Chapter Text
It wasn't the first reported case of incomplete corruption, but it was the first one this close to Mydei.
He watched, held back by his uncle as his mother and father fought, his mother desperately trying to get Eurypon to snap out of it. It was horrible, watching his parents beat each other with fists and whatever else they could lay their hands on. Actually, his mother only ever used the objects to defend or attempt to restrain, dedicated to not harming her husband too much.
Eurypon, on the other hand, looked too far gone. His eyes were deep pools of black, the veins in his arms took on a similar hue, ridding his skin of the lively red and replacing it with a dreary pallor that made him look ill. While Gorgo's hands were fierce yet protective, Eurypon's were aggressive and violent. Mydei had never seen his father swing his fists around so carelessly, throw things with such voracity…
He was scared, squirming in Krateros's hold, wanting his parents to stop fighting.
Eventually, it became clear what the result of all this violence was going to be. Krateros scooped Mydei up and flung him over his shoulder. As he ran away from the scene, Mydei screamed, pounding on his uncle’s back to go and help his mom.
“Let me go!” He squirmed in Krateros’s hold. “We have to help her!”
Krateros didn’t respond, he just kept running away.
The last time Mydeimos ever say his mother alive was as his father drove a knife straight into her chest.
“NO!” He screamed and screamed and screamed until the screaming turned to wailing and then sobbing. His body finally gave out after an hour of trying to escape his uncle’s hold. He passed out and didn’t wake up until the next morning.
*
Something was wrong with the Titankin in Castrum Kremnos. A strain, a mutation, something evolutionarily more complex. The Black Tide didn’t turn the people into disfigured monsters designed to be faster and stronger than their prey, it possessed them. The Titankin were suddenly walking around wearing the faces of loved ones.
And the one ruling them all was Mydei’s own father, Eurypon.
It made fighting them harder.
Mydei did his best to make it quick, but killing Titankin was hard. If he beheaded them, they’d simply grab their head and heal themselves. If he stabbed them in the heart, the brain, or anywhere else, they’d keep moving like it didn’t matter.
Destroying their bodies beyond repair was the only way to kill them. They had to be chemically changed, destroyed, in order to stay dead.
Acid was the quickest, but not incredibly accessible. That left fire.
Mydei once read somewhere, that dying by fire was one of the worst ways to go. He hoped that wasn’t true, but it probably was. The Titankin aren’t silent when they die, their screams are just as loud as any human’s.
He grimaced as another screech tore apart the vocal chords of another Titankin.
“Mydei! Catch!” Leonnius tossed a lighter at him as he ran passed, dumping a cannister of gasoline along a perimeter of a Titankin camp.
Heshastion, Perdikkas, Ptolemy, and Peucesta were all still inside the encampment, keeping the Titankin distracted while Leonnius and Mydei set up the true trap.
He hated it, resorting to tricks to kill off beings that would otherwise be humans walking beside him. As this point, it was only a matter of time before he or one of his friends got possessed by the Black Tide… only a matter of time until they were killing each other.
Leonnius dumped the last of the gasoline and started sprinting towards the others. “I’m going to tell them it’s time to leave! Get ready!”
Mydei could barely hear him by the end of his statement, the man was running as fast as he could to free the others of their burden. He righted himself, readying his hand on the lighter, ready to flick and drop at a moment’s notice, but grip still firm so it doesn’t slip early.
“Mrrp?”
Mydei flinched at the sudden and unexpected noise. He was used to screams and violence… not… pleasant and curious chirping?
“Mrrp!”
He turned his head and saw a… curious little orange creature.
“What are you doing here?” Mydei asked, as if the small creature could understand Kremnoan. “Go, shoo!”
“Mrrr!” The thing pranced in place, almost doing a little dance.
It seemed completely ignorant to the suffering around it, the buildings on the brink of collapse, the gray sky, and rubble surrounding them, the blood staining the streets… it ignored all of that in favor of yelling at Mydei and doing a jig.
He had woken up that morning, right? He wasn’t dreaming?
My name is Fig Stew!
Ah, voices in his head. This one felt… more real, though, not like the usual ones.
