Chapter Text
There was a man in the middle of the road. A man. An absolutely ass-naked man, sitting in the middle of the road. Just sitting there. Naked as the day he was born. In the middle of the road.
Cor stared at him.
The man stared back.
They stared at each other.
“Hullo,” said the naked man in the middle of the road.
“Hello,” Cor replied.
“I seem to be lost,” said the naked man in the middle of the road.
“Seems like,” Cor replied.
The naked man in the middle of the road scratched idly at the dip of his sternum and made no move either to stand up or to cover himself. He just continued to sit there, watching Cor with the oddest look on his face. Like he didn’t quite know what to make of him.
“Where am I?” Asked the naked man in the middle of the road.
“Horse lords,” Cor cursed, wearily.
Why was it the weird ones. Why was it always the weird ones.
The naked man in the middle of the road seemed both deeply distrustful of breeches and equally concerned by the concept of a shirt, but had eventually consented to put both on while Cor did up the buttons for him, since—as he explained through continual colorful commentary—he had always assumed they were ornamental and served no purpose and had just thought they looked nice. Once he had clothes on he demurred shoes completely and rather than ride Cor’s horse sat down in front of the gelding, squinting as he stared into the horse’s eyes.
Cor gave up and went to set up camp right there at the side of the road. He tried clicking to call Roach over, but the gelding wickered and snorted and turned back to the stranger, totally ignoring his owner.
Fucking horses. He never trusted them for a reason.
They just stood there—man and horse, nose to nose—communing for nearly an hour before the man came over to Cor’s fire, which he had been struggling to light for reasons he couldn’t figure out. The man stared down at it.
“You aren’t very good at this.” Cor glowered. “I remember you being better at this.” Cor chose not to unpack that statement. The man flicked his eyes towards the fire and a moment later it sprang to crackling life, so bright it was like the flames were super-saturated with reds and golds.
Cor yelped and jumped two feet back. He looked up at the man, who looked very smug.
“Thanks,” he snapped. “I know how to use flint and steel.”
“Of course you do,” the man agreed. “But that shan’t do you any good.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your hearth fire,” the man explained, as if he was talking to a small child. “You live on the road, Lion of Shang. Your hearth is here.” He paused, then added, “It would be, were it not here.” He pointed at himself. “There must be something I can do about that.” He looked suddenly consternated as he crouched down by the fire, peering into it.
For the first time, Cor was able to get a good look at the man as he sat, staring into the flames. He was somewhere between thirty and forty with a slim, almost feline face: sharp jaw and slightly crooked nose, knife-blade cheekbones, an expressive mouth and heavy-lidded hooded eyes that would have been sultry had his brow not been too heavy for them. His hands were slender and long-fingered, tactile with an odd kind of graceful finesse. His hair—a flyaway, boundless kind of curl that didn’t seem entirely possible under the constraints of gravity—was the oddest color Cor had ever seen, a red so close to purple it looked like wine, dark and rich. When it caught the light, it glowed like fire.
It was definitely his natural hair. Definitely. Cor had gotten an eyeful earlier.
Up close, finally able to study this odd man, it was impossible to notice that his hair, however unique, was less striking than his eyes. Cor shuddered, resisted making the sign against evil.
His eyes were molten gold, his irises black pits before endless brilliant liquid light reached his eyelids. There were no whites to his eyes whatsoever, and as he rolled his sleeves up, stuck both hands into the fire, his irises lit up like they were the flames, glowing from within.
The fire did nothing to harm him. He just sat there, eyes glowing, settled down on his haunches, then smiled and closed his eyes.
“You aren’t on fire,” Cor said.
“Obviously,” the man agreed.
“You stuck your hands in the fire, but I don’t see your Gift anywhere.”
“Oh. Do I need that?” Cor’s silence seemed to be enough of an answer, because a moment later the man’s hands were limned in a flickering light that twisted beneath the fire like liquid metal over his skin. The longer Cor looked at it the less he was able to tell what color it was, shifting between metallic ruby and gold and sapphire, brilliant diamond blazing at the center. Before too long, he had to jerk his head away and look elsewhere. It was giving him a headache. “Is that better?”
Cor the Immortal knew all of about three things about magic and two of them were ‘never startle a mage who is doing something you don’t understand’ while the third was ‘Old Thak is never a good sign’ so he abided by his good sense and said nothing. But. He was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to be able to turn the Gift on and off, and he was also pretty sure it was usually one or two colors and stayed that way. It didn’t do...whatever this was.
