Chapter Text
The stories of heroes were highly valued on the land of Amphoreus. No matter what city you hailed from or what titan you worshipped, everyone knew at least a couple of legends celebrating the feats of renowned warriors. In some tales, a small man challenged the gods, while in others, they faced a wild beast. The hero could be a warrior with countless battles under their belt, or even a cunning rhapsode. Whether the hero wielded a sword, a pen, or merely their own determination, the essence of these stories always remained the same: justice must prevail, no matter how your “justice” looked like. Something significant must be achieved for the sake of the greater good, against all odds.
Phainon's first weapon in actual combat was a rusty hoe, and the clumsily severed throat of a monster was his very first "justice". He wrote his little epic while still a young lad. And although this story was small and meaningless compared to others, it largely defined his entire future.
For some people, heroism was a topic for small talk; for others, a distant dream; for some, a duty...
For Phainon, however, it became life itself.
From the moment his feet first brought him to the walls of the Eternal Holy City, when Aglaea discerned something in him that even he could not see in himself, when the thought of his absolute irreplaceability took root within his mind with its poisonous tendrils, he no longer wanted to become a hero. For him, it became a matter of vital necessity. After all, for him, there was simply no other way. Every chosen Chrysos Heir was obliged to lay down his life on the altar of absolute faith and love for humanity; otherwise, the world as they knew it would come to an end.
This sacrifice was the only thing he could offer in return for the care of his teachers. This path was the only one that had been paved before him. To walk it meant to be 'Phainon the Chrysos Heir'
To be someone.
To mean at least something.
To know that you did everything that was required of you.
Should you take this burden away from him — and he would surely sway and fall, like a delicate vase that had only been held together by the weight of what it was filled with.
This was definitely not the heroism he once dreamed of with delight as a child. He had become the character of some distorted myth — whether it was the 'scene' or the 'actor' himself to blame. But on the brink of apocalypse, choosing one’s fate was an unforgivable luxury. Therefore, the hours he spent sprawled on the dew-kissed grass, gazing at the shine of distant stars and searching for scenes of his future exploits in their twinkling lights, had to be locked deep within his heart.
The Era Nova was truly such a paradoxical time. In anticipation of disaster, struggling with horror and despair, trying not just to survive but to continue living on the edge of endless uncertainty, everyone had to become a little bit of a hero. And in a world where myriads of heroes walked the earth… it seemed as if there were no heroes left at all. Day by day, Phainon felt how this word gradually lost its color. Its hues were washed out, its form thinned, and along with the concept, it felt as if Phainon himself was dissolving too.
Until that very day. The day when a star from distant heavens, dazzling and untainted by the sorrows of this world, fell right into his arms.
***
Of course, he was cautious at first. The Era Nova, the apogee of all their efforts and laments, was both close and nebulously out of reach. Aglaea and the mentors – Tribbie, Trianne, and Trinnon never really showed any signs of concern; their faces were masks frozen in peace and absolute faith in a better tomorrow. But Phainon knew, he felt it deep down – this anxiety, a subtle tremor running through invisible golden threads. The air of Okhema rang with uncertainty: would their next step be a final push towards clear skies or a fall straight into the relentless waters of the Black Tide?
There was too much at stake, and they could not afford to take any risks. Steeled by this thought, Phainon was determined to approach the strangers with at least some bit of caution, even if he was never good at suspecting someone. Like a young lad taking on an important mission for the very first time in his life, he kept a script in his mind of what he would say and how he would respond to various actions and words. The last time he felt so tense was on that awful day he retook the same exam with his teacher Anaxa three times in a row. Although his years of academic debates and performing as a model Chrysos Heir had borne its fruit — Phainon's face was perfectly calm and impenetrable — nothing could save him from that little storm he felt deep inside.
How unusual the strangers looked — all awkward and alien, yet astonishingly easy to blend into the shadowy landscape of Janusopolis at the same time. How they literally fell from the skies — just what could be cooler than that?
And above all…
“Does no one else think we look like brothers?”
Phainon was not sure what kind of impulse had sparked in his mind at that very moment. Words that came out of nowhere, spoken so out of place, bewildered him more than they really should have. None of the scenarios he had imagined while searching for their guests included such a combination of sounds, and his plans for further action seemed to be thrown out the window. He should have been on guard, questioning what such a statement could signify. A distraction? An attempt to buy time? A devious manipulation of the mind? Alas, at that moment he would not have been able to answer, even if he wanted to. And he did not want to, and somewhere deep down, Phainon understood that this should have disturbed him. He was no longer a child who could cast aside all responsibilities and indulge in mischief without regard for anyone else. He was a Chrysos Heir, destined one day to bear the burden of the Deliverer. Nothing was more important than this duty, and all threats must have only two paths: to be kept tightly in check or to be eliminated. Phainon had to remain vigilant...
But like a bird hearing a familiar call from its kin for the first time in a foreign forest, he could not suppress the immediate response in his throat.
