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The ground is drenched with blood. The air reeks, and the stench of iron is thick, heavy and hot, bearing down on him like the weight of a thousand suns. Bodies litter the valley, as if they were nothing more than pieces of paper adrift in the wind; they are easily torn apart, and easily replaced. War is a piteous thing indeed. Lives have suffered, and for what cost? To what end? For what purpose do they fight? A soldier’s pride? A mother’s embrace? Or is it, perhaps, for the glory, the strife, and the slaughter?
It seems that way to him.
His feet stand on the bloodied ground, and he sees no victory and no glory. There is only death in this place. Can they not see it? The futility of war? Swords lay abandoned on the floor, sitting in pools of their master’s blood. Stray arrows have found their targets, sunken into flesh and piercing the tiny chinks and gaps in armour. Arms and legs and fingers have been sliced off, but the men and women they once belonged to only bear serene looks on their faces. They had accepted long ago that they would die in this battle, and they were all the prouder for it. Perhaps their children would go on to tell stories about them.
If they even live past this war-torn age, that is.
Above him, the sky does not weep; it chooses to be silent in the face of death. It sees this… this contest as fair. What is given must be taken away. Life is too precious in the hands of human beings. They will only waste it in their fruitless combat. He knows all too well that what they are doing is fruitless. Between the Holy City of Okhema, and the City of Strife, Castrum Kremnos, they are evenly matched. They will kill and kill, and keep killing, until all of its warriors are bathed in the blood of the innocent. They will not stop, they will not falter, and they will not call a truce. Humanity is far too stubborn to reach such an easy resolution.
Not until one of them holds Amphoreus in the palm of their hand, they will not cease.
Torn banners are still clutched in a few soldiers’ hands; the remnants of a city’s pride. He sees the emblem of Castrum Kremnos on one of them—a bloodied pair of crossed swords—and Okhema’s on another—a bright, magnificent sun. Both sides must have fought valiantly, no doubt. But was it enough to satisfy their rulers? Those who craved the power they sought?
Clearly not. They have been at this for decades. Just how many have they slaughtered? King Mydeimos the ‘Undying’ could snap the neck of a soldier with his bare hands, and about as much force as it took to crack a walnut. Queen Aglaea the Goldweaver could charm a thousand men to do her bidding, all with a simple wave of her hand, a weave of thinly taut thread. They are deadly indeed, and dancing on ice so fragile that he could see the water beneath it as clear as crystal. However, Phainon frowns—his face scrunching up in thought—it is indeed ironic that Mydeimos is far from being as ‘undying’ as the legends say. He is still human, just like the rest of them, just like Aglaea.
Meaning they can be killed.
He continues down the snaking path, carved by severed limbs and outstretched, limp hands. He continues down the snaking path, hoping to find some semblance of life he can cling to, he can save, after the flames of strife have dissipated from the land. He wants to see someone alive, their breathing even and genuine. And he does get what he wants. Just not in the way he expects.
In the distance, he spies a lone figure; his back is facing him, but even from this far away, he can see the well-defined muscle there tightening. The man’s claws are stuck, deep, in the flesh of another, like a sword impaling a man’s chest. “There is no use hiding.” He speaks curtly, with both the stoic tone of a seasoned warrior and the solid determination of a leader. “Your footsteps ring loud against the earth.” The man says this as if it is the most obvious truth in the world. A lion’s mane of strawberry blonde hair cascades down his shoulders, and a braid curls around his ear. Angry red tattoos are scrawled all across his body, and they seem to writhe and wriggle as he nears the mysterious man. He feels… drawn to him, in a way that is difficult to explain. Whether it is the charisma that radiates from him in waves, or his deep, smooth baritone voice, it matters little.
All that does matter, is that he feels—no, seems important. That small, tiny hunch is enough to catch his attention.
“Who are you?” The question is posed out of mere curiosity—the only time he will indulge it—rather than for the sake of gathering information; Phainon barely gets time to react before the question is spurred from his lips and left to sit on the ground before him. And in response, the man finally grants him a proper audience, turning to face the lone spectator on the battlefield. He retracts his golden claws, the blood staining them. His eyes are gold like the sun, yet they hold none of its warmth. They are almond-shaped and downcast, almost in disapproval of his presence. Perhaps it is his strange attire, out of place amongst the sea of red, gold and white. His face is chiseled by years of withstanding harsh climates and the unrelenting heat of the sun. High cheekbones are framed by side-swept blond hair, tinged at the ends with crimson.
If he had not just fought a war, he easily could have assumed it was the natural colour, but the accompanying splatters across his face paint an entirely different story. Phainon might have even gone as far as to call him pretty, if his stare wasn't so murderous.