Mydei blinked at the creature. “Fig Stew?”
It chirped and bounced. He chose to interpret that as an affirmative.
“Heh,” Mydei said to no one in particular. “I must be hallucinating. Is this what people see? In their final moments?”
Nope! They usually see something much worse!
Mydei flinched. The voice was still cheery, but delivered such a blunt message. “Of course,” he amended. “That was insensitive of me.”
Would you like the power to save them?
He blinked. Save them? The Titankin?
Form a contract with me! I give you powers and you give me raspberry pies!
Mydei’s gaze finally left the creature to turn back to where Leonnius had run off. He can’t believe his brain chose this moment to go insane.
“Go away,” he whispered, begging the figment of his imagination to go away. “I have to focus.”
“Mydei!”
He perked up at the sound of Hephastion’s shout. “Be ready!”
Leonnius passed the line first, Ptolemy and Hephastion not far behind him. Pueucesta and Perdikkas brought up the rear. As soon as they passed the line of gasoline before him, Mydei flicked the lighter and dropped it. Titankin, not intelligent enough for self-preservation, ran right into the fire. Mydei quickly joined his friends as they ran away from the scene.
They ran until they got back to their base, what used to be Mydei’s home.
“Is anyone injured,” Perdikkas asked immediately.
“Ugh,” Ptolemy collapsed onto the ground and rolled over. “I hate running.”
Hephastion lightly nudged him with his foot. “Shut up unless you’re dying.”
Their heavy panting filled the safe entryway of the place Mydei once called home. He’s grown since those days. Home is no longer a place, it’s people. These people.
He sighed and leaned against the wall, sliding down to the floor. A warm hand settled on his shoulder.
“Hey,” Hephastion whispered gently. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Hephastion shot him a look, one that said he didn’t believe a word of it.
“I don’t need medical attention,” Mydei clarified.
The other sat next to him, pressed to his side. “I’d argue otherwise, but none of us really hold a psychology degree, do we?” He nudged Mydei.
Despite himself, Mydei smiled at the horrible attempt to make him feel better. The smile quickly faded, however, as his usual stern look took over.
“I tire of this.”
Hephastion raised a brow, sarcastic comment clearly on the tip of his tongue but holding back. Probably something like, You mean to tell me you’re not having the time of your life?
He took in a deep, unsteady breath, not addressing Hephastion, but the room. “I think it’s time.”
Ptolemy’s head snapped up from where it was on the floor, the others also moved to look at Mydei.
“Mydei,” Peucesta began. “You don’t mean…”
“It’s gone on long enough, hasn’t it?” Mydei’s voice didn’t waver, he words were strapped in steel. “If we kill the Titankin King, surely they all follow suit? Or become less powerful? There has to be a king for a reason.”
“The king hasn’t… turned, though,” Peucesta countered. “Are you sure you’re ready to—”
“I don’t have the luxury to be ready,” he snapped. “People are dying.”
Several pairs of eyes blinked at him.
“Nah,” Ptolemy’s head fell back to the floor. “Sorry, boss, but intel is a little dry right now. We need time to prepare before we go charging in. Otherwise, it’s a suicide mission.”
“Ptolemy’s right,” Perdikkas agreed. “We can’t impulsively approach the king, he’s surrounded by dozens if not hundreds of the most powerful Titankin.”
“We don’t—” Mydei took a deep, grounding breath. “Not immediately. But we need to start making it our top priority.”
Hephastion’s hand went to his own and Mydei gripped it like it was his only tether to the real world, the only thinking holding him together.
“Strategy meeting tomorrow,” Leonnius suggested. “Just not tonight. I need a fucking feast of a dinner and three weeks worth of sleep in one night.”
The boys eat… not a feast, but they do make their way through several cans of beans and some bread Mydei had found the time to make earlier in the day. It wasn’t the greatest, as he really only had flour and water and not much else to work with, but it still tasted comforting.
That night they all piled into the same room. Several mattresses had been pushed together to make one large one. There was no rhyme or reason to how they climbed in or ended up, so long as they could feel each other when they inevitably woke up in panic, it was okay.
