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Three weeks had gone by in nothing but the blink of an eye.
What was three weeks, to those like him? To those like them? He who had lived six thousand years in this realm and Azhdaha, who had lived so, so much longer?
Those three weeks were the beginning of freedom. Freedom, as he had never tasted it before, freedom that was true and pure and complete. It was more than what he had had after his retirement, because Morax had always known that that peace had always been temporary and that in the end, he would have to take his spear up once more one final time. There had always been that invisible clock counting down the time until the end of the world, each hour a gnosis passed into the Tsaritsa’s hands. Three weeks ago, the clock struck midnight.
And the world had ended, and a new one born from its ashes.
When he closed his eyes, he could remember the feeling of the firmament shattering, shards of the false-sky plummeting to the ground as his heart of stone resonated with each Fruit-Of-Irminsul that crashed into the sea.
(The sight of the true sky that had once been his childhood home was seared into the back of his eyelids. He remembered being young, driving a chariot with his brothers across the sky, and he remembered being younger, arriving from a birthplace even he did not recall.
He remembered crashing into the ground during the Calamity, his core cooling into a cor lapis, a heart-of-stone, and the precise moment when he went from an it to a he.
But ah, all of that was so long ago. None of it mattered, anymore. He was not the Eldest of the Morning Stars, he was not the Geo Archon, he was not Rex Lapis, he was and could finally be simply Morax. He had killed the others with his bare hands, choking them to death till they could not rise again.
And that, in the end, was all he wanted.)
He could remember the feeling of his spear in his hand as he fought alongside his people and the Geovishaps of Liyue, the echo of bloodlust in his veins as the sky shattered and the world smote for its arrogance. He could remember the feeling of seeing seven gnoses shatter in the Tsaritsa’s grasp, the power stored within enough to destroy the Heavenly Principles and Celestia with it. He could remember the feeling of every contract that had ever chained him to that accursed place crumble into nothing.
Once the dust had settled, it was over. The Third Descender was put to rest, and the Authorities given to the former archons to return to their true owners—save for the Hydro Sovereign, who already seemed to have his.
(Morax had cradled the final missing piece of Azhdaha’s heart in his palms, basking for a moment in its familiar presence before presenting it to its owner.
And for the first time in thousands upon thousands of years, for the first time since he had first been struck down by the Primordial One, his mate was whole.
They had already fixed Azhdaha’s erosion, his more recent wounds, but those ancient aches—the stolen memories, the stolen powers, the stolen shard of his self —had finally been healed.
The other Geovishaps had told him Azhdaha’s heart-song was clearer than it had ever been.)
And then—he was free. Free. There were eyes on him, at first, on his horns, his tail, the glowing markings on his prosthetics shining through the tears in his sleeves.
“Rex Lapis?” someone murmured. “He’s alive?” “He isn’t dead?” “Our god is back to lead us—”
And then Hu Tao had launched herself into his arms.
“Mr. Zhongli!” she cheered. “We did it!” She had looked at his dumbfounded face and grinned, pinching his cheek. “Or is it Mr. Morax, now? Aiya, we’ll need to change your employment forms…do you think it’ll be good for marketing if we put your face on the brochures?”
Azhdaha had smiled pleasantly at the crowd, the hint of a threat in his eyes as he plainly told the crowd that Morax was his and he’d be damned if he allowed them all to take him away again.
“Azhdaha,” he’d tried to protest, but his mate had hushed him and told his people exactly what he thought of them.
(It had been very sweet to watch Azhdaha stake his claim for all to see once more. It had also been deeply, deeply mortifying. His husband did not do things by halves.)
The eyes went away very quickly after that. He was just Mr. Zhongli, after all, just…with a different name, a slightly different face, and a longer history than they could ever fathom.
And three weeks later? His people, his children had gotten used to him and his mate no longer hiding their identities and things had gone back to normal.
Oh, they were still rebuilding, of course. The birth of a new world could not be healed in less than a month, after all. That would be preposterous.
But the dead had been grieved, and flowers were beginning to bloom on what were once battlefields, and the leylines flourished under the influence of the Dragon-Kings.
Perhaps the birth of this world had been a traumatic one , he mused as he wiped down one of his antique pots. This one had been a gift from his older sister in all but blood when she was teaching him to cook. Morax still used it to cook slow-cooked bamboo shoot soup. Perhaps he should cook it again, for the first time after the sky had fallen. But it is healing.
