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Past lives couldn't ever hold me down
Lost love is sweeter when it's finally found
Kishiar offered Yuder a stack of cakes on the same day that, in another timeline, Yuder had driven a sword through his heart. A lifetime, a timeline ago, Kishiar had cupped Yuder’s face and frowned—resignation, not resentment—and let himself fall limp with a breathless sigh.
This timeline had several differences to Yuder’s original one. For one, Kishiar’s vessel was strengthened by what Priest Lusan had described as ‘our Sun God’s generous blessing’. Was it the Sun God’s, if it had come from Yuder?
The white light had drained into Kishiar as Yuder untangled the blockages in his flow of powers. It diffused through Kishiar’s form and stitched him together from the inside—a transference, perhaps, though why divinity was coming from himself, Yuder didn’t know.
He clenched his fists at his side, afraid of what he might have done. Fatigue called him to sleep. His anxious uncertainty kept him awake.
Once Yuder had explained what had happened, Kishiar had checked his own condition. “I healed and recovered abnormally quickly. You said I have more divine energy?”
Yuder nodded, eyes flickering at his inner turmoil.
“Don’t tell others about this before we figure this out.”
It turned out Enon was the one who figured it out.
“You’re not human anymore,” came Enon’s curt conclusion. “If I had to call you something, I would say… a god?”
“Are you sure?”
He scoffed, “Now, you’re more power than you are human.” Enon’s explanation, with some further input from Lusan about his own divine powers, sealed the deal.
A god. If it were anyone else, Yuder might have felt wary or concerned. If Yuder were anyone else, he might have been awed, jealous, impressed, bitter. Kishiar la Orr, Cavalry Commander, god.
“So? What does my assistant think?”
Yuder averted his eyes. “I don’t think my opinion is relevant.”
“Hm? But I’m interested in what you have to say.”
“…”
“It would be helpful to gauge how others would react.” Not that Yuder reacted normally in any sense of the word.
“Do you plan to expose this?”
Kishiar shrugged, ruby eyes gleaming as Yuder looked back. “Should I?”
“The attention would be a bit burdensome.”
“So you do have thoughts on this development.”
“I…” Yuder’s brow pinched slightly. “I feel relieved.”
That was not what Kishiar had expected. “Relieved? I did not take you for a church devotee.”
“No, not like that. Since you are a god, you’ll be with me for a long time.”
“With you…” Kishiar tested the words on his tongue, a beatific smile curling its corners. “My flighty attendant has no plans to leave. That’s comforting.”
It was. Not in the way Kishiar thought it to be, but it was. Yuder asked, “Do you think he can be killed?”
“Nice of you to remember I’m here,” Enon snarked, brandishing a pocketknife casually. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Yuder’s body flinched. To the pharmacist’s credit, he didn’t bat an eye even as the knife jerked out of his hand and launched itself at his neck.
“Yuder.” Kishiar’s calm yet amused tone cut through the icy focus that had overtaken him. “I thought you trusted Enon?”
He blinked. “Oh.”
The Commander rose from his chair and plucked the pocketknife from the air by Enon’s throat. “It might be best if I do this part myself.”
“Comman—”
“I healed well even before this development,” Kishiar assured him, “we only need to check if that has sped up more.”
The deep gash he sliced across his wrist was perfectly uniform in depth – a well-practiced move. It healed the instant the blade left his skin, without even a scar. When Kishiar looked up and met Yuder’s eyes with an impressed smile, Yuder forced himself to relax.
Yes. Maybe… this time around would be alright.
(The static in Kishiar’s mind is growing, it is calling, it is knocking on his skull. Eternity, it whispers, everything. Learn it, live it, know it all. He refuses, this time – it seems intent on leaving his body behind.)
I've got the strangest feeling
This isn't our first time around
Godhood, it turned out, was all well and good until Kishiar started remembering events that had never happened.
His ‘prophetic’ dream threw them both for a loop.
