Chapter Text
He’s born just as dawn rises over the mountains, not that anyone could know it, tucked away in a small chamber of the earth. His first memory is being held at the wrist by his mother. They stand together, shrouded in shadow at the end of a long cavern. On the other side, something mesmerizingly bright pours in through a hole in the ceiling. The boy tries to approach the falling rays- but his mother holds him tight at the wrist, and tells him that he must never attempt to touch the bright force. Their kind must stay in the shadow, safely hidden from the beams, or they will burn and fade to dust. “Sunlight” is what she calls this thing that makes pebbles shimmer like diamond. Kars decides that one day, he will feel it.
...
The young pillar man taps a feather against stone, splattering droplets of ink across its surface. He peers over his notes again, and grunts. Kars’ eyes come to rest on the burning torch that illuminates his room. Why did its light not burn him? Likewise, why could he walk beneath the moon and stars? How did their light differ from that of the sun, and why could all other things bask in in it but him? Surely it could not be light itself that burned his peoples’ flesh, but rather, they came into the world with an allergy to the light within themselves. If he could discover the secrets that lie within his own body- maybe they would tell him how to walk in the sun without harm.
Potions, elixirs, powders, bones, sacred artifacts- no matter the concoction that Kars ingested, when he tossed a vial of his own blood from the darkness into the light, its contents vaporized. The adolescent realized that nothing he could drink or apply to his flesh would truly keep him safe from harm. So if he could not alter his body by external force, then he would have to apply it to the inside instead. All functions in one’s body originated from the brain, did they not? If true, then perhaps the answers he sought already lay waiting within his own skull.
A pebble scuttled across stone, and Kars scrambled to hide his documents. However, his research could not so quickly be tucked away when scattered all over. His father entered the chamber, and grit his teeth. Kars could only peer back at the man with venom in his eyes as his own father began to bark at him, stampeding into the room with his fists balled at the sides. The elder dragged out his son’s papers and tore at them, bellowing that as a fish could not breathe air and a deer could not live from meat, so their kind could not live in the sun. Why couldn’t Kars learn to play an instrument, to hunt, or to weave linens? Soon enough things like marriage would be on the table, and if he didn’t change his foolish ways, then Kars would never have the chance to reproduce. The mere thought of such a thing made the younger’s throat burn with bile.
Tossed out of his own home until he “learned to do something useful” or; until his father’s rage subsided at least, Kars picked himself up from the rock. He straightened out his messied hair and stood with a straight back, knowing within his heart that his search for the light was far more important than silly crafts and weddings.
“I don’t think you’re wrong.”
Kars turned, slowly. Behind him stood a much smaller boy, several thousand years his junior. His horns were only little nubs, just starting to grow out of his skull. Wiry white hair grew from dark skin, and a crimson birthmark ran across the young one’s entire face in two diagonal slashes. The young one scratched his own bare leg and sniffed with no grace whatsoever. Kars knew of this child of course; as he was one of very few that had followed after him. Esidisi was his name, if he recalled.
“I heard what your father said,” The boy clenched his fists at his sides. “And I think he’s wrong. I want to see the sun too.”
Kars turns his entire body to face Esidisi, nose held high. “Follow me, and I can show it to you.”
And so, the boy did.
...
It’s twenty thousand years later, and Kars still feels no closer to his answer than before. But now he’s a man, and has escaped the roof of his mother and father. Now that he has a private cavern, he can keep his research scattered as far and as messily as he wishes. Yes, while he can, he doesn’t wish to. And he certainly doesn’t appreciate Esidisi rolling over onto his still-wet notes. He groans and curses as he snaps up the smeared page. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Esidisi snickers. Now he’s a man as well, every bit Kars’ equal in size and wit. And he wraps his arms tighter around the other’s neck, pulling their bodies tighter together and further from the stress of their research. “It’s nothing you’ll forget before tomorrow.” He chuckles, knocking their horns together. “You’ve been cooped up in here for weeks, relax for a little while.” He drawls, tracing a finger up the other’s spine.
Kars tuts. “You’re an insatiable beast at times.” He kisses Esidisi’s temple. They’re both men, but too young to have learned not to give in to the temptations of one another’s embrace.
“If it weren’t for me, you’d have gone crazy searching for a way to touch the sun.” The younger snarks.
He didn’t know how true those words were.
...
Now they’re fifty thousand. Kars’ research has led to using himself and Esidisi as the only viable guinea pigs for his experiments, which for now included trying to find a material strong enough to pierce their skulls. Most things stop short of their bones, and the brain takes a long time to heal- there isn’t much room for error. By now, he still doesn’t have to worry about his parents- but the elder of their clan has taken note of his research, and more than once reminded him of her disapproval. He could not afford to be banished from their clan while still searching for his answers. The leering eyes of his peers weigh on him, adding ever more onto his distressed urgency to make a breakthrough.