He is never granted an answer to his question. Instead, all he receives is a flash of warning behind the man’s eyes. In an instant, he covers the ground between them, and a sharp blow is taken to the head. Comrade of the fallen enemy or not, he does not discriminate. All who look back at the aftermath of war are fools.
When he comes to, several days later, he is greeted by the sight of stone walls encircling him. He is caged, shackled and bound, on his knees in front of wrought-iron bars. His head still pounds, a dull ache from where he was hit; and he cannot even nurse his wound, for his hands, too, are chained to the floor. In alarm, Phainon instinctively tilts his head downwards, only to find that his greatsword no longer rests at his hip. The only thing he can do is raise his eyes and scan the room that he is being held captive in. Ah. Well... he supposes his weapon should be the least of his worries. He should worry about himself first—that, and planning his escape.
What he does want to know, however, is the reason behind his hesitation. He could have matched that man, blow for blow, had he gripped the hilt of his greatsword in time and swung. He could have cleaved through the air with a strike as strong and as clean as lightning.
But he hadn't.
Murmurs and laughter sound from directly above him, snatches of whispers and conversations that all feel too personal to hear. Torchlight brings the rest of the crumbling hallway into view. To his right, a staircase extends upwards, its stonework chipped, cracked and worn with time. There are several other cells—empty, but even from here, he can see the skeletons laying against the walls, their mouths open in their unheard screams. The smell of blood and iron isn't as prevalent here as it was outside, where petrichor has likely washed away all the traces of anguish left behind by the paths of strife and romance interlocking.
Titan worshippers, the lot of them.
He's sure he won't die here. That man had the chance to kill him while he could, but instead, he chose to bring him here. Torture was definitely still a viable option, though. He winces at the thought of having his insides rearranged and cut into pieces before his eyes, or slowly being eaten alive by rats. Surely, a man who had held himself like a king would not stoop as low as to engage in such brutish and barbaric activities.
Surely.
His answer comes much quicker than he anticipates. For all it is worth, he at least expected his host to be much more unforgiving. Whoever he was, he must hold his authority and identity in high regard, given the blatant offence he took when asked for his name.
It was as if he expected everyone in Amphoreus to know what it was. And yet, he had never seen that man’s face before. Not at all on his journey. Not at all, in the ten or so years he's spent wandering aimlessly through barren wastelands, lush forests and waterlogged valleys.
Metal clangs against steel, and he hears a man descend the stairs. The torchlight casts an impressive shadow of the person's figure on the walls. There he is: the snaking, looping braid, the swaying, bloodied chiton…
It's him.
The footsteps don't stop until he's right in front of his cell, and then he's staring down at him; his gaze steely. “What is your name?” The man asks.
The sheer irony of it all, huh? So this man is allowed to ask, and yet he can’t?
“I asked first.” It's not a false statement, really, but the man’s eyes flash again—a flickering, red flame of anger. It disappears. At least he is more composed than last time.
The man scowls, but doesn't entertain him any further. Instead, he counters the witty retort with another question. “What do you want?” The words spill out as a growl. Phainon knows he has won this duel of words. An argument—though he can barely call this one—is lost when one displays palpable emotion. It looks like his opponent is smart enough to notice this, too, because when all he does is smile at him softly, he turns heel and stalks away.
It will take a lot more than petty intimidation to get any answers out of him.
Several days pass before he sees him again. The migraines have started again, voices too quiet to be heard whispering things in his ears. His bones have started to ache, too, and his stomach feels scratched raw from the lack of food and water. He hasn't been provided with so much as a loaf of stale bread since he was thrown into this prison, and from the looks of it, he won't even survive long enough to be tortured. His arms feel as heavy as lead, and the blood has rushed down to his kneeling legs. He can barely feel. Thoughts swirl, confused and chaotic, swimming before his eyes; all blurred faces and voices, hands reaching out towards him. In his mind, he grips his sword, feels golden blood dripping down his arms, his face, his legs. It warms his skin, but it all feels wrong, erratic and violent.
Something is missing.
The slow, deliberate steps are barely even enough to catch his attention. He will gain nothing from talking to this man. If he has to keep his lips shut, then so be it. Ergo, escape seems an unlikely possibility now.
But it appears that the man in question is done playing the waiting game, because the next time he stands in front of his cell, his frame proud and tall, he asks another question. “Are you truly ignorant of my identity?”
“No.” He answers honestly. “If I did, there would have been no reason to ask.”
Humming noncommittally, he folds his arms across his broad chest. “Mydeimos. My name is Mydeimos.”
