Chapter Text
"Terence!"
Terence barely had time to look up from his sorry excuse of trying to patch up a sock before an apple and a piece of bread were shoved in his face. Beyond them, a wide grin still missing one tardy tooth flashed proudly at him, and soon scrawny fingers brushed against his palms as Dion carefully placed his findings in his hands. Terence looked down, inspecting the trophies. The apple was wrinkled but of respectable size, and the bread felt like it hadn’t been entirely petrified yet. He smiled. They were feasting tonight.
Dion's grin widened, and he crawled up the porch of the abandoned house they had claimed as their own, squeezing his small frame against Terence's barely bigger body. His golden eyes sparked under the sunlight, and he adamantly stared at Terence.
Terence blinked and bumped his shoulder. "What are you hiding?"
To this, Dion's smile turned triumphant, and he reached into his small satchel and produced another apple – not wrinkled, fresh and of a soft yellow that matched his hair. He held the treasure with his two hands, and Terence looked between the fruit and Dion.
"Where did you find that?" he asked. Dion brought the apple to his nose and inhaled softly.
"Father Berald gave it to me," the other boy answered. "He said it was a gift of Greagor's mercy and told me to make sure to share it with my friends, and you’re my only friend."
Terence stared wordlessly at the apple when Dion handed it to him. Seeing that his friend didn’t seem to want to take the first bite, Dion retracted his offer.
"Well then."
"Dion wait-"
Dion gasped as the apple suddenly dropped from his hand and his mouth closed on nothing.
"What are you-" he started, horrified, but the look Terence gave him froze his protests in his throat. Without a word, Terence picked up a shard of glass on the floor by the broken window and used it to carve out a small part of the apple, careful not to touch the juicy flesh. He let the piece of fruit fall down the ground – and soon enough, a few curious ants came swarming it. They ran up and down the piece of apple for a moment, and then one suddenly started acting erratic, immediately followed by her sisters, and within seconds all the ants had dropped in a macabre circle around the apple.
Dion looked at his hands that had been bringing the same fruit to his mouth merely a minute ago, and then at the last ant giving a final spasm. Horror spilled in his eyes.
"How did you know?" he whispered. His hands began to shake. A shudder wreaked through his entire body.
Terence silently took Dion's trembling fingers in his own, and held them tightly.
"They say it is a kindness," Terence answered, his voice carefully quiet. "I saw them give out food to Big Tom's crew behind the church, and then I saw Big Tom floating in the canal."
Dion gasped, and turned even paler. Terence felt his hands twitching erratically in his. "Why… why going to this extent to… to…"
Dion's shaking was worsening, and he looked like he might start gasping for air. Without thinking, Terence let go of his hands and instead firmly grabbed his shoulders and pulled his forehead against his. The proximity and the anchor of Terence's warmth seemed to calm Dion down a little.
Terence thought back to the dinners with his parents, when he still had parents. The warmth of a fireplace, and an old nanny to make them simple but delicious dishes. They had held hands before eating, and his parents had prayed to Great Greagor for health and success. In virtue and righteousness, in compassion and justice, they always ended their prayers. May the halls of Greagor's domain open to the worthy.
Did they open for you, Father, Mother? Terence thought. Or do they open only to those who think slitting a child's throat to be barbaric, but seizing their heart to stop beating to be a choice led by the divine?
"Terence?"
Terence blinked, and found himself breathing in Dion's hair. Unbeknownst to him, he had wrapped his arms around his friend's back and pulled him in, which had now led to Dion being twisted in an uncomfortable position. He made an apologetic noise and let him go.
"Let's eat and go to sleep, alright?" he said, and Dion made a face.
"I don’t think I can eat anything anymore." The grimace he displayed would have almost been funny, if the circumstances hadn’t been so horrifying. Terence smiled and tucked a little at the corner of Dion's lopsided mouth. Dion frowned.
"Alright, let's just sleep then," Terence relented. They went inside the empty house and laid down, close to keep each other warm, and Terence kept his eyes open and peered at the shadows as Dion quickly fell into a peaceful sleep against him.
