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Jayce would never admit it, but during the first year of his and Viktor’s relationship, he kept expecting his partner to pet Yslaine. Or to ask after it. Or to send Radko his way with a little nudge of desire.
He wasn’t starved for affection by any means. Viktor was picky, but he wasn’t unaffectionate. They kissed plenty, embraced even more, napped one on top of the other, fucked for any number of reasons, massaged each others’ aches, watched each other cry, laughed in until they felt sick—and Yslaine and Radko echoed all of it in their own way. It was more than enough, yet the expectation remained.
After a while, an embarrassingly long while, Jayce realized that he’d fallen for another of Piltover’s catty beliefs about Zaunites: the belief that their boundaries around daemon-touching were looser. Easier. Baser.
So he stopped expecting it. But he couldn’t help but be curious, wondering after the texture of Radko’s fur, daydreaming about how it might feel to have Viktor sink his fingers into Yslaine’s fleece and scratch . To have Viktor hold his soul in his hands. Would it feel like a long conversation on a sleep-deprived night? Or maybe the euphoric high that followed a scientific breakthrough?
The years wore on, and still he never knew.
And then he found himself, ears ringing, vision spinning, mouth tasting like metal, in a council chamber awash with dust.
He’d only seen a daemon fall to ash once before, when a glass-eyed Zaunite child plummeted six stories to the floor of the Shimmer factory. The polecat at the boy’s side had turned to an afterimage. Atoms. A smear of gray.
The ash in the council chamber piled like snow drifts. Hoskell and Bolbok both had large daemons, a boar and quarterhorse respectively. Cassandra Kiramman was nearly buried under the dust of her hulking lion. Jayce sifted through it with shaking hands, searching for her face, her pulse, before realizing that he was already digging wrist-deep through the proof of her death.
Mel was saying something, the white belly of her sea-eagle stained black from soot. But Jayce didn’t hear her. Couldn’t hear her.
Because Viktor lay prone under the rubble of the west wall, Radko scattered across his torso.
—
Jayce only noticed his own unkempt state when he saw it reflected in the matted wool of Yslaine’s coat. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Whatever the Hexcore was doing to Viktor, it hadn’t saved him yet. And Jayce knew this because every time he paced the length of the laboratory, there was only one set of footsteps following after him, echoing cold to the high ceiling.
Yslaine rarely strayed more than a meter from him. They were glued together now, man and daemon, half and half—and yet Jayce felt cleft in two.
Nothing was certain.
Viktor still had a body to restore, sure, but Radko had scattered to the wind long before Jayce found the strength to scoop his partner into his arms and run. If Viktor did come back, would it be alone? What did that mean for him? For his soul?
In the end, Jayce never found out. By the time Viktor ripped wetly from the frame, a sound that only vaguely registered in the back of Jayce’s exhausted mind, Radko was already there. Simply a matter of fact.
The fox’s body matched his human’s: overlapping metallic tendons replaced sleek fur, brilliant purple energy rippling between his joints, with the change halting just short of his jaw and cheeks.
He let Yslaine bump up against him as Jayce and Viktor argued. He sniffed at her as realizations dawned and betrayal faced the light, and he departed with Viktor as a years’ long relationship shattered apart.
With everything that happened afterwards, Jayce didn’t have much time to theorize, but Radko’s transformation was confirmation that the Hexcore had changed Viktor more radically than Jayce thought possible. He expected Viktor’s body to emerge in a state, but to have his soul dragged into that same metamorphosis? He almost couldn’t believe it was possible.
And then it happened to him.
Much like when Yslaine first settled, Jayce couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when the change happened; all the days and nights spent in that horrible, dank crevice bled together into a sludge of pain and mania. His daemon was there, but it was hard to see her, hard to focus.
The day he finally hauled his broken body over the lip of the ravine and collapsed onto the rain-soaked stone, Yslaine cuddled up to his stomach. Pressed her back against him. Brushed her lovely, curled horns to his chin.
And then he saw it: mottled, multi-coloured divots bruised the horn’s outer spirals. Spidery veins of opal and magenta and cyan crawled over bone.
Jayce had already seen the evidence of how the Arcane reached into one’s soul and twisted. During his journey to the heart of Piltover, he’d seen innumerable corrupted daemons, some even flash-calcified to the walls, fossilized and amalgamated with their human counterparts. And, of course, for every marionette that pursued him, there was a daemon to match. Rusted cats that chittered and creaked. Songbirds that crawled on stony wings. A snake that cracked itself in two trying to slither.
The most harrowing detail was that the tether between human and daemon remained through it all. If the human was embedded in a wall, the daemon couldn’t stray. If the daemon was reduced to a writhing, eroded mass, the marionette would succumb to the tugging and skitter back to its side.
