Chapter Text
Marmoreal Palace was only standing due to a mixture of spite and golden threads.
The rest of Okhema’s city centre was much the same. Gold threads bound around broken pillars and sealed the cracks of building rafters. Various floors shimmered with gold, gaps in the ground woven together into something liquid that had since dried into concrete.
Irontomb had been defeated but not without cost.
The city was as much of a ruin as the actual ruins torn asunder by the black tide. It would need to be rebuilt and fast. Aglaea’s golden threads could keep things in place long enough for further evacuation from the more structurally unstable regions of Okhema but she couldn’t rebuild a city with her powers alone.
…Phainon probably could have done it.
With millions of Mnestia’s coreflames squirreled away in his chest, he probably could’ve done it all on his own. Was it rude of him to have not taken the initiative and strung up his own set of threads? It was difficult to know. Honestly, it was still a little difficult to think.
Tracking all of the damage for an entire city, identifying the structural damage and then subsequently fixing the damages in whichever way was most reliable would be far too difficult on the best of days. An hour ago, Phainon had torn himself - with much agony - free from the scepter’s core. It was not exactly the best of days.
For now, he settled on what he could manage: He reinforced any trembling threads at risk of snapping with his own. When Aglaea shot a sharp look in his direction, he flashed her a tired smile and a thumbs up, as if he weren’t currently dead on his feet.
He was still focusing on reinforcing her threads when the conversation began. It was a debrief of the past 24 hours as much as it was to be a meeting to discuss immediate plans for Okhema’s future.
Hopefully, whatever workload got placed on his shoulders wouldn’t be so time sensitive that he couldn’t take a short nap first. Titans, there was nothing Phainon wanted more than to lie down and sleep. It was a statistical wonder that he was still conscious.
Conscious, maybe. Tracking the conversation? Not at all.
He’d need to ask for a summary from the trailblazer later. Currently she stood beside Cyrene and was explaining her part as the deliverer of this latest cycle. Phainon caught some words - something about the cycles, something about Lygus’ administrative access being revoked. He even heard his own name mentioned a couple of times.
Like now. Stelle was probably explaining something about Irontomb or whatever, so of course his name was coming up a bunch of times. He took hold of fraying gold wrapped around a crumbling pillar and reinforced it with a net of finely spun strings.
…Wait. She was still saying his name. It was louder than before, his name spoken with more persistence.
Phainon’s gaze flicked back to the group. A dozen pairs of eyes were all focused on him.
“Huh?”
“Are you still there with us, partner?” Stelle asked. Phainon tilted his head and blinked at her. She added, “You weren’t responding when we called your name.”
The smile he offered was deeply tired and overly forced. He couldn’t add enough emotion into his voice for it to be anything but dull and exhausted. “Sorry. What did I miss?”
“Everyone wants to know a bit more about the cycles you lived through,” Stelle said, with a wan smile.
Phainon felt something jolt in his chest. Could’ve been the coreflames. Could’ve been grief. He said, “Uh… Right now?”
“Not too much. Just—you know…”
“We’d like to know how many times you went through them,” Aglaea interrupted. “The trailblazer has mentioned that there have been many but she has not mentioned any specific number.”
Threads slipped through his hands. He wasn’t sure whether it was his thoughts stuttering or Mnestia’s physical, tangible strings. The building wasn’t immediately crumbling apart so it was probably just his thoughts.
“Oh,” he said. There wasn’t really any reason not to tell them. Sure, they’d probably be angry that it took him millions of cycles to bring any real change to Amphoreus, but surely they wouldn’t be too angry if he reiterated that the idea had been to draw out the cycles for as long as possible to buy them all time for Stelle’s arrival to Amphoreus. “Uh, well. Thirty three—”
He felt the snap just in time for the pillar to come crashing into the pool. The sound of falling stone drowned out the rest of his words: “—million, five hundred and fifty thousand, three hundred and thirty-six.”
Phainon whipped around as the rest of the pillar fell. Oh, so he had let go of some of his strings after all. Aglaea’s had snapped under the sudden weight.
Stupid. He should’ve been able to do better. Shame flooded his chest, burning as hot as any coreflame. Immediately his gaze was flickering for signs of any other trembling threads.
There were only a few. It was easy enough to encase them in a protective barrier.
