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It was dawn when, at last, Remus once again rose from the ravaged sea on the back of Vishap King Scylla, who had deigned to lend a helping hand on account of ‘hmph! Your kind are so very fragile compared to the strength of us dragon-kin’ and ‘it’s frankly shocking you haven’t fainted from exhaustion yet, little usurper’.
“ The truth was not what you hoped for, I take it.”
Remus’ silence provided him with his answer.
The journey back to shore from his visit to the Primordial Sea was a quiet and ponderous ordeal. There were a great deal of new things to think about, and none of them pleasant. But the God-King was weary to the bone, and it was feat to so much as curl his hand into a fist – so he allowed himself the luxury of sleep, even as every nerve in his body cried out in horror at the thought of letting precious time slip through his fingers so frivolously.
He let himself drift into unconsciousness on the broad back of the dragon prince, one arm flung across those dazzling scales. And if Scylla felt him waking in terror from those unhappy dreams of days to come, hands scrabbling desperately for something to hold onto, he made no comment of it.
A long time passed in silence. Finally, when the shore came into view, Scylla spoke.
“ What will you do now? ”
“I will return to my city,” Remus said distantly.
“ You are still resolute, after everything? ”
Scylla glided elegantly into the quiet bay and stopped next to an outcrop. Slipping off of the vishap king’s back, Remus landed unsteadily on the rocks. When he found his footing, he looked back up.
“If the waves shall devour my subjects, then I shall seal their souls in an Ichor that is utterly insoluble in all waters. If time shall rot my realm, then I shall forge imperishable bodies of bronze and stone for them."
“ A foolish endeavour.”
“Mhm, perhaps.” Remus smiled faintly. “But you have agreed to help me, no? Then we are fools in this together.”
Scylla heaved a great sigh of exasperation. It went on for a while.
“Do not be so pleased in reminding me, little usurper. I have an inkling it is something I will come to regret. ”
There was a soft huff of laughter. Remus placed a gentle hand on the hard shell of the vishap king’s head, and for some unknowable reason, Scylla allowed it.
“Return to the Capitolium with me.”
“ Hmm?!”
“Are we not allies? Now that I have seen your kingdom, it is only fair I accommodate you in mine.”
Scylla regarded him with a mixture of scepticism and curiosity, his reptilian eyes reflecting the shimmering light of the dawn.
“ ...Very well,” he said eventually. “ I should like to see what it is that you fight so hard to protect .”
“Perhaps I can show you around the city,” Remus said, and all of a sudden it was like he had been reawakened. There was an eagerness in his voice that found itself at odds with its usually gentle timbre. “The Hortus Euergetis is quite beautiful at night, and we have just finished constructing a new belltower in Machimos – there is also a great bridge currently being built above the lake that will carry ichor along its – ah…”
“ What’s the matter? ”
“It may… be difficult to… introduce you to the Capitolium as you are now.” Remus said regretfully. “Maybe I can have a special passageway built… ah, but the time required…”
“So your puny mortal cities cannot accommodate for one such as I? ”
“Well-”
“ Hmph! A small matter indeed.” There was a rumbling sound from Scylla’s chest that sounded suspiciously like laughter. “The power of water is the ability to take any shape – my kindred and I are not bound by such ridiculous restraints. Watch closely, usurper-lord of the mortals!”
There was a hiss, and an explosion of pale mist. A column of water swirled skyward like a growing flowerbud, before gently unravelling open.
A second later, Remus looked up, and sighed.
“Scylla, that is me.”
“Is there a problem? Is your form perhaps considered unsightly among the race you rule?” Scylla appraised himself. He patted his sides, then ran a curious hand over his chest. A small step forward almost sent him stumbling into a fall, but he caught himself on a rock in the nick of time and hurriedly pretended no such incident occurred. “Hmph. What strange creatures. Rest assured that I do not care for such sentiments.”
“That is, perhaps, beside the point,” Remus said, averting his gaze as the vishap prince pinched his own face and stuck a finger in his mouth. “But I fear it may be uncomfortable for humans to see an exact image of their ruler walking around without a care in the world.”
Scylla stopped tugging at his hair to contemplate this. “That would cause some tension, it is true. But I am unused to the finer details of human physiology – come here, little usurper.”
He took hold of Remus’ hand as he approached, and laid it flat against his face. “Shape my body for me. I shall transform myself in response to your touch.”
Remus fell silent. For a moment, the two looked at each other like a mirroring image, the only minute difference being the vishap prince’s still-slitted pupils.
“What’s wrong?” Scylla asked finally. “Is it beyond your abilities? Simply say so, then.”
“No,” Remus murmured. “I am quite accustomed to sculpting the human form. Only, well… no, never mind.”
“Hmph. Get on with it, then.”