“A dream where you die,” he had told Yuder, so haunted by the possibility that Yuder averted his eyes and sucked in a shallow breath. “You were standing under a guillotine in the square, condemned.”
Yuder had listened to Kishiar’s strange, seemingly omniscient dream of his first death and felt his words leave him. It was strange to hear something that he had experienced with little emotion be described as if it were a nightmare.
“You…” Kishiar now sighed into a silence that had stretched too long, their game of Imuran Yute Mesis paused, and their secrets unravelled on the board. “Why do you seem relieved?”
His first instinct was to say it was nothing, but what stayed his tongue was the clinical thought that this topic was his best gateway to explain everything. The commander extended an elegant hand. As if by Kishiar’s power, Yuder found himself drawing closer before he could make the conscious decision to.
When their fingertips brushed, Kishiar’s fingers laced between Yuder’s gloved ones and tugged. The look in his eyes was not wholly human.
“If I am a god… if you gave me this godhood, surely…”
Yuder shook his head. “I don’t want it, nor do I need it.”
“You transferred that energy to me. We should share it.”
“Think of it as a gift,” Yuder replied, pulling back half-heartedly. Their intertwined hands did not budge. Kishiar’s free hand came up to cup the back of his skull and draw him in.
The press of their lips burned. Yuder felt some noise tear itself from his throat, an animal sound born of love and lust and pain. He swallowed, and something bled into him. Kishiar’s lips twitched up against his.
‘Do you feel it?’ Yuder imagined him saying, ‘Can you feel me inside you?’
His lips burned, but everything else was like ice—the flow of blood in his veins shuddered and leached cold divine energy from Kishiar. It was something he had not experienced in either game thus far. The divinity that had flowed into Kishiar in the first place did not carry with it any physically comparable sensations other than the familiar drag of power through and out of his own vessel.
Divinity was cold, it turned out. Unfeeling and unmoored and antithetical to everything Yuder attributed to the commander.
“Kishiar—”
“Look at us now.”
Yuder sucked in a steadying breath and refocused his vision at the calm instruction. Kishiar’s form was extraordinarily bright as always, but the twining divine energy within him was dimmer than Yuder remembered. Kishiar raised their intertwined hands, drawing Yuder’s gaze to them with the movement. Golden energy bled between them with a passive pulse that swelled and echoed along the seam where Yuder’s gloved hand met Kishiar’s. Its rhythm was hypnotising.
Kishiar smiled, languid and satisfied. “At least this way, you will not go easily.”
But Kishiar would be more susceptible now than before, without half his godhood.
“I don’t need eternity. Nor do I think I deserve it any more than you, my stalwart assistant.”
The only sensical thought that crossed through Yuder’s mind was that Enon might have his head for this.
(The thought that crosses Kishiar’s mind, heavy with its rediscovered mortality, is, ‘Yuder. Yudrein. Yud-re-in. Who needs eternity when I already have you?’)
Past lives couldn't ever come between us
Sometimes the dreamers finally wake up
It ended in a bang, and Kishiar’s blood spraying in an arc grotesquely reminiscent of the champagne spray at the Cavalry’s first anniversary party. Yuder hadn’t realised he still remembered it—not until now, not until it flashed over the scene with some horrible, awful echo of a light-heartedness he knew he would never feel again.
Kishiar threw himself in front of Yuder knowing full well Yuder’s ability, and goddamn it all, of course he would. Yuder had pushed himself too far only a handful of days ago. Kishiar had only put the matter to rest the day before the palace came crashing down around them.
Maybe the problem was that their enemy knew them too. To kill a god, one must kill every last trace of it, rend it, change it, destroy it. Rely on divine artifacts, consort with other gods. The first artifact they had teleported into their vicinity was a suppressor. The second was an assassin with monster-byproduct weapons. The third was the bomb.
Yuder choked on metal and sticky warmth, fingers twitching weakly against the cracks of a once-smooth marble floor. Nothing happened. He tried again.
