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It was several weeks into the journey to the Ark Reach Cluster, and Ohthere Wyrdmake was once again in Ahzek Ahriman’s personal quarters.
Ahriman sipped his wine– quite literally his, as it was a vintage of his own creation– and permitted a small smile to cross his face. It had been a long, long time since he had been so close to another man. His expression was threatened by that train of thought, and so he placed his goblet on the table between them and poured Ohthere another glass.
The Space Wolf was slowly coming around to Prosperan wine; of this Ahriman was quite sure. At first, the Rune Priest balked at anything that wasn’t his familiar Fenrisian Mjød. As was his wont, he was ready with a running– and dismissive– commentary in his strange parochial cant, lamenting the drink’s lack of potency.
This, of course, had Ahriman rising into the first Enumeration to cast off the petty rage that came of pride. There was a satisfaction to Othere’s frustration at not having easily baited him, and also the fact that Ahriman had decided that he’d commit to slowly introducing the other man to the gentle pleasures of wine.
He still had some ways to go, though, for Ohthere picked up the glass and drained it one go, roughly wiping his stained lips with the back of his hand.
Ahriman laughed. “Really,” he murmured softly. “Must I once again instruct you as to the proper way to do it?” Ahriman held his glass aloft and closed one kohl-rimmed eye, appraising the liquid with a degree of gentle irony. “Observe its colour and its clarity,” he said, in the tone of a patient lecturer. He swirled the glass slowly before inhaling deeply above it. “What of its aromas?” He took a small sip and held the rich flavours in his mouth a moment, before closing his eyes in pleasure and swallowing.
“The taste on your tongue, your palate, your throat…” He poured Ohthere another glass, but instead of taking it and downing it in the way of its predecessor, the Rune Priest pushed himself to his feet with a great exaggerated groan.
Ahriman looked up at him over the rim of his glass and took another sip. The wine wasn’t making him drunk, per se– his enhanced physiology protected his blood from being poisoned in such a way, and even if it didn’t, his facility with biomancy would make short work of the effects upon his mind.
But the wine was still able to spread a pleasant warmth through his body, which gathered in the pit of his stomach as he watched Ohthere Wyrdmake pull his tunic up and over his head, displaying his broad, muscular, and quite hairy body. Ahriman leaned back against the pile of pillows he was splayed quite comfortably across, and felt his eyebrows rise, his painted lips slightly part, and his cheeks redden.
“It is my turn to teach,” Ohthere told him, in the low rumbling growl that felt like fresh thunder in the darkening distance.
Ahriman groped for the lower Enumerations, and through his strength of will and mastery of the Empyrean he exerted control over his bodily reactions to Ohthere’s words and deeds. He cleared his throat and asked,
“And what sort of a lesson might you have in mind?” As thorough as he had been with his efficient meditations, his voice had still gone a little high and tight.
The Rune Priest grinned. Ahriman had seen the same feral expression on Ymir’s shaggy muzzle. “So wise and learned, Storm Brother, or so you claim to be. And yet you do not ken my meaning?”
Despite his earlier efforts, Ahriman felt his blush return. Ohthere looked down at him under hooded eyes and softly said, “but it can be that sort of lesson, if you wish it to be so.”
He stepped closer to where Ahriman was sprawled over the cushions. The Chief Librarian pulled the robe that was slipping off one brown shoulder up and over it again, and looked up at the wild man that stood above him.
Ahriman swallowed. “No, no,” he said, gathering his considerable wits about him once more. Maybe he should slow down with the wine, he thought, if he couldn’t even feel the future of what the man before him might say. “Pardon my inappropriate insinuation.” He straightened, and looked at Ohthere quite seriously. If this was a true opportunity to learn from the Rune Priest, he would be remiss to neglect it. “My interest is purely academic,” he continued. “What did you have in mind?”
Ohthere looked down at his furry chest and belly and motioned towards his bare torso. “The markings on the hard walls of my hearts,” he said, in the strangely figurative way that Ahriman was beginning to find a little enchanting. “The bind-runes inked upon my chest.”
“Oh!” said Ahriman, placing his wine down on the little table between them and bringing himself to his knees, propelled forward by interest and a thirst for understanding. “Oh yes, of course.”
He could feel the power born of the Aether seeping from the man’s skin, even from his place on the ground before him. “I must admit, I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with such a ritual.”
Even before Ohthere began his explanation, a part of Ahriman’s mind was taking note of the shapes and lines and circles, of their potential for power and possible meanings. He considered for a moment how such stark ink might look against his own flesh, curling around his calves and wrists and chest.
“Wise and learned,” Ohthere said again, “but not of Fenris born.” He knelt before Ahriman and his gilded pillows, and reached out to take the Librarian’s hand. Ahriman licked his lips but let his fingers be taken in the other man’s larger, rougher hand. The difference between life on Prospero and Fenris, he supposed, was painted in their flesh.
