Chapter Text
In a world ruled by vialism, there was a constant.
The brightness of rebellion was destined to oppose the suffocation of despair.
There's always been a figure steeped in a cloak, and there's always been someone holding up the light, no matter how dark it would become.
A bishop and a Torchbearer. Two forever colliding forces circling each other.
Josh almost wished it didn't work that way.
Defeated, all he had left to do was try again. It's how everything is supposed to go - Clancy falls, and Torchbearer is left to pick the pieces up.
Josh dropped his backpack like a heavy sack and couldn't even bother to talk to the remaining banditos. Their faces were grim as he passed by the ashen fire pit. He made his way back to their old tent and fell onto the cot face down.
And so, the cycle snapped in place. There had never been another ending.
There was no force more powerful than time. It spun like the immovable wheel forward, snowballing this same song and dance again and again.
He was so tired.
So Josh let sleep take him.
He dreamed of liquid gold dripping from the foliage of the greens. Late summer, maybe early autumn. The endless plains of Trench stretched before him, as he sat up on the muddy ground in what felt like the middle of nowhere.
He looked up at the sky, letting his gaze wander up onto the clouds, where they stretched in white strands, swirling like the eddies in the water and reaching their tendrils further towards the horizon. Like an eternal sunset that refused to sink beneath the trees.
Josh picked himself up, looking at the plains behind him and the forest in front of him. He stood quietly, letting the silence settle over his shoulders like an old blanket.
It was almost comforting how nothing really moved. As if stuck in forever silence just to rest.
Oh, he thought.
Is this what the stillness feels like?
Right then and there, he decided that there was no better feeling than this. All of his restlessness taken away.
In his dreamscape, he made his way to the trees. And in the waking world, the other morning, he picked himself up and joined Jenna for a hunt.
She looked tired even after a good night's sleep. But then again, she might not have slept at all. It was hard to tell with the air of helplessness that settled over the camp.
He could tell she needed this walk as she led the way, trudging through the tall grass, holding a bow in her hand.
There was a small clearing where they made their stop to watch their prey.
Later that morning, Josh stared at the breathless creature, beautiful doe eyes devoid of any life. It reminded him of the other pair of brown eyes, and he hated his own brain for the image it tried to conjure up against his better judgment.
So he got out a knife and got to work.
"I hate to tell you this, but we are running out of time," Jenna finally broke this fragile silence as they were busy skinning a deer.
Josh was elbow-deep in the guts, blood soiling the blade, handle feeling sleek in the grip of his palm.
He looked at her sideways, from where she maneuvered her own knife in a more efficient succession.
"Okay." he answered, lacking other words to speak out loud.
She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes expressing this familiar sadness. He was used to this look on other banditos' faces. It wasn't how she usually looked at him, though.
"Clancy is waiting. Somewhere out there." Her voice was quiet. Her blond hair had a drying splash of red on it.
"I know."
"I mean it."
"I know."
He had nothing left to offer.
Paul joined them an hour later, and together they hauled their meat reserve back to the camp.
Now that Clancy was gone, Torchbearer had a lot to do.
First, he had to make sure that all of the remaining banditos got all they needed after the battle. Those who stayed were injured, and their tents stayed dormant while they were recovering under the watchful eyes of Lucy.
Then he had to go back to the planning.
There was a map laid out in front of him. He tried to keep his eyes from closing as he leafed through his journal while sitting on his cot.
Eventually, he dozed off, and the reality fell away.
He opened his eyes in a lush green forest.
The golden light filtered lazily through the canopy overhead, painting long ribbons across the moss beneath his boots.
Josh sighed, shoulders dropping in resignation.
Since he was here, he thought it wouldn't hurt to explore his surroundings.
This was a first.
This wasn't Josh's first rodeo as a Torchbearer, but these dreams were something entirely new. He had no idea what had started them or why he was seeing them altogether.
He wandered between towering trunks without direction, fingers trailing over rough bark, boots sinking softly into damp patches of moss. Every now and then, the trees parted just enough for him to glimpse the endless plains beyond, washed in eternal evening.
He was sure in one thing, though.
He was here for a reason.
Josh knew this time was different from all of those other times. He and Clancy, he and Tyler got too close this time around. He just didn't expect it to end so abruptly.
Out of all the endings, how they could lose Clancy, him becoming the thing that he hated, wasn't something that Josh could foresee.
He let his feet carry him to the pond nearby. It was dimly shining in the setting orange sunset, vivid enough for him to spot it from the walking distance a hill away. He made his way closer to the water.