“This is not ideal,” Kishiar muttered, the strain in his voice only ever familiar to Yuder in the bedroom. Yuder blinked, but the darkness was all-encompassing. “How injured are you?”
With a stake driven through both their abdomens, there was no point wasting breath on ‘are you?’
“I can’t use my powers.” He tried once more out of sheer desperation, rotated his hand to press his palm into the sharp fragments and reached out. Yuder realised distantly that he had fallen back on the shallow, staggered breathing pattern he had developed last game after his mana hole was pierced. It kept the shifting of his injured abdominal muscles to a minimum but was unsustainable for longer periods. “I can’t get us out. Can you?”
Kishiar didn’t answer. The pair mulled over the silence together, trading puffs of air between their bloody lips with each shaky pant. What did Kishiar look like? Was his face tensed in pain? Was he angry? Or did he look just as exhausted as he did when his past self died at Yuder’s hand?
The slight shift of Kishiar’s hair, cut loose from its braid in the initial blow, against Yuder’s face was another familiar sensation, and his mind protested the comparison. All these sensations he could remember from better times, all those memories would be tainted if they did not both get out alive.
Yuder took a deeper breath, as deep as he could, even though it hurt viciously. He could not afford to pass out. More than that, he was worried that if he passed away, he would have left Kishiar alone.
“I’m sorry.”
Kishiar swallowed, and in the non-existent space between them, it sounded like the tail-end of a sob. When he spoke, his voice was as even as ever. “What for?”
“…”
“My… Yuder.” A brave attempt at a chuckle. “We haven’t lost yet.”
Maybe it was because his lover was here, that the pain didn’t feel half as bad as he remembered it. Kishiar’s feverishly warm body pressed against Yuder’s so firmly that he couldn’t tell what of the blood wetting his sides was Kishiar’s, and what of it was his own. Perhaps it was a mix of the two, in an echo of the ancient ritual of swordkin—sworn brothers and sisters who, when in battle, forgot everything except living and dying for each other.
Like this, the idea of being one king down did not feel half so hopeless.
“How do you feel?” The words sounded as breathless as he was.
Kishiar shifted above him with a barely audible grunt, lifting his weight off Yuder ever so slightly. The weight of a castle pinning them down, and Kishiar pushed back. “I’ve been… hm, suffocating you.”
“How fast are you healing?” Yuder asked, taking advantage of the space to suck in another proper breath though his ribs screamed. His wounds were healing as best they could around the intrusion in his abdomen. Each shift of his chest reopened the minuscule tears in the muscle and skin and sinew that had fused to the metal in their attempts.
“We have… time.”
Yuder let out an involuntary noise at the faintest brush of a finger against his—skin on skin. The collapse had torn his gloves. He intertwined his own fingers with Kishiar’s as best he could, being careful not to accidentally unbalance him. Kishiar huffed another fond laugh.
“Yuder.” His eyes widened involuntarily as Kishiar’s head drooped, pressing their lips together firmly. “You are the most capable person I know.”
A mental attack. That was what this was—some thrall he had been struck with, captured in, where all the memories he held most dear were wrought into a nightmare, and all his nightmares came back to life.
Yuder belatedly remembered his ability to see energy. He activated it without a second thought. Kishiar’s form lit up in front of him, and oh, how the power flowing through his veins writhed.
“What are—what are you doing?”
A surge of red light, and Kishiar groaned quietly before answering, “Making sure.”
Yuder felt his body grow cold. Was it the blood loss? The pain in his abdomen, in contrast, grew into an inferno. A gasp escaped his lips against his will; Kishiar swallowed it down with a chaste kiss that dissolved rapidly into something messy and desperate.
Something was not right.
His head spun, the energy lines that currently comprised his vision blurring and hazing, dimming as he flickered in and out of consciousness. Yuder clenched Kishiar’s hand in his as he fought to stay awake. The man was whispering something. It took an inordinate amount of effort to understand.
