Archive of Our Own ^beta

Magni doesn’t know how long he’s known the truth.

It could have happened from the last clone. Could have happened three clones ago. Could have happened a hundred clones ago. 

Doesn’t matter. 

He’s got memories of trying to deny it, memories upon memories of when he finds out, again and again and again. 

Memories of saying he is the one and only, the Great Magni Dezmond. 

But the truth is that he’s not the one and only. 

And he’s not great. 

He’s not really Magni Dezmond, either.  

His nature doesn’t bother him anymore. He’s expendable. He knows that. Just a stand-in for the next Magni Dezmond, who will be replaced by another Magni Dezmond, and so on and so forth. 

Being expendable has its perks. 

He can do whatever he wants, knowing when his body breaks, he will just be born anew. There are no rules. No limitations. There’s a certain freedom to his shackles. Being forced to stay alive through the science of cloning means he has all the time in the world. 

Magni is the result of desperate attempts to defy death, and now, he is immortal. At least as far as he’s concerned. He’s not a creature with its own identity. He’s just a copy of many others that came before him. 

He’s considered branching off, sometimes, but the name sticks. The title sticks. It’s like a homage to the love of his creator. A duty etched in a long forgotten headstone. 

He’s the Great Magni Dezmond, even if he’s not. 

Elysium has changed a lot over the centuries. 

Magni has been part of several guilds in his iterations, but the guild that had saved Elysium from the Records Corruption had been Guild TEMPUS. 

The Changing of Times: that was Guild TEMPUS. 

Eight crazy motherfuckers on a mission to eradicate the source of corruption, fighting against the odds and the enemies, and sometimes even each other.

If asked about TEMPUS, Magni would say he remembers. Vaguely. 

Obviously, he’s not the Magni that actually saved Elysium. He’s just a follow-up. A dessert, after the main course. The main course was several hundred years ago. 

Magni sometimes misses people he’s never actually met. 

That is the one true inescapable cruelty of immortality. He will outlive every heart and every soul he’s ever loved. 

That was true back when he was in TEMPUS, and it still rings true today. 

The world is more advanced now, and most lives run longer than they used to, but still, no cure for the dead. 

What’s forbidden will remain forbidden, he supposes. There’s no helping it. 

Magni doesn’t fall into the same traps as the real Great Magni Dezmond, so he doesn’t try and bring anyone to life. He just lives his, waiting for the next. 

Sometimes, he wishes he could end the cycle. 

Mostly, he just wants to rest. 

In earlier iterations, Magni had been motivated to make the most out of it. 

Earn more money, trick more people, get himself VIP treatment wherever he goes. Make himself rich. Make himself famous, at least ten times over. He learns how to be better than anyone else, and gloats about it with his nose in the air for decades. 

Being immortal gives him time to climb the ranks, and he even spends a couple of iterations as an alchemist of royal status before he decides it’s too much work. Too many stuffy responsibilities and not enough time for the simpler pleasures. So then he tries to keep his schedule clearer and his options more open. 

For a while, he goes sightseeing, and eats at every restaurant and hole-in-the-wall eatery that boasts a good gyudon or a killer fried rice. He’s a polite tourist, always a sucker for cute souvenirs and little expensive trinkets and stopping by buskers in the street just to hear the music play. 

He traverses mountain peaks and valleys, collecting herbs and exotic plants for his concoctions, and goes out dancing during the colder months to keep himself warm. Most nights, someone else pays for his drinks. He sings with pretty bards, and makes shallow conversations with shopkeepers he’ll never see again, swindling them out of their wares so he can resell them at a higher price. 

That’s just business for ya. Ain’t nothing else to it. 

Magni keeps his pockets full so he can go running to the next big thing, experiencing the world without a care, because if he stops even for a second, he would have to deal with the fact that he is doomed to circle this so-called utopia forever and there is no way out. 

Still, he’s happy, for a bit. 

Happy to call this endless life a slice of his own personal heaven, where he can bumble around to his heart’s desire, indulging himself morning and night. 

But it doesn’t last. 

Despite filling his days with joy and wonder, it catches up to him anyway. 

Magni is painfully, horrifically lonely. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been this way, but sometimes, he feels like his heart is the stone of a rotting peach, and his body is the sick, sweet flesh of it — slowly falling apart. 

He tries the temporary remedies. The kisses in alleyways, the batting of eyelashes, the flirting with strangers and having them pour copium and red wine down his shirt. Countless tongues taste his skin. Nothing works. Inevitably, those strangers leave, and any friends he makes do eventually end up walking out or expiring, because he is a recycled body that will outlast anyone that ever gets close. 

He tries joining guilds again, temporarily, but he stops finding meaning in saving others. No matter what potion, incantation or spell he brings forth, they will all die, ultimately, anyway. No matter who he learns to trust or like or love — he won’t get to keep them. 

Every person comes to an end. 

Magni doesn’t. 

So he pushes people away. Convinces himself that he has to, so that he doesn’t have to deal with the agony of losing them, and eventually, he finds himself walking down cracked brick pavements and thinking, this is it, I guess. I’m doomed to spend eternity alone. 

That is when Magni finally starts to give up. 

On the pretense of enjoying life to the fullest, and even on the copium that had been keeping him afloat. He starts easing himself off of it, lamenting the days he felt truly alive. There’s no use in fuelling his own addiction. He could drink the stuff forever, but floating on clouds doesn’t erase reality. When the potion wears off, he feels it worse than ever. 

He trudges home and cries. He spends days in a devastated stupor. It wouldn’t be for the first time and it wouldn’t be for the last. He’d try again, and give up, and try again, and give up. 

Then, eventually, he would wake as an iteration of Magni Dezmond that just doesn’t want to try anymore. 

These days, more often than not, Magni lies down and lets the world pass him by. 

Sleeping is nice, but a rare luxury. His mind is too active to allow it, and his body thrums with a fierce restlessness which he stalwartly ignores. 

Get up. It begs him. Do something. 

He doesn’t want to. 

Nothing he does will matter, anyway. 

Lying down is easy. It takes no effort, and his Magmites will alert him if he ever needs to do anything — which, quite honestly, he does not.

He just wants to stop waking up. 

But this is all he has. 

Lying listless is the closest thing he has to death by a mile. There’s a certain comfort to it, anyhow. Knowing that nobody is waiting on him to be anywhere or to accomplish anything. He’s no hero. He gave that shit up eons ago. 

He may not have ever been a hero, as far as he’s concerned. 

That’s comforting, too. Fending for himself has always been the easiest way to live. Other people only ever ended up dragging him down. 

Still, doing nothing gets boring after a while. 

Being alone with his thoughts is a prison in itself. 

Isn’t there more you could be doing?

Sometimes he asks himself. 

People would kill to be like you. 

He can’t imagine why. After being forced to live for so long, he has no more left to dream about, and no real aspirations left to achieve. He’s done everything he’s ever really wanted to do. A lot of things he regrets, too, but it’s all blurred together in the repeating days of this soulless cycle. 

Resentment stirs in his heart. 

How convenient it is, that the one that began all of this can now rest in peace, while his successors suffer through iteration after expendable iteration — unable to change their fate. 

He grows jealous, too. 

His spite forms a hideous pit in his stomach. 

Sometimes, he thinks his blood itself is acid. 

But he cannot help it. 

He is ferociously jealous and spiteful of the real Magni Dezmond, who must have gotten it all in the end, finally dying to be reunited with the love of his life. The one and only Magni Dezmond that could have gotten a happy ending was the one that started this all in the first place. 

How cruel it was, that he had lived hundreds of lives, only for the first life to be the only life that truly mattered. 

All his clones had been tortured afterthoughts, born in water and left to rot in water, too. 

There’s no such person waiting for this Magni when he inevitably kicks the bucket. All he has is the ocean, and a promise made by two foolish kids that this ‘love’ of theirs would never die. 

That’s what they were, after all. Kids. Barely graduated, stupid kids that wanted to play with the big boys: life and death. 

Magni is disgusted by them. 

Disgusted by their happiness. Disgusted by their anguish. Disgusted, mostly, by their complete and utter idiocy. Hates that he’s a product of it. 

He’s especially disgusted by Magmite Prime — the first Magmite hadn’t been able to ever truly gain Magni Dezmond’s love — for insisting on keeping this corpse alive. 

Perhaps, Prime is still searching for a Magni Dezmond that will love him. But there is no such Magni, and as a product of his overwhelming desperation, he’s only creating a Magni that knows nothing but contempt. For him, for all his brothers, and for those two stupid lovers, too. 

That sorry excuse for an alchemist and that damn warrior that he fell for should’ve been mowed down together, all those moons ago, for all he’s concerned. End the tragedy there. Tie it up in a neat little bow. 

They’re strangers to him, now, both naïve morons that somehow masterminded this hellhole he now calls a life. 

Because of them, there is nothing Magni despises more in this godforsaken world than love.

“Magni.” 

Magmite Prime looms over him, expression unreadable. His mechanical body has limited mobility, but mobility nonetheless. Centuries of technological advancement would make it so. Magni would prefer if the detestable creature stayed useless and unmoving, but he’s never been able to stand up to Prime. He had been the one to give Magmite Prime all these moving parts, over a dozen Magni Dezmonds ago. 

If I help him, maybe he will spare me, that cowardly Magni had thought. 

But Prime hadn’t spared him. 

That Magni had still ended up at the bottom of the ocean, and now several iterations later, this Magni is dealing with the consequences. 

“You mustn’t waste this life you’ve been given.” Prime tells him, looking upon his prone figure as though Prime himself is a priest at the altar, and Magni is a sacrificial lamb beneath his knife. “There have been a great many failed attempts to make you who you are.”

“I don’t care. I never asked for this. I don’t want to be here.” Magni snips back, burrowing further under the covers, like he’ll be able to block out the voice. He knows what will happen if he defies Prime’s wishes, but he doesn’t care. He’s just another expendable, after all. “I don’t want to be Magni Dezmond, either. Just accept that he’s fucking dead, and leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Prime replies coldly. “I’m afraid I cannot do that. Until we can restore Magni Dezmond to his original state—”

“There is no original state to go back to!” He hisses, gritting his teeth, unable to stop himself from lashing out as Magmites swarm him, dragging him off the bed. He just wants it to end already. Maybe he is just another sacrificial lamb. Maybe he is destined for the knife. “You can kill me as many times as you want! This won’t bring him back!”

“Another defect. How you cause me so much pain…” Prime sighs, sorrow wrought in his tone. His mechanical arm waves dismissively. “Little ones, take him away. We’ll start again with another clone.”

“You won’t get him back!” Magni screams, hearing the crash of ocean waves that he knows he’ll soon be swallowed in. He doesn’t fight it. He knows what will happen next, whether he likes it or not. He musters all his strength to yell back down the hallway, hoping and praying his dagger hits its mark. “Magni Dezmond is not coming back!”

Magni wakes up again. 

He wants to tear himself apart. 

Another body, another day. 

No matter what he does, he can never seem to escape. 

He lives in the clone lab now, since it’s no secret to him anymore. Passes the green tubes and lifeless clones of himself, hoping to find a switch to free them from their prisons and destroy the core of the cloning process for good. 

Unfortunately, the Magmites keep watch, and Magmite Prime has only gotten more intelligent. More ruthless. As each iteration of Magni improves, so does he. 

They are trapped in this cycle together. 

One lives, while the other dies and dies and dies.  

There’s got to be a way to end it, Magni thinks. Even if I have to murder Magmite Prime with my own hands. 

He has killed many of his creations before. 

He has not been able to kill Prime. 

He has tried and failed and tried and failed. 

