Work Text:
The heart of a god does not beat.
It’s not that you need it to anymore. The blood that runs in your veins moves now from habit rather than necessity; no more than an echo of what once was. Sometimes you wonder if this shape you wear is still fitting, if perhaps you should be wind and fire and the scent of burning stone - but there is pride in the craft of it that you are unwilling to let go.
Let them look upon your face, and let them see infinity smiling back. Let them see the terror and the beauty of you, just then, right then, in that perfect knife-edge moment at the very end of them. They cannot know you - but let them try, let them grasp out over the abyss in your eyes; and let every one of them fall.
It’s sweeter that way. It always has been.
You pass over them all, the scattered inhabitants of these wild lands, and sometimes you can almost pity them, if you had remembered pity. Such little lives; brief flickers of mind and deed and soul, leaving already-fading trails against the surface of this world more by chance than intent. Pointlessly exalting each insignificant success, bemoaning even smaller failures, and returned back to ash and dust before most of them ever truly realised what it meant to be alive.
You were never like that. You’re sure of it, in the same bedrock way you are sure of everything. And now you are so, so much more than anything you might have been; you fly, touching the edge of the sky as easily as you deny the plaintive call of gravity. Rock will flow at your command, metal and flesh and water bending with equal ease under your will, and you glory in it, even when it is needed. Making and unmaking, as the very bones of the earth turn aside at your thoughts.
Their bones move just as easily, on the whole. There are individual differences, where one tangled line of destiny - white against the Void - shines a little brighter than another, if you choose to look for it, or connects more closely to many others, but you’ve never wondered too strongly about that.
Destiny changes. You are your own proof, if you ever need any.
There is a price, of course. There is always a price, and you understand that better than you ever could before. But that doesn’t mean you have to pay it personally.
Let them pay. They have to have some use, some grateful return for what you do - unseen by the scurrying flickers of soul beneath you, blind to the burdens you bear, as you weave and seal the ever-breaking threads of this realm. Guiding the miraculous, nursing the birth of new reality, and striking down that which would threaten it.
This is your world, after all.
And so they will run, they will fight, they will die - when you need it. When you want it. Those brief, bright little stars, with those bonds they make - of family, of friendship, of all the little lies that drive their flitting lives - gathered together at your choosing, and so, so sweetly sundered. You watch, you sink your self into the play of it as all the delusions fail, all the false hopes and crafted comforts break apart down in the blood and the dirt and the ashes of the only Game that really matters.
You feel it then. Your own heart echoes with their last beats, a shock sudden moment in your stilled chest, and there is something like a memory with it before the exhilaration hits - but it sweeps aside so easily, a wisp-fragment unimportant against the golden-burn surge of bloody oblation, and you are a god once more.
It doesn’t last, of course. Nothing is eternal - although there are times when you sneer at even that. But the Game must be played. They know it. Not as well as you, but they know it. There are no spectators, but there are rules, and someone has to win. Survival. Existence. The only prizes that matter, and they fight so hard for them.
You never cared what happened afterwards. Perhaps you should have done.
Because then she won.
It was an unremarkable Game, although satisfactory enough in every way you cared for. You descended, struck out in gold and folded midnight, to declare Champion, with your thoughts already turning away from the slaughterhouse chaos below. She was shaking, as you landed, trembling so hard that her broken blade stayed barely in her fingers, still staring down at the split-open shape at her feet. She was young then, with hair as dark as her skin, and blood trailed like jewels across her narrow frame, adding a macabre lustre to the form of her.
She didn’t look at you. Not as you landed, not even as you reached into the shifting folds of almost-fabric that hung from your shoulders and - as your attention swept across the shattered weapon in her hand - withdrew something. The shape shivered under your fingers, solidifying from the weave of nothingness and commanding thought; ideation, given form by the faintest coil of your will. It seemed fitting enough.
“A Champion needs a proper sword, wouldn’t you say?”
