Shandak and Zachary Reconcile

Characters in this scene: Zachary, Shandak

Location: Sanctuary

Follows: Shandak Hurts

It was late in the morning, and Zachary was bored. He'd just finished up with feeding Justin's dad's monstrous mice, and had watched them eat their prescribed food and immediately conk out, the sides of their little bodies rising and falling in the calm rhythm of sleep. The only two mice that were still awake were the skinny black one and the white one with a brown spot on the head, each in their separate cages so that they wouldn't murder the rest. Those two ran around agitatedly and seemed incapable of eating, drinking, or sleeping at all. Zachary had no idea what was happening with these mice, but he'd sworn to take care of them while Justin and the rest were off in Australia, and now he couldn't back out of it.

Zachary opened up his phone, sent a picture to Justin of the remaining normal mice, and then scrolled through the rest of OMO. Maybe he could talk to someone else? No, Evelyn was busy around this time, Levi and the rest of Seafoam were also in Australia, and Reese's icon was set offline. He huffed out another sigh of boredom and kept scrolling, his fingers tapping on the table next to him.

On impulse, Zachary checked his DM with Shandak. Although Shandak was blocked, the site still showed that Shandak had messaged him several times. There really wasn't any harm in unblocking to read what Shandak had said, was there? Zachary didn't actually care about Shandak, but he didn't have anything better to do, and he could always put the block back on. Before he could think any better of it, Zachary took off the block to read the messages.

*I am reminded of you somewhat in MirrorImage, I will admit. You seem to share a fierce certainty of opinion. Unlike you, however, she strikes me as a being who would sneak and hide and prey on the wellbeing of others. An annoyance of a girl, really.*

*I suppose the same is true of me to an extent. I tend to be certain in my actions and decisions, confident that I do what I ought to accomplish my aims.*

*Thus I do not frequently apologize for my actions, as I do not consider it necessary.*

*Nor do I intend to.*

*However, it has come to my attention that you consider something of what I have done repulsive to you. I am not surprised at this.*

*You are not the first to question the morality of my actions, and you likely will not be the last. I accept this.*

*What I will offer is this. I apologize for the uncertainty that may have seemed to have been in my actions. I am aware that my departure may have seemed sudden to those who had not paid careful attention to what was said in the public chatroom, and that the note I left for OMO may have sounded dire, and I understand that that may have been concerning to you. For that, I am sorry.*

Well. Shandak had finally deigned to apologize after all. This was technically enough so that Zachary could speak to him again without breaking any oaths, but that still didn't mean that Zachary was now *okay* with unrepentant city-destroying. Or abandonment. He refused to go crawling back to Shandak after a few paragraphs of pretty words that said basically nothing anyways.

Zachary set the phone down and went back to watching the mice, his head resting on crossed arms. Maybe Justin's dad would want a health report on the mice? At this point Zachary was willing to take about any company at all.

At that moment, a loud roar split the air. The very foundations of Sanctuary shook to hear the sound, and some primal part of Zachary wanted to cower and flee. The rest of him, however, recognized that noise. He'd heard something like it in training nearly every other day for the past quarter of a year.

*Shandak.*

Zachary flung open the window of his room, pushed aside the netting, and jumped through the open space. He fell through the air along the side of the building, windows passing in a blur and the wind rushing through his clothes. Shortly before hitting the ground, he jumped again, and converted the momentum into a roll. Then he was off, running towards the source of the noise with fire sword in hand. If Shandak was here to reveal his true self and destroy Sanctuary, Zachary could at least buy them a few minutes.

Zachary knew where Shandak would be resting. The gates of Sanctuary were almost always open, and yet it had seemed that Shandak had decided that he ought to watch and take care for it that Sanctuary might not be intruded upon by those who would bring it harm. And while Zachary may have expected to find some huge, roaring beast of tremendous height there, there was none to be found. Instead, Shandak's effigy sat in place, the small stone statue emanating a crushing anger and hatred, the natural grinding of his aura brought to a degree of crushing silence that seemed to choke the very air of the space. The face of the effigy was downturned into an expression of rage unlike anything Zachary had ever seen from him before, though it remained in its stony place.

