Chapter Text
March meets the blonde she knows, for a long while, as August on the Xianzhou Luofu, just after the mess with the Ambrosial Arbor suddenly growing. He has his sun-gold hair tied up in a quick ponytail and he speaks with an accent that March automatically marks as subtly different from the Luofu residents around him, enough to mark him out as a tourist. Helps that he’s in Aurum Alley, eating a snack at one of the newly-revitalized stalls.
“—from the Astral Express?” she hears him say, as she rounds the corner and climbs up the steps to the food stall. “The little gray-haired kid?”
“Caelus!” Tall Auntie says, delighted. “Yes, we know him, he’s the business consultant who’s been helping revitalize the place.”
“A…business consultant,” says the man. He’s tall, is the first thing March clocks about him—taller than most people she can think of except, horrifyingly, Sampo. He’s wearing a shirt, technically, but it’s so open that he might as well not be wearing one, and March takes note of the red tattoos on his chest, snaking up his neck, his face. “Caelus. That—is not as much of a surprise as it should be.”
“He’s such a good boy,” says Tall Auntie. “Why are you asking after him?”
“Friend of mine wants me to pass something along to him,” says the man. “In thanks, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t know if he’s around here right now, he could be at Youci’s place listening to the bird,” Tall Auntie says. “But—oh! March 7th, you’re here!”
March shakes her head, mostly to clear the surprise, and grins back at Tall Auntie, giving her a quick little wave. “Hi, Auntie!” she says. “I’m just here to take pictures! And try your berrypheasant skewers, too—who’s this guy?”
“March 7th?” the man says, incredulously.
“Uh, yeah,” says March, squinting up at him.
“Thought I was the only one who got named after a date,” the man mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. Those are nice gloves, she thinks, sleek black fingerless things. “Just because some people can’t be bothered—” He lets out an annoyed sigh, and said, “August 16th.”
“Seriously?” March yelps.
“August is fine,” he says.
“You’re like me?!” March says. “You—Did you wake up in ice—”
“Do you just say that to everyone you meet,” says August, floored. “Do you just tell them, out loud, about what happened to you?”
“You don’t?!” she squawks.
“Uh,” Tall Auntie says, “what can I get you, March?”
Oh! Right. That. March points at August, and says, “We’re talking about this after I get my food!” Then she whirls on her heel and says, huffily, “I want a berrypheasant skewer and also what was he saying to you before this?”
“Sure, coming right up,” says Tall Auntie.
“I’m right here and I can hear you,” August says, annoyed. He steps up, and says, “Your friend Caelus helped out a friend of mine.”
“He’s like that,” March says, a little peeved when she thinks about it. Caelus is the sort of person who’ll help anyone, even Stellaron Hunters, and even though he jokes he’s just doing it to spread around his reputation or to get cash money for pulls, whatever that means, she knows for a fact that even if he didn’t get paid he’d do it anyway. Case in point: he’s sure not getting paid for being a museum curator in Belobog. Another case in point: he’s sure nicer to Kafka than anybody should be, he’d helped her and her buddy get off the Luofu just last week and not even regretted it. “What do you want with him?”
“I’m just here to give him a package,” says August. “And…to check up on him. For my friend’s sake.”
He looks away as he talks, and March thinks of what Caelus said—she knew me. Wonders if August knew him too, before.
“Well, he’s fine,” she says.
“I can tell, I saw the trail of trash cans he rummaged through,” says August. “Didn’t know he was hanging out with—someone else like me, though.”
Someone else who doesn’t remember. Someone else whose memories only go back so far. Someone else who looks out at the stars, sometimes, and wonders which one they’re from. Wonders if they can ever go back.
March says, “Well, ta-da! If you want I could bring your gift to him—”
“No,” says August. “He’s at Youci’s, right? I’ll go see him myself.”
“He’s fine!” March says. “I swear to you he’s doing just fine!”
“I’ll go see him myself,” says August, flatly, and March grabs hold of his arm and digs her heels in as he moves…and moves…and keeps moving, despite March’s best efforts, because. Uh. Well. Apparently he’s really strong! She’d be more appreciative of his biceps if he also wasn’t, like, a stranger, about to bring a super suspicious package to her best friend.