“I am sorry, Magni.” Prime would always say, before he’d inevitably disarm the clone, and send him once again to a watery grave. “But I have to stop you because I love you. It’s for your own good.”

Magni researches how to kill something like that: a chimera of forbidden alchemy, borne from a Philosopher’s Stone and a broken lover’s desperation. 

The answer remains unclear. 

After all, everyone who has ever tried has died. 

Including — he thumbs the page of the journal, worn and weathered with time — the Great Magni Dezmond himself. 

Alchemy is a product of science and magic. 

Where magic has slowed in its relevancy, science has only progressed. Perhaps, Magni thinks, to combat a curse of magic, he needs to look at the other side of the scales. He needs to turn to science. 

It is the age for it. The digital booming era. Post-RC, some call it. The Records Corruption hasn’t been top news since Guild TEMPUS axed it, but the age of TEMPUS came and went. Now, Elysium is a paradise of cyber activity, always on the move for the next powerhouse discovery. 

Even for Magni, who cares little for what happens outside his lab walls, is aware of it. With no Records Corruption, people have had years to pour their lives into the enhancement of the digital realm, and that means the answers to age-old questions are being uncovered, too. 

Technology in Utopia is being researched at a neck-breaking pace, and one night, when Magni finally feels like swigging a couple of drinks in a decrepit bar to stave his woes, that’s when he hears it. 

“It’s what they used to kill the corruption beasts for good.” A nameless patron says, conspiratorially, to their companion. “They say Guild TEMPUS gave up their souls for it and their souls are still there, to this day. Crazy, huh? If you had high enough clearance, you could meet Regis Altare.”

“Ha,” their compatriot laughs. “Nice try. I don’t even think Regis Altare actually existed. They just made up some pretty boy hero so they could put a nice-looking statue up in the town square. It’s all propaganda.”

“Oh, come on. You’re just mad because you know he’s prettier than you,” they elbow each other on the bar stools, giggling. “But don’t you think it’s interesting? That the Records Corruption could still be out there, and some ancient machine is the only thing keeping it away from us?”

Magni sips his concoction, and hastily writes down some notes. He won’t be blamed for eavesdropping in a public space. 

“Suppose this machine actually exists. How would it even work? What, does it shoot anti-corruption laser beams or something?”

“No, stupid. Haven’t you read the stories? It’s about the heart. Corruption destroys hearts. The beasts can be killed on their own, but they’ll always come back, because they’re like ghosts and don’t actually die. TEMPUS found out that if you give them their heart back, then you can kill them for good. Make them mortal, or whatever.”

“Sounds like bull.”

“You sound like bull. Bartender, can we get another drink for this fool? Add it to my tab.”

“Actually, bartender,” Magni enters the conversation smoothly, giving the two patrons his most charming smile. “Drinks are on me. Can I ask you lovely people a few questions?”

Truth be told, it’s a silly, drunken little tale. 

Hardly a lead. Hardly anything, really. 

But it’s all Magni’s got. 

The clock strikes past midnight and he’s staring up at the statue in the town square, the triumphant reflection of a long-lost hero staring back at him. 

“You saved Elysium once.” He murmurs, shoving his hands into his pockets. It’s cold, out here. “Do an old friend a favor and save me from this shit too, won’t you?”

It’s empty words. 

Regis Altare is long dead, and can’t hear him. 

Something about that is strangely comforting. 

“Oh, and, before I go, mister hero,” he says, circling the statue. “I am sorry about the betrayal, by the way. Kinda late, I know. Several hundred years have passed. But y’know, I’ve turned a new leaf. I’m a new Magni Dezmond. Literally.”

He feels ridiculous, talking to a statue. 

Yet, at this hour, it’s the only time he’ll be able to approach it without the crowds that mingle for photos, and toss coins into the fountain like they’re praying to some god in the form of a young man in glowing armor. 

Too young to have had to save the world, frankly, but Altare had been nothing if not brave. Even if he had made the mistake of teaming up with a coward of an alchemist. 

“Forgive me?” Magni whispers, his words caught in the wind. 

He doesn’t really mean it. 

He’s too far removed from TEMPUS to mean it. 

But some sweet talk for the funsies wouldn’t hurt. 

Maybe he’s still a teensy bit drunk. That’ll explain it.

“Listen, buddy,” he says, circling back until he can look Altare in his heroic little face again. “I need a heart. I need you to get me in, so I can get that heart.”

According to drunk extras number one and number two, it’s rumored that there’s a device that can create hearts, right in the core of Elysium. 

It is a gift of life, one that is used to grant free will to those that used to fall under the NPC category, and it is a gift of death, in that it can turn the unkillable corruption beasts that used to roam this land into mortal creatures that bleed. 

The rumors say that Guild TEMPUS’ souls rest there, protecting the machine, and the watchful eyes of Regis Altare remain their guardian, never to let it fall into the wrong hands. 

Most of that is fancy embellishment, of course. Stories to tell kids at dinner time, to make it sound mysterious and exciting. Magni doesn’t believe in fairytales. He’s never believed in anything he hasn’t seen for himself. 

“What do you say, mister hero?” He chuckles, reaching out to gently brush his fingertips against the statue’s hand, where strong fingers grip the hilt of his signature weapon. “Care to come save one last lonely soul, one more time?”

What a joke. 

There is no Guild TEMPUS anymore. 

There is no hero, either. 

In the town square, all there is to see is a statue. 

In the core, all there is to see is an old, decrepit machine. 

He doesn’t even know if that thing really exists. How convenient it would be, for a single device to stop the spread of corruption from ever rearing its head again. 

Whether good or bad, a monster can always be killed if it has a heart. That’s what he had been told. 

Perhaps it is worth looking into — if he can fit it into his loaded schedule of doing nothing all day, that is.

But it is a thought that Magni keeps locked in the corner of his mind, deep down. 

If he goes to the core, and grants Magmite Prime a heart, he could finally kill that damn creature and be freed for eternity. 

Magni doesn’t go to the core, but that won’t stop another iteration, if he’s ever decided he’s had enough. 

This iteration of Magni has had enough. 

Faces blur in his memories. He doesn’t feel like he’s ever actually lived a life, just stolen someone else’s, and if he had once felt love towards the machines that keep his mind alive, he feels none of that love, anymore. 

The Magmites keep him company still — too small and single-minded to know how to do anything else — and Magmite Prime expresses doleful feelings about how cold Magni has become, but Magni can only smile faintly and say, “It’s your fault I’m like this.”

“And it is your fault,” Prime would reply. “That you didn’t make me into something worthy of your love.”

“You were supposed to be good enough.” Magni clasps his cloak together and slips towards the opening of the lab. “But you failed me.”

“Be safe, Dezmond,” Prime replies. “Live a good life.”

Magni doesn’t smile when he turns the handle to leave. He doesn’t intend on listening — living a life, or making it a good one. He has well and truly had enough. 

Prime and the Magmites have loved him for centuries. Loved him since his beginning, and love him always to his end, too. Magni sometimes wishes he could love them back, but he feels nothing these days. Not towards them, or anyone, or anything. 

Perhaps, he thinks, this is the consequence of being immortal, too.

He is empty. He does not even feel human. He is an entity. Perhaps he has been this way for a long time. 

This Magni seeks out the core.

He is not Magni Dezmond, anymore. 

The core of Elysium houses a computer. 

For a digital world, this is not unexpected. 

What Magni doesn’t anticipate is how difficult it would be to reach the computer. 

“Intruder,” a soft monotone catches his ear before Magni can even look up and register it. “You are not allowed here. Die.”

The last thing he sees before he’s sliced open is a blue blade, glinting like ice in the dark. 

Someone is protecting the core.  

Magni wakes up again, shucks on his gear with wobbly legs, and is already out the door before Prime can get a word in. Magmite goop sticks to his boot. 

Someone he needs to get rid of.

He will get that heart, no matter what. 

Nobody is getting in his way. 

He’s an alchemist, so he doesn’t have many weapons. Potions might do the trick if he can get a good strike in, but last time, he hadn’t even seen his killer until it was too late. 

In the dim light, there were no identifiable features. 

Only blue. He saw only blue. 

But Magni is smart. And expendable. 

All he needs to do is learn a few things. 

He packs up his potions and heads to the core. 

His death count rises exponentially, fighting this beast. 

Could this be called a beast? It is a guy in a blue cape and armor, technically, though Magni rarely catches sight of his face, with how abruptly he hones in on Magni and takes him out clean — like an indomitable sniper, never missing a shot. 

He’s seen the long tatters of his cape, mostly, and piercing green eyes. A belt that hangs around a skintight bodysuit, bolstered by the silver-white planes of segmented armor, wrapping shoulder, arm and chest. Quick as a dart, leaving trails of aqua light behind him as he cuts Magni down, time and time again. 

“Oh, come on, you little shit,” Magni heaves, wiping blood from his mouth. “Just give it up already! I’m only gonna keep coming back until you let me through, you know!”

“Nobody is getting in.” 

The reply is curt and short.

Magni just scoffs. 

“Like you can stop me.”

“I can, and I will.”

Magni looks up.

Oh, he thinks. I’ve seen this face before. 

Regis Altare has his hand poised over his gunsaber, aimed straight for Magni’s heart. For a moment, the blade flickers — it turns into a chain, then a whip, then a rapier. 

“Die.” Altare says, and Magni’s vision blurs, then goes black. 

Some things don’t add up. 

For starters, Regis Altare should be dead.

Magni may not remember the nitty gritty details, but he’s pretty sure that Altare is a human being, and human beings — that are not Magni Dezmond with an underground cloning scheme, obviously — usually don’t live for hundreds of years, and what’s more, he did kind of die to save the world. 

That’s something that earned him the title of True Hero of Elysium, even though the bittersweet truth was that he didn’t live long enough to find that out.

Not to mention, this Altare is different. Magni can just feel it. His features are the same as that of the statue, but his movements are mechanical. His fighting style is odd. There is no shine to his eyes. 

He is a warrior. A soldier. But he is no hero. 

The Regis Altare of legends uses a sword and a gun. A duo of weaponry fashioned into one slick gunsaber, which he still does possess, but he also brandishes other weapons, switching between them at will. 

Magni has counted six so far; gunsaber, chain, whip, rapier, bow and arrow, and spear. 

Sometimes, Altare even flies, two pods beneath his feet lifting him into the air, which explains how he can land attacks from above. He’s got a whole arsenal of tools at his beck and call, and uses them with far too much intensity against an alchemist who can barely land a fist in his direction. 

If he is really Regis Altare, he should know that Magni Dezmond doesn’t need six weapons to kill him (he is not notoriously strong and he screams more than he actually fights back), but then again, Magni doesn’t know if he can really call him Regis Altare at all. 

His face is the only thing familiar about him. 

But can Magni even call this familiar? He never even knew the hero of legend. That was some other Magni. All he knows about Altare is what people read in the history books. Some wisps of memories he can barely recall. 

“Do you not understand that this area is out of bounds?” Altare asks. “If you turn around, I will not kill you. Just leave.”

First, he repeatedly kills Magni, with no mercy in sight. 

Now, he’s saying he’ll just let him walk out if he wants to. 

He just cannot get a read on this guy. 

“You’re Altare, right?” He tries to ask, yelping as a spear sinks into the wall beside his head. Yikes. “Not the real Altare, obviously. He’s dead as a doornail. I saw. But you’re— you’re still Altare, aren’t you? Some kind of weird copy.”

“I am Regis Altare.” The response is emotionless. He calls the spear back with his hand, and turns it into an arrow, drawing out a glowing blue bow and pointing the arrowhead in Magni’s direction. “I am the one true savior of this world.”

“Top ten things Altare would never say,” Magni mutters, throwing up a shield. “Okay, and what’s your deal? Kill anyone that gets close?”

