Micolash, Host of the Nightmare (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
grantuseyes) wrote2017-12-22 04:26 pm
grantuseyes) wrote2017-12-22 04:26 pm
A Lullaby for Mergo
It all began with a piano.
Without eyes to read or navigate the dungeon Abysa keeps as his Nexus home, Micolash is left with little in way to pass the time or enrich himself. Limited mobility due to a healing, severely damaged body remains an issue as well. Only when the scholar recalls his distant childhood years and how a portion of it was spent with music lessons does he think to ask Abysa if securing a piano is possible. Something he can do without sight but keep his mind and hands occupied. The demon was delighted with the suggestion and set to the task with expedience. It's barely a day before such an instrument is teleported into a sitting room (now a music room!) and made ready for Abysa's human patient.
The piano is of the grand make, jet black with a midnight blue sheen, decorated with silver accents depicting the moon and stars with a matching bench. Custom made by artificers in Hell and clearly sparing no expense, as is all things Abysa has created for his charge's benefit.
Micolash uses his hands to feel along the curves and body of the instrument before taking a seat and trying his best to get situated. A few plinked keys, finding the right ones and the feel of the piano's tone and pitch. Then a series of halting scales. Without his eyes, this is going to rely a great deal on muscle memory and the rust there is profound.
But not so much that the scholar can still remember the exact arrangement of a simple tune. To hear the lullaby again makes Micolash smile but Abysa's reaction is instead a deep enough shiver that he pauses in his sorting of sheet music books (for later, when Micolash has his sight again.) Only when it's passed does the demon turn to ask, "Where did you learn that?"
Still smiling a big goofily, Micolash replies, "Isn't it a special song?" rather than explain what Abysa has asked.
"Yes but," Abysa presses, "normally, humans would not know a song that does that." This earns a frown from the scholar who idly taps at a single key at a soft and steady rhythm.
"Does. What...?"
"That! The thing it does!" Abysa waves his long hands. "When you put tones together in a certain way... like when you put symbols together in a special way. You invoke a sense that you have not the receptors for. But some creatures do."
Only now does Micolash make a face of realization."Oh! Well...it IS the favoured lullaby of Mergo. Child of Blood and...the doomed queen Yharnam. It soothed him greatly, however! Does...it not you?"
Abysa is the one frowning now, thinking and still feeling a faint chill from that earlier shiver the song evoked in him. "It is difficult to explain... Was Mergo not a Great One? It would make sense, if so."
"Oh yes! Quite special and quite Great. A wonderful child to have ever had audience with..." Micolash sounds wistful...
"I would liken it to a spell, of sorts," Abysa goes on. "But not quite. Whoever composed such a lullaby knew of extrasensory perception in one of its most advanced forms, as it can elicit a reaction even on the most base levels of hearing and comprehension, while carrying an extra layer of meaning if one is able to understand extra dimensions... Like I said! Surely it did not originate with mortal thoughts..."
"Oh most likely not," Micolash agrees. He refrains from replaying the lullaby's opening tune again for the moment as this conversation progresses. "Theories largely point to the father, Formless Oedon, teaching the Pthumerian people how to play it. To prepare for his coming child. Alas, he would not live to hear it properly on this plane..." Sigh. He instead plinks at some of the piano keys tunelessly.
"Oh! That would make a lot of sense. But Mergo, was this child? A slain Great One?" Abysa floats nearer now to stand beside the bench the human is seated at.
Micolash nods, still plucking at the keys. A lazy scale up the white pieces. "Indeed. As a Great One, he could never TRULY die. Especially not as a Child of Blood. But yes, his...mortal form was never even fully finished. Instead, torn from the womb of his mother by who we postulate was her esteemed court." He says this all sort of...clinically? Ancient history. Facts from a book he's read a million times.
Abysa meanwhile, seems somewhere between disgusted and shocked. "And why would such a horrific crime ever be committed? To slay both mother and child alike, for what?"
