Chapter Text
The sunset was beautiful. In a smokey, bloodied sort of way. The orange skies streaked with pink clouds, one side of the horizon slowly darkening faster than the other. If he were in the mood, or had the time to spare, then he might stop to admire the sight for once. As it stood, he possessed neither.
The minutes slipped away, his team made haste. The canyon was deathly silent save for the cracking of fires that sent columns of smoke into the sky and the methodical slicing of scales and flesh. His latest assistant, a young boy barely into his teen years, perched atop the monstrous beast’s chest. His cuts were messy, closer to tearing apart the slowly cooling corpse rather than the clean, surgical incisions he himself preferred. Time was of the essence, annoyingly. He allowed it to happen.
A dozen more were gathered around the body, tubes and pumps and needles much larger than would ever be used on a human slowly draining it of as much blood as they could get. They only needed a set amount, their experiments proved that much, but he wanted more. More from this beast specifically. What didn’t spill over the ground from battle would be theirs, he swore it.
The boy abruptly dove nearly headfirst into the gaping hole in the creature’s chest, emerging not as bloody as anticipated, but holding a perfectly spherical stone in his hands. “I have it!”
He said nothing, making a mark on his clipboard. He flicked through the pages, and waved a hand. Pen clicking idly, he studied the skeletal anatomy of the printed illustration. They needed specific parts, and there wasn’t a true guarantee this beast would even have them. Sadly, the only real constant between all the beasts were an unbeating stone for a heart, green eyes and hair in their disturbingly human looking forms, pointed ears, and a selection of reptilian traits that could range anywhere from fully resembling a lizard to barely at all.
He knew one of them resembled a bird more than a reptile. Which made little sense in his mind, but served only to be all the more fascinating.
“Oi. Your Moleness. You’re going to poke a hole in your papers.”
His eye twitched. “Don’t you have something better to do than bother me, Gautier?”
“Hey! I just helped slay an entire city of divine dragons! I’d like a little respect on my name. I've just made the history books, I'm sure.” the man said. Even though his helmet masked his face, it didn’t do a thing to muffle the grating, newly arrogant tone of his voice.
Were the man not vital to their plans, he would’ve very willingly fed him to the nearest beast. Perhaps even tied him up and left him for Wind Caller to discover, right next to the corpse of his wife. Now that would be a scene he’d love to witness.
He glanced towards the sky, scanning the horizon. Even squinting, he wasn’t certain if that speck in the clouds was a common bird or something much more dangerous. He couldn’t take the chance in either case, flipping the pages on his clipboard to make a few notes.
“Go be a bother somewhere else. You have a procedure to be ready for.” he said, clicking his pen once more. There was a faint sound he kept hearing, and it was driving him up a wall. High pitched, whiny, and pathetic. He’d almost call it the sound of a crying child, if he hadn’t known that all of them had been killed.
“Well excuuuse me, Your Holy Priestly-ness.” Gautier was already on the move, metal armor clanking as he walked. His horse waited for him several dozen steps away, neighing. He stopped along the way to pull his lance from the dead beast’s ribs, slinging it across his back before climbing into the saddle.
As the surface human rode away, the sound from before only seemed a little louder without his presence to drown it out. It faded as a sickening crack of bone snapping free rent the air, then somehow seemed even louder. Still muffled, but now there was a new quality to it. He’d almost call it pain, or fear.
He put the pen away, one last click almost a finality. He was losing his mind, the sound was just so grating. It had to stop or he was going to do something he would regret. Or scream. He gathered his robes, holding them out of the blood as he stepped over debris and followed the sound.
It brought him to the half destroyed house, decimated beneath the felled beast’s body. The door hung almost off its hinges, a fallen beam blocking it from opening at all. A simple, weak spell ate away at the engraved wood, the pieces falling away. He stepped over the rotted material and into the home proper.
It was a curious place, even torn apart as it was. Stonework held the place up, once supported by wooden beams that now were charred. A fallen curtain had once divided the kitchen and the living room, though now there was no kitchen to speak of at all. A toppled wardrobe blocked entry into the bedroom. The weaponry on the walls— very high up, to the point they’d be out of reach of small children, he noted with no small amount of curiosity— were the only thing that he recognized. None of it was of any interest to him. His only concern was that damned sound.
