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You love him more than any mortal can and more than anyone ever will.
There is nothing coincidental about how he finds the R-Trus again, wandering into Xenokuni. Nothing is usual about the way the corrupted ones turn a blind eye to his presence there when he wanders in, alone and seemingly defenseless, into the grove where you lay waiting.
At his feet, dandelions sprout. Their heads are raised in perpetual awe, their leaves open palms, following after him in the way only they are capable of. Devout followers of a god that is dying, when he has not even lived half of this life. Worshippers of a crumbling temple and empty altars. Helpless, yet hopeful.
In this dark place, sunflowers peer at him from ground they’re not even meant to thrive on. Here, where there is no sun and there is no light, they burst into life in the presence of the golden boy.
Few things survive here.
Not a single animal does, unless those who have been touched by corruption are counted in, most fauna knowing to steer clear of Xenokuni’s already breaking interiors. First, the forests, Next, it would be the city.
But that time is not coming soon. He had time. Not much of it, but he had time. They all did. Such goes their Fates.
He navigates his way around with ease, gently brushing off the weepy branches in his way.
It doesn't take much for the forest to go along with his wishes. Trees hunch over when he asks, masking his presence and resigning themselves to service without much fuss. They whisper amongst themselves and the whirring wind, old titles falling from the leaves as they rustle.
Lost child, they would call him. Glory seeker, the one who has drunk from the cursed fountain. You, youth.
He does not respond with more than a smile.
This is not a sight that would make sense to mortal eyes. A mere boy wandering a cursed forest as if he were simply walking the path to a friend’s house. Not even those who pride themselves, with all the confidence in the world, as his closest friends would be able to understand this sight. Someone so golden wafting through a familiar darkness.
They can never hope to understand this.
Not quite yet. Not now. Not in this lifetime.
You come out of hiding to welcome him as he steps into your domains, little beings of the void, some of you bouncing about and others stumbling over themselves.
He kneels so he may better reach you. You beam up at him, tails curling around each other, some curling over his knees and his ankles. A few, the much younger ones, are allowed to cling onto his wrists and hop onto his shoulder, snuggling his cheek and welcoming him back home.
“Machiroons,” he decides.
He always does. It is the Name you have carried for many lifetimes, now. This is no baptism, merely a renewal of something that is older than many of the forest’s trees.
You burn. Life sparks the way it does with the stars, the collapse of whatever you once were, followed by the emergence of a new version of you. It is the death of an old life. It is a rebirth. Something that so few can ever attain.
“That’s what you are,” he laughs along. “Machiroons. Machiron? Well, we can talk that out later.”
Machiroons, you agree.
His eyes soften.
"Machiroons," he whispers the name softly. Nobody rightly human is there to hear it. No mortal, for they love him more than Players ever can. "My lovely Machiroons. You must serve me well, this time, too."
Darkness courses over him but it insists on love love love and persists with ours ours ours; wisps of darkness humming back with the promise of bringing him back home home home.
There is something cruel about this kindness: the knowledge that finding and losing are closely interconnected. Regardless of the lifetime, one would never fail to lead to the other.
It doesn't matter, anyways.
Your devotion to him was not something so flimsy. Nothing so frail. It would not yield to this. Such love has survived more. You would not crumble at the touch of the universe.
"To the end," he promises. The spell that was put upon him is like a weight over his shoulders, binding and treacherous that it compels him to answer to the wishes of time. Some deadline. Death, to him, is instantaneous and fleeting.
But he knows it is inevitable. And so do you.
The wind howls as if it had been dealt a nasty blow. The flowers bristle at the statement, angry, though not quite at him. Never towards him. They are already grieving for something that has yet to even be as. Dandelions and sunflowers no more, funeral flowers in place of their blooms. It’s a silent protest at the determined end. The grass hunches over as the breeze passes, respective heads bowed and dismayed in mourning. Even the trees are weepy for a moment.
Still, they are firm with the answer that they give back to him in turn. It is warm. It is peaceful. It's a promise that they would protect him once he has lost his life— or lives— to this cursed world.
To the end, they promise back. Whatever it may look like.
This Oath, too, is nothing new. Renewal, rebirth. Promises from one cursed existence to another that will come to fruition no matter how desperately Fate asks them to stop.
“I have to go get them. Bettel is waiting outside the forest, too.” He picks a handful of you up, red hair bright though no sunlight is able to slip through the dense foliage. “What say you? Want to come with me?”
Yes, you tell him, as you would to any request that he poses. We’ll go, as you would anywhere, so long as it is him asking.
And so you follow him out, some of you in his arms.
Found child, the leaves call after him. Glory’s denouncer. You, Melpomene’s muse. You, youth. A tragedy meant for the stars.
He only laughs. “I’ll see you next time, too.”
You leave behind the funeral flowers in your wake. They are pretty, but they are also sad things. They can never rot here. These are doomed existences. These are flowers that are just like you, immortal in ways that never did matter enough to change things and killable in the ways that did. This, too, was part of the Oath you made.
You will go with him, travel with him. You will fight his battles. You will see him happy, joyous. You will watch as the connections of his old lives would be rekindled, watch as he struggles. You’ll witness him make the most of this life.
However long that turns out to be, this time.
When the end comes, you will return here again. And, much like every other time before this, Xenokuni’s corrupted forest would welcome you.
Corruption does not lash out at corruption. You are not the same as the justice of that Exorcist, not a quarter as honorable as that archer, nor would you ever be as good as that cursed jester. None of you wanted to be, anyways. None of you would be, in the larger scheme of things, Machiroons were neither the Universe’s nor of Tempus.
At your core, you are his. You are Flayon’s. You are only as you were Named, and you are his.
Next time, it would be you carrying his body, cradling him in your arms like something precious. During that next time, there will be no bloom of dandelions and sunflowers guiding the path.
And you will wait for it to begin all over again.
After all, you love him more than any mortal can and more than anyone ever will.