Mydei settled in as best as he could with the dawning dread taking over his body.
“I saw something today,” Mydei spoke in the quiet, dark room. No one responded, waiting for him to disclose more information. “A hallucination.”
That got Perdikkas to sit up. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” He shuffled up the bed to hold Mydei’s face in his hands. “How long was it? How many times have you hallucinated it? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Mydei swatted at the hand in his face. “I don’t know, maybe a minute or two? But I could hear it in my head… Clearly.”
Perdikkas’s mouth pressed into a straight line. “First time?”
Mydei nodded.
Silenced passed for a beat before Ptolemy spoke up. “What was it?”
“I don’t know, something weird. This little chubby bald cat thing offered me powers in exchange for raspberry pies.”
Off to the side, Hephastion made a noise, clearly holding in a laugh.
“This isn’t funny—”
Hephastion waved his hands up in surrender. “No! No, it’s not funny. It’s just, with what you were talking about earlier and how you were addressing this in such a grave manner, I thought you were going to say something about like… wanting to… nothing. I’m just relieved. It’s a relieved laugh.”
Peucesta hummed. “Hephastion, despite his lack of tact, has a point, Mydei. How concerned are you about this hallucination? Are you sure it was one?”
The thing was there one second and then it wasn’t. You know my family’s history. It is only a matter of time before that madness finds me.
“You’re right,” Mydei brushed it off. “I was worried over nothing.”
He turned, curling himself into a ball and trying to avoid eye contact with all of them.
“Goodnight,” he said with a note of finality.
A chorus of goodnight’s sounded around the bed.
A hand reached out for his own and pulled it from his comfortable little ball. “We love you, Mydeimos. Thank you for telling us. Let me know if you experience this again.”
He didn’t bother acknowledging the request.
*
3 years ago…
They had just wrapped up a party to celebrate Mydei’s eighteenth birthday. He’d been without his parents for two years and without his uncle for six months. His family got torn away from him before he was ready.
You can’t leave me!
His friends from school and camp filled that void easily. They’d all lost their own families as slowly migrated to Mydei’s house when it happened. It made sense that the young and able were the ones surviving, the ones capable of running away, of fighting back.
You’re the reason we can’t be a family anymore!
Seeing as it was his first birthday without a member of his original birth family, Mydei was feeling down. The boys started to clean up and told him he wouldn’t be helping, seeing as it was his birthday. Rather than fight it, he took a step onto the back patio for a moment to himself. The air was warm and humid, it felt as oppressive as his own inner turmoil.
You aren’t even my real dad!
He sat on one of the loungers, gazing at the setting sun.
It wasn’t long before he heard the door open and shut, a single pair of footsteps approached before a person sat next to him on the lounger. Hephastion didn’t say anything, he was typically the best at reading Mydei’s moods.
“I’ll never forget my last words to any of them,” Mydei confessed quietly. “They were… horrible.”
The last time he had a conversation with his mom had been a fight. His last conversation with his father when he was coherent, a fight. The last time he saw Krateros also ended in a fight.
“I don’t want to do that again,” his voice began to break. “I don’t want the last words spoken to the people I love to hurt them.”
Hephastion tilted his head in thought, also staring out at the setting sun.
You can’t leave me! You’re the reason we can’t be a family anymore! You aren’t even my real dad!
Mydei curled in on himself, pressing his eyes with his palms, willing the tears to not fall, not today.
“Maybe it’s corny,” Hephastion began. “But if you fight with any of us, just end the conversation with ‘goodnight’.”
A hand reached out to tuck a piece of red-tipped blond hair behind his ear.
“‘Goodnight’ because it is sweet and not as final or foreboding at ‘goodbye’.”
Maybe it was corny, but Mydei liked it and adapted it into his principles immediately. Should a conversation ever end on a sour note, or if he was unhappy with his final words, he could simply end it with goodnight.
“Thanks,” he said after several minutes of silence. “I think I’ll do that.”
*
Mydei was tense the morning after he confessed to seeing a hallucination. He understood that the hallucination itself was silly, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t turn violent. He’d always had… issues holding back. Repressing only works when you didn’t feel like you were on the verge of snapping at any moment. And he felt that. Titans, did he feel it.