*
Terence had hoped that they could stay in the empty house for a few more weeks, but they were soon forced to move again. The day Terence had made them stop before reaching the house and turn back in the same movement, Dion had asked why in a pitiful way. And Terence had just pulled him a little closer and pushed the hood of his cape further down his face, dragging him back towards the crowd until the leery man he had spotted disappeared from sight.
Dion was a beautiful boy, the son of one of the most desired courtesan this side of Sanbreque, until she had disappeared with all her belongings and her sisters had led Dion to the backdoor of the brothel and kicked him out into the cold. Or at least, that was what Terence had understood from Dion's fuzzy memories and letting his ears hang around the shady alleys and the taverns.
Dion was a beautiful boy, and he was reaching the age where the first signs of teenagehood and years of malnourishment were ciselling off the childish chubbiness of his face and turning him into something that some circles would pay dearly to have.
So they never returned to the abandoned house, and sought a new refuge for the chilly nights. When they finally laid down in a small alcove between two trees, they peered at the clear sky between the branches and talked about fate and the stars.
"You saved my life," Dion said to the quiet of the night. "Again."
Terence heard Dion fumble around the space between them for a moment, and then the feeling of warm fingers slipped against his hand and Terence hooked his pinkie around his.
"I am glad the stars guided you to me," Dion continued, and it was more than a metaphor. Fate or something else, Terence remembered a shower of lights in the sky, and the urge to follow one as it traced its way through the celestial vault. He had let go of his mother's hand and made his way down the city to the edges of the slums, eyes transfixed on the sky, thinking about his nanny saying that shooting stars led those determined enough to follow them to treasures beyond imagination.
But instead of finding a coffer of gold or the chalice of eternal youth, Terence had instead very ungracefully tripped on something soft on the ground. A pitiful moan had emanated from the shape, and Terence found himself forgetting about his scraped knees as a pair of shiny golden eyes opened and looked at him. The eyes were unfocused, and difficult breaths came in and out parched lips.
Terence could have left then, it would have been what most of his classmates from school would have done – what did the life of a nameless street urchin matter to those of noble birth?
But he didn't, and used his little arms to slowly drag the collapsed boy out of the way of whoever and whatever would make their way down the street morning come. He didn't have much on him, but he had water and the snack his father had bought him, and so he gave them to the boy. After a moment, the boy's eyes closed and he slumped down into a restless sleep. Beads of sweat shone on his skin under the moonlight. Terence carefully put a hand on his forehead and on his own like his nanny had showed him, and frowned.
"I'll be back tomorrow, alright? Hang in there."
And he had been back the day after, with medicine, and the day after that too, and more in a parsed way until Greagor had forsaken his house in her grand design and his world had crumbled alongside the silhouettes of his parents dangling from the ceiling. That day, his feet had taken his dazed self to where Dion hid, out of habit. His friend had taken a look at him, and immediately wrapped his scrawny arms around his back and tried to squeeze the sadness out of him. "It isn't much, but my home can be your home too, if you want," he had said, and Terence had smiled a little through his tears.
"You saved mine too," Terence replied, years later, under an unchanged and yet different set of stars. A soft breeze rustled in the leaves, far above their heads but still closer than the observing guardians of the celestial halls. Dion shifted and came to rest his head a little closer to Terence.
"I love you, Terence," Dion said, and there was a meaning to them in that word, a comforting warmth in a ruthless world. "When we both become stars, will you come find me again in our next life?"
"Of course," Terence promised. He squeezed his pinkie, and Dion turned his head to smile at him.
And then they stayed silent and thought about fate and wandering stars, until a dreamless slumber covered them both in its comforting veil.
*
Screams came from the marketplace.
Out of pure instinct, Terence dropped the bag of scraps he had gathered and ran towards the noise. People were rushing from the other direction, but years of practice allowed him to easily slip through the panicked crowd. All kinds of horrific thoughts came to his mind, a wild beast set loose in the city, a madman cutting his way through unshielded skin and tender flesh, an uncontrolled fire spreading through the stalls and trapping those not fast enough in its embrace- and all these overlaid with an image of Dion's still and unseeing eyes raised to the heavens, a little packet held against him, of what he had told Terence he had wanted to go fetch in the market, a surprise he had said, because it was the anniversary of the night they met, and Terence had let him go alone–
"Dion!" he screamed, and emerged in the marketplace. There was no fire, no wild wolf wreaking havoc, only a circle of people staring in absolute silence at something in the middle of the place. Terence pushed himself through the crowd, darting his eyes around in search of Dion's familiar blond hair – and froze.