“I’m telling you that he’s fine!” she says. “Don’t you trust me? I’m a Nameless, we’re really trustworthy people!”
“I’m aware,” August says, his stride not even slowed by her weight. “Let go of my arm.”
March, instead of that, digs in her fingers into his sleeve, refusing to let go. “Why can’t I just take your message to him, huh!” she snaps.
“I am not telling you in public,” says August, continuing along his path with March attached to his arm. He hasn’t tried to dislodge her, but then if he tried, March’s back-up plan is to bite down like a dog and just not let go. “But your friend is in no danger from me. You have my word.”
“Cocolia said that too,” March says, “and then we got arrested.”
“Ah,” says August. “Your first time being betrayed, huh.”
“My first time?” March says. “Where have you been that you apparently keep getting betrayed?! Are you okay?”
“I wouldn’t know, where I am now, everyone is doggedly loyal to each other and to our superior,” says August. “I’m simply…more naturally cautious. Are you going to let go or not, March.”
“No,” March says.
“I should’ve known you would all be insanely protective of each other,” August says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Stop trying to break my skin with your fingernails. We can go find Caelus and you can posture as much as you like when we get there.”
--
The Nameless—and the Stellaron Hunters, awkwardly hanging around—don’t leave Amphoreus immediately. Yeah, it’s a shock to Phainon too, he thought they’d all be raring to leave the second the dust settles. He’d understand why, it’s been a little on the traumatic side for everyone (which is an understatement), but. They haven’t taken their train and left.
Dan Heng says, “Well. I haven’t finished adding to the data bank yet.”
“Is that really it?” Phainon dubiously asks him.
Dan Heng shakes his head. He’s brought a desk out to the balcony and is transcribing the documents they’ve all picked up into the Express’s data banks, and by all accounts he looks pretty satisfied with himself. “You’d have to ask Caelus and March for their reasons,” he says.
Phainon winces. “Cy—March is fine?” he asks.
Dan Heng narrows his eyes at him. “She’s fine,” he says, shortly, which…hurts, oddly. Sure, he deserves it, but. They’d grown to like each other. He’d grown to rely on Dan Heng’s solid judgment. Now Dan Heng looks at him with the same narrowed eyes he looks at incoming enemies with, with a hand ready to call his spear at any time. “If you want to find her, try somewhere with a good view.”
It’s a peace offering if Phainon ever saw one. Or a test. Whichever.
“I’ll give her your regards,” Phainon promises him, and goes off on his own through Marmoreal Palace to see an old friend.
He doesn’t find the one he’s expecting, but instead: Mydei, browsing through the library books, talking to a small, grey-haired young woman, who, Phainon notes, has her eyes on every exit and entrance point. Like a trained soldier, he thinks. Firefly, isn’t it? Yeah, Firefly. She spots him first, and taps Mydei on the shoulder, steering him gently around so that—
—so that if Mydei’s attacked, she’ll intercept the blow.
Mydei says, “You don’t need to do that, Firefly.”
“I mean, I don’t blame her,” Phainon starts.
“Great,” says Firefly, pleasantly, “because right now the only thing really stopping me is that Elio still needs you for the script.”
Right. The script.
“Go find Caelus,” says Mydei, flatly. “Do you think I couldn’t handle Phainon on my own if I really needed to?”
Firefly squints up at him, and crosses her arms. “I think he’s stabbed you in the back enough times that it’s a habit now, August,” she says, and for a second Phainon doesn’t know who she’s talking about—until he remembers, and it wrenches at him all over again. “So, you know, I’m a little wary.”
“If you’re so worried, get Silver Wolf to watch,” says Mydei. “Past time she did something besides compete with Cipher. Go find Caelus—he has plenty to catch you up on.”
Firefly sighs. “If you’re sure,” she says, and leaves with a glare in Phainon’s direction. Which is a little silly, because he’d handed his sword off to Caelus, so he can’t exactly do much stabbing right now. But at the same time, well, she has a point. It’s why Phainon’s been avoiding Mydei for a while. Avoiding most people, really, but. Anyway.