He moved through the day like it was any other. It was his turn to make breakfast, and if the eggs were a little overdone and too salty, he’d deny doing it on purpose. Not that the others would mention it, they knew what it meant if Mydei’s food wasn’t perfect, but they had the rest of the day to make it up to him.
After breakfast was the first strategy meeting with the end goal of finally killing Mydei’s father, sitting on a Titankin throne. Mydei hadn’t seen the Titankin King in several months, but his father still mostly looked like himself rather than a Titankin. The thought of having to look his father in the eyes as he killed him… seeing the loving father that raised him turn into a monster over the course of several years… he could feel his heartbeat in his ears, his blood rushing through his veins, and his gaze lose focus as fury settled deep within his bones like it was meant to be there.
Several days passed without incident. They went out on rescue missions, to gather intel, or rations. Other than that, they stayed hunkered down and planned, planned, and planned. Mydei understood a lot of battle strategy, since both his parents were ex-military, but Ptolemy really shined in those moments. With them both combined, they were able to find weak spots in their strategies.
In their childhood, it was a reoccurring joke that a chess match between Mydei and Ptolemy would never end.
It wasn’t entirely true, but there was a chess table in the corner of the room still frozen in place from their last game, just waiting for the day the two would pick it back up again.
*
Several months passed and it was his birthday again.
“Sorry, it’s not really a cake,” Puecesta apologized, setting a dinner roll on the table. “We’ll have to go scavenging for anything fancier. But happy birthday, Mydei!”
Hephastion’s arms looped around Mydei’s neck, carding his head to his chest. “Our little baby in the group is twenty-two. Can you believe it?”
“You’re only a month older than I am,” Mydei grumbled.
“He still pouts like a baby,” Leonnius countered. He stuck a candle in the roll and lit it. “Make your wish, Mydei.” And make it count, goes unsaid.
Truth be told, he was out of wishes. Let this be over, was chanted every morning. Let me wake from this nightmare, was repeated every night.
I wish…I wish to know peace again… someday.
He blew out the candle.
*
“I’m going to look over that way,” Leonnius pointed towards the left half of the store. “You wanna start on the opposite and we’ll meet in the middle?”
Mydei nodded and headed towards his half of the store. Most stores were ransacked in Castrum Kremnos long ago, meaning the only real tuff to scavenge was tucked away in home that no one no longer resided in. Mydei didn’t like breaking in to people’s home, not that any of them particularly enjoyed it, but he was vehemently against doing it.
He wasn’t naïve enough to think the others wouldn’t. Maybe they figured that if he never witnessed it himself, he wouldn’t be too mad at them. However, distracting him so they could do so meant someone had to take Mydei to a normal scavenging place, like a grocery store.
Mydei walked down the aisles of the store, passing by the rotten produce and empty shelves.
“Mrrp!”
He froze, boots allowing the dust to settle on the floor around him.
“Mrrp, mrrp!” Hello!
He didn’t want to, but he had to turn his head, had to make sure the little creature was consistent with what he saw all those months ago.
There are no raspberry pies here!
The thing—Fig Stew—blinked up at him. Mydei didn’t respond. Instead, he looked back ahead and continued walking.
“Mrrp!” Fig Stew followed him.
Mydei continued to ignore him, not even bothering to look at it. It didn’t deter it, but he wouldn’t feed the illusion.
If you ever want those powers, Fig Stew said, All you have to do is say, ‘I accept’!
Mydei would not be doing that. He picked up a random snack cake off the bottom shelf and checked it over. Rats had obviously gotten in to it. He set it back down, ditching the box of nothing.
Anything that was present had either long expired or gotten to by vermin. In order to not look at Fig Stew, Mydei watched the ants on the ground. Several more aisles down and he managed to find some oatmeal. It had expired by a couple years, but he hoped it was salvageable.
“Hey, Mydei,” Leonnius met back up with him in the middle of the store. “Good think we grow a lot of our own food now, huh?”
Mydei nodded, showing off his oatmeal.
