Chapter Text
Warning(s): G, none
“So, this is the great and mysterious thing you’ve been working so hard on?”
The mischievous lilt of Rukkhadevatā’s voice echoed cavernously through the enormous observatory still fresh with the scents of plaster and newly hewn stone. The vaulted chamber rose like the inside of a lotus, the zenith crowned by a retractable opening that yawned into the great expanse of stars, the vaulted ceiling descending into enormous, bejeweled petals that scintillated in the soft glow of crystalline sconces and cascaded to the untouched marble floors. Commanding the center of the room was an enormous space telescope tilted towards the moon, cobbled together from myriad parts of the various Primal Machines he’d scrapped and repurposed over the years, the man in question splotched with oil stains and other shreds of evidence of his nocturnal work.
“It’s not done yet, Mahārāja,” Al-Haytham modestly deflected as he carefully extricated himself from the bowels of the telescope, glancing down at his soiled Rtawahist uniform. He frowned slightly but knew there was no helping it.
Rukkhadevatā’s coppery features reflected the moon’s light like a gem, the space bathed in the cool, cobalt glow that suffused throughout the observatory. Her sāṛī twinkled with the silver thread embroidered within, and he couldn’t help but notice the distant contemplation that seemed to remove her from the moment.
“You’re a Rtawahist student I hear these days. Al-Hazen, was it?”
Al-Haytham involuntarily smiled; it wasn’t much different than being interrogated by a parent. “You’ll hear a lot of rumors about me, Mahārāja. The least of which is true is the fact that my thesis deadline is coming at the end of the month.”
“And this is your thesis project?” Al-Haytham nodded in reply. “I’ve heard a good deal about you, Al-Haytham. Churning out text after text—mathematics, physics, astronomy… and this optics, I’ve heard it called?”
“The study of how light begins and moves, basically. It’s not as exciting as it’s made out to be,” Al-Haytham replied as Rukkhadevatā trailed closer, eyeing the complex column of glass lenses arrayed within the crystal-clear telescope. He quickly jotted down a paragraph of text within an enormous journal, the first draft of another one of those textbooks. “It’s gotten me through the Rtawahist without trouble, so I can’t complain.”
As he spoke, Al-Haytham couldn’t help but notice how Rukkhadevatā seemed entranced with the telescope, but her study seemed to gaze through it. Considering the revelations he’d learned as a boy just ten years ago, it didn’t surprise him. Undoubtedly, he was certain he was a stand-in for the Scarlet King also acclaimed for his mechanical prowess. Even if Al-Haytham wouldn’t call himself some Kshahrewar savant by any means, the correlation was still there. In lieu of the history he’d gradually come to learn, he couldn’t blame her.
Rukkhadevatā halted in her study of the telescope and strode slowly towards the ornate stairwell that led into the observatory and sank to the lowest stair, ivory hair pooling around her. Though it was unspoken, Al-Haytham could sense the invitation and sat next to her, mindful to keep a respectful distance from the Dendro Archon to keep their long tresses from becoming twisted or sat upon.
“Do you remember when you told Vyāghara and Viridescent that you were worried about those Khaenri’ahn envoys I was scheduled to see? It feels like only yesterday, but… you weren’t wrong, Haytham. In fact, you were right to.”
Al-Haytham’s eyes shot wide at the sudden revelation, that creeping dread he thought he’d locked away in his boyhood seeping through the cracks. It felt old and stale, but the way it unsheathed those slow claws to inexorably gore into his psyche awoke a kind of terror prey felt when their demise in the predator’s jaws was inevitable.
“Is it another Black Tide event?” Al-Haytham questioned lowly, modulating his voice quietly in case anyone else was within earshot.
“I can’t say. I and the Rākṣasas have been doing everything we can to monitor Irminsul for any changes, but… Even your grandmother cannot find much in her dreamweaving. Except… there is one thing.” Rukkhadevatā faced Al-Haytham with an expression that was both stricken and contemplative. “Have you heard of the alchemist known as Rhinedottir?”
“Only that she’s a secret idol of those within the Spantamad. What about her?”
