Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Zane had never been broken before.

In fact, he thinks his life had gone swimmingly, all things considered. He was his mother’s favorite, she loved him and doted on him and always said he was the most special boy in the world, that he deserved the world, that it was all rightfully his to have. No matter what he did, who he killed, what rules he’d bend, or what lines he crossed, his Mummy always loved him in the end, practically worshipping him like her own special little doll. He always made her proud.

…unlike some people.
His father, the King, was never quite so convinced. Zane had been vying for his approval ever since he was a toddler, and yet nothing ever seemed to be enough for him. Because of Garroth. Garroth was the golden child, Garroth was the heir to the throne, Garroth was lucky. His father always designed these little, unspoken competitions between the two brothers, and despite Zane taking such great care to remember each little intricate detail of this day-to-day minefield puzzle they navigated under Garte—the failure always seemed to fall back on Zane’s shoulders. No matter how hard he tried, it was always Garroth whom he spent more time with. Garroth needed special training, Garroth got to oversee every division that Zane knew he would be better at running, Garroth needed to come to the war meetings, even though he knew nothing of war and bloodshed and Zane had spent hours in the library studying the very subject until sunrise.

He was always in Garroth’s shadow. He was Garroth’s shadow.
And it only got worse as they got older.

But it was fine. Garroth ran away from home like the coward Zane always knew he was, and Vylad was a rejected bastard child who had no true royal blood in him and simply ruined everything he touched, and was therefore never a risk to Zane’s birthright. So when they were both eliminated from the picture, Zane was the only son Garte had left. Garroth was dead, after all, so surely he would get everything he wanted and seize the throne and the entire kingdom would be his—

…or Garte could get it in his sick, senile head that Garroth was “somehow still alive out there” and it was Zane’s stupid fucking job to retrieve the stupid fucking “true heir” to the stupid fucking throne that should have easily been his. But no, even a ghost was apparently more worthy to be Heir than him.

It was fine. He handled it fine. By putting himself at the top of the O’khasis church, he found his own way of seizing mostly total power over the empire. He made it work. The people cowered beneath him, as he was an unstoppable saint above everyone else on this filthy rotten rock of a continent.

Then Garte ruined it all by forcing him to go on a dumb fucking mission to retrieve his brother, or else he’d be cut off from all his hard-earned power and money. But he was pretty certain he had this mission in the bag, and then it could all go right back to sitting comfortably on the replica throne Zane had built with his bare fucking hands.

…Or the mission could go terribly wrong and descend into this hellish war across dimensions, all thanks to some stupid little peasant girl calling herself a “lord.”

His brother had found himself a gaggle of friends. How wonderful.
Except what wasn’t wonderful is that all of Zane’s attempts to kidnap, capture, kill, incapacitate, demoralize, or otherwise ruin the lives of the Phoenix Drop people kept getting foiled. Each and every one of his plans, upturned and shattered into pieces by this one woman. When Aphmau was on the other side of the chess game, he Just. Couldn’t. Win.

It got bad.

Why did people have to make it so damn hard to control them?

There was another factor. One that Zane had been doing his best to not look at directly, even if that was…a bit hard to do right now.

Aphmau wasn’t just some obnoxious peasant woman as Zane had originally believed. She was playing with the arm of a God. Of Irene, the Matron, divine and forthright.

Now, surely that was impossible, and Zane argued that it wasn’t possible up and down and all around…up until the Irene Dimension.
He had held Irene’s relic in his hands, it was in his reach, all that power, everything he had ever studied, everything he had ever vied for and wanted and needed, everything he had dedicated his utmost life and devotion to as a High Priest of Irene’s Church, right here in front of him. Now, of course, he had bent a few rules here and there, but he had perfectly good reason to! A few minor acts of heresy here and there, looking into forbidden subjects and tampering with dark magic, but all of it was perfectly justifiable. You see, Zane hadn’t been born with magic, and that was simply unfair, was it not? So it shouldn’t matter if he used a spell of dark magic or two, it didn’t make him unworthy as a person. Surely the relic would trust him!

…And yet it had been Aphmau the relic chose. Not him.

It was never him. Nothing could ever go right for him. Every time he got so damn close to getting the power he wanted, it slipped out of his fingers, and went to someone else instead. As if they were better than him. First Garroth, then Aphmau. Some insignificant, obnoxious, useless, sniveling, pathetic, dirt-poor, low-class peasant wench from a no-nothing town, had somehow been proven as more worthy for Irene than her own fucking High Priest. Aphmau had never dedicated her life to the job, to the staircase it took to climb to the position of power, and yet power had just been handed to her in droves. Power that she didn’t want.

Power that Zane needed.

God, he was furious.

…but the more he thought about it, now that he had been put in a position forced to reminisce, his anger could never last long in the face of the sheer grief and bone-shaking terror that followed that day. Irene herself had possessed Aphmau’s body, sprouting wings of angelic light. The Goddess herself, in the flesh, took one look at Zane…

…and oh, God, the anger in her eyes when she looked at him.

Her disapproval, blazing and loud and decreed from the Matron herself, that he was worthless, that he wasn’t good enough, that he was rotten—that was the last nail in the coffin for him. It was a perfectly pristine mirror he had been maintaining and building up all his life, and more cracks had begun to sprout around the edges over the past year’s turmoil and conflicts, but he had always managed to keep it together. Until Irene’s own disapproval took a sledgehammer straight into the center of the mirror and shattered it completely.

It had gotten him finally beginning to wonder, as he sat in this void of the afterlife, am I…not good enough? Was I…doing something wrong?

And The Shadow Lord was there, right at his shoulder, to tell him it was true.

Some stranger had appeared in the middle of his dimensional fight with Garroth, and Zane barely had any time to ask who the fuck he was and what he was doing here before a massive explosion went off and everything went white.

Aaron Lycan was his name. ……had he heard that name before, somewhere? … No, no. Wherever it was that he had heard that name before, it was frankly not important in the slightest, so he had simply forgotten. It was irrelevant, a tiny footnote in his greater pursuit to power.
And yet that tiny footnote came rising back from the grave to, quite literally, blow up everything he had ever worked for.

He had killed him.

He had lost everything, in one fell swoop.

Zane was certain he had hit rock bottom. Shad-Aaron begged to differ. If Zane was lying at the bottom of the barrel, then Shad-Aaron had given him a shovel and told him to dig.

The Shadow Lord greeted him in the afterlife, and now, he was far from a disembodied, fragmented spirit. He had a body. He had a vessel, a face. And that face was the face of Aaron Lycan, the Lord of the forgotten village of Falconclaw. (and Aphmau’s lover, as if he didn’t need even more reason to feel vengeful.)

He made Zane into a Shadow Knight. A Shadow Knight. A demon. A demonic creature, he was a demon, he was a demon, he was turned into a monster, he was unholy, he was dirtied, muddied, his own body was something unholy and filthy and tainted— And a Shadow Knight needed to be molded into the perfect soldier. How they went about this was through torture, an eternity of physical and psychological torture designed to break down every last semblance of personhood and individuality until there was nothing left of you to remember. Until it hurt too much to remember, to think, to act upon your own free will, because you knew you had not one shred of it left. You knew you were nothing more than a hollow husk of a monster, no longer human, no longer a person, no longer the man you were before you died.
Zane thought he had known pain before. Zane thought wrong.

And worse yet, the usual executioner chosen for the torturing process had been set aside, because Zane was special. He deserved special treatment, delivered straight from The Shadow Lord himself. To Shad, Zane was a Priest of Irene, a holy and devoted servant to her faith, and therefore deserving to be knocked down a peg. A worthy source of anger relief. To Aaron, it was much more personal, but nonetheless enough for the two of them to team up on Zane and break him in as hard as they could. Aaron would make him suffer, for all of eternity, over and over again, he would push him to the brink and make him scream, as punishment for everything Zane had ever done in his life.

Everything Zane had once believed was justified, was deserved, was necessary…now was beginning to be warped into something long-gone and wretched.

Maybe it was Irene’s rejection, maybe it was Garroth turning against him and dedicating his supposed-to-be-final moments to killing him, maybe it was losing his grip on everything he had ever worked for, maybe it was becoming something truly demonic against his will and how that was a complete reversal of the mirror laughing in his face for everything he ever thought he could be. Maybe it was never earning Garte’s approval, maybe it was never getting to see his mummy again, maybe it was how Aphmau was proven to be right, maybe it was how the whole entire universe had seemed to turn against him, blades drawn at his throat. Or maybe it was the fact that, for hours of every day, for seemingly an eternity, Aaron was right there in his face, telling him he was worthless, telling him he had never been good enough in the first place, telling him he was wrong, that he was a useless, pathetic fuck-up, that he was a monster, that he deserved nothing more than to rot in the bottommost pits of Hell for the rest of infinity. He was a monster. He was nothing. He always had been, really, and now he could see it clear as day.

His father had been right.
He was nothing more than a wasted fleck of dirt. A stain of mud under someone else’s shoe.

And now he was here. Broken. Crumpled into nothing. Aaron had successfully reduced him into a shred of the arrogant, all-powerful figure he once was, effectively turned into a whimpering, trembling wild animal, mind feral and wholly instinctual, paranoid and flinching and sobbing at the slightest of sounds. When Aaron wasn’t around, he did his best to cling on to his sense of self, he really did. But… what use was there? He had lost everything. There wasn’t anything left to cling to anymore.

