Work Text:
Sagespire had stirred once more.
Hearing stolas’ reports that one of the villagers had found the gateway in the Dim open, Clive had hurried alone to Eastpool. For a mercy, no one had been hurt as of yet. Wade had ordered the village’s north gate locked and guarded, allowing passage for none save Clive himself.
The short walk between the village and the tower had been relatively uneventful. Some smaller Fallen echoes had jumped out at him, but no ancient goblins or anything else out of the ordinary.
But the moment Clive had stepped foot inside, the door’s interlocking mechanisms had given off a crunching whine before sealing behind him, and now it refused to reopen.
“No way out but through,” he sighed.
Centuries of wear was catching up to the ruins most likely, he told himself—happenstance, rather than the purposeful manipulations he’d had to beware of in the past. From what he could see, the tower’s other navigational mechanisms—its interior doors, lights, and lifts—still appeared in working order, but naught else. None of the dusk crystals had regrown, and no artificial voice greeted him with dire warnings. It looked to be much quieter than when he’d first explored the place with Jill and Joshua.
Happily, like all ruins forged by the Fallen or Ultima, Sagespire was now but a ghost of ancient ambitions cut short.
Still, the unnerving question remained: What could have possibly prompted the tower to reawaken?
Primogenesis’ effect on the aether had been the catalyst for the spire’s first awakening. Was it possible that the shifting balance of aether owed to the land’s recovery from the Blight had been enough to trip some mechanism within the tower a second time?
All Clive could do was speculate and continue onward to find out. If he was lucky, his explanation wouldn’t be too elusive. At the very least, he knew there were balconies that jutted out from the airship landings further up. He’d find himself an exit, even if it meant a precarious climb down the tower’s outer walls.
Up the curved path to the first lift he walked, turning every so often to be certain that nothing was stalking him. A few spherical nodes and bugs barred his path at random, but they were quick to fall. So far, it appeared that the tower had spent all of its living flesh monstrosities the first time around.
Nothing left of this place was meant to try his strength or protect anyone’s secrets.
Yet, as he ascended, the hair on the back of Clive’s neck stood on end. Something had indeed gone awry with the aether. What had started out as an occasional shimmer in the sunlight on the ground floor had thickened into the tell-tale blue fog of a flood but a few levels up, and it was only getting worse the further he climbed. He couldn’t make any sense of it. Normally, aether was thickest closer to the earth from whence it had sprung. Here, it obscured his way forward enough that in some of the narrow corridors, he found himself clinging to one edge of the path or pressing up against a wall for guidance, resisting the temptation to peer into bottomless void below.
When he did finally give into the urge to have a look, a stray thought occurred to him: Sagespire might be built atop the sprawling underground labyrinth of the Apodytery. There had seemed to be some kind of lofty structure visible from the first subterranean level back then, before he and Jill had descended into its depths.
…Before Ultima, first disguised as a cloaked stranger and then masquerading as his own shadow, had taken him through a charade of accepting past sins that weren’t wholly his own, and then used the guilt to lead him on for a time.
Clive grimaced. Like as not, there was no shortage of reminders of all he’d suffered and lost during his journey.
In the end, by some stroke of terrible irony, he’d ultimately accomplished the original mission he’d set out to fulfil: to kill the son of a bitch who’d murdered his brother. Joshua hadn’t made it out of Origin, and for better or worse, he’d been doing all he could to make peace with that fact. That Ultima was also gone made it…not easier, but lighter. His brother hadn’t died in vain.
Insomuch as he’d been able—as much as Joshua had allowed—he’d done his duty as his First Shield.
It would have to be enough. His only other option was self-destruction, and he knew that Joshua would never want that for him. No…Joshua would want him to live on; to find a new purpose for himself that wasn’t so tied to their old roles in service to the Duchy or as Dominants. And that was the hard part, because he’d never thought too much about what he might want—only of securing the future for others.
For now, between the odd mission, he’d kept busy by penning his story, and though it was plainly from his own point of view, he meant to publish it under Joshua’s name. Once the volume was complete…he didn’t know what came next. Perhaps Jill was right about where they belonged. Maybe they’d both outgrown the Twins, and their future awaited them out in the world they’d laboured so hard to save, far removed from the difficult memories that lived on in Valisthea.