“Yasmin and I have been covertly recording her dreams and memories. We’re sequestering them away from the rest of Irminsul, but—she’s making… things. Artificial life. More than that,” she continued with a furrowed brow.
“Interfering with human evolution, tampering with life and death, and attempting the forbidden while fearing nothing?” he supplied, listing three of the four Akademiya’s sins without hesitation. Almost every student had them ground into their minds like a mortar and pestle, after all.
Rukkhadevatā smiled mirthlessly; it never reached her eyes. “Yes. I cannot help but feel as though she might be tapping into the Abyss. And Khaenri’ah’s king… I cannot begin to wonder about him, either.”
It didn’t need to be spoken for them to understand unequivocally. Rhinedottir was reaching farther and further into the Abyss to pursue her research, that much he didn’t doubt for a second. In the years spent growing up and attending the Akademiya since his teens, he’d pored over as much as he could that wasn’t forbidden on matters concerning Al-Ahmar, among those being artifact records that documented stories associated with artifacts that told the story of the god’s descent into madness and the whisperings of the Abyss that became more of a cautionary tale.
Why wouldn’t the Akademiya forbid stories that acted as lessons against the sin that was forbidden knowledge? The Abyss was just as universally reviled, and this was no different.
“Those envoys—what did they want? What did you talk to them about, specifically?”
Rukkhadevatā propped her elbow on her raised kneecap, leaning her cheek into her cusp as she gazed ahead and studied the telescope. “They’ve been using those machines called Field Tillers for generations, since the Archon Wars, and maybe before. They came because they wanted assistance in fending off the Abyss in honor of an age-old alliance we once shared.”
“An alliance? With Khaenri’ah ?” Al-Haytham questioned incredulously, expression dubious.
Rukkhadevatā regarded Al-Haytham patiently, but seriously. “Things were different, Haytham. Long ago, the kingdom I ruled with Nabu Malikata and Deshret shared a unifying heritage with the likes of Sal Vinadagnyr and Enkanomiya. Khaenri’ah has always rejected the heavens, but so did Amun. Khaenri’ah has always welcomed those who rejected the gods, and so could they accept those who’d come to understand Celestia’s treachery—even if we were gods ourselves. It’s a lesson Malikata taught us. A harsh one, but necessary.”
“I never thought…”
“That I would admit this aloud? That such liaisons were more than just impartial business with Irminsul?” Rukkhadevatā challenged him, with a rare and emotional cadence to her voice. To say that Al-Haytham wasn’t used to it was an understatement. No matter how familiar they regarded themselves, he always bore a threshold between the mundane and the divine that he never trespassed over. They could speak like friends, and they could sound like family, but there would always be lines he couldn’t cross.
It made Rukkhadevatā feel utterly alone after the loss of her oathbound friends, for there were few people left who saw her not as their Archon, but as their equal. It was a secret she kept buried in her breast, one that would follow Deshret and Nabu Malikata into the next life… if there was one.
“I’m sorry, Mahārāja.”
Rukhadevata smiled wistfully, shaking her head apologetically. “No, I should be the one who’s sorry, my dear child. You’ve been told all your life how terrible the Dahrī are, how taboo and misbegotten by the gods they’ve been. I shouldn’t blame you for what you didn’t know.”
It was an odd tangent to fork away upon, especially when their conversation had brooked from the subject of his nearly-finished telescope before dovetailing into matters deeply confidential and melancholy, and it made him wonder: was it a portent of things to come? Perhaps, it stemmed from sentimentality and the questions that had burned in his chest since he was a child.
“I think I already know I’m the Scarlet King’s reincarnation. Mahārāja, why was that kept a secret from me?” Al-Haytham asked earnestly, their eyes matching. Though Rukkhadevatā sustained it for a long moment, she averted hers when it prolonged too much.
“I saw it in your dreams; Yasmin showed me. You’re right, it was a pointless secret to keep, but… Haytham, how much do you know, really? About what he did?” Rukkhadevatā returned with as much sincerity, brow pinched as the strain sounded evident in her voice. “Do you know the true extent, and can you possibly accept that he exists in you?”
