Andrian smiled at his students and turned back to the board, "Each new location you visit is going to require a different strategy. People living under different dreads see the world differently, so hope will have to be applied differently. Think of our work as planting a seed. Each location has different properties of soil, some soil is dark and fertile, others rocky and so forth. In order to allow the seed of hope to grow we must first prepare the soil."

Eli sat staring up at his father with his mouth hanging open. Inside he was a sea of conflicting emotions, Nausea, nervousness, joy, confusion, hurt, happiness. They warred inside him like two opposing tides in a sea, each one pressing back and forth for dominance, though slowly one by one they faded, Joy and happiness went first followed by the nervousness. Slowly the hurt began to build up bringing with it a slow boiling rage that began in his stomach until it overflowed into his chest before bubbling towards his head with every passing moment.

His hands had gone cold, and so clammy they left little condensation stains on the chair arms of his seat. The collar of his shirt had gone tight, like a noose slowly constricting into place, He was so hot he felt he could melt.

"Desolation." Wink muttered uncharacteristically Grimm

Wink had crawled out of his satchel and was staring towards the front of the room with his one large eye.

He blinked slowly, "This is going to get interesting."

Peter was standing next to them now, looking back and forth between Eli, wink and the man standing at the front of the room.

"Is that?"

"Yup."

Peter went silent, "Oh.... no." He glanced at Eli.

Wink oozed back into his seat glumly, "This isn't going to be good."

"Maybe we should leave.'

They continued to talk, but Eli didn't hear anything past the roaring in his ears.. The edges of his vision had gone black, and all around him the silhouettes of people before him had turned crimson. His hands dug into the seat of the chair, which creaked under the strain of his anger as his knuckles went white.

"Hope is the foundation on which we base our practices. Hope is our foundation upon which we build a scaffold with knowledge and experience.

Eli stood.

There was a sharp pop as if a bubble had been burst and his vision was clear again.

His voice rang out loud and clear.

"And where, out of curiosity, does HOPE fit into abandoning your family!"

The room went dead silent. At least fifty eyes turned to the back of the room where he stood disheveled and seething on the back row.

Adrian turned back from the board holding the piece of chalk high in his hand. As he caught sight of Eli, his eyes widened, and the small piece of chalk fell from his hands falling for what seemed to be an impossibly long time, spinning once before clattering against the floor only to shattinger into three smaller pieces which bounced and jittered across the stone.

The room was frozen, eyes wide staring back and forth between him and Adrian. None of them knew, but some of them suspected who the strange newcomer was. A soft buzzing began as whispered voices penetrated the air.

"Eli..." Andrian's voice was soft, shocked, almost tender.

But it hit Eli like a kick in the stomach.

He felt as if he would be sick.

Adrian stood and waved a hand at his classroom, "Class dismissed."

There was another murmur of shock and confusion as Adrian hurried from his place on the stage and up through the rows of confused students towards Eli. The closer he got, the more Eli could see.

His father hadn't aged a day.

Rage continued to boil up inside him.

Adrian reached out a hand taking him by the shoulder, "Maybe we should go somewhere more private."

Eli threw off his father's hand with such Venom that Adrian staggered back.

The entire classroom was still watching, rows of men and women dressed in strange red and black uniforms.. Peter, staring back and forth between them turned to look at the class and began waving his hands, "Alright everyone OUT! OUT!"

With reluctance, the crowd of people began to move very slowly, churning forward and past them like sluggish ice water in a stream.

Eli stood where he was hands balled into fists at his sides.

Adrian stood before him, hands held out to either side of him half up and half open as if he wasn't sure what to do with them. As if he wanted to embrace his son, though looking at Eli he knew he shouldn't.

The crowd was slow, and Peter urged them on with ever escalating exclamations until the last person limped through the door and Peter followed after them. Leaving Adrian, Eli and wink as the only remaining occupants in the room.

His expedient retreat made it very clear he knew he wasn't wanted in this particular conversation.

Adrian and Eli stood facing each other, and despite being mere feet from his father, Eli had never felt so distant from him. The man he saw standing before him, was a stranger, despite his familiar face: they looked a lot alike, both tall, both wearing glasses, both with dark hair, though Eli had his mother's eyes.

