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Rafayel isn’t often caught off guard.
In fact, it happens very, very rarely that he can count all the instances on the fingers of one hand. That they had the tendency to end in catastrophes the likes of which had never been seen before is unfortunate, but not exactly surprising.The point remains. Rafayel does not make it a habit to lower his guard, no matter when and where, under whatever circumstances.
But when he steps into the abandoned facility and finds not one, not two, not even three, but entire rows and columns of large glass tanks inside, he forgets everything about caution, circumspection, protective measures and defence mechanism. The tanks are all cylindrical in shape, devoid of anything but stale air and a layer of dust. There is no name, no clue, no remains, nothing. Rafayel stops anyway, movement arrested by mute horror.
For a long moment, he cannot breathe. The implication of what he’s seeing, the sheer magnitude of it, shackles him where he stands, frozen and exposed.
Very stupid, of course. That he pays for that moment of exposure—of weakness, really—is only to be expected.
Rafayel gasps when pain as sharp as shrapnel shreds his shoulder. He takes one, two steps back, mostly to get out of the weapon’s trajectory. The facility has been left to rot a long time ago, but somehow its security system is still running—is still tracking his movement, is still shooting at him, energy blast that rips the fabric of his shirt and skims too close. He avoids the worst of it, all the way thinking, how incredibly stupid it would be to die in the hand of something as insentient as a system that no longer guards anything of value.
Rafayel is panting by the time he manages to slip behind a concrete pillar. His shoulder throbs. Blood is pulsing out of the fresh wound, too much and too fast, staining his shirt red.
Any other day, it would have been nothing. Any other day, the pain would have been mere distraction, the blood loss negligible. Today, so close to the beginning of his Ebb, his focus is a fraying tapestry. His body is approaching its lowest point, and the row of glass tanks still lurking there in the dark are not only reminders of his failure, but also ghosts waiting for retribution.
(Yet another proof of how bad his condition is right now—because, ghosts? Really?)
Rafayel blinks. Then his mind catches up with what his eyes have been seeing. There, crouching in the dark, a huge wanderer with a metal carapace and a long sharp tail, aimed at him.
Rafayel reaches for his Evol, flickering and feeble in the recesses of his soul. He knows it will be too late, too weak, to matter.
He gasps when red and black swallow his vision. When they disperse, he’s no longer inside the building. Above him is the full expanse of a sky approaching dusk. Under his feet is the hard unevenness of a rock. He’s standing on top of a cliff overlooking the abandoned facility—just far enough to keep the entire cluster of grey buildings within his line of sight, not far enough to escape the nightmare within entirely.
Around him is a familiar pair of arms, belonging to the very person (being? creature?) who has orchestrated his escape.
“You’re hurt.”
Sylus’ voice is startling. He doesn’t belong in this nightmare Rafayel has been living under for the past week, ever since he had managed to coax bits of information about the old laboratory (a prison, a farm, a breeding facility designed to keep certain species in captivity, used and exploited like cattle) from those tightly sealed lips. Just because they’ve slept together a few times—more than a few times—doesn’t mean that they have the same cares, aims, hungers.
“What,” Rafayel rasps, trembling slightly, “are you doing here?”
“Protecting my investment.” A frown sits on the space between Sylus’ eyes. The circle of his arms tightens, just a fraction. “You’re bleeding.”
Rafayel laughs—except the sound that comes out of his throat is more like a snarl bastardised by a sob. What does a little bleeding wound matter when everything inside him is a maelstrom of hurt?
“Let go.” The words come out small but vicious, a snake-like whisper.
Sylus doesn’t budge. “What are you planning to do?” he asks instead.
“None of your business.”
“Then you’re not going anywhere.”
He doesn’t even sound mocking, only matter-of-fact. Rafayel sees red all the same. “Fuck you,” he snarls, wrenching himself away—or tries to, because Sylus is still not letting him go. Rafayel jerks his arm, hisses when the wound in his shoulder shrieks and spills more blood.
Sylus makes an angry noise. “Stop it. You’re bleeding.”
“Then let the fuck go.”
“No.”
Rafayel stares. Sylus knows who, what he is. He should have known better than to stand in his way.