Brushing the errant strands of hair behind an ear, Remus traced a hand slowly, ponderously, over the face that so resembled his own. He smoothed a thumb gently over the slant of that jawline, and watched with fascination as skin and bone shifted like sand beneath his touch.
Scylla remained utterly still, as if bewitched. Not a muscle stirred underneath the too-familiar skin, but those eyes remained fixed on him as he worked, and something in that gaze seemed as acute as a sword to the throat.
“Blue.”
“Hmm?”
“Your eyes. Blue suits you, I think.”
“Ah,” said Scylla, seemingly caught off-balance. “Very well.”
And those blue eyes fluttered shut as Remus pressed lightly on the contours of his brow. Elegance suited him well, Remus mused. There was some deadly intent in the way he moved and spoke. In those thirty days of constant battle, not once had he struck without design, and every attack left him scrambling to regain purchase. There was something beautiful about that fluidity, that power, all honed to a knife’s edge.
In another form, Scylla might have made for a wonderful dance partner.
Some old habit prompted him to cup the vishap king’s face in his hands as he admired his work, before the faint warmth of his skin reminded him of what he was working with.
And those eyes were on him again, keen as a razor blade.
“Apologies,” Remus murmured.
“Don’t get too carried away, little usurper,” Scylla said, but his words carried no bite.
There was a slow exhale as Remus worked his fingers behind the shell of his ear, and then down to the nape of his neck. Sharp eyes softened, blinking lazily as hands carded through curls of hair that blanched and loosened into strands of silken moonlight.
A gentle tap on the underside of the vishap king's elbow had him raising his arms without a word. The God-King's hands glided down the smooth arch of the spine, then up the lean muscle of the serratus anterior, down again past the interior, and around the curve of the hip. As flesh gave way beneath his touch, a part of him noted the tension of Scylla's posture, the stiffness in the muscle that parted and re-knitted under his guidance. But the vishap king made no complaint, so Remus abided by his silence.
There was barely a hand’s width of space between them now. From afar, their posture might have resembled an intimate embrace. Scylla’s eyes had closed again, but the soft stir of breath through slightly parted lips left a lingering warmth on the God-King’s neck.
And Remus remembered that he had not been this close to another in a long, long time.
A god was permitted to love humanity, but the lives of humans were often equated to flickering candle-flames – those short-lived, impermanent bursts of brilliance, who threw the monotonous darkness of eternity into such fascinating disarray. And like a moth, an immortal who ventured too close could only burn.
A god who truly loved humanity should only do so from afar. And there had never been one among the immortals who caught his eye, or given him the opportunity to approach in such a manner. It was impossible now, to pretend now that the warm skin was mere clay, the echo of the thundering waves barely constrained to flesh a mere disturbance of the wind. It was impossible to ignore the faint thrumming of a pulse beneath his fingertips, the shifting of muscle beneath his hands, and the gentle pressure as the vishap king, perhaps unconsciously, chased after the warmth of his touch.
And the sensation suddenly seemed… scalding.
There was a faint tremor in the next breath he released, and Scylla opened his eyes once more to stare at him curiously. He, too, did not speak, but grabbed hold of Remus’ wrist as he moved to take a step back.
And again, that gaze pierced through him like a scalpel. It felt like peeling off the accumulated debris of centuries, and something raw and vulnerable was exposed to the cold morning air.
There was no need for them to have been that close in the first place. It would have been easier to manoeuvre around him like he would a normal sculpture, but some wretched, starved creature inside of him had seen the chance to be selfish and lunged for it like a drowning man to a rope.
Scylla let go of his wrist, and before Remus could react - would he have pulled away? Or leaned closer? - the vishap king’s slim hands were cupping his face in a manner mirroring his unconscious action earlier.
“Is it always so… warm?”
“I suppose it must be,” Remus whispered.
“How pleasant.” Scylla let go, and stepped away. Casting a glance down at himself and turning this way and that, he said: “Are you finished?”
Remus blinked. “Ah. Yes, I believe so. Is it to your liking?”
“Is it to yours?”
There was a hidden layer of query to that question, but the self-satisfied twitch at the corner of his lip told Remus he already knew the answer.
“I simply attempted to capture the image I thought would best suit your temperament,” Remus said, smiling faintly. “If you would like to make some further adjustments…?”
Scylla snorted. “Are you so faithless in your own ability, little king?” He stumbled over to the edge of a rockpool and crouched to peer at his reflection, turning his head this way and that, before running a hand over his own neck and shoulders and declaring: “This will suffice! It is indeed a form worthy of a king.”
“I am pleased to hear that,” Remus said solemnly.
A hand was offered. Scylla blinked down at it for a moment, before tentatively extending his own in a mirroring gesture.
Remus took Scylla's hand and clasped it warmly, firmly, before pulling the vishap king to his feet. “Shall we, then?”
“...Yes,” Scylla said, looking up from their joined hands. “Show me this city of yours, King Remus. And why you believe it to be worthy of salvation.”