"For the Blood, of course. It was Oedon's come to the Waking. Powerful, potent, pungent. A being so vast and Great He exists without form. Only will and voice. And he'd chosen the Queen as his consort. A betrothal ceremony! Marriage between a Great One, and what a Great One! And a mortal. But those around her, ah. They succumbed to bloodlust before the child was even finished gestating..."
Abysa grimaces, baring his teeth while his mouth wrinkles in an unsightly way. "Cutting down a divine union and its gift, the creation of new life... You spoke of... 'thoomarens'? Are they not human? It would surprise me if they were not. This sort of treachery is exactly what humanity is known for."
Micolash remains oblivious to Abysa's discomfort, lacking his sight, and keeps explaining readily and easily. He thinks the demon is just interested in Yharnam history or his studies. "Oh no! Mortal but...not human. A race of beings longer lived, closer in union with the Great Ones for longer than we. Gone beneath the earth to guard the crypts of the sleeping Great Ones they came to know. It was within their lost cities that we found the Old Blood. The labyrinths the endless tombs of gods and their timeless watchers. But even they fell. Their cities gone to dust and sand. It is...uncertain what caused this, but it is believed it was this...incident. With Mergo. For what father, Formless or not, would stand idly by and watch his wedded consort and unborn child be butchered for their holy blood?"
"I should hope not," exclaims the demon. "I would curse them for their wretched greed without hesitation. To have his own servants to slay his divine Beloved and their child... Does it not upset you at all?"
"Oh no! I met Mergo! Though the body failed and the Blood drained, the babe persisted in the outer reaches. Swimming in the cosmos. And he was the one that answered when I reached to Make Contact," he puts out and up his arms to do the gesture either by habit or for demonstration, "with One who would assist in forming the Nightmare of Mensis! He was...wonderful." Even an infant and he still sounds awed...
"Its spirit did not return to the sea to be reborn...? An unborn child should only be but a gathering soul, yet to hold its form..." Abysa is confused now, trying to piece together what exactly happened from what he hears. Is it history in its flawed recollections, or is it something else..?
"The sea?" WHY....does that phrase spark something in Micolash's thoughts? Something important? It-...No, whatever it was, it's gone now. Perhaps imagined. "Ah, no. No. I think the answer to that, if what you are. Asking is as I understand it? Mergo was unborn but likely very near to the end of the birth cycle. Perhaps that is why her court went to beastly frenzy and tore into her belly like animals."
"Such horrid phrasing... even if it were close to birth, it is the natural path of the spirit to journey back to the origin of all things, so it may reincarnate. If you had contacted Mergo, ages later, in the time of humans... it was lingering, all that time as a baby, unable to age, unable to grow. Does it not make you despair?" Abysa is starting to feel properly disturbed with this conversation now, to see his blind patient so blithely unbothered by these recounted atrocities.
"He seemed quite happy when we had our time together..." Only NOW Micolash is picking up on Abysa's discomfort. "Are you...uncomfortable? With this story?"
"How can one not be?" answers the priest with a worried frown. "It is a terrible thing to have happened, and one Mergo may not even be able to fully realize. What if its presence lingers still, at the edges of your cosmos? And what of the mother?"
"Oh. The...mother." Micolash smiles nervously in that queasy way of his, turning his face back down towards the piano keys again. Unthinkingly starts to pluck out the simple opening notes to Mergo's Lullaby. "She. Persisted. In her own ways. So many of her people are restless dead, however. She is not exceptional in this state. Though hers is a more. Dire and potent sort of persistence." Piano notes ring out one by one in that haunting tune. "...She was of little concern to the workings of Mensis. I. Do not know. Any more of her." That sounded even more stilted than he usually talks...
"She persisted still... yet you had her child." Though not visible, the tone in Abysa's voice suggests a very deep frown.
"The child was fine, Kin." Micolash sounds almost exasperated. Or cornered. "He had his Wet Nurse, he had a marvelous purpose, he dwelt in the Nightmare where his kind are gods. A single mortal's suffering, especially that of such an ancient sort, a sort that inflicts most remnants of her entire race, is far less alarming than you make it out to be."