“Deliverer,” says Mydei.
“August,” says Phainon, and immediately Mydei’s expression flattens. “Isn’t that…”
“I’m not March,” he says. “I go by both names. And that name is not yours to speak.”
Yeah. Because of all the backstabbing. “Mydeimos,” Phainon says, carefully. “I, uh. I wasn’t expecting to run into you, I was—”
“Looking for March,” Mydei finishes. “She’s not in the palace. She requested to be taken to Janusopolis. Apparently, she wants to take pictures of the architecture.” He shrugs. “You would know that, if you’d asked around.”
And who, exactly, would answer the Emanator of Destruction in their midst, who’d almost become a Lord Ravager, a hollow husk carrying out the will of an Aeon that wants to see the universe burn? Well, fine, besides the Astral Express and the Stellaron Hunters, but they’re all insane anyway. Yesterday he spotted Caelus flying past on a wagon pulled by Little Ica.
“I wasn’t sure if any of my questions would be received in the spirit they were meant,” Phainon says.
“On account of the general insanity,” says Mydei.
“No, I feel very sane,” says Phainon. “I mean the crimes. But, uh—if March isn’t here, then I can wait for her.”
“Or you can come and see her,” says Mydei, with a shrug. “I imagine she wouldn’t mind a visit from an old friend. So long as you don’t expect Cyrene.”
“Is that allowed?” Phainon asks.
Mydei stares at him. “Even if it wasn’t,” he says, flatly, “I doubt anyone here could stop you, of all people. Save maybe Caelus.”
“That isn’t being fair,” says Phainon, rubbing at his wrist, thinking of sparring matches, the faintest of smiles, the promise of a library by the end of this. He shouldn't ask for that promise fulfilled now, he knows. So he won’t. But still. “Caelus isn’t the only one. I—If. If you told me to stop I would.”
Mydei is still, his expression inscrutable. Phainon looks at him, takes in the details of his appearance now—he’s tied up his hair, and he wears a shirt and a vest, both opened enough that Phainon can see a good amount of his bare chest beneath. A blood-red cape is draped over his shoulder, with the crest of Castrum Kremnos embroidered onto it. He looks as if he no longer quite fits here, in Okhema, in Castrum Kremnos, in the entirety of Amphoreus.
“Now you say this,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “Now. Now you would tell me that I could have stopped all of this with but a word.”
Phainon chokes, shakes his head, says, “That’s not how I meant it—I just.”
“Was that why you had me split up that way,” Mydei continues, still wearing that inscrutable face. “Because if I were to only speak to you, even when you were raving mad, you would stop your rampage in its tracks—and you didn’t want that?”
Phainon flinches. He shouldn’t, he knows, but he does—almost a Lord Ravager, definitely an Emanator with the power thrumming under his skin, and this man still holds the power to undo him, just like that. “My—” he starts, then stops, because what right does he have now to call him Mydei?
Mydei says, “HKS.” Then he pushes past him and heads towards the door.
He stops with a hand on the doorframe, looks back at Phainon.
Says, “Meet me at the city gates. I will take you to her.”
--
“A Stellaron Hunter?!”
“March!” Caelus says, immediately and worriedly poking his head out of the alley, hoping there’s no one coming this way. August, who’s leaning against the wall, only raises an eyebrow at March, as if to wonder how he ever ended up in the same boat as Caelus and March—no memories, and a broad road ahead. Or, well, Caelus knows he and March have a broad road ahead—he’s not sure August does, with the script Kafka’s so devoted to. “Don’t say that so loudly!”
“Yes, I’d rather not be arrested by overzealous Cloud Knights who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper towel,” says August, his tone dry as dust. “Take it you liked her gift, though?”