“Well how about that? Perhaps it's fate! Friction really does spark friendships, huh?”
The way how quickly Phainon failed should be forever immortalized in treatises on rhetoric and psychology, right alongside that case of Mydei not being able to refuse the curious children who had gathered around the kremnonian barracks, so he spent half a day carrying them on his back, one after another.
Shame flickered like a spark at the tip of his nerve and was quickly extinguished, drowned in a sea of other disjointed signals. The challenging journey through the time-lost corridors of the fallen city and the further road to Okhema kept Phainon’s mind too occupied with care for the rescued refugees, time to time skirmishes with titankin, and attempts to convey the entire history of Amphoreus as briefly and clearly for the outlanders as he could manage. His natural curiosity anxiously scratched between his heart and stomach — Phainon always found it hard to keep himself in check when he wanted to know more and become better. Forbidden knowledge from beyond the heavens, surely punishable by Aquila, whispered enticingly to him every time the guests opened their mouths.
Dan Heng appeared young, younger than Phainon, but sometimes, something swirled in his cold gaze that Phainon could not fully grasp — as if what was visible on the outside was merely ripples from a stone thrown into the center of a deep lake. Was it possible that he, like some of the Chrysos Heirs, had existed longer and knew more than met the eye — Phainon did not yet know. The young man was polite and cautious — he did not overstep boundaries, did not pry into matters he should not, and shared information just as carefully in return. It was hard to tell whether the guest held a grudge for his ruined weapon, but Phainon was determined to rectify this misunderstanding regardless, even if his actions at the moment and under the circumstances of their brief duel did not seem wrong to him. So, until the debts between them were all settled, it felt extremely awkward to ask for more than what Dan Heng would be willing to share with him.
As for Caelus… He seemed to be barely concerned with the chaos happening around them. He eagerly turned his head, taking in the landscapes from atop the dromas’ back, sometimes getting so engrossed that either Dan Heng or Phainon — depending on who reacted first — had to keep him from falling off his saddle. Every time something specific caught his attention, the boy did not hesitate to notify everyone nearby immediately. He asked questions without any fear, sometimes invading his interlocutor's personal space, and only a warning flick on the forehead from his companion or the visible discomfort on the face of his victim stopped him… even if just for a moment.
And, be it for better or not, this openness worked in the opposite direction as well.
At some point, their improvised caravan had to make a stop. Phainon and Tribbie, due to their duties, had long been accustomed to long journeys between the cities, and the golden blood that existed to contain the power of titans also helped them cope with almost any discomfort encountered along the way. But the same could not be said for the exhausted refugees worn down by fear, illness and hunger, nor for the guests recovering from serious wounds and overloaded with new information. Therefore, without hesitation, the Chrysos Heirs signaled to stop, even though concerns about Okhema's vulnerable state did not fully leave their minds. The sooner everyone restored their strength, the faster they could set out again, reach the city, shelter the suffering folk in a safe place, and join the defense of the last bastion of humanity.
Phainon had just dismounted from his faithful dromas, patting the animal's sturdy side in gratitude, when someone's presence suddenly appeared right behind him, causing his warrior instincts to scream, so he instantly tensed his entire body in preparation for battle with a potential threat. But before he could whirl around impulsively, a hand — so delicate, he thought — laid next to his own, all pale from tension, on the rough skin of the beast.
“Caelus”, he realized as he turned around, and a wave of completely inappropriate relief nearly embarrassed Phainon again. The unusual name — not as unusual as “Dan Heng”, of course — came too easily to his mind, as if they had known each other since forever. However, he had enough awareness not to speak the guests' names aloud unless absolutely necessary. This was the last bastion of caution that Phainon reluctantly forced himself to build, even if every soulless label he assigned them felt uncomfortably on his tongue.
Ah, if only he was Tribios — their talent for concise yet heartfelt nicknames was simply undeniable, and whether they applied them to titankin or to Nikador himself, no one would ever bat an eye.
But in this cruel and unjust world, Phainon was himself and no one else. So he had to come to terms with what his limited sense of beauty — cursed by Mnestia, huh? — allowed him.
“Do you like dromases, buddy?”
An attempt to initiate contact truly worthy of a bard's pen.
“Mhm”, Caelus replied vaguely, clearly uncomfortable as he tilted his head back in an attempt to look at the animal's face, which he somehow found offensive to call a snout. “I guess? They’re cool. Kinda looks like one of my friends.”
The suddenly introduced conversation topic was like a lifebuoy thrown into stormy waves, and Phainon did not waste his chance to grab onto it.
“Your friend must be a very kind person then. Dromases are extremely patient creatures. It’s best not to provoke them intentionally though, since their wrath can be quite destructive.”
The outlander pursed his lips thoughtfully, drawing circles on the cool skin with his fingers.