Your words were a black silk, licentious in your very own way, and you allowed yourself a smile as the girl shivered again - but the shattered sword dropped from her fingers, and her bloodied hand rose, trance-like, to grasp the hilt of the elegant blade that had sat across your palms. The sense of completion was there and your interest waned, even as you stepped back into the air and threw a final smirk down at the figure below, as she gazed blankly at her new-born sword.
“Don’t I even get a smile?”
She had looked up then, and her stare was obsidian flame.
Everything starts somewhere. You had thought yourself better at seeing when it did, but you had left that arena little more than entertained. You have had a hundred Champions, and they never last long, even by mortal standards. You never really bothered to wonder about the why of it - why those gifted weapons were more often than not turned against their recipient’s throat, so soon after, or how quickly those gleams of life went out. They just never held your interest, before now.
But she hates you.
You have been hated before, of course. Loathed, and loved, and worshiped and despised, with the separation barely acknowledged. Deference or defiance - the difference between dedications has never mattered. They amuse you, either way, and that’s all the use they have ever had.
This is something else.
Your awareness is not a thing easily condensed down - not truly, not for a long time - but here you make that effort, to find her again within the passing years, overlain like a scarlet stain on paths walked by other - uninteresting - lives. To trace the lines of her as she moves, feel the ripples she makes in the fractal weave of fate.
Her hatred is artisan. Exquisite. Refined and renewed and rebuilt a thousand times, honed and heated and folded back on itself again and again and again like the finest steel. It has been a long time since you felt the thrill of mortality outside of the Game, a long time since the razor-edge of raw existence was so keen against your mind in in arena not your own - but this is almost worth acknowledging.
You watch her. Mortal time is such a dull thing - so reactionary, so repetitive - but you watch her anyway. See how she changes, one step to the next, incremental shifts in mind and muscle and ability. Watch as the young, desperate strength that you tasted before begins to mature, as the gifted blade once trembling in her grip begins to steady, as the arrows loosed from her bows start to seek, not just fly. And more, and more again, weapons and the skill for them, and the hard-blood determination as she seals her own taken wounds, as her eyes are raised towards those who would face her, and she carves regret in kind into their sundered flesh.
They know her now. The knowledge of her, the word of her sword and deeds that roam wider even than she does. She never stays still, never settled, never stopping, as if every moment she has lived is a hairbreadth behind her and she will outpace it every time. Some stand against her, challenge her, for malice or bravado or foolishness - you’ve never cared for why before, and you do not now, but it is so much fun to watch. There was no blood on those hands before your Game, and since, they have never been clean.
You name is on her lips with every breath, but she will not speak it. You have made a new play of that, almost - your own game, just the two of you, for as long as it lasts - and you have not won yet. She sees your proffered bargain, every time, and every time she defies you. Hanging by broken nails over a yawning fall; struck down, too many lucky blows from too many willing hands; pressed back, as claws like bloated razors tear into a failing barricade - and you whisper, right into that moment, that sweet-salt inferno of burning breath as the world holds, caught between futures, and you can taste it all over again.
‘Call for me. And I will be there, my Champion, at whatever end you find.”
You have not won yet.
She hates you. You feel it, hot and crimson and seething within her, and she cherishes it like the child she does not have. Will not have. You know this too - you have seen it, as she has travelled into those places best avoided, and dealt with those that dwell within. All things have a price, and you are sure it is one she paid quite gladly.
Time passes, and the pressures of the world wax and wane and demand your heed. You are dimming again, the gilden fires of your core drawing down, and your thoughts turn once more to the Game, where those unchosen offerings of extinguished soul would renew your own.
And she calls your name. It is a sharp jolt through your thoughts; a thing imagined so often that the reality of it is almost a true surprise. You stop - search - spinning your awareness down a thousand threads of shivering reality until you find it, and the world reforms around you again.
She is older now. You know this, you have watched, but somehow it is clearer here, as you step out of the air before her and meet that black-iron stare. There is grey in the thick locks of her hair, and the scarring that sketches its runework patterns across her skin is traced alongside now with fainter lines, etching the edges of past expression onto her features. She stands at the crest of a small hill, your gift-blade in her hands, held up in front of her like an exclamation. But she does not move.