When he returned his attention to the meeting, they were still staring at him. Tribbie’s eyes were rapidly filling with worried tears. Hyacine held little Ica close in her arms, hugging the pegasus for comfort.
“You had to go through that thirty-three times?” Tribbie asked. Her voice wobbled with unshed tears.
Ash caught in his throat. He’d definitely said million but the falling pillar must’ve drowned that part out.
Were thirty-three cycles really worth crying about? The number was shockingly low. Even a thousand cycles passed in a blink of an eye, compared to millions. Tribbie really shouldn’t be wasting tears over a number so small.
…It wasn’t just the little priestess who looked upset, though. It was all of his fellow heirs.
It was Aglaea, whose lips pressed together in a thin line, brows faintly furrowed. It was Mydei who was now glaring at the ground like it had wronged him. Castorice too, looked upset, like she wanted to hug him and never let go.
All for such a miniscule number.
And then it registered: If they reacted this way over the idea of thirty-three cycles, they were going to lose their shit when they learned the true number was far, far higher.
Phainon did the only thing possible in such a situation.
He panicked.
The first new feeling, past relief, exhaustion and rage, across millions of cycles hit him and it was pure, bone-chilling panic.
“Uh,” he said, because clearly his eloquence had abandoned him during one of the cycles, “yes?”
Behind Aglaea’s shoulder, the trailblazer stared at him. Not with shock—though her surprise was evident—but with a frown that clearly asked where he found the audacity to spin such a lie.
Phainon was a big fan of digging his own grave so he ignored her frown and said, “I lived through thirty three—” - million- “—cycles.”
The meeting continued, except now, Stelle was staring at him as if she were minutes away from having an aneurysm. Considering the fact that he was the cause of this sudden breakdown, Phainon did his best to avoid looking her way. Every time she managed to catch his eye, she began mouthing things at him that his brain was too tired to decipher.
All he’d managed to decipher thus far was ‘what the fuck’, which he could whole-heartedly understand the sentiment behind. Phainon too, wasn’t entirely sure what the fuck he’d just done. Nor could he answer why the fuck. Objectively, he already knew this was a disaster waiting to happen. And yet he did nothing to clear the misunderstanding.
Further conversation was had. Bits and pieces of information from the recent cycles were explained - things that the other heirs remembered. At one point, the Flame Reaver was brought up and Phainon waved the topic away by saying he’d killed him and that the reaver would no longer be a concern.
At that, Stelle let out a choked noise which had not gone ignored.
“Is something wrong, trailblazer?” Aglaea asked.
Stelle, without looking away from him, answered, “Nope. Nothing.”
Her voice was so tight that Phainon doubted anyone truly believed her. The only reason they weren’t asking was because the day had been long enough and their exhaustion had reached bone. Even Aglaea, who normally wouldn’t have given up on the question without some sort of minor interrogation, seemed happy to leave the questioning for later. The goldweaver would most likely pick the questioning back up when they’d gotten some rest and the buildings around them were no longer in the process of physically falling apart.
Once their meeting ended, Stelle burst forward. Her hand wrapped around his wrist like a bruise, forceful and heavy as she stared up at him with what was, most probably, the fakest smile he’d ever seen.
“Hey Partner?” She said, in a tone that made him want to hide his face in his hands. “It’s been a while. Let’s catch up.”
It was clear he was in some sort of trouble. Stelle dragged him away from the hero's baths, down the —surprisingly still functional— elevator and into one of the now abandoned public changing rooms. Through it all, her grip remained harsh, each footstep quick as she dragged him along.
Phainon did his best to keep up even if his body was beginning to feel like lead.
She did not speak again until she’d confirmed they were alone, at which point she let go of his wrist and pinched the bridge of her nose. It was an altogether odd look on her; She looked less like she was actually exasperated and more like she was mimicking Dan Heng in an attempt to let him know that he was an idiot.
“First off,” she said, dropping her hand back to her side. “I’m really glad you’re not dead. It was really cool watching you burst out of Irontomb like a baby chicken. Good shit. Ten out of ten.”
Ah, yes, Phainon thought, he’d missed the odd way in which she spoke. Even if said oddness included being likened to a bird.
His lips quirked upwards. There was a cold satisfaction in his chest that came with helping destroy a Lord Ravager that he didn’t think was going to go away anytime soon.