“I will burn you,” he says. A fact, not a threat.
Sylus’ lips twist. “You’re not going anywhere,” he reiterates.
Rafayel burns. He’s been desperately holding on to every scrap of control he can unearth, but this close to his Ebb, control is an illusion. Everything is shifting sands and shadowy lights, and at the centre of it is Sylus, smiling—not smiling, exulting, grinning like a madman because he has just goaded a god into rage.
Rafayel finds himself thinking about hurting him, scorching him, maiming him and severing his limbs, all interesting propositions in the interest of science. When pitched against each other, the mindless violence of his flame against Sylus’ ability for recovery, surely only one will win.
“Go ahead, Your Godliness.” There, finally, is that familiar mocking lilt, caressing every bleeding part of him. “Hurt me.”
Rafayel hears the scream that wrenches itself from his throat. He’s fire and rage, vicious and blinding, and his entire body burns with it. He would have struck this presumptuous beast, scorched him where he stood, turned him into cinders and swirling ashes—except this is Sylus, and Sylus is an entire equation outside the range of his calculations. He could, and would, survive. Rafayel has seen it before, flesh regenerating, skin knitting back together as soon as his fire has wrought its damage. It would be a race, who could do it faster, who would lag behind, the destroyer or the thing that could heal.
But it would not be painless. It’s this errant thought, this silent drop of water on the stillness of his consciousness, that burns his fire out at the last. His flames flicker, then die, its roar silenced. In its place are only the smell of singed leather and the gasping sound of his breath, mingling with the staccato of Sylus’ heartbeat.
A chuckle sounds in the sudden silence. “Is this mercy?” Sylus says, still teasing, still mocking, still there. Through it all, he has not let go of him even once.
Rafayel blinks against the heat in his eyes, the wetness streaming down his cheeks. “I hate you,” he whispers, just for the sake of answering.
Sylus shifts, then, his hand cradling the back of Rafayel’s head. “Tell me what you want.” He sounds almost gentle when he says it. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”
“Not your business,” Rafayel mutters, the fabric of Sylus’ jacket muffling the words. His voice has lost most of its venom. Now he’s simply tired—tired and numb. He wonders if this is what defeat, surrender, is supposed to feel like from now on, so tame and insipid.
“Then make it mine.”
“You wish.”
“Think of me as a tool,” Sylus continues as if he has not spoken. “Something you can just use. So go ahead and use me. Command me, my sea god.”
Rafayel swallows down a shiver. Sylus’ voice is heavy with promise, the kind that sears his soul and leaves a shackle instead of assurance. Slowly, he raises his face. He doesn’t know what he looks like, what kind of inferno is burning in his eyes, but he knows what he’s about to say.
“You will do anything I want?”
“Try me.”
Rafayel breathes in. “Then I want it gone.” The words fall from his mouth with the weight of a curse. “Every piece of brick. Every sheet of glass. Every equipment and every weapon and every single fucking thing inside that place. Destroy them all until there’s nothing left.”
There is a quirk of a smile on Sylus’ face, followed by the press of his lips on a feverish temple.
“As you wish.”
Rafayel closes his eyes. Sylus’ hand guides him, keeping him close, cheek pressed against the firm breadth of a shoulder. He does not see, but he can hear it, feel it, the heavy sweep of Sylus’ power as he lays waste on the entire compound, tearing up foundation and splitting concretes. The ground shakes under their feet, entire lifetimes swallowed into the earth, memories of trapped Lemurians abandoned by their god.
All the way, Rafayel keeps his face tucked in the crook of Sylus’ neck, and simply breathes.
He only moves long after the dust has settled and the world regained a semblance of balance. He angles his face, pressing his lips just under the curve of Sylus’ jaw, where his pulse beats the strongest.
“Thank you.”
Sylus doesn’t reply. It’s his touches that speak, caressing, supporting the curve of his spine, gentle and firm at the same time. The feel of his hands wrecks something terrible in Rafayel’s chest. He cannot bear gentleness right now.
He moves away, disentangling himself. This time, Sylus lets him. His arms ease their hold, now a loose circle around Rafayel’s shaking form.