(He would have to make it vegetarian and skip the pork. His poor daughter had been running herself ragged, and it would be a perfect excuse to force Ganyu into a chair and make her eat.
Azhdaha’s guilt tripping worked wonders as well. “I raise you,” his mate would bemoan, slumping sadly into a chair. “I teach you to read, to draw a bow, and you abandon me in my old age.”
Of course, his melodramatic act would disappear the instant Ganyu promised to visit, and their daughter would always leave their home with her arms stacked high with food boxes.)
For the time being, he set the pot in its proper place, adjusting it so the dragon-scale pattern was clearly displayed. “There we are.” Satisfied with how his kitchen was arranged, he made to leave, but the scent of osmanthus-honey perfume was the only warning he got before he was scooped up into a pair of strong, familiar arms.
“Good afternoon,” Azhdaha purred, lapis eyes twinkling behind his glasses. “I missed you, my sun.”
“Azhdaha,” Morax sighed, utterly fond. He reached up to trail the tips of his claws over the taller dragon’s cheek, delighting in the way his mate pushed his cheek into his palm. “I have merely been organizing. It has been three hours.”
“Three hours away from you are three hours too much,” he objected. “I miss my wife.”
“I stopped being your wife two hours ago.”
“My husband, then.”
He conceded that with a shrug and a brief kiss, chuckling and acquiescing when Azhdaha stole a longer one. “How are you feeling?” Morax pressed a stone hand over Azhdaha’s heart, feeling the Geo resonance thrum under his fingers in time with his own heart and the ground below their feet. “I know you were having some trouble with all the memories returned to you.”
“The sheer volume of them is overwhelming,” Azhdaha admitted, kissing his forehead. “But I am coping well. The earth sings so loudly, now.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. I can feel my…my body, the earth. I am the earth. I am it, and it is me. I can feel Irminsul again, Morax.”
“I think I understand a little of what you’re feeling.” The gnosis, when it lay in his chest, had linked his heart-of-stone to the earth below, harmonious enough but not as strongly as it reached for Azhdaha, because the ores and the stone and the earth had always loved his mate more.
Morax did not blame them. He also, after all, knew what it was like to love the Lord Sovereign of Geo, the being he had called husband for thousands of years. “The piece of your heart within the gnosis linked me to the earth. I can no longer feel it as well as before—it’s the same as it was during the War, though I never was able to access Irminsul through it. Is it overwhelming you?”
Azhdaha exhaled, shaking his head. His curls bounced into his face and Morax tucked them behind his ears for him, fixing his glasses while he was at it. “I feel whole, Morax. How can being all of myself be overwhelming? It’s exhilarating, my sun, I—” He laughed. “I am me. And,” he added, smile growing mischievous. “I can love you even harder, now. When I say that every part of me utterly adores you, I can mean it.”
“Ridiculous creature,” Morax sighed, but his mate’s smile had always been so contagious even before that ancient wound had healed, and the return of Azhdaha’s Authority had done nothing to dim it. “Put me down, my heart, I must finish reorganizing the cabinets. The quakes have done a number on many of my artifacts, and I must repair what is broken and—” He coughed, spluttering.
Morax wiped at his face, and upon seeing the pink and yellow petals clinging to his hand, he leveled a stare at his mate's clearly unrepentant face. “Azhdaha,” he said slowly. “Did you just throw your petals in my face?”
“And if I did?” he said innocently, flicking his tail—which was adorned in pink and yellow petals, that brute —and smiling at him. “What’ll you do?”
“Azhdaha.”
“That is indeed my name~”
Morax narrowed his eyes. “What would the world think if they knew the Lord Sovereign of Geo, the Dragon-King Azhdaha of Nantianmen, Lord over Geovishaps and the Earth, stooped so low as to throw petals in his husband’s face?”
“Very bold of you to assume I’d care,” he laughed. “What do you care, my sun? The time for worrying about such things has passed.” Azhdaha’s gaze softened. “You are free, remember? You’ve laid down your spear for the final time. The stewardship of the world has been passed to those who were born for the duty. You have nothing more to worry about.”
“Yes, but—”
“Shh.”
“I need to—”
“Shh.”
“Azhdaha.”
“Yes, my sun?”
Morax fixed him with a disapproving stare. He had a reputation he had to maintain.
“You’re thinking too loudly. Beloved, listen to me.” Azhdaha pressed a thumb to Morax’s lips, guiding him to meet his eyes. “Listen to me. The world ended.”