“It was very cathartic,” Phainon said.
“I can imagine,” Stelle said, with a small smile. Then it faded back into the indignant glare from before. “But enough about all of that. You, mister, what the fuck was that?”
He didn’t have the energy to grimace. Instead, he sighed and said, “Does it matter if they think the number is lower than it truly is?”
For a moment, she simply stared at him.
Then Stelle nodded in such a jerked manner that it was a surprise she did not give herself whiplash.
“You know,” Stelle said, her words altogether dumbfounded by what Phainon could only guess was his audacity. “I’ve heard people say you get wiser the older you get. Considering you’re probably older than the literal universe multiple times over, I’d have thought you wouldn’t be so stupid.”
Alright, well, that wasn’t necessarily fair.
“Well—”
“But maybe being wise isn’t like that at all, maybe it’s just this one repeating wave and at some point you regress and fall back into being a fool. What was that word again? Ah right, yeah, it’s a bell curve of stupidity. Maybe this is a bell curve and you, Phainon, are currently in the negatives because what the actual fuck, why would you even think the number doesn’t matter at all?”
It was kind of impressive actually, how she managed to get all the words out in seemingly very few breaths. She’d only taken two breaths the entire time. Maybe she’d been given tips by Anaxa, who was typically just as effective at drawing out each breath when lecturing others.
When he didn’t say anything, Stelle put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Phainon.”
“Stelle,” Phainon said.
“I want to study your stupidity like a bug.”
Yeah, Phainon wasn’t really sure what that meant. All he knew was that he was very tired and Stelle was displeased about his understatement. Typically when Stelle thought something was a stupid idea, it meant that it was very stupid indeed.
“I didn’t set out with the intent to lie,” Phainon said, slowly. “It just happened. I panicked.”
“I totally get that,” she said, and began nodding. “Totally. But you’re definitely going to have to un-panic yourself and tell them the truth. You’re not allowed to be the dog in the room that’s on fire, okay? It’s not fine and neither of us have enough fire extinguishers for this kind of thing.”
They fell into a silence where they both simply… nodded at each other. As if to emphasise that yes, they were totally hearing one another but they didn’t quite know what came next.
Probably fair - he and Stelle had never really been people that others pointed to and thought: ‘Hey, they’ve totally got their shit together’.
The silence began to bleed.
“...Is that… one of your meme references that I don’t understand?” Phainon asked.
Stelle’s hand tightened around his shoulder. Somewhat pained she said, “Yes it’s one of my memes that you don’t understand. I’ll show you it later. Right now, you need to fix this.”
Phainon sighed. Then, gently, he lifted Stelle’s hand from his shoulder and took a small step back.
“I’ll—Fine.” The words were dragged from his throat, utterly reluctant. “I’ll tell them the truth. Just… Let’s deal with rebuilding things first, alright? Okhema comes before all of this. But I will tell them eventually.”
Stelle narrowed her eyes at him. “You won’t try to wriggle out of this if I leave you to tell them yourself?”
“I won’t,” Phainon said. He wasn’t sure whether he was being truthful or whether it was a lie.
She watched him quietly, as if trying to determine the same thing. Either he was too hard to read or she saw something resembling sincerity in his eyes because eventually, Stelle dropped her shoulders and let out a long sigh. “Fine. But tell them soon, okay? Keeping secrets sucks.”
Four days later, at the behest of the genius Herta, the Astral Express bid them a temporary goodbye, taking with them the remains of the scepter Irontomb in a set of cargo containers. Phainon joined the other heirs in waving goodbye to the express crew and did his best to avoid the warning look Stelle sent his way.
“Whoa,” Tribbie said, by his side, “little grey is really glaring at you. Did you guys fight?”
Phainon, who was in the middle of wriggling his way out of telling the truth just as Stelle had feared he would, shook his head. He said, “We didn’t. That’s not a glare—I think she’s just a little tired.”
Tribbie hummed. She said, “We all are, I think.”
Ha, yeah, that was an understatement. It’d been days and Phainon still found it difficult to put one foot in front of the other without being flooded with exhaustion. If he were being honest, he probably should’ve gone to Hyacine about it by now but… Well, what was one more secret?
Everything would be fine.