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Soot and iron. A great burning that engulfed the land.
Phainon is on the ground, his face caked in dirt. Noxious ash fills his nose and coats his tongue, blood gushing from a deep slash in his belly.
Somehow, he knows that this is not his first foray with death. He knows not how or why, only does, as he must. He would die here, because it must be so.
Four million cycles. Would there ever be any true end to eternity?
Blood pounds through his ears as the drums of war. He lifts his neck, tight as the seize of his body, and watches helplessly as a blade pierces through a back. Again and again, he watches. He does, thoughtlessly and without question, as an animal following instinct. He watches because he must. Does, because he must.
Which side of that blade did he watch from, he wonders…?
Golden ichor seeps into the fabric of a flared robe. A pair of eyes more radiant than the amber dawn look only to him before a limp body is cast to the ground. He is screaming and silent all the same.
Stay down, he begs. It does not matter who he is, or where he stands, whether it be as the stone cold executioner, or the one bellowing in despair while desperately trying to shove his entrails back into his belly. They both think the very same thing. Please. Just stay down.
He looks to himself now, though not from the ground. His consciousness has been ripped from him, and he is Phainon no longer.
He is the Flame Reaver, and Amphoreus burns at his hand, because it must.
Somewhere across the world, the Coin of Whimsy lay shattered. The Goldweaver melts in the radiant warmth she cherished so. The curtain had closed on the Great Performer’s divine comedy for a last time.
He is the Flame Reaver, the slayer of the Godslayer, and he steps over that fading light as though it is nothing at all; The mighty Lance of Fury reduced to an inconvenience on his path to genesis. He watches himself struggle now. How futile it all seems, from the body of an outsider.
A wail. A name. It comes from deep within him– no, not him. Not this him… the him still laying in the dirt. Long had the Flame Reaver lost his voice for such overwhelming grief, though this mirror image of himself cried out for the both of them.
Mydei, he says. Who was Mydei? He did not know a Mydei. Only Strife, who now lay dying in a pool of his own blood. Because he must, just as he had four million lifetimes before.
A grunt. A clenching of teeth. The Kremnos Festival was over, and yet the immortal still moved. His body, broken and severed within, still moved. Still fought. So long as Strife breathed, Strife would fight. He knows this just as much as he wished it wouldn't be so. Stop moving. Please stop moving.
Paralyzed legs drag through a ground made muddy by golden ichor. A weakened hand clutches around his ankle.
The Flame Reaver halts his march towards the inevitable. Once he turned his back on Strife, he was never meant to look back. For four million lifetimes, he does not. He does not, because he cannot. Something about this lifetime is different. Morbid curiosity supersedes better judgement, and for the first time, the Flame Reaver turns over his shoulder to engage in battle with Strife for a second time.
He lays there, legs utterly still with a clean cut through his spine, held up only by a forearm planted in the ground.
“Leave him. Please. Leave him.”
“Mydei, no–! Stop it!” Hunched over across a clearing coated in Amphoreus’ cremation, his progeny seems to have found his voice at last, all to defend a man who would never accept it. Four million lifetimes. Four million staunch refusals of a peaceful end.
The Flame Reaver is unmoved. A swift kick to the face grounds Strife once more, paired with the anguished wail of the helpless and the damned.
Stay down.
Stop moving.
Stop fighting–
“Leave him!”
Stop.
“There’s– There’s no coreflame within him!” he shouts– pleads. He'd never been a bargaining man before. Not in war. Not in grief. What changed? Which one of them changed?
“Stop it, Mydei!”
“He won’t pose you any threat once you’ve taken mine–!”
“Stop!”
The Flame Reaver knows this all too well, and yet he will do it all the same. This Phainon was never destined to see the dawn, nor was any Phainon that came before him. Not even himself.
The war drums swell. Metal scrapes the ground as the prince begins to crawl once more, though it is inevitable, though he too knows he too is destined to die here.
The world around him seems to fracture, and once more, Phainon finds himself on the ground, and Mydei is crawling towards him as Amphoreus’ undoing, a man with his face, stands by as though a passive observer. As though he was not the cause of this grand ruination.
Phainon sobs as Mydei trudges through the muck, for a trickle of blood sprouts from his nose, blooming from a boot and forced out by exertion. He is hurting, and yet he still moves, closer and closer and closer still in spite of the pain. He staggers, and in that moment Phainon is certain that Mydei would not make it to him. His wounds would run dry before their final meeting.