Then it all, suddenly, makes sense, clicking together like the final puzzle piece in his brain. It explains the royal aura that he felt so pressurized by the day they first met, the offence taken when he asked for his name; all the peoples of Amphoreus know his name. In fact, even he does—the small country bumpkin from an unknown village—testament to the King of Kremnos’ fame. It explains his proficiency in battle; slaying all those lives as if they were nothing more than mere livestock, ripping their throats apart like tenderized lamb, crushing their skulls like bones made into broth.
And it explains why he had been there in the first place. It was likely that he'd been leading that army himself.
This is Mydeimos the ‘Undying’. And yet, he doesn’t shake where he is sat, kneeling before the soon-to-be King of Amphoreus. He’s not scared, but he knows he should be.
“Phainon,” He finds himself replying in kind. It would be rude not to. Besides, it isn't as if Mydeimos will know of that name, or of that place. “Of Aedes Elysiae.” He adds, for good measure.
At this, Mydeimos’ eyebrows raise, indicating that he is somewhat cynical of this latest development, but he nonetheless chooses to let the matter slip through his fingers. “I will ask you again: What do you want?” The growl he heard days previous is gone, and has been replaced with something Phainon cannot quite place his finger on.
Should he tell him the truth? Phainon ponders for a moment. The chains that bind his ankles and arms shake as he shifts against the stone floor. Thankfully, since the other day, he's managed to change his position to something more comfortable: crossed legs. Even if he were to, there would still be the possibility of Mydeimos refusing to believe him. To say that he is nothing more than a traveller, seeking refuge from a past he cannot remember is to ask for his head on a silver platter. To defer from the truth would also land him in the same position. He is clearly not an Okheman—he does not wear their white and gold. From what little he has procured from their brief, fleeting conversations, Mydeimos is more perceptive than he expected from the King of Kremnos. He is not merely some mindless oaf. Both a deadly adversary in battle and an intellectual eye. A formidable foe indeed. Aglaea herself must really be a piece of work to keep up with an opponent like this.
So all things considered, Mydeimos should kill him where he sits. An unknown, third variable does not bode well in the tidings of war.
Phainon settles for telling him a watered down version of the truth. “I am… a traveller of sorts. I lost my map some days ago, and have been wandering the earth since then.” Sounds believable enough. His sentences are punctuated by the occasional, heavy breath. It seems the lack of nutrients has finally caught up to him. “I… do not wish to fight you, o’ gracious King of Kremnos.” The last part sounds patronising. Condescending, almost, but he doubts that the royal blood that flows through Mydeimos’ veins has seen and heard far worse than his sugar-coated statement. And besides, it’s too late to take it back now.
Mydeimos stares at him, hard, but appears to be satisfied with his answer. He looks him up and down, but if he sees the numerous sun emblems plastered across his torn and bloodied clothes, he says nothing of the matter. “You are no Okheman.” It must be his behaviour, then. No student nor troop of Queen Aglaea's would dare take such a teasing tone with their city's rival King.
And then he is gone, leaving Phainon alone once more. He blinks, and the mini suns boring into his soul disappear, leaving only scorch marks in their wake. Phainon lets his head slip from where he had tilted his chin up to face the king, exhausted from the sheer effort he has exerted. Ugh. It does little to ease the pain seeping into his skull, calling to him, beckoning to him to close his eyes and rest. S—sl…eep— There it is. The voice induced by the migraine, buzzing and bleating like a sheep lost in a dense, thick forest. Frantically, he tries to block it out.
It's not rest. It's death, he thinks.
Has Mydeimos left him to die, then? Phainon summons what little strength he has left to chuckle, wincing when the rusted steel cuts into his flesh. Ah, the King of Castrum Kremnos must have truly lost his humanity before his wits for him to be so cruel as to leave him here to rot. But then again, what had he expected? He was not special. Just another man that he needn’t bloody his hands with.
Perhaps some would call it mercy—he has heard many stories from wandering merchants; some say Mydeimos’ bloodlust cannot even be satiated by simple conquest. Oftentimes, he has tortured prisoners of war—all the pretty, pretty faces—not for information or strategies with which he can use to slaughter his enemies, not for their weak spots or unfortified defences, but for the sake of his own entertainment. Perhaps this is mercy, Phainon thinks, inhaling the tangy, sharp scent of rusted metal and blood. His blood. Kremnoans were strange people—a race so far flung from his own.
It is false to believe that this is the last time that he will see him. In fact, it’s highly likely that they will meet again, this time with Mydeimos’ fist clashing against the carefully forged steel of his greatsword. Part of him looks forward to the rush of adrenaline that will pump through him, enveloping his skin in a cocoon of heat. Part of him is terrified of having to face that man… that monster of a man on the battlefield. He might die. No. Not might. Definitely.
Next to Mydeimos, he has barely seen combat.
