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The snow crunches under his feet. He drags the scythe heavily, leaving an uneven trail behind him. He hears the last man alive gurgle in pain as life abruptly escapes his body, now but a limp, broken puppet.
Just when they're done, it starts raining.
Near the edge of the forest, where the tree line gives way to the endless plains, he stops under the spreading branches full of young leaves, rustling on the light breeze. His human hand brushes along the scratchy bark, feeling the ridges and the lines with his fingertips. He lifts his head up, eyes closed, and feels the warm rain on his face, the first one of this year.
The quiet moments right after the battle’s end are nice, but always fleeting.
“We should keep going.” Rhaast hurries him, eager as usual, never content to stay in one place for too long, even if he’s not the one moving.
Kayn stubbornly keeps his eyes closed and tries to focus on the feeling of the rain washing over him, blood and grime of the battle running down his skin and clothes in small streams. It would almost feel cleansing, if not for the bodies scattered around him, a stark red against the pristine white canvas of melting snow, drowning in blood that would nourish the Ionian earth. And the fiery bloodlust, coursing through his veins, pulsing under his skin. Is it Rhaast’s or his own entirely? They’ve spend so much time together already, that it’s hard for him to discern, to find that fleeting line that separates them. It doesn’t matter.
“Kayn.” Rhaast prods yet again, tugging at his mind impatiently, and Kayn can feel the scythe’s red eye peering up at him from where it habitually rests in his corrupted hand. “Kayn.” Kayn grips the hilt of the scythe firmer.
“What, Rhaast?” He lets out an exasperated sigh and finally opens his eyes, admiring the aftermath of the bloodbath they’ve put another Noxian outpost through. ‘Admiring’ might be too heavy a word. He’s seen countless dead bodies throughout his life already. Dismembered, beheaded, bloodied, incinerated, contorted, broken. He’s seen bloodbaths. He’s been a part and the reason for most of them. The sight doesn’t thrill him quite like it used to. Maybe he’s losing his edge.
“Pitiful waste of time.” He can feel Rhaast in his mind, sensing his melancholy, but he doubts he can ever find or understand its source. Kayn’s simply never going to let him.
“You say that only because you no longer can sense the rain on your skin.” Kayn picks at him, picks at the easy wound that’s never going to heal and will always fester. He’ll make sure of that.
“We keep moving, Kayn, and we find more Noxians to slaughter.” After a short silence, Rhaast repeats, not providing much of anything else. But Kayn knows the spot and that he’s hit it. He did it deliberately, with clear intent and reason.
Why does the reminder sting for him too, he cannot understand.
As the night catches up to them and envelops in its grasp, calm and steady, Kayn sets up camp.
He builds a small fire by the riverbank. The water cuts deep through the forest they find themselves in, after an endless search for battle has led them further north. Even farther away from the monastery, farther away from the life that used to be familiar.
Good. The change is good. Stagnation is what erodes the mind and body.
“You are thinking about Thanjuul again.” Rhaast notes, a picture of mockery. He knows what it cost Kayn to abandon his previous life, his master’s teachings, his comfortable, yet meaningless existence. He knows, and still, he picks at the festering wound.
“I am.” Kayn doesn’t see a reason to deny, not when his mind is weary and worn by the long trek through the snow that they’re taking, and that doesn’t seem to end. Rhaast will know if he lies or tells the truth either way.
“What for?” The Darkin’s voice rumbles through the confines of Kayn’s mind. “Meaningless.”
“A lot seems meaningless to you.”
“Because it is. Blood and battle and the song of death is what I consider meaningful.”
Kayn doesn’t respond to that. He knows Rhaast’s priorities, and they don’t surprise or baffle him. Some, he even shares wholeheartedly. Only some.