“You are an unauthorized trespasser and this is an area with restricted access.” Altare replies, arrows multiplying into three. The shield cracks, and Magni hisses, rolling off to the side, barely dodging a hit. “It is my duty to eliminate you.”

“Some hero you are.”

“Coming from you?” Altare raises an eyebrow, and it’s the only hint of an expression he’s made since Magni has started coming down here to get his ass beat by him. “And I take it, you’re trying to access the core for purely heroic reasons?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.” He snaps, his glove cloak tossing a bottle of stun at Altare, hoping to brain him long enough to slow his attacks. “I’m trying to save myself, you see.”

“That’s what a hero is, to you?” Altare parries the potion with his chain, cracking it in half, letting the glass splinter against the wall. “Someone who saves himself?”

“Nobody else will,” Magni whispers. 

Altare’s eyes are cold when he gets out the spear again and skewers him. 

“You just don’t die, do you?”

Magni wants to laugh at the irritation in his tone. 

After a few too many deaths, he had assumed this: Altare is a program. He’s made up of zeroes and ones. He’s emotionless, and bound by the rules pre-written into him. He is not Regis Altare. 

It explains a lot, when it all comes together — in the end, this could just be a security system wearing a hero’s face, some ironic cosmetic decided by some fucked up techhead with too much time on their hands — but sometimes he sasses back. A program with personality, then. He settles with that explanation for now. 

“I’m like a cockroach,” Magni replies, twirling a round glass of copium with his glove hands. “Just keep coming back. Stay mad about it.”

“I’m still not letting you in.” Altare says curtly. “I’ll kill you as many times as it takes.”

“Then we’re gonna be here for a while, brother, I’ll tell you that.”

“What’s your name?”

That stops Magni in his tracks. 

He didn’t know why he had assumed Altare had known — didn’t know why some part of him is almost disappointed that he didn’t. 

So that’s what they are now, huh? 

Just strangers that want each other dead. 

Figures. 

Well, it’s not like Magni was expecting a friend. 

“You’re looking at the one and only,” Magni grins, opening up his cloak arms in a grand gesture and bowing. “The Great Magni Dezmond.”

Oddly enough, Altare seems to smirk. 

“I can do that too, you know.”

His eighth hidden tool comes to life in the form of holographic arms that spider around him, and one of them twirls an orb of a flask, filled with a red wine liquid, mirroring Magni’s own. Another one swings his gunsaber, and another two share the twist of a roping chain. 

“I am the one and only,” Altare repeats dramatically, bowing. “The Great Magni Dezmond.”

Magni can’t help it. He laughs. 

“What the hell?” He barks out. “If I’m Magni Dezmond and you’re Magni Dezmond, then— then what the hell is even the point of being a clone, one and only is bullshit—”

“Why are you laughing?”

“No, no, no, that’s not fair. One of us has to change,” Magni snorts, waving his arms at him. “And that someone ain’t gonna be me.”

He’s still laughing when Altare shoots him in the face. 

“Okay, so, like, your extra arms, right? Can you bring them out again so we can compare them? I just want to know who has bigger—” Magni screeches when Altare slings out his sword and starts chasing him. “Okay, Jesus Christ, I’m sorry! You’re insecure about it! I didn’t know! Don’t come near me! I’m sorry!”

The souls of Guild TEMPUS live within their guardian. 

That’s what the rumors have told. 

Magni had thought them just rumors, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. 

So he’s not fighting Altare, he thinks. 

He’s fighting all of TEMPUS. 

Including himself. 

How positively riveting. 

“So you’re Altare, usually.”

“I’m always Altare.” Altare replies. 

“But you’re Guild TEMPUS, too.”

Hovering, twirling his whip in his hands, Altare inclines his head. “I am the guild leader. I live and breathe Guild TEMPUS. I am them, and they are me.”

Something tickles pleasantly inside Magni’s throat and he suppresses a smile. 

“That’s cute.”

“You’re not talking your way out of this,” Altare says, and kills him again. 

“I was in Guild TEMPUS, once, you know.” Magni tells him, frantically scampering past the rain of arrows to get closer, at unfortunate ease with the dance of their fatally one-sided fights. “I’m surprised you don’t remember me.”

“A lot of people claim that to try and get past me.”

“Nah, I’m the real deal.” He says, while knowing he doesn’t hold a torch to the real Magni Dezmond. He has never been able to catch up with his own shadow. Guess he's always been just a little too good at running away, even from himself. “But I guess you’d prefer it if I was dead.”

“Why would I?” Altare asks, the day after he murders him. “Want you dead, I mean. If you really are Magni Dezmond.”

“I betrayed you.” Magni replies. 

Altare stares at him, for a long moment, as if he’s truly recognizing him for the first time. “I always knew you would.” 

“You wouldn’t have died if I didn’t run away.” He says. “None of you would have died.”

“I think you’ve died more than enough times to make up for it, Dezmond.”

“Let me into the core, Altare.” Magni pleads quietly. “Then you’ll never have to deal with me again.”

“No.” Altare replies, beckoning him forward with his rapier. “Not unless you defeat me first.”

Now, Magni is not a fighter. 

But by god, does he try. 

He copies what Altare does. He finds himself a whip, and is so horrific at using it that he’d make cowboys weep. He finds himself a battle chain, and trips over it, giving himself ouchies on the spiky bits, and doesn’t fare much better with the rapier. Purple blood splatters every time he fucks up, and he feels the pain immensely. His body throbs with the bruises, even when he’s reborn again.

He fights Altare.

He keeps losing. 

And losing and losing and losing. 

He almost gives up several times, but drags his own damn self up a familiar path every time, telling himself that he will get Regis Altare on his back, and he will claw his way to victory. Some way or another. 

Time is not an issue, after all. He’s expendable. He’s a fast learner. He just needs to find his way. 

He just needs to find his competitive advantage. 

Something he has that Altare can’t replicate. 

That’s when it hits him. 

He’s a genius. Literally. He is the famed genius alchemist — a retired workaholic of innate, immeasurable skill. He is pretty great, actually. 

He is no fighter, but the one thing the pretty great Magni Dezmond does have is his brain. 

So he hits the books and starts putting it to good use. 

Learning the techniques is easy. 

There’s books upon books about Guild TEMPUS, the Grand Library filled with tomes and tomes of stories covering the legendary Adventurer’s Guild. 

He chases the facts, from front to back cover, and studies them extensively. He learns all about Guild TEMPUS, and he sees them in Altare, and he wants to know more and more. 

There’s something about the fight that thrills Magni, sending thunder straight down his veins at the thought. 

Oh yes, the Great Magni Dezmond was a coward. 

A right old weenie baby, crying at the first sign of danger, screaming as he punted countless flasks from the sidelines, cradling bloodied guildmates in the aftermath, healing potions in hands. 

The Great Magni Dezmond would never be able to defeat a killing machine with his guild leader’s face and his guildmates’ weaponry at its command. 

Then again, he’s not really Magni Dezmond, is he?

He’s just a clone. Just an insignificant, unwanted version of a genius that will never walk this godforsaken ground again. 

So what does it matter if he wants to try? If he wants to defeat Guild TEMPUS, not as a traitor, but as the tired, wretched villain he has become?

He’s never been one to deny himself what he wants. 

Magni flicks his pen across his page. 

Altare doesn’t have a fighting pattern, per se, but he’s most confident with his gunsaber, and hadn’t even brought the multiple arms out until Magni had. 

If he has to scale the tools in his arsenal, he’d probably rank the gunsaber as the weapon with the most confidence — which makes sense, seeing as that is the Regis Altare special — and the glove cloak as the least. 

Well, Magni thinks wryly, the two of them have always been diametrically opposed. 

Hit after hit. 

Blow after deadly blow. 

Death after death. 

Magni starts learning. 

Magni starts hitting back. 

Every iteration is better than the last. 

He’s heard those words from Magmite Prime before, but he hadn’t realized just how much power laid behind them. 

“Listen up, Altare,” he grins maniacally, even with the point of a rapier — the signature weapon of Vesper Noir! Magni has read the entries back and front! He knows Guild TEMPUS now, even though he’s never met them! — poised at his throat. “You’re toast.”

He knows he’s not just imagining things when Altare hesitates just a second before piercing him through. 

It’s—

So—

Much—

Fun.  

He sends Altare rolling across the concrete, the replica of a hero hissing in pain. 

“You still won’t make it through.” Altare snaps, bow and arrow at the ready. “Just because you keep coming back stronger, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to defeat me.”

“I’ll make you eat those words,” Magni says, grinning. Those arrows come through like a downpour. He’s lucky he has enough hands to catch them. “Kill me again. I dare you. I’m only gonna keep coming back.”

“Magni.” Prime says, voice low when Magni wakes, his mechanical body creaking as he regards Magni with a tone of frustration, somehow still fond. “Is life so meaningless that you must continuously choose to die?”

“You know what?” Magni says, exasperated, as he scans the room for his inventory. They’re all safe, as usual. The Magmites always bring his stuff back with his corpse. Ever the good, adorable little cleanup team, except when it comes to ants. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“This behavior is reckless. Even for you.”

“And what do you know about me, anyway?” He mutters bitterly. 

Damn. He needs to stock up on potions again. 

Apparently, Altare is resistant to being iced to death, which is kind of fucked up. Magni had given himself frostbite for no reason. At least the lab is at a moderate temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. 

“You want to kill me, don’t you?”

Magni freezes, snapping to attention. 

For a moment, he thinks his heart stops. 

“You want to erase my existence. Don’t you, Magni? You wish you had never created me. You wish you could deal the finishing blow and end all this for good.”

He looks up at Magmite Prime in horror. 

Not because he’s been found out, but because he had forgotten his objective, amidst all the excitement of a good brawl. Something to look forward to. An end goal. Too consumed by the thought of destroying Altare, he had lost sight of why he was doing this in the first place. 

To finally die. 

Prime only chuckles. “I don’t blame you. I haven’t exactly been the most kind to you when you fail me. I always thought you’d understand. You’ve killed countless of the little ones with the same thought in your mind.”

“I don’t…” he gazes down at the gaggle of Magmites that crowd at the foot of his bed, squeaking at him innocently. “That’s not true.”

Had he been so cruel? He doesn’t remember. He had cursed them out, squished them, had them bitten up and chewed. But he hadn’t hated the Magmites. He had just been so sad. So devastated. So angry. 

“We failed you.” Prime says simply. “We could never give you the love that you lost. Even though each and every one of us loves you more than life itself.”

“I’m sorry.” Magni replies, still looking at the Magmites, who clamber onto his legs with round, beady eyes. “The Magni Dezmond that created you… and the one you loved… he no longer exists. If he couldn’t love you then, what makes you think that I can love you now? I’m a paltry imitation of him. Just another failed Magni, in the sea of other failures.”

“Oh, but we do love you. We always love you. We don’t have a choice.” The Magmites clutch onto Magni, cradling his arms. He picks one of them up, and finds his reflection in its pleading gaze. “We’re made with love for you. We are the manifestation of love for you.”

He squeezes the Magmite and the critter chirps happily. Magni thinks about how delicate it must be. How easy it would be to crush it and kill it. 

“You have so much love right here. Is it not enough for you?”

“I’m not…” he squeezes until purple oozes onto his hands. “I’m not Magni fucking Dezmond, alright? I’m sorry. I know you love him. I know you all love him, but I curse his goddamn name. You know that? He’s the reason you made me, and I am sick and tired of this bullsh—”

“Will it make you happy? Killing me?” The old Prime creaks again, interrupting him. “Or will you simply end it all by erasing yourself as well? Is there really no way for me to make Magni Dezmond truly happy?”

