Is that your Aspect?"
Eirwen looked at him.
The man gestured vaguely toward his own throat, then toward Eirwen's body. "The healing, you know. I saw one of those things tear into your neck. It looked bad enough to drop anybody, even an Awakened. But you just kept moving?"
Eirwen let the question sit for a second. Eventually, he pressed the claw against his cheek lazily. "Something like that."
The woman with the sling narrowed her eyes. "Something like that?"
Eirwen looked at her and smiled faintly. "Any wound I receive heals."
"That was more than healing, though!" the other man said. "Your face was half-open when we arrived! But look at you now. So beautiful you could be a model in a magazine!"
Then, after a second, he added with a sigh, "Wait, you guys still have magazines, right? I'm not sure how long I've been here."
"We do," Eirwen answered with a raised brow, his pride replaced by confusion for a split second.
The bandaged man stared at him for a moment, then gave a short, tired laugh. "Gods, every new generation of Sleepers just keeps becoming stranger."
Eirwen's smile widened a little as he thought, 'It has nothing to do with that. I'm just better than most.'
Seraphiel, meanwhile, watched him without any real expression, Soul Shards still in hand. He was not judging, just watching, as if quietly measuring how much of Eirwen's behavior was performance and how much was actually him.
For him, the answer was both.
In his eyes, Eirwen was nothing but a fraud, and if not for the circumstances, he would not want to be anywhere near him.
Or was that the case…?
Eirwen opened his mouth, ready to say something that would probably make the Awakened even more curious, when a flat voice cut through the room.
"Is there something to smile about, newbie?"
The smile disappeared immediately.
Miro stood in the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back, bald head marked with faint dust, tattoos visible along his arms and neck. He looked even shorter than usual beside the soldiers moving behind him. A few conversations died immediately at the sound of his voice.
Eirwen turned the claw between his fingers again. "Am I not allowed to smile either?"
"Don't get smart now, kid." the man answered.
"How was I getting smart?" Eirwen replied, doing his best not to mention his stature or his bald, shiny head.
"You love getting the last word in, don't you?" Miro's gaze shifted past him to Seraphiel afterwards. "You. Get up."
Seraphiel rose immediately, the Soul Shards in his hands now dull and mostly drained.
Miro looked back at Eirwen. "You are going with Varkos to the lower tunnel. Something breached through it, and enemies are flooding in."
Eirwen blinked once. "Who?"
The answer entered the room before Miro gave it.
At first, it was only the sound. Heavy steps in the corridor outside, each one slow and hard enough to make the loose dust on the floor twitch. Then a shadow covered the doorway, and the tall Master with the axe from before stepped into view.
'What the fuck is this…' Eirwen thought as he craned his neck up.
Somehow, the monst— man looked even scarier than he had before.
He was huge, both tall and broad.
His armour was black, layered, and titanic, built from thick plates. They drank the light, dull and heavy, scratched in a hundred places and stained with old blood that had dried on the surface. The shoulders were massive, the chest plate ridged, the gauntlets large enough to crush a normal man's skull without needing a weapon. There was nothing elegant about the armour whatsoever.
His bucket-like helmet covered almost everything, leaving only one eye visible through a narrow opening.
It was an ugly colour, as if the eye had been burned and never healed properly. The skin around it was dark and scarred beneath the helmet's edge, and the eye itself seemed half-ruined, the pupil uneven, the white stained with broken veins.
The dull grey axe rested in his right hand.
Varkos looked at Miro first, then at Seraphiel, then at Eirwen. His red, ruined eye lingered on the blood around Eirwen's mouth and the broken claw in his hand.
"Am I to take these two with me?" he asked, his voice like thunder grinding through stone.
Miro's expression did not change. "Use them as meat shields if you want."
Varkos seemed to consider that before turning away and coughing out a single word: "Walk."
That was apparently all the conversation they were getting.
Eirwen tossed the claw away and pushed himself off the pillar.
The Awakened who had been questioning him watched with renewed interest, but Miro's presence killed whatever else they wanted to ask.
Seraphiel moved to Eirwen's side immediately, looking much better than before and the two followed Varkos out without another word.