"She was lover to one of your Gods, and Mergo their child! Do you not see the sacrilege that had been committed? Back then upon their deaths, and then upon Mergo's... abduction? That you had died, denied your answers, it makes sense now... You have no concept of love, and none of compassion, and so you were given only what you deserved." Abysa sounds passionate, yet not with anger. The way his voice seems strained, creaking, seems to give one the impression of sadness, or fear.
Micolash looks up again towards Abysa's voice, or at least an approximation of it. He's looking just slightly over the demon's right shoulder. He's frowning, his brow furrowed deeply. "Unkind, Kin. Why are you angry with me suddenly? I was not one who tore into the Queen. And what can a ghost care for a living godchild's spirit? And you..." He frowns deeper, his mouth turning into a slight offended pout. "...are saying I deserved my losses? What has gotten into you?"
"Perhaps you could never empathize with such pain and sorrow, but it is one that has been visited upon my Lords a thousandfold, even more, over the countless ages of the universe..! In the beginning, a pantheon many times its current size, with not just one High Priest, but a whole order! What is it like to be a God, witnessing the many deaths of your lovers, those bonds severed in trauma and sorrow and pain, over and over again? By mortal hands! To see one's pantheon shrink to but seven, and no longer the strength to support an order of priests, but to place all your tenderness and your strength into one, hoping that they shall be the one who lives, and survives... When I lay in ritual, I know this pain, and I see the scope of their despair, and I see too, they fear the same of me too...
"I weep for the Queen, and I weep for her child," asserts Abysa finally. "Suppose then, I had died with Lord Secret's seedlings in my womb? We would be kindred spirits, tortured in death. A curse upon her people, for their cruelty..."
Micolash frowns through the whole delivery, unspeaking, staring in that slight off-center due to his bandages. When the demon finally stops, or at least slows down, the human takes a moment to gather his thoughts. Inhale through his nose. Exhale. "...But that did not happen to you, nor these seeds you speak of. You are getting yourself into a lather over something that never happened to you. Something that barely matters any longer. Yharnam lies dead, Mergo, sweet Mergo, likely still in the Nightmare with his Wet Nurse. Perhaps the hunter who slew me slew Her as well and undid my Ritual. We will likely never know. And never be able to change it. Especially that of which is literal ancient history. Now please. Calm yourself."
However, Abysa very much does NOT calm himself. Instead, he is headed in the exact opposite direction. "You love not your Gods but arrogantly assume you are fit to stand with them! You yourself, worked into rotten fanaticism at the thought of cutting into MY body, and you have the gall to say my outrage is unwarranted..!"
"It most certainly is!" Micolash doesn't stand from the piano bench but he does slightly raise his voice, but only to match Abysa's volume. "I cannot begin to understand why you are behaving like this! You are offended over things that are set in stone even before my hand, outraged over nothing concerning Mergo's care. I never once harmed him, I would never." He's not even going to touch on the return of that whole dissection issue. Pretend to be the bigger man.
Abysa's exasperation only grows, clenching his hands into fists in front of himself and shaking them. "It was never yours to take, Micolash! You had stolen the spirit of an undying God, an eternal infant who may never really know the depth of yours, nor of these 'pthumerian's' depravity. Its childlike innocence does not absolve you!"
"Absolve me of what?" He smiles now, looking incredulous. "I've done nothing wrong. Morality is subjective to begin with, and my...miscalculations of matters was the only fault on my part. And even then, I had made it to work! And I would still be in my Nightmare with Mergo, toiling towards understanding and achieving Greatness, if I'd not been slaughtered like a beast."
"You did everything wrong," cries the demon in response. "What of your 'miscalculations'? All the fellow mortals you damned? Hundreds, thousands, slain? Remade into something else entirely, not unlike death in its permanence? Keeping a child away from its mother? Was Oedon simply watching you then, were any of your Gods looking upon you in your Nightmare with approval? With pride? Surely, they would have heard your prayers! Your death was justice, Micolash. You were judged and found unworthy, and your nemesis the Hunter, an agent of that will, of that I am certain."
