Your Complications;; Dissy.

[Dissonance Valerius]

For Dissonance, it had been a long five years. Five years of constant warfare, bloodshed, slaughter, sacrifice, toil and struggle, and the echoing laughter of thirsty gods. It was impossible for him to say anything was the same; the things he'd been doing in the interim between then & now had irrevocably changed him, had strengthened and forged him in the fires of hardship. The mansion he knew little of; he had never been here in the flesh before recently, had only seen bits and pieces, fragments of memories that lingered in the back of one's mind, felt the oppressive presence of so many souls by proxy. This place was, in a way, sacred to him, though he had not grown here. But it, too, he could tell had changed, just by the way his fellow groupmates had been acting as he'd quietly observed. It was strange, he had to admit. Being back again. It was the completion of that goal he had been fighting for. Five years of fighting had come to this, their success was so close he could almost taste it!

Yes, he'd certainly changed. Gone was that eccentric artist and philosopher, gone was the all-but-child who had joined and shied away from battle in favor of intellectual pursuits. That tom, that Dissonance, had died, and in his place had been born another. One with eyes just as bright, but who walked with an innate sort of confidence and pride and poise, who eyed everyone critically and warily but smiled at them like they were old friends. Exhaustion lurked behind those eyes; he was tired, oh so tired after all he'd done, after struggling to keep himself going to see his home reborn. But he'd succeeded, or was about to. They were on the precipice, he knew. The most important days were upon them. He was now, for the first time, properly exploring the mansion, breaking his isolation with the determination to face everyone again.

Where Jiyu had once tried to hide her nature as a born killer, Dissonance had simply rejected it for a time - and then embraced it, but did not flaunt it. It was not something to be proud of...or ashamed of. It was a part of him that just was, and he had come very close to finding his inner peace. If only Anthrax could have-...

But no, of course not. She was gone. He just hadn't come to terms with it even still. He couldn't admit or acknowledge that she was probably never coming back. He ached for her return above all others - but the rest of them, even those he had traditionally not gotten along with, were good to see. He was home, again. He'd had a bit of a change of perspective. A large one, really, one he found himself admiring many times. An epiphany, if one could call it that.

It was the smell that he noticed, first. With this place having been uninhabited for so long, the air had long since become stale, and fresh smells were easily noticed. What tipped him off; where his eyes deceived him, his ability to see the auras of living creatures having faded temporarily, but it would return. He stopped there in the hallway, dead silent as his gaze lazily trailed across the scene before him. It was the only space one could have hid in this area, that bookshelf. Part of him wanted to just continue on his way and let himself be ambushed...but in their absence there was no guarantee that this place didn't have other occupants of some kind, so he didn't risk it.

"You almost got me." His simple statement carried another undertone, a lingering question: who is it?