He froze at what they said, before leaning against the wall. After a moment, he gave a long sigh, before nodding to the door, wanting to get in before they did any more talking. Once in, he shut the door, before furnishing it with a couple chairs, a table, a cot, and a stool in the corner, which he perched on. He reached up, and ran a hand through his hair, before another long, almost desperate, sigh escaped. "Not sure where to begin. Gonna have to do the whole thing, and it ain't gonna be a fun ride. Certainly wasn't from this side.<br/><br/>I am not setting you two aside. I never would, thought of you two were all that kept me moving forward, for a given value of movement. I am trying to maximize my efficiency while minimizing waste. Too much time on a battlefield, and now I am just... I want to say exhausted, but I think a better term would be depleted. I am faking it like the best, that I can do more than fall over if any of Barid's cronies attacked now. Orian, Oirian... whatever the hell his name was, it was far closer than it looked, and it was less 'curb stomp victory' and more 'got lucky in that he didn't hit anything vital, and then scared his beyonder off rather than take a strike to the face.' It was nearly a complete bluff, a power play that drained me right back to the bottom of the barrel, and now I don't even have the energy to start considering getting up to get started back up. Less military mindset, more utterly depleted and just wanting to rest.<br/><br/>So much damn blood, wasted deaths, and fanatical zealots screaming for blood and death. Saw what my failure would result in, I think, if Barid and Verdelet managed to remove me permanently, and it was depressing as Carceri is. Beyonders inside the multiverse, other things, WORSE things, chasing them, long forgotten enemies rising to take on the beyonders and whatever is behind them, and Verdelet is leading the beyonders. Barid is trapped between life and death, unable to do anything but watch it all die around him, humans are killing everything that isn't a 'pure' human devoted to Barid. Everyone, all the companions, all the kids, dead and dust, not even a footnote in history, only Amaterasu and maybe twenty kitsunes left on my domain, which is dying. Ama was insane, and tried to kill me. Lost a lot of the constructs then, had to turn everything off except for the bare minimum to keep fighting forward, trying to get home. And every mistake I made, or sometimes I didn't even make a mistake but it wasn't fast enough, killed a planet full of people, sometimes several hundreds of billions, a double handful of times it was trillions."<br/><br/>He sighed, and rubbed his face, before burying his face in his hands for a second. He took a shuddering breath, and then continued. "And then, when I finally get home, and wanted to just fall in everyone's arms, the taints, which I thought I had managed to finally hold back, nearly kill me and everyone nearby. Only Jashah being E'Lune's host stopped that, I was damn near powerless.<br/><br/>I am in shock, exhausted, just want to pass out and let someone else fix things for a change, just a decade at absolute most, but instead, I find out that Barid took over, is killing the multiplanarverse to turn Fate into a still born of the race that terrifies the Beyonders, and all of you wanted me to immediately rush out and fix it. Not in a decade, not in a year, even a month was too long for all the noise you all raised. So I had to lock everything down, man up, and get to work, and I wasn't even sure V'elen was going to continue living. Hell, I am still not sure if it/he can still survive. And if he dies, I do too."<br/><br/>He shuddered for a moment, fighting back an urge to collapse, and then gave them a look of clearly forced cheer. "But, you are correct, I am currently alive, no one is currently attempting to kill me, and I am back with my family. So I do have a number of things to be grateful for, and should endeavor to not be a shell shocked soldier. Just trying to get shit done as fast as possible so I can get back to sleeping. For longer than a couple seconds without having screaming nightmares and trips down memory lane that would traumatize a demon, I mean."