The silence in the western plaza had a certain heaviness to it.
It felt like the air was holding its breath in anticipation of the unspoken words. As the light faded, shadows stretched long across the cobblestones, hinting at the untold stories that lay ahead.
The quiet in the western plaza was not the kind that follows a period of peace. Instead, it reflected a transformation—a place irrevocably altered by an unseen force, now poised in anticipation of what might co next.
The broken stone, the cracked facades, and the hole where the fountain had been were all part of that waiting. They were all parts of a picture that was still figuring out what it ant.
Apollo was on his knees in the middle of it, and he had been on his knees for longer than he had been tracking.
His forehead rested against the cracked paving stones, and the sound he was making had evolved from one thing into another over the minutes he had been there, much like how a fire alters the materials it consus, transforming them into sothing unrecognizable.
He could hear everything happening around him, and he knew, in fact, that he had ssed up big ti.
That was the cruelest thing about what his system did when it wasn’t fighting or healing: it ran at full resolution every sensory capacity it could, including hearing.
The hearing picked up everything in a much larger area than a person without system support would have been able to process.
He heard a guard running closer along the north street, two blocks away, informing soone in a voice that attempted to sound professional but fell short. He relayed that the building’s outer wall had collapsed onto the residential quarter behind it.
The news triggered a surge of panic through the nearby streets as residents hurried to gather their families and escape the area. In the distance, sirens began to wail, signaling that help was on the way, although it might not arrive in ti to avert the chaos that was unfolding.
He heard a woman from the neighborhood adjacent to the market asking about her son. Her voice carried the weight of soone who likely already knew where he was, yet she asked anyway, as it was the last action she could take that might alter the outco.
The desperation in her tone cut through the noise, stirring a sense of urgency within him. With each passing mont, he felt the burden of their shared fear, compelling him to take action before it was too late.
He heard the sound of people being moved on stretchers, the distinct rhythm of that motion, and the intermittent instructions from those performing field triage on burns.
These were the types of burns that occurred when soone was near a source of heat that was not fire in the traditional sense but rather what a life-affinity system produced at its absolute ceiling when it was no longer under control.
His system.
His heat.
His output.
His ceiling had been reached because sothing within him shattered the restraints that years of training, discipline, and careful consideration had instilled.
In that mont, he had unleashed everything he possessed toward a person who had committed unforgivable acts and, as it turned out, had not even been close to the blast radius when that ceiling finally gave way.
He had destroyed a third of Aethelgard, impacting his own city’s guards and its people, the very buildings and streets that the residents relied on to navigate their daily lives.
He could hear the cries of the woman asking where her son was, the sound of the building that had collapsed on the residential quarter, and the myriad other consequences his senses were relaying in vivid detail, whether he wanted to acknowledge them or not.
"DAMN IT ALL...!!!" Apollo hit his forehead against the ground hard.
BAM!
The impact was not soft, and the stone was already broken, so the edges were not smooth. The result was imdiate and physical, and it had nothing to do with why he was doing it.
"I lost control...!"
"It’s all because of my own rage...!" He did it again.
He felt a strange sense of release with each impact, even though he was frustrated and in pain. It was like the physical punishnt was a way to clean out the chaos that was building up inside, even if only for a short ti.
BAM!
"She already warns to use it wisely without having to feel any wrath...!" Apollo slamd his face on the ground again and again. "I’m such a fucking disappointnt...!"
BAM! BAM! BAM!
"I can’t save anyone but make it worse!"
Along with the impact, he made a noise that wasn’t a word. It had started as a word, but by now it had beco sothing less than words because of all the sounds his hearing had been sending him.
It was the sound of soone trying to do their own accounting that kept coming up with a total that they couldn’t hold on to, so they had to start over every ti the total showed up and get the sa total every ti.
"He’s done," said a voice behind him.
Apollo heard it the way he heard everything: completely, in full resolution, in the specific register of Theo Morr Nightwing, who had arrived at the plaza’s eastern approach with a unit of five knights in the standard post-engagent sweep configuration.
"Formation," Theo said softly.
The five knights then took up positions around the edge of the plaza that were more like a containnt posture than a hostile one. This was the right thing to do, but it was also the harder choice because the people holding the containnt posture had to stay focused on what was in the center of it instead of acting on it.
Theo stayed at the eastern entrance and kept an eye on Apollo.
"Apollo..." Theo’s fists started shaking as he processed what he had just done.
Apollo was aware that soone was watching him. His hearing was as good at finding people at the edge of the plaza as it was at finding the woman looking for her son two blocks away.
It told him that Theo had stopped at the approach and had not moved forward.
But... Apollo doesn’t care, apart from hitting the stone with his forehead again.
"Sir," one of the knights said quietly, the word directed at Theo and having the tone of a question that needed to be answered before the person asking it had to make a decision on their own.
"Hold it," Theo said with his hand raised.
The knight held.
Theo looked down at Apollo sprawled on the ground in the middle of the western plaza. His expression revealed the conflict he felt: on one hand, the person before him was genuinely in distress and posed no typical threat, while on the other hand, this sa individual had just caused significant destruction to the city that Theo Morr Nightwing was sworn to protect.
He had no good choices, which is why he looked the way he did.
"Apollo," Theo said.
Apollo kept his head down on the stone.
"Apollo, please listen to ."
The sound Apollo was making persisted without pause, yet he was fully aware of everything Theo said. His hearing did not diminish in sensitivity based on his internal state.
"What you did tonight," Theo said, and his voice was careful, as if he were choosing each word with the knowledge that any of them could be the wrong one. "I don’t have... words for it right now, and..."
"I don’t think any of us have the right words in this kind of situation."
He stopped for a mont.
"All I know is that you’re still here and that the people who are still alive are still alive. Those are the only two things we can work with right now."
He surveyed the plaza, taking in the ruins and the construct in the northeast corner. His intelligence training identified it as a necromantic asset of so kind, sothing he would need to report. He would require experts to examine it.
"I can’t assure you that everything is fine," Theo stated. "Because it isn’t..."
"I’m sure you’re already aware of this, and I don’t want to say anything that could worsen your situation."
Apollo pressed his forehead against the stone one more ti, and this ti he left it there, and the sound he was making reduced in volu but did not stop.
Theo looked at the knight who had spoken.
"Send for a healer," he said quietly. "And keep the periter."
The knight moved.
"On it, sir!"
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