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The moon was full and bright, shining silver through thick, patchy clouds. A cold breeze shivered through the crops, a rustle whispering over the fields. Somewhere in the distance, down the hills, came the cry of phantoms beginning to hunt for the night.
And Ren was dead.
Martyn stumbled off the altar, unbalanced, and landed heavily in the dirt. The soil was wet and soft under his hands—blood soaked through the frost, coagulating rapidly in the night air. His last frenzied swing had buried the axe-head in one of the rows of carrots, crushing the wilting greens and tearing up the dirt.
The night air rung with his last desperate cry. His breaths came ragged from his own lips, muffled and far-away. Ren was dead, and his blood stained Martyn’s hands a damning, gorey red.
His King’s body had vanished, dissipated into green-gold glitter strewn throughout the fields. Martyn got to his feet, shaking, supporting himself on the handle of the ax. His hands slipped, still wet, and he stumbled. Stepping back, his boot hit stone. He let the axe drop, clattering to the altar.
Ren mustn’t have set his spawn properly, because he hadn’t come back yet. The bed sat empty on the hill—the woolen sheets were dotted with small flurries, and Martyn glanced up at the sky, realizing it had begun to snow.
His feet carried him through the fields, away from the bloodstained altar. There was an odd sort of numbness spreading through him. His fingers felt cold and clumsy, sticky and wet, and his footsteps seemed to belong to someone else.
What had he done?
When he’d first agreed to work with Ren he’d thought their partnership would last for a week, maybe. Just a passing duty that he could drop when he got bored; tell Ren he was done and Ren, ever kind, ever spineless, would let him go without much fuss. And yet he never left, and Ren never asked him to. Ren let him stay, offered him a place to carve out a life. And despite himself, despite everything, Martyn had.
His numb legs took him around the path that circled the shack as the snow began to fall harder. Every corner he turned, he expected to see his King standing there in the fields, or beside the shack, but the grounds of Dogwarts were barren and still. Martyn followed the path back to the front, and his ragged breaths fogged in the air as he stood there. He trudged down the basement stairs, leaning heavily against the wall for support—but the rooms below Dogwarts were empty as well.
Martyn was alone.
Distantly, it occurred to him that what they’d done had been against the rules. Greens and Yellows could not kill unprovoked; neither of them had been Red. Perhaps that would explain the sick pit in his stomach, the ringing numbness in his ears, some instinctive recoiling at breaking the laws of this world. He wondered vaguely if whatever gods that watched over them would strike them down for this. Or maybe just him. He’d been the one holding the axe.
What had he done?
All at once, his frayed nerves caught up to him, the muffled silence and heavy stillness of the basement like a weight over his shoulders. Martyn sank down where he stood on the stairs, clutching his comms unit, checking it absently. There was a smear of Ren’s blood drying on the screen.
It was almost funny. The first person he killed in this game, and it was Ren—the one person who’d been trying to keep him around since the start. With the way things had been going, he really would’ve thought it’d be Scar, not…
Martyn heaved a sigh, stowing the communicator back in his pocket. His hands were still trembling. Blood and grime had soaked into the creases of his knuckles, drying stiff in places.
Something in the air changed, then. A sudden shiver raked up his spine, and Martyn knew at once he wasn’t alone. He didn’t look to his comms unit to confirm—he didn’t need to. Martyn stood, stumbling up the steps and back out to the yard.
The snow swirled, thick and bitterly cold. And within the squall he could see him, standing tall and proud again. A dark shadow among the storm, a cold, bloody vision on the altar.
Ren, now Red.
Martyn stood frozen, staring.
“Hand!” His voice was deep and harsh, a victorious growl. “Your Red King has risen!”
The Red King approached, trailing messy red footprints down the altar steps. He was still bare of his armor, heedless of the cold, his clothes now heavily bloodstained around the neck. His long, dark hair whipped in the wind around them, and he grinned. Blood trickled down his face in rivulets from the crown upon his head, staining his lips and teeth red. Cool hands gripped Martyn’s shoulders, drew him in close. Martyn had taken a life, his first on the server, because Ren asked him to and he was too caught up in that whirlwind sense of purpose and devotion to refuse—and this was the result.