Leonnius inspected it. “Maple? Titans, it’s been so long since I’ve had anything maple flavored. What about you?”
He thought on it a bit. “Maybe the last time my parents made honey cakes.”
The other made a face. “You put maple syrup on top of your already sweet honey cakes?”
Mydei shrugged, a soft pink tinging his cheeks.
“That sweet tooth of your’s will get you in trouble someday, Mydei.” Leonnius put the oatmeal in his pack. “Let’s get out of here. It’s fucking depressing.” He grabbed Mydei’s bicep to guide him out of the store.
All the while, Fig Stew was at his feet. And Leonnius didn’t make a single mention of it.
*
The wretched thing followed them home but disappeared shortly after they arrived. He still hadn’t decided if he would tell the others or not. That time, Fig Stew had stuck around for a lot longer. It put him on edge, but he didn’t want to explain it again. He knew it sounded stupid and silly. But it was clearly a sign of something going wrong in his psyche.
“You’re being quiet,” Hephastion said after dinner.
“I’m always quiet.”
Hephastion huffed. “Quiter than usual.” He nudged Mydei. “Stop with the moping. Save it for your emo band.”
Mydei rolled his eyes in response.
The other clicked his tongue. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but if you don’t tell me, I’m going to know exactly what it is.”
Mydei raised a brow and met Hephastion’s gaze. “And how does that work?”
Hephastion grinned. “I know you best!”
Mydei didn’t dignify that with a response, rather using the opportunity to dig into Hephastion’s methods. “What exactly is it that you know?”
The smile dropped as Hephastion leaned in with a serious tone. “You saw it again, right? That hallucination?”
He loved them all, but curse them for being able to read him like a book. “It’s been months since I’ve brought that up.” Neither confirmation or denial.
“We look out for each other,” Hephastion said. “You’d notice if any of us were off about something, surely the same goes for us about you.”
Finally, Mydei leaned into the other, his head resting on the other’s shoulder, receiving the comfort he needed. “It’s just strange. Surely my father’s hallucinations… surely no one else’s were that absurd. They all respond so violently. My hallucination just wants pies.”
Hephastion hummed.
“Then there is the other side. They start harmless so you let your guard down. Then suddenly you are holding your loved ones down in a pool of water, waiting for the struggle to stop.”
“Oh, okay, dark imagery, brother,” Hephastion teased. “I don’t think that’s what this is though. If people experienced silly hallucinations before the darker ones settled in, I’d think we would have heard about it as part of the symptoms by now.”
Just because he was right doesn’t mean that Mydei believed it. He had to worry. The moment he stopped worrying about it would be the moment he finally loses himself. He wasn’t ready for that, he still had a life he wanted to live.
“What if we left Castrum Kremnos,” Mydei finally said. “What if we just let him have the city, pack up, and leave.”
“Who are you and what have you done with Mydeimos?”
Mydei cracked a smile. “Just a suggestion.”
“If you’re serious then you know we’d leave with you,” Hephastion stated. “But we know you. You want to save this place more than anything.”
“I do… but at some point, it hurts you all more to stay here than to allow us to leave.”
“Okay, let me rephrase,” Hephastion sighed. “We want to save Castrum Kremnos. This is our home too, dipshit. We’d all rather see it thrive than wither away.”
Mydei nodded against his shoulder. Several moments passed in silence before he sat back up. “Thanks,” he said. “Let’s save Castrum Kremnos together.”
*
The first to fall was Perdikkas.
Mydei had been too busy fighting off Titankin to witness it, but he heard the screams and shouts of the others. By the time Mydei had dealt with the corruption in front of him, the others had huddled around Perdikkas.
When Mydei approached, he saw an arrow sticked straight up from Perdikkas’s chest.
“No…” he whispered.
Ptolemy held Perdikkas, trying to keep him still as the other convulsed. His veins became more prominent, going from purple to black.
None of them knew what to do. They just watched and comforted Perdikkas and each other. Through his seizure, black goop came up from his mouth. Next, his eyes went completely dark.
Gone was his soft, quiet look. His voice that usually carried such kindness and gentleness, broke out in screams of pure agony.