“Well, yeah, it’s nice, I guess,” says Caelus. Truth be told, how he feels about Kafka is—well, complicated. To say the least. He cares about her, but…she left him behind, alone and amnesiac, on a space station that was under attack by the Antimatter Legion. She left him alone. It’s—hard to get over that. Still, she got him something, and that means kind of a lot. “How are she and Blade doing? You gotta tell him he needs to back off from Dan Heng.”
“They’re both fine,” says August. “Do not worry, I will sit on Blade if I have to. We’re both undying, he can try to kill me.”
“That’s awful,” March says, horrified.
August shakes his head. “I am not mara-struck, just very good at not dying,” he says. “But you can imagine why I’d rather not be arrested, personally.”
Caelus sighs. “Well, why risk it?” he asks.
“Yeah!” March pipes up. “I was telling you this whole way you could just give me the thing and I'd pass it off to him!”
“You hear the words Stellaron Hunter and believe that to be a judgment of my own morality,” says August, snappish and cranky, and March puts her hips on her hands and glares up at him. It’s a little like watching an adorable kitten meow furiously at a much bigger, much older mountain lion. “I’d rather not take the chance. Besides, I…suppose I wanted to make sure you were fine, Caelus.”
“I’m fine,” says Caelus, baffled. Why do the Stellaron Hunters act so concerned about him? What, was he one of them before, or something? “But also I really hope you don’t need to get off the Luofu too, ‘cause I don’t know if I can pull that off again.”
“Unlike the others, my bounty isn’t quite as eye-searingly high,” says August, dryly.
March harrumphs, crosses her arms. “That’s not gonna last,” she mutters.
“I’m aware it won’t,” says August. “But between us, I haven't been arrested yet.”
“Cocolia was a hag who was listening to the Stellaron that wanted to turn everything into a frozen wasteland!” March says. “Of course she arrested us, she didn't want anyone figuring that out!”
“It's been very eventful,” says Caelus. “You should probably get going. You know, before the Cloud Knights figure you out.”
“Fine,” says August, pushing himself off the wall with such casual coolness that a frisson of envy runs up Caelus’s spine. “I’ll stop by Aurum Alley first, I left an order behind.”
“Oh shit, me too!” March says, eyes going wide.
“I can take you guys there,” says Caelus, brightly. Weirdly enough, he kind of doesn’t mind hanging out with August a little more. Probably because they're all three in the same boat: no memories, no real clue who they’re going to become now. “Got some business stuff I gotta do anyway.”
--
Ordinarily, it would take days to go from Okhema to Janusopolis. Certainly people going to Janusopolis have been complaining about the shortage of available dromases to get them there, which, look, that one’s really not Phainon’s fault, probably. He targeted Chrysos Heirs and Coreflames, dromases were really not on the list.
Anaxa would consider it a cold comfort, he knows, but he hasn’t really talked to Anaxa in a while. Talking to Mydei in the library might be the most interaction he’s had with anyone in a while, save maybe Caelus, who’s a friendly little weirdo anyway who apparently befriends Emanators for like. Fun.
Mydei, because he’s both the embodiment of Strife and a Stellaron Hunter with access to Space Anchors, just brings the two of them to the entrance to Janusopolis in a flash. Phainon stumbles a little, surprised by the suddenness, but a pair of strong arms catch him in time.
“Shouldn’t you be used to this by now?” Mydei grumbles. “With your teleporting and your clones.”
“I am used to it,” Phainon protests. “Just…look, I haven’t been outside in days, all right, give me a break.”
Mydei gives him an unamused look, but helps him straighten up. “You’re paler than you should be,” he says. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
“You do not want that list, trust me,” says Phainon. “Or maybe you do want to hear it, in which case, fine, I’ve just—been trying to ground myself in reality, all right. In this body. In not being in the cycle anymore.”
“How.”
Phainon pulls away, and says, “Don’t ask.”
“Deliverer—”
“Please.” If he asks—What wouldn't Phainon give him, out of guilt? Nothing, that’s what. He’d pull his golden heart out of his chest and offer it up on a platter if it meant Mydei would just…let him call him Mydei again. If it meant forgiveness. If it meant he could have that faith back. “I—Please, don’t ask me.”