But he was scared. And a scared, wounded animal will do anything in its power to get the hell out.

So he did.
That was the biggest security risk with sending the big man himself down to torture a mere servant. A servant who had spent the majority of his life studying each and every paper in the region about The Divine Warriors. He knew everything there was to know about Irene and Shad and their compatriots, about their relics, their power, their history, their forms and their souls. Most of the famous books people relied on for common information about the Divine Warriors were written by him. This was, above anything else, his specialty. And though The Shadow Lord had a vessel now, he wasn’t entirely stabilized yet.

One day, Zane saw his opportunity, and he took it.
A shard of Shad’s relic, torn free and pulsating in his hands.

It was all a blur, but at some point, Zane had ended up booking it as far as his weak and injured legs could run down the bloody planes of the Nether, dodging the hoards of Shadow Knights that were chasing him as he sprinted towards his only chance of escape, Shad’s furiously screaming voice echoing and reverberating off the biome walls. He reached out his hand—and fell through the Nether Portal.

And thus was his escape.

——

Zane stumbled into the Overworld, immediately having to squint his one good remaining eye nearly shut, holding up his hand to block the glaring sunlight from hitting his face. Sunlight…it’s been so long since I’ve seen the sun, I had almost forgotten…

However, his memory did not tell him that the Overworld should be so blaringly loud, either. He hissed through his teeth, turning his squinted, blurry, one-eyed vision about the all-too-bright place he was in, trying to get a grasp of where this…ungodly, mountain-shaking sound surrounding him was coming from. He saw…stone? Was that what stone looked like? God, it had been so long since he’d seen stone, he almost missed it with a fierce yearning beat of his heart. To think he could miss stone. It was pathetic.

Stone walls, all around him, making a large, open, rectangular space, with a few stone brick towers rising up on either side of the— Oh. I’m in a fortress. The sound was an alarm, a warning siren. And these were guards, running up to stand in front of him in droves. He cracked a weak, maddened grin across his face, seeing how silly they looked with their armor all gray and silver and delightfully human. It felt…nostalgic. Look at their little iron swords! And their wooden shields—holy shit, wood! That’s wood! And in fact, there were massive trees all around him, towering beyond the walls of the fortress. Trees! He nearly sobbed, laughing to himself like he had gone insane.

The adrenaline still keeping him up on his feet now danced with the strangest chemicals of mirth and relief in his system. The world around him seemed to be in a haze, foggy around the edges and all so blissfully wonderful, like he was having the most pleasant, warm and fuzzy dream. Chaos erupted around him, sirens blared, guards barked orders that fell on deaf ears, and he was lost to it all. He started to sway on his feet, fatigue and starved weakness seeping in through the cracks, now that he was free. Free! Really, truly free! Can you imagine that?! I’m free! I made it! He began to laugh, more and more, until he was clutching his chest as cackles rolled out of him, nearly shrieking with…some strange elixir of emotions, most of them swirly and whirly and slipping.

At least he had succeeded at one thing.
Maybe this would slip through his fingers, too.

“It can’t be…” A voice, quieter than any of the guards, cut through the cacophony and directly into Zane’s head. He knew that voice.

He faced forward, peering down the stairs to see…Katelyn. “Oh. It’s you.” He sneered. The traitor.

His brain began to direct him to spread his arms out wide and say some snide, proud declaration like, ‘Did you miss me?’ or ’Did you really think death would stop ME?’ and he almost started to, before the nightmarish image of The Shadow Lord’s face resurfaced in his head, like the throbbing of an open wound. He stamped it down, he- he had to. He had to. He wasn’t- he shouldn’t speak. He shouldn’t move. If he spoke like before, if he taunted him or insulted him, oh, god, no, no, no no no—

He stumbled with a grunt, catching himself on the sprawling edges of the portal, consuming the nearby area like tree roots. His legs began to tremble. His whole body pulsed with pain. He was…so tired…

”Zane.” Katelyn, however, regained her strength and bravery like it was easy. She glared at him with a burning ferocity, stepping closer. “You should have stayed dead, you fool.”

Yes, that would have been nice, wouldn’t it? But alas, Irene and Shad were not so kind…

The world blurred all around him. His skull felt like it was splitting.

“If you think you can come back and terrorize this world again, Zane, you’re wrong.” She gripped the metal claw-gauntlets tight around her fists, the metal rattling under the shift. “I have half a mind to send you right back where you came from, but I’ll make this easy. Surrender now, or come down here and fight me yourself.”

Combat. Right. Yes. Combat… it had been years since Zane had fought anyone, and even then, he was never much of the direct fighter himself. He always had a million and one goons to do all the muscle work for him, from guards to the Jury of Nine to his own brother at times. Not that he didn’t know how to fight—if he recalled correctly, he was rather quick on his feet, great with a dagger and striking cuts in the places he knew would cause his opponent the most pain possible. Sort of the opposite to Katelyn The Fucking Tank, who could probably punch anybody into the ground and leave a crater.

Gonna be honest, he did not want to be a crater. He oversaw Katelyn’s military training himself, he knew exactly what she was capable of. He was the mastermind, never as big and strong and tall and capable as his brother was. He and Garroth were opposites, night and day, the brains and the brawn. (Father had always been rather disappointed about his growth and the shape of his body. Physical strength mattered quite a lot to the King, and that, too, was an area he could never seem to beat Garroth in. He always was the runt of the litter. It wasn’t his fault his genetics more closely resembled his mother, and yet…) And about an hour or so ago, he was chained up in a cell, being tortured and beaten to a pulp. This was the most he had walked in…god, it must have been years. Maybe one day he could have won in a one-on-one duel against Katelyn, but now…

His legs shook. His fingers shook. He held the relic piece tucked under his arm, clutching it to his body and trying to shuffle it out of Katelyn’s view at the same time, wobbling on his steps and mostly depending on the portal’s exterior to stay standing. His wounds still bled under his exoskeleton armor, his bruises grew and ached, his muscles had mostly atrophied over the time spent not using them, and with each passing minute, the migraine and fatigue in his brain threatened to swallow him whole. She could flick him and he’d fall over unconscious.

He considered his options. Put his calculative, scheming brain to good use. Either fight his way out of this fortress, accept the challenge of combat and simply just…pray for the best (praying had become rather unreliable since Irene’s betrayal), or…surrender. Become Katelyn’s captor, and surely be shipped over to Lady Aphmau and face the brunt of her punishment.

There was nothing Katelyn nor Aphmau could ever do to him that would match Shad. They were not who he was scared of. He knew the two of them rather well by now, and though Lady Aphmau may hate him, he didn’t think she was capable of ever hurting someone to the same degree that The Shadow Lord was. It was the route of mercy, to become her prisoner.

And, really, it was ridiculous to think that would last. Of course he would just break out and run away. So, really, it was a brief period of mercy, and then inevitable freedom.

Sounded like a bargain to him.

He pushed himself off of the portal’s edge and took a heavy step forward. He lifted his hands into the air.
I surrender.

Katelyn was clearly shocked. “…Are you actually—? This is a trick. You would never surrender so easily!” It was like she offered the option of surrender as something more decorative than substantial. Which was fair.

It was a brief mirror into a man, a version of the self, that had once been much stronger than he was now. A man on top of the world, who had everything under his claws. But now… he had nothing. Nothing at all.

I am no one, said the whispering voice in his head. I have nothing.

Well…nothing but an upper hand against the Shadow Lord himself—the relic still tucked under his armpit, snug and pulsing against his chest. An upper hand…and an opportunity for revenge.

Sweet, sweet revenge.

“Trick you? Dear Katelyn, who do you take me for? Please, if I were to plan a way to trick you, I would have selected an option much more flattering. This is simply-…” His head ached. His stance wavered. “The smoothest… smoothest course—“ He staggered forward, dropping his hands to reflexively catch the relic, as the edges of his vision began to turn into a foggy black. The last of the adrenaline seeped out of his system. “Of… a-action.”

He collapsed at the top of the stairs, unconscious.

——

He woke up in another cell.
His hands were cuffed, but no chains, which was a minor relief, as he was pretty certain the mere sound of them rattling would send him spiraling into a fresh panic attack. The more he focused on his surroundings, the more relief poured in. The walls and floor were cold, not magma-hot. The walls were made of stone brick. There was a cool breeze coming in from one of the cracks. He could hear voices talking on the other end of a nearby wall. He could see at least three different ways he could escape from this cell alone. Aphmau really does make this all too easy for me.

However, there was a problem.
The relic shard was gone.
Okay. Minor panic. Aphmau probably has it now. That was fine. He could get it back somehow. It was fine.

He was lying on the wooden “cot” that was chained to the wall of the cell. If there was a pillow on this “bed” at some point, they must have removed it, just for him. How nice. He pushed himself up with a grunt, arms shaking from the effort, and leaning against the wall in a crumpled up ball, slightly swaying where he sat. He closed his eyes and pressed the back of his head against the cold brick, taking in a few deep breaths and grounding himself. I’m fine. I can do this. Walk it off. It’s fine.

Garroth rounded the corner and stepped in front of the cage, arms folded in front of his chest, gaze cold and dark—but there was no point in hiding the slight tremble of his lip from Zane. “So, you’re awake.”

“So, you lived.” Zane gave him a look. “Why am I not surprised?”

“You as well, it seems not even death would be enough to make you leave me alone.”

“Strange. I was about to say the same thing.” Zane forced a false grin.