The still shiny surface appeared between the grass, reflecting the endless sky with its bright colors. It looked less like a pond and more like something that wasn't ever meant to be carved into plain ground. Like something sacred.
Like heaven itself, spilled under his feet, like something that vialism was supposed to preach.
Josh stopped at the tree line.
There was someone at the shore.
Josh held his breath, blinking and waiting for the image to recede. It didn't.
The figure at the shore looked down at the pond. And Josh was sure this figure belonged to a person he tried his hardest not to think about.
Then, almost as if sensing his presence, the figure shifted and stood up, head turning around to meet his gaze. He froze at the spot.
Clancy.
Hope was a vicious thing.
It struck before reason ever could.
Josh stepped closer just enough to make sure.
"Clancy?"
But something felt off.
The high of a mere possibility, the hope of "what if" slipped away from his desperate grip faster than he could realize.
He should have known, it couldn't have been true.
Everything was off.
He could see it in the details. In the vacant expression on his face, in the stillness of his all too familiar brown eyes. Even the posture was wrong, all too rigid. Too composed.
Clancy had always carried himself like someone forever preparing to run. This man stood before him as though rooted into the earth.
This man didn't have any marking of black on his neck, but Torchbearer knew better than second guess this appearance.
A bishop.
That's who he was.
Nova.
He hated how quickly his mind supplied this new name. Like a curse.
He should've known better. He did know better. He'd watched Clancy pull the red robes over his own shoulders.
The man stared at the water for another long second before lifting a hand toward the old scar across his nose. Like something akin to a habit.
Clancy used to do that whenever he was thinking.
Josh's throat tightened.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair that the smallest gestures had survived.
Realistically, it was a given. This man was Tyler once. That whoever Nova had become still blinked the same way. Still tilted his head the same way. Still breathed the same.
Recognition spread across Nova's features. Not quite a smile bloomed on his face.
Josh shifted his weight.
"No..." His own voice sounded hollow to his ears. "Of course it's you..."
Silence settled between them.
Nova straightened from the edge of the pond.
"Hi."
Josh's chest twisted. He couldn't do this. So he turned away. If he looked any longer, if he listened and let himself pretend just for a moment, he was sure he wouldn't leave.
His boots carried him toward the trees. Away.
Just like they should have all those years ago.
"Wait."
Josh stopped.
The word rooted him in place, as if he was dog on a leash, and the other end of the leather line belonged in that hand.
"What?"
He hated feeling this way.
"What?" he repeated more quietly.
He finally looked back.
Nova had taken a cautious step closer. With how casual he held his spine straight and gaze laser focused on Josh, he looked strangely uncertain.
"What do you want?"
"How..." Nova hesitated."...How are the banditos?"
Josh almost laughed. It came out as something brittle instead.
"Shouldn't your vultures tell you how the banditos are?"
Nova frowned.
"I don't seize vultures."
Right. His lip curled in disdain.
"You seize people. How could I forget?"
"Glorious gones."
"My point still stands."
Josh folded his arms tightly across his chest before he realized his hands had begun shaking.
"I shouldn't talk to you."
"Why?"
It was brutal how he watched a dead man speak.
Josh's eyes traveled to Nova's lips. He once kissed those. Spending days on end, sharing the fire of his rebellion. And nights, when rain was the least of their worries, as their limbs tangled together.
"You know exactly why."
"I don't."
Josh searched his face.
Memories came unbidden. He remembered it like it had happened yesterday. They were stranded on Voldsoy, boat rocking on the waves of the Paladin Strait. Back then, Tyler leaned in, searching for Josh's hand, looking for all the reassurance he could give. And Josh was eager to give it all away, for one person only.
"You're not Tyler." Josh stared at Nova. "You're not Clancy anymore. That's why."
Nova's expression shifted. Barely.
"Didn't you find another Clancy?"
Like a gut punch, Jenna's words from earlier hit just as hard. He hated the question.
Time moved on the other end, in the waking world.
He should have moved on already. Found another face and handed him a spark and started over.
He looked at Nova for one long moment.
Then he turned away, and this time he didn't stop. The trees of the dreamscape swallowed him whole.
He woke with damp eyes and an empty cot with what felt like an empty space beside his own.
The time went on without him.
Josh woke before dawn.
The lantern hanging beside the entrance had burned itself out sometime during the night, leaving only the faint gray of morning filtering through the canvas walls.
For a long while, he felt sick just at the thought of moving.
Josh rubbed a hand over his face.
The worst thing was that the dream didn't really feel that unreal.
The thought unsettled him enough that he buried himself in work before sunrise.