And now Yslaine, his soul…
She was still mobile and coherent, but the glittering proof of how they had been irrevocably altered shone from her crown.
But Jayce couldn’t dwell. The only thing he could do was climb.
—
All his life, Jayce believed the mage’s daemon to be a wolf—a true timberwolf, huge and hulking with dense fur to protect from the cold—but he’d been barely nine years old at the time. Everything seemed huge to him then. Now, he saw the truth.
The fox that lurked behind the sweep of the mage’s cloak was stone-gray, cowed by age but undeniably familiar. Undeniably Radko.
Not a wolf. Not literally.
And yet, at the top of the Hexgates, amidst the haunting silence of a ruined world, Wolf and Lamb looked each other in the eye once again.
—
Walking through the commune made Jayce’s skin itch with disgust. Every man, woman, and child was the precursor to a mangled marionette. Every daemon was a soul hollowed into a shell.
The horror only solidified his resolve. The Viktor he knew would never do something like this. The Viktor he knew was gone. He’d never left the council chamber, and whatever strange facsimile that had crawled from the frame was a fake, the twisted form of Radko a red herring.
He trudged past the tents and homes. Past the gardens of strange, yellow flowers. Past the shadowed entrance of the spherical, temple-like structure and the coolness that fell over his shoulders. Past the rabbit rhythm of his heart. Past doubt. Past love.
Viktor floated at the epicenter of the sphere, his placid face illuminated by the glowing threads attached to his back and limbs.
It was a simple thing to lock the hammer's trigger in place. Rest the weight at his hips. Lean on his right leg. Brace himself.
Viktor opened his eyes as diamond-dense light lashed from the hammer's arcane core.
Yslaine leaned against her other half, whether in support or protest, he couldn't tell.
Air snapped. Crackled. Rent.
And a sharp pain tore up the length of Jayce's shin.
He cried out, falling to one knee and taking Radko with him, the fox's teeth embedded in his stringy, atrophied muscle.
“Jayce!” Viktor's voice rebounded against the walls as if astonished by his own soul's reflexive violence.
But Jayce was running on instinct too. He dropped the hammer and lunged for Radko.
The fox tried to wriggle away. Nails scratched the metal floor.
Jayce slammed a hand onto the daemon's shoulder. His adrenaline roared, crowding out all other sensations. He barely felt the flex and strain of living metal. He barely felt the rush that tore through his chest, buzzing in his nerves.
It all happened in less than a second. The contact. The brutal intent.
Viktor screamed .
His body seized. The threads flickered and he crashed to the floor like dead weight.
Jayce's eyes were wild as he fought to pin the fox underneath him.
He couldn't fail. He couldn't. Viktor had to die. Radko had to die. Either would do. One would follow the other. He couldn't fail them.
The daemon shrieked, flailing and scratching and straining to bite.
He was fire under Jayce's palms, a strange, transcendental heat that he felt in the curve and jag of his bones, hot like arguments, like bitter compromises, like the unwelcome chafe of friction that interrupted sex.
Jayce was already crying. He wasn't sure when he'd started—he felt like maybe he'd been crying his whole life, the agony and grief of finally holding Viktor's soul reaching back to destroy the person he had been before.
Viktor lifted onto his hands and knees. The noise that carved from his throat was primal, anguished. He reached out and the ozone scent of magic pierced the air. The ground shifted. Slanted. The sphere temple rotating on its axis.
Jayce fell away from Radko, both sent tumbling. Yslaine bleated in panic.
Humans and daemons slammed into the curved wall.
Breath knocked from his lungs, Jayce heaved onto one knee, scrambling to find Radko again. Again, the sphere tilted like a ship in a storm. His hip slammed against metal when he failed to catch himself.
No. Get up. He had to end this.
He marshalled his strength, his will, his thoughts—now, separated from the onslaught of stimuli that was touching another's daemon, he could think clearly again. His mind raced.
Touching Radko had felt uncanny. Intuitively wrong. The soul wasn’t inhuman but instead something more. More than human. Volatile and beautiful and dangerous.
Whatever Viktor's soul may have once been, it was now mixed together with pure magic, essence and humanity layered and compressed like iron ore in stone.
And Jayce clung to that knowledge and focused his anger, narrowing his vision and driving forward. Relentless. Unerring.
He had to do this. He couldn't fail.
Somewhere nearby, Viktor was stumbling towards him, but Jayce couldn't look at him. His partner was already haunting the periphery of his vision, the afterimages of his soul begging Jayce to remember them.
A flash of ash-black, metallic fur. As Radko tried to slink away, Jayce stomped a boot heel on his tail, and Viktor sobbed outright.