Esidisi yawns, fiddling with a broken stone spine from a failed experiment. “You know, if you married me, maybe everyone would get off of your back.”
Kars blinks, dark bags tugging at his eyes. “Huh?”
“I said you should marry me.” Esidisi repeats himself. “If you did, then everyone will think that stubborn spirit of yours has finally snapped, and that you’ve settled down for a domestic life. They might start leaving you alone and letting you work in peace.” He hummed. “ The elders don’t bother me as much because I’ve had training as a warrior, and I have other hobbies, but I can tell that they’ve been pestering you.”
Continuing to chisel away at his newest invention, a stone helmet, Kars scoffs at the idea. “Haven’t you noticed? We’re both men.”
“It’s happened in the past.” Esidisi replies, idly scratching his hip. “If I recall, there’s two women who are married, aren’t there?”
“I cannot and will not bear children.” Kars tosses back at him, tiredly. “They would only take up another five thousand years of my time.”
“Well of course not, you just said we’re both men. So there’s no reason to even worry about children.” Esidisi yawns. It’s contagious, and Kars turns his head back, fangs bared as he slowly sets his work down onto the table. He puts his head in his hand, and turns to face his partner.
“You have nothing to gift or engage me with.” He argues, twirling a finger in his hair.
Esidisi lays his head on his arm, shifting atop Kars’ bed of feathers and fur. “Maybe I don’t have gold or jewels... But when the time comes, I’ll let you stand on my shoulders and pull the sun down from the sky.”
Kars blows out the one tiny torchlight illuminating the room. For the first time in all of his millenia, he is grateful that the sun is out of his reach, if only to hide his godforsakenly flushed face.
...
Kars and Esidisi are married mere months later. It’s an annoyingly large event, with food and drink and flowers tied into his hair that don’t seem to leave for weeks. Esidisi drinks until Kars has to lug his unconscious body into the bed where they’re meant to consummate their union, a ritual that his drunken groom has fortunately spared them both from. Kars goes through the fuss only for later convenience- not as an act of love towards his partner. The sun is still his goal, and if this would grant him greater ease in the process, then he would go through the trouble. But even so, once the hangover wears off, he allows Esidisi the time to have his fun with him anyway.
At last, Kars is left alone by his fellow pillar men and to his work. He finds a way to pierce through the skull, and from then, it’s only a matter of time.
...
Kars is almost ninety thousand years old when he holds the stone mask in his hands. The stack of notes that his father had torn to shreds as an adolescent now spanned an entire library; and in his mind alone he held knowledge of his own body that no other of his species ever had. With this, his magnum opus, he would finally own the sun.
He steals away with the mask just before dusk, off to a cavern where he’d stood clinging to his mother too many years ago. The pillar man’s heart at beats his ribcage until it rattles the surrounding bone. This had to be the moment. After he donned the mask, he could not go back. The mask had been fine tuned, adjusted, and perfected over the course of nearly a thousand years- but one wrong move could utterly destroy his brain. Now, after a lifetime of work, he stood there on the precipice of achieving it all- or dying in an attempt.
Just as he had done to spill his blood into vials all of those years ago, Kars slits his own wrist and lets his hand drip red. The mask covers his face nearly perfectly- the nose juts out just enough so that it would also accommodate a larger one than his own as well. Regardless, it sits just so on his face, held up with a shaking hand. The other creeps closer to the stone, and he can hear the drip of his own blood on the stone beneath him.
Blood touches the mask, and just as intended, it activates. Kars is blinded with light that it emits, and he hardly feels the sting of his brain being burrowed into by rock.
Power erupts from his wounds, flowing through his blood, and electrifies every nerve in his body. He clenches his fists and tosses his head back, screaming beneath the mask’s cover. What could have been mistaken for a howl of agony was in truth a cry of utter, mad joy.
When the mask falls from his face, the sound echoes around him, and then the cavern falls to silence. Kars does not yet know what power he has unlocked, but he can feel something, something penetrating his every nerve.
Kars steps towards the light, mouth agape in a wild grin. He reaches out, and hardly takes the time to notice that the wound in his wrist has already closed. Stepping towards, and not away from the sun’s rays brings him come close to weeping.
Kars touches the light.
And, just as it always had, it burns him.
He reels back, falling away from the light and back into the darkness once again. The threat of tears had made good, and there was nothing that could keep him from crying like a disappointed child.