A sharp pain stabbed at his temple then, disrupting his thoughts.
Clive touched the offending spot and attempted to relax his jaw—clenching his teeth had become a poor habit of late, leading to no shortage of headaches—and kept walking.
Aside from the slow thud of his boots on the ceramic floor, the silence was deafening. He listened closely for anything the aetherflood wouldn’t let him see but heard only the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Instead, a foreboding but too-familiar tightness welled up in his chest. He clamped down on it, willing it not to become the beginning of thoughts; before it could supply him with words that weren’t his, lest they find their way unbidden to his tongue.
This was a secret he’d done well to keep for a little over a year: Once he’d absorbed Ultima’s being into himself, and his health had recovered from the fight and use of his power, he could still feel the impotent remnants of the god’s musings and moods swirling around in his head. It was akin to what he’d experienced after taking the essence of Bahamut from Dion—memories and ideas that were not his own, but to which he was an intimate witness in retrospect.
Rarely, though always intrusive, they arranged themselves into cogent words.
Clive recalled the ones that had emerged most recently, cryptic as they’d been: “At the peak that reaches unto heaven, amidst curiosities left unknown and the dawning hopes of man—there shall the transgressor ascend, to know…and to become…”
Palm pressed tightly to his mouth, he held his breath for a count of ten to ground himself. He’d not meant to recite the words aloud, but they’d come out anyway, forced and stilted.
Here, within the spire, their mystery unravelled: To Ultima, he was doubtless the transgressor. The ‘peak that reaches unto heaven’ was Sagespire. The ‘dawning hopes of man’ too felt self-explanatory by now—it had been but a summer since Origin had fallen, and though most of Valisthea was still finding her legs, Rosaria was quick to flourish. Under his uncle’s watch, it had fast transformed into a renewed hub of trade and agriculture.
As for unknown curiosities, the tower contained plenty, most of which were best left that way. If not for the danger they might pose to the people living nearby, he’d have never returned.
All that remained unclear from Ultima’s thoughts were the notions that he was going to learn something, and that it would change him. “To know and to become,” he repeated voluntarily this time, wishing he’d brought Torgal with him at least. “Right…”
So far, Clive had discovered little else aside from his own agitation with how dense the aetherflood had grown, and he wasn’t interested in any more of Ultima’s lessons. If the entrance hadn’t shut him in; if he’d thought it an option, he would have already turned back. Whatever was left of Ultima within his mind clearly wanted him here. Lest he find out why, he needed to manage his escape sooner than the airship landing.
“There must be another way,” he reassured himself. He’d always made it out of places like this before. There was no reason why that needed to change.
As if in response, the tightness in his chest and the pain in his head doubled down, staggering his train of thought.
Overwhelmed, Clive dropped to one knee to break his fall, but he couldn’t prevent Ultima’s ideas from using his voice again, albeit in a constrained whisper—“We knew that when Mythos was come, he might cling to his errant will. And though we sought to steady his course, many were the bonds of consciousness that preserved him. Knowing that he would fight us to the last…we allowed him to fulfil his wish…”
Quickly as the pain had come, it relented.
Squinting ahead into the aether as he stood, he spotted an unmistakeable silhouette turning a corner, wandering away from him into one of the rooms where the Fallen had staged holding chambers for the creatures they’d used to grow crystal. “Jill?”
What was she doing here, and how had she outpaced him? Jill had more than made her apprehensions for his returning here known, but he’d insisted. It was nothing, he’d told her. He’d be fine, and back home within a day or two. After all, neither Omega nor Ultima remained, and she herself had helped eliminate the worst Sagespire had to offer. Whatever else he found wouldn’t be anything of note—but a few anomalies that Eastpool might need a hand in disposing of.
Truth be told, he’d left the air between them in an uneasy state. She’d pleaded for him to understand how wrong this errand felt; to let this one go as a personal favour to her if for nothing else. But…he’d simply promised her she’d see him again soon and departed. Insofar as she dreaded the prospect, everything in him was telling him that he must take up this mission.