The fireplace was both functional and a work of art all on its own, it was one of the few things that had survived in full. There had been a fire in it recently, judging by the ashes and coals long dead. Etchings and engravings of wind ferrying leaves and flowers through vines decorated the hearth, the flowers in particular had been painted with colors so vibrant they showed even through the trickles of blood.
The sound was even louder here, muffled and growing weak. A hiccup interrupted every so often, and he followed it to a loose stone in the floor. He knelt, clipboard set aside to pry it away. He found the source of the sound, louder than ever and it left him more curious than ever.
He lifted the basket from the hollow space it hid in, peeling away the dusty blanket. The infant only cried even louder now that it knew someone was there to hear it. His ears rang, and in that moment he’d give anything to make the thing shut up. He’d give anything to make this particular thing shut up.
He hadn’t known Wind Caller had a child. A wife, yes. Brothers, a technical sister, and even friends. But a baby? He hadn’t known that at all. It looked young, perhaps not even a year old, though he was no expert on how they aged. It could’ve been easily a decade or older, it wasn’t an impossible thought. Wind Caller had appeared to be fourteen for at least a century and a half before he started to even begin to look a year older, and even that was a rough estimate.
The thing was still crying. Wailing, hiccuping, screaming loud enough that it hurt. His first instinct was to gather the blanket and simply hold it over their face and wait for the crying to stop. He almost did, the soft fabric catching on his taloned gauntlets as he wadded it up and made to press it hard into their face. It would be so easy. There’d be one less beast in the world, and no one would ever be the wiser. One more casualty in the slaughter of Zanado. He could even take the body back for dissection and study, it was a valuable specimen. No one had been able to study one so young just yet.
He could only imagine how Wind Caller might react to discovering both wife and infant dead. Rage, undoubtedly. Despair, hate, grief. Any number of things that would indescribably hurt. He’d relish the thought. He might even stick around long enough to witness it in person, the thought appealed to him so greatly.
The baby seized a finger with all the strength the tiny thing had. At the same time, a thought occurred to him. He had the opportunity to do something so hilariously devious that it had him chuckling. He had to do it. So many new ideas and schemes already began to swirl into coherency at the possibility alone, he was as close to maniacal giddiness as he could possibly be.
The blanket— after he checked it for a name— was dropped. Drawing his cloak over his arm, he lifted the infant from the basket to cradle in his elbow. It didn’t settle right away, and refused to release his finger and the feathers of his mantle when it got ahold of them. Annoying, but what could one do about a fussy infant really? The thing couldn’t even comprehend that it had limbs yet.
In another world, he would’ve chosen to supervise the harvesting of a different beast. In another world, he would’ve never known Wind Caller had a child. One that was lucky enough to survive a slaughter. He gave not a thought to what that world might have looked like, he had much more important things to concern himself with.
A scrap of his cloak torn and left in the basket with the blanket to taunt, he carelessly passed off the clipboard to the nearest Agarthan.
He left the ruins of Zanado.
The sun dipped below the horizon when an ear splitting, echoing wail of a screech rent the air. He paused where he stood, head lifting and glancing off into the distance. He’d never heard such a sound in his life, even from so far away. Full of grief and wrath so absolute they were all encompassing. Overwhelming, pouring from a being of pure emotion and exactly zero of the logic he knew a certain brilliant mind possessed.
He smiled to himself. He drew his cloak a little more around the baby cradled in his arms. It had cried itself to sleep not long ago, weak and pathetic and entirely helpless. Tiny hands held the pen he’d been using like it was the most comforting thing in the world. He suspected he was not getting it back.
He simply got a new pen, and went back to work, infant in his arms. It was surprisingly easy to work around only having one hand to do things with, so long as the thing stayed still. Which it did, particularly while sound asleep. Very rarely did it fuss, only wiggling a little to try and snuggle closer.
He worked well into the night, cataloging and labeling the bones, various containers of blood that were immediately placed into freezers for transport, and hearts they had harvested. No one dared to bother him, only the handful of researchers were even around, and they were all busy packing away the catalogued parts. In the middle of this, the infant awoke of its own accord. Yawning, tiny fists rubbing its eyes, it peered up at him.
He hadn’t known very many of Wind Caller’s kind personally, but weren’t they all supposed to have green eyes and not blue?