The mask hadn’t worked? No. It had served some purpose, but it hadn’t been the one that he’d intended. Kars shook in the revelation that perhaps he’d spent every waking moment since his childhood for this one moment, and that he’d guessed wrong in assuming what effect his research would have on the body.
The raw shock of it all evolved into rage. Kars cried out in fury, raising his arm to strike the earth wall next to him, as if it would do anything at all. However, when he did thrust his arm towards the wall he found that the flesh of his arm never connected to the stone. Turning his head, Kars observed that not only had his burned hand had already come to heal- but that from his own flesh a long, curved blade jutted. The edge of it had cut directly into the stone and become wedged. With a tug, Kars released it.
He opened his hand, like he’d just learned to use it for the first time. Just what had he awakened within himself?
Between blinks the sun seemed to recede, leaving the world dark. Kars climbed out from the cavern, pulling himself onto the grassland. The full moon lit up the world around him, though not ever so brightly as he could have wished. But, the breeze slipped over him, and he was consumed by a new feeling.
Hunger. Unbelievable hunger overtook him, and he felt as if his own body would devour itself from the inside if he didn’t eat now. The pangs of need overtook his thought, and soon he found his hands latched around a bird- fingers sunk through its flesh, and without touching it he could absorb its energy and let it become his own. Shriveled to nothing in an instant, the animal’s carcass dropped to the ground from Kars’ grasp. A tiny bird, however, barely scratched the surface of his hunger.
He blacked out, and like a blind beast, devoured.
...
Kars came to in what he could assume were only a few hours. The moon lay resting at its peak in the sky now, just ready to turn over and begin to set. He shook his head, violet locks swaying with the motion. As his vision returned, he absorbed the sight before him.
Before his feet lay a scattered mess of sticks and fur, or at first, that’s what the objects appeared to be. But as the moon’s light reflected onto their forms, Kars realized that a dozen of his fellow pillar men lay before him, the fluid from their bodies drained until they crumbled. But his hunger had been sated.
This body that he’d been born in was so much more than he’d imagined. In his simple desire of wishing to walk beneath the sun, he had inadvertently awakened within himself something entirely new. Something that could prove to give him not only the sun- but the very world that it illuminated. He could fuel this power with the life force of other living things.
Kars drifted back to the cavern opening where he’d crawled out into the night. There, the mask remained right where he’d abandoned it. Dipping down, he brushed off the dust from the precious object. This was not a failure, no. It had to be the beginning of something new.
...
He’d been cornered. Kars clutched his dear mask in one hand, standing once again beneath the moon. Every face that he’d ever known, from the background faces of his life, to his own parents, and even the small handful of children encircled him. His people held spears to his throat, shrieking in a chorus of fear and rage.
Kars snarled back at them with all the malice that he had. “You fools!” He cried over the tremendous sum of their voices. “Don’t you wish to reach your full potential?!” He called out next, holding out the mask for all to see. “With this, we could all become greater beings- gods, who could do even more than walk in the sun!”
“He’s a madman!” Came one voice. “He cannot be allowed to continue like this! Too much life will be lost!” Followed another. The cornered pillar man scoffed at his peers with bared teeth. He unsheaths the blade from his arm, taking up a defensive stance.
“Kars!” One voice cut through the rest, and he shifted his eyes. On the edge of the chasm that split him apart from the others, Esidisi struggled against the hold of several other men and women. “Let me go!” He barked at them, kicking and scratching to escape their hold. Finally, he resorted to biting one of the arms that held him- it offered the struggling man enough room to break free, making a desperate leap across the chasm and to Kars’ side. He lands the jump, and stands.
The pair turn to one another as all the rest watch. Esidisi huffs, littered with wounds from where the others had pierced and struck him. Everyone knew that he was Kars’ primary accomplice in creating the mask, and for that, he would also be punished. “Are you alright?” The wounded man asked between his breaths. Kars only nodded. Esidisi let out a relieved snicker. “Go on then, you’ve kept me waiting on this thing. Put it on me.”
Kars held up the mask again, displaying it for all to see. “Witness the mask’s power as it heals this man’s wounds in an instant, and grants him power beyond what our natural bodies are capable of!”
With that, Kars forces the stone object onto the other’s face, activating it with Esidisi’s own blood. Needles pierce the other man’s brain, and shrieks ring out amongst the crowd around them. Esidisi falters, but does not fall.
Kars wonders for a moment why there’s no searing light flying from the mask as there had been before. But soon enough, his hair is blown back by a vicious cloud of steam as it blows out of Esidisi’s puncture wounds, as well of his ears and nostrils. It heats up the air around them to temperatures that burned lesser creatures than they. The wounds that would have otherwise taken days to heal faded as if they had been washed off with water.