The scythe rests securely, placed along Kayn’s thighs as he sits cross-legged by the fire. He stirs the embers with a long stick; the flame obediently flickering stronger, warmer. Kayn never lets go of the scythe, not even in his sleep. The short moments when they aren’t in contact feel wrong and strange. The connection they share, it seems to bend and stretch, and when they’re far away, it feels like pulling a tooth, like being held up by your hair and feeling the pressure all over your scalp. It’s maddening. It’s constant. It never actually stops, but comes to a meager lull when he holds the scythe. When he holds Rhaast. So, he never lets go, his fingers mindlessly dancing along the hilt.
Kayn tries to recount the number of Noxians, their outposts and caravans, that they have slayed, but he has long lost track. He thinks about their journey, how far they’ve come, and finds himself not being able to adequately measure the distance to importance. They don’t have a final destination, only an endless, frenzied wander across Ionia in a search for something. For blood, for battle, for meaning. For a promise of a resolution. Is there a particular resolution he desires? He’s not sure anymore.
“I sense your doubt.” Rhaast makes himself known again, always listening in, never leaving Kayn any chance for privacy even in his own thoughts. “Filthy and coiling. Whatever the reason, disperse it.”
As if it’s easy, Kayn thinks, as if it ever leaves.
Just like Rhaast, it’s always there, ever persisting. Pushing on Kayn and Kayn pushing back. Never-ending struggle with no winner. The winner may take it all, but what if there’s nothing to take?
Kayn brushes the fingertips of his human hand over his corrupted one. Over the jagged edges, spikes and scale patterns, over the ridges and the lines. If it wasn’t so burningly cold to the touch, it would almost resemble a tree’s bark. But when the bark is pulsing with life, this side of him reeks only of death. Yet he brushes his fingertips along the burning cold, tracing the ridges and the patterns, picking at every sharp, pointy edge, feeling the red skin lying underneath the molded carapace. Even if it doesn’t quite feel like touching his own skin, an alien, intriguing sensation, it still brings him comfort.
“What are you doing?” Rhaast stirs, strangely alert.
“Nothing.” Kayn is quick to dismiss, moving his human hand away.
The crimson eye stares. “I felt it.” Kayn pauses at that, looking into the scythe’s eye with distrust. “Do it again.” The Darkin urges.
Kayn does. He repeats the motions, touching red skin, darkened plating and sharp bends. He watches the eye patiently, awaiting any confirmation or reaction.
“Nothing.” Rhaast rumbles, and Kayn can feel his mind sulkily retreating deep into the scythe, almost vacating Kayn’s own entirely. But he can never truly leave, always lurking on the outskirts. No matter how hard they try, they can never sever the bond on one side or the other.
They are two strings tied in an untangleable knot, with them both pulling at their respectful ends, trapped in an endless game of rope. If Rhaast was still near, he would consider this comparison childish. Kayn finds it fitting.
His hand flutters above the corrupted flesh only a moment longer, before falling back onto his lap, circling along the hilt of the scythe.
“Do you remember the time when I first claimed you?”
“Yes. We slaughtered that Kinkou acolyte. Our first kill.”
“We did.”
“And there was no one to tell his tale. Felled in a battle with Noxians, a fitting end for a warrior—was what you told Zed then.”
“When in reality he died to a corrupted blade his brother was wielding.”
“Do you regret it? Killing the boy.”
“No. And to get you, to get this power, I would do it again.”
“Good.”
When Kayn sleeps, Rhaast watches.
The mortal body was never something he missed through the years of his long, millennia long life. But being imprisoned in his scythe, idle for years on end, not being able to feel his own weapon in his hands, to feel the iron, sweet scent of a battle passed, to feel the rain, warm on his jagged skin. In moments of pure, disgusting weakness, these years of being trapped left him longing even for a weaker, mortal shell. To occupy a body, to feel it as his own. Before, he would’ve considered any body to be sufficient enough, anything that could’ve dragged him away from his torturous, timeless prison of darkness and wafting memories of the times long gone.