And so he did.
At the time, he’d wanted to believe it was naught but wanderlust or cabin fever.
Now, he hoped that in her worry, Jill had chosen not to wait for him—that she’d come to protect him from himself once more. He no longer wanted to be here alone. Between the intensity of the flood and Ultima’s reaction to the place, she was right: It wasn’t safe, especially not for him.
“Jill!” he called after her, but she didn’t respond.
Clive broke into a light jog, but only a few turns later, stepping onto the next lift, he collided face-first into another invisible wall of agony. His lips trembled, and again Ultima’s story poured forth: “Having already waited centuries to bring our Mythos into being, we conspired to grant him one year of reprieve. One year to look upon the work of his hands…and to find himself… wanting...”
Once more, his body released. “‘Find myself wanting’?” he echoed. Did he?
The relative quiet of the present compared to the chaotic life he’d led for so long beforehand was…admittedly discomforting. He was restless and adrift, and he jumped at shadows more often than he ever thought he might, but that scarcely meant that he’d fallen short. His personal struggle with adjusting to the peace was nothing against its value to the world.
But of his own value to the world, now that all was said and done…? He wasn’t so sure.
He’d think on it later. Now wasn’t the time.
Looking up, he caught another glimpse of Jill—the bound-up silvery ends of her hair disappearing around yet another corner.
He sprinted full speed after her this time, releasing a low growl when turn upon turn revealed naught but winding stretches of abandoned corridor, veiled in ever more aether, until he came at last to the lift that would take him to the airships’ landing.
“Please be there,” he pled, stepping onto it.
Emerging onto the path before the first balcony, he beheld Jill standing with her back to him in the archway. Sixteen diamond-shaped structures that weren’t there before had come to be affixed to it, all but two of which were illuminated in an eerie glow that crawled over their surfaces.
Wind gusted in from outside, clearing out the flood and tossing the loosened strands of her hair into her face when she turned toward him, and she raised her hands from her sides.
The diamonds glowed, and Jill levitated.
A low thrumming reverberated throughout the landing. Blinding jets of aether emerged from each diamond, surging into her, jolting her body as they collided.
Clive opened his mouth to cry out to her, but something deep inside of him—running through his head, down his spine, and into his stomach—moved. Instantly overcome, he stumbled forward, spewing aetheric energy like vomit. On his hands and knees, he wept it and sweat it out from every pore while he retched, until it had coagulated into a singular gleaming sphere, bathing the remaining space between them in radiant white as it too drifted towards Jill.
Jill…who, landing gently on both feet, welcomed the final piece with open arms.
And for the first time in a year, Clive perceived that he was alone in his head--alone, and all too aware of how badly he’d lost control of the situation.
“Come…Clive,” she finally spoke, beckoning him to meet her outside.
Bewildered, he followed.
Out on the balcony’s edge, standing side by side, they surveyed the lush landscape surrounding Rosalith and the crater near Phoenix Gate, neither daring to meet the other’s eyes for a long moment.
“You…survived,” Clive stated.
“Did I not tell you that I cannot end?” she reminded him, lightly touching his forearm.
Clive flinched slightly but made no effort to pull away. “So you did…”
She looked up at him piteously, but the person behind those eyes—he knew who it was, impossible though it should have been.
“This was only ever going to end one way, Mythos,” Ultima said, imitating Jill’s admonishing tone. “One more year to unseat the pretender’s soul from my vessel was a small price to claim you.”
“You must mean Joshua…” His brother’s memory had lingered with him for months, as though their final conversation within Origin had taken place but days ago. Only during the last several weeks had he felt his presence wane…and now that he had no room left for denials, that had also been when Ultima’s had strengthened.
Ultima waved his hand in an explanatory gesture as Jill would. “That the Phoenix would attain the power of Logos was unforeseen, but all that was required to cleanse you was to convince you of my passing. And so…save for one of mine that you took upon yourself at the end of our farcical battle, I retreated to this place to await the hour of my choosing,” Ultima explained. “I knew you’d come when I called for you. You always do.”