Magni bows his head, shuffling to get out from under the covers so he can resume his mission again. This time, he might be better prepared. 

“I’m sorry.” He says. “But I don’t think there is.”

Why is he trying so hard? 

He’ll defeat Altare one day, kill Magmite Prime, and then what? Just like he said, end it all?

What’s the point, then?

Does he even really want to die, or does he just not want to suffer anymore? He doesn’t know. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to figure that part out. 

He stands in front of Altare and opens his arms. 

“I’m tired.” He declares, weary again. Not even this enjoyment could last. Not even this. “Just take the shot. Just kill me.”

Altare raises his gun. 

“Tell me.” Altare speaks the moment Magni steps in, towards the core. “This world that I am protecting. Why are you trying so hard to destroy it?”

“I’m not trying to destroy the world.” Magni tells him truthfully. “I’m trying to destroy myself.”

“Countless times you’ve died by my hands.” Altare’s boots crunch along the ground as he walks, his saber fixed on Magni like a target. “Countless times you have come back. You know what death feels like. Why do you still chase it?”

“You’re asking a lot of questions for a killing machine.”

“I am always alone.” Altare says. “There is nobody else that can answer me.”

“Don’t you have, like, the data of the universe here or something? Just look it up.”

“The data of the universe does not tell me how you feel.”

“Alright, well,” Magni shrugs. “I guess we can talk for a little while. But don’t expect me to be nice to you. I’m only here because I need what you’re standing in front of.”

“This stone wall?” Altare asks, amusement in the eerie tint of his eyes. 

“Yes, you idiot.” Magni replies sarcastically. “I want that stone wall. I think about that stone wall every day. Just want to press my body up against that rock hard—”

Altare pulls the trigger and shoots him again. 

“Rule number one!” Magni announces as he stumbles in through the entrance again. “You do not shoot people you’re trying to have a conversation with!”

“Sorry.” Altare says, not sounding remotely apologetic. 

“You’re impossible.” Magni replies. “First you wanna kill me, then you say you wanna talk, and then when I start talking, you end up killing me again. You know what?” He yanks his dagger from his belt. “We’re multitasking now. Fight me.”

“Oh,” Altare pulls out his own sword. “Okay, sure.”

“First one to get hit has to answer any question the other person asks, and it has to be an honest response.”

“Oh,” Altare says again, eyes widening at the prospect. “Okay. Sure.”

Magni cannot believe this guy. 

Altare nicks him within minutes, and all he asks is some bizarre ass question like, “Can you really see the stars from anywhere in Elysium?”

Magni wants to ask if he knows basic astronomy, but holds his tongue. 

“I guess you can, when it’s nighttime.” He replies, granting him his honest answer. “It’s always nighttime somewhere in the world, so I suppose you can always see the stars from somewhere, even if it’s not from everywhere at the same time.”

“Cool.” Altare says, accepting that with a simple nod. “I like the stars.”

“You see stars from here?” He asks. 

“Sometimes.” Altare shrugs. “It’s usually just dark here. I might see an airplane, if I’m lucky.”

“Must be lonely.”

“I don’t know.” Altare replies, and Magni is startled momentarily by how innocent he sounds. “I don’t know what that means.” 

“We’ve found a way to bring him back.”

Magni groans as his eyes adjust to the light, and he finds himself in his fucking clone lab again — his surroundings glowing a sickly green. 

Right. Their little chat had only been a brief moment of reprieve. As soon as Magni had made a mad dash for the gate, Altare had caught him with the tug of a chain, spearing him through. 

Now he’s here again. Home sweet fuckin’ home. 

“The answer was right in front of us this entire time. You found it for me, Magni.”

Magni sighs, taking the Magmite off his face where it had been resting and throwing it across the room in annoyance.

“Can you let me wake up properly before you make weird, vague discoveries? Dying takes a lot outta me, y’know!”

“But this is what we have been looking for, Magni. This is all we need. The end is near. I know how to restore the Great Magni Dezmond once more.”

Magni scratches his head. He has never heard Prime so animated, but when he finally looks over, dread hits him like a cannon. 

On the screen, camera footage plays. 

“You found him.” Prime says. “The missing piece.”

Altare stands at the gate of the core, holographic arms protruding from his cape, fiddling with the knobs and screws on the wall. 

You can’t be serious. Magni thinks, panic settling in before he can even register that he’s feeling it. Why him? Why now? I was just starting to—

No. His expression hardens. He rips that train of thought from the bud, snipping it at the roots. We were never meant to get along. Don’t delude yourself into thinking there was ever a chance. 

You are not Magni Dezmond. 

And he is not Regis Altare. 

There is no reason for you to learn to coexist. 

“We will make the modifications to your body so that you will be able to kill him properly.” Prime says, his lofty voice glimmering with a peculiar lightness. An essence of hope. “You were right all along. I should have trusted you. You have always been a clever one, after all.”

“What,” Magni croaks. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Prime tells him the truth: the Altare he knows is an AI that contains the data of Guild TEMPUS. 

He is not human. He is not really Altare, either, but Magni had known that since the very beginning. 

That doesn’t make much of a difference to him. 

This Altare is the only Altare he knows. 

The Magmites have been monitoring their fights, always at the ready to drag Magni’s dead body back to the lab, and each time Magni has learned something new about Altare, they have stored that information, too. 

That is why he is so quick to get back on his feet, and so quick to be able to mosey down to the core and get his ass beat again. There is no break in his memories. Days may have passed between his deaths, but Magni will wake up feeling as though they were only minutes. 

“Do you know what this means?” Prime booms, as Magni lays strapped up to wires, squinting into the middle distance. “This means he has the complete data of Magni Dezmond inside of him as well. You will kill the vessel and bring our dear alchemist back to me. We will see the true Magni alive once more.”

Magni hisses as an agonizing pain shoots up his arm, electrifying his entire body. Another burst of agony has him screaming to be let loose. 

“And if you do not survive this procedure, there are countless others that can.” Prime tells him coolly, a guileless tilt to his tone. “Little ones, prepare the replacements, will you? This might take a few more tries.”

Kill Regis Altare. 

Easier said than done. 

Magni has been trying to get past him for a while now, and he still hasn’t been able to accomplish that. 

Altare has the strength of eight adventurers coursing through him, and the core of Elysium to defend. It will not be easy. 

And what’s more, Magni doesn’t actually want him dead. 

They’re not friends, but he’s the closest thing to a person that Magni regularly interacts with, and he finds himself drawing out their fights just to hear him talk, sometimes. 

It’s a plea for normalcy. Any normalcy. 

He’ll take Altare’s cold, clipped remarks if it’ll mean he gets to speak to someone other than Magmite Prime, and he doesn’t have to worry about Altare keeling over and dying anytime soon, because he is an AI and he does not know death. 

“You are getting stronger every time you come back. That’s pretty impressive.” Altare muses. “But is saving yourself really worth putting the rest of the world at risk?”

“I only want one thing from the core.” Magni replies, panting, sticking to his story because he can’t tell Altare he’s been given orders to eliminate him. Can’t tell Altare that he still doesn’t know how to defy his own fate. “And that’s a goddamn heart.”

“You say that, but humans will never stop at just one thing.” Altare leaps in with his saber, and Magni blocks it with one of his own, a deafening clash of blades before they spring apart. “Once you get a taste of power, you will want more. Such is the nature of people.”

“You think I’m gonna get greedy?”

“Maybe.” Altare switches for his whip, and so Magni’s cloak arm follows, switching for a rapier, and he artfully parries its path. “If not greedy, then corrupt. You’ll have people eating out of the palm of your hand for a taste of your power. There is no-one with a good enough heart to be trusted with the core.”

“Is that why you’re here? Because people can’t be trusted, they put computers in charge?”

Altare falters, his chain clattering against the floor. 

“Who told you that?”

“Told me what? That you’re an AI?” He scoffs. 

He has to wonder if Altare had been trying to conceal it. If he was, he hadn’t been doing a very good job. 

“Dude, don’t you think I’d figure it out by now?” Magni asks, putting up a smoke bomb as Altare advances towards him. “You barely act like a person, you only look like one. You don’t get emotions at all.”

“Emotions will only interfere with my duty.” Altare bursts through the smoke, and Magni shrieks, his dagger zipping across Altare’s leg. The cut seals itself immediately in a spatter of bright blue pixels. “I don’t need them.”

“Then you need to work on your acting skills, you damn robot,” Magni teases, before he takes a kick to the stomach that sends him stumbling backwards. Damn it. Their skill difference is still too wide. “Can’t call yourself Regis Altare if you don’t even smile.” He spits out blood. “You know that guy was pretty famous for it, right? Smiling, I mean. He always walked around smiling like some kind of idiot. Or a serial killer. Take your pick.”

Altare raises his eyebrows. “I was never taught how to smile.”

“‘Course you weren’t. You were never taught to be happy, either.” Magni almost feels sorry for him, for a moment, but that doesn’t stop him from bludgeoning him with a stun bottle. It’s one of the only times it works, because Altare jolts and stays frozen in place, and Magni takes his sweet time walking back up to him, dagger in hand. “Have you ever considered giving yourself a heart? Feel something, for a change? Maybe then, you’d actually be able to pull off the disguise.”

A flying machine pod smacks Magni in the back of the head and he yelps. Shit. Forgot about those. 

Machina X Flayon, he thinks. Ace pilot of Guild TEMPUS. 

They knock Altare over, too, scooping him out of stabbing range, though Magni has a fire potion prepared for attacks from a distance and one of his back arms lobs it at Altare’s head. It lands, and the AI hisses as the fire erupts in the hood of his cloak, but the stun status wears off as a result. A huge spear is immediately summoned into his palm, which he separates into two; one wide, one narrow. 

Banzoin Hakka, Magni thinks. Exorcist of Guild TEMPUS. 

Altare flies at him, flaming, twin spears at the ready. 

“You can’t defy orders, can you?” Magni goads, though his words come out more personal than he’d wanted them to. “This is why you’ll never be the real Regis Altare. You are just a fake, phony ass bitch who has no control over his own destiny, forced to live your days as a security dog because someone out there thought they knew what was best for you.”

One spear pins Magni by the cloak arm, and Magni doesn’t fight it. This time, he isn’t winning, either.

“But in reality,” Magni spits venomously, urging Altare to look him in the eye. “They were only in it for themselves.”

“You are weak.” Prime speaks, voice booming through the laboratory. He creaks unpleasantly, face contorted in sorrow. “You are weak and foolish. Do you know how many times I’ve had to break my own heart to watch you die? Do you, Magni?”

“You bring me back knowing I’ll have to die.” Magni laughs. “Stop kidding yourself. Do you really love me? Or do you love this perfect vision you have of me? What’s to say that if you ever do bring the real Magni Dezmond back to life, he’s not going to disappoint you just like I have?”

“He is perfect. It will not happen.”

“You loved a man who barely knew what the hell he was doing.” Magni remarks dully, shaking his head. “His first relationship got fucked up, and it spiralled into this shitstorm because he couldn’t handle the grief of losing someone. He was young and stupid. So I’m weak and foolish. I’m only like this because I was modeled after him, you know.”

“Go kill the AI.” Prime replies gruffly, clearly having had enough of this conversation.

“Right, right, kill the AI,” Magni rolls his eyes, flexing his cybernetic limbs. His arms and legs are metal now, all in the process of turning him into a weapon to suit his maker’s needs. 

All of him is slowly being replaced with stronger parts, and he’s not quite sure he likes it. Any more of his body being replaced, and he won’t even look like the alchemist of long past, but he supposes that doesn’t matter to him, either. 

“For the record?” He drawls when he reaches the door, fingers touching the handle loosely. “His name is Altare.”