He’d never been this “on display” in front of Garroth before. The sturdy wall of distance between them often prevented it, and Zane had always been rather insistent on wearing a mask around him…literally and figuratively speaking. But now, there was nothing that could hide the state he was in. The way his fingers shook involuntarily, not from fear. The bags under his eyes, the pale and unhealthy definition of his cheekbones, barely hidden under the mask. Just from looking at him, Garroth could tell he’d been through hell.

“What happened to you?” He asked, half meaning ’how are you alive.’

“Are you blind, or so stupid that you couldn’t guess?” Zane scoffed. “I’m trying to complete the set. Now there are two brothers who turned—“ Garroth cut him off with a slamming grip on the cage bars, hard enough to rattle the room. It reverberated up through Zane’s spine and made him flinch, much against his will.

“You don’t get to talk about Vylad.” Garroth growled through gritted teeth.

“…You couldn’t stop me if you tried, but…noted.”

Garroth held his glare (albeit it was the most intimidating glare Zane had ever seen on his face before. Not that that meant Zane was scared, it more just pointed to the idea that the man had grown during the time he was gone. How many years had he been gone for, anyway?) for a minute longer, before sighing and letting go of the cage bars, backing off. “…Do you know anything about-…how Laurance has been faring?”

“Wh- I-“ Zane stammered, affronted. “Why the hell would you ask me?! Why do I care?!”

“I want to know if you’ve seen him, or heard anything about him, during your time in the Nether.” Garroth was doing a very good job at staying calm and stable.

“No.” He huffed. “I was locked in a damn cell for- likely years, why would I have seen him?”

“Nothing you overheard from the other knights? Nothing about a rebellion?”

A rebellion? He tried to cast his memory back to if he had ever heard Shad and Gene speaking about a rebellion, and felt like he almost grasped onto a memory where one of his torture sessions had been interrupted by a sudden raid against the Nether Fortress—but he ran away from that memory as quickly as it came. He did not want to put himself back in that mental space today. “No.” He said a little too quickly. “Nothing about a rebellion. I— I was a prisoner, Garroth, not a trusted deposit of information.”

Garroth was quiet for a moment, as if doubting him, but…he dropped it. “Got it.” He muttered.

“What, is he not with you anymore? Your little boyfriend finally ran off into the Nether where he belongs?” He spat.

Oh, that ruffled his feathers, alright. He slammed against the bars again. “Don’t you dare talk shit about him. He is my husband, and he does not ‘belong in the Nether’—not like you do. One more word about him out of your fucking mouth and I swear I’ll make you regret ever rising from the grave, you vindictive piece of shit.” He snarled.

Zane started to laugh. “I’d like to see you try, brother. How about you come in here and fight me yourself, hm? Just like old times—“

”Enough.” Aphmau’s voice shot through the bickering, silencing both men.

Zane rolled his eyes with a groan and fell back against the brick wall. Garroth pulled away from the bars, softening almost instantly as she showed up. She stepped to his side, lifting her hands to clutch his forearm in worry. “Are you alright?” She whispered.

“I-…” Garroth let out a heavy exhale and dropped his shoulders, letting himself relax. “I’m fine. Thank you, Aphmau.”

“Of course…”

They whispered a little more about Laurance or whatever, and Zane was already beginning to tune it all out as hard as he could. They were so fucking sappy it made him sick. God, he hated both of them so damn much.

When he looked up and caught Aphmau staring at him, it was an expression so psychologically warped, so darkened in violent fury and hate, that it nearly knocked him out of his skin. He had grown so used to the Lady always arguing for “the moral high ground” and “peace and love” and “mercy” and all that trite, fluffy shit that to see her so vehemently fallen over the edge… It began to genuinely make him reconsider if this route really was the path of mercy. He was very grateful for the iron bars separating them, lest she rush him right this second and skin him with her bare teeth.

”Hello, Zane.” Her voice was beyond tense, her manners held together by a very thin and fraying string.

“…Always a pleasure to see you again, Lady Aphmau.” Zane smiled thinly and entirely falsely.

“Likewise.” She returned the gesture.

Then she took a step closer, dropping the formalities entirely. “I know this may be an obscenely difficult feat for a person like you to achieve, but I’m going to ask you a question, and I would like you to give me an honest answer.”

“Go ahead.” He said, as if this were a situation where he could grant her permission to speak, and not a situation where it was a mere blessing she let him speak at all. She’d probably cut off his tongue if he got too close.

”Did Aaron come back with you?”

The name shot through his spine like a blizzard. His previously smug act dropped completely, as that old, rabbit-like terror completely consumed him, violently shaking him up and mentally putting him back in that scathing, blood-red cell.
Garroth noticed the shift.

“I- I don’t—“ Zane’s throat tightened up. His voice changed tone entirely. “I’m not— I don’t want to- to talk about him.” He forced out, shaking his head and turning his focus away from Aphmau’s worsening rage.

”Tell me the truth, Zane. Is Aaron back?” She seized the bars of the cell, hissing through gritted teeth.

”I told you, I can’t— I’m not going to talk about him, stop—“

“Are you…scared of him?” Garroth whispered. “You weren’t scared of him before.” He honed in. Scrutinizing him. “Surely you wouldn’t be scared of the man who killed you, you’re far too arrogant for that.”

“I-I’m not!” He didn’t realize he was backing up, crawling into the corner of the room, shriveling up smaller and smaller as the pressure increased. “I said I—“

“He’s back, isn’t he?” Something fluttered through Aphmau’s expression. Desperation, even hope. “Tell me he’s back. Tell me he was revived, that he was turned into a shadow knight alongside you. You know he’s back, don’t you?”

His throat burned. His breathing was speeding dangerously close to hyperventilating. Various memories of The Shadow Lord’s face popped up in his mind, again and again, as if he were surrounded by him on all sides. He could feel his eyes boring into his back, his low voice rumbling ’You could never escape me,’ in his ears. He wasn’t safe, he wasn’t safe, he needed to hide, he needed to run, he was shaking—

”Tell me where he is.”

”The Shadow Lord has him!” Zane cracked and gave in to the pressure choking its way up his throat. “He’s— he was the perfect match, he- he’s become the Shadow Lord’s vessel. They share a mind, he- he’s with him- that’s where he is! Leave me alone!”

The room fell silent, broken only by Zane’s gasping breaths.

Shame crept up through Zane’s bones. He curled in on himself, raising his knees to his chest and avoiding looking at the two of them. He didn’t used to be this easy to crack in an interrogation, he used to have thicker skin, he used to be a pain in the ass to get information out of. Shad had trained him well.

Only Garroth cared to notice.

Aphmau had lifted a hand to her mouth, all prior terrifying violent hate vanishing from her face, replaced with tears welling up in her eyes. “He’s back… he’s really back? He’s- he’s alive…” She moved to clutch her chest, revealing an emotional, beaming, hopeful smile. Clearly, this was wonderful news for her. Then, concern and confusion swelled up. “But- Shad has him? He’s-…his vessel? What-…” She gulped and turned to Garroth for answers.

Garroth hadn’t stopped watching Zane. “…Shad was only a disembodied spirit before, right? Maybe he…made him a Shadow Knight, and for whatever reason has decided to possess him.” He reasoned. “But…why?”

“It— it gives him power.” Zane wheezed out. “Can’t you see that? He- he can go anywhere now. Do anything. He’s free.”

The dread that seeped into the room was crushing.

Garroth and Aphmau shared a look, wary but desperate for more information. Communicating in silence, Aphmau gave Garroth a nod, and he reassessed, shifting gears and sliding his hand into a small pouch. He studied Zane first, giving him a minute to catch his breath before he pulled out its contents.

The relic shard.

It almost hovered a half-inch above his hand, pulsating with light emanating from the golden center. It was the only part of the sharply fractured ball of power that was warm, and made a slight “white noise” sound once it was out in the open and audible, though it wasn’t any sort of noise they’d heard on this plane of reality. “Tell me. Does this have anything to do with his revival?”

Zane gasped far too soon for him to suppress, and scrambled over to the bars, trying to get closer to it. ”Give me that!” He swiped through the bars, and Garroth lifted it up and out of his reach. He hated when he did that. “That is not an item you can just— fuck with willy-nilly! That is sacred, and important, and it’s mine! Give it back!”

“Oh? Does that mean you know what it is?” Garroth pressed further, voice hauntingly casual and calm. “You could tell us what you know…or I could just throw it into the sea, where no one will ever see it again.”

“It is true that we’re going on another voyage across the sea again.” Aphmau nodded. “It could be lost forever…” She hummed conspiratorially, eyeing Zane.

Zane gritted out a snarl from the base of his throat. “It’s a piece of The Shadow Lord’s relic. It holds a fragment of his power, and if you want any hope of defeating him, I recommend you be very careful with the key.”

“A piece of his relic?” Aphmau’s eyebrows shot up. “How did you get ahold of that?”

“I have my ways.”

And it was true that Aphmau knew those infuriating ways very, very well.

“Fine.” She huffed. “Do you know anything else about it?”

“…Mmm…no.” Zane grumbled, very reluctant to admit any form of weakness. “I’m still…in the process of studying it.”

An idea struck Garroth like a lightbulb of hope, turning to his love. “Maybe we could have Emmalyn take a look at it. If anyone could figure out what to do with this stuff, it’d be her.”

“Ah! Yes, thank you Garroth.” She smiled, relieved. “I’ll have her look it over tomorrow.”