And eventually the days blurred together.
Lucy cornered him outside the medical tent with another list of herbs they were running low on.
"I'm sorry to ask you of this," she looked guilty for handing him this list. "But Jenna is on the hunt, and Mark is busy with the food, and Paul is fixing that roof, so I…"
"I got this, don't worry."
He carefully pocketed the folded piece of paper.
On his way to the supply tent, Michel complained about spoiled grain.
"It all got moldy after the rainwater leaked through the roof. We are down by two sacks. There's like no way we'll have enough for winter."
"Okay, we'll think of something. A little later." Josh brushed him off, entering the tent.
Nick sat on one of the crates, tinkering with the broken bow. He let go of the string he held between his teeth to speak.
"Oh, hi, Torch! I was looking for you. Mark said he broke the knife, you know, that one that was holding on by one screw. But I need wood to fix it and Leo is busy at the moment, unfortunately, so there's like no one to help."
"Did you talk to Debby?"
"No, I think she's hunting."
"With Jenna?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. I'll get you some wood."
That night, Josh stayed awake as long as he could.
He got some wood, handed the list of herbs to Debby as soon as she returned, and in turn got busy with all of her tasks for the day.
He sharpened knives, then fed another log into the fire pit until only glowing embers remained. He wasn't afraid of sleeping. Or so he tried to convince himself. He laid his head down on the pillow and stared at the canvas wall.
Eventually, exhaustion won.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
On the other side of the waking world, the orange sky greeted him once again.
The dream refused to let him go.
Josh sighed as he looked around the place where he opened his eyes. He wasn't at the pond anymore. Instead, he was surrounded by a haunting image of something he woke up to for uncountable years every day.
He already knew where he was. It was his home after all.
All around him was an abandoned camp. No banditos in sight.
The tents stood exactly where they always had, untouched by time. Blankets still lay across empty bedrolls. Crates remained half-open where they'd been abandoned years ago.
Nothing changed here.
Nothing except him.
Josh looked toward the largest tent. His stomach sank.
He knew. Somehow he knew.
Without letting himself think about it, he crossed the camp.
The flap hung open. He reached it and stopped. His fingers curled around the coarse canvas.
Just one season ago, he shared this tent with someone.
For a ridiculous moment he considered walking away, pretending he had never come. Instead, he ducked inside.
The tent was dim despite the everlasting sunset outside. Josh lowered himself onto the edge of the old cot, raising up a cloud of dust. It floated lazily through shafts of amber light.
Just one season ago, sometime back in spring, he remembered building a pillow fort from these bed sheets. They still cover his bed now.
That night rained tapped on the canopy of the roof, dripping down to the solid ground. It washed away the rising heat, leaving them cold under the covers.
He tried not to think about bothering to change them. After all, they were short on supplies already.
His gaze fell on the crumpled piece of paper on his side.
He picked it up absentmindedly.
The edges had softened from time spent in hesitation, folding and unfolding, from writing and rereading.
He already knew every word written across it. It was his handwriting after all.
We must do better, Clancy.
His thumb traced the faded ink. It looked just as weathered with time as he felt weathered with it.
He wondered if dreams preserved things the same way they preserved people.
The flap rustled.
Josh's head snapped up to the sound of someone entering the tent.
Nova froze at the entrance, looking at him with those black eyes.
It felt like an intrusion.
Neither of them spoke. For one moment they just looked at each other.
It was then that Josh realized that he was crying.
"Get out." His own voice surprised him. It sounded flat.
Yet Nova didn't move.
Feeling more and more powerless with each second, suppressed rage was threatening to bubble out the longer he sat in this tent.
Tyler, no, Clancy might be gone, but memories of him stayed, cutting him once again. He couldn't stand it.
"I said get out."
Josh really, really wanted to throw something. To yell and shout for all of this to stop, for the planet to stop spinning, to halt for a second or longer.
Instead, all he heard in his own voice was exhaustion.
Please, he pleaded to anyone with higher power, for anyone who would listen. Just let me remember him the way he was.
Slowly, Nova lowered his hand from the canvas flap.
The entrance fell closed. The sound of heavy fabric settling echoed through the tent.
Josh stood abruptly. The cot creaked beneath the sudden movement.
Before he could think himself out of it, he crossed the tent in three quick strides and threw the flap open.
Nova was still there, on the other side. Standing exactly where he had left him, wearing a skin that didn't belong to him anymore. A false husk.
Through the seasons, his clothes had changed. His name had changed.