This time, Magni takes a detour. 

Killing Altare won’t happen in this iteration either, and he knows it. He might as well enjoy himself before he gets slain again, he thinks, so he goes the long way around. 

He wonders, briefly, if Altare waits for his arrival these days. 

Wonders why he’d like it if he did. 

Thinks it’d almost be cute, too, like getting chummy with a skittish stray animal that keeps biting him to death. Imagines the stoic AI with a pair of cat ears, then dog ears, then bunny ears, just for the fun of it. It keeps him distracted from the fact that he’s supposed to want to kill this guy. 

He walks down to the town square to hear the birds sing. He passes the statue of Elysium’s hero, and smirks wryly at the children splashing coins into the fountain, making wishes. 

If only he could be so naïve. 

Dear Regis Altare, he’d wish upon the young man, you should have killed me a long time ago, so none of this would ever have to happen. Amen. 

He gets himself a nice, warm meal at a restaurant and thinks about how many centuries ago the real Magni Dezmond would have done the same thing. The sitting down and eating thing, not the praying to Altare thing. That would be weird to do to someone you know. 

He envies the alchemist, not for the first time. 

Had he been one of the Magnis that had known the real Regis Altare, maybe they could have been friends. The Hero of Elysium had befriended several iterations of Magni Dezmond, after all. He’s known him in many different bodies harboring the same soul. 

If there was anyone who could save him—

Anyone at all—

No.

He can’t entertain that thought. 

Nobody was ever able to save him. 

There is nobody in this world he can trust, anymore. 

All he has left is himself. 

He just has to remember that. 

He pays for his meal on the way out, and chuckles when the waitress tells him he looks a little bit like Guild TEMPUS’ alchemist. 

“I get that a lot.” He says, running a hand through his asymmetrical bangs. “Maybe I’m his clone or something.”

The waitress just laughs back. 

Altare looks different when Magni steps towards the gate of the core. 

The glowing blue light in his chest, right above his sternum, pulses to an unheard rhythm. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that could mean. 

Magni’s own heart beats in time with it, the ruby red of his Philosopher’s Stone rising and falling with his own chest, where it sits. 

Altare is perched on the edge of the gate, and opens his eyes when Magni trudges up to him. 

“Hi,” Altare says. The light in his chest flutters. 

“What the hell is that? Did you actually do it?” Magni asks, instead of brandishing his weapons immediately and getting into the fight like they usually do. “Give yourself a heart?”

“Are you kidding?” Altare asks back, immediately glaring at him. “Of course not.”

“Right.” Magni smirks knowingly. “Because if you were still just an emotionless AI, you wouldn’t be getting defensive. What changed your mind?”

“I just wanted to know what it would be like, okay?” Altare admits, fidgeting with his fingers. His anger softens into something inexplicably gentle. “The wind against my skin. How it would make me feel.”

Something in Magni’s chest pangs. He remembers when he used to emerge from his tank, groggy and disoriented, and find his own subtle wonder in the ways of the outside world. 

“That’s it?” He asks. “You just wanted to feel the wind?”

“I’ll put my heart back soon. It’s no big deal.” Altare says, shrugging. “It gets… quiet up here. Nobody ever comes by, except you. The animals are happy — is that the right word? They look happy when the sun is out. I wanted to know how it felt. Just once.”

“Don’t put it back.” Magni tells him. It’s a demand that’s selfish, but he’s not exactly notorious for being the alternative. “Feel the sun on your skin. Feel the wind. Don’t let those in charge tell you what you can and can’t do.”

“It’s a lot to deal with.” Altare says. “Having a heart.”

“It sure is.” Magni replies. “But you can handle it, can’t you? You’re a big, strong hero. Well, I guess you’re not that big. A small, strong hero. You can handle a few feelings.”

“No. I have to put it back.” Altare says, and his eyes are wistful. “Or you’ll try to kill me for good.”

Magni smiles softly at him, feeling dread twist in his gut. “I wish you weren’t right about that.”

He takes Altare on a walk. 

Temporary truce, he had offered. I wanna talk while you have a heart. I don’t want to be a killing machine fighting another killing machine. Just for a little while, we’ll be people, yeah? 

Altare had tilted his head, trepidation in the green wash of his eyes, but Magni had already started walking off, hands behind his head. Soon enough, Altare sighed and followed. 

“The scenery around here is pretty bleak.” Altare calls after him. “You won’t find much to look at. I’d know. I’ve been walking these premises for centuries.”

“Where’s the happy animals?” Magni asks in response. “Show me the critters.”

“Oh, sure,” Altare seems to light up at the prospect, catching up to him, and overtaking, even, ready to lead. “Animals, this way.”

He’s a little robotic in his actions still, but Magni trundles along with his steps, following the trail of Altare’s tattered cloak. 

He’d hesitate to call this nice. It’s more like an unexpected break from the fighting. A moment of peace. He’s seen this guy kill him too many times for him to let his guard down, but for a while, he wants to forget about all that. 

Altare shows him woodland creatures. Magni smiles faintly at squirrels. 

A moment of peace? Yeah, right. 

He doesn’t deserve peace. 

“Hey, Altare.” He cocks his gun and points it at Altare’s head. “Catch.”

He failed. 

Fuck.  

He hadn’t loaded his gun since the last iteration, and he hadn’t thought to check. The iterations have been blurring together, and little details get lost along the way. Maybe he was distracted. Stupid squirrels. 

Damn it all, he really thought he’d had it in the bag this time, so why did he feel so relieved to wake up to the greenlit ceiling of his lab, instead of finding out whether an AI can bleed from a shot through the head?

“You wound me.” Prime says. “The real Magni Dezmond wouldn’t have let that opportunity go.”

“Yeah, well,” Magni spits out, getting to his feet. “I don’t think the real Magni Dezmond goes around shooting people in the skull, but that doesn’t matter to you, does it?”

“He destroyed a city for the Philosopher’s Stone. 10,000 souls dead. You can’t even kill one.”

“Great. Awesome.” He says. “See, that’s kind of a bad thing. But I guess if you do it for love, then everything goes, huh?”

“Go back and finish the job.”

“Alright, alright. Whatever.” Magni mutters under his breath. “Screw you, Magni Dezmond. Son of a bitch.”

Altare’s light is still pulsing when he returns. 

“I thought you said you’d put your heart back.” Magni drawls, stun potion in hand. “Now I’d feel kinda bad if I offed you. Because you’d actually feel an emotion when I do.”

“I was going to put it back.” Altare grumbles, sounding chided. “But I got bored. You don’t know what it’s like, being able to feel and then not feeling again. Everything goes… empty.”

Magni knows exactly how that feels. 

He’s been empty for a long time now. 

“You were right. People are selfish, aren’t they?” He tosses the potion, and Altare cuts it in half, barely flinching. “Nobody can stop at just one thing. Not even you.”

“What do you want, Dezmond?”

“Don’t call me that.” He huffs. Raises his fingers. “Look. Two things. I need a heart, and I need your data. Any chance we could strike a deal here? I could get you anything you want. I’m a master negotiator with an infinite number of lives. Nothing can stop me.”

“There’s nothing I want.” Altare replies. 

“You sure? You’re holed up here all the time. Maybe I could swing you a vacation, get you to Northern Elysium, see the summer stars, chill out on the beach? Southern Elysium also has fried chicken to die for. Not literally. It’s just really good fried chicken.”

“You’ve traveled a lot, haven’t you?”

“I’ve seen it all,” Magni waves a careless hand, trying to brain Altare with another potion, which is swiftly blocked. The flask rolls into the bushes. “Everything this world has to offer. That’s the problem about living forever, you know? The world has finite opportunities. You experience it all, then it’s over. You’re stuck in an endless cycle, and it never ends.”

“Is that why you want a heart? So you can end it?”

“More or less.” He shrugs, aiming with a dagger next. Altare hits it with his chain before it even gets close. It goes clattering across the ground. “I’m being kept alive by a thing called Magmite Prime. He’s unkillable. Product of forbidden magic, Philosopher’s Stone, yadda yadda.” He half-heartedly tanks a whip-crack, right in the mechanical arm. Nothing hurts, anymore. “But if I can kill him, then maybe I’ll be free. I’ll finally be able to disappear for good.”

“That’s sad.” Altare says. His eyes are glazed over, like he wants to cry, but doesn’t. “That’s really sad, Dezmond.”

“Shit, man, I guess it must be.” Magni laughs, because he has no other way of reacting. He’s gotten used to the sadness, a long time ago. “You’re a real softie, arentcha? Deep down. Alright, let it out before you kill me. There, there.”

“You just try so hard,” Altare whispers. “You try so hard, and it doesn’t matter, in the end. None of it matters. You’re not even trying to live. You don’t even want to.”

“My goodness. Would you look at that?” Magni shakes his head, a sardonic chuckle on his lips. “I can’t believe I taught a computer how to cry.”

“Do you care about him?” 

Magni lifts his head at the question, sluggish and slightly dizzy from the act of being brought to life again. 

“Is that why you stall, Magni? And let his blade strike you down? I have made you near indestructible, and yet here you are, once more. A defeated man.”

Magni sighs, trailing a hand through his hair. It seems the Magmites grew lazy this time, and didn’t cut it. He can deal with another cycle of long hair, but if he gets pissed off, he might just shave half of it out of spite. 

“What?” He snarks half-heartedly. “Are you jealous?”

“Not at all.” Prime says. “I am simply weary. Every day, you seem to grow further and further from me. Every clone. Every iteration. Do you not want to be restored to your former glory?”

His hands keep running through his hair, tugging at the ends. “I have never wanted that.”

“You don’t want greatness? You don’t want to be complete again?”

“Am I not complete now? Is that what you’re saying?” 

It’s a plea to his maker. He must sound so pathetic, asking such a stupid question. If Magmite Prime had ever thought of him as anywhere close to complete, he wouldn’t have been forced to continue this sick cycle. He grips his hair in frustration. 

“Answer me.” Magni says, unable to stop himself from trembling, the anger boiling beneath the surface of his skin. “Am I not complete now?”

“No.” Prime replies. “You are not. You are too callous. Too unkind. You do not value this world, or your creations, or your own life. You are still not worthy of being the successor of my beloved creator. You are too weak. And far too heartless.”

Magni grits his teeth. 

You’re the one who’s heartless. You’re the one who made me this way. He wants to say. You were the one that forced me to hate this existence. You were the one who put me through all this! How can you possibly believe I’d stay the same?

“You’ve changed, Magni.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Magni raises an eyebrow as Magmite Prime looks upon him again, this time in sorrow. “What percentage of me is still Magni Dezmond, at this point? Face it. I failed you. You failed me. I made you some kind of monster, and you did the same to me.”

“Why don’t you understand? I am doing this for your own good!” Prime booms, voice rough with anger. “Why can’t you see that all I’m trying to do is give us a life to be happy together again? I love you. I have always loved you. I was made solely out of love for you. Why is that not enough?”

“Because,” Magni’s jaw stiffens, and he can’t keep the edge out of his words. “You’re not supposed to exist! And neither am I! We’re just failed experiments by a stupid fucking alchemist that didn’t stick around long enough to see his creations try and murder each other, and murder him, while they’re at it. Because that’s all you’re doing, isn’t it?” The rage breaks soon after. “You love me?! Don’t make me laugh! YOU NEVER LOVED ME! You don’t even know what love is!”

“Magni—” 

“You’re killing me, Prime.” Magni cries, stomach wracked with pain as sobs start breaking free, with reckless abandon. “And you’re killing Magni Dezmond with your so-called love. You killed what was left of him and you turned him into me. How much of me even looks like him, anymore? How much of me even acts like him? You’ve ruined him. What, you think I’ll just get the data from Altare, and you’ll bring Magni back, and he’ll smile at you, and congratulate you for everything you’ve done? Magni is gone.”