Emmalyn? Who… Zane chewed on that thought. Must be a scholar of Irene, then… Hm.

For now, he only spat out a few curses towards the two of them, swapping threats until Aphmau decided they had their fill of him and his temper, taking Garroth by the hand and guiding him away and behind the wall again. Zane went back to sitting on his shitty wooden cot, leaning his head back against the stone wall and closing his eye.

Tomorrow I escape. I find this Emmalyn scholar, I get my shard back, and then I’m out of this trash heap for good. Thank Irene.

…No, wait, not that last part.

——

All this time, and they still didn’t have a Shadow-Knight-proof prison cell to hold someone in. It felt rather stupid at this point.

Tomorrow came and he managed to discreetly break his way out under the cover of night, slipping out through a hole he’d made in the wall and vanishing into the night, unseen.

He would need a disguise. He was pretty certain he had never met this “Emmalyn” woman in his life—though, he usually forgot most unimportant people he encountered, so it was still possible that they could have met, or she could have simply seen him the last time he visited Phoenix Drop. Or seen any of the O’khasis propaganda, royally commissioned paintings, or maybe even wanted posters that depicted his face. Meaning there was a chance she could recognize him. Either way, he’d rather be safe than sorry.

He managed to scrape up an outfits worth of torn, ruined, stained or otherwise discarded pieces of clothing from trash bins behind houses and market stands. Rummaging through other peoples’ garbage was very likely one of the most humiliating things Zane Ro’meave had ever done, and very much demonstrated to him how far he had fallen since The Good Old Days, but he was trying to ignore the emotional impact of that tonight. He had a scheme to focus on, after all.

In an abandoned back alleyway, he let his Shadow Knight armor exoskeleton fold up, the plates stacking in on each other and unraveling, only to seep back into his skin like liquid magma. His mask was removed along with it, as it was, effectively, just the bottom half of his helmet. He quickly shuffled on a shredded pair of pants, a black and gray scarf, a stained peasant’s shirt, and a dusty old robe that he draped over his shoulders. He tucked his fringe behind his ear, stretched out a rubber band and pulled his hair back into the world’s smallest ponytail.

One of the things he was banking on pretty heavily for unrecognizability points was his scars. Most of them were hidden by his fringe, his mask, and his armor, so unless you saw snippets of the scars underneath his strands of jet black hair, you would have no idea how incredibly scarred he had become.

Turns out, being exploded point-blank left a mark, and a pretty big one at that. He had managed to turn his face to the right just before the bomb went off, so most of the damage had been done on the left side of his face, coverable by the fringe. He had lost his left eye entirely in the blast, along with hearing in his left ear. The scarring stretched down to half of his lips, and then down further to his neck, shoulder and upper chest, and as a whole looked almost like a very jagged star—similar in shape to the relic shard. Then, there were the torture scars. Some were larger than others, most of them resembled cuts and slices, but others were a bit more sporadically shaped. They dotted and covered every inch of his body. Some smaller scars were visible on the in-tact half of his face, from where Aaron had cut up his cheek and nose repeatedly.

He slung a small leather messenger bag—also stolen—around his shoulder. He cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders, taking up perfect posture…before he remembered a filthy, low-class vagrant probably wouldn’t have the posture of a Prince. He let himself hunch over instead, tucking his hands in his pockets and half-intentionally limping his way back out into town.

He found a rather large stick under a tree on the way there, so he picked it up and used it as a cane. Just for extra measure.

——

Zane wondered if the giant library might be home to the oh-so-great scholar, and when he asked some non-military-guard strangers where he might find this great scholar named Emmalyn he’d heard so much about, the library was, in fact, where they pointed him. He bid them a gentlemanly goodbye—old habits die hard—and set out towards the building.

The library was closed down for the night, so he tried the house attached to it, walking up onto the wooden porch and rapping on the front door. Hopefully it wasn’t too late for her to be asleep, the sun had only set about an hour or two ago…

Thankfully, a tall, broad woman with long, tangled blonde hair, rounded glasses, and a purple robe answered the door. She almost flinched in shock when she saw him, but then eased, a bit confused. “Oh! Uh…hello! Can I help you?”

Oh, thank Irene, she doesn’t recognize me.
…I have got to stop saying that.

“Hello, uh… I really hope it’s not too much of a bother, but I- I had heard that there was a rather knowledgable expert on Her Lady Irene living here in Phoenix Drop…would you happen to be Emmalyn?” He tried to sound as old and strained as he could, almost hoarse and meek in his voice. As far as he could get from the deeper, snide, growlingly angry voice most people who knew him were accustomed to. His face was polite, gentle, warm, and tooth-rottingly sweet, which was probably the most unrecognizable feature of all.

Emmalyn gasped, visibly immediately flustered. “U-uh- Yes!! Yes there is an expert on Her Lady Irene here!! And it is me! Oh, heavens- you have no idea how much I’d love to talk about her, I know everything there is to know about Lady Irene and The Divine Warriors, they are my absolute specialty! Yes!” She was just about vibrating with excitement now.

“Would you mind telling me about her? I’ve heard so many good things about Her Holiness and traveled all this way to learn more and— aaAUGH-!” Zane yelped as she suddenly seized his arm with a truly unexpected strength and yanked him inside her home in a flurried rush of ’YESTHATWOULDBESOAWESOMEYESYESYES’ and other such gibberish.

The door shut behind them. She was bouncing on her toes. “Ohohoh, no one ever asks me about Lady Irene! But it truly is my favorite subject in the world. I’ve devoted my whole life to studying her, you know.”

“Is that right?” Zane rubbed his arm now that he had been let go, his smile a tad strained.

“Mhm! I think I’ve found almost every book, scroll, and journal about her made in Ru’aun, and even some from the Gal’Ruk region.“ She began to lead him further into the house, past the living room foyer to her office, stacked with bookcases on each wall. There was even an additional giant bookcase inside the room, creating a small “bookcase hallway” behind her desk. She let him skim through the contents, and Zane was rather impressed to find ancient artifacts, scrolls dating back hundreds of years, and fragments of history that Zane had previously been wasting years and thousands of coins trying to find with his own archeological research teams, only for it to be sitting right here on a shelf in Emmalyn’s study this entire time. He found some of his own writings on these shelves, and suppressed a huff of pride.

“I’ve gone on archeological expeditions uncovering more unknown truths about her history, I’ve written multiple journals… There’s still a lot we don’t know about her and the history of the Divine Warriors, and Lady Aphmau and I are working on trying to uncover that, but…if there’s anyone you were to ask about Lady Irene, it would probably be me.” She chuckled, a bashful glow radiating from her nervous smile.

“Damn.” Zane was…genuinely impressed. He’d been a scholar of Lady Irene for decades now. The history behind the Divine Warriors and their relics, especially The Shadow Lord, had been his favorite subject of study before his death—to the point where he had to hide a lot of his research about Shad in fear of being prosecuted for heresy. But he had funded and led entire expeditions and archeological dig sites dedicated to uncovering more fragments of their history. Hell, he had his own private library of research that was only about a story bigger than Emmalyn’s.

He didn’t expect to find a kindred spirit in this worthless, washed-up trash-heap of a town, and yet here he was. “Very…very well done, Emmalyn. This is-…wow.” He spoke a bit too genuinely, before remembering his cover. “I-I believe this will be very helpful, yes. Thank you.” He cleared his throat, awkwardly.

If anyone is going to help me figure out how to utilize this shard… it would be her.

“Uh, a-anyway— Cookie?” She laughed equally as awkwardly, handing him a cookie from a plate on her very messy desk. (He fondly remembered his own writing desk back at the O’khasis castle, and how easily it became the least tidy thing in his bedroom.) “My friend made a batch for me and my husband to share, they- they should still be warm!”

I don’t…need to eat anymore…but… “Alright.” He took her offer and bit into the cookie. It was chocolate chip, the center was still warm, the chips were still melty, it was crunchy around the edges but still soft on the inside in the way that was perfectly baked—and he just about melted. “Mm, God, this is heavenly!” He hummed after swallowing his bite, then swiftly taking another. For the first thing he’d ever eaten since leaving the Nether, he figured this was pretty worth it.

“I know, right? They’re so good, they’re Kenmur’s favorite.” Emmalyn beamed.

“Kenmur? Is that your husband?”

“Hm? O-oh, yes, he-“ Emmalyn giggled ever so quietly, holding a hand up to her face as if it could hide her blush, looking away fondly. “He’s such a sweetheart. He helps me with my research, too. He’s more of an engineer than a librarian like me, but he’s absolutely wonderful and helps me run the library from time to time. He should be home in a few hours, you should meet him!”

I should knock you out and drag you out of this place before he comes home, then. “Haha! I would love to, he sounds wonderful.” Zane lied through his teeth.

Regardless, he still spent a bit more time than he normally would’ve allowed to just…pretending he was this other person, listening to Emmalyn’s latest findings, studying the brand new artifacts she had on her shelf and hearing stories about her and Lady Aphmau’s fruitful expeditions in the past. Some of it actually was new information, and he felt genuinely interested in hearing about it.

He spotted the relic shard tucked away in her study.

She didn’t stay conscious for long after that.

——

Emmalyn woke up in a cave lit up by a small, crackling fire pit, her wrists tied together by a rope. She jumped, gasping awake and looking around frantically with a sharply rising panic. “Wh- where- how—“

“Oh good, you’re awake.” The man she welcomed into her home said, stepping into her field of view with his hands behind his back. Zane still had his disguise on, but now dropped the altered voice.