Micolash finally stands, sharp and fast enough to send the piano bench toppling behind him. In the act of getting up, he pushed himself upright with his hands on the piano keys, causing a discordant slam of notes. He glares in a way Abysa can surely feel and know, in that way one with obscured eyes only can. His breathing is rapid, in and out through his nose, his face gone flushed in upset.
In the ringing of his ears and roaring of his blood, he realizes he has a conundrum. He cannot easily storm out, not without sight. He still does not know the way easily around by feel or pace. Micolash is only increasingly upset by this fact. His own outrage having to be tempered or made comical by him having to stumble and grope in the dark, or worse, Abysa help him to his room. Which is the LAST thing he wants right now.
Maybe even less than dwelling on Abysa's words.
"...Leave."
"You cannot deny that you were mistaken in your ways, Micolash," Abysa persists. "It will only keep you from moving on, moving forward... How can you know such horrors, and have enacted more still, without your heart breaking?" Though he does not leave yet, he lingers by the door, watching. That glare pierces the mind and for reasons Abysa simply cannot understand.
"LEAVE!"
The scholar bangs his fists onto the keys once more, making another, louder, harder even MORE messy cacophony of notes. His face is almost red at this point. His breathing ragged.
"Leave, PLEASE." Micolash says it after a deep breath, trying hard to sound more calm and measured and not entirely succeeding.
"How can you be so heartless?" Abysa sighs, defeated and frustrated. "I tend a monster in a man's skin." There is silence for a time, and Micolash hears the door open, and close. The air grows a little colder, somehow.
Abysa will hear something strike the door a minute after he's closed it. Micolash, after staring in mute and seething outrage and offense, gropes about in the dark for something, anything, that he can pick up. He doesn't know what he grabbed. (A vase with long-stemmed hellflowers resembling lilies.) Then heaves it at the door. (It shatters.) The sound makes him glad. But not feel any better.
After several more minutes of silence back inside that room, the demon will eventually hear the piano playing again. The notes all sound heavier, darker, pressed with angry emphasis. Several times, a song derails into nothing but the angry slamming of keys over and over, faster and faster, before there's just one more when his elbows meet them instead when he grasps his head and rocks forward to lean there.
The music always starts again a minute or two later.
Without eyes to read or navigate the dungeon Abysa keeps as his Nexus home, Micolash is left with little in way to pass the time or enrich himself. Limited mobility due to a healing, severely damaged body remains an issue as well. Only when the scholar recalls his distant childhood years and how a portion of it was spent with music lessons does he think to ask Abysa if securing a piano is possible. Something he can do without sight but keep his mind and hands occupied. The demon was delighted with the suggestion and set to the task with expedience. It's barely a day before such an instrument is teleported into a sitting room (now a music room!) and made ready for Abysa's human patient.
The piano is of the grand make, jet black with a midnight blue sheen, decorated with silver accents depicting the moon and stars with a matching bench. Custom made by artificers in Hell and clearly sparing no expense, as is all things Abysa has created for his charge's benefit.
Micolash uses his hands to feel along the curves and body of the instrument before taking a seat and trying his best to get situated. A few plinked keys, finding the right ones and the feel of the piano's tone and pitch. Then a series of halting scales. Without his eyes, this is going to rely a great deal on muscle memory and the rust there is profound.
But not so much that the scholar can still remember the exact arrangement of a simple tune. To hear the lullaby again makes Micolash smile but Abysa's reaction is instead a deep enough shiver that he pauses in his sorting of sheet music books (for later, when Micolash has his sight again.) Only when it's passed does the demon turn to ask, "Where did you learn that?"
Still smiling a big goofily, Micolash replies, "Isn't it a special song?" rather than explain what Abysa has asked.
"Yes but," Abysa presses, "normally, humans would not know a song that does that." This earns a frown from the scholar who idly taps at a single key at a soft and steady rhythm.
"Does. What...?"
"That! The thing it does!" Abysa waves his long hands. "When you put tones together in a certain way... like when you put symbols together in a special way. You invoke a sense that you have not the receptors for. But some creatures do."