He didn’t have the chance to think about it. The second he leaned just a bit closer to get a proper look, the brat seized his facial hair and yanked. And giggled at the yelp that escaped.
“Why you little—!”
The baby laughed, pen abandoned for its newest interest, his hair. He breathed sharply through his nose, snapping his mouth shut. It wouldn’t do to lose his temper with a beast of all things. Particularly one that had just seemed to notice that it had legs. And was using them to kick in some semblance of happiness.
Patience. This is an opportunity you cannot afford to lose.
He had to remind himself of that more and more often, the longer he kept the baby. Feeding it was not an issue, there were any number of willing subordinates agreeing to fetch what he needed at the drop of a hat every. Every so often one was sent off with a list of materials and items he was slowly compiling in between all the other tasks he had to contend with. It wasn’t even an issue to entertain it. He simply had to hand it the aforementioned pen, a book, or any other number of random objects that weren’t important and listen to the grating clanks every time it decided that hitting his chest plate with them was funny. It was better than letting his hair be pulled.
What was an issue was that the baby cried. A lot. The second he tried to set it down to do anything at all that required two hands, it started to fuss. And wriggle. And whine. It only stopped when he picked it up again and held it, and that was not conducive to working effectively. He wondered why in the world anyone would want a baby if this was what they had to go through. And there was no telling how long the baby stage of its life cycle would last, he could die several times over before it even came close to being considered a toddler.
He should’ve just killed the baby when he found it. At least then he’d have gained some valuable knowledge from a dissection, and perhaps even enough material to fashion a prototype of sorts from its flesh. But only when everything was finally catalogued and sent off and he could return to Shambhala did he begin to think otherwise. And it was for one reason, and one reason alone.
By the dawn of a day he never saw, a full fortnight after taking the child, he had returned to his chambers. One of the items he had sent for was already in place. Exceedingly simple in design, but one that had been perfected over the thousands of years with the advancements of technology only being forced into underground isolation could bring.
He placed the sleeping baby within the crib that resembled a pod more than anything, leaving his cloak with it when its tiny fists refused to release the feather mantle. It fussed a little, whimpers just beginning to burble, and he simply could not handle anymore crying.
Out of ideas, exactly three seconds away from strangling a fucking baby while it slept, he dropped a hand onto it. Not truly holding, but not quite yet to the point he was genuinely strangling the brat
And it settled. The whimpers died down, the breathing evened out, and the baby babbled almost contentedly before fully drifting back to sleep. Still, he didn’t remove his hand until well after he was certain the thing wouldn’t wake up. If that creature cried one more time that day, he was just going to dissect it, schemes be damned.
He rubbed his temples, willing away the developing ache behind his eyes. He took a moment to soak in the absolute silence and the dim gloom of electric lighting, then pressed a finger to his earring.
Static pinged in his ear. “Cleobulus. My chambers. Now.”
Now, was not when the wretched woman arrived. Not even minutes later. No, it was hours by the time she decided to show herself. The clock on the wall showed nearly noon when the door opened with a near silent whooshing sound.
Cleobulus waltzed in, dress swaying with every slight movement. The vibrant purple of the silk stood out in the darkness, the woman a pop of color in an otherwise entirely monochrome room. He barely acknowledged her arrival, far too busy trying to take the measurements of a child that liked to kick excitedly and grab at everything within reach. Including dangling earrings, which he no longer wore.
He simply spun around in the chair to face her, expressionless, tiny green haired baby in his lap. “I see you took your time.”
Cleobulus just took him in, her own expression the exact opposite of his own. For a long moment, she simply stared, the only sound in the room that of the babbling child chewing on his gauntleted fingers. It squealed, tugging and pulling on his fingers incessantly to watch the joints in the metal move.
“....Thales.” she said, her smile bemused. “What do you have there?”
He prided himself on the fact his eye didn’t twitch. “A measuring tape.” he said flatly.
Hands on her hips, she sauntered over. Placing herself at his elbow, she leaned over, fingers waggling in the baby’s face. In an instant, it was utterly fascinated, reaching to grab and babbling up at her. “My! What an ugly little thing you have here. Where did you find it? Do you have another I can use for my own research?”