He watched, rapt and enthralled, as Ohthere took his hand and placed it over his forearm. Ahriman kept his eyes on the journey of his fingertips, as they brushed the markings tattooed on the Rune Priest’s skin. Ohthere gently guided his hand up the bulging muscles of his biceps, and around the interface ports that were worked into the design.
He took a quiet breath as Ohthere led his hands on a journey across the broad, hairy planes of his chest, tracing once more the circles and lines that wove across the hard muscle there, around a nipple and down between each pectoral.
So different from his own body it was, though they were both Space Marines, built and constructed to be so. The runes were powerful and warm and thrumming beneath his fingers. He was lost, for a moment, in their obscure and arcane patterns, before he recalled himself enough to softly ask,
“What do they mean?”
Ohthere rumbled a quiet, amused laugh which Ahriman could feel when the palm of his hand was placed atop a rune upon the other man’s chest.
“Over the stones of valour,” Ohthere began, with Ahriman’s hand above his hearts, “the runes for steadfastness.” Ahriman looked up at the other man and there was a pleasing warmth behind eyes that usually crackled with fresh frost.
Next he placed Ahriman’s hand over his bicep, and he curled his fingers around it as far as they could go. “For strength,” he said, and Ahriman nodded.
“They’re practical, but also quite beautiful.” Something strange within the Librarian had compelled him to speak.
“Beauty counts for little in the spear-din, when battle-sweat stains bare flesh.” Ahriman nodded again. He thought that he might try that one on Hathor Maat, and see what he made of it. But Ohthere reached down to tilt Ahriman’s chin up. His dark eyes widened when Ohthere said to him, “but you, feeder of ravens. Pleasing to the eye you are, in battle and in silks.”
Ahriman took a shaky breath and his Corvidae senses felt the pull of a possible future, like cool tendrils of power were drawing him in to the Rune Priest, whose aura was pulsing a decadent pink-purple. Ohthere was leaning towards him, too, firmly yet gently grasping his chin, when–
– something crashed down behind Ohthere. Ahriman gave a start and the Rune Priest looked behind him to see the massive tome that had somehow been knocked to the ground.
Ohthere looked back at Ahriman and grinned. “I thought you a master of control, my brother. Has your excitement undone you so?”
“No,” said Ahriman, shaking his head a little dazedly. “I didn’t move it, it wasn’t me.”
Not now, Ohrmuzd… Ahriman would never lose control of his connection with the Aether so easily. But he felt within his hearts that he knew why the book had fallen.
More recently– and the more time he spent around Ohthere, he noticed– strange things had been happening around him. Things would move on their own accord, especially when Ohthere got too close to him, but that wasn’t all. If the Space Wolf put a friendly hand on his pauldron, the other shoulder guard– the one with the oak leaf cluster– would suddenly pulse with energy from within, and become so hot that Ahriman could feel it through his bodyglove.
When they had shared a bottle of wine, and were pressed side by side as they pored over Ahriman’s favourite treatises, a splitting headache would begin behind his eyes, and only dissipate when he complained of the agony and sent Ohthere away.
As he ran his fingers through the rippling tides of the Great Ocean, he looked into it and saw his own reflection, or something so very close to it. He had much more to read, much more investigation and experimentation to do, but something in him was certain that the spirit of his lost twin was reaching across the Sea of Souls to connect to him.
But why? It was a dark thought he wished to banish, but every time this spectral disturbance occurred, he was with Ohthere. Was he jealous, Ahriman wondered, that the other half of his soul that yet lived was close to touching another?
It was difficult to accept, for this spectre could not have been his twin. In life, he never showed such jealousy. But maybe in death, he was changed. Maybe the currents of the Great Ocean warped his soul to match what was once his physical form, and what was left of him was determined to disrupt what might be between Ahriman and this strange, bestial newcomer.
But Ahriman was always the one to see the future. Not this strange shadow, shaped like his lost brother, that seemed insistent on ending what had barely begun. Ahriman remembered what it was like: every day without him he burned with the recollection that the two of them had been so close. Closer, perhaps, than twins should have been. But when he looked back instead of forward, he couldn’t help but reminisce.
They were as close as two could twine when their bodies of light swam together in the Sea of Souls. He closed his eyes and recalled their imbricate selves as they danced together. Two becoming one. One whole.
Ohthere reached down and wiped a darkened tear from his cheek with a broad thumb. Ahriman opened his eyes and looked up at the other man, whose head was tilted to the side.
“Is aught amiss?” the Space Wolf asked.
Ahriman took a deep and shuddering breath. This time, his connection with his corporeal form would ground and balance him. “It’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine,” he tried again, bolstering his words with a small smile. The past was a pit as black as the void, but he was Magister Templi of the Corvidae. Reaching forward to the future was his gift.
He stretched out his arm and gently pressed his fingers against the bind-rune tattoos on Ohthere Wyrdmake’s chest.
“Let me learn some more,” he whispered.