“Wh- buh- Who are you?! Where am I?! Did you kidnap me?! Who the hell are you?!”

Zane lifted his hands back and started to untie his ponytail, and as he did so, his exoskeleton jutted back up his throat in pieces until the mask over his mouth formed once again, a dark red flesh-like metal accented with glowing red veins lining the edges of the plates. He let his hair fall and adjusted the fringe to cover the scarred half of his face. Now he allowed himself the pleasure of swishing his arms out to the side and gracing her with a small curtsy. ”Remember me?”
What can he say? A dash of dramatics were good for the soul.

”ZANE RO’MEAVE?!” Emmalyn shrieked. Zane stumbled off his balance at the sudden, piercingly high-pitched sound. He rubbed his only functioning ear with his fingers, shooting her an irritated look. “B-but you— you’re dead! You’ve been dead for years! Garroth said he saw it with his own two eyes, how did—“

Zane raised an eyebrow at her.

“—Right, Shadow Knight. Undead Shadow Knight. Of course. That’s how.” She corrected herself, slowing down a tad.

“Oh, good, you’re not a complete idiot.” He retorted dryly.

”Hey!” She struggled, her panic dissolving into frustration. “I’ll have you know that I outpace most of the people in Phoenix Drop alone! Have you ever tried to get Brendan to play a game of chess?”

“I don’t…know who that is. Nor do I care.”

”Good! Because it was a nightmare!” She yelled. Then, muttered, “anyway—“ as she shook her head, “What the hell do you want with me? Money? A route to Aphmau? My research? Because you’re never gonna get it! I’m not giving you squat!”

“I want to pick your brain.” Zane hummed, dropping down to a crouch in front of her, perched at eye-level. “As you said, it’s your very intelligence that makes you valuable to me.”

“My…brain?” She cocked an eyebrow.

He let his exoskeleton crawl out from his elbow joint, stretching its way up his forearm to his hand, where the jagged sections curled over his fingers and turned them into claws. He clicked the tips of the talons together, attentive to the little clicks the hot metal made when it tapped against itself. All the while speaking idly, “I have known many scholars in my time, put them to use time and time again, only to find that most of the so-called geniuses I meet were actually rather…useless, to put it gently. Turns out, a real genius is few and far between, and sadly, occasionally tucked away behind library shelves in some small, nobody town named Phoenix Drop.”

Emmalyn cut in. “Phoenix Drop has actually undergone a significant popularity boom over the past 15 years, with tourism rates a hundred times higher than they were prior, mostly due to the exciting rumor that the mythical Irene herself is a resident and former lord here. The territory radius and fame of the town now rivals that of villages such as Scaleswind, with an ever-increasing population by the day. By your memory, it makes sense that you would remember us for the small and decrepit village we were once, but now just about everyone knows our name. We’ve been upgraded to one of the bigger players in Ru’aun. Just so you should know.” She corrected with a growing smirk.

“…Right.” Zane glared. “It’s that I’m talking about, though. It just comes pouring out of you like nothing, and it was all intel that I didn’t have prior. Which is exactly what I need, because…” He dug his hand into his bag and pulled out the luminescent, lightly levitating shard. ”I have a new project for you.”

Emmalyn gasped, drawing herself back in her caution and apprehension of Zane, but… He could see how the shard glittered in the corner of her eye. This was the most enthralling bargain chip he could have ever offered her.

“I need your help to find a way to use this to defeat him. This shard is the ticket to bringing him down, I’m certain, I just-…” He drew in a breath, suppressing the tremble that nearly slipped into his voice. “…Am a bit…lacking in resources, for now. So, what do you say? Wanna be my research partner?” A sly, serpentine grin spread across his face.

He could see the gears clicking into place in her mind, churning and evaluating all possible options, weighing outcomes and consequences… and a surge of pride burned in his chest when he could see in her face that she chose the right option. Her shock and fear completely drained from her face, replaced with serious, firm, almost hostile professionalism, her face underlit with the purple and yellow shifting glow of the relic.

“Deal.”

“You’re a very wise woman, Emmalyn.” Zane purred.

“With two conditions.”

Zane’s smile fell. “Of course.” He grumbled.

“1. You never tie me up, cuff my wrists or ankles, or keep me otherwise restrained. I am given free rein at all times. 2. You never touch a hair on Kenmur’s head.”

“I am not an honor-bound creature, my dear. We could very well do this the hard way, where I chain you up, torture you as I so please, and slaughter everyone you’ve ever loved.” He hissed, a dark look crossing his face.

“Sure, we could do this the hard way.” She returned the same heavy glare. “But I don’t think I’d be very willing to be your work partner and intel confidant if you murdered my husband and harmed me. I could withhold information from you, fabricate lies, manipulate the results of our experiments in my favor, and you would be none the wiser. I could find a way to escape, and then all of this extremely valuable information would be dumped right into your worst enemys’ laps. Or I could simply refuse to speak, no matter how much blood you spilled. Grief can be a very crushing, silencing thing after all, and something tells me you really don’t want to waste your time… Do you?”

He hated working with equals, actually. He hated it very much already.

He ground his teeth, the muscles of his nose scrunching up and wrinkling under his brow with the force of sheer fury he was radiating. ”Fine.” He jutted out his other hand to shake on it. “But don’t be surprised if I break our deal and turn on your dear, sweet Kenmur.”

She shook his hand around the ropes. “Likewise. You’re not my Lady, after all. My allegiances will never align with you, and I will always return to Aphmau’s side at the end of the day.” She said, cold and calm.

“Of course.” He let go of her hand and delicately placed the shard back into the messenger bag, grumbling something about ‘you and your pretty little moron of an Irene, worshipping some bullshit false idol…’ under his breath as he unsheathed a dagger and began cutting at the ropes around her wrist.

He kept it gripped tight in his talons when her hands were freed, fully preparing himself to have to stop her from punching him in the nose and booking it for the exit, but to his surprise, she did nothing of the sort. She rubbed her wrists, and then met him with a dimmed attempt at optimism. “Well then! Where do we start?”

——

“You are a very fascinating research partner to have, you know.” Emmalyn broke the silence in the cave as she spoke. She had been leaning over a microscope at the desk Zane set up for the two of them, taking a magnetized view into the very core of the shard.

“Oh, good.” Zane drawled, sarcastic. “What, never met a Shadow Knight before?”

“Oh, no, I have! And though I would love to study that at some point, if you’ll allow me, simply just because I’ve never had the opportunity to have a close-up examination of what it’s like to be a Shadow Knight before—“

Now that he thought about it, neither had Zane. That was…actually a very rare and near-impossible research opportunity, given how much time Shadow Knights usually spent trying to render everything around them into a fiery pit of explosions and death. But now that he was here… He put a pin in that for later. He didn’t think it had anything to do with the shard, so that would have to be lower priority on the list. (But definitely someday.)

Emmalyn was still talking, by the way. “—But that’s not why I find you fascinating to work with.”

“No?” He stopped what he was doing—which was a mix between “keeping watch” and “fucking around with his sword while he was growing bored out of his mind”—and walked over to the side of her desk to chat. “How so?”

“Well… you used to be my idol.” Her tone had softened, grown small and tinted in melancholy. “I was so excited to hear The High Priest of O’khasis himself had shown up to our measly little rotting doorstep, when you first arrived in town. I had heard so much about your research efforts… I didn’t think there was any scholar in Ru’aun with more credited findings than you.”

That’s mostly because I sought out all the other scholars in the region who did find things and forced the credit to go to me or else I would murder their wives and children. He thought, not really out of guilt or regret, more out of dull, neutral observation. Though it was at least a little odd to notice in himself, normally he would brush off any thought on the matter as ’it was rightfully mine and I deserved it’ but…

…the alternative had sort of become hammered into his mind over the past three years.

He suppressed a shudder.

“So you must know how devastated I was to learn you had been tormenting innocent children and civilians in my town. My friends. And then you proceeded to wage war against us and tried to destroy the entire town…” She frowned, more of that melancholy disappointment slipping in.

Zane felt a little awkward. And uncomfortable.

“So, all things considered, I really should hate you.” She hummed observationally. “I think everyone else in Phoenix Drop does. Even Kenmur hates you much more than I do. And it’s not like I continued to be your fan after those events, I considered trashing any spec of your research and throwing it all off my personal shelves. But… I didn’t.”

“Of course you didn’t. Historical research is incredibly valuable knowledge, valuable enough that the personhood of the author or finder shouldn’t matter, or even exist in your thoughts at all.” Zane scoffed, rolling his eyes and flicking away the notion with a swish of his hand.

“Maybe.” Emmalyn chewed on her inner cheek, like she was both doubting and disregarding him. “But…I don’t know. Some nights, it’s like you haunt me. I dream both of burning your findings and spitting in your face, and also of getting to work with you in some glorious setting, where I still look up to you all the same.”

She finally looked up from the microscope and met his eye. “But now?” She paused, studying him. “…Now I just feel bad for you.”

Zane flinched. ”Wh- I- kuh- Excuse me?!” He squawked.

“You don’t look a thing like the High Priest I saw 18 years ago. You just look-…hollowed out.”