Mydei’s eyes misted. “We… we have to do something.”
But there was nothing that could be done. Eventually, Perdikkas fell still and Ptolemy immediately pressed his fingers to the pulse in his neck.
They all waited with bated breath. A minute passed like it was months.
The final nail in the coffin was Ptolemy shaking his head.
Mydei collapsed to his knees with the rest of them. They sobbed out in the open, mourning their dear friend and brother. The noise would surely lure more Titankin their way, but none of them cared in that moment.
They lost more than just a mere friend that day. They lost a part of themselves. A Perdikkas-shaped hole would forever be in their lives, their dynamic. He was gone.
*
The death of Perdikkas gave them the motivation and momentum to speed up their process. Mydei wanted to kill the Titankin King as soon as the others would allow. He’d do it then, if he could’ve.
Instead, he and Ptolemy doubled down on their intel reach and search. Every rumor was deconstructed, every bit of land was surveyed heavily, not just for information, but survivors and resources as well.
Sometimes Fig Stew was there. He’d been showing up more frequently and staying for longer. One night, Mydei had gone to bed staring at the thing in the corner, begging it to go away. When he woke up, Fig Stew had left.
He remembered being alone in the bedroom one day, about to exit, when he heard Hephastion and Ptolemy fighting.
“You know we aren’t supposed to leave him alone!”
“He’s fine, Ptolemy. You need to trust Mydei in times like this.”
“Of course I trust him,” Ptolemy spat. “But I don’t need that damn hallucination fucking with him right now.”
It hurt Mydei more than he wished it to. He took extra care saying ‘goodnight’ that night.
Mydei had been so caught up in his own mission, that the news Leonnius had passed on a mission alongside Ptolemy hit him like a bag of bricks.
The remaining four of them held on to each other that night, incapable of believing their two of them had already perished in this world.
“Are you sure we can save this place,” Mydei asked Hephastion one night. “Would saving it be worth losing them?”
Hephastion turned to him, water pooling in his eyes. “Nothing could be worth it,” he said. “But I’m not letting them die in vain.”
Shortly after Leonnius died, Ptolemy followed. They mourned again, down to three. Half of them had officially been taken away from them. With them gone, progressed on locating and killing the Titankin King slowed.
Locating was only half the issue, anyway. Mydei still had no idea what weaknesses the Titankin King—his father—had.
Days turned to weeks, turned to months. Early summer had set in once again when Peucesta sacrificed himself. That’s the only way Mydei could see it. Peucesta died to buy him and Hephastion time to grab the survivors and get out of there.
If the two were inseparable before, they got a lot worse with that loss.
Hephastion was the only thing keeping him grounded at that point.
*
Mydei squeezed Hephastion’s hand. The latter had gotten a nasty cold and would be unable to accompany Mydei today.
“The medicine is right next to you. Take more in six hours.”
Hephastion scoffed playfully. “Plan on leaving me alone that long?”
He took the hand in his own and brought it to his face. Tears flowed down his cheeks, the hand interrupting the pathway. “No one can predict what the next few hours will bring. Just be here when I get back.”
Hephastion coughed. It sounded horrible. Wet, rough. Mydei tried to rub his back in comfort.
“It’s not like I can go anywhere else,” Hephastion joked. “Kick his ass and make it hurt. For me.”
Mydei placed a kiss on Hephastion’s cheek. “For everyone. Hell will look like a vacation when I’m done with him.”
Energy left Hephastion at that moment and sleep took him. Mydei took a minute to watch Hephastion’s chest raise up and down. Crazy, how something as simple as watching someone breathe has become such a comfort to him.
“I’ll be back before you wake up.” Even though Hephastion could not hear him, he spoke those words anyway.
*
The late summer sun held no mercy as it blasted Castrum Kremnos with its intense heat. Mydeimos didn’t mind the heat, he quite liked it actually. It made his muscles loose, relaxing his body. He felt like he could breathe easy.
The Titankin King had set himself up in an arena of sorts. Mydei wasn’t sure how they managed to build such a thing, but he would be the one to tear it all down. He’d make sure not a single piece remained.