Zachary approached warily, fire sword held out in front of him and body turned to the side to minimize his profile. At the sight, his planned declaration to defend Sanctuary to the death was pushed out of his mind, and he struggled to come up with something else to say.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Zachary finally managed.

The statue seems to be embattled, facing some kind of great struggle. And whatever it was that it was fighting, or attacking, or destroying - it hates it, and yet its expression turns to joy as it continues to sit there in silence. Has it won? Was the battle over? It was still emanating that hatred, that anger, so he probably hadn't ended whatever foe he was fighting. He wasn't dead or come to terms with dying or something was he? That'd be weird, and probably still didn't fit. There was something... At some point Shandak had said something of the joy of combat, of battle, that he enjoyed destruction. Was this that? The fierce energy of a being who hates to the core what he's destroying, and yet enjoying the act of it?

Where was he destroying?

Zachary kept the fire sword leveled at the statue, even as the expression on his face changed to one of concern. "Hey, Shandak, are you even here? Hello?"

A stillness filled the air, like a breath of calm in the eye of a storm. The seething rage remained, but, for the moment, quieted, before boiling back up again with yet greater force than before. If this was destruction, then there was no longer any joy in it. Simply hatred.

"Shandak, is there something wrong with your statue? Should I get Lady?"

There's almost a snapping in the air at that, as Shandak's attention seems to finally be pulled from whatever he was wreaking wherever his main body was. His form bubbles forth, greater and taller than it had on any occasion prior, standing nearly as tall, in fact, as Zachary. "WHO DARES TO - Ah. Zachary." There's a bit of sadness there, as he registers and acknowledges him, and, as he begins to relax, a deep tiredness.

Zachary almost stepped backwards. He wasn't used to Shandak being this tall, and in fact had usually relished being able to lord his height over Shandak, because most other people at Sanctuary were so ridiculously tall. Still, Zachary held his ground, and then dismissed the fire sword with a whispered, "火劍."

Zachary relaxed his stance to a more casual pose and said, "Oh, uh, hi. Seemed like something was going on with you? You -- your statue, anyways -- made this really loud noise. I thought that I'd check."

Shandak pauses and considers, for a moment. "You were not wrong to check, young one. For one with such a reputation as mine, one might consider it a necessary precaution. As for what I was actually doing, one might say that I was allowing myself to act on my frustrations, for a moment."

"Okay," Zachary said. "What's that about? The frustrations, I mean?"

"I am breaking, Zachary. It is a matter of years, now."

Zachary's eyebrows raised. "You mean, your statue is breaking? Can you get a new one from Lady?"

"Far worse than that. My Being has been being crushed by the Abyss for the last thousands of years. The time draws near when it shall succeed, and I shall no longer be as myself." Shandak says this with almost his usual certainty and confidence, but it's very clear to Zachary that the very idea of this pains him a great deal, let alone admitting it to another.

"Oh," Zachary said quietly. "Yeah, okay, that's not good."

Shandak stands silently, moving not a muscle. The storm of rage and hatred has faded away, and he seems to have been left with the cold stillness of deep, abiding sadness.

"Is there a way to get you out of there? If you swear not to destroy any more cities or kill massive amounts of people again?" Zachary asks.

"There are potentially ways for me to escape even without such an oath. Certain of them involve my death. Be that as it may, I hesitate to swear such a thing. Destruction on such a scale has made up a large portion of my being, Zachary, and such things are not easily given up." There's a lack of faith, there, that any of the options he speaks of will actually *work*.

In lieu of anything to do with his hands, Zachary bounced onto the balls of his feet, and then back down. He could still see the top of Shandak's head if he really tried. Not that it mattered, really, especially in the face of everything Shandak was saying now.

"Do you *need* to do stuff like that? Does it keep you alive, or something? Can you even do that sort of thing in the Abyss anyways?" Zachary said.