“No, I can still save him. I can still—”

“He’s gone, Prime. I’m sorry. He’s not coming back.” Magni brings his knees to his chest, the torrent splitting his voice raw. “And I tried, for you. I did. I tried to do everything you said. For years and years, I tried to be the perfect Magni Dezmond, but I can’t. I can’t.” He buries his head in his arms, breathing slowing as he tries to swallow his tears. “You think you’ve never been good enough for me? Well, why don’t you look in the fucking mirror for once? When have I ever been good enough for you?”

Magmites pool around him, their stubby arms reaching up in some semblance of a hug.

Magni ignores them. 

There is nothing that can comfort him here. 

“When have I ever been good enough?” He pleads, shaking. “You’ve never wanted me to be like this. You’re always waiting for the next one to be better than the last. Why have I never been good enough for you to just let me live? How can I ever truly live like this, knowing if I mess up, you’ll just kill me because I’m not acting like the Magni Dezmond you remember? You don’t love me. You don’t even care about me. I’m just an expendable clone. Not even that. I’m lower than garbage to you. Love? You’re out of your mind.” 

“...bring the AI here.” Prime says with a heavy sigh, turning away. “Maybe I’ll be able to talk some sense into one of you.”

“Come with me.”

Magni holds out his hand.

Altare doesn’t take it.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Magni frowns, staring pointedly at the pulsing light of his chest. “You still haven’t put it back.”

“This heartbeat is all I have.” Altare replies. “Do you know how quiet it gets down here, in the core? I like being alone, most of the time, but this silence will eat me alive. I needed something to keep me company. Anything.”

“I should never have given you any ideas.”

“It’s true. You shouldn’t have.” Altare shrugs. “But you don’t care about anyone other than yourself. I did a lot of thinking, you know. I had time. Why would you ask me to give myself a heart? Because you’re a kind person?”

Magni crosses his arms, annoyed. “Well, you said it, not me. What’s your point?”

“You did it for yourself.” Altare says back, equally annoyed. “If I bring a heart out here, then you don’t even need to go into the core. You could just come and get mine.”

“Uhh, yes, but that would kill you.”

“I’m an AI that protects the core of Elysium.” Altare says, palm over the light of his chest. “I am an integral part of this world. If you remove my heart, I will come back. I’m the only kind of being that can.”

“Right, then,” Magni draws out a rapier. “Mind if I just take a little stab then—”

“Dez.” Altare snaps, and Magni stiffens, pulling his weapon back. That’s a name he hasn’t heard in — well, it’s a name he’s never been called, frankly. 

Not for a very long time. 

“What?” He snaps back. “Why are you telling me this, anyway? I’ll just use it against you. We’re not exactly friends.”

“You’re a friend to me.”

“Okay, no, no, no.” Magni says, even though some part of him knows he had been thinking the same thing, just not out loud. “We can’t be friends. You and me? Nada. No way. I need you dead. You need me… not to be here. So, let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you need me dead, too. We’re literally incapable of getting along, because we’re bound to kill each other. One way or another. And don’t call me Dez.”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s not like you have anyone else to call a friend.”

Altare doesn’t have to put it like that, but Magni’s shoulders slump a little. He’s right. 

“Fine, best buddy of mine,” he declares sarcastically, fingers aflutter, gesturing as he talks. “Do this for me, then. You come with me back to see Prime. You give him your heart. I kill Prime. Easy. I get freed. You free me. Friendship forever. Piece of cake. Everyone is happy.”

Altare shakes his head. “I am a watcher. An observer. I protect the core, and I can’t interfere with worldly matters. It is my duty to stay.”

“You’ve defied your duty once. Why not defy it again? Who’s watching?”

Magni doesn’t hold back. 

He uses fists, incantations, throws all his weapons and potions and spells at Altare, until they’re surrounded by the debris of his destruction. 

“You’re the only thing I have, Altare!” he heaves, half a whisper, half a howl. Blood trickles down his temple, an iron tang meeting his tongue. He almost chokes on it. “Maybe I am selfish! Maybe I am asking for too much! Maybe I’ve lost my humanity, and rotted to the core! But nobody— nobody ever tried to help me, you know that? Nobody…”

“You didn’t let anyone in.” Altare’s eyes are glowing, green as the lab tubes Magni is born in, again and again. He does not find that comforting. “You never trusted anyone but yourself. That’s why you ran away, isn’t it, Dezmond? That’s why you betrayed me.”

“Altare…?”

The heat of the fight runs cold in his veins. He doesn’t recognize the expression on Altare’s face. He thinks, for a silent foolish moment, he might be speaking to the real Regis Altare, locked away for centuries inside an AI’s body. 

But that’s impossible. 

“You were scared.” Altare says. “Scared that we’d find out the truth behind your existence. Scared we’d try and end it. End you. Because you are a product of corruption. You are a corrupted record of the great alchemist Magni Dezmond, and our mission was to eradicate every corrupted record in existence.”

“Did you know?” Blood drips down his throat. Its deep purple stains the red of the Philosopher’s Stone embedded in his chest. “Did you know, back then?”

“How could I have known?” Altare’s expression softens. “Dez, if I had known back then, I would have had to kill you. I wouldn’t know any other way.”

“Then kill me now.” Magni begs him, falling to his knees. His body aches. He can feel his mechanical implants in every place they meet his skin. “Kill me, and kill Prime, and end this cycle. Please. I can’t do this anymore. Save my life by ending it. I'm asking you because I do trust you.”

“Why do you trust me?”

“Computers can’t lie.” His hair falls in his eyes and he shakes like the ground will crumble beneath him. “Please, Altare. You’re all I have.” 

“One week.” Altare says, and in an instant, his blade is at Magni’s neck. Magni falls back. He’s not entirely human but he’s still soft flesh beneath a saber’s edge. He’s still a sacrificial lamb. He still gives way beneath the knife. “Give me one week. And I will go with you, and I will kill Prime and set you free. On one condition.”

“What?”

“You don’t choose to die afterwards. You choose to live, even if it’s your last life. No, because it’s your last life.”

Magni wants to grab him by the stupid hood of his cloak, and scream. He hasn’t got the strength left. 

How can I? He wants to ask. How can I even begin to live, after all this is over? It would be so much better if I could just—

“How long?” His voice cracks, betraying him.

“What?”

“How long should I live?” 

His eyes meet Altare’s, the eerie glow of green dimming, the blue of his heart taking over, fighting for dominance in the ambient light. He has always been the colors of the ocean. Magni wonders, ironically, if that means Altare was always meant to be his executioner. 

“…long enough.” Altare settles with saying. His voice is small and quiet. “To be happy. Even if it’s just for a little while.”

“You drive a hard bargain.” Magni replies, voice equally small and quiet. “But I think I can agree to that.”

“One week.” Altare reminds him, the point of his blade touching skin. His eyes are like the stars that Magni drowns beneath. The seas will always be the death of him. So will Regis Altare. “Don’t show your face around here until then.”

Magni wakes up in his lab. 

Magmite Prime gazes at him, and for a moment, neither of them say anything. 

Then, Magni sighs. 

“He’ll be here in one week. That’s what he said.”

Prime sighs back. 

“Magni, I…”

“Save it.” Magni says, curling up in his sheets and closing his eyes. “I’m tired. I just want to take a nap.”

“You abandoned me,” says Prime. “You abandoned me back then, and you abandoned me now. But I never stopped loving you, Magni. I never gave up on your incomplete selves, because I knew I would bring you back one day. I knew there was a way.”

“What if there isn’t?” Magni whispers. “What if his ghost is all there is? What if I’m all that’s left of him?”

“Do you hate me, Magni? You, who created me, out of all the love left in your heart?”

“Honestly? I don't know if I can answer that.”

“Do you know the first time I emerged from that cauldron, I had nothing but love for you? Nothing but love, and yet you looked upon me with such hatred.”

“You don’t see it, do you? The way you look at me now is the same. You were not good enough for me. I was never good enough for you.” Magni laughs, because if he doesn’t, he might just choke on a sob again. “And now our fate lies in the hands of a computer.”

Prime’s smile is distant, and sad. “A computer that you taught how to feel.”

“Hey.” Magni knocks on the gate. “Seven days. Wakey-wakey.”

“Morning, Dez.” Altare yawns. His heart glows bright in his chest. Magni is very careful not to let his eyes wander any lower, lest he start actually asking who chose to dress this AI up in a skintight bodysuit. Honestly. “Ready to take me back to your place?”

“Don’t put it like that.” He scoffs, flustered, like he’d been caught in his thoughts redhanded. Moment of weakness. That’s all. He whirls on his heel, already on his way back out, making sure Altare is following him. “It’s been a while, huh? A week is both longer and shorter than I remember. And don't call me Dez.”

“Aww,” Altare coos. “Did you miss me, Dezzy-Wezzy?”

“How did you get more annoying while I was away? Someone install a ‘bad joke’ module into you or somethin’?”

“I got a few things taken care of.” He shrugs, skipping so his steps fall in time with Magni’s own. “Can’t leave the core without leaving something behind, you see.”

Magni gazes at him skeptically. “What did you leave behind?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Altare grins. Somehow, perplexingly, he’s the happiest Magni has ever seen him. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

“So you actually came.”

“Being human makes you do strange things.” Altare says, peering up at Magmite Prime with a wary skepticism. “Maybe you’d like to give it a try, sometime?”

“Ha.” Prime responds with a scoff. “You know why you’re here, don’t you, AI? As a means to an end. This friend you made in Magni…” His eyes skirt over to the man in question. “...is a mere farce. He always intended to betray you from the start.”

“His name is Altare, by the way.” Magni says, unruffled, as he leans against the doorway in observation. “I’m pretty sure I told you this.”

“I know Magni betrays me,” Altare adds nonchalantly. “He’s already done it before.”

“Okay, great, my reputation precedes me. Fool you once, fool you twice…”

“Enough. Both of you.” Prime says, growing impatient. “Little ones, lock the door. We will need to run a few tests, but data extraction isn’t exactly rocket science. Make something for our guest, if you must. I do not know if computers eat.”

“I could go for a snack.” Altare hums. “This is the worst welcoming party I’ve ever been to. I mean, it’s the only one I’ve been to, but it’s kinda lame.”

“You are insolent. Be quiet.”

“No, seriously.” Altare says. “This sucks.”

“You tell ‘im, Altare.”

“You really thought I came here just because my friend asked?” Altare’s cloak billows as multiple arms emerge from behind him, shining blue light into the green-tinted room. “Listen, Prime. Say I give you Magni Dezmond’s data. What do you think is going to happen? You’re just getting another copy. The data I have isn’t the original, either.”

“It does not need to be the original. A copy of it will work just fine.”

Altare raises an eyebrow, glancing at Magni, then back at Prime. 

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll take anything.” Magni mutters. “Anything that isn’t me.”

“But you are Magni Dezmond.” Altare tilts his head.

“Well, not Magni Dezmond enough.”

Altare frowns. “Anyway. Forget data extraction, I’ll let you talk to him. That’s what he wanted. Lemme just… load it up, one sec.”

“Okay, whoa,” Magni says, stepping back as a spiked violet halo materializes over Altare’s head, a pointed diamond hovering over his right eye. “That’s freaky. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, I’m full of surprises. Anybody can vouch for that. Good morning. Fear me. Sorry I didn’t come up with a flashy entrance, I didn’t exactly have the time.” Altare half-heartedly waves his cloak arms around, suddenly, his entire demeanor slouching as he pivots on his heel, looking around. “Wow, okay, so that’s why Altare was asking about all the data sharing stuff. Took us a while to figure this shit out but here I am. Listen, we need to talk about the bodysuit, Altare, this isn’t protecting your vitals at all— anyway, hi everyone else. Hello. Goddamn, you all look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

A Magmite squeaks at him from below.