Clive touched his forehead, reliving the memory of having carved a massive hole into Ultima’s torso with a final, enraged throw of his blade; of having literally punched the remaining life out of him. His fall had been plain as day. All that was left of him afterward was one of his disembodied forms, and he’d watched it disperse as ash into the wind. “But I know that I saw you...” he trailed off, trying to pick out anything that he might have missed—any clue that meant Ultima had endured.
“You witnessed but what I gave you to see,” Ultima said, offering him Jill’s mildly amused smile. “Look upon the land, gifted but a taste of her predestined rebirth. It is time now for us to finish this work…together.”
Clive gazed out over Rosalith, and across the water to boats transporting men and goods between there and Port Isolde in the far distance. Rosaria, the cornerstone of so much of his life, had become the beating heart of Valisthea’s recovery from Ultima’s curses and plagues. He thought of the many people going on with their daily lives below, unaware of the doom about to meet them despite how hard they’d fought for this—unaware that their home would also serve as the epicentre of the world’s end.
He knew that if he could look out from the other side of the tower, he’d catch a glimpse of the mountains that hugged Bennumere and the hideaway. Back home, the real Jill, Gav, Torgal, and all of the others were waiting for him to return with yet another tale of a malfunctioning Fallen ruin.
But now? Ultima had ensnared him in a trap he never could have anticipated. He could try to fight him again, but he knew it wouldn’t end well. He, Joshua, and the faith that their loved ones had placed in them had accomplished little else but to borrow a sliver of time—exactly the one year that Ultima had allotted.
Feigning his demise, Ultima had succeeded in taking his guard down.
In taking everyone’s guard down.
…That is, everyone except for Jill. Somehow, she’d known. Maybe not the particulars, but she’d never really let go of the idea that something was still amiss, with him and with the Twins. She’d often questioned why the Fallen ruins were still so reactive, or how it was he’d retained his Eikonic power. On days when Ultima’s thoughts were close at hand, she’d taken to checking in on him constantly, asking if he was feeling unwell, and he’d foolishly denied there was a problem every time.
In failing to heed her warnings, he’d squandered the one last choice that mattered.
“I’m…sorry, Jill,” he murmured, collapsing to his knees, weeping. “I truly believed we’d won…our lives, our freedom…”
“And thus…your will is broken,” Ultima observed, his tone almost mournful.
“Don’t pretend to share in my pain,” Clive said.
Ultima’s hand lighted upon his shoulder. “It is no pretence, Mythos.”
“And yet…you won’t spare anyone,” Clive charged.
“No. Humanity has served its purpose,” Ultima reaffirmed, “…and so shall you.”
Looking back, Clive confirmed that Ultima remained in Jill’s form and hated him for it. It was a mockery of the most precious living bond he shared with another person—of someone he loved and who’d bolstered him against the weight of the world time and again. “Is this the ‘eternity of anguish’ you promised me, Ultima? To know that the last time I ever looked upon her face, it wasn’t her? That in my dying moments when I try to remember her, it will be you that I see?”
Ultima cast him a sidelong glance. “Have humanity’s tales so soon forgotten the gods’ jealousy?”
Clive returned the glare, uncertain if Ultima was sincere, or if that was yet another of his callous digs. “No…but in some of those tales, they’re merciful or could be bargained with at least. You are none of those things.”
Ultima sighed as Jill might and settled beside him, letting his legs hang over the balcony’s edge, heedless of the long drop. “Had I borne witness to the whole of humanity’s history, I would not have permitted them to live long enough for you to blossom. You know nothing of how they called upon me day and night for vanity’s sake, nor of the violence they visited upon Valisthea before they thought to encroach upon my domain, and I laid them low.”
“Oh, I think I do,” Clive replied, calling to mind the spire’s upper levels—a profane mimicry of life, strewn with pulsating flesh and blood flows, all in service to birthing crystals and Eikonoklastes to wage war upon one another, and then Ultima—not for survival or liberty’s sake, but because they craved godhood for themselves.
For once, Clive couldn’t bring himself to fault Ultima for his contempt. Not entirely. If Sagespire was any clue, ‘violence’ was scarcely adequate to describe what the Fallen had gotten up to.