"Consider, Zachary, if I asked you to never play a video game again. I am not dependent upon destruction to survive, and do not directly feed upon it, but all the same it is something I would rather like the opportunity to do sometime again, be it in 50 years or 500, should my Self remain intact that long."

Zachary made a face. "I don't kill real people when I play. I can stop if you actually make a good argument that it's hurting people, but it isn't."

"I did not suggest that it was the same, but it has been of similar importance to my being. In addition, such an oath would put me in an awkward position should I have to defend myself again as I had to recently."

"I've mostly had to give up games because of the stupid frostbite thing," Zachary muttered. "All the fast paced stuff, anyways. Destiny is barely playable, League is even worse, I downloaded Outriders before Alaska but I can barely make it through the tutorial now."

"But you will likely return to them when you are able, will you not?" Shandak pauses for a moment, and almost seems to laugh a little bit. "And after all, if I cease to be Guardian of the Abyss and leave behind my nature as Destroyer, there might be very little of me left."

Zachary paced around Shandak. "Yeah, but that's not the same as dead, is it?"

Left unspoken was the fact that Zachary had never had many grand labels like that at all, and that the smaller scale ones that he did have were ones that he wished that he could get rid of.

"There might be very little of me left should I not find a means of escape from the Abyss soon, either."

"Yeah, see? So which would you rather have? I can't support you leaving the Abyss in good conscience if you're just going to destroy more places."

Shandak is smiling a bit, almost laughing, now. "A fair enough point. And yet the question remains of what I might do should I escape. I do not expect to be able to simply reenter your world unchallenged."

At this point, Zachary remembered something from earlier, and his hands balled up into fists. He kicked at a rock on the ground. "You said on OMO that you'd be plenty willing to kill Xander and me if we tried to stop you from killing people."

"I have done so in the past. Killed my allies and friends when they sought to prevent me from my ends. It is not due to any feelings against you, Xander, or indeed any of the others of OMO and beyond. But when I have determined that a place requires my interference, none stand in my path and survive, save for a few certain instances in the past."

"And that's supposed to make me feel *better?* What even gives you the right to decide a place should be destroyed, anyways?" Zachary said with a scowl.

"What gives anyone the right to decide anything? It has been my role, my position to decide such things. Who are you, to challenge me on such a thing?"

Zachary rolled his eyes. "I, Zachary Wong, declare that it is my role to challenge you on this question, then! If you really want to play this game I can do it right back! I'm your student, I have the right!"

Shandak raises an eyebrow. "If it is not my role to make such decisions, then whose is it? There are issues which are easier to remove if one removes all around them. Such is the purpose of amputation, frequently, as has been true of my targets."

"Like what? If you're so sure about that, then name some examples," Zachary demanded.

"A society within which the sale of those substances which harm and destroy their people is baked into the very system of governance. A village, having been touched by a Demon, whose rot slowly eats away at the harvest of all grain in an area measured in miles by the time I eliminated it, but which threatened to extend to the tens of miles should the village have grown further. A city-state whose leaders have decided that their citizens no longer require pay or, on occasion, food, for they are simply workers for the state to use as it pleases. Do you require further examples?"

Zachary crossed his arms, and appeared to be quite engaged in a game of dribbling the rock he had found on the ground like a soccer ball. Had public chat been wrong after all? Maybe he had been to quick to assume? No, no, he still had to check.

"Have you ever *interfered* in a way that was net negative for the world?" Zachary asked.

"Likely. While what I removed was almost always negative to the world, on occasion I would agree to remove a location on the behalf of others, and things become far less certain when others are involved.

"So you did mercenary work too. *Why?*"

"Frequently, that I might preserve what I might be able, in times of war. Why do you ask?"

"Because... this stuff matters? Morality? If you know what even that is?" Zachary said, motioning into an exaggerated shrug with his hands. "I spent all this time learning from you and didn't know you were like *this*. I mean, why even do that if you just want to destroy things?"