Okay, that hit a little too close to home. All of the blazing fury he was about to send raining down upon this insolent woman choked out into a small cough of smoke in his throat. His cheeks burned with embarrassment and shame, that old, weak, miserable, whimpering shell of a man in the cell returning to his mind. “I- I just— you don’t—“ He started to argue, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ but seeing how her lavender eyes were, very uncomfortably, staring right through him like he was a pane of glass, somewhere along the way it molded into a much less dignified, “You don’t know the half of it.” He immediately took it back. “I-I mean— that’s not—“ He bit his tongue.

“Fuck you.” He settled on.

“Fair enough.” Emmalyn shrugged.

“Don’t you dare presume that about me again. Or- or anything, for that matter. I’m not—“ Why didn’t he feel as powerful as he used to? It was so infuriating, and yet he wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball in the corner and have another breakdown. “I am- plenty powerful, and I could still just as easily destroy your entire village with ease, so- watch your tongue, young lady.”

“I’m pretty certain I’m at least 15 years older than you.” She corrected dryly.

“I am leaving.” Zane hissed, and promptly began walking further into the cave. “Good night.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon…”

“Good night, jackass!” He shouted over his shoulder.

“Alright, alright, jeez…” Emmalyn turned back to her work with a huff, muttering something about temper tantrums.

——

Just because you don’t need to sleep anymore doesn’t mean your body can’t feel fatigue. Especially after three years of torture, a night of running for your life on barely-functional legs, having a very stressful conversation with your arch nemeses, and then running away again and dragging an unconscious body far away from town and into a cave (again on barely-functional arms). Mentally, the fatigue was catching up to him as well. It was late at night, and Emmalyn had curled up in the corner for sleep hours ago.

The world went dark, and something about it made Zane’s paranoia spike as he stared out into the night outside the cave. His irises glowed red faintly in the night, peeking out from the entrance of the cave like the undead mob he truly had become. He hadn’t heard any footprints or voices since he fled town, but he was still convinced that Gene and his Shadow Knight troops were hunting him down. There was no way that Aaron or Shad would let him go easy, they were definitely hunting him down right this minute.

A branch cracked. Something about Emmalyn being asleep and away made him feel in danger. An owl called, it sounded a little too much like a person. Crickets chirped. Dark clouds passed overhead. A deer and her fawn were grazing in his view at one point. The mother looked up and met Zane’s bloodshot eyes in the cave, and their tails shot up before they bounded away, recognizing him as a predator.

You look like a hollowed out version of the idol you once were.

The mirror reflectijg his younger self was haunting him, looking him in the face with that stupid, smug grin he always had under his mask, the way it made his two perfectly blue eyes crease up, giving him the face of a fox. He wanted to punch that perfect smile off his face. He wanted to grab his chest and ball up that expensive, fancy white fabric of his into his hands and sob into his doppelgänger’s chest. You had it all, you had it all, he would have screamed. Why did you give that up? How could you let that go? How could you let yourself get so caught up in the game, how could you let all of it burn down, and for what?

He could feel the chains around his throat, even now. Following orders like he was reduced to a slave, because he just couldn’t take fighting back anymore.

He wanted to wrap his hands around his younger self’s throat. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? He would have cried down to his reflection. It should have been me. You never should have existed. What have you done? What did you do to me? It’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s all my fault—

A cracking branch snapped him back into the present. Much like the owl with the voice of a man, his head jerked straight towards the direction of the sound.

It was just a squirrel.

He took a deep breath. I’m losing myself, standing out here.

…I already lost myself a long time ago. He closed his eyes, shoulders slowly dropping. There isn’t much to lose anymore, anyway.

What was the point? Why even try to fight back? Who was he kidding? What old shred of his younger self was he humoring by trying to organize a scheme of revenge to take down his warden? The Shadow Lord seemed so huge and daunting of a threat now, looming overhead like a mountain peak that never stopped casting its silhouette down upon Zane. What if this doesn’t work?

…Then he’d go right back to the same cell and repeat those days all over again.

He couldn’t do that.

That’s why.

His inhale trembled. God, I need a break. I need to clear my head. He hesitated, and then turned his back on the outside world, dragging himself back into the cave. He shoved Emmalyn awake.

“Huh-wha-…? Zane…?” She must have seen how disoriented he was, even through the blur of groggy sleepiness. “Is something wrong…?”

“Do you…have any books?” He muttered.

Emmalyn stared at him. “…what, after you kidnapped me?”

He held his ground.

She sighed. “Yes, actually. I do.” She pulled a thin, compact book out of her cardigan pocket and plopped it down into his palm. “Return it in the morning.” She slurred, turning back over onto her side and falling back asleep.

“Okay.” He whispered, clutching the book in his hands.

He sat down next to Emmalyn, faced the quietly crackling fire, made it blaze a little bit stronger, and cracked open the book to the first page.

His anxiety slowly drifted away.

——

“I think an avenue we should try is to figure out how relics are made.” Emmalyn chimed in as he rotated a skinned rabbit over the fire spit. He had gone out and hunted it himself this morning, when Emmalyn started complaining about ‘starving to death’ or whatever it was mortals whined about.

“Where they come from, what they’re made of… Because if we know the composition of the shard, then it could help us narrow down how to use it. Which we’re going to have to get a bit creative with, considering the usual method of utilizing a relic as a power source is to have it absorb into you so you can draw upon it naturally. But it’s only going to do that with Shad, so… maybe we can put it in a sort of machine? Maybe we can use it to extract the rest of his relic out of his body?” She hummed, chewing on the tip of her pencil, then continuing to scratch down notes in a journal. “If we could do that…then he’d really be powerless—“

“And we could kill him easily!” Zane finished, a little too enthusiastically.

“Not kill him!” She turned around in her chair to scowl at him. “That’s Aaron’s body you’d be killing! You do that, and he’ll die too!”

“…I don’t see how that’s not a benefit.” Zane grumbled. “Or the goal.”

“You would say that.” She snarked back, returning to her writings. “Unfortunately, he’s pretty important to my friends, so. I can’t let you do that.”

He laughed at that, sinister and mean-spirited. “I’d like to see you try.”

“You never know! Shadow Knight or not, I’m pretty sure taking an encyclopedia to the skull would knock you out all the same.” She huffed. “Never underestimate a librarian!”

“Uh-huh.” He rolled his eyes.

“That aside, I don’t think you have any information on the exact composition of relics yet, do you…?”

“I was-…working on it. At some point.” He winced.

“Then we might need to make some trips to local libraries to see if we can find any theories on the matter.”

Oh, good. Leaving the cave and returning to public society. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

“We should get moving after lunch.” She scratched a few more things down as quickly as she could, putting a pin in it for now. “Personally, I would be surprised if they were composed of any…worldly materials? Like, you’d never expect a relic to be made of stone. Or diamonds. You wouldn’t be able to craft one with materials you could find on this plane, you know? Maybe they’re pure magic. Like- Lady Irene had just so much magic that she was able to extract enough of it from her soul to make different, separate magic sources! And she gave it to her friends, to make them powerful too.”

“Maybe.” Something about that didn’t feel…right… to him, though…

“But I’ve held magical objects before, and they’ve never felt this…” She reached out her hands to the sides of the floating shard, less than an inch away from grazing the edges, her voice dissolving into a hushed, reverent, cautious whisper. “…alive…”

…Something didn’t feel right at all.

“…We’ll figure it out.” He concluded.

“Right.”

——

Zane donned his disguise again, which was to say he drew back the rest of his exoskeleton and pulled his hair up again. They packed their things into their bags and head out, following nearby plumes of smoke (away from the direction to Phoenix Drop) to a small, nearby town.

Zane pulled the robe’s hood over his head and slunk behind Emmalyn, letting her lead the way and do all the socializing for him. He could charm and smoothtalk his way to the library, but a chipper, friendly, sunny energy came so much more naturally to Emmalyn than it did for him. She was much better at being nice to people and making them like her in a way that wasn’t…

…He reminisced about the past. Recalling the kind of fox-of-a-man he had been before, a charmer and a “social butterfly,” though it had never been because he actually enjoyed talking to people. He hated it, really, but a smile and a diplomatic compliment can get you very far in the wealthy world. Most of his life, especially growing up as a Prince, was a game of chess navigating connections and social slip-ups, appearances and reputation. So much power over the world could be traded away into his hands, and it’d all be thanks to a pleasant bout of smalltalk at a fancy party. Charm the right women, kiss the boots of the right people, and soon he was King of the World.

…Metaphorically, of course. As if he needed to remind himself of that.

…all of that was gone now.

So he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He left that to Emmalyn. Which worked out perfectly, because she had them approaching the village library in a matter of minutes.

They both got to work. Selecting out their own individual hauls of books, all pertaining to Irene, the relics of the Divine Warriors, and The Shadow Lord’s power. They met in the middle with all their books, sat down at the most isolated table in the back of the library and got to speed-reading.

…After a certain point, he slid his Shadow Lord-centric books over to Emmalyn and traded her for books about the Divine Warriors.

Wow, Garroth really did bear a resemblance to Esmund.

“I wonder if we can find some sort of connection between Shad’s power and the makeup of Shadow Knights.” Emmalyn broke the silence with a whisper after what must have been an hour of quiet reading. “What about the origins of Shadow Knights? How do his powers allow him to create them? Why does he create them? Does his relic, as one pertaining to destruction, also have some…necromantic qualities? Life and death all in one? How is that tied to Irene?”

“Pick a single question and focus on it.” He grunted.