So, Phainon shifts, drags his knees and abandons his futile attempt at keeping himself whole. The agony is so great that his mortal mind cannot fathom it, and for this he is grateful. He feels nothing at all as a trail of viscera paints the ground beneath him. Only one of them needs to survive long enough to make it to the other. It would be him, because it must be.
The sight of this great struggle is perhaps the most incensing of them all to the man who had forgotten his own name. How selfish Strife is, to prompt his other half to toil in misery, chasing the illusion of dying in peace, together, when all he truly means to do is reach the discarded blade cast to the ground and fight to the last breath.
This anger ignites a fury within him so great that the very ground beneath him burns hot. He stomps forward, a scream in his very own voice ringing out as Strife is wrested off the ground by the neck, before their fingertips could ever touch.
“Why… Why do you refuse to go in peace…!?” Phainon spat.
Phainon…? No, this couldn't be true. Phainon is on the ground. He is screaming. He is sobbing. He is dying. It is not his hand around Mydei's neck. Why is his hand around Mydei's neck?
“Why must you fight to your dying breath every time!?” He still screams, and he still sobs, and he is still Phainon. This is perhaps the greatest anguish of all. He is still Phainon, and he will carry this grief with him into the next lifetime, because he must.
A guttural gasp. A scraping of sharp metal against his arm. A struggle so grand and so pointless. Mydei fights. It is all he has ever known, and all he will ever know.
“I have watched the sun set on four million eras, and each time… each time… you've forced me to put you down like a dog.”
No tears streak down his face. His body is a blazing inferno, ripping hot and bright with the fire of forty seven million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand and nine hundred ninety-nine Coreflames. Nothing could weather that kind of heat. All that survives within him is the anger that feeds off the flames. Anger that is fanned by the stubbornness of Strife’s heir.
A sickening, wet crunch. Mydei’s arms fall limp, but he is not dead.
A bellow, low and howling. The voice was his, though it did not come from his throat. It comes from the mirror, mourning a man that he knows just as well is not yet dead.
Finally… a thud. A limp body falls to the floor, and it is certainly dead now. Strife is a stubborn fool, but he is no liar. No coreflame rests in the Deliverer's body, for he weeps freely and uncontrolled. He finds himself envying two dead men.
“Does it hurt you to know that he will never love you more than he loves strife?” Phainon asks an inconsolable piece of himself. “I have made it to the end of this journey more times than your mortal mind could possibly comprehend. Not once…” he says, “...not once has he ever chosen to set aside his honor and hold your hand as you usher in a new era. He will force you to rend your heart from your own chest each and every time.”
Trembling arms cradle a corpse, tears soaking into dirty hair matted by drying blood. This other version of himself, unburdened by the weight of a million lives, looks up at him, and in that moment, Phainon can see nothing but pity in his eyes. He clenched his fist around the hilt of the sword, stained by needless carnage.
“For you to ever ask such a thing of him… must mean that you did not love him as much as you thought you did.”
Despair, and the twitching of an eye. Phainon looks up at himself, at the blade that points towards his neck, and he finds that it is with no great apprehension that he lifts his chin towards the reddened sky, holding Strife close to his heart while awaiting the end.
A scream. And the rolling of a head on the ground.
Phainon screamed and screamed and screamed, and he did not stop screaming until his lungs gave out and he choked in its place. He scrambled upwards in his fervor, shoving off whatever covers were draped over him while a pair of arms moved just as frantically to urge him back down. He fought with all his might to sit up. Sit up. He had to reach him. He must–
“Phainon!” Finally, a new voice. One that wasn't his own. He clung to it, held it close to his heart, turned and buried himself into whatever part of it was offered to him.
The sound of a pulse beneath his ear tempered the rapid swell of his chest. Relief washed over him like the gentle lapping of a stream at his feet. Mydei’s chest rose rhythmically beneath his face, and he gripped around the man so tight he feared he may squeeze the life out of him. Hands search the expanse of Mydei’s back desperately, feeling for a deep puncture wound that was no longer there. Petrichor and sweat had taken the place of blood and soot in his nostrils
“Shh. You're okay now,” that syrupy voice soothed, running a hand through his hair. “You're okay.”
The room was already pitch black, and still Phainon sought refuge from the world in Mydei's skin. It was only then that he realized the position he was in, his body splayed out to the side while he clutched around Mydei's waist. He'd already had his head in Mydei's lap when he woke up. This was not how they usually slept.