“Hey, you recognize me, dont’cha?” He laughs, holographic arms plucking it from his leg and giving it an affectionate squeeze. If creatures could cry rivers, Magni thinks that Magmite would have flooded the lab then and there. “The Great Magni Dezmond, at your service. I’d say nice to meet you, but I’m sure you all know who I am. Bangin’ party, hello little mags, hi Magmite Prime, hi Magni Dezmond again. The cyborg look is a choice, but you’re making it work. Very sexy. Futuristic.”

“Oh,” Magni says, turning a startled pink, not expecting the compliment. “Uh, um. Thanks. You know it.”

“Sure do. We’ll talk later.” Altare – Magni? – winks at him. “So, we’ve all gathered here today, for what I’m assuming is another clone revival thing that's gotten way too out of hand. Yeah, look. My bad. I lost track of that stuff when I got downloaded, so I’m assuming you still haven’t broken the cycle. Very tragic. Sorry about all this. I’m kind of not alive anymore, so it’s hard to, y’know, do anything about it. Oh my gosh, hey, little guys! You’re still here!” He scoops up some more of the Magmites into his arms as they swarm his feet. “Wow. You are still utterly indistinguishable from each other but I love you all the same.” While saying this, he puts one of them in his mouth. Purple oozes out and he grins. “Yep. Still same formula.”

He looks apologetically back at Magni. 

“Listen, I’m sorry about all this, man. Sorry about… yeah, I’m cycling Altare’s memories right now. Lots of death. Oof.” He raises his eyebrows, mouth falling open in shock. “You took a bullet to the face? You’re braver than I ever was. Holy fuck. Nice shot, though, Leader. Not that I’m surprised.” He gestures to himself. “He’s always been a good shot. Altare, I mean. Gosh, I know I look like him right now, but I can’t change that. You’ll just have to deal with staring at my tum-tum out in the open, until I can get this guy to fix his outfit.”

“Magni…” Prime says, cautious and disbelieving. “Is that really you?”

“The one and only.” Magni-Altare says, clicking his tongue and smirking. “Congrats on the fully mechanical body, by the way. Very nice. You really are the Prime of Magmites. Seems like a lot has changed since I went away…”

As he’s surveying the lab with a curious gaze, Prime gets closer, bowing his head to reach Magni-Altare’s level, with a tenderness that Magni barely remembers him ever having, but somehow feels like it’s always been there, all the same.

“Come back to me, Magni.” Prime speaks solemnly. “Let my love save you, once and for all. I can finish what you started.”

The ghost of the alchemist’s smirk falters, and he sighs deeply. 

“You can’t.” 

“What do you mean I can’t? I most certainly can.”

He shakes his head. “You just can’t.” 

“We were born from templates of real people.” Prime replies. “With the wonders of alchemy, we can be those people again. We could do that, Magni. We could do that together.” 

“Aren’t you tired? Need a break from it all?” The alchemist asks, an unshakeable kindness in the lilt of his voice. Magni barely recognizes him. It's hard to believe they were born from the same person. The same DNA. He wonders if he could find that grace again. He wonders if he’ll ever need to. “Feeling like your body will give up soon, and that you’ll be the next to expire? Would it be worth it, experiencing life with me again, when both of us are barely capable of living life at all? You tell me.”

“If it is for one more moment with the real you, anything would be worth it.”

“Aww, baby.” He says, and his evergreen eyes have taken on a golden hue as he glances over at his clone, who has backed himself into the corner of the room, fearful of how this meeting would resolve.

The clone realizes only now that even though time has made him physically, unbreakably stronger, he still remains more scared of Prime than he ever used to be. He never believed he could save himself.

Yet once upon a time, he must have.

He wouldn't have made Magmite Prime otherwise. Once upon a time, he must have thought he was someone who could save other people.

Once upon a time, Magni Dezmond believed he could be a hero.

“That’s what I said when I made you too, you know.” Magni says, all blue hair and purple halo and not much like Magni at all. Not like Altare, either. Something in-between and just as otherworldly. “That if I had one more moment with you, anything would be worth it.”

“Magni…”

“Look, I don’t believe in ‘love saves all’, anymore.” He says, looking up at Prime with an empathetic smile. “Because quite frankly? Love didn’t save all. I couldn’t save you, and you couldn’t save me. I guess we created life for each other? Which is kind of fucked up, because this wasn’t exactly how I pictured the glorious gift of childbirth— oh my god, Altare’s in my head telling me to shut up, you shut up, Altare, I’m giving the body back in, like, five minutes! Chill!” He grimaces. “Sorry. You know. Altare’s body, Altare’s rules, apparently. I gotta speed this up a bit.”

“Prime.” Magni-Altare says, composing himself as his gaze tips skyward again. “Magmite Prime, the first, the true one and only. Thank you. Really. I know it must have been really hard. I don’t know how long you’ve been suffering, but by the looks of things, probably a lot.” His gaze softens. “Can we stop all this now? You’ve been looking for me all this time. But I’ve been right here.” He holds his hand over his chest, over the pulsing light. “Er, not, like, inside Altare’s body, but in your heart. Sorry. This looks fucking weird because I’m in Altare’s body, but everyone’s just gonna have to deal. Here. I’ve been here. In every body you’ve ever made me.”

He steps closer. Prime shifts imperceptibly away.

“Your love kept me alive. I have never not been here.” The alchemist steps closer again, reaching up to the thick cords and wires wrapping Prime’s monstrous body. He does not act with affection, but he is not afraid, either. It’s like he’s in a trance, like he’s finishing a mission he long set out to do. “All those Magnis you dropped into the ocean? They’re still there. All those Magni Dezmonds you kept alive for all those years. Come down, join us. Don’t you remember what I said to you, when I died for the first time?”

“I’ll finally… be reunited with the one I love. Of course I remember.” Prime replies, in a gravelly voice. “When you died, you were… happy.”

He smiles. “Right? That was my happy ending. You can have yours, too. I know you wish we could live forever. Once, I did, too. But we can’t. Forever isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’ve felt it too, haven’t you? Everything seems to change without asking. You’re not happy chasing forever. You’ll be happy if you come with me.” 

“Magni, I… I’m sorry.” Prime says. 

“Hey. Don’t be.” Magni-Altare plucks the light out of his own chest, the soft blue glow pulsing gently in the still air of the lab.

Magni, the clone, wants to protest, wants to push that light back into Altare’s chest and tell him to forget about it, actually, he’ll try to make peace with living forever, but something in the other’s gaze stops him.

“It’s gonna be okay.” The Great Magni Dezmond reassures him, and then Prime, too. “Just trust me on this one, buddy. Take my heart. Come down with me. You’ll find me, just like I found you, all those years ago. You don’t need to do this anymore. Even if the sexy cyborg makes a pretty neat lab decoration.”

“H-hey!” Magni stammers. 

He grins back at him. “And you, Magni Dezmond of the future. Can you promise me one thing? From one genius alchemist to another?”

“What… what is it?”

“Cherish your life.” Magni’s green-gold eyes gaze at him with such warmth that he can’t look away. “I mean it. I lost mine because I was so scared of everything. Didn’t want to lose any more, so I became closed off. Jaded. Tried to protect myself. Yes, I betrayed Altare. I betrayed Guild TEMPUS, the boys, everyone. But when it came to sealing off the Records Corruption, Altare still came to find me, which is why my data is now here, entwined with his soul.”

He sighs again. 

“The first Magni Dezmond lost his life when he chased his ghosts into the dark. We’ve always been bad at losing things. But it’s over now, isn’t it?” He glances at Prime. “You want to be free, as much as I do.”

“All these years…” Prime replies, starting to tremble, his very worn features contorting with his sobs. “I really, truly missed you, Magni Dezmond.”

“Well, I’m here now. Let’s go together.” Magni pushes the blue heart into the core of Magmite Prime. “Oh, and one more thing, Dezmond,” his halo flickers. “Don’t make my mistakes. Don’t go chasing ghosts anymore. The real Regis Altare is dead, just like me. But your AI boyfriend? I think you could get along, y’know, without the whole kill-each-other thing going on. Let it be known that I support robots in love. That’s a genre people are into, you know. Don't ask what kind.”

“He’s not my…” Magni waves his cybernetic hands awkwardly, ignoring the way his whole body has gone tense and embarrassed and strangely fluttery at the thought. “Not my boyfriend.”

“Heh. Sure thing. Just remember what I said,” the halo leaves Altare’s body, enshrouding Magmite Prime with a purple light. Altare quietly plucks his gunsaber from his belt, and finishes him off. “Cherish your life.” Altare repeats, in a soft monotone.

“Altare?”

Altare looks back at him, the flow of corrupted data bursting into the air off the end of his saber, disintegrating into pixels of black smoke. Magni wants to run up to him and squeeze him tight and he also wants to reach into the ashes of his self-made monster to chase the light that once shone bright in the core of Altare’s chest. It’s not like he’s lost him. He’s right there. But he doesn’t feel rational. None of this feels real.

He feels like he’s lost a part of himself. He feels like he’s gained something new, as well.

Altare stumbles, swaying dizzily on his feet.

“Altare!” Magni calls out, bursting out from his corner, finally, forgetting his own cowardice.

“Dez,” he says, and while he doesn’t express any outward emotion, his eyes are shining. “You’re free.”

Altare collapses soon after, but Magni’s mechanical legs have him dashing over in an instant, the AI falling limp in his arms. 

“Let’s take you back to the core,” Magni says softly, almost burying his face instinctively into the soft blue hair he’s never had the luxury of seeing up close, but stopping himself just before he can. “There’s still some things I want to ask.”

The sight that greets Magni at the core almost has him dropping Altare’s body on the ground. 

Luck on his side for once, he manages to keep his grip on it, and glares at the person that scared the fuck out of him, meeting devious ocean eyes and a toothy grin. 

“You didn’t have to bring the body all the way back here, yo.” Altare laughs, swinging his legs over the gate. “But that was very sweet of you, Magni-chan. Not gonna lie, big help. Thank you.”

“What!” Magni exclaims, looking between him and the lifeless body in his arms. “How did you— how did you do that?!”

“Man, I dunno.” Altare shrugs, jumping down from the top of the gate. There’s a soft clink as the chain he’s got strapped to his waist hits the floor. “He can probably explain it to you better when he wakes up. I’m just here to keep watch.” 

He lifts the body with little effort, wrapping it up in its cloak. His posture is more relaxed than usual, and he gestures to the gate with his head, as if beckoning Magni to follow him in. 

Magni does, but is momentarily struck by just how blue Altare’s eyes are. Those are not the eyes he remembers. 

Despite all logical explanations, he thinks that this might not be Altare at all. 

“Flayon!” Maybe-Altare yells inside. “Stop the reload, dude! Magni brought back the body!”

“Are you kidding?!” An identical voice yells back, shrill and annoyed. “Fine, fine, it’s stopping. It’s stopping. Give it a minute. Shinri, what’s the call? He did leave you in charge.”

“Uhhhh,” another voice, slightly deeper but still all too similar, speaks from the back end of the facility. “Guild meeting?”

Magni sits at the head of the table, barely withstanding the urge to put his face in his hands. 

“He split you back into your individual parts?” He asks, in disbelief. “You, as in the members of Guild TEMPUS?”

“Yup,” Axel-Altare grins, propping his feet up on the table. “Each one took an entire day to prepare, too. And we don’t have replacement bodies of our own, so that’s why we all look like him.”