There were many tales Al-Haytham had studied after he’d learned, many of them fantastical allegories whose moving parts were difficult to put together if one didn’t know how. “I know he was a great pharaoh, and that he built Ay-Khanoum with you and the Goddess of Flowers, and that you three didn’t fight in the Archon Wars. I’ve read a lot of artifact histories—Eremite legends, that tell more; that he wanted to resist the shackles of heaven and live life outside of that. In doing so, he destroyed everything he’d built in a single night… just to create the Golden Slumber and Eternal Dreamland. Both to resist and to mourn the loss of his greatest love, the Goddess.”
Rukkhadevatā swallowed thickly and a rare display of sadness shone glassily in her eyes, inhaling a shuddering breath. “I keep forgetting how simply we’re forced to render that tale. All because he serves a lesson. But, they didn’t know Amun the way I did. The way Malikata and I did.” Clasping her hands together, she gazed at the blue veins of ore etched through the marble floor.
“The only reason it all affected him so heavily is because he loved too much. He was a sensitive soul, Haytham, but he saw the world for what it was. He experienced the fruitless struggle that was the Archon War, how gods threw themselves at him in vain attempts to achieve victory. How many he was forced to kill because of his power, targeting what we’d built, and when we met Malikata… those absurd rules that forced him to needlessly slaughter cemented that fear of the divine. Especially with what she revealed to us, and what happened to her Seelie race. The devastation they suffered and how they were never helped despite being beloved by the divine.”
Al-Haytham blanched at how much Rukkhadevatā revealed to him, unable to help the instinctual religious terror that existed in all of those that existed under the light of the Seven. It was irrational, and his logical side became exasperated by such a juvenile response, but it begged the question: would dire consequences be rendered because of what the Archon had revealed to him?
“Should I be worried about what will happen now that I know all this?” Al-Haytham asked uneasily, shifting uncomfortably. Though he tried to convey wryness, it came across as the dread she knew he felt.
“Nothing will happen to you. The civilizations that turned away from Celestia, that live beneath the earth, are still there. Even their smiting from the Nails wasn’t because of blasphemers, Haytham. No, the Heavenly Principles are not human and not ruled by mortal egos.” Yet, as she placated him, the bitterness was still audible on her tongue.
It was a new facet of Rukkhadevatā that Al-Haytham had never seen before, of the wise, benevolent, and patient matriarch turning cold and grieving after the insurmountable losses she’d suffered. The Archon was kind and carefree, but in moments such as these, she became someone he didn’t recognize.
He found he didn’t mind this side of her, though.
“Good. I’m not sure what I’d do if a Nail came smashing through the roof and destroyed my thesis project.”
Rukkhadevatā’s face became split by a true and summery grin like the sun at daybreak, tussling his hair in a sisterly manner. “You’re a ridiculous child, but… Haytham, I hope this means you can approach me about matters concerning this in the future. I consider you my family, and I don’t want you to feel wary for any reason.”
Although Rukkhadevatā’s support heartened him, he couldn’t help but be taken aback by this moment, sharply and mentally retracting to dissect what it all meant.
Was it truly so simple? She said she supported him, essentially implying the conservatism regarding a previous reincarnation was fruitless and done in vain. Perhaps… not even supported by her? It wasn’t so unusual to think about, as—like a dizzyingly ornate mandala—there were interconnecting parts that functioned differently, that took on unique forms and elaborations. All depended on the epicenter that joined them all together, but even that crucial cornerstone wouldn’t always see what those moving parts were doing. Even if it had the ability to traverse the dreams of thousands every night and understand things no one would know. A ring would whirl, another swayed, while one remained stagnant; all invaluable parts to a whole that could be misunderstood all the same. This was just one instance of that, where her true opinion on telling him the truth didn’t reflect in the fragile reverence her acolytes possessed.
To not simply treat her like another person and instead of an indifferent icon of the likes of the Heavenly Principles, but when faced with the magnitude of an Archon, perhaps it simply couldn’t be helped.