“Okay, fine. Wise. Here’s something I wonder if you would be able to answer: Why does Shad make Shadow Knights? Like-…what are they for? Do you remember anything from the revival process that could give a how and why?”

“That was three questions.” He corrected dryly.

“Oh, buzz off! You know what I meant.”

He chuckled lightly.

He drifted off into thought nonetheless, lifting up his focus from the page to the wall ahead of him. “…Hm.”

He could faintly remember waking up in a white void. He figured it was limbo, and he was lying on the ground at first, groaning. He sat up, looking around at wherever the hell he had ended up, only to realize that he wasn’t alone in this void. There was a massive set of double-doors, the door frame curved like a half-moon and encrusted with glowing red runes. It looked like old stone, singed and burned around the edges, with the red glowing interior of the runes almost dripping down the frame like blood. The door was some sort of gray wood, but some parasitic veins were growing from the opening between the doors, crawling their way up the wood and pulsing with a glowing, red heartbeat.

There was a man standing in front of the door. Tall, broad, built like a train with tan skin, dark hair, black eyes made of rippling mist and two luminescent red spheres for pupils, his red armor more pointed, jagged and intricate than any Shadow Knight he’d ever seen. Jet black, sleek horns jutted tall and slim out of his head in spikes, a black devil tail draping just above the ground of the same sleek, black qualities. His armored claws were massive, and could surely cut through steel.

It was Aaron. Aaron’s face was glaring down at him like an owl, if you could call any face made with those eyes to be expressive. Zane gasped in horror, recognizing Aaron before he recognized Shad (that would come soon after). He barely had any time to crawl back and away before the monster of a man stomped towards him, quickly overpowering him, grabbing him by his hair and his arm and yanking him painfully hard towards the door. He screamed and struggled and flailed to no use, a kitten in his massive, iron-grip hands, all of it lost on deaf ears. He remembered the low growl in his ear, mostly Aaron’s voice, but a mix of the two different men turning into a reverberating, echoing, supernatural tone, hissing ”I’m going to make you suffer for an eternity.” Before he was thrown through the open double doors and fell down, down, down, through lava and fire and netherrack and smoke, into waking up in his cell.

Back in the present, Zane swallowed thickly. “I-…I think I was- sort of an exception to the norm, but-… I think Shad’s realm is the afterlife. I think he decides whose soul goes where when they pass, which means he chooses each Shadow Knight for a reason. He didn’t tell me what his reasoning was when he turned me-“ That was a lie. “-but speaking as a former organizer and leader of my own military, it must be because the souls he chooses have some sort of trait that could serve him and his army. Like their physical strength, or their natural magicks, or their expert training in combat, or stealth, or natural agility, or perhaps the soul has potential to be molded into a soldier with highly advantageous skills.”

He kept tapping a pen against the table. He found the small, repetitive motion regulated him. Slightly.

“Now, Shadow Knights aren’t allowed to keep their individuality or their minds, so traits like intelligence might not be as common of a factor. I’m certain their position in life matters a fair amount too, considering how most Shadow Knights end up being Guards—people close to Lords, people who can easily kill other people in power, to open up room for Shad as the number one ruler of the world. If Aaron was not part of the picture, I wouldn’t be surprised if Shad made me a Shadow Knight purely because I was a Prince, it’d be a very advantageous position.”

“You think Aaron added a bias to your situation, that he determined why you became a Shadow Knight?” It took Emmalyn talking for him to glance in her direction, and only then he saw how studiously she was listening to him, her head propped up in her hands and drinking in every word he was saying, like he was just as valuable of a source of intel as the books they had in their laps. It threw him a bit off guard.

“Uh-…Y-yes. Though I’m not willing to elaborate on him specifically.” He coughed, tensing up.

“Hm.” Emmalyn was scrutinizing him again. At least this time, she had the manners to disguise it with a completely casual expression, indistinguishable from the one she had on prior. He began to dread her pushing even harder on that pin in him simply because he brought attention to it, but to his surprise— “Alright.” She shrugged it off.

“So, you’re saying that, by this theory, a man like Garroth Ro’meave would have a higher chance of becoming a Shadow Knight than say, my very intelligent but sadly very scrawny husband Kenmur?”

“Oh, a thousand times so.” He nodded thoroughly. “If Shad had a choice between me and Garroth to pick as Shadow Knights, I don’t doubt that he would immediately pick Garroth instead.”

That sentence stung more than he thought it would.

“Hm. Duly noted—“

“Oh, hello dears!” A brand new voice entered the scenario. Zane snapped towards the sound of the figure coming out from around the corner and approaching. It was an elderly civilian woman, wearing a quaint, light gray dress and an apron and holding a plate of cookies in her hands. “Dear me, I hope I’m not interrupting you two, but I don’t think I’ve seen your faces around here before!”

Zane was bristling on edge, but Emmalyn placed her hand over his arm and took over the situation, as if to deflect any sort of hostility he was about to jump towards. “Hello! That’d be because we’re travelers, looking for information about Lady Irene. Have you heard of her?”

“Have I? Of course I have!” She lit up in a reverent, devoted awe for the woman that, at this point, was getting pretty dull and annoying to Zane. “I see you and your husband have found our selection on her, hm? You two enjoying yourselves?”

Zane could only do so much outward social filtering to hold back the sheer, vehement disgust that flooded his entire body with that suggestion.

“Uh- no, he’s not- we’re not a couple. He’s my-…co-worker.” Emmalyn was being very gracious with her own expressions as well. She held her hand to her chest, “I’m married to a different man, and he’s-…” Pointing her thumb at a crumpled up and cringing Zane actively trying to sink under the table. “…him.” Her disdain was thinly veiled.

“Oh! Silly me, making assumptions, hehe…” Despite the hoot the old woman seemed to be getting out of this, she slid an apology plate across the table to them. “Either way, new guests in the library are a very rare sight to see for our small town! I had made some cookies for my grandchildren to share amongst their friends, but it seems they’ve all ran away while my back was turned. How about you two have some, as a warm welcome?”

“Oh! Thank you ma’am, but you really didn’t have to—“

“No, no, I insist! My treat.” She laughed it off, waving away Emmalyn’s polite decline like it was nothing. Then, with a sharp glance towards Zane, “Besides, this young man looks like he doesn’t get nearly enough in his belly as a growing boy should.”

Zane groaned. Emmalyn giggled behind her hand, and Zane had half a mind to hit her for finding such pleasure in benign mockery against his pride.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to your work! You two have fun now, and you let me know if you need anything, alright dears?”

“Of course. Thank you so much!” Emmalyn gave her a parting, sunny grin as the two shared a wave (Zane did not participate). The elderly woman left.

Zane pulled himself back up to sit up straight in his seat. “…I hate nosey, meddling civilians.” He muttered.

“You hate everyone.” She rolled her eyes and dropped the grin. She took a cookie and handed it to him. “Here, maybe this will make you appreciate her generosity a little bit more, hm?”

He groaned again, but took the treat and nibbled at it.

“…What’s the name of your ‘baker friend’ in Phoenix Drop?”

She cocked her head at him. “Uh-…We just call her Madame Ashida, why—“

“Her cookies are better.”

Emmalyn laughed. “Yes, yes they are. Maybe if you hadn’t tried to kill Aphmau and destroy the whole town 18 years ago, you would’ve been able to eat at her bakery more often!”

Your fault, the voice in his head echoed.

“…Maybe.”

——

“So is it like-…your skin?” Emmalyn had asked once they were back in the cave.

Zane had agreed to allowing Emmalyn to study him as a Shadow Knight. The excuse he gave on paper was “to see if there might be any connections between the makeup of Shadow Knights and the Shadow Lord’s powers” but the real reason was because he had been searching for in-depth information about Shadow Knights for years, only to find little to nothing on the subject matter. This was literally the most perfect research opportunity ever, and, frankly, over the past couple of days Emmalyn had proven herself to be one of few scholars in Ru’aun that Zane could trust to inspect him without taking advantage of him. So what if he couldn’t resist indulging in a slight educational detour? He was a man hungry for knowledge, it wasn’t his fault he just couldn’t say no to uncovering a few arcane-biology secrets here and there. It was fine. They were technically still on track anyhow.

He had propped himself up on the table, his entire exoskeleton—aside from the top half of his helmet—unfolded across his body for inspection up close. He held out a hand for Emmalyn to examine, patiently allowing her to poke and prod his palm and talons as she pleased.

His armor didn’t have the same texture as solid metal. When Emmalyn pressed her thumb into the center of his palm, the armor sunk in slightly, compressing his skin under her touch and regaining its shape when she let go. It felt closer in composition to dense muscle tissue than it did steel.

“Not exactly. It’s interesting—I find myself thinking of it almost like a second skin, like it’s apart of me and my body and my soul now, but I don’t think it fits the criteria to be classified as a kind of ’skin’ per se. Perhaps more like the exoskeleton of a beetle, or centipede.” He sounded…strangely comfortable. It wasn’t as if Emmalyn was going to harm him. How could she?

However, if anyone else had done such an examination of him and his brand new body, say: Kenmur, some doctor he’s never met before, an old co-worker, Kiki, or Irene forbid any of the other Phoenix Drop residents, he was 100% certain he would have rejected the offer in a heartbeat. It would be uncomfortable, invasive, dehumanizing, and possibly even traumatic, given how shitty the terms were on how he got this new body. He would have found the entire ordeal to be downright insulting, and would sooner skewer them for merely suggesting it.

No, it had to be Emmalyn.