All Aedes Elysiae had taught him was a calm, serene life, tucked away in the vestiges of the forest. It never taught him to take lives. Instead, to keep and to preserve. Never to hurt. Never . So when the small village had been engulfed in flames, Phainon could barely remember what it looked like, let alone the values it stood for. The next thing he knew, he was slaughtering Titankin and soldiers left and right. He never asked for their names. He never asked if they had families to go home to, families to look after. It wasn’t that he didn’t care; of course he did. They just never asked for his, either, and that was fine with him. Nobody wanted to hear about Aedes Elysiae, the village that had receded so far back in history that only Phainon… only he still knew of its long-gone existence.
Or so he thought.
Some hours later, Phainon is rudely awoken from his slumber by the rattle of chains. His fetters fall to the ground with a loud, resounding clatter, and there are bright red marks where the cuffs had been binding his wrists. It hurts to twist them after such a long period of disuse. It's only been several days—a week at absolute maximum—but for Phainon to stop swinging his greatsword for even that period of time must have taken a toll on his physical health to some degree. He vaguely feels the sensation in his arms, his legs, his skin touching the cold stone beneath him; limbs splayed out like a starfish on the tiles. Bleary eyes, still kissed by the last dregs of sleep, dazedly look upwards…—
And he's blasted by those radiant, mini suns instead. Their gaze is hollow, Mydeimos’ gaze is hollow, but hollowed out in such a way that Phainon knows what he is going to say next, before the words can even leave his lips.
He's so predictable, even if Phainon barely refuses to believe that prediction.
“Tell me more about Aedes Elysiae.” A useless question, utterly devoid of the fruit that Mydeimos wishes to pick, yet Phainon somehow finds himself entertaining the King nonetheless. It's stupid. They're stupid. He's stupid.
For a moment, Phainon indulges him in the sound of silence. Then he frowns, pressing a numb finger up to his lips, as if to gesture that he is thinking; he hears the chains clank and groan under the strain. It's definitely not as if he already knows what he is going to say—but Mydeimos isn't aware of that. His head throbs a little, so he slowly, slowly cranks himself up, all under the watchful gaze of the King of Kremnos. “It was wiped from history when I was eleven years old. I barely remember much of it, except that it was somewhere in the middle of a forest.” That much is true. What Phainon neglects to tell Mydeimos is why the village disappeared from Amphoreus, without so much as a trace—
That isn't entirely true. Phainon is that last trace. And he's sure Mydeimos is smart enough to figure that one out. Thankfully, whatever he's planning will have no consequence on a village that was set ablaze thirteen years ago. He can still hear the tongues of fire, rising up—high above his head. He can still smell the sulphur, the ashes, the burning wood; the scent of broken dreams laying decapitated all around him, like the felled trees of their forest. He can still hear the screams, the dying screams of his friends, family, neighbours… everyone whom he loved and cherished deeply. He doesn't even need to concentrate or to think to see the blade impaled in Cyrene’s chest—great and big and dripping with golden blood. He doesn't have to open his eyes or close them to see the insurmountable horror on her face, the quivering lips, the words she spoke that night—
After that, he doesn't remember a thing. His dreams always stop there. And that's good. That's fine, Phainon tells himself.
He doesn't want to remember. Doesn't need to, either.
Mydeimos stares blankly at him. Clearly, that's not the answer he had hoped for, nor anticipated. He had wanted clues, coordinates, something, anything he could jump off from. His eyebrows furrow, highlighting the crease lines under the King’s eyes, the leap and tick of a muscle set in his jaw. It makes Phainon wonder… What exactly does Mydeimos have to gain? He'd shown it himself, earlier, several days prior, whilst making that same face: furrowing his eyebrows, a cynical, almost faraway look softening an otherwise battle-hardened face.
Aedes Elysiae was—in short—an unknown variable. Even the Great Mydeimos had been unable to pinpoint its location. If Phainon had to take a stab at why he hadn't been killed in this cell, right where he stood, it was because Mydeimos had believed he could glean something out of him. If Phainon had to take a stab at what Mydeimos had been doing in between that time and now, it was entirely probable that he had been hunting down every last map, manuscript and tablet that Castrum Kremnos had in its archives.
All to find it. Anything for the war cause, right?
He needed him.
Pathetic, really. Mydeimos is indeed a confusing man. There were no gold mines or ore deposits, or anything remotely of value where the village used to be. It was, if nothing else, a complete and utter waste of one's time to go and invest resources into it.
He's not telling Mydeimos that.
Mydeimos only grunts in response, then shoves a bundle of something into Phainon’s chest; his greatsword, unscarred and unblemished, and a small loaf of bread. The bundle feels warm and soft; it must be freshly baked. “Get going.” Mydeimos says gruffly, gesturing with an armored hand. “Perhaps one day we will meet again on the battlefield…”
“And I will crush you with my own hands.”