“Nothing will happen, even though I’m the reincarnation of one of our nation’s greatest sinners.” Sparing a look to Rukkhadevatā who appeared mildly perturbed by his misnomer, he quickly amended, “ Supposedly .”
“Supposedly, indeed,” Rukkhadevatā sighed, and she appeared pensive; rooted deep in thought that befitted the goddess of wisdom. “I’ve questioned it as often as possible through the years, but I still don’t know everything. I’m the Avatar of Irminsul, but I’ve wondered if that title can really hold true when I couldn’t save the people dearest to me in the world.”
Al-Haytham wondered if this was the true magnitude of being a god, of living with failures that far eclipsed that of mundane ken like himself. It wasn’t to say that the ordinary couldn’t live with a great and varied amount of regrets, mistakes, and sins, but for a god… was it different? Let alone for an Archon? The Archon Wars themselves had been theaters for incredible violence and loss at the behest of pointless greed, even if history had been rewritten to frame it as a gauntlet to test the golden-hearted wheat from the greedy chaff, or something ennobling such as that.
“Did they want you to save them? Can it really be called failure if you weren’t even asked?” Al-Haytham inclined his gaze towards her, sincere but asking.
“There’s only do or do not, Haytham. Sometimes, the ones who don’t recognize the oblivion they’re consigning themselves towards are the ones who need saving the most,” Rukkhadevatā answered somberly, brow furrowed and countenance brittle. “They both knew, but… they were in pain. So much pain… I could’ve saved them from it, but—”
She didn’t get the opportunity to finish that thought as the Akkadian engulfed her in a tight embrace, one she couldn’t have precipitated despite all the logic and knowledge of the world flowing through her like a nexus of rivers. It was warm, and fortifying, and he couldn’t help but feel as though she seemed remarkably warm and solid as a person despite those high walls built around her as the Dendro Archon.
At first, Rukkhadevatā froze in shock, stiff from not remembering the last time such a frank and familial gesture had been afforded unto her, let alone from someone like Al-Haytham who wasn’t known for being particularly empathetic. Gradually, like a spring thaw melting the ice, the Archon sagged into the embrace before she slowly returned it, the most reassured she’d felt in… ages, maybe.
Even her closest retainers were rarely this blunt, this understanding that she had her hurts and moments of weakness when she couldn’t be the faultlessly strong goddess they desperately needed her to be.
A prolonged moment passed before the pair withdrew and Rukkhadevatā returned her hands to her lap, feeling slightly better.
“Mahārāja, I won’t claim to understand reincarnation better than you, but in a way, you are saving them, aren’t you? You oversee the very thing that’s seen their souls deposited in others in the hope their lives will be better. As it stands… I don’t think my life’s been all that bad,” Al-Haytham assured after a beat, a consoling smile flitting to his lips for a moment. “I think this Saṃsāra will be better, for a change.”
Rukkhadevatā rose from her place on the stairs and Al-Haytham felt like the little boy she’d personally taught in the Vihāra all over again. She ruffled his hair and he raised his hands in mirthful defense, correcting his shaggy mop of silvery bangs that looked a little rustled, to begin with without her affections.
“I hope it will be, too, Haytham. I hope you know… I really do love you and your family like they were my own. You’re very precious to me, and knowing everyone in Sumeru is safe and protected is all I could want. However,” she amended with a solemn note, facing the massive telescope painfully close to completion, “I cannot wallow in grief. I cannot, and I will not. I think your life will be better, it’s true, but we cannot negate that your fears aren’t insubstantial. I must be proactive, no matter what.”
Although it was clear to the Rtawahist that their familial moment was largely over, he couldn’t help but quietly marvel at their Archon; for the one who was the strongest in their nation, she couldn’t help but inspire awe even when it wasn’t deliberate. While he treasured those small moments when she was more than just the Greater Lord, less than a god, and more like a family member, this was who inspired him to chase knowledge and wisdom as the pinnacle of those ideals.
Someday, he hoped to be an embodiment of everything he wanted in that moment, too.