“Yes, it did. So what?”
“And with it any last thread of duty you had.”
“And? I cannot see myself abandoning Liyue, if that is what you are suggesting— mmph!” He glared at his decidedly not-sorry mate with another handful of flowers unceremoniously shoved in his mouth.
“Now you’re putting words in my mouth,” Azhdaha said, raising an eyebrow.
(You're putting flowers in mine, Morax thought, cross.)
“My sun, listen to me. I adore your voice, and I know you enjoy speaking, but it is my turn right now, alright? Good."
Azhdaha sighed. "It has been a very, very long time since you were last free. You have rested, yes, but never with a clear mind.” His gaze was warm, and some of Morax’s ire began to ebb away.
(These days, he could never be too angry with Azhdaha for too long. Those thousand years of separation ached more than any wound could, and now, he could not bear wasting the stolen time they had clawed back for themselves in petty anger.
No, Morax would never make the mistakes he had made in the past again. Not when he knew firsthand what it felt like to lose the person most precious to him.)
“Morax, there has always been something to anticipate. A battle, a fight, a war, a trap. Even after your retirement, there was this on your mind. And after this, there was rebuilding, but Morax, that is the last thing you will ever be needed for. The rest of your life is yours, and yours alone. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want it. Do you understand?”
Morax spat out the last of the flowers. What Azhdaha said was true, he supposed. It was not something he liked thinking about. He’d had a similar breakdown after retiring for the first time, overwhelmed by the amount of choice he had suddenly found himself facing, lost at sea with the only map he’d been using to navigate the waters willingly sacrificed to the storm.
(Even then, Azhdaha had flatly told him to ask for help. There had been some rather heavy-handed reminders that he was no longer Rex Lapis, and that he no longer had to carry his burdens alone.)
“I suppose you’re correct,” he admitted.
“I usually am, when it comes to these things.”
“Don’t gloat, my heart, it does not look good on you.”
“Ah, but you look good in anything.” Azhdaha poked him gently. He did not say I clearly love you more than you love me, because they both knew it was both true and a tender scar to touch.
(Morax, after all, had always loved Azhdaha second to his people. Azhdaha, however, had always put him first.
This, in the end, was the root cause of their separation, after all. He had resolved to never let go again, and this was a promise he would keep even through the apocalypse and the birth of the new world.
But. But. In this new world, could this part of him too be reborn anew?)
“Enough, you’ve made your point,” Morax said, patting Azhdaha’s thick bicep. “Now let me down.”
“Not until you tell me what you’ll be doing tonight.”
“Maybe I’ll go stargazing with you. Satisfied?”
“No,” Azhdaha smiled. “We’ll go hunting, too. You haven’t gone hunting properly since Guizhong died, haven’t you?”
Hunting?
…he’d gone hunting, what was Azhdaha talking about? “I’ve gone hunting for food plenty of times.”
He sighed, giving Morax a Look. “For pleasure, Morax. Kill to eat, yes, but when was the last time you let yourself enjoy the chase? When was the last time you hunted with your teeth and claws instead of a weapon? Felt the flutter of a pulse under your teeth and blood on your tongue? Morax, when was the last time you let your instincts free?”
“I was a beast when I was young, you want me to—”
“Yes.”
“Azhdaha, I have a reputation,” he said flatly.
“One that doesn’t mean anything anymore. You can do whatever you want, Morax, and honestly it’s been far too long since you just stopped thinking. It’ll be good for you, my sun. Let’s go hunting in the mountains tonight.”
And of course, because he was weak for his mate’s puppy eyes, Morax agreed.
Late that night, as Azhdaha watched him feast on his catch under the light of the true sky, something in Morax settled into place. Was it the blood on his snout, that triggered the feeling? The fresh meat on his tongue? Or the indulgence of his basest instincts, allowing himself to let go of the composed, solemn persona he’d carried all these years?
(The world was born anew, shedding its old skin to display something new.
Bright, beautiful, and the tapestry of the stars above their heads was what it always had been, behind the wool of lies Celestia had thrown over all their eyes.
It was a comfort. The world would move on, on its own terms.
And perhaps, perhaps, he could do the same.)
The celestial dragon raised his head towards the skies and roared. His cry was joined by the quieter one of his mate’s, the voice of an elemental dragon produced by a humanoid throat.
They had bound themselves by fate, so very long ago.
Whatever came next, they would face together.