“...I… I didn't wake you again, did I?” Phainon muttered, quiet and muffled. A trickle of blood from a nose. Terror placed a lump in Phainon’s throat, chin digging into Mydei’s pectoral as Phainon looked up. “A-Are you hurt? Did I–!?”
Another shush as a loving stroke gently guided his head back down. “No, you did not… and I am a light sleeper. I would have woken up at some point regardless.”
Yes, then, he thought unspoken. Phainon let out a heavy sigh, fingers taken to tracing the chiseled muscles of Mydei's unmarred back, taking particular interest in a space midway up his spine.
“Another nightmare, then?” Mydei asked.
Phainon nodded, met with a light, airy hum. This was a common enough occurrence by now that Mydei's first guess was usually the correct one. If ever Phainon were to wake up screaming, there was only ever one culprit; Himself.
“I'm sorry,” Phainon said.
Mydei shrugged, felt but unseen in the darkness. Once the thundering of his own pulse calmed, he could hear the soft patter of rain beyond their open window, a cooling of the summer heat. Phainon burned so hot that Mydei always felt cold by comparison, and in turn, holding Phainon must've felt like caressing a boiling pot of water. He hoped the breeze provided some relief, at least.
“I'm sorry,” he repeated.
A chuckle filled out his ears, soft as wool and gentle as the lamb. “How many times is that, now?”
“Only twice,” Phainon said. He's been known to repeat himself much more than that.
“Mm-mm,” Mydei shook his head. “Total, I mean.”
Ah. Total. “...Ten thousand, eight hundred and thirty five.” Only thirty three million, five hundred thirty-nine thousand, five hundred and one to go.
“And how many until you'll feel as though you've said it enough?”
Phainon froze. “I'm… not sure,” he lied. Mydei knew just as well that he had lied, though he chose to spare Phainon on this particular night.
They hold each other under the cover of night for untold minutes, both in the nude and listening to the drip of rain off the awning behind their heads. Soothed by the melody of Mydei's heartbeat and a pair of hands diligently combing through his unkempt hair, Phainon's shoulders finally go slack as his mind melts.
“I… I want to cry,” he whispered, quite mindlessly.
Mydei stilled at this, and a brief horror eclipsed him. How selfish he was to ask the man he'd just murdered with his own two hands for something so intimate. He had no right, no right at all–
“I'll see what I can do,” Mydei said.
“I'm sorry.”
“Oh, hush,” he admonished, gently guiding Phainon's head from his chest so that he could sit up.
Phainon hated asking for these sorts of things, no matter how willing a participant Mydei was, nor how often he insisted that Phainon ask when he needed them.
Though Amphoreus’ plight had long since reached a happy enough end, and Phainon could spend his days lavish with the freedom provided by the Exotale, some wounds ran too deep for victory alone to heal. Etched into his bones and woven into the sinew that made him man were the scars of thirty three million lifetimes lived and twelve times as many stolen. His body still burned, and for it could produce no tears. On these nights where the shadow of grief loomed heavier than most, he could do little more than press his wary cheek against Mydei's face as their bodies melded together and entrust his lover to take care of the rest.
And so he did. Mydei took Phainon into his arms so willingly he could almost forget how heavy that shadow's presence was, forget the sickening crunch of bone and trachea beneath his grip and let Mydei's tears wash away the blood that stained his face.
Mydei breathed shallowly, a trained act, he was sure, as their hands clasped together, cheek resting against cheek. Phainon tried not to think about anything at all while they sat there, silent as always, waiting for the first trickle to run down his face.
Only sometimes did Phainon wonder what Mydei was thinking, each time he was asked to bring himself to tears, though he knew just as well that he'd drive himself to insanity before he ever received a satisfactory answer. His willingness alone was more than Phainon ever deserved, and so he did not take it for granted nor seek to understand it in any way Mydei did not wish him to.
The first tear struck Phainon's face cold, as most things were, and evaporated just as quickly. It was soon joined by another, and another, and another.
Mydei was an elegant crier, likely because it was not something he often chose to do, so he did not like to make a fuss about it when he did. His shoulders did not rack themselves the same way Phainon's did. He did not seek comfort in Phainon's side, the same way he did Mydei's. In fact, Phainon believed Mydei much preferred such affairs to be kept between himself and whatever four walls he chose to hide behind whenever he did need to let go of his sadness.