Only now does Micolash make a face of realization."Oh! Well...it IS the favoured lullaby of Mergo. Child of Blood and...the doomed queen Yharnam. It soothed him greatly, however! Does...it not you?"
Abysa is the one frowning now, thinking and still feeling a faint chill from that earlier shiver the song evoked in him. "It is difficult to explain... Was Mergo not a Great One? It would make sense, if so."
"Oh yes! Quite special and quite Great. A wonderful child to have ever had audience with..." Micolash sounds wistful...
"I would liken it to a spell, of sorts," Abysa goes on. "But not quite. Whoever composed such a lullaby knew of extrasensory perception in one of its most advanced forms, as it can elicit a reaction even on the most base levels of hearing and comprehension, while carrying an extra layer of meaning if one is able to understand extra dimensions... Like I said! Surely it did not originate with mortal thoughts..."
"Oh most likely not," Micolash agrees. He refrains from replaying the lullaby's opening tune again for the moment as this conversation progresses. "Theories largely point to the father, Formless Oedon, teaching the Pthumerian people how to play it. To prepare for his coming child. Alas, he would not live to hear it properly on this plane..." Sigh. He instead plinks at some of the piano keys tunelessly.
"Oh! That would make a lot of sense. But Mergo, was this child? A slain Great One?" Abysa floats nearer now to stand beside the bench the human is seated at.
Micolash nods, still plucking at the keys. A lazy scale up the white pieces. "Indeed. As a Great One, he could never TRULY die. Especially not as a Child of Blood. But yes, his...mortal form was never even fully finished. Instead, torn from the womb of his mother by who we postulate was her esteemed court." He says this all sort of...clinically? Ancient history. Facts from a book he's read a million times.
Abysa meanwhile, seems somewhere between disgusted and shocked. "And why would such a horrific crime ever be committed? To slay both mother and child alike, for what?"
"For the Blood, of course. It was Oedon's come to the Waking. Powerful, potent, pungent. A being so vast and Great He exists without form. Only will and voice. And he'd chosen the Queen as his consort. A betrothal ceremony! Marriage between a Great One, and what a Great One! And a mortal. But those around her, ah. They succumbed to bloodlust before the child was even finished gestating..."
Abysa grimaces, baring his teeth while his mouth wrinkles in an unsightly way. "Cutting down a divine union and its gift, the creation of new life... You spoke of... 'thoomarens'? Are they not human? It would surprise me if they were not. This sort of treachery is exactly what humanity is known for."
Micolash remains oblivious to Abysa's discomfort, lacking his sight, and keeps explaining readily and easily. He thinks the demon is just interested in Yharnam history or his studies. "Oh no! Mortal but...not human. A race of beings longer lived, closer in union with the Great Ones for longer than we. Gone beneath the earth to guard the crypts of the sleeping Great Ones they came to know. It was within their lost cities that we found the Old Blood. The labyrinths the endless tombs of gods and their timeless watchers. But even they fell. Their cities gone to dust and sand. It is...uncertain what caused this, but it is believed it was this...incident. With Mergo. For what father, Formless or not, would stand idly by and watch his wedded consort and unborn child be butchered for their holy blood?"
"I should hope not," exclaims the demon. "I would curse them for their wretched greed without hesitation. To have his own servants to slay his divine Beloved and their child... Does it not upset you at all?"
"Oh no! I met Mergo! Though the body failed and the Blood drained, the babe persisted in the outer reaches. Swimming in the cosmos. And he was the one that answered when I reached to Make Contact," he puts out and up his arms to do the gesture either by habit or for demonstration, "with One who would assist in forming the Nightmare of Mensis! He was...wonderful." Even an infant and he still sounds awed...
"Its spirit did not return to the sea to be reborn...? An unborn child should only be but a gathering soul, yet to hold its form..." Abysa is confused now, trying to piece together what exactly happened from what he hears. Is it history in its flawed recollections, or is it something else..?
"The sea?" WHY....does that phrase spark something in Micolash's thoughts? Something important? It-...No, whatever it was, it's gone now. Perhaps imagined. "Ah, no. No. I think the answer to that, if what you are. Asking is as I understand it? Mergo was unborn but likely very near to the end of the birth cycle. Perhaps that is why her court went to beastly frenzy and tore into her belly like animals."