Besides, she was the only person smart enough to know what to look for. “It’s interesting that you say that! I was debating the idea of that in my head, but I wanted to rule it out because, strangely enough, it doesn’t seem hard enough of a material to be something made out of chitin. It’s too soft to be a metal, too durable to be muscle, and too…” She cringed, slightly. “Squishy to be chitinous.” Then, with a curious hum, “Do you think it could be some kind of…brand new material never before seen in Ru’aun?”

“It must be.”

“Does it bear any resemblance to netherrack, by any chance?”

Zane thought about it. While the very ground of the Nether seemed to move and fluctuate in a veiny mass as if the entire realm was one big, convoluted brain, he didn’t think… “Wouldn’t netherrack break easily under a sword? Or a pickaxe? Shadow Knight armor resists any and all breakage—I don’t think it’s even possible to break it.”

“Maybe it’s…hardened netherrack? Or just…a material from another realm or dimension that none of our measly Overworld tools are capable of breaking yet!”

’Yet.’ He didn’t like that word.

“The latter seems like the most likely option to me.”

Emmalyn continued to rub her thumb along his palm. The next thing she noticed was the temperature of the armor. Unlike the natural chill of steel, the surface of Zane’s armor was warm, considerably so, like holding your hands to a fire.

“You’re so warm…” She almost sounded in awe of the fact. She then lifted her other hand to press against Zane’s forehead, as if checking for a fever. He closed his eye and allowed her to. “Yeah, you’re just as warm under the armor, too! Are you always this warm, or is it just the armor heating you up? Do you ever overheat under the suit? Especially in the Nether, actually! I’d be sweating bullets if I had to wear a full-body suit as naturally heated as this, and spend my days surrounded by lava and fire and sweltering heat!”

“I think my body temperature stays around this level regardless of my armor. I can’t recall ever feeling cold since my passing, now that I think about it.” He hummed, chewing on his lip as he cast his memory back to the night spent in the Phoenix Drop cell, with nothing but stone bricks and cracks in the walls to keep him warm. And then after that, walking through the evening air with shotty, half-shredded clothes. Night time should have been much harder than it was, but he barely even noticed any temperature drop coming with the fall of the sun. “It would check out if that was another physiological trait of being a Shadow Knight—I can never feel cold. I am a creature of the fire and the magma, the Nether is my-…to put it purely scientifically, my natural habitat. I never overheated there, and though I was always aware of the heat, I don’t remember it ever agonizing me, or giving me heat exhaustion. If anything, it was comfortable. Homey.”

He continued, “In fact, I believe I pose some small ability to manipulate and increase fire, as we’ve seen with our campfire—and the many, many tales of Shadow Knights always setting fire to the villages they attacked. I haven’t tested this theory yet, but all of this gives reason to believe that I would be immune to being burned by fire as well. I don’t know if that would mean I’m also resistant to being melted in lava, and I-…” He winced. “I don’t think I’m willing to test that theory on myself.”

“Yeah, no, don’t do that, I think.” Emmalyn thoroughly shook her head, visibly disturbed by the image that put into her head. “Jumping in lava would be a very bad idea to test.”

He cleared his throat and shifted to avoiding her gaze. “Perhaps that is…part of becoming inhuman. The Nether consumes me and my body, turns me into a different species entirely. One that could outwardly resemble a human, but is closer to an elemental of another realm than anything made on this planet.” Emmalyn let him go, looking at him with a sympathetic sadness forming. He flexed his claws open and shut, staring at how the ligaments flexed and curved with in the segments of his exoskeleton. “From unrecognizable materials, to temperature and fire resistance, to an entirely new layer of my outward biology that humans just don’t have—I am a different species. I am as human as an elf or fairy would be, as human as a Meif’wa or a werewolf. Perhaps even less so than a werewolf, as they even have a human half to revert back to with the sunrise…”

He drew quiet, his voice low and hushed. “…I was human once, but I never will be again.” He then scoffed, “Maybe you should even find a new taxonomical classification for me, I’m so far from my original biology.” But this time, it wasn’t the kind of scoff he’d make because someone else said something stupid that was worth eye-rolling over. It was a laugh, at himself, at the joke he had become. At the alien, monstrous, unholy, unworthy creature that now met him in the mirror every time he looked. The dark, red-eyed figure that had been distorted against his will, the very breed of demon that a Priest is raised to banish.

He wondered if his old self saw him now, he would try to exorcise him, or exile him for the danger he posed. Or if he’d even be inhuman to himself, dissecting this insignificant animated corpse under a scalpel to see what fascinating secrets it held, secrets he could draw power from.

His body was not his own. Maybe it was, once, but it had slipped through his fingers now. His true body was simply one of the many things that he had lost in the explosion. The original had died, and now he was a walking replacement, a placebo that got the assignment wrong.

He was his own worst failure.

“Hey.” Emmalyn startled him out of his thoughts. “We don’t have to do this if it’s upsetting you.” She seemed…strangely concerned, though undoubtedly hesitant to extend a comforting hand to the very man that terrorized her hometown. Like she wanted to do something, but was treading very carefully in selecting what.

He didn’t blame her.

“No.” He took a deep breath, straightened his spine as his mother would have scolded him to do, and dragged himself back into the present. “It’s nothing. Continue.”

She hesitated. And then gave in with a sigh. “Alright. If you say so.”

She thought for a moment, studying his claws, before an idea occurred to her. “…Could you show to me some of your ability to create flame?” A sparkle of intrigue lit up in her eye.

Zane chewed on the thought (assessing safety risks), and then nodded. “You’re going to want to take a step back.”

She nodded dutifully, a small smile on her face, holding her hands clasped together. A blaze exploded out from the center of his palm, trailing its way up to the ceiling of the cave and painting the walls with flickering abstract shapes of orange light.

“Ooooo!”

Zane managed a chuckle.

——

“This tastes terrible.” Emmalyn said through a mouthful of cooked hare that Zane had caught for her. It was dinnertime, and the two were sat down on Zane’s robe, used as a blanket to protect from the cold, uncomfortable rock of the cave floor. The campfire in front of them crackled and warmed the scene.

“Starve, then.” He snorted.

“No.” She took another bite, tearing and pulling at the meat with her teeth until it finally cut loose. “It’s not even salty. How hard would it be to get some salt and pepper?”

An amused smirk grew underneath his mask, holding a hand to his chest as he turned up the fake dramatics to mock her. “What, are you suggesting I steal seasonings from some poor, innocent chef in town? And here I thought you hated the idea of me committing crimes!”

“I do! But I hate unseasoned food more!” She whined. “Irene’s sakes, maybe you should.”

“Well excuse me, then. Next time I’ll hunt down a gourmet filet mignon for Her Highness.”

“Hypocrite.” She scoffed. “Royal hypocrite.”

“Who, me?” He pulled back his hair and let his taunting grin show through a shrinking mask. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m just some hapless civilian tourist, come to check out the riveting, divine Phoenix Drop scene! About as indistinguishable as your everyday moron!” He mocked a high-pitched voice, “Ooh, Lady Irene! Bless my baby’s skull, Lady Irene! Bless my crops, Lady Irene! Bless this ass, Lady Irene!”

Emmalyn kicked her head back in howling laughter. He couldn’t help but crack up as well, laughing right alongside her.

“Gods, they really did sound like that sometimes…” Emmalyn wheezed, her laughter dwindling down as she wiped a forming tear out of her eye.

“Sometimes? You should see the kind of idiotic tourists I had to deal with in O’khasis, coming to my church and asking the dumbest questions. Ooh, Prince Zane, what does this mean? Oh, Your Grace, what does this do? What do you think about this, Your Grace? What if I told you my life’s deepest secrets and begged you for your divine approval, Prince Zane? God, I got so sick of stupid questions.”

“Don’t get me started.” She groaned, despite still radiating amusement and intrigue. “Do tell, what was your worst contender for stupid clients and tourists?”

“Irene help me.” He coughed out an exasperated laugh, before leaning in closer with a reveling glint in his eyes. “Let me tell you…”

It was a waste of time, yes, but it was one that got away from him. Speaking for hours into the night about whatever subjects they found they had common ground in (reviving Emmalyn’s old, snarky, cynical fatigue with stupid people and stupid questions), until Emmalyn began to yawn and slur her words, eyelids drooping and swaying where she sat. He let her turn in for the night, using his robe as a blanket, while he moved to their desk and took up the research job for the rest of the night. While she slept, he alternated between keeping watch at the cave entrance and working away tirelessly at their theories and tests against the shard. While she was awake, Emmalyn worked at the desk while he kept watch and went out on brief hunting trips, bringing back food for her and cooking it at the fireplace. Aside from their regular trips to the library, this became their day-to-day schedule.

They settled into something comfortable.

Maybe a little too comfortable.

… …

Gene razed a trail across the Overworld plains and villages with his soldiers in tow. Burning buildings left behind in their wake, blood pooling from the door he closed behind him.

If Zane was going to run anywhere first, he was certain it would be Phoenix Drop, or the region surrounding it. Now, Lady Aphmau was his enemy as much as Gene was, if not more so. So it was unlikely he’d linger in the town for long, if at all. But he had grown…rather settled with the surrounding area during his mortal days.

He saw light smoke billowing from homes belonging to another village in the distance. He directed his soldiers towards the plumes with the blade of his sword, and with a single nod, they continued their trek ever onwards.

I’ll have you in my claws soon, little rat.