You know this place. The faintest flick of attention confirms it, and a smile curls at the edges of your mouth. Very fitting.
“An unprecedented honour.” Your coat sweeps around you as you dip into a liquid bow, only half-mocking, without once taking your eyes from her face. Her lips are deep, but there is tension in the press of them as she takes a long breath, and you are curious despite yourself.
“Ridgedog.” Your name again, spoken for the second time in a life, and you cannot help but grin as she spits it; as if the word she has carried all these years is acid in her mouth. Her eyes meet yours and there is fear there - of course - but age has not dulled their furious clarity. You step forward, blink-fast, and then you are so close you can feel her breath against your face. It is quite steady. She is quite steady.
“And what can I do for you, my dearest Champion?” You ask - and the response is a surprise even to you, as her eyes narrow slightly, her chin tilting up a little, and she replies.
“I want to play again.”
Silence falls. There are noises within it at first - a thin wind whistles through the vines that clog the ruins here, sweeping fragments of dead leaf and fine dust into the abandoned air, tracing over white-bleach bones poorly buried and the hilt of a broken blade - but the silence is stronger, a thing in its own right, spreading out around you both like smoke, and any real sound dies with it.
You watch her. Look through her, staring so deeply into those dark-burn eyes that you can see the thoughts dancing there - but that one, the truth of it, blazes over everything else so strongly that you barely have to try.
“That’s not how it works.” You reach out and she does not flinch now, as you place one long finger against the flat of the upthrust blade and run it down, tracing the tiny pittings of a lifetime’s use. She shrugs.
“Then make it work.” It is almost a command, and your smile widens at the boldness of it. Your hand drops from the blade and this time she does shiver, as the tips of your paired fingers press gently into the underside of her chin. Her heartbeat betrays her, dancing frantic beneath her flesh, but it does not reach her eyes.
“Why?” There is genuine curiosity in your question, and you do not keep it from the word. She blinks - once - twice - and for a moment she is looking past you, into the shadows of history that lie so thickly here.
“I would die where I began.”
The silence swirls again, so heavy it almost has weight, stirring amongst the overgrown ashes of this place. Your hands settle down either side of the upheld blade, pressed lightly to the chill metal.
“And how would you play my Game, my Champion?” You turn your head, very deliberately, to stare down at the old bones that jut from the earth nearby, then back to her stony features. “You have been very careful. You walk alone; you fight alone. You sleep alone. Who would you play with? Who would care if you died - and whose heart would break to stand against you?” You lean a little closer, until the upright blade splits your face with its own reflection. “What use are you, to me?”
And she smiles.
“Find me one here who does not know my name.” Her voice is low as she speaks but there is an undertone there, a curl of dark pride that stirs a hunger beneath your thoughts, as she leans in, until the blade edge rests against her forehead and the halves of her reflection shimmer beside your own. “I am legend here. I am death, and I am deliverance. I am the monster in your name unspoken. Find one who does not have some thought of me, who would not face this blade in glory or horror - and I will step aside.”
She is right. You hold that stare in your own, and you can see the truth of it. You have watched her, and you have seen how her path - forged in blood, chance, and the raw-steel determination that encases her heart - has crossed back and forth across so, so many others; but perhaps you have not seen how strongly this is true before. It has never seemed important. Heroes usually have so little real interest to you, so little substance to their lauded lives - but she is something else.
How long it has taken, for you to see what that is.
It is… interesting. And you can use it.
“Then my price is your name.”
She blinks. There is surprise there, and the grin is back on your lips as you let go and step up into the air, extending one loosed hand towards the dark figure below. She is puzzled, just for now, and it amuses you.
“My name?” She frowns and you smile, wide and terrible.
“You are legend, true enough. But no more. You will fight, you will fall, and it will cost you everything. You will die in my name, and none shall remember who you ever were.” You reach down, and the world is gilden midnight about you, as she shivers under your stare and the promise within it.
“So tell me, my Champion. Would you like to play a Game?”
She watches you, right back, and she lowers her sword.
“Yes.”