As always, he ignored Fig Stew, who had been sticking to his side a lot more lately. The creature also seemed to learn that Mydei would not be responding. It didn’t stop it from talking, but there were no pauses waiting for Mydei to speak.
This is going to be dangerous! It didn’t sound like a warning. Rather, Fig Stew sounded almost excited by the notion of danger. Taking on the king of the Titans! Roar!
Mydei’s eyes stayed trained on his path, his feet sure and true with each step he took. Determination cloaked him like a cape, trailing behind him, adding to his dignified air. He wasn’t unstoppable because he simply was, but because he had to be.
Rubble crunched beneath him, he made no attempt at a subtle approach. Once the arena was in sight, his stance got wider, his feet got quicker. He knew to conserve his energy, but the adrenaline building inside him, combined with the grief and anxiety of the past year all piled up within him. He ran.
Whether he was running away from something or towards it remained to be seen.
He grabbed a stray pipe right outside the arena and kicked in the door. It was now or never.
His noise alerted the Titankin to his presence immediately, of course. They charged him, blades, arrows, claws, all pointed at him. He’d never taken on this many before, but it almost didn’t matter. He fought with precision and skill, anyone who didn’t know him would think that Mydei was fighting with an aura of calm surrounding him. But Mydei learned early on the showing he was about to breakdown was weakness, so he built his walls. While his mind was occupied by all the negativity in the world, the grief, the violence, the illness, and eradication of entire societies, his face was a mask of complete control.
Mydei swung his pipe into the outer skull of one of the Titankin, its flesh tearing away easily. He turned and stabbed another in the chest. While they were incapacitated, he dropped a match on their disfigured bodies.
They would never be coming back.
Again, he swung his pipe, knocking one down into another. Match. Light. Drop. A stab through the skull and swinging the pipe with the Titankin still on it, making it collide with several others. Match. Light. Drop.
They would never be coming back.
A Titankin landed a hit on his arm, tearing the sleeve of his shirt and drawing blood. Mydei growled and swung the pipe upwards towards the underside of the Titankin’s jaw. It lashed out as it was knocked back, nicking him in the face. The drew a match, lit it, and tossed it on its face.
They would never be coming back.
You can’t leave me!
He narrowly dodged an arrow, only for another to wedge itself into his thigh. Holding back a scream, he flung the pipe in the direction of the archer. It knocked the Titankin back. It wasn’t enough to distract the Titankin for long, it released another arrow in Mydei’s direction. Mydei was able to get out of the way, but tumbled over some rubble. His hand landed on a dead branch, fortunately. He quickly lit the branch and launched it.
They would never be coming back.
You’re the reason we can’t be a family anymore!
One by one the Titankin piled on him, bruising his ribs, bloodying his body, taking every once of adrenaline away from him. Yet, he fought on. Match. Light. Drop.
They would never be coming back.
You aren’t even my real dad!
He made it to through the hallways of the arena, finally making it to the grand entryway of the stage. His left was swollen shut while his right blinked away blood that kept falling into it. The red tips of his hair weren’t just red with dye anymore as it soaked in the blood falling from his head.
One arm wasn’t doing to great. Maybe a bone was broken, maybe a nerve damaged, maybe nothing at all.
He limped towards the center, where his final target sat patiently waiting for him.
A possessed Eurypon rose as Mydei approached. He didn’t speak a word, just drew a spear from out of thin air and attacked his son without any hesitancy.
The fear drove Mydei to find more energy within him, almost as if borrowing from his future self. The tip of the spear just pierced the first layer of skin on his chest, drawing a thin red line from left to right as he swung out of the way.
Eurypon used the momentum to swing the spear with Mydei’s dodge, pushing him to the ground. Mydei stuck his leg out and swiped at his father’s feet, knocking him down as well. The Titankin king’s head snapped back up and stared at Mydei with soulless eyes. The black pools that replaced the warm brown were endless and cold.
With unnatural speed, Eurypon’s limbs jolted, snapping him upwards like a puppet pulled from a string until he was standing again. Mydei scrambled to follow, only for a kick to be delivered to his gut as soon as he tried.