"Such horrid phrasing... even if it were close to birth, it is the natural path of the spirit to journey back to the origin of all things, so it may reincarnate. If you had contacted Mergo, ages later, in the time of humans... it was lingering, all that time as a baby, unable to age, unable to grow. Does it not make you despair?" Abysa is starting to feel properly disturbed with this conversation now, to see his blind patient so blithely unbothered by these recounted atrocities.
"He seemed quite happy when we had our time together..." Only NOW Micolash is picking up on Abysa's discomfort. "Are you...uncomfortable? With this story?"
"How can one not be?" answers the priest with a worried frown. "It is a terrible thing to have happened, and one Mergo may not even be able to fully realize. What if its presence lingers still, at the edges of your cosmos? And what of the mother?"
"Oh. The...mother." Micolash smiles nervously in that queasy way of his, turning his face back down towards the piano keys again. Unthinkingly starts to pluck out the simple opening notes to Mergo's Lullaby. "She. Persisted. In her own ways. So many of her people are restless dead, however. She is not exceptional in this state. Though hers is a more. Dire and potent sort of persistence." Piano notes ring out one by one in that haunting tune. "...She was of little concern to the workings of Mensis. I. Do not know. Any more of her." That sounded even more stilted than he usually talks...
"She persisted still... yet you had her child." Though not visible, the tone in Abysa's voice suggests a very deep frown.
"The child was fine, Kin." Micolash sounds almost exasperated. Or cornered. "He had his Wet Nurse, he had a marvelous purpose, he dwelt in the Nightmare where his kind are gods. A single mortal's suffering, especially that of such an ancient sort, a sort that inflicts most remnants of her entire race, is far less alarming than you make it out to be."
"She was lover to one of your Gods, and Mergo their child! Do you not see the sacrilege that had been committed? Back then upon their deaths, and then upon Mergo's... abduction? That you had died, denied your answers, it makes sense now... You have no concept of love, and none of compassion, and so you were given only what you deserved." Abysa sounds passionate, yet not with anger. The way his voice seems strained, creaking, seems to give one the impression of sadness, or fear.
Micolash looks up again towards Abysa's voice, or at least an approximation of it. He's looking just slightly over the demon's right shoulder. He's frowning, his brow furrowed deeply. "Unkind, Kin. Why are you angry with me suddenly? I was not one who tore into the Queen. And what can a ghost care for a living godchild's spirit? And you..." He frowns deeper, his mouth turning into a slight offended pout. "...are saying I deserved my losses? What has gotten into you?"
"Perhaps you could never empathize with such pain and sorrow, but it is one that has been visited upon my Lords a thousandfold, even more, over the countless ages of the universe..! In the beginning, a pantheon many times its current size, with not just one High Priest, but a whole order! What is it like to be a God, witnessing the many deaths of your lovers, those bonds severed in trauma and sorrow and pain, over and over again? By mortal hands! To see one's pantheon shrink to but seven, and no longer the strength to support an order of priests, but to place all your tenderness and your strength into one, hoping that they shall be the one who lives, and survives... When I lay in ritual, I know this pain, and I see the scope of their despair, and I see too, they fear the same of me too...
"I weep for the Queen, and I weep for her child," asserts Abysa finally. "Suppose then, I had died with Lord Secret's seedlings in my womb? We would be kindred spirits, tortured in death. A curse upon her people, for their cruelty..."
Micolash frowns through the whole delivery, unspeaking, staring in that slight off-center due to his bandages. When the demon finally stops, or at least slows down, the human takes a moment to gather his thoughts. Inhale through his nose. Exhale. "...But that did not happen to you, nor these seeds you speak of. You are getting yourself into a lather over something that never happened to you. Something that barely matters any longer. Yharnam lies dead, Mergo, sweet Mergo, likely still in the Nightmare with his Wet Nurse. Perhaps the hunter who slew me slew Her as well and undid my Ritual. We will likely never know. And never be able to change it. Especially that of which is literal ancient history. Now please. Calm yourself."