“Countless eras of avarice and bloodshed: these are all that lay beyond mankind’s long sought-after horizon, and each to follow. Is it not merciful that I should put an end to his suffering?” Ultima asked.
“We aren’t our forebears, Ultima. If after a year spent living in my head, you still think their atrocities are all we’re capable of, then you don’t know us…and it’s because you refuse,” Clive countered, “just as surely as you refuse to be known.”
Ultima paused for a long moment, his hands gripping the balcony’s edge hard enough to create a fissure in the ceramic. “Even now, bereft of mortal hope, you would tempt me…”
Idly, Clive wondered if Jill would somehow be capable of doing the same, had it really been her sitting with him. He’d certainly seen her angry enough before. “Yes, I would,” he replied. “I’ve nothing more to lose for it.”
As quickly as it had appeared, the crack mended itself. Ultima folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes, reinforcing his composure and likeness of Jill. “No, I do not know how mankind must appear to himself, his lifespan shorn down to a century. But is it not this that allows for generation upon generation to forget his ancestors’ sins? Bloated with hubris and ever convinced of his own ingenuity, he commits them anew. Even those of his number steeped in history are impotent but to bear witness to its repetition, whilst their brethren rise up to slay them, deeming that man cannot bear the knowledge of his transgressions. To suffer such beings, so odious towards even themselves, would be merciless, Mythos.”
Clive considered pressing Ultima for how much of life’s brevity was by design, but he held his tongue. Continuing to argue the point would buy him naught but minutes.
A cold wind blew, punctuating the momentary silence. In his periphery, he thought he saw Ultima’s guise falter. He was whole and one again, no doubt ready to claim him the moment his patience for small talk ran out. “I’ve no will to fight a battle I know I’ve already lost, Ultima…You have your vessel. Whatever you’re going to do with me…do it quickly.”
“Your place with me yet grieves you...”
Clive furrowed his brows, offended. “Of course it grieves me. I’ve failed everyone.”
A hand he wished were Jill’s grasped his, entwining their fingers. “I am your purpose—you shall not fail me. Your will to dissent may be forfeit, but I would have your faith also.”
Recoiling, Clive tried to retract his hand, but Ultima held him fast. “Why? So you can soothe your conscience after you discard me? So you can tell yourself that I was a willing sacrifice?”
“Because this is my due if the number of souls I spare should increase by one,” Ultima replied.
“You said that to spare us would be merciless,” Clive countered.
“It pleases me to keep you, mine only beloved of men,” Ultima snapped.
Clive’s stomach bottomed out, giving way to a horrendous cacophony of dread. Wherever this conversation was going, he’d not expected that Ultima might profess to harbouring some manner of affection for him. It was one matter to be made to surrender and accept death alongside the rest of the world, but this?
This was so much worse.
He would not only serve as Ultima’s vessel, but would thereafter remain with him as…what? His servant? Akashic equivalent of a house pet? Consort? He was too afraid to pose the question directly, and trying to imagine it was futile—the world he was to enter would not be a human one.
Struggling to tame his panic, Clive asked, “When did you decide this? Not long ago, you were of a mind to damn me.”
Ultima looked upon him sweetly, enough that the expression appeared almost natural to the face he was wearing. “Is it truly so hard to conceive of that I might yet prefer to delight in my creation?”
Clive bowed his head, wishing for all his worth that this was naught but a fever induced nightmare—that he was moments away from waking in the infirmary to discover that Jill had been by his side the whole time. He wanted to forget this misguided foray back into Sagespire, and rest safe in the knowledge that his victory over Ultima had been real.
But…that was not reality. A fresh bout of hot tears streamed down his face, though it was fast sinking in that neither weeping nor begging would alter his impending fate—his or anyone’s. The future was entirely at Ultima’s mercy, whatever little of it there was.
Ultima frowned and let Jill’s image slip away.
Clive closed his eyes against the sight of him and slowed his breathing, bracing for whatever came next. The inevitable.
He shivered when long, clawed fingers lifted his chin and swiped away the last of his tears. His breath caught in his throat when Ultima’s palm descended upon his forehead, and a vertigo-laden throb coursed throughout his body, rendering him numb.