Shandak shrugs in reply. "I am aware of morality, and the issues my practice causes therewith. As for teaching you and the others? Several reasons. First among them is that as I am unable to resume my role, and likely will be for some time even should I escape the Abyss, I feel my time is better spent improving what I can rather than rotting in my cell in the Abyss doing nothing. Additionally, if I can improve the world as a whole, then it is more likely that when I do feel the need to act upon a place, what will replace it will be better than what was before."

"Stockton is awful but I'm not helping you destroy it. I refuse."

Shandak shrugs again, and looks frankly despondent. "I have no expectation that it would be in my better interest to destroy Stockton even if I could, now. You see, this is the trap that the Abyss has caught me in. By my access to OMO, it has proven to me that, despite my efforts to retain myself, and even should I somehow win my battle with it and escape, there is no longer a place for me in the world above. By this realization, it gained much ground, and reduced my remaining time from centuries to decades, at most."

Zachary sobered, the detour that they had gone arguing down leaving his mind. "That... yeah, that's just... do you want a hug, Shandak?"

Shandak looks surprised, as though a hug was the last thing they expected to be offered, but he doesn't seem displeased by the offer, either. "I do not believe I have ever been offered a hug before. I nonetheless appreciate the sentiment, for perhaps now you understand why my position seems so dire."

He pauses for a moment. "Very well. I will accept this thing."

Zachary put his arms around Shandak. It was somewhat awkward, since Shandak was effectively a moving stone statue, but Zachary held his position for a good ten seconds and patted Shandak on the back.

Shandak, also rather awkwardly, put his arms around Zachary and patted him as well. The near instant that Zachary starts moving to stop, so does Shandak.

Zachary drew back. *"Is* there... I dunno, anything else that you want me to do that'll make you feel better? That doesn't involve killing people?"

"Honestly? I have little idea what I want to do now. Many things seem unimportant that I might once have done out of amusement or boredom. How goes your recovery?"

Shandak seemed so much more vulnerable now. Like he was admitting things that normally he wouldn't say to anyone. It was hard to see, in a way. For most of the time that Zachary had known Shandak, Shandak had seemed unshakable, and the lack of remorse for his past killing sprees had only reinforced it. But now... Zachary described how he was doing now, both in the physical and mental exercises that Shandak had set for him. He also then went on into describing the level of hand mobility that he had now, the feeling of sudden aching colds that happened for no reason, the join stiffness, the sensitivity to even the slightest temperature fluctuations. All of it was livable, sure, but nowhere near ideal.

Shandak ponders as Zachary tells him of these things, considering each piece of information both individually and as part of the whole. "Something of Winter has taken root in your body. I am unsure of what, exactly, but I believe this to be true. Have you any idea when Wings will be coming to visit Sanctuary? I would like for her to perhaps exercise her expertise regarding spirits of this variety, that we may perhaps remove this thing."

"Do you really think so? Evelyn has talked about coming over sometime soon, but I don't know specifics," Zachary said, looking concerned.

"Considering the timeframe of your injury, I see few other possibilities. Evelyn mentioned even at the time that she was concerned for the severity and nature of your injury, but given the natural frostbite that was already occurring at the time, it would likely have been difficult for her to tell at the time even if she were in a better position."

"I'll see about doing that when she comes over," Zachary said. He looked up at the sky, then back at Shandak, and took a deep breath. "Actually though, about what you said earlier... did you have anything to do with Sodom and Gomorrah?"

Shandak pauses, at that. "Do you refer to the biblical cities? If so, then I do not believe so. I remember being annoyed for a short period that some other being might attempt to take on my role, before being informed that it was some form of divine or angelic curse that what would come to be known as the Abrahamic God would be called responsible for."

Zachary decided at that moment that he didn't actually want to know specifics after all, and nodded to show that he understood. He scuffed at the ground. "Okay. You know, it's been a while out here, and I think I should get lunch soon, so unless you have anything else to say... see you later? At the usual time?"

Shandak nods. "That sounds pleasant. I shall see you then, should circumstances allow."

Zachary waved and left, leaving Shandak to his own devices.