His friend was just there, kneeling in the middle of the emptied out space, and something was very wrong with him. He was glowing. Wisps of gold and blue aether swirled around him, intertwining with his hair and skin and pulsing radiant light across his face and arms.
"Dion," Terence called again, but his voice cracked weakly in front of the incomprehension of what he was seeing. And still, Dion's head snapped up like he had heard him and the pupils of pure lava in the middle of his eyes drilled fire inside Terence's head.
"Terence–" Dion called back, and his voice was wrong, like an ancient beast was trying to channel itself through his childish voice and hit its frame on the too small strings of Dion's vocal chords. But beyond the wrongness, beyond the uncontrolled waves of light emanating from him, there was fear, there was pain, and Terence sprang forward again to meet Dion's reaching hand and quell the terror in him–
And was suddenly lifted from the ground and thrown back down.
"Move back, all of you!" a commanding voice bellowed to the onlookers. A whirlwind of shining silver and steel seized Terence's vision and he would surely have been trampled if his body didn’t scramble back up quickly on instinct. He stepped back on unsure feet alongside everyone as soldiers formed a line and pushed at the crowd.
"The Warden of Light is reborn, at last, at last!" someone clamored with the passion of the devout. Terence recognized that voice. Through the cracks of the line of soldiers pushing him back, he saw Father Berald kneeling on the ground not far from Dion, his arms raised unto the sky. In front of him, fruits spilled out from a knocked out basket. An apple rolled and bumped against Dion's knees.
A murmur passed through the crowd, and Terence lashed at the arms in front of him. He didn't understand anything they were saying, he didn’t understand anything of their talk about the Warden of Light. All he could see was Dion's terrified eyes and the presence of that priest way too close to him. All he could imagine in his mind was the man approaching Dion as he was looking around the stalls, and offer him another one of his deathly fruits with a smile.
All his boiling blood wanted to do was to choke Father Berald until his mouth foamed and he dropped like one of the ants.
All his bleeding heart ached for was to reach out and take Dion in his arms and run away with him.
The soldiers pressed harder against the crowd, and more guards spilled into the place and approached the scared boy in the middle of it.
"Let me go!" Dion screamed. His high-pitched voice reverberated against the buildings, a terrible roar echoing through it like an undertow. "Terence!" he wailed, desperation seeping through and through, and Terence tried to push against the armor-clad arms holding him back.
But what could a child of not even thirteen summers do against the unmoving might of an imperial guard?
"Dion!" Terence cried back. He barely recognized the hoarse voice that had come out his throat, and kicked at the steel legs in front of him. In response, the soldier roughly pushed him down and kicked him over in the stomach. His head hit a hard pavement.
"Terence!" he heard again, through a red veil of haze. His mouth felt dry and swollen. "Terence!"
His bones shook. He tried to get back up to his feet, but the ground felt like it was shaking. Someone was screaming.
And then something hit his head, and all became dark.
*
When Terence woke up, he was lying in a dimly lit and unfamiliar room. He tried to move, but pain flared through his entire body and he groaned.
"Master, he's awake!" he heard a young voice cry.
A few seconds after, a hand covered his forehead and Terence started. He hadn’t heard any footstep.
"Don’t move," a woman's deep voice said. "It is already a miracle you are even awake now, don’t squander your luck with some foolish thoughts."
"Dion…" Terence tried to say, but he just cracked out a vaguely human noise. He tried to focus on the woman, but his vision was blurry. The hand paused for a second on his forehead.
The woman stood back up.
"Tell Isabelle to bring fresh water and change the boy's bandages after she's done with the twins," she instructed. A hum of agreement, and then no footstep skipped on the floor. No old plank cracked.
"Where am I," Terence tried again, but he was unsure of his success at forming words. The woman seemed to look at him for a long time. Then she moved and stopped by the candle litting the room.
"In purgatory," she said, and blew on the candle. As darkness fell on Terence's eyes, he just had time to hear her last words before his mind turned dark too. "Welcome to the underworld, Terence."