Martyn found himself subconsciously, instinctively afraid of him. It was an animal fear, raised hackles, eyes on you from somewhere unseen. He should be grateful that his King was still alive after what he’d done, grateful that they stood here on the altar together again. But all he could feel was his own heartbeat, fast and painful like a rabbit’s. He thought his King might hear his racing heart, smell the fear on his skin, but if he did, he gave no sign.
Behind them, the puddle of Ren’s blood seeped through the cracks in the stone, dripped down the stairs, clung to the Red King’s boots in careless splatters.
“The Red King has risen,” Martyn repeated, breathless. The King yanked him in for a hug, and Martyn froze stiff. It was only after a few seconds that Martyn raised a hand to cling to the back of his cloak—but his weak grip slipped away almost immediately as he stepped back from Martyn, shaking out his wild mane of hair. Martyn found he couldn’t look him in the face, eyes fixed instead on scar ringing his throat—not that the King sought his gaze either.
Something glimmered in the fields beside them, and Martyn tore his gaze from him to see the abandoned Red Winter axe, snowflakes melting on the carved crystalline head of it. Overcome with the sudden urge to have something, anything to occupy his hands, he dipped to retrieve it, not looking up as he pressed it into rough grey palms.
“Milord, take your axe, it’s yours. You’re defenseless like this, you could be gone any second.”
His nerves prickled, and he glanced up at the darkening sky. It was an odd anxiety that gripped him; their fields were well-lit, their walls sturdy. He had no reason to believe there would be any monsters nearby, other than those that lurked outside their walls. And yet.
The Red King’s gaze lingered on the axe-handle. His hands overlapped Martyn’s, his claws thick and dark and clean of the blood that stained Martyn’s nails red. He shook his head, that sharp grin fading. “You thought that was your test, did ye, Hand.”
“I—yes? What do you mean— ” Martyn stammered, and his grip tightened unconsciously on the axe’s sticky wet handle. A surprise swell of outrage had his heart racing again—what more did he want? What more could he ask of him after… “I’ve just beheaded you—”
“Nay, Hand!” The Red King leaned in, and their gazes locked. It was close enough for Martyn to see the fresh, bloody red of his King’s eyes, to hear the growling edge to his low murmur. “The test begins now, my friend.”
He took a step back, then, and Martyn’s shoulders slumped, a sudden, dizzy rush replacing the anger. The Red King continued as if he didn’t notice as he stepped back up onto the altar, “In this world there’s a rule: if a Red attacks ye, ye may attack the Red back. And in this moment here on the Black Heart Altar, me Hand, I am going to prove my loyalty to ye.”
Martyn inhaled slowly, the air harsh and cold. “Okay…?”
“You attacked me, which means—” The Red King turned on his heel with a wolfish grin, “—that I can now attack you!”
It was a primal instinct that sent Martyn scrambling back, a cold, electric shock of fear. “Oh, no you don’t—!”
He raised the axe in front of him like it would protect him, bracing for a blow—he tripped backwards over the carrots, ripping his gaze from the Red King to turn and run. He could put the hut between them, give himself time to grab his shield, he could—
“But I shan’t, Hand!” The King’s shout carried across the yard, and Martyn stumbled to an unsteady halt against the lattice walls of the hut, breathing ragged. “I shan’t.”
His head spun. “You’re a cruel one, milord,” he muttered, straightening up and catching his breath. He wiped at his mouth, still thrumming with adrenaline as he returned to the bloody altar again.
The Red King bowed his head, shaking it slightly. “I give my blade to you til the end, Hand.”
The tenderness in his voice stung, like a sharp breath of too-cold air burning his lungs. For a moment, Martyn saw the Red King’s expression falter, softening. He wanted so desperately to believe in the warmth he thought he saw there, wanted nothing more than to fall into the arms of the Ren he’d gotten to know up until this night. He was so goddamn tired, nerves run ragged. But Martyn squared his shoulders, set his jaw. He stood before his King, now, and in this moment his King spoke only to his Hand.
“But now we test you, friend. For if I attack ye, right now, ye can take me out of the game for good.” The King paced back and forth slowly, a wolf on the prowl. Martyn watched his every move, heart racing in his throat.