His crimson eye turns to look at Kayn, sleeping by the felled log, covered by an old piece of cloth only remotely resembling a blanket. He looks at his face, never relaxed even in sleep, always trapped battling Rhaast and himself. He looks at the creases of it, the arch of his brow. He looks at how steadily his chest rises as he breathes, how it steadily falls. He watches the cold air leave his half-parted lips in cloudy puffs. He watches the firelight dance on his skin, tangling through his hair, resting atop his perfectly corrupted hand, gripping Rhaast. Refusing to let go.
No any body would suffice for him anymore.
This one. He has to claim it.
The perfect host.
A guttural, almost animalistic growl escapes from deep within his throat as he thrusts the scythe into the stomach of the last Noxian, part of their current feast. As he rips the weapon away in one wide, swiping motion, the innards of the soldier follow suit, fanning along the ground Kayn stands upon.
“Yes.” Rhaast rumbles, pleased, drunk on the blood and the screams.
Kayn breathes in, hard and heavy, each breath cut short with adrenalin and the rush of the battle still deafeningly loud in his ears, his heart beating restlessly inside his chest. His head swims with bloodlust, a familiar, welcome feeling, that he long stopped prescribing to being his or the Darkin’s. Their bloodlust. Their strive. Their need to move and to kill and for it to mean something. Even if Rhaast would refuse half of the notions Kayn thinks of as theirs, Kayn won’t stop in his conviction. Because they may be separate, but they long have grown to be one. They learned, how to be one. Him—a weapon, with Rhaast—an extension of his will, perfect as he rests in his palm.
The perfect tool.
An abandoned, pillaged village near the coast. One of the many which had suffered Noxus’s ruthless, blazing, conquering wrath.
They find themselves wandering through its ruined streets and collapsed houses, touched by the scorching fire. Under Kayn’s feet, stray arrows and hilts of weapons crack like the fresh coat of snow. Only the weather is warm and it’s summer already. All that Rhaast can think of is how glorious, how desperate the battle held here must’ve been. He can almost smell the burnt flesh.
Finally, Kayn walks up to the only relatively untouched building, standing by the village’s edge. It seems like it used to be a shed, once. Its roof has collapsed in the back; the far wall is black with soot and blood, licked by the fire, but left otherwise untouched.
“Why do we never move at night?” Rhaast asks, watching from his usual place on Kayn’s thighs as the man peels the wrapping off some dried meat. He watches the firelight dance across his features and thinks how much he misses having a body. An ability to touch. To trace a pattern. To chase a shadow.
“You should know by now.” Kayn answers, moving to sit more comfortably, his fingers brushing over Rhaast’s blade, holding him in place. “I move in the shadows, but they are the strongest only when the light shines through.”
“The twilight.”
“Yes, the twilight. The dusk. The dawn.” He muses, pausing to chew on the meat. “Besides, I have to sleep. Unlike you.”
Rhaast doesn’t remember what’s it like, to sleep. Immortal bodies require no such comfort. To lose consciousness freely and to come back to it, rested and no longer plagued by what shook you just hours ago. An almost magical state of not being, but still existing. All Rhaast can afford for himself nowadays is hours of watching after Kayn’s sleeping form, sometimes coming closer to his mind, getting a taste of dreams and nightmares he usually has. He can’t imagine the human gets much rest like this, even if he doesn’t remember what having a dream ever felt like. He’s only ever plagued by memories. He has, for more than a millennia now.
As the night deepens, Kayn remains restless where he lies.
“The nightmares ail you again?” Rhaast taunts without his usual bite. “How weak your mind is.”
“Yet you still can’t break it.” Kayn replies, opening his eyes, directing them to the holey roof above his head. He drags his fingers along the blade’s edge absently; the gesture appearing almost gentle. “This tells more about you, than it does about me.”
“You are but a setback on my path to bloody glory.” Rhaast bites the bait easily, aware of it. Their usual quarrel, words wasted. Yet they don’t seem so meaningless to him, somehow.
Kayn sits up, dragging his human arm down his face. Deep shadows lie underneath his eyes, and even the fire’s gleam can’t chase them away. If fitting, for the power the human wields, he appears sickly. Tired. Weak. Why can’t Rhaast find him to be so?