But for one fleeting second, Josh caught the same uncertainty that used to cross Clancy's face whenever he wasn't sure he'd done the right thing.
Josh had to accept the turning wheel of time, and still, as he looked at a man, no longer a bandito, he couldn't help but feel trapped.
"Would you stop haunting me?"
All the strength he'd spent holding everyone else together over the last weeks deserted him in one quiet breath.
"Get out of my head."
He wasn't sure what he really meant by that plea.
Either way, as he watched Nova's eyes darken from his words in that familiar way Clancy's eyes did, he was sure in one thing.
This wasn't just a dream.
Waking up in the morning, lifting his head off the pillow, Josh turned over this idea in his head.
The dreamscape that he had conjured up wasn't just that - a dreamscape.
He was sure it was something more.
Night after night. Never changing. Always the same sky.
Always him.
He had to test something.
The camp recovered slowly.
Lucy finally forced half the injured out of bed.
Debby and Michel argued over dwindling stores until Leo settled the dispute by volunteering another hunting run.
Mark spread maps over the central table nearly every evening, searching for routes farther east.
"We should start moving." He said, looking at Josh. "Nova bishop knows where we at."
Josh nodded wearily.
Paul finished the restoration of the broken roof.
And Jenna closed the last crate in the preparation for the move.
Everyone worked.
Everyone waited.
For another Clancy.
There had always been another Clancy.
Another spark the bishops failed to smother.
Another child destined to inherit someone else's war.
The cycle demanded it.
Josh had spent years believing they could break that cycle.
Instead, he had simply watched it complete another turn.
When sleep found him again, the dream welcomed him without resistance.
Josh found himself sitting beside the old fire pit. He looked around, waiting.
Abandoned camp felt eerily quiet.
Until it didn't.
He blinked, and there, someone appeared right across from him. As if materialized from thin air, Nova sat on the log in front of the same fire pit.
Neither spoke.
Josh had begun to appreciate the silence. Words rarely improved anything anymore.
Eventually he stood.
Without looking back, he headed toward the storage crates. He knew exactly which one he wanted.
His hands found the warped wooden lid, and he ripped it open.
The old jacket rested where he remembered leaving it, weathered and untouched.
And covered, beneath, lay ivory antlers. He hesitated for a second before reaching inside the crate and picking them up.
Just as he thought, as he carefully wrapped his hands around their smooth surface, this dreamscape was of his creation.
There shouldn't have been another pair.
Yet here they were.
Josh turned. And Nova didn't move. He was watching the antlers. Watching them the way one watched an old wound. Recognition flashed across his face.
Good.
He remembered.
Josh stepped closer and extended them to him.
"I don't need those." Nova said. "I can seize perfectly fine without them."
Josh didn't lower his hands.
"Have you tried?"
Nova frowned.
"...What?"
"Seizing in a dream."
Josh watched understanding slowly settle across the bishop's features.
No.
He hadn't. Of course he hadn't.
There had never been anyone here to command. Anyone except—
Josh.
The realization hung unspoken between them.
Nova's expression hardened.
"No."
Josh sighed.
"Don't make this difficult."
Nova's gaze remained fixed on the antlers.
"...Fine."
Slowly, he shifted his grip.
If Nova refused—
Then Josh would prove his point himself. He wrapped both hands around the antlers and raised them to the sky.
"What are you doing?" Nova's voice was hard as he spoke.
"It's not going anywhere, Ty."
The old name slipped free before Josh realized what he'd called him.
Nova froze.
"The rebellion isn't going anywhere."
After all, they would relocate, decorate the new camp in yellow dashes, but in the end none of that would matter.
"There are too many glorious gones."
He looked down at the antlers.
"This religion—it takes everything. Banditos are not doing well."
Nova's eyes narrowed.
"And you're giving up? We pushed on through worse."
He looked back at him.
"And where did it lead every single time?" Josh asked, gesturing at the anthers in demonstrative motion. "I really thought it'd be different with you."
The words escaped before he could stop them.
"But then you turned your back on me."
"You left me."
Josh suddenly felt older than he ever had before.
Older than the bishops. Older than Dema itself.
This was going nowhere.
"I'm tired." He looked at the anthers in his hands. "I don't think… I can do this again."
And that was it.
As the orange sky dissolved into nothingness, and he woke back on his cot, he decided.
One more time wouldn't hurt if he won't let it.
Josh reached for his torch and picked it up. Like the boulder, running down the cliff, like the sun rising once again, he finally moved on.
So, banditos packed their bags and relocated to the east of Trench. Back to the start.
It was the last lime he had ever dreamt about that place.