“I need to go,” Rafayel hears himself say. A glance to the spectacle under his feet is enough to tell him everything. Sylus has kept his word; there is nothing left standing where the facility once was; the glass prisons too, now nothing more but shards and glass dust buried under Sylus’ thoroughness.
A thumb strokes the curve of his hip. “Where?”
Before he can answer, Rafayel hears it, stones tumbling down, rubbles shifting. He looks back down. There, standing tall amidst the wreckages, is a wanderer. The wanderer from earlier.
“How?” Disbelief stains Sylus’ voice. He raises his hand, ready to finish an unfinished job, but Rafayel is faster, catching his wrist, folding the fingers in his.
“No,” he says evenly. He recognises inevitability when it stares him in the face. “This one is mine to kill. I’m the only one who can end this.”
Sylus’ eyes narrow, rubies dyed an even deeper red in the dusk light. The thin curve of his lips purses when he grips Rafayel’s waist and relocates them to the foot of the cliff, some distance away from where the perimeter fence has collapsed. It’s only then that he lets go, careful to remove any contact between them.
“Be careful.”
For a moment, Rafayel allows the ghost of a smirk to touch his lips. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
The wanderer is waiting, unmoving, its hulking form silent and still. In the deepening dusk, it looks like an ancient eldritch horror rising out of the sea. Only its inhuman eyes track his movement, slow and languid.
The closer he gets, the clearer he sees all the damage it has sustained. Rusty blood drips from cracks on its face. Its metal carapace is broken in too many places to count, revealing the pulsing grey flesh underneath. Anguish flares in Rafayel’s chest, to see something so beautiful reduced to this.
“You’ve been waiting, haven’t you?” he speaks softly, carefully, matching his touches to its face, where metal plates have buried themselves into bones and sinews. “I’m sorry for taking so long.”
It doesn’t react. Its eyes watch him, empty and soulless, beyond any manifestation of self. It has been dead for a long time, in all the ways that matter.
Rafayel attempts a smile through his tears. “But now you can go home.”
A flicker, then his right hand lights up in a blaze of fire. His flame is brutal but efficient, going through armour, flesh, bones as easily as a knife to soft butter. The hulking form slumps into his arms and he holds it, him, her, them, until the weight of the bulk dissolves, scatters, silvery strands streaming in the air.
What remains in the valley of his palms is a cluster of pearls, their lights long since waning to deathly paleness but no less beautiful for it.
Rafayel doesn’t know how long he’s standing there, barely aware of anything but the pearls, until he feels Sylus’ presence behind him. The other man doesn’t say anything, doesn’t offer help, doesn’t even try to touch him. His presence is grounding all the same, his warmth bleeding all over Rafayel’s skin.
The unfairness is staggering, humbling. How is it that he, someone who has failed so many, a god that burned an entire civilisation in the name of selfishness, is still allowed this comfort, this knowledge of having someone who protects him like this, loves him like this. Unthinkable to be so certain that if he sways and lets himself fall right now, there will be someone there, waiting to catch him.
And so he doesn’t. Rafayel keeps himself upright and cradles the pearls close to his beating heart.
“I’m leaving.”
He walks to the direction of the sea. It’s not far, and before long, he can hear the sound of the waves, calling the souls they have lost.
Sylus’ presence has disappeared from his surrounds. If he can feel eyes on him from time to time, or hear the sound of wings riding the air, then he knows better than to pay them any heed. Some pilgrimage one must make on one’s own.
Rafayel walks to the water’s edge, bare feet sinking into soft sand. Gentle waves welcome him. They lap at his ankles, at the hem of his pants. When he goes deeper, they weave around his feet and carry him afloat.
Clasped to his chest, the pearls throb, calling for home. Rafayel imagines the deep where a broken city lies in a forever sleep. A hum rises to his lips, flowering into a song, a lament. Then his feet make a turn, another, seamless, magic spreading over water.
Rafayel sings and dances and gives the wandering souls back to the sea, where they will join the other countless dead, far under the waves in the lightless grave.
On the horizon, the sun melts into the waves; on the shore, the shadow of a winged beast across broken lines of white sand.
End