All of the terrors playing out in his mind ceased, caving into nothingness—or, close to it. Clive still felt his own presence in the back of his mind—his sorrow, his fear…and, where raging defiance had once held, his resignation. There was nothing left to do but let it happen.
Lazily, he opened his eyes to behold a gleaming blue abyss gazing back at him—a ravenous stare that warned he was as likely to be devoured as possessed.
“Mythos…at last,” Ultima whispered.
The air rippled around them.
The tower dissolved.
Clive felt the balcony crumble and fall away beneath him. He sucked in a breath, bracing for the bone-shattering pain that would greet him—if not kill him outright—when he landed.
…And then he awoke, exhaling sharply. He was on his back, unbroken and nestled deep beneath the soft cotton and satin covers of a well-appointed bed. Hunting trophies displayed over the mantel to his right marked the room as the guest chamber he usually occupied when visiting with Uncle Byron. Judging by the darkness outside the windows and the fading embers in the fireplace, it was late.
A little too warm, he sat up and cast aside the blankets. Crisp, drafty air caressed his whole body, startling him. “Oh...when did I…?”
He then spied the neatly folded bundle of his clothes on a chaise in the far corner near the door, with his boots on the floor beside them.
Clive stood and started inspecting his body for fresh injuries. Perhaps he really had fallen, and had therefore required a physicker’s attention. His clothes may have been in the way of whatever wounds he’d needed mending.
“You’re awake,” Jill called to him from behind.
Cautious, he turned back to see her sitting upright on the other side of the bed in a similar state of undress. As welcome and relieving of sight as she was, it still perturbed him that he couldn’t remember having come here or having done…anything…up until he’d come to.
“I am,” he said after a beat, settling back onto the bed.
“You seem frightened,” she remarked. “Was it another nightmare?”
“Yes…I think so. It’s been months since the last one…I’d hoped they were past.”
Jill wrapped her arms around his chest and rested her face against the back of his shoulder. “Clive, you’re shaking…”
There was no sense in hiding his confusion, Clive decided. Something was gravely amiss, and he needed her help. “Jill…why—and when—did we came to Port Isolde?”
She stilled for a split second, letting out a melancholy hum. “Was this not what you wanted—to wake up safe, with me at your side?”
Clasping his hands over hers, Clive answered with a quiet sigh. No, he didn’t remember coming here, but he did recall ascending halfway up Sagespire and meeting with Ultima.
Ultima, who’d appeared to him as Jill.
And once he’d accepted his fate…that’s when he’d wound up here.
Jill slid her hands out from beneath his and gently pushed him to lean back so that she could straddle his hips.
“I wish I had…back at the hideaway where I left her,” he replied. Unable to avert his eyes from hers any longer, Clive beheld the truth once more. “So…this really is how you’d punish me.”
Retaining Jill’s form and voice, Ultima leaned forward so that their noses brushed, subtly shifting his hips. A cascade of silvery hair fell around their faces, heightening an air of secrecy between them. “Can you comprehend what it means to bear a longing for centuries?”
Clive swallowed. “…And now you want more than a vessel.”
Ultima ground up against his hips again, causing Clive to let out an involuntary grunt.
“Rightly she called you a ‘treasure’,” he replied, “so precious a creation. My Mythos.”
Ultima kissed him then, embodying Jill’s comforting softness, but he tasted of a cold autumn downpour in the middle of an aetherflood—a maddening earthy sweetness that sought to quench and drown him all at once, intoxicating him with want.
Forgetting himself, Clive arched his neck, leaning into the kiss. Trapped between anticipation and dismay, his heart raced.
He was not supposed to want this. He was supposed to resist, even should it be futile. Even should it look and feel so much like he was with the one he loved, that if he wasn't aware of the circumstances, he'd never question it.
But…wasn’t he done running from Ultima? Might this not be what surrendering his body entailed? An intimate act, serving to create a passionate bond between them, thereby rendering his mind a more suitable fit...