“I love you,” Kishiar whispered. Over and over and over, “I love you.”
Yuder choked on his breath, on a mouthful of bitter blood. “Some- wrong. Something’s wrong!”
“Ha… ha, no, it’s going… right.”
(“Find me in the future,” Kishiar says with the dying breath that Yuder is not conscious to hear. “I trust you.”
The final fragments of power in him rejoice at their victory. Eternity, they cry, everything, everywhere.
‘I will return to him,’ Kishiar thinks bitterly as he is ripped from his body, ‘or I will expunge you.’
Divinity shivers around him; his soul, untempered by flesh, burns with his conviction. Everything, everywhere… then back here.)
When Yuder awoke, it was to the unforgiving press of Kishiar’s cold, unmoving chest against his. He looked for Kishiar’s energy. The collapsed rubble stayed as dark as ever.
Whatever came next was lost to Yuder’s rage.
The world burned. It was not the first time Yuder had watched it.
The Cavalry, in this round different in the people it held, clung to him when he turned to leave. For years, they had fought a church of corruption and spite, and for days, they had been victorious.
The realisation struck him bitterly.
Yuder had changed too much. Not enough. He had lived far, far too long.
But his comrades were persistent this time, having grown fond of him, by his own initiative. Gakane dug his fingers into Yuder’s wrist hard enough to bruise and cried words he could not bear to listen to. “Yuder! What are we meant to do without you?”
Yuder looked between his friends. Enon shut the office door behind himself, entering the confrontation late. “Hey, kid. What’s this about?”
“Ever.”
“Are you really going to give away what the Comma—what Duke Peletta left to you?” The Shin Division Deputy shook her head in disbelief.
Yuder pursed his lips.
“Enon! Talk some sense into him!”
Enon shook his head. “He’s not happy here.”
Kanna brushed her hand against the sleeve of Yuder’s free arm. He didn’t move. “You said you would see this through. All of this. With us.”
“I did.”
“Then stop this! Stay with us.”
He pried himself out of their grip but did not look back. The sun had only just risen, framing itself almost benignly in the window. “You’re capable of handling it yourself.”
“So that's it, then. You're just going to abandon the Cavalry like everyone else did?”
“They’ll believe you now.”
Ever’s gaze was bitter as she dragged him around to look her in the eye. “Then you will die alongside them, the same way you promised you would fight gods with us.”
But he was not a babysitter, and he did not have the care anymore for these kinds of quarrels. “We fought that false god and won.” His eyes narrowed, sharp and sour and venomous with emotion he hadn’t realised he could still muster. “Did you forget who I lost?”
Even Yuder flinched slightly at the question he snapped. Only Kanna was unmoving, likely having sensed the emotions and predicted something like this.
Ever rallied, “No! Of course not! But—”
“Enon,” Yuder interrupted, not even fully realising it. His empty black-gold gaze slid over to the pharmacist who had made himself scarce in the corner. “I’m tired.”
In the glass panel of Kishiar’s last portrait, he could see the others’ gazes, ones that reminded him of every person he had changed the story of—in their eyes, an expression of desolate misery and the smallest glimmer of hope.
It really had been too long if he had come to resent that expression.
The world burned twice. This one, at least, would rebuild—even if Yuder refused to see it happen without bright red eyes watching it from beside him, and a large hand holding his.
Don't wake me, I'm not dreaming
Don't wake me, I'm not dreaming
He caught Kishiar’s reflection behind him in the mirror some countless decades later. Yuder’s hair had grown over the years—it was as long as it had been when he cut it, the second time Kishiar died—and as he brushed it out, the ends swayed to reveal the carefully restored portrait. Sometimes he caught himself spending days sitting by the mantle of his thrice-renovated cabin in the Airic Mountains, staring at Kishiar’s portrait and the braided length of his own black hair laid under it.