If he could have stripped off his skin and become someone else in that moment, he would have.

"Eli, please-"

"No!" Eli snapped his teeth drawn into a wolfish snarl. He was so mad he was almost foaming at the mouth. He had missed his father every day for the last ten years. He had cried and he had screamed and he had begged for him to come back but he never did. He had worshiped his father, had carried his books and taken care of his library, hoping that one day he would come back.

Only to find him here.

Alive and healthy with his legs intact: perfectly able to walk home if he wanted.

Teaching

Other

People

Teaching other people to rely on hope.

"No, You don't get to talk. You..... you.... bastard! " He forced the words from his mouth with all the control of someone holding back a scream

His skin felt hot, like he was on fire, and it was hard to think, words were failing him. Adrian stopped trying to speak, waiting patiently as Eli readied his insults, readied every curse he could think of. Adrian looked at him with all the patience and concern of a loving father.

It was all a lie!

He didn't deserve that title.

Eli took a deep breath, taking the reins of his rage and shoving it down until he had control of it.

"How, dare you." he began again, his voice soft, "Ten years, ten years alone in that tower by the sea surrounded by desolation. Ten years reading your books and following your footsteps to preserve your memory, continuing your research. Walking from Affliction to Exposure to Bound and back again, just to find you here, safe, healthy and well teaching other people some daft driveling Malarkey about HOPE and FAITH ." Andrian stood there silent head bowed as if Eli's words were the biting wind of a storm, "The man I knew, my Father would NEVER, have abandoned his son to fend for himself, my father was a good-man, but you....I don't know who you are." he was out of breath and panting now his chest heaving up and down with the weight of emotion ready to burst through his skin and come crawling out of his chest.

Adrian waited for him to continue, but when he did not he tried reaching out a hand again, "Oh, Eli."

He snarled and pulled away. Adrian paused, hand still raised but slowly lowered it, "I am so sorry, I.... I never would have done what I did unless it was absolutely necessary. Even then I almost couldn't do it."

"How heroic. He ALMOST couldn't abandon his family."

Adrian grimaced, and expressed pain as if Eli had pulled out his compact and shot him.

"I am not trying to make what I did seem acceptable, Eli, but you deserve to know the truth, if you will let me tell it.

Eli didn't want to hear his fathers words. Didn't care, simply wanted to yell at him, to scream at him and have done with it, but he couldn't. A part of him needed to hear what the man had to say.

Needed to know why he had been abandoned.

"Im' listening." his voice was tight, and his eyes were hot though no tears came.

Adrian sighed, "For all of my life, I have dedicated myself to the study of destroying the dreads-"

"Haven't we all." Eli said, unable to help himself.

Adrian waited again before Eli forced himself to quiet and listen, "We traveled everywhere in the known world searching and studying, doing our best to decipher the rules of a world that was not interested in divulging her secrets. During my travels, I met many people, many contacts in many places, and during that time I found something very important, a trend that I knew could be the potential key to unlocking the defeat of the Dreads."

"Care to share/"

Adrian pressed on, "I learned that people were the key. If our fears shape the dreads then it can be assumed by the same logic that if we remove our fear, or lose our fear, the dreads will have less power."

It was a logical jump, but right now Eli didn't want to be logical. For once, he just wanted to be angry.

"So I thought, what is the one thing that can take away fear? At first, like you I assumed it was logic. Teach people how to deal with things, give people knowledge and they will be able to overcome adversity, and that was partly true, but I found that -- when that method was applied by itself-- it didn't work quite as intended. It seemed, in certain cases, that by giving them more information about their fears, they were given more reason to fear. They didn't try because they saw no point." He gestured Eli to a seat but Eli remained standing. Eventually so did adrian.

"So I went to more... unconventional methods. It was first when I noticed the acolytes, and the way they were able to avoid the hold of the other dreads. I heard it used in Veerus city once, as the outbreak talked about faith."

A memory came flashing to the forefront of his mind. A group of people running across the lake, shouted words about faith trailing behind them.

He shook it off.

"They had faith in their particular god that it would protect them from harm. They believe it enough that they no longer had fear for other dreads though they did it through the worship of fear. So that led me onto the next step, and I thought.... Well what is the antithesis of fear, some may say it is love, but I came to a different conclusion..... It's hope."