Too late, Clive understood that the final barrier shielding him from becoming Ultima’s vessel was not the sort to be breached so much as it was a divide in want of a bridge. Had he not given in, their minds may have yet remained incompatible. His life was over regardless, but his friends might have had one last narrow chance to fight if only he’d refused.
He didn’t know which was worse—for the end to come upon them suddenly, or for them to die fighting it, never knowing why he couldn’t be there.
Despair surged to the forefront of his mind to mingle with Ultima’s hold over him, and moisture leaked out from the corners of his tightly closed eyes.
Parting from him, Ultima cupped his face, once more wiping away the tears he’d not been able to withhold with the palms of his thumbs. “Tell me you want to be with me…Clive…one last time.”
“Please,” Clive uttered, wincing internally at how desperate he sounded—how desperate he must be, to accept solace in the arms of his enemy’s illusion.
He watched through hooded eyes while as Jill, Ultima adjusted his position over him. Inhaling slowly, he felt his erect length sinking into what felt like the tight, velvety warmth of her body. He thrust his hips upward slightly to fully sheath himself and closed his eyes once more, savouring the sensation, calling to mind all the nights she’d seduced him—though she’d scarcely needed to try.
Ultima leaned into him, guiding him to lay back, and lifted one of his legs over his shoulder. A slick, unseen appendage snaked past his inner thigh and between his buttocks, palpating and lubricating his entrance with inhuman flexibility.
Clive shuddered, clenching up.
He should have known this sweet, desirous act wouldn't last. Insomuch as Ultima could mimic a human body, he most assuredly had his own to sate, and Clive didn't dare imagine he'd be denied. What damage it might do him before their encounter concluded, his imagination was only too ready to supply: grotesque, broken open and defiled in his own entrails, his body used up as a living toy before as a vessel and then--
“Don’t be afraid, Clive,” Ultima soothed his rising horror, matching Jill’s intonation perfectly, and captured his lips again.
Clive felt Ultima’s tip—narrower than the rest of his shaft—slip inside of him just slightly, massaging his rim in slow, careful gyrations, pleasuring and relaxing him. Once he’d fully unclenched, Ultima released his mouth and nuzzled his neck, pushing a little deeper while lightly nipping at the tender skin along his jaw down to his collarbone.
Clive bit down on the inside of his lower lip to suppress the noises forming in the back of his throat. “I think… I can take you now,” Clive hissed, unable to resist the urge to thrust a few times.
At once, the rest of Ultima’s length slithered into him, and he tugged on fistful of Clive’s hair, lifting his head so that they were eye to eye.
Clive froze, self-conscious of the strangled cry that had found its way out of him once Ultima had fully penetrated him. He huffed, staring at what still appeared to be Jill’s face, though its features were more stoic than she’d ever be in a moment like this.
“Move with me,” Ultima breathed, using Jill’s voice, laced together with the odd upward inflection that was unmistakeably his own, rocking their interlocked hips to commence a slow-churning rhythm.
At first, Clive kept his eyes trained on the appearance of Jill’s face; on everything about this that felt right and safe and normal. The illusion took a turn, becoming more than merely convincing. It was enthralling—a mirror image of how her lips would part and her cheeks flushed when she truly began to enjoy herself. Of how her eyes flitted closed and her back arched, pressing her breasts and their aroused peaks into his chest as the friction between them intensified, transforming the initial tenderness of their union into a heated, needy dance of endurance in which he often struggled to keep up—to hold himself back until she was in the throes.
And he was feeling all of that now, stoking a hot, aching tension in his lower abdomen. The added heady sensation of Ultima stroking him from within was overwhelming him, its novelty thoroughly confounding his capacity to pretend he was simply making love to Jill. Again and again, Ultima’s movements hit upon on shallow sensitive point, sending a lurid, tingling static coursing up Clive’s spine and through every limb.
His insides tremored, straining to come undone.
“Ultima,” Clive mouthed, lingering on the last syllable awkwardly.
Icy shame washed over him for which name had found his tongue first, but it was fast swallowed up in the unrelenting mutual friction, in the delicious onslaught of energetic sparks that were fast coalescing into—
But at the sound of his name, Ultima stopped, tethering him from going over the edge. “Is it I you now desire, Mythos?”