Out of the game for good. It was hard to imagine this world without Ren in it. His work-worn hands were what built the walls that protected them, and forged the axe Martyn now clung to. His crown that Martyn followed. His warm body curled at Martyn’s back as they slept.
Could he actually do that?
“I’m naked—I stand before ye unarmed. And I shall strike ye, to initiate our combat.”
Martyn tensed as the Red King raised his fist. When he looked up at him, all he could see was Red.
“Now ye shall make a terrible choice, Hand. Are you with the Red King til the end? Or do you take Dogwarts for yourself? Make your choice, lad!”
The blow struck him on the cheek, and it—it wasn’t hard, was the thing. If he thought back on it, he was convinced he could feel the restraint, the hesitation behind it.
“Make your choice!”
But it still fucking hurt. His teeth clacked together, and he could taste blood on his tongue, and everything blossomed open in a violent red burst somewhere behind his eyes. For the first time since he watched Ren’s head roll across the field he felt truly, properly awake. Incandescent rage bubbled up in his aching head and he steadied himself.
There was a brief moment where he thought he could do it—he could swing the axe again, like he’d already done once tonight, and all this would be over. And he wouldn’t have to care.
He looked up, and watched the Red King fall to his knees, his back turned, head bowed. He held out his arms, open, steady, empty, unarmed. Martyn tightened his grip on the axe, felt his own pulse racing through his veins, and he wondered if this was what it would feel like to hold another man’s beating heart in your fist.
He took a step forward, then another. It was always going to end like this, one way or another; one of them would have to die for the other to have a chance at victory. Was he more afraid of killing than he is of death?
Martyn raised the axe over his head, eyes fixed on his King’s bared neck. He thought of his aching cheek and the blood drying under his nails and across his face, and he thought of Ren with lapis paste staining his hands blue, of laughter echoing in the Dogwarts basement, of quiet companionship even as death lingered just outside their walls.
Or was he most afraid of losing this?
The Red Winter axe clattered when he dropped it.
“No! I won’t do it!” Martyn’s vision blurred, and he scrubbed angrily at his face, chest heaving. “I won’t do it.”
The Red King remained where he knelt on the altar, still and cold. Martyn continued, eyes fixed on the ragged red scar ringing the back of his neck, “You took me in when I was a lowly traveller, going across the four corners of this world. I learned there was nothing in this world for me. Nothing but walls, corners, edges.”
The words spilled out like a flood—now that he’d started speaking, he couldn’t stop. His chest hurt, his face hurt, his heart hurt, and in the hunched figure of the Red King he saw Ren. Because despite everything, despite the blood on his hands and the cold biting his skin, it was still Ren.
“And you know what, you showed me life. As much as I’ve taken it from you, you gave it back to me in bucketfuls. And I just—I’m with you. This is us now. This is us.”
He choked on his words, then, voice near breaking. He gritted his teeth and wiped at his eyes again, his other hand curled into a fist at his side. There was a raw sort of desperation rising in his throat, and as much as he tried to swallow it down, he didn’t trust himself to speak any further.
The Red King rose and turned, and Martyn caught a glimpse of the smile on his face, relieved, triumphant—before it collapsed at the sight of him, worry clouding his features, and for a second Martyn saw Ren again. He stepped forward, one cool grey hand going to Martyn’s cheek; Martyn struggled to stand his ground, to meet his eyes. But then Ren’s hand cupped his face, and he let his eyes slip shut, melting into his touch.
“Me Hand,” Ren murmured, “are you alright?”
Martyn took a breath, wanting to answer with something dismissive, something easy, but the words stuck in his throat. His bloody hands came up, grasping shakily at Ren’s wrists, and Ren moved to hold both his hands in his own.
“Oh, Martyn.” Ren leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead, still holding his hands in front of him. “Martyn, I’m sorry.”
It all came crumbling down, then. His hands were still within Ren’s grasp, so he wasn’t able to wipe at the tears that slipped down his cheeks. He grimaced, moving to duck his face, but Ren said his name in that soft, reverent way. When he met his eyes, they were still Red, bloody and bright enough to make his stomach twist, but they were familiar, too.
“It’s you and me til the end, Hand,” Ren said, voice rumbling in this throat. “To the end.”