Eli snorted.

Adrian held up a hand, "hear me out. In my travels the people that I found who were the happiest and most immune against their dreads had something in common, whether an acolyte outbreak or peasant, they all believed in something better, even if it was misguided. Years and years of study led me to the conclusion that hope paired with knowledge was the only way forward."

Eli had so many things to say on the subject, so many arguments to bring up, though the words caught in his throat. His anger strangled him.

"I collected books, stored them away in different caches all across our world. The Tower is only one of those places. As I shared my knowledge with others, tested my theories, little groups grew up all around, men and women bearing the ideas that I had found. They had different names, Some called themselves the Order of Hope and showed acts through their good deeds, others chose songs and hymns to chase away the dark and others used writing to do so. Everyone had a different way of bringing hope to themselves and to others.

Eli's mind went back to the order of hope, to the women singing at Genua,and how the words had vanished from the skin of those around them.

Adrian was beginning to talk faster now, "It became clear to me that there was only one way forward. I was changing, the way I thought was changing, some began to call me a prophet, though I tried to distance myself from that title, it was too late. Some came to see me as a sort of symbol. Again, prophet was used, while others -- usually the students --called me the diametric, because just as their belief in fear gave power to the dreads, their belief in hope gave power to.... Well, to me."

It was all Eli could do not to stare at his father in disbelief.

Had the man gone insane.

"I tried my best to avoid that outcome.People find the best hope when that hope is in themselves. If you attach your hope or faith to someone else they could always leave or fail you, but not if you cultivate it yourself.

"I've had a lot of people fail me." Eli said pointedly.

Adrian winced again

His fists were still balled, "Still none of this explains why you left us, why you ABANDONED me."

A look of agony crossed over Adrian's face, and he rested his hand against his chest like he was feeling a wound, "I didn't want to leave you."

"Well that makes up for it now doesn't it." Eli spat

"You don't understand, I was.... Walking into something new, something unknown. I was changing. As soon as they began to have hope in me.... To actually believe.... Things became strange. The power I had was difficult to control and impossible to hide. Almost as soon as it began I became a beacon for dread, drawing them towards me like a lamp draws moths." He reached out towards Eli with pleading hands turned upwards, "I don't know what it was, but they could sense me, it seemed everywhere I turned I was being hunted. I am STILL being hunted.... I... I had to leave, I couldn't risk that they might find you or your mother"

He trailed off, and for a moment there was silence before."

"You've gone stark raving mad!"

"Eli."

"What are you even talking about?" he waved his hands in the air, a manic laugh bubbling up from his throat, "Am I supposed to believe you are some kind of.... Some kind of what? Anti-dread, some sort of prophet... some sort of deity." He began to laugh again, tried to choke it back, " No, no, I don't think so I think you've deluded yourself, it is all a lie made up to make yourself feel better." He hissed, drawing closer to his father.

Adrian stood straighter, "I love you Eli, I have always loved you and your mother. My entire life has been dedicated to making a better world for my family, for my son, and the best way I saw to do that was to defeat the dreads. I had to leave for your safety and to make the future better. I regret what I did every day of my life, I wanted to go back as soon as I stepped out the door. But I was never willing to risk your lives. " He went quiet, "Any man would do the same."

"Don't lump me in with you. Not any man would abandon their family!"

Adrian looked along the line of frustration, though there was still sadness in his face that Eli chose to ignore. He didn't care how his father felt. He didn't care how logical his arguments were or how compelling his statements.

Eli was hurting, hurting so bad it seemed that it would never end.

He wanted this, wanted to lash out, wanted to hurt him.

"I never abandoned you Eli." his voice was soft, "I gave you all the clues you needed to find me, my notes, my contacts, the symbol... for when you were ready. I gave you w-." He trailed off before he could finish that sentence and restarted, " I hate myself for the decision I made, but no matter how much you hate me, I will still make a better world for you, always for you." he held out his hands, "And the clues, they worked didn't they. You found me."

Eli was at the razor edge of snapping. His voice was so choked, it sounded like he was strangling, "I didn't find you." His voice was higher than he would have liked sounding like a petulant and winy child who hadn't gotten his way, "PETER found you."