It is not instant. The arena must be selected and even you must prepare. The players must be chosen; those found who are so closely bound that the breaking of fate’s strings is symphony itself. The loss of each will flow through the other, again and again and again, until you can draw the severed ecstasy of it into yourself, and feel your heart’s fire burn once more in the renewed, blazing susurrus of your apotheosis. As their Connections become your own.
It is not instant, but it is swift. There is an impatience in you now, to see how this will run, and each selected soul adds another spark to that desire. You want to see what she will do. There has never been a replay before, and there is an alien thrill to the novelty of that.
At last, it is ready. Sunlight pours down across the chosen space, bright and unrelenting in the morning you have shaped. The arena is a tiered city this time, its inhabitants fled at the sight of you, and you have made what adjustments are required. There is a shimmer faintly to the air a few miles across to the sides; a soap-bubble gleam of focused force, impenetrable as stone; a wall between the open world and this temporary-favoured domain. The players are scattered, held in a frozen moment as you spill your self out across the field, until the light itself is sharp with the edges of you.
Run. Fight. Die. There is no escape; no chance for rescue; no mercy. Nothing but the Game.
And it is extraordinary.
You watch, as you always have, from every part of this place. Whatever you had expected, whatever you had envisioned this to be, the reality is so much sweeter. You have been so careful in your selections, this time. There are masters here, with the first reaction to their plight tempered by years, their realisation-horror almost hidden beneath the smooth mask of fine-honed skills. There are the rising stars, hot with that temporary immortality of youth, and running on the razored edge of reckless luck, pushing their fear aside with bravado and tempered ignorance. There are those that brace others against the world, who take the weight of responsibility on their shoulders and form alliances quickly as their natures dictate; the healers, the defenders, those of silver tongue and warm heart - who hide their mortal dread of this, or wear it, defiant, as a crown.
Yet she falls among them all like a scythe; makes no pact, gives no quarter. She is death itself, just there, and they die with her name torn from their cut throats, the syllables fading into stained air as if never been. There is a very old magic in this price, and you have seen it paid before the walls came up. When they have all fallen here, these unknowingly-honoured souls, even those echoes will be gone.
You keep your promises, after all.
Oh, but let this be eternal. Each shattered life, each vicious-precise cut through bone and flesh and the hot blood splashing into churning earth, and you are intoxicated with it, as the drum-beat of ending echoes is so strong in your chest that it is almost a pulse once more. The flitting ghosts of memory are washed aside in the burning tide, and you are flying again, as if for the first time.
But there is an end to everything, eventually, and so soon you can feel the Game winding down. Few little sparks are still lit up below you now, and you begin to draw together again, pulling in your awareness from the arena-space, trailing unseen fingers of thought across the bright slaughter of it all. Closer, closer, and you focus in, thoughts and self and substance condensing into the smoky air, casting ripples that shiver and dance as they whip aside. There are so very few left now.
Four - and three - then -
- two. Here. The last.
She is not unscatched. Blood runs free from a hundred gashes, parting the dark sheen of her skin with crimson rends. Much of her hair is missing, from the same flame that has run its scalding grasp down across her uneven shoulders, and her leg is bound in rough-efficiency in some construct half-brace, half-tourniquet. But she stands, panting, with her blade held high above her like a judgement. There is some figure beneath her, crumpled back against a low wall, but you barely notice it. Sweat has cut strange patterns in the grime that layers her, tracing the edges of muscle and mapping movement passed, and steam rises as she hoists her weapon higher.
“Ridgedog.” Her voice is low, and harsh with holding strain, but your name is like wine as you condense completely, just behind her, until you can feel the heat of her in even a mortal way. You lean forward and your palms press into her shoulders, feeling the exhaustion sing and shiver beneath her skin. There is salt and blood in the air, and the soft cries of the dying form below, and it is quite, quite beautiful.
“My Champion.” You murmur, and she recoils and relaxes, all at once as your fingers tighten a little more against her. “You are extraordinary.”
She shifts, just so slightly, and you feel the press of her against you, as she looks down and adjusts her grip.
“Finish this.” You murmur, along the ragged line of her ear. “For me.”