When the man pulled his hands back the flames were suddenly so much dimmer that it took a moment for Cor to realize that was just what normal campfires looked like. He stared at the man suspiciously as he inspected his hands, the gemlike fires of his Gift vanishing back beneath his skin.
“What did you do?” Cor asked. He was wary, as all Shang were, of the Gift. Growing up with Regis ten feet away had robbed Cor of the belief that some Shang held of the Gift as a crutch, but in return he had gotten all the more careful around mages, especially ones he didn’t know. He’d seen what people did at the University in Corus, and he was perfectly happy to stay far away from that.
“You know? I haven’t the foggiest. Well. I sort of have the foggiest. It occurred to me that since I’m here, you see, nobody else in th whole world would be able to light hearth fires and that would certainly cause a ruckus, so I suppose I told them all to just…go about their business. The fires, I mean,” he clarified, like that clarified anything. “Not the world. Not even a Great God can get the world to go about its business if it doesn’t want to be. They’ll just be sadder for a bit—the fires, not the Great Gods. They won’t be much good for anything that any other fire couldn’t do.” The man sighed gustily. “I do so hate causing a ruckus unintentionally.”
He genuinely sounded morose about the prospect, which was confusing, as Cor still didn’t have the slightest clue what the prospect even was. He pressed a hand to his forehead, pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache.
“Who,” he began at last, “Who are you?”
“I’m fire,” the man replied. Like it was obvious. He raised his eyebrows, almost mocking. “Well, not all fire, obviously. Can you even imagine me working a forge?” He shuddered, baring his teeth. “Mithros is welcome to that, I shan’t touch the stuff. I am the hearth fire, the bringer of light and warmth, healer of the sick and cooker of food, apotropaic and warding. I am the first flame brought into life on this world to make and bring anew and destroy when I was done with it. I am spark and wildfire and home but you,” and here he reached out, pinched Cor’s cheek, giggled, “You may call me Ardyn, Cor the Immortal, Lion of Shang.”
Cor stared.
Cor stood up.
“I,” Cor said, “am going to go jump in the nearest stream, because I am hallucinating.”
The man was still there when Cor got back, having apparently dug through Cor’s packs and come up with his kettle and set it to boil. Roach was lipping through the packs, and as Cor watched his horse pulled his mess kit free.
“Thank you,” Ardyn told his horse. His horse made a snuffling noise as if to say no problem.
“What are you doing.” Ardyn didn’t look up at Cor’s not-question. He just hummed.
“Making tea.”
“I have fifteen more miles to ride today,” Cor tried. Ardyn ignored him. “Why are you making tea. And settling in.”
“Because.” Ardyn finally did look at him. Facing him full-on, Cor was struck again by how very, very pretty he was. “You found me, obviously. Don’t you know that means I am your problem now? That’s how quests work.”
“What,” Cor said.
“What do you mean, what.”
“What do you mean quests.” Cor the Immortal hated two things: that fucking nickname and quests. Even the concept of quests was leery to him, left him on-edge. He was not Gods-chosen and had no interest in being—he’d met Sarralyn Salmalín and no, thank you. He was good. “I’m not on a quest.”
Ardyn huffed, grabbed the pot in the fire, and took it out like it wasn’t at all hot. That was a new spell. Why did he keep using his Gift for the oddest things. “You weren’t on a quest,” he corrected, pouring the tea. “Now you are. I am here,” he pointed at the ground, “not here .” He pointed at the fire. “You need to fix that.”
“Put you...in the fire?” Cor felt like he was having two conversations and one of them was going completely over his head. This was like discussing shit with Regis but worse. “Burning those with the Gift has been illegal in the Eastern Lands for centuries.”
Ardyn stared at him for a very long time, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed. Just stared at Cor, dripping wet, while he held a teacup. Slowly took a sip. Stared some more. Finally turned to Roach. “Was he always this stupid,” he asked the horse, “or did I land on his head and knock all the brains out of him?”
Roach blew out his nostrils. Ardyn gasped, affronted, wagged his finger. At the horse. “Don’t be rude,” he chided, and Cor decided he needed that tea, actually.
“I’m taking you to Corus,” he told Ardyn, “and then I’m giving you to Regis and you’re his problem.”
Ardyn sighed, almost longingly. “Do you know how much I wish it worked like that? I would kill for this to work like that.”