Emotion overtook him quickly, and a dry sob escaped his lips. The wetness of Mydei's face transferred to his own, where it lived a short life before turning to steam. In those precious few seconds before the moisture billowed up between them, Phainon felt the smallest sliver of burden lift off his shoulders. In this room, beneath these covers, beside this man, he could cry the same as any man, mourn the losses he often couldn’t, feel the soft ebb of melancholic grief spread throughout his chest. The inferno forged by dozens of millions of firelights was the closest it could ever be to extinguished by Strife’s tears.
“I love you,” Phainon said.
“And I love you. Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?” Mydei asked.
Phainon contemplated, shifting in Mydei’s embrace. Mydei sensed his apprehension and did not shy away from it. A hand pulled Phainon’s wrist up to his face, offering it a place to rest over his cheek, right beside– his neck. Phainon drew his hand back like he’d been sliced by the hard outline of Mydei’s jaw, and no longer was there a need for words, for in all of Phainon’s lifetimes, there was only one where he’d ever placed his hands upon Mydei’s neck.
“Ah,” Mydei breathed. Phainon nodded a sad, solemn little thing as the tears collected on the side of his index finger ceased to be.
Though that Phainon, the first Phainon– Khaslana– was no more, his memories still remained. So heavy was the toll of that one single lifetime, where he felt Mydei’s body break and go limp beneath his own hand, that he could no longer carry on. The image of one headless, disemboweled body stacked atop another of a broken neck was passed down to each iteration of himself alongside the torch of deliverance, serving as a grim reminder of why they must keep fighting. Why they must suffer as each Phainon that came before them. Better him than any of the rest.
And now, that man who had become so synonymous with pride and prowess in his mind embraced him with the tender touch of a starcrossed lover, soft hands uncalloused and body free from the scars of war, and Phainon thought, perhaps selfishly, that he would do it all again a million times over if he must. Mydei held him and wept as though he expected as much.
In the absence of any more hands left to couple together, a great wing unfurls from Phainon’s back, cresting over Mydei’s shoulders and enveloping him in its radiance.
Mydei tutted, spurred to life by a perceived provocation. Without ever lifting his cheek from Phainon’s face, two of his own gilded wings clinched around Phainon’s. A second wing from Phainon’s back joined, pincered all the same. A final two from the small of Mydei’s back came to wrap around Phainon’s waist, trapping him at Mydei’s side.
“No fair! You have more wings than I do!” Phainon protested.
“All is fair in love, my sweet,” Mydei cooed, placing a chaste kiss beside Phainon’s crinkled nose.
“I think there’s a part of that phrase you may be forgetting…” he muttered.
Mydei shook his head. “Not forgetting. Omitting. Love is all I concern myself with when it comes to you.”
Hands and wings alike tangle around each other, and as Phainon’s eyes adjust to the dark, he began to make out each one of Mydei’s sincere, softened features. The gentle crest of his brow, the fondness in his red, puffy eyes, the placid curve of his lips and the snaggling tooth that rested between his smile. Phainon reached up, swiping a thumb beneath Mydei’s eyes and whisking away the residual moisture on the cheek reserved only for Mydei’s sorrow, where tears flowed freely to his chin. Before Phainon ever had the chance to draw his hand back this time, Mydei’s head tilted into his palm.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” Mydei grinned, with just a hint of exasperation to his voice as he entertained Phainon’s repetition a second time. “And in case you were wondering, that is the ninety third time you’ve told me as much.”
Phainon cocked a brow in disbelief. “That can’t be possible. I’ve said it way more than that,” he insisted, their cheeks finally pulling apart.
Mydei nodded sagely. “I do not deny it. I was only referring to today.”
A small blush spread across Phainon’s cheeks. “A-Ah. You keep count?”
“Yesterday it was two hundred and thirty.”
Phainon hummed. How silly for him to forget so often how sentimental a man Mydei was, and how deeply he cherished the simplicities they both fought so long and so hard for.
“Sounds like I have some catching up to do, then, no?”
Wandering hands trace patterns around the base of Mydei’s wings while the angel holding him captive in a cage of gilded wings leaned over for a true kiss. Lips brushed against each other, tongues touched, and two bodies came together for a kind of lovemaking that could only arise from the joining of two souls threaded together since the dawn of time itself.
And through it all, Phainon would be loved, because he had no choice in the matter at all. Because he must.