However, Abysa very much does NOT calm himself. Instead, he is headed in the exact opposite direction. "You love not your Gods but arrogantly assume you are fit to stand with them! You yourself, worked into rotten fanaticism at the thought of cutting into MY body, and you have the gall to say my outrage is unwarranted..!"
"It most certainly is!" Micolash doesn't stand from the piano bench but he does slightly raise his voice, but only to match Abysa's volume. "I cannot begin to understand why you are behaving like this! You are offended over things that are set in stone even before my hand, outraged over nothing concerning Mergo's care. I never once harmed him, I would never." He's not even going to touch on the return of that whole dissection issue. Pretend to be the bigger man.
Abysa's exasperation only grows, clenching his hands into fists in front of himself and shaking them. "It was never yours to take, Micolash! You had stolen the spirit of an undying God, an eternal infant who may never really know the depth of yours, nor of these 'pthumerian's' depravity. Its childlike innocence does not absolve you!"
"Absolve me of what?" He smiles now, looking incredulous. "I've done nothing wrong. Morality is subjective to begin with, and my...miscalculations of matters was the only fault on my part. And even then, I had made it to work! And I would still be in my Nightmare with Mergo, toiling towards understanding and achieving Greatness, if I'd not been slaughtered like a beast."
"You did everything wrong," cries the demon in response. "What of your 'miscalculations'? All the fellow mortals you damned? Hundreds, thousands, slain? Remade into something else entirely, not unlike death in its permanence? Keeping a child away from its mother? Was Oedon simply watching you then, were any of your Gods looking upon you in your Nightmare with approval? With pride? Surely, they would have heard your prayers! Your death was justice, Micolash. You were judged and found unworthy, and your nemesis the Hunter, an agent of that will, of that I am certain."
Micolash finally stands, sharp and fast enough to send the piano bench toppling behind him. In the act of getting up, he pushed himself upright with his hands on the piano keys, causing a discordant slam of notes. He glares in a way Abysa can surely feel and know, in that way one with obscured eyes only can. His breathing is rapid, in and out through his nose, his face gone flushed in upset.
In the ringing of his ears and roaring of his blood, he realizes he has a conundrum. He cannot easily storm out, not without sight. He still does not know the way easily around by feel or pace. Micolash is only increasingly upset by this fact. His own outrage having to be tempered or made comical by him having to stumble and grope in the dark, or worse, Abysa help him to his room. Which is the LAST thing he wants right now.
Maybe even less than dwelling on Abysa's words.
"...Leave."
"You cannot deny that you were mistaken in your ways, Micolash," Abysa persists. "It will only keep you from moving on, moving forward... How can you know such horrors, and have enacted more still, without your heart breaking?" Though he does not leave yet, he lingers by the door, watching. That glare pierces the mind and for reasons Abysa simply cannot understand.
"LEAVE!"
The scholar bangs his fists onto the keys once more, making another, louder, harder even MORE messy cacophony of notes. His face is almost red at this point. His breathing ragged.
"Leave, PLEASE." Micolash says it after a deep breath, trying hard to sound more calm and measured and not entirely succeeding.
"How can you be so heartless?" Abysa sighs, defeated and frustrated. "I tend a monster in a man's skin." There is silence for a time, and Micolash hears the door open, and close. The air grows a little colder, somehow.
Abysa will hear something strike the door a minute after he's closed it. Micolash, after staring in mute and seething outrage and offense, gropes about in the dark for something, anything, that he can pick up. He doesn't know what he grabbed. (A vase with long-stemmed hellflowers resembling lilies.) Then heaves it at the door. (It shatters.) The sound makes him glad. But not feel any better.
After several more minutes of silence back inside that room, the demon will eventually hear the piano playing again. The notes all sound heavier, darker, pressed with angry emphasis. Several times, a song derails into nothing but the angry slamming of keys over and over, faster and faster, before there's just one more when his elbows meet them instead when he grasps his head and rocks forward to lean there.
The music always starts again a minute or two later.