Hours after the Archon had departed, Al-Haytham was left alone with his ruminations within the observatory. The mechanical sounds of his own tinkering were a lulling metronome, and as he switched between that and scrawling his progress in nigh illegible script comparable to chicken scratch, his thoughts wandered away from the uplifting moment shared with Rukkhadevatā.
While he didn’t disbelieve his own words, he doubted that ineffable feeling of dread would simply trickle away, either. Having hope and conviction in the promise of tomorrow was something every sapient being needed to keep themselves from going mad, but it didn’t deny the brutal reality that it could change at any moment. But, it made him wonder: just as the grief he’d felt encountering those specters of the Goddess of Flowers wasn’t his own, was the same true of this ominous feeling welling within his breast?
Truthfully, Al-Haytham often dismissed such irrational feelings as the fabrication of the unconscious mind, but he wondered if this time had as much merit then as they seemed to now. He’d been keeping extensive journals regarding these matters since boyhood, so maybe it was something to look further into…
A juddering boom rocked the observatory and a deep, guttural vibrato quaked the very foundations. The telescope shuddered and swayed, threatening to collapse had he not personally overseen construction that ensured most disruptions wouldn’t cause monumental damage to the fragile device. The crescendo became grating, but the shaking ground stabilized amid filmy showers of dust from the mosaiced, tiled ceilings, that rained to the marbled floor below.
Despite the stilling of the ground, the light fixtures within the observatory flickered feebly before the space was plunged into darkness. Not even a sputter followed through the power grid fueled from Electro energy; ingenious as it was, Al-Haytham wasn’t the sort to simply sit around to fiddle his thumbs while waiting for someone else to fix his problems when most were too stupid to rectify their own.
In his headlong sprint up the iron-wrought stairway, he came to the threshold of its egress, greeted by a familiar head of blonde and one of his few friends within the Akademiya.
“Rosalyne?” he greeted the Mond woman in surprise as he fell in stride, briskly striding through a corridor that encompassed the enormous trunk of the Divine Tree and afforded sweeping vistas of Mt. Devantaka was normally peaceful and unremarkable, but seeing what was lurching towards Valivija had his heart climbing in his throat.
The pair watched on in shock with a growing throng of observers as the massive Ruin Titan that bore the shape of some great, infernal, and serpentine vishap slithered towards the city while molten light burned through its segments with each undulation of its massive body. The ground in its wake was shredded and destroyed, a mere slither able to wipe out whole neighborhoods if it wanted. Moonlight glanced from its cruel angles, eyes magmatic in darkened pits that honed on the Akademiya with hellish light.
“If we don’t do something, Al-Haytham, thousands will die! We can’t wait—”
Rosalyne’s urgency was severed as the ground outside of Sumeru City was ruptured and split by towering tree roots that burst like the heads of snakes to writhe and hone upon the Ruin Titan. They lashed and lassoed around the immensely-sized automaton, completely arresting it in its tracks while the grate and groan of straining machinery sounded with deafening dissonance through the night sky.
“The Dendro Archon has a handle on it. That doesn’t mean we can’t do something, too.” Al-Haytham was quick to relay his plan to the Spantamad student, whispering of how they could assist in the takedown of the massive construct while those around them were too horrorstruck to even move despite the urging of the Matra to evacuate to safety in the lower levels of the Akademiya.
To some, the sudden collaboration would appear odd. But, when one factored in the fact that he and Rosalyne had been close friends through their Akademiya years, it began to make more sense. Zandik was technically a part of their little group despite how distant he’d grown over the years, but he’d always been an odd one with a waning interest in humans or humanity… Not something he’d dwell on then and there, though.
“Al-Haytham… wait.”
Rosalyne’s staying hand on his shoulder halted him, following her deep blues towards the Ruin Titan that slithered towards the Akademiya. It was a sight they’d already noted, the dissonance of its approach a nightmarish reality that cut and screeched over the forested landscape changed. A black and violet miasma exuded from its orifices, smoking ashy and acrid into the night that blotted out the stars. It corroded Rukkhadevatā’s offense, burning the organic matter like acid dissolving flesh.