“If Wind Caller ever has a second child, you’ll certainly be the first on the waiting list to take it.” he said, handing the baby over for her to hold while he measured. The baby did not like the arrangement, its own expression going a sleepy sort of deadpan.
Cleobulus burst into cackling laughter as high pitched and ear piercing as the screech of metal, shoulders trembling with the effort to stay upright with a child in her arms. “You didn’t! Tell me, are we at least experimenting on it when it’s older? I have so many ideas of what we can use it for.”
“You keep your hands off of my test subject, you wretch.” he said, holding the baby’s legs still to measure its height properly.
“You handed it to me, you deal with the consequences.” she hummed, patting the strangely unfussy baby. “Whatever plan you have, I humbly request you share with me.”
Cleobulus was nothing even close to resembling humble. He didn’t believe her words for a second. Regardless, he finished the task at hand and took back the silent infant before speaking.
“Study, of course. A living beast can provide us with much more blood samples than a dead one, so long as we’re careful. And children can be trained into obedience. The younger we start, the better. Thus, an infant.”
“Oh, certainly, of course. Not at all because you want to spite one of those vermin.” she grinned. “So why did you call me here? Not simply to help you measure a common child, surely.”
“Someone has to watch the thing while I focus on this war. You’re experienced with this sort of thing, so now it’s your job when I am not here. And if I hear this thing wailing one more time, I will vivisect it. And Myson is too busy with his own experiments to bother.”
“Aww,” she cooed, her smile sickly sweet. “You’re attached! You won’t even vivisect me and everyone knows how much you adore me.”
“I utterly despise you, wretched woman.”
“I didn’t hear a no on that adoration, Thales!”
“Get out.”
The click of her heels were drowned out by cackling laughter, cutting off abruptly as the door shut behind her. Within the same instant that the welcome silence took over, the baby began to fuss. A problem conveniently fixed by simply holding it closer and dropping the measuring tape into its hands. Whatever issue it had with being held by Cleobulus it would have to get over, because it was going to be happening for the next few years, or however long it took for them to win the war.
The thing had grown alarmingly attached to him in such a short amount of time. Playing with his hands, chewing on whatever he handed it without even stopping to wonder if it was even safe, squealing and grabbing excitedly at every new thing he brought out even if it couldn’t reach. Perhaps it was simply that he was the only faintly familiar thing out of a hundred new things, by proxy of pulling it from the wreckage of its home. He hadn’t anticipated the sheer level of trust from the creature, out of all things that could’ve happened.
Hmm.... He could work with that.
It was years before he finally admitted that they had lost the war.
In that time, nothing much had changed with the infant. It looked perhaps a few months older. It was a little clingier every time he returned, as though it didn’t quite understand that it wasn’t a person separate from him. It cried a little less, save for late at night if he was judging the clock correctly. And even then only when the earth rattled from the forces of the beasts above. Those nights, not even he slept, the baby cried so hard.
He discovered very quickly that it was a bad idea to feed the thing fish. Fresh or freeze dried never mattered. One simply did not feed the green haired child fish if they wanted their eardrums intact. Unless it was in a soup, for some odd reason, and even then only one specific type of fish. Cleobulus suggested it was related to something in its biology, but he personally suspected that the child was just picky.
She was not wholly incorrect about suspecting biology, annoyingly enough. He had known Wind Caller long enough to pick up a few oddities about his and the other beasts' eating habits, and high amounts of inherently magical fruits and vegetables were almost as common as drinking water.
With Nemesis and the rest of his little band’s bodies in storage, he had no other projects to focus on besides the child for centuries. It went nearly everywhere with him, even meetings until it gained enough intelligence and vocabulary to understand what was being discussed. Then he left it in its room with a few carefully curated books. They couldn’t have it getting any ideas that weren’t wanted.
It never left Shambhala. It dressed like an Agarthan, in muted colors and diamond and sun motifs with loose fabrics that draped clear to the floor. It lazed around, alternately sleeping, reading, or studying whatever had caught its attention that day. Occasionally, Thales even deigned to teach it a few things. He took glee in that fact, watching the little beast grow and look to him for guidance. It was a delicious sort of irony, how much it resembled the father he stole it from in its early years.
Wind Caller would never find his precious son, not until Thales let him. And by the time that happened, it would be fully grown. Fully grown, but fully dependent on no one but Thales.
He was so curious to know how it would break the man.