“Kinda freaky. Kinda freaky,” Vesper-Altare says, nodding. “But you get used to it.”

“I’m not used to it.” Magni snaps. “This is creepy. And I lived in a clone lab.”

“Oh, whatever!” Flayon-Altare claps his hands together, tail swishing animatedly behind him. “Weren’t you two gonna run off together, anyway? Why else would Altare leave us in charge of defending the core?”

“What? We weren’t gonna— he was just helping me—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bettel-Altare adjusts the hat on his head. “Look. You can have him. He’s been looking after us for a long time. If you weren’t gonna take him, we were gonna make him go on a holiday, anyway. Imagine being stuck here for hundreds of years, with only weapons as your friends? Could not be me. Just fucking take him. Take him away.”

“Couldn’t he have done this earlier?” Magni asks, tone wary and still not quite able to believe what he’s seeing. “Like, split you guys up, so he would have the company?”

“I mean, technically, yes? But practically? No.” Hakka-Altare chimes in, picking his teeth with his spear. “It’s a bit of a violation, you see. We all need hearts,” he thumbs his chest to make a point, “To be given individual bodies. That’s seven hearts generated without authorization. That can be seriously dangerous business.” He shrugs and Magni’s eyes hone in on the single fang he's made out of his top tooth. “Guess you made a rebel out of an AI, man.”

Shinri-Altare doesn’t say much, but Magni watches as he straps Altare’s body up to numerous cables, cords trailing into the segments of his armor. The central computer runs lines of code, and Shinri sticks out his tongue, deep in concentration. 

“What are you doing to him?” Magni asks, soft enough not to startle. He tries not to touch any cords, but he can’t help but want to. He wants to know how it all works. He wants to know what Altare is made of, down to his very last cell.

“Restoring his heart.” Shinri replies absentmindedly, tapping a few commands on the screen. “It might be breaking the rules again, but I’ll take the blame for it, if anything happens. It’s the least I can do for him.”

“Self-sacrificial as always…” Flayon sighs, making his presence known as he waltzes into the room. “It’s okay, Shinri. We won’t tell.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s going to find it a little suspicious that there are seven Altares walking around, don’t you think?”

Flayon shrugs. “We’ll change our names. Our appearances, too. We’re in the core of Elysium. We can change this world at will.”

“We can’t play god, Flayon.” Shinri sighs, shaking his head. The monitor beeps and Altare’s body glows in a gentle blue light. “That defeats the purpose of us being guardians.”

“Fine. But a little hair dye goes a long way, y’know? We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”

“Where are the others?”

“Probably up to no good.” Flayon smirks over at Magni, a nefarious thought seeming to cross his mind. “Hey Magni, if we all shut up, do you think you could tell us apart? I might trade places with Altare and go with you instead, y’know.”

“I can tell.” Magni replies plainly. “I’m very familiar with clones.”

“So,” Flayon snakes around him, resting his head on Magni’s shoulder. “I can’t make your heart beat faster if I get close to you like this, Dezzy-Wezzy?”

Magni just laughs, shoving him off. “No fair. I’m not answering that.”

Before Flayon can dive at him again, Altare starts coughing, his body twitching against the cables. Magni straightens in alarm, but Flayon settles him, hand on his arm. 

“Oop,” Shinri says, glancing at the screen. “Procedure’s complete.” 

“Ooh, lemme see! Lemme see!” Flayon bounds forwards, but Shinri grabs him by the hood before he can launch himself onto the table. 

“Flayon, don’t.” He says sternly, even as Flayon pouts back. “Take Magni with you and get out. Our leader needs to rest.”

“Don’t worry about him so much, man.” Axel puts him in a headlock the moment he steps back outside, bursting into laughter as Flayon shrieks for him to give Magni back this instant. “Leader’s tough as fuck. He’ll be up before you know it.”

“I’m not worried about him.” Magni retorts, more than a little flustered to be surrounded by so many duplicates of Altare, all taking turns touching him. He hadn’t even made contact with the original replica this much and here comes Axel and the tight squeeze of his strong arms. He can’t say he hates it though.

“Nah, you don’t gotta lie. I saw the way you were staring at him the entire time.” Axel grins, getting on his tiptoes to noogie him. “And you brought his body all the way back here. You care, Magni. Don’t gotta hide it.”

“Stop!” Magni bristles, hot under the collar at the accusation. “Get off me! Don’t act like you know me!”

“Haha, sorry,” Axel grins, not sounding remotely sorry. He waves at Vesper, who’s passing by. “Oyaji, check out this guy. He’s just as much of a tsundere dumbass as our Magni. Ain’t that funny?”

Vesper laughs. “Let him go, Axel. You’re gonna suffocate him.”

“Nah, we just playin’! We just playin’!”

Magni wrestles him off of himself. “Can I ask you guys something?”

“Anything,” Vesper replies. 

“Are you all… AI? As in, you can’t be the real TEMPUS, right? You’re just imitations, wearing their names and… Altare’s face.”

“Yeah? Yeah, I guess we are.” Vesper hums thoughtfully, stroking his chin. “Still getting used to that part. Kinda cool, though. We’ll work on getting cosmetic upgrades soon. Otherwise, we really will look like a freaky cult.”

“Besides, what you are or who you are doesn’t really matter, does it?” Axel says, hands behind his head. “It’s what you do with your time that matters.”

“Thank you, wise Axel.”

“You’re welcome, bitch. It won’t happen again.”

“So is it okay, you think,” Magni says quietly. “That I don’t feel like Magni Dezmond anymore, even if I still wear his name and face?”

“It’s okay,” Vesper says. “You don’t have to feel like him. You be the Magni Dezmond that you wanna be.”

“I don’t… know what that means. I don’t know who I want to be.”

“Does anyone, really?” Vesper shrugs. “Go live a little. Figure yourself out. You don’t belong in the core, and we’ve got each other to keep company. You’ve only got one life left to live, so make the most of it.” A gentle smile tinges his lips. “But for the record? Our doors will always be open, if you ever need a place to come back to.”

The stupid gaggle of idiots were right, even if Magni won’t admit it. 

He had been intending to ask Altare to leave this place with him. The one little slice of happiness Altare had asked him to find, to live for — he couldn’t imagine finding it all by himself. 

He had already lived so many lives alone. 

Perhaps, he could find it on his own, one day, but having company wouldn’t hurt. 

Altare beams when he sees him. 

“What a sight to wake up to,” he says. “Just you, me, and a bunch of cables everywhere. Where’s everyone else?”

“Probably eavesdropping.” Magni replies, angling a look at the exit, where a tattered cape and a pointed tail gives away a sneaky presence. “Go away, Flayon.”

“How’d you know it was me?! Bettel’s here too, y’know!”

“Dude, shut up!”

“And Hakka’s under the table!”

“Fuck!” There’s a bang, as the table shakes and Altare jumps. Hakka crawls out from under the table, cloak over his head as he makes a beeline for the door. “Bye! You didn’t see me! I was never here!”

“Oh, you guys…” Altare snickers, and Magni catches him wiping a tear from his eye. His hand falls over his chest soon after, palming the light of his heart as he recovers from the shock. 

Magni doesn’t give him much time to. As soon as he turns back to face him, Magni is wrapping his arms around him, pulling him into a hug. 

Altare makes a surprised sound, but relaxes when Magni holds the embrace, realizing he’s not under attack.

“Thank you.” Magni whispers. “For everything.”

Altare’s hand lands tentatively on his back. He slides it up and down. A comforting gesture.  

“Of course, dude. You are my friend, after all.”

Magni likes the sound of that. Friend. He doesn’t think he’s had a friend in a very long time. He’s been many iterations overdue for a friend. 

“Let’s go see the world together.” Magni says, still holding him close. “It’s a big place out there. Let me show you everything you were put here to protect.”

“Why?” Altare asks, curious, the tips of his fingers touching the red stone in Magni’s chest. “You’ve seen it all before.”

“Sure, I have.” His eyes roam over the 3D holograms around them, mapping out the lands in every corner of the world. It’s beautiful, in the core of Elysium. All digital interfaces and holograms that light each room with an ethereal blue. It’s like being inside the AI himself, and seeing his world of numbers and code. If only he had more time. Maybe he’d have liked to stay a little longer. “I spent many lives just seeing how far I could get before I kicked the bucket. I’ve seen everything this world has to offer. One could even say I’m an expert.”

“Then why do it again?” 

“Because you haven’t seen it.” Magni pulls back to tuck a strand of pale hair behind his ear, his piercings brushing against the underside of his fingers. He feels the points of the metallic spikes and sighs. “Don’t waste your life protecting a legacy, Altare. I know there are things you want to see. Things you want to experience for yourself. Let me take you there.”

“I…” Altare hesitates. Magni watches the rise and fall of his chest, the glow from within revealing the steady rhythm of a heartbeat. “Well, I do want to see the Northern stars.”

“They’re real pretty.” Magni smiles. “The ones in the East aren’t bad, either. You can see the constellations from every roof in Xenokuni.”

“And I want to see a cool dragon.”

“Those are kind of scary, but still very cool.” He chuckles, remembering the last time he encountered the mythical creature that sent him howling and tumbling down a mountain at terrifying speeds. “You’ll have to be able to defend yourself, but you’ll never see anything as shiny as a dragon’s hoard.”

“I can defend myself just fine,” Altare grins. “I haven’t lost to you even once, you know.”

“I was going easy on you.”

“Sure you were.”

“I’m serious about this, Altare.” He says. “You don’t have to answer me now. But I don’t have infinity anymore, I just have this one life left. And I’d like to be able to spend that time with someone I care about.”

“Aww, you care about me?”

“Of course I do.” Magni says, shrugging. 

“But the core…”

“You put a bunch of idiots here to protect it, didn’t you?” 

“We got you, boss!” Axel cheers from the doorway, before Vesper shows up with a stern hand on his shoulder. “Go on that honeymoon, get that big booty shakin’, invite us to the wedding—”

“Shut up, Axel!” Vesper hisses. 

“Hang on,” Flayon asks, peering out from under Axel’s arm, sounding perplexed. “Why is the wedding after the honeymoon?!”

“Shinri should be the priest,” Probably-Hakka adds helpfully. 

“Shinri should be the priest.” Probably-Bettel agrees. 

“No thanks.” Definitely-Shinri replies, not having any of that. 

“I could be the priest, but I’d need someone to be in a rockin’ sexy nun outfit— hey, where are you taking me?!” Axel protests, as Vesper drags him away by the cloak.

Shinri, presumably, tugs two of the other rowdy ones by the ears, with the last one shuffling nervously behind. From the back, it’s hard to tell who is who, but there’s loud complaining all the way down the corridor outside until the door slams shut.

Magni slaps a hand over his face, stifling his snort of disbelief. 

“You get used to it.” Altare just laughs.

“Was it always like this? Back in the day?”

“Well, no, because they didn’t all look like me.”

“That does freak me out.”

“Says the clone.”

“Ahem.” Magni says, sounding affronted. “At least you saw my clones one by one and not, like, seven guys at once.”

“Eh, I could take seven guys.”

“Like, in a fight?”

“Obviously!” Altare shoves him, but then his arm sort of stays there, fascinated by the fabric of Magni’s sleeve. He leans against him hesitantly, trying to peek beneath the hand still covering Magni’s eyes. “You know what, though? I really do want to see the stars. And you said you knew a place with good fried chicken?”

“Only the best.” 

Magni’s hand slowly slides off his face, revealing the soft edge of his smile. He holds out his hand again, cybernetic fingers splaying in invitation. 

“But rumors say it tastes even better when you eat it with someone else.”

Altare’s hand meets his, the cool metal of it sliding against his palm. 

“Wanna find out?”