This time, his voice was his own.
Clive let out a frustrated groan and nodded once, unwilling to say it out loud, but unable to deny it any longer. He’d never imagined wanting this—wanting Ultima—not in his wildest dreams, but the very foundations of his being had won out, compelling him to need.
To need Ultima who, having already cast off his façade of Jill, now overshadowed him in all of his inhuman strength and size. The ornate armour he’d worn when they’d fought was absent, leaving behind only the wings folded at his back and the crown that adorned his head. Trembling, Clive ran his hands over Ultima’s chest and abdomen, learning the textures and contours of his partner’s true body. His azure skin was as a sort of taut, rough leather, each defined muscle gleaming at the edges with a dark opalescence. Heat emanated from him as from a live ember, pulsating in tandem with what felt like the beats of more than one heart.
Ultima gazed down upon him, his expression softening from its usual stony glare into something almost placid. “And now, Mythos…you know that you are mine,” he gently chided, brushing Clive’s hair from his eyes and caressing the side of his face with the backs of his talons.
Interweaving their hands, pinning him, Ultima pressed their foreheads together and resumed their intercourse in languid motions, occasionally nipping at Clive’s lower lip.
Feeling Ultima’s movements so much more acutely and flustered by needy moans he could no longer supress, Clive drew in deep breaths, willing his muscles to become more pliable for the effort. One slip in restraint was all it would take for Ultima to crush him or tear him asunder from the inside out as he’d first feared, but as they increased their pace, all Clive could feel—all that mattered anymore—was how his whole body throbbed with ecstatic impatience.
Molten pressure began to gather in his lower abdomen once again. Between heated kisses and bites, Clive panted heavily, relishing the dizzying amalgam of nigh-painful tightness and their easy momentum in spite of it. He was too caught up in needing—knowing and becoming—his mind and body stretched beyond their natural limits to reach a sensory pinnacle that only Ultima could satisfy; his fraying nerves finally grasping that he was laying with a god.
All but begging for release, he squeezed Ultima’s hands, clenched his teeth, and tilted his head back.
There was no way out but through.
There was no way out. There never had been.
He no longer wanted out.
And the last of his body’s resistance shattered. Irrepressible spasms rippled through him, and he plunged himself as deep into Ultima as he could.
Before he could stop himself; before he could think twice, “My god…” fled from his throat, mingled with his groans as he came.
Ultima’s eyes widened at the utterance, and his lips parted. “Mythos,” he murmured—barely restrained from mewling—and kissed him hard, revelling in their shared orgasm.
Sealed up together in violent contractions and bursts of hot fluid, it was as though their bodies were trying to meld into one of their own accord.
Coming down, they pulled out from one another and lay in silence for a long while, pointedly ignoring the sticky mess that had oozed out onto their legs and the sheets in favour of eying one another knowingly.
There was no coming back from this.
Ultima closed his eyes, his face taking on a serenity Clive had never witnessed on him before.
“Confess your faith unto me once more, O beloved,” he quietly commanded him.
Hearing it, something deep and time-worn within Clive finally snapped. Old things—his attachments prior to meeting Ultima within Sagespire—unravelled. His life as it was and who he had been before were over now; he was no longer his own. Save for a trace of bittersweet remembrance, his former bonds were severed—gossamer threads flailing unmoored on a wind that would soon carry them away.
The tiny piece of his mind that had yet resisted fell silent.
“You are…my purpose,” he said, reverently touching Ultima’s face.
Ultima gathered him into his arms and whispered, “O mia lost elan. Tu isag elythe.”
Mythos didn’t notice the walls beginning to fade around them. All he could feel was Ultima’s heat—an undying fire holding him; that had always held him, after one manner or another, as much as he’d fought him—flooding into him until they’d merged. All he could see was his skin, submerged and swarming in blue aetheric light, marking true his loyalty to his Creator.
But rather than transform into a raving, unthinking monstrosity, he was overtaken in a focused calm.
There was but one task that remained.
From the heights of Sagespire, he raised his arms to the heavens. A massive pillar of flame blossomed from inside and around him, spreading out in every direction, consuming all the world in its path.