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"I arrived without you, I leave without me, you have taken everything without meaning to.
An eternal second that stops time in you, and your eyes that won't let me live"
(Más - LODVG)
Their first encounter was on the beach (sometimes his dreams reminded him of it and woke him up in the middle of the night, with such an awful feeling that it made him want to throw up).
Disoriented by the impact, their eyes met amid the daze, smoke, fire, screams, chaos and confusion.
“(...) you can call me Saps.” He would always be tormented by the clarity that formed until he saw him.
They settled in the snow far from the majority of people, accompanied by a couple of others who decided to join them. They were a small group, but that was all they needed.
It was peaceful in Nox Imperium, harvesting, building, and mining with a pleasant calm. Far from the conflicts happening in other lands, the only concern was finishing their own tower and the gods' plans that included the ominous tower in the center of The Island. Until—
Saparata tried to swim in lava
Fluixon dropped the stone blocks he was using to build the tower as soon as he read the notification on his device, scrambled down from the height with a messy water bucket clutch, and ran toward the mine where Saparata had just moments ago submerged himself to gather resources. His desperation was evident in the sound of his hurried footsteps echoing in the hollow cave, yet all he found was a charred body and traces of lava on the ground. The minerals that Saps had promised to return with were still melting in the furnaces.
Ignoring the burns, he took the charred body in his arms and carried it to the surface. It was his own hands that gave Saps a burial. And on the grave he placed white flowers brought from a long journey to another biome, flowers that would surely have made Saparata smile in life.
Next time, Saparata would live.
They met again. Between the sky and the sea. One face showed curiosity at the sudden presence of the other, and the other showed broken pain at the immediate recognition.
Memories invaded him, which felt like swords in his heart, those black eyes looking at him once again.
And just like the times before, there was regret, there was doubt about how long it would last. Fluixon was overcome with fear that Saparata's heart would stop as soon as their eyes separated. He could almost feel the familiar warmth of blood on his hands.
And amid those overwhelming feelings, there was the clarity of the nascent resentment in his heart, from which a distant idea began to take shape.
The sky grew more distant as he fell, and from the edge of his own tower, the face of the person responsible for his fall appeared, smiling smugly. Fluixon didn't even have time to shout an insult as his last words or to think about how much evil he had done or whether he deserved to go to heaven or hell; his body crashed into the compact snow with a muffled thud.
The blackness disappeared when he opened his eyes, and he found himself walking toward an imposing stone brick building whose peak seemed to touch the sky. It was a completely different view, and he was sure he was no longer in Nox Imperium or The Island.
Fluixon quickly noticed that his warm clothing had been replaced by an orange uniform, similar to those worn by the people walking alongside him.
"Welcome prisoners, I am your warden Jawunleashed. Obey the guard and you'll have a good time here." A friendly-looking man with a green scarf covering half his face gave the introduction, but it only raised more questions in his mind. He was sure he had died; no one could have survived such a high fall, but there he was, alive and in prison for no reason he could remember that deserved him being there.
Prison was boring. He paced back and forth in his cell, trying to avoid getting into trouble, but not even a day had passed and already there were problems. A riot in the cafeteria had prevented him from getting his meal, and he had to return prematurely to his cell with an empty stomach and a heavy head.
He wandered around the square footage assigned to him, arms crossed over his chest, tracing circles on the stone floor. Now that time seemed to slow down a little, his mind tried to figure out what was happening. Just a few hours ago, he had been pushed from his tower after an argument with one of his own, and suddenly he found himself in a prison. He looked out the window and saw only an endless jungle, but that infamous tower was nowhere in sight, which only reinforced the idea that he was not on the island.
Was it a dream?
No, it had been real. The cold that pierced his bones was real. The burns on his hands from holding Saps' charred body were real. So what was all that?
His thoughts were interrupted by sharp knocks on the iron door. Behind the bars was a face he recognized immediately. Saps was standing in front of him once again. Alive, breathing, unburned, wearing a black uniform and giving him an apologetic smile “I'm sorry you didn't get your food, but don't worry, tomorrow there will be better organization.”
“Are you okay?” The guard opened the door, entering with careful steps and a tray of food in his hands. Fluixon couldn't speak. With every blink, the saparata in front of him changed to that charred version, leaving him unable to move, unable to ask him if by chance he also remembered.
But he stood motionless, staring at the back of Saps who was walking away, confused.
Saparata's death was brutal, blood spilling across the stone floor of the empty hallway, sword still in hand, body barely recognizable, and yet his face wore an expression of satisfaction. He hated Saparata for the stupid, ridiculous, and irrational idea of fighting seven escapees, but even so, Flux carried the mangled body and gave it a burial deep in the jungle, under the damp soil and in the shade of a tree.
Next time, Saparata would live. He would make sure of that.
“It's weird that you remember, the system rarely fails,” reflected the god, floating around him with his hand on his chin and his pupils pointing to the corners of his eyes under his furrowed brow. “Ah! But you don't mind, right?”
Ish was the god of everything he knew so far. He had heard that name countless times in his three previous ‘lives’. Saps himself had mentioned in passing that he had had a conversation with the god in the previous world, and the only thing he had seen of him were his floating eyes that wandered all over the world and captured everything. But it wasn't until now that he had him in front of him, interested in the story he would be creating.
But it wasn't supposed to be like that.
He had to be the one to capture Saparata. If Saps was so determined to die, then it should be Flux who granted him a useful and merciful death. It was not for nothing that he sent his own men out every night to search for him, but after a month of searching, the results were disappointing. And all he got was doubt about the loyalty of his own men, because of the way Thomas, his right-hand man, came back from the search mission one night, avoiding his gaze and the all-seeing eye of that god who knew everything but revealed nothing but doubt.