Other times, like this one, he jerked to a halt halfway through whatever repetitive chore he had given himself, Kishiar’s bright red eyes dulled by oil paint age and yet sharp as ever. Yuder’s attention snagged on him, as it always had, but this time, he found himself caught on the hooks of an uncharacteristic surge of wrath instead of breathless love.
It was humiliating. Was this how Kishiar had imagined it, transferring his deific blessings with a kiss that still stung Yuder’s lips all these years later? That for all his power, for all the power they shared between them, everything would end so soon.
And for everything they had done, everything they had achieved, Yuder watched the world move on and grow in ways he found himself unable to anymore.
Sometimes Enon turned up to check on him, to see if Kishiar’s gifted immortality had finally run its course. On seeing Yuder as alive and untouched by time as ever, the Guardian would drag him out for a walk. Some air. Some food too, if Yuder’s mundane haze had not lent itself to more human measures of productivity in the recent weeks.
This time was different.
“Yuder! I know you’re there!”
Yuder shook himself out of his stupor and answered the door. “You came last week though.” He cut himself off, catching sight of Enon’s expression. “What do you need?”
“It’s too troublesome to explain. Get dressed, we’re heading out.” Enon looked gruff as ever, but Yuder spotted something of a frenzy kept contained in his eyes.
“Hyung—”
Enon rapped his knuckles on the doorframe, brow furrowed. “Come on, hurry up. When have I ever led you wrong?”
Yuder suppressed a sigh and headed to his bedroom. As he started unbuttoning his shirt, he heard the sound of the front door shutting, then the familiar low creak of his lone wooden chair. His two-room cottage was simple, spartan, and he’d had his fair share of Enon’s nagging to get with the times.
What need did he have for ‘the times’ without Kishiar to spend them with?
He pulled on a clean-pressed collared shirt, watching the divine energy flow through himself bitterly. What had Kishiar hoped for? All this divinity, all that was Kishiar’s… Yuder had lived two lifetimes already, at the time of Kishiar’s ‘gift’. It was a question he lived with, every second after he had come back to himself. Why did he decide I must live even more?
Kishiar was once a god. They had been demigods together for years that stretched between them, game strategy and the intimacy of strategic tact keeping both the Cavalry and Orr itself thriving decades longer than the average life span.
And now here Yuder was. A lone god.
Enon rapped on his bedroom door. “Hurry up! Have you finally disintegrated in there? If yes, you’ve got terrible timing!”
Yuder saw his own energy pulse brighter and knew he had been startled. He belted up his pants, buckled his boots, dug out his old travelling cloak and grabbed the sword and gloves Kishiar had gifted him all those years ago. “I’m ready.”
“About bloody time.” Enon had grabbed one of Yuder’s lemons in the time it had taken him to change clothes. Neither of them had much in terms of supplies; there wasn’t really a point if your body worked the same anyway.
“How long will we take?”
“Impatient,” Enon scolded. He stepped aside.
Larger than life and overflowing with divinity, there sat Kishiar la Orr on the rickety wooden chair of Yuder’s lonely cottage. He looked real—with the glow of Yuder’s gold eye, the man was illuminated in a cacophony of all the same colours his energies once were—and felt real too. When Yuder rushed over and grabbed him by the broad shoulders before he could contain himself, Kishiar was just the same.
“Yuder.”
“… You sound the same,” Yuder said, not even ashamed of the way his voice rasped with his desperation. His eyes felt uncomfortable.
A pair of warm hands came up to cup his cheeks, smoothing calloused thumbs across Yuder’s eyelids. “You need to blink.”
“How could I?” He asked. “I’m looking at you.”
Kishiar’s laugh felt like the heavens themselves had descended, all their power and warmth and life here in one precious, precious person. “Is it my turn to show you a different round?”
Distantly, Yuder noted Enon shaking his head with a disgusted yet fond grimace and stepping out the door.
“I have a board. Would you like to play?”