The inexorable sensation of being rooted in place overruled his senses, alarmingly transfixed on the Abyssal corruption that drained with gruesome volume from the Ruin Titan. What should’ve repelled any other person kept him entranced, as if a gravitational pull drew him towards certain disaster. One he couldn’t walk away from, until his rationale stormed through and hauled him back into reality.
“No… I can’t.”
“Haytham?”
Rosalyne glanced at Al-Haytham and saw as his resolve withered away as cinders carried away on a winter’s wind, the mage switching back as the terrific groan of metal rose to a bombastic crescendo and the Dendro Archon split the Ruin Titan in twain superfluously despite the Abyssal power fortifying its structure. It collapsed into a heap of ruinous parts like a palace had buckled, a dusty cloud obfuscating much of the remains that would be descended upon by the Matra and senior members of the Kshahrewar, as well as the Archon and Asuras capable of withstanding such high concentrations of the Abyss.
“Come on, let’s go somewhere where it’s not as crowded,” Rosalyne suggested to Al-Haytham who nodded mutely, the blonde linking arms to guide him away from the crushing throng and back towards the observatory where they could speak in peace.
“The stars speak to us in ways a lifetime of star charts will never be able to explain. We may study astrology in a thousand ways, and understand the movements of the constellations in the sky, but we will never be able to fully comprehend how the stars incline us. How destiny and fate shape our lives no matter how we try to escape it, foolish and fanciful as humans are.”
In the open-air amphitheater, he and dozens of other students sat on slabs of rough, gnarled stone that had been used for generations of scholars before them. The sky studded with countless stars swam in waves of the universe, violet and undulating, yawning deep and endless above their heads. Lokapāla Jungle rose with its bioluminescent platforms in the distance, framing the horizon in cool violets and amethyst. It was a beautiful vista, that much was certain, and his favorite venue for lectures.
Tonight, though, he was untouched by its splendor.
After the Archon’s battle, he and Rosalyne had spoken. He’d withheld the entire mess that was his being King Deshret’s reincarnation, but what had been clear was the wrongness of the situation. Though it had been difficult to pinpoint the standard emblazoned on the Ruin Titan from afar, Rosalyne had clearly identified the Field Tiller as one of the Schwanenritter, one of the many sworn enemies of the Abyss that Khaenri’ah had battled since time immemorial. For its helmsmen to be corrupted by the Abyss was unprecedented, but an expected outcome. A dire consequence they had to face when embattled against the Abyss itself, a force that could claim the lives of gods themselves. What a mortal compared to the devouring dark?
“Al-Hazen, would you care to tell us your thoughts since you seem so lost in the clouds?” Professor Nāṣir teasingly prompted from his place on the stage. Holographic constellations lazily drifted about him like the rings of a planet, highlighting the amusement in his wizened features.
Al-Hazen, his pseudonym. Through the years he’d been in the Akademiya, scribing textbooks and conducting studies on the stars, mathematics, astronomy, and physics, it was the name attributed to him. If because he liked the anonymity it afforded, many not even knowing it as his true identity.
“I was thinking about the constellations I saw in a dream, Āghā Nāṣir. Not my dream, but another’s. And how they differ from the ones we see in the sky,” Al-Haytham lied, but it wasn’t untrue. His time spent apprenticing with his grandmother through the past several years had been… illuminating.
“Do go on.”
“I’d be happy to,” Al-Haytham continued cheekily, “once you finish editing that textbook draft I sent you and it undergoes peer review… I can’t be forwarding uncontested theories in the lecture hall just yet, now can I?”
Nāṣir expelled a belly-shaking laugh and Al-Haytham lowered his head to smirk, feigning interest in the notes he wasn’t taking and those thoughts utterly unrelated to the lecture.
After a moment, the lecture resumed and the impasse was forgotten. His smirk fell, but his eyes returned to the stars and he wondered: What’s my destiny, then?
Maybe, more than that, he wondered why he’d balked, why he felt so drawn to the fragments of the Abyss witnessed that day.
And he wondered what it meant, above all else.