Welcome to Gaia! ::

The girls teleported away in a flurry of unfamiliar magic, and for several long moments, Lovas expected them to simply reappear behind him, to stab him somewhere more devastating than his arm. They didn’t. He never saw them, never sensed their return again. With two agents of Chaos and their weapons and their uncanny ability to steal starseeds, they probably could have overpowered him if they worked together. One of them felt stronger than him- Stronger than he’d been even at his best.

But they had simply left.

He didn’t know why, and it wasn’t like he anticipated a chance to ask about it later. But with a little shrug of his shoulders, he settled on the reason being ‘just too much of a hassle,’ and definitely not because there was any chance that they wouldn’t have killed him if it were slightly less inconvenient. ’They’re people,’ Thad would say. ’They don’t want to hurt anyone… Not really…’

And he was speaking from experience, Lovas knew, but Lovas’ experience was that Chaos didn’t care who it killed. The agents were infected, no matter how young or small or ‘people’ they were- They were infected. There was only one cure for infection that he knew of. Well, one that he’d seen, though he’d been told that Thad had been among those classified as Agents at one point. Infected and cured by means previously unheard of to Lovas.

It was just hard to believe.

…And perhaps too difficult for him to fully comprehend.

Since he didn’t know how many had been cured in the only way he’d ever known, by his own hand.

“Ah…” As the certainty that he was and would remain alone began to settle, the gash from the girl’s blade throbbed a reminder of its presence. Right. She’d wounded him. His fuku left most of his arms bare, nothing between them and the sharpest cut, and blood flowed freely in little rivulets down his arm, pooling in the bend of his elbow, or traveling further to drip from the protrusion of his wrist. Arm wounds were such a pain… inconvenient to tend to with only one available hand. Lovas puffed out a resigned breath as he traced the open gash with a finger, burning under his touch, testing the shape and depth. Well, he would manage. He had suffered worse before.

It was still an inconvenient walk home through the cold and wind and snow, powered down now, so as not to draw more attention to himself, and keeping one palm plastered over the gash- though it was covered now by the coat he wore as a civilian. Inconvenient and long. Iriel hadn’t thought he’d wandered so far. Navigating the city was still a bit of a challenge, so he kept to routes he was familiar with, usually, but… It didn’t make this trek more enjoyable.

Something else did, though.

The snow. His own world was cold, not completely unlike this, but there was no snow, no ice, no light. When Lovas was hurt, he simply slunk through the darkness back to one of his camps, trying to not be seen or noticed. He would tend to whatever injuries he had and spend the entirety of his recovery ready to bolt at a second’s notice. Any weakness could be devastating. He couldn’t afford to rest- he couldn’t afford to be injured. Period.

Here, he felt no evil on his heels, and even if the cold was unpleasant and biting, the snow was crisp and beautiful, disturbed only where he stepped. Lights glinted from the city, but also rose in delicate, shimmery arrays from the ground, from the snow. Iriel didn’t find this strange, didn’t even know to think of it as unusual because everything on this world was unusual to him. It was at least pleasant to see during his long walk, and the knowledge of someone being there when he got to ‘camp,’ that warmed him too.

Iriel tried to move briskly, to keep an undistracted pace (which should come naturally to him, since he rarely lumbered around to see the sights, at least, not on his world). And the Chaos was still here. He shouldn’t bumble about in a compromised state.

But it just… It was easier here…

Everything.

Everything was easier.

He did not have to eke out a miserable existence where all of his efforts to cleanse his world failed again and again- The state of things growing worse and worse- But there was nothing for him to do but try, anyway. Try to fix it, try to survive, try to avoid the worst of the devastation so he could ‘live’ another day and keep trying and keep trying and keeptryingkeeptryingkeeptrying-

Ahem. It was more peaceful here, even when he had just faced the infected.

He hoped the peace lasted.

Because it was a beautiful and lively world… more than he remembered his ever being. There had certainly been points in his life when he’d not been alone, when things had seemed- not lovely, never lovely- but manageable, when others had faced the terrors with him… But he barely remembered those parts, didn’t remember those faces or names at all, didn’t remember places being anything more than twisting piles of tendrils trying to drag him down. When he tried to recall people from the past, now it just imposed those from now on the memories. Thad or Eli. He’d had to bandage himself up alone before, but they would help him now. They were very diligent allies.

Lovas stepped through the snow, the gently glimmering lights seemed to weave around him, pushed away as he strode forward, and sweeping in behind him to occupy any space he vacated. The snow crunched under his boots as he approached Eli’s and Thad’s house through the backyard. It would be… so miserable to condemn a third second world, and such a waste to lose everything again.

Little auroras clung to his boots, and Lovas smiled in amusement as he reached for the handle to the house he’d been invited to stay at, by people he didn’t know that well, but who also had a hand in this planet’s protection. They weren’t quite friends (Iriel wasn’t sure what he felt, if he felt anything at all, and he absolutely did not see value in trying to unpack that right now- or ever), but they were kind and patient and supportive, and-

And it was strange to have that.

Whether it was temporary or not, it wouldn’t do to squander it.

He pressed inside. Home.