Mydei clearly hesitates, before he lets out a breath. “Fine,” he says, in a way that tells Phainon this is not over yet, and he has more questions that need answers. Shit, so does everyone else. But he owes March the most. March—who used to be Cyrene, who holds the power of Remembrance, who is happy now as she is but who wants to know who she was, what sort of person could’ve agreed to Phainon’s plans. March, who is, who was his best friend.
March who is no longer Cyrene and who smiles at different people now. Trusts different people implicitly.
Real kick in the head, that.
She isn’t here, he doesn't hear the shutter of her camera going off, and he would, he’s got sharp hearing these days. Which means she’s all the way across the other side of the chasm.
They’ve rebuilt the bridge, he sees that. Or, well, they’re in the process of rebuilding it—right now it’s really just a rickety rope bridge held together with duct tape, hope, and expert rope-braiding. Phainon sets one foot on it, and immediately looks down and has to back away.
“When did you get scared of heights?” Mydei asks.
“Not heights,” says Phainon. “Just.” The chance of throwing myself off the bridge. He shrugs, a little, not certain how to explain it.
Mydei stares at him, waiting him out.
Phainon lets out a breath. Then he says, “I. There were. Cycles. Where I found out the Flame Reaver’s identity early and remembered early and. Well.” He pauses. “You think a lot, when you've got a long way to fall. I haven’t been out on the balcony for a while, incidentally.”
Mydei says nothing, but—he catches a hold of Phainon’s hand, and his grip is tight, his palm warm. “You will not fall,” he says. “I am here. I will not allow it.”
Oh. Well. All right, then. He nods, and so they end up holding on to each other the whole way across the rope bridge.
Lifetimes ago, this would’ve sent Phainon into what March refers to as “a real tizzy,” on account of Mydei of all people holding his hand. Imagine! The demigod of Strife, the hope and Prince of Castrum Kremnos, holding his hand! These days he’s…it’s a warm hand, in his. It’s someone holding him tightly. It’s a voice calling to him in the dark and dragging him out, bit by painful bit, into the light again.
For once, he doesn’t want to claw open his ribcage, offer himself up as a sacrifice if it means everyone he loves will be safe from him, from Destruction. For once, this is enough.
“So,” he says. “Why August?”
“Because the Hunters thawed me out on the 16th of August,” says Mydei. “And it was easier to remember the date that way. I didn’t have any better ideas, so.”
“No really good names in the Kremnoan language?” Phainon says.
“There are,” says Mydei. “But I didn’t suggest them because I had no memory of them.”
Ah. Right. That.
“You’re not allowed to fall, by the way,” Mydei adds, which is a good reminder, at least, that if Phainon wants to be not a sack of shit, then the best way to do that is to keep living. “I will be displeased, as will March. We’ve worked too damn hard to get you out of Destruction’s grasp to allow Thanatos to claim you.”
“Cas wouldn’t,” says Phainon.
“You assign your self-hatred so easily to Castorice,” says Mydei. “She would, to give you rest and peace. To her, it would be a kindness to whisk your soul to the Nether Realm.”
Would that be so bad? “Is it a kindness to you, too?” Phainon asks.
“No.” Mydei’s voice is curt, sharp. “Death is an end. You have a new beginning. Only a fool would waste it.” His grip on Phainon’s hand tightens, and what else can Phainon do but follow him there, follow him anywhere?
His heart beats fast in his chest. Here—Here is a different kind of fall.
--
(A pair of arms wrap around his shoulders, familiar warmth pressing against his back. She says, “I don't care what that stupid Scepter’s been telling you, what the Stellaron says. We’re friends, you dummy.”
A pair of sword-calloused hands catch porcelain-cold fingers. “Deliverer,” he says. “Phainon. Lay down your burden—the miracle of a new world will not be witnessed alone.”
Liars, the both of you. What of the prophecy?
“Not lying! I swear I’m not! And screw that prophecy, anyway, the prophecy didn’t take us Trailblazers into account!”
“It is done. Wake up. Break the chains you’ve wrapped yourself in—or if I must, I will break them for you.”)