Adrian paused in confusion.

"If it were up to me, I would never have made it here." he turned to look towards the door behind which he was sure Peter was probably listening, "I found him in the library in Veerus city, and when we got back to the tower he made sense of your notes, that led us to genua, after genua he was the one who convinced me we needed to go to Kurshing. His logic was just so different from mine. We ACCIDENTALLY ran into the Order of Hope in Kurshing city, and Peter made us stay even though I wanted to leave. " He felt his face going red again, flushing bright. He was panting with rage. Heat coursed through his skin. "He's the one that convinced me not to walk out of this place as soon as I saw that stupid tree,"

Adrian stared at him in silence.

"I didn't find you, all your clues were for nothing, and your hope is a lie...." his chest burned and his eyes stung. "I had hope once...." He said softly, "Hope that one day you would walk back through that door, hope that we should be a family again, hope that I wouldn't be so.... lost. That you would come find me, that you would come save me from the inevitability that was desolation...." He paused looking over his father with derision, "and do you know where that got me!?"

Adrian said nothing."

"I don't have hope anymore..... All I have is what I know, and what I know is telling me that you abandoned me to be alone for the past ten years, with a minor dread and an overwhelming desire to walk into Desolation and never be found again."

The look on his father's face was hard to read, but Eli sensed there was some pain there, and that urged him to keep going. He wanted to hurt him, to hurt this man who had left him to suffer.

"Alone." he repeated, "Completely alone, no father, and no mother." He paused to let those words sink in. "She left, shortly after you did." His eyes were stinging, threatening to spill tears and tears, "I was Ten years old!" His voice quivered, and cracked, but he kept a close eye on his father's face, and was horrified, when his father did not appear surprised but...

Sad.

His heart began to hammer in his chest, he measured his father's face, carefully taking in the expression of a man that was not surprised by this information, either that or apathetic. However, upon close examination of his father, the turned down corners of his mouth,his upturned brows, his glistening eyes, he knew that it couldn't have been apathy. That left only one other explanation, "You knew...." his voice was barely above a whisper, and little less than a squeak. His own voice began to echo in his head as the room began to spin slowly.

The last little pieces of his shattered world were slowly beginning to crumble down around him.

"Eli I-"

"You knew!, and you did nothing!" The roaring of blood in his ears almost drowned out the sound of his father's voice.

"Eli please-"

"How could you!" His voice was rising, his hands shaking at his sides as if the anger had become too much and was now seeking escape from his skin. It took every ounce of self control to keep himself in that room as he stared at his father, "You know what happened to her, and you still left me!"

Adrian sighed suddenly appearing twenty years older than he should have been as a vortex of emotion swirled across his face before finally settling on anguish. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, "I didn't leave you alone."

"What are you-"

Eli followed his father's eyes over to where wink was sitting on the back of one of the chairs gleefully watching their argument like the dread he was. Adrian's gaze flicked back to Eli, but he had already given himself away.

Eli was rocked to his core for the second time that day.

He turned his eyes on wink as he felt the cold sense of betrayal beginning to seep up through his feet, "You.... you knew."

What little structure Wink's body had held in the minutes leading up to this drained away under Eli's rage, as he oozed backward into a bubbling mass. His voice was uncharacteristically low and calm. "I haven't been concealing his location from you, if that's what you are implying."

And there it was, the last bit of his reality, spinning through the moment like a shard of stained glass only to shatter on the ground at his feet.

Wink, his friend, his only companion, the one who had practically raised him.

A liar.

Adrian held out a hand to him, "Eli, please just listen. Wink..... Wink is."

"A family heirloom so to speak." Wink interjected.

Adrian nodded, "he came with your mother's family from the lost, and for the longest time he was her companion while I was away."

Wink took up the narrative, "It was that Damn tower, surrounded by the desolate that did it, got into her head, seeping in like a bad smell, luring her out into the promise of nothing." When he spoke his voice was spiked with bitterness., "Believe you me, I tried, did my best to keep that damn dread out of her mind, but one day..... There was just no stopping her."

Eli felt as if the world around him was spinning.

His feet were sure to leave the floor.