“I dunno. He’s weird. Sometimes he helps me, and other times he just causes trouble. He seems to like me well enough, but once he tricked me into believing that he left a bomb on the ship… uh, a bomb is a thing that makes re-eally big boom! — and made me defuse it. I still want to kick his ass for such jokes so badly, but we rarely see each other, so I haven’t had an opportunity at all…”
Well, forget it. The lifebuoy was just stolen by Zagreus.
“Oh… I guess you have very… interesting relationships… with your friend?”
Phainon didn’t know what else to say: his interlocutor’s speech was full of unfamiliar words, the meanings of which he could just barely grasp from the context, but he didn’t want to come off as overly confident and end up saying something utterly absurd. Being careful with your words was one of the harshest lessons among the Chrysos Heirs — for a young and impatient warrior, this was a far more difficult lesson than any battle training, since he had long since become accustomed to bruises and scrapes, but the shame he felt lingered for a long time and stung very, very painfully.
But Phainon’s silence seemed to bother the guest not at all, as he continued to chatter away with enviable ease about whatever came to mind, not caring about how his words would be received by those around him or whether they might be used against him later.
“He kept disappearing and then showing up out of nowhere. I saw him or signs of his presence almost everywhere I went, so I’m surprised he hasn’t crawled out from behind a bush by now and declared that he planted a bomb… in this dromas, for example!” Caelus cheerfully slapped the side of the big creature. However, tired from the long and winding road, it merely opened its bright eye briefly before returning to slumber again. Realizing that no further reaction would follow, the young man pouted and turned all his attention to his last listener. “Well, maybe not in this one, but in some other.”
“Everyone will be extremely grateful if no one tries to blow up dromases. Mainly because they probably won’t suffer any consequences at all themselves, but I can’t vouch for the safety of the criminal.” For some reason, Phainon said this with a smirk that barely matched the picture they were discussing. There was nothing funny about this imagined scenario — especially for professor Anaxa, who would have used his "educational" gun on them without any remorse for merely entertaining such a thought. But the moment Phainon dared to respond to someone else’s foolishness with foolishness of his own, contrary to everything he had been taught to this day, felt like a breath of fresh air, cool and invigorating.
Once upon a time, he too had been someone who could chatter thoughtlessly just as easily. He still was such a person, a firm knowledge inside him said — but he simply couldn’t afford himself to be that way. For, contrary to those stories about heroes he loved so much and chased so fervently, reality turned out to be much more prosaic. Whether a hero held a sword, a pen, or their own determination, more often than not they were ruined not by gods, not by wild beasts, not even by the all-consuming darkness of the Black Tide.
The main downfall of heroes was the people they tried to protect. Shortsighted people blinded by greed, people drowned in fear, or simply too weak to oppose their traditions and opinions of the crowd. Every vice has its source; Phainon still naively believed there was a way for everyone to reach a compromise in any situation. But sometimes, you simply aren’t given the chance. Sometimes, the last thing heroes see in their life is contempt in the eyes of those who had been hidden safely behind their backs.
Such was their reality. The reality of Aglaea, Anaxa, Tribbie, even Mydei — and soon it would become Phainon’s reality as well, if he truly wanted to become the Deliverer and fulfill his duty. There was no place for weaknesses, no place for silly jokes with strangers...
But the eyes of Caelus, which widened for a moment as if he hadn’t expected any response at all, suddenly sparkled and squinted into a broad smile that stretched across his face. In a moment of euphoria and pure horror, Phainon watched helplessly, like an observer from afar, how the echo of that happiness immediately mirrored on his own lips.
He had to admit, they were somewhat alike. Something mutual — natural and elementary, human, primordial — resonated within them. He hadn’t felt so frighteningly and weirdly calm since… since…
Since that day he stopped searching for scenes of his future exploits in the light of distant stars, lying on the dew-kissed grass.
On the field of bloody battle where he was used to hearing nothing but screams and the clanging of metal, where he forced himself not to hear anything else but that – for a mistake would cost him his life and that of their entire miserable world – an innocent little bird accidentally flew in and filled the air with its cheerful trill. And even though all he should have been thinking about were the enemies in front of him and the enemies behind his back,
He failed to silence the bird that longed to sing within his chest.
And at least for that brief rest, for that fleeting moment amidst everything that was already there and everything that was yet to come, Phainon resigned himself. He would listen to whatever his new friend decided to share, no matter how incomprehensible and senseless it might be. For every ridiculous joke, he would respond with one of his own, under the sideways glances of their companions. He would release this overwhelming, hazy loneliness that pressed on his chest even amidst the crowd, and he would surely feel better. They would return to Okhema, Phainon would entrust the care of their guests to someone with a cooler head, and he could finally focus on the goal that had sustained his shaky existence all this time. He would pull himself together, so even when — “if”, he didn’t want to admit it — their new acquaintance would be allowed to join their glorious mission, his priorities would no longer waver.
It seemed to him, this plan was as reliable as any of Chartonus' blades — sharp enough to cut away all unnecessary thoughts, and strong enough to withstand any unexpected attack and any pressure...
It only “seemed” – that was the point.