Her breathing is the turn of worlds, as the blade shivers in her hands, and she readies to strike.
“That was always my intention.”
The sword swings down, accompanied by a scream - hers, an animal sound like nothing you have ever heard her make - and there is a clash of unaccustomed shock as the blade’s arc continues back, plunging through her bared stomach with all the force she has left. It is a surprise, true enough, and you can see the same on the staring face below, beholding your sudden pinioned tableau - but it is nothing to the pain.
It hurts. It hurts, and for a second you can do nothing under the strange gravity that holds you now, as the slender, through-struck sword sinks back into your almost-flesh, blooming the unfamiliar taste of agony - and she speaks again, forcing words past a jaw locked closed in her own reflection of that hurt.
“You - would take our lives, so - I give you mine.”
Panic. It’s an unfamiliar taste in your mind, icy and cloying and utterly unwelcome, and you can barely remember the last kiss of it. The last time you found yourself unable to act, as the void of uncertainty sweeps open around you - and you hesitate.
Later - much later - you will wonder about that moment. If there was something you could have done differently. Would have done, should have done. And perhaps you are even glad of it - but now, right now, you just feel the bite of your own handiwork blade cut deeper, dragging her blood along with it - spitting and seething and twisted through with something different, something Else, forged in the pure-burn fires of her perfected hate.
“I - can’t kill you.” Her voice is faltering, breath failing in her throat, but her grip on the blade that binds you now is solid, even as her own blood wells up around her fingers. “I can’t stop you - or this Game - but I can make you feel it, as I have. Every single time. Until - someone - can -” She grunts and there is a change in the pressure against you as her body fails, as the last breath spills damply from her lips and she slumps down against the impaling edge. But those senses are merely physical, so far away from the twisting vertigo that whirls about you now.
You have watched her. You have watched her, seen the changes in her, seen the blood on her hands renewed a hundred times; seen her plunge into the darkest places of the world, on guise of aid or vengeance for a thousand different souls. Seen her facing down the dark and the fire alike; seen her make pact and promise, and been amused by what you have watched her learn, unflinching, when your attention strayed that way.
You did not watch her close enough. As the blade bites, as you feel your own will-forge turned against you, echoes of it all flicker like ghosts. Of the shadows she has walked, of the bargains she has made, the half-faded whispers she has listened to. Of the price she has paid - again and again and again - for even this gleam of understanding, this half-lucky chance that you have missed.
A life that has been forged against you, on your own flame.
There is nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run, in the fleeting seconds where you might have considered either - and then it is too late, was always too late, as she flows into the gold-burn of your self, and brings the Game in with her. Every moment of it, her own and every other, reflected back out of the once-shielding brilliance of you. Every racing pulse and frantic gasp at air; every betrayal and alliance and tearing-soul ache of dismay or brief, terrible elation; every second of pure horror as another’s eyes go dull before your own, or black-soul joy as a falling blade is turned aside; as victory and defeat entwine like blooded lovers.
You have seen every one, and truly felt none of them. The play of it, you knew - the searing sacrifice-pulse of ancient pact, stolen or offered and it barely matters which - giddy with the very edge of life that cuts so deeply here. The power of it you have felt, but the mortal reality of it missed you; flying so high above on your black-gold wings.
Run - Breathe. Fight - Shield. Die - Live.
Now you feel it. Now you know it. Every loss, every death, every fragment of every taken life. You feel it, all of it, as if it were your own - and you remember when it was.
You remember the man whose perfected face you still wear.
You remember the ice of his despair, and his gasping, desperate words; spoken so very, very unaware of what it was that he called out to - or what listened; what answered. You remember the last of him, the final knife-edge moment of that once-life, as victory and ashes wove together, and the backlash of salvation cut its cruel price. You remember falling, forsaken at your own hand, when the world was nothing but gold and fire and darkness, and you remember how you burned.
The heart of a god should not beat, yet you were not always so. And now there is thunder in your chest again, a returning rhythm half your own, and a lost name, bloody on your lips.
There will be another Game. When you need it; when you want it.
But the rules have changed.
-