Jayce could feel his insides cracking apart listening to the pathetic, pained noises. But this wasn’t his Viktor. This was something else wearing his face like a mask, infecting his soul like a virus. It had to go. He had promised him.
He scruffed Radko, lifted him against his chest. One hand gripping the bottom of the fox's jaw. The other hand latched to a foreleg. Crossed and ready to twist, muscles tensed, shaking.
Viktor was doubled over. Haltingly, he uncurled himself, willful even as terror flashed in his eyes.
“Jayce,” he rasped. “What—”
“I have to,” Jayce said, heaving from the effort even as Radko went limp in his hold, reflecting the paralyzed fear of his human.
Time stretched.
Here, in this brief moment of peace, Jayce came back to himself. Just a little. Just enough to feel the horrible, gorgeous shape of Viktor's soul against his skin. The most brilliant man he'd ever met, at his most fundamental, was incandescence, a force, a rage, a star he wished to swallow, an ocean he wished to drown in.
He felt his intellect like a prickle over his skin. He felt his pain like saltburn in his marrow.
God, he loved him. Beyond words, he loved him.
He loved the harsh scratch of his handwriting, the way his accent curled around his favourite vocabulary, the softness of his thighs, his awful jokes, how his ensuing laughter seemed always to escape him, how he was hesitant to dream but eager to dare, always striving, always meddling, always thinking.
All of which was preserved perfectly in the shifting strands of Radko’s flank. The way he breathed was Viktor, and the way he twitched and wiggled, too. Viktor was in the weight of his mass and in the space that he occupied. His partner was altered, yes, segmented and stratified between the Hexcore’s will, but he was still there. Still real and so, so alive.
Jayce’s next breath was wet and shuddering.
“Why?” Viktor whispered.
“I promised you,” Jayce said, arms still wrapped around Radko, clutching the fox to his chest, hands clasped firm, poised and ready to act, but there was something protective about the hold now. The reverence that Jayce had hoped to bury was seeping out from behind his ribs.
Viktor said nothing, just watched how Jayce’s grimy fingers gripped the edges of his soul.
Seconds passed, and yet he remained where he was. He was in denial—he had to be—unable to believe that Jayce would truly hurt him despite the vicious, violating strength with which he’d handled his daemon. Or maybe he knew exactly what Jayce was capable of and was waiting for him to pass judgement, for the axe to fall. Maybe his trust in Jayce extended even to matters of life and death. Or maybe deep down he simply wanted to die.
Yslaine trotted forward. She’d stood guard in the corner, attention locked onto Viktor with her beady black eyes, defensive, but now she approached him. And Jayce wasn’t surprised. He understood.
“It’s okay,” he told Viktor, a slight tremor to his words. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Viktor shook his head, his eyes wide and lost, almost glassy. For a man who all his life had been so thoroughly consumed by his will to survive, there was an uncanny horror in seeing him stripped of it entirely.
Wool brushed the cool metal tendons of Viktor’s legs and Jayce shivered. Yslaine nuzzled against Viktor’s side, moving to his ribs and then his shoulder, his robe catching briefly against her horns.
For a split second, Jayce felt Viktor on the threshold.
And then Viktor reached out to brush the backs of his golden knuckles across the velvet of Yslaine’s nose. Hesitant. Almost dreamily.
Jayce’s eyes burned. Fuck. Fuck, it wasn’t fair .
The sensation wasn’t internal or external but instead somewhere for which he had no frame of reference. It may not have even been sensation. It was just truth. Just real, the way that Viktor regarded him.
Every atom-thin layer of his being fanned out like pages in a book, Viktor’s thumb pad gently scraping the edges of the paper. A heat rushed over him, settling in all the most primal places, the animal of his body mirroring the divine.
None of this was fucking fair. He didn’t deserve this gentle treatment. He deserved—needed, craved even—the ferocity reciprocated. He wanted a claw raked over his ego. He wanted to taste blood in the back of his psyche. And perhaps Viktor knew as much, knew that denying him this carved an even deeper wound.
Viktor’s fingers ghosted over the long of Yslaine’s skull, over her eyelids, tracing around the base of her ears and settling in the mantle of wool around her neck.
Jayce knew when Viktor knew. There was a soft gasp, a set of the jaw, a stiffening, a flicker of disbelief, and a slow rise to meet Jayce’s gaze. But also he knew because of course he did. Of course, with the two of them holding each other the way they were.
Maybe they would always be holding each other like this even once their arms were empty, the weight affixed permanently, an impossible bend in the universe that said I will know you forever.
One could only hope.
Jayce snapped Radko’s neck.