He did not attend the trial that The Commonwealth would hold for the most hated man in Pandora, but he watched from afar as the subsequent execution would take place, embittered by the familiar scene of being so close and yet so far from the death of his first and only friend. Flux just leaned against one of the trees in the forest under The Gauntlet, waiting for the sight of the body crushed by gravity that he had seen the previous time, wondering what expression would be on Saps' face, perhaps hatred, perhaps sadness, perhaps forced acceptance, perhaps even—
He should have expected it; Saps was always spontaneous and unpredictable. Flux stood there, watching him disappear into the distance, between the sky and the sea.
Fluixon did not board that immense ship that appeared on the coast, which all the other prisoners and defected guards rushed desperately to board in order to attain the freedom that was promised to them, far away, safe.
Instead, he leaned against the stone faintly engraved with the name “Saparata” and closed his eyes, thinking about the past, remembering Saps' face and preventing the memory of his broken expression and lifeless body from contaminating the few good images that the fog in his brain allowed him to visualize.
Quickly, his body lost strength and his mind numbed so fast that he began to wonder what was happening. Was this dying?
When he opened his eyes again, he was greeted by scorching heat.
His heavy feet sank deeper and deeper into the hot sand as he moved forward, his blurred and confused mind trying to connect the distant thoughts that the sun's rays burned as they tried to form. He didn't know where he was, he didn't know where he was going, but he kept moving forward on the vast golden powder beneath his feet because there was a magnetic need born from God knows where that urged him to climb the desert dunes.
And he was not mistaken. In the distances of one of the dunes, a waving white figure glided toward him, its steps slowed by the sand. He could not see its face behind the distortion of the hot air, but he knew it was Saparata. He and the other figure with long golden hair and blue eyes were his last vision before collapse.
Theria was wonderful, Fluixon helped and saw that nation grow from the beginning, rising from barren soil and standing proudly like a solitary crop in barren fields, like a piece of heaven in the middle of hell. And even though there were minor disputes and the danger of being attacked was still present, he had complete faith in Saps, who as leader did his best for the people who lived on his land, and as vice president would even give his life for his nation.
He walked proudly down the stone paths that he himself had helped to build. The cerulean sky above their heads was strangely a little bluer than usual, but other than that, it seemed like a good day. The citizens outside their homes, going about their usual tasks, waved for a few seconds when they saw their vice president, a calm smile on their faces, and then went back to what they were doing while he continued to walk around the perimeter of the nation, looking around. He hadn't seen Saps all day. He had been suspiciously quiet lately, and there was a weight in his eyes that he didn't talk about and that he thought was imperceptible, but to Flux it was not. He had to find him and—
It seemed like a good day, one like so many others. His nation was resilient, he wasn't spending torturous days in a cramped cell, his people were happy, and above all, Saps was still alive—or at least he was, until the sickening sound of flesh and bones hitting the ground reached his ears and the notification “Saparata fell from a high place” flashed on his device.
His path suddenly veered off course toward where people were huddled under the shadow of the sandstone obelisk. The shocked and gasping crowd, choking back tears, looked at Fluixon with pity and hesitantly parted to make way for their vice president.
Saparata's head was smashed to a bloody pulp, and his broken bones made him look like a puppet that had been carelessly thrown away, but there was a calm smile on his face that made Flux clench his fists until his knuckles turned white and crimson dots formed where his nails dug into his palms. Once again, Saps' life had slipped through his fingers, and once again, Flux had been unable to do anything.
His knees fell onto the black stone bricks of the road, his hands reached for the dirty white, and the familiar warmth of blood enveloped his hands once more like a gentle greeting, like a sick reminder that he had failed once again, a warning that he had to change something, do something, something drastic if it was necessary.
Saparata was buried beneath the sand from which he lifted Fluixon.
It was the first time that a Saps funeral was not a lonely one; all of Theria was there to mourn the mysteriously sudden death of their leader, but Flux felt as alone as he had on previous occasions. It was the first for all of them there, and the third time for him.
Jophiel's touch on his shoulder was superficial, hesitant, but it felt heavy. Her gaze, fixed on the gravestone, occasionally shifted to look at him, and her mouth twisted as if she wanted to say something, interrupting herself to search for more appropriate words. She knew how close Flux and Saps had been, and offering simple sympathies was useless. She sighed heavily. They would discuss the political arrangements later; for now, they would mourn Saps.
And when the weight of leadership fell on Flux's shoulders, he abandoned it as soon as he could, said a brief goodbye, and walked across the sand under an immense cerulean sky, searching for something he would never find until the end of the world caught up with him. And in his final moments, he thought.
Next time... Saparata would not live, as always
Their last encounter took place in the colosseum on the disputed Island One, in a final duel amid the carnage of the culminating war.
Fluixon knew that only one of them would come out alive, which is why he kept every frame of their final encounter in his mind, the way Saps' eyes lit up with an unknown ferocity and the setting that seemed so special, as if designed specifically for that moment.
The words that came out of his mouth were not even a fraction of all the discourses he had planned to say for so long, for three ‘lives’. Next time he would do it freely, he promised himself, when the lump in his throat was not so tight.
Shields were raised and swords were wielded. Combat was not something Fluixon was ignorant of, but he was not exactly an expert either. Saparata had the advantage over him, but his inexperience was compensated by his motivation to kill the one he—
How interesting, how ironic and funny.
Now it was Fluixon who lay on the ground, who received that broken gaze, and for the first time, the blood on his hands was his own.
His heart beat with the last strength he had left as he saw the other's face. The words in his throat stuck as he was overcome by an indescribable feeling when he saw the silent tears that treacherously formed in the eyes that finally looked at him.
“Next time, don’t———”
They meet again, between the sky and the snow.