Kars pulls the mask from his partner’s face, and is greeted with a look truly becoming of the other man. A confident, cocky grin. He shows no fear of what he has now become- only a wild desire to follow Kars wherever he would go. Trust.
There are no more words spoken between them, and even if there were, it wasn’t likely that they could hear one another over the incensed crowd. Kars draws his blade once more.
“Fall.”
...
The battle is over. Kars drags his grievously wounded form across piles of gnarled corpses, half sliced and half cooked, all lying dead beneath him. He is healing- but even with his advanced body, these wounds will take time. He doesn’t know if he should be more focused on holding his dangerously loose arm onto his body, or his even looser guts in his body.
For now, he isn’t really thinking of himself.
“Esidisi!” He cries out, and his voice cracks pathetically. If there were any gods in the heavens, please let his cry be returned, he thought. Limping down earthen stairs beneath the great tree he had once lived within, Kars finds himself in a moment of weakness. The inside of the cavern is starkly void of corpses. As he passes by an open chamber, he realizes that his comrade must have herded his own victims into rooms and cooked them. Turning from the pile of dead, he continued to drag himself on. His cry remained unanswered, so he called out again. “I won’t allow you to die yet, there’s still so much work that I have to do!” He called out. “Die, and I’ll...”
“What’ll you do, eh?”
Kars whips his head around as fast as his aching neck will let him. His lover sat on the floor next to him, resting against a stone pillar while his wounds healed. He was very quickly joined as the other man collapsed next to him, more out of relief and less out of exhaustion than he would have liked. He doesn’t answer the other’s snarky question, focusing on letting his injuries heal.
Esidisi grunts. “We’re not finished yet.” He moves to get up, faltering on the first attempt.
“Who...?” Kars picks himself back up as well, somehow managing to keep on. He’s only lead on with a come-hither motion as the other turns away from him. He truly was in a state, following Esidisi on his command. Oh well. It wasn’t like anyone was around to witness it.
The two shakily make their way further down into the cavern, the air growing cool around them. Kars, for all of his genius, couldn’t piece together Esidisi’s intentions. On their way down, he realized that the other man could very well be dragging him down with the intent to kill him- after all, it would be difficult to escape from down here. But. There was that sense again. Trust. Kars knew that the other man would not try to hurt him, and that alone seemed to ease the pain from his wounds.
Finally, the came to stop in front of a door. Wood scraped stone as Esidisi opened the chamber. It lay unoccupied, filled only by a few small possessions and the light of a torch. Or so it first appeared. Upon a closer look, a basket hanging from the room’s earthen ceiling moved on its own, gently swinging back and forth. The two men looked at one another, then entered the room.
Kars approached the basket, peering down to view its contents. Inside, wrapped so gently in a hand-woven cloth, lay an infant. Sandy hair wildly tossed about its head, doing little to cover up the emerald, angular birthmark that lined its whole face. The child blinked at the two faces that had suddenly come to stare at it. But it did not wail, waiting patiently for its parents that would never return.
“There’s another one a little farther down.” Esidisi murmured. “They’re both boys, this one’s about two thousand- but the other’s only a hundred or so.” He motioned his head towards Kars’ still-exposed blade. “You do this one, I’ll get the youngest.”
Furrowing his brow, Kars too looked to his arm. The blade, dyed red and quickly fading to an oxidized brown, flickered in the torchlight. Then he focused back to the child. He briefly thought back to the other young ones he’d dispatched, how they had thrown stones at him from behind their parents’ legs. But this one... Could he protest? Could he choose, as Esidisi had chosen to follow him?
Kars took the child from its bed, still wrapped in the linen that his mother or grandmother would have crafted for him. He cradled him in one arm, still without protest. The child quietly accepted whatever this bigger creature would bring to it, be it good or harm. Esidisi covered his eyes, unable to look as the older man raised his bladed hand.
Fingers met hair, and stroked, straightening the mess. Esidisi peeked from behind one finger, then nodded. “Good, comfort it. I guess it’s not wrong to show a little bit of mercy to a baby.”
Kars didn’t look up, keeping his eyes locked with the tiny thing in his arms. The blade in his arm withdrew. “I want to show this child the light of the sun.”
“Oh yeah, I guess we could just take them out in the sunlight and-” Esidisi stopped as cogs turned in his head. “Wait a minute Kars-”
“Go fetch the other one.”
Esidisi choked. “What are you even talking about, we can’t just... You don’t even like kids...!” He sputtered. Kars glared at him, clutching the child in his arms closer. The younger man could only let out a deep, exasperated sigh.
“You’re gonna regret this.”