They would never be coming back. They would never be coming back. They would never be coming back. They would never be coming back.
He had to do this. He needed to stand up.
Stand up, Mydeimos. They would never be coming back. They would never be coming back. They would never be coming back. They would never be coming back.
Through the chanting, through the pain, through the fear and exhaustion, five words stood out, delivered in a squeaky pitch.
Do you accept the contract?
Honestly? He would never accept. Not fully. But in his last moments, curiosity won over any amount of sanity.
“Sure,” he responded to Fig Stew. “What can you possibly do?”
Even though he couldn’t see Fig Stew, he could feel the satisfaction emanating from the wretched thing.
A bright flash encompassed Mydei. He brought his arm up to shield his eyes, squinting at what he was sure would be his final moments.
As the light faded, his body began to scream.
So many signals were being sent to his brain. He was in pain, yet he was healed. He was exhausted, yet he was energized. He wanted to lay down and just once wish he would let defeat win him over, yet he was filled with the urge to persevere.
He stood.
His body was covered in a strange suit, but he didn’t care to look into it. Right now, he wanted to tear the HKS like he tore their family apart.
Mydei let out a battle cry, but if anyone had been around to witness the scene, they would have told you they heard the roar of a lion.
A strange instinct took over, Mydei swung his arm out and red crystals emerged from the ground. The followed the trajectory of his arched movement, making their way towards Eurypon. Mydei screamed again, not as a battle cry, but at the feeling of his bones being pulled from his body, the feeling of his blood solidifying in his veins and poking through his skin in jagged edges.
IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT. IT HURT.
But he did it again.
He launched his other arm and again, red crystals followed his lead to attack the Titankin king. Eurypon was unable to move out of the way, still occupying a human form and therefore, tethered to the ground.
Mydei panted with the effort to keep it together. He lashed out again. The red crystals had pinned Eurypon in place and stabbed him from all over, through a knee, in his stomach, from one side of his neck to the other.
He lashed out again. And again. And again. And again. Red crystals formed all around and from within Eurypon. They expanded and tore apart the body until all that was left was bits of skin hanging limp from the points of the crystals and fresh blood painted the floor a horrifying red.
Mydei dropped to his knees. A flash went off again, much quicker this time, and his bold new outfit was gone, replaced with what he was wearing earlier. There was a big hole in the front of his shirt and several rips and tears on his pants. He took quick inventory of himself. His limbs would be moved without much agony. He was sore, but nothing was broken or causing him so much pain that he couldn’t move.
So he did just that.
He moved. To return to the one person left waiting for him.
*
“Hephastion?”
Mydei tapped on the doorway of the bedroom wear Hephastion went to sleep.
The other didn’t so much as twitch. Mydei got closer, not wanting to jolt the other awake, but too excited to deliver the news to wait. As he got closer, the distinct lack of movement became more noticeable.
“No,” he whispered, quickening his steps. He didn’t even know why he said it out loud.
He collapsed to the side of the bed, reaching out for Hephastion’s hand.
It was cold.
“No,” he said again. “No, no, no, no, no. Hephastion, wake up!”
Hephastion did not respond to the request. His chest remained still, his eyes stayed closed, and his hand was still cold to the tough.
Mydei squeezed the hand and buried his face into Hephastion’s shoulders.
Wasn’t it just a cold? How did it end up like this? Could he not have anything? Did he lose his mom, his father, his uncle, and all his friends, just to finally have the ability to save them all?
As soon as the thought passed his mind, guilt wrapped its dirty claws in his heart and squeezed.
A sob tore itself from his throat. Tears soaked the sheets and Hephastion’s shirt.
If he had accepted Fig Stew’s contract earlier, could he have saved them? Would they still be alive? Was that even real? Or was it all a delusion? Did he finally fall for the Titankin’s black tide? Was this all an illusion?
There was no one around to tell him what was real or what wasn’t. There was no one to bring him back to the physical realm. There was no one.
There was simply no one.
Mydei screamed into the bed, frustrated with the outcome of it all.
It hurt.