Caranic had become used to this position: sort of splayed out on some cold hard ground, covered in dirt and grime and blood, his body fractured with injuries.

It didn’t matter where he was, he would get out of this situation. If only he could get up.

“Get up, Caranic,” the voice inside of his head echoes again. It’s a familiar voice though it’s not his own.

The voice belonging to the one who presided over his every move, his unnamed patron that had put him in this uncomfortable position. The uncomfortable position not so much being the one where he finds himself crumpled on the ground, but rather the one where he finds himself in the command of a patron.

His patron deity, whose name still remains a mystery, grabs him by the hair and lifts his head from its comfortable respite of the cold, damp ground. It was not always comfortable, as his nose squished against the damp bricks restricting his air flow or the hard ground dug into the flat surface of his forehead. But he had grown used to it.

He looks into the eyes of his god, cold and silver, their lips lift in a plotting smile, a sadistic one. Caranic doesn’t so much as grunt at the feeling of being manipulated by his hair, though the roots cry at being tugged against his skin.

His patron, their eyes burning with rage not at him but rather those who he had allowed himself to placate with his brief and momentary defeat.

“You will rise, Caranic. I shall lend you my sword.”

There is an affection in how his patron says his name, in how they tangle his hair in their fist. They bring their face closer to him and he can count every long, dark eyelash and note the pulp of blue and grey that make their irises. They give him a hollow look, one that burns a picture of boiling hot rage, of consuming aggravation, of justified violence.

He would gladly take up their sword, if not for his own cause, he would take it up for them. The affection in their voice was auxiliary in comparison to the sweltering adoration Caranic had for his patron, though he would never vocalize such passions.

Perhaps he didn’t need to.

The fist grasping taut to his hair lifts him off of the ground and he rises with the movement, acquiescent and without so much as a wince. He can’t see his own face but he’s sure he looks nothing short of a dog, eyes shinning as they lean their face closer to him grinning as they force him to stand.