"Even as her long term companion, knowing her better than she probably knew herself.... I still could not hold onto her. She slipped away, and I was forced to contact Adrian. Of course the imbecile was already being pursued, and there was nothing I could do."

Eli's mind spun whirling this way and that like a leaf caught by the wind only to fall to earth below.

Wink had been there before?
But wouldn't he have noticed...... The question faded away in his mind. Answered by a slow trickle of memories. The shadows that pooled under his bed, the presence in the tower, the flickering of the shadows on the walls. Whispers and darkness that had plagued him his entire childhood.

Shadows he had always dismissed as false childhood memory, now a piece of the truth he just didn't want to hear.

Adrian took Eli by the elbow, "They were hot on my heels and.... If I had come home I wouldn't have been able to protect you, so I sent Wink back to watch out for you. Eli I.... I didn't leave you alone, I would never have done that, but I couldn't risk getting you killed. I couldn't even risk sending a message as they were tracking, and are still trying to track my every movement. It was only sheer luck that helped me to keep the tower secret."

That thin thread that had been holding him together for the past few minutes, frayed and finally snapped, though when it did he found himself calm. His heart began to slow, the tears that threatened to sting his eyes suddenly dried up. The choking in his throat vanished. Even the rage was gone.

He felt.

Nothing.

"So you left me in desolation with nothing but fear to watch over me..... To lie to me and pretend that you had fallen to desolation too....." His voice was soft, "It would have been nice to know that you were still alive because at least then I wouldn't have wasted my life wondering after you and hoping you would walk back through that door with my mother." He turned his head to wink, "I wouldn't have wasted my life trusting you."

He choked back his own pane turning away from the dread sitting solemnly on the back of the chair.... The dread that had raised him since he was only ten years old, taught him how to research, how to think.... Concealed the truth from him for so long.

Instead he turned towards his father.

The pain on Adrian's face was predictable but not particularly satisfying. It was just proof, more and more proof that Adrian had never really cared about his family. If he did he would have at least done better than a minor fear, but he didn't and he never had. Eli turned on his heel and walked out the door.

In his head he could hear the call of exclusion. Remembered how it sang to him. In his mothers voice.

Was that a coincidence?

"Eli.... Eli, please wait."

As he shoved through the door, he came face to face with Peter standing just outside waiting for him.

"Eli what's-" He shoved past Peter knocking him in the shoulder as he stormed past, and the other boy staggered back, "Eli?"

All this time searching, all of his research and hard work had meant nothing.

There were other eyes watching him too: the eyes of students that just couldn't resist a little more Drama. He shoved past them as well.

"Eli, wait!" His father's voice called after him. His body felt cold, his heartbeat shallow and silent.

He had wasted his entire life.

For nothing.

Inside his head there was nothing but the sound of bitterness, it reminded him of the whistle of wind through the cracks in his tower.

People parted before him unwilling to get in the way of his wrath.

People stared on in concern.

"Please, out of my way, my son, I need to..."

Eli walked into the Atrium glowering at that ugly deformed tree, hating it more than he reasonably should. Twisted, apparently it didn't just twist bodies, it seemed like it twisted minds, or even lives, whichever came first.

He could hear his father's footsteps getting closer though he was being waylaid by other professors and other students who had not yet caught on to the atmosphere. Peter called after him, but he ignored both of them, marching towards the front door.

Just as he reached the open entryway, he brushed past a woman heading inside.

A quick glance at her registered how strangely pale the woman looked, with glassy distant eyes. Her skin was so white it seemed to have taken on a greenish hue. She staggered past him and he walked out into the sunlight.

There was a dull thud on the stone behind him, and a sudden commotion. He didn't bother turning back to see what that was about. Instead he used it to his advantage, cutting left over the grass to where he had seen a small side door in the interior of the wall. He pushed it open and walked through ignoring the main gate entirely.

Jonah's voice rose over the commotion, colored with fear and desperation. "Adrian stop! You can't leave."

Adrian's voice was fading amidst the crowd "Get off me! My son!"

"But the barrier."

"Eli." It was Peter's voice this time, but it was even more distant than his father's, caught behind the swelling of the crowd.

He ignored it

The door shut behind him, cutting off much of the noise in the background. He was left standing before a puddle of stagnant water completely alone as the gnats rolled around him in waves.