Avere halted for a tiny instant, thinking about Adelius who looked, for lack of a better term... broken... his once, though still old and decaying, body, which he had held with surprising energy, slacking, his hand that had held the glass bottle with the liquid, the thing that would most likely vanquish Avere outside of here, now dropped on the floor, with he had twitching, his floppy skin having vanished, his spots seemingly having slightly moved, as if to make tears appear in his eyes.
And indeed, he did see tears there, not real ones, not ones that were already flowing, not even ones that had left the bigger-than-normal eye-sacks, caused by his sheer age, just there, not because he was trying to push them out or something, but rather than that, there because he had realized that his friends, people that had actually cared about him were gone...
He knew that Adelius was suffering with him, and he cared, he was happy, he understood, but not for real, he just felt that, he felt understood, he didn't yet think about all that, he didn't yet bat an eye about what was happening with him, he wanted to continue, he wanted to understand what had truly happened, he would talk about what had happened, as he had done before, he was angry, he was hateful, and he didn't even know who he despised so much that it made every bone in his body hurt, that it made his tears, never-flowing, feel as if they would boil, that it made his heart pump out blood to such a degree he felt as if he had a stone inside him, that his hunger had long since vanished, his body having accepted that, instead replacing it with an eternal flame he was never truly aware of, that he wanted revenge, that he wanted to burn whoever had done it...
"I lost everything, I lost myself, I will slaughter whoever did it, I will f#cking kill the,, I will use their innards as a garland, I will use their teeth as dices, I will use their skulls as pots, I will use their eyes as decoration, i will use their blood as alchemical ingredients, I will use their hair to make strings, I will make clothes out of their skin and then paint it pink, just to spit them, I wil-" he continued on and on before being interrupted once more.
"Woah, woah" he gestured to try and stop, though now much slower, inertly agreeing with Avere and his hatred, though he did seem to think it was excessive from what he was soon to continue talking with.
"I think you should probably tone that down a tad bit, in the end, you won't get anywhere if you just have hatred burning inside you like a fire that burns a house down, the fire that burned your parents house dow-"
Avere felt his heart stopping, his mind calming down, full of hatred for the man, though that vanished within a moment, without even a explanation that would be capable of satisfying him to where it had vanished to.
"I'm sorry I had to say that, " he looked intently at Cades, calming him down further, as if he was talking with a wild animal, " but it is a good trick I learned, one involving the light of dominion, something that took me decades to truly understand wholly, so please listen to me, please talk with me, I might be able to f#cking help you."
Avere took a breath, feeling his heart still being much heavier than before, still angry, still filled with hate, still filled with blood, as always, but it had been as though the voice of Adelius had just fanned the flames, it had not shrunken them, it had not destroyed them, it had not weakened them, it had just brought them somewhere else, as if he had brought it from a wooden house into one made of weak bricks, still being damaged, btu for a bit, safe to be within.
Actually, now that he had slightly calmed down, how did he even know what had happened with Cades's parents, had Averee told him?
No, that was certain, Avere would have remembered that, and Cades would have been stunned for a bit, that would have changed the way he had been acting, at least slightly...
"I can not imagine how f#cking horrible you must feel all the time" Avere grew slightly annoyed at that way of talking, "but I loved ehetria too, so please tell me, what exactly happened, how it happened, maybe I know something..."
"It happened fast, and it wasn't special either, really, there was a big attack with fire and exploding spheres, powerful, destroying my home, or at least big parts of it, burning one of my parents..." he halted for a bit, feeling the anger all over, and many other things that words could not truly do justice to, " then monsters came, grotesque but relatively weak beings, made of black muscles and with various arms, mostly not having wings from what I could remember, as the ground fore to take up the slack that remained after all the fire, destroying our architecture that mainly consisted of wood after all..." he sat down, the chair just appearing out of nowhere, Adelius not even batting an eye at it, perhaps having been the one who had made him seat himself, using that so-called light of dominion.
He, instead, thought for a bit, but seemed to actually have something to say, the first person who might actually give a clue, and Avere was listening intently, every word that was about to utter being more important to him than his own safety, every word, if it gave him a way to get revenge, perhaps good enough to actually justify all this suffering, the eighty ears of both Arges and Rondel, not that Cades minded that at all...
Adelius opened his mouth, ready to talk, and finally, he said the expectant words.
"That kind of just sounds like a crusade..."