Bloodshed. Bloodshed, is where their destiny lies. The path they take, littered with corpses, is a winding one. Kayn is an apostate, betrayer of the Kinkou clan, self-proclaimed abolisher of Zed’s teachings. He thrashes, he rebels, yet he’s doing precisely what he was taught. He slaughters the enemies of their land. He keeps the Darkin inside its ancient scythe, keeping their battle lasting eternal. Kayn’s tore his leash, but he’s a dog that seems unable to learn new tricks.
The irony isn’t completely lost on him.
He laughs. He laughs as he stands amongst the blooming corpses, his vision swimming with crimson red. He feels the blood staining his arms, his face and his robes, slowly drying and crusting over. As he swipes along his face with his corrupted arm, the trail of blood slips into his mouth, and he tastes copper and iron and salt. He licks his lips almost feverishly, his heart beating in his throat.
Lately, he’s been getting more and more lost. Getting down from the high of battle takes him more time, takes away more of his strength. Am I starting to lose it?, he thinks as he still continues to relish the sight before him, unable to tear his eyes away. Blood red. Crimson red. Ruby red. All the possible and impossible shades, spilling across this once green meadow. Tainted, just like Kayn’s left side forever will be.
“There were children.” Rhaast notes, delight and glee lacing his voice.
Kayn jerks his shoulders, suddenly taken out of his manic trance, and his thick braid, with flecks of blood hiding in the plaits, slides behind his back. “I haven’t noticed.”
The Guardian’s Sea, the end of Ionian mainland, sprawling endlessly and getting lost over the horizon. If he turns his head west, he can almost see the Noxian ground, all blood red and metal. The crisp and salted air near the shore cuts deep into his lungs, and suddenly he’s acutely aware of them expanding as he breathes.
He doesn’t remember much, from his childhood in Noxus. Most of it remains a distant, hazy blur; nothing but an uneven ink dot splattered over his past. There was pain, hunger and need. Briefly, there was fear, which he had to abandon in order to survive. Then, there was blood. A constant, never-ending trickle of life force that goes across his entire life, with him spilling it or getting it spilled. He remembers now, how the rusted sickle felt on the bank of Epool river, gripped tight inside his small hand. The deadliest tool he’s ever wielded.
“Surpassing even me?” Rhaast juts into his stream of reminiscing thoughts. If one can even call it ‘reminiscing’. Kayn never talked to Rhaast about his past, about how his life’s been until they became one. Rhaast simply never asked, content with glimpses of fading memories he sometimes snatched from Kayn’s wandering mind, or snippets of what might’ve been in his nightmares. He liked putting all the pieces together, like a puzzle to be solved, like dragging all of the limbs back to the dismembered carcass of a body.
“Back then? Yes.” Kayn answers simply, outstretching his human hand towards the horizon. The dusk spills across the sky like the blood from an open wound; the stars mingle into constellations and clusters, the pristine white moon barely visible in the distance.
“Solemnity doesn’t become you.”
“You look better bathed in blood.” Rhaast comments, observing Kayn tread the salty water from his place on the sandy shore.
He hates that they must be apart, even for this short moment as the human fulfills his awfully human needs. Through him, through his corrupted arm, he can almost sense the water sloshing around Kayn’s body, accepting, warmed by the Ionian unrelenting sun. He can sense the slight tingling, stinging pain from the salt getting into the countless tiny wounds and knacks that litter Kayn’s body like the stars litter the sky. Although, all of the pleasant sensations get overshadowed by the gnawing tug at his mind, the connection demanding their constant touch. The pull feels somehow stronger, more vicious; it feels like peeling the scales off of his skin, one by one.
“Kayn.” The Darkin calls out as he watches the human dive inside the rolling wave and loses sight of him.
Shortly, the dark mop of hair emerges from below the water. Rhaast watches his— he watches the human shake his head, droplets of clear-blue water clinging to the silky, inky black canvas of his hair. Under the evening’s glow it almost looks like a starry night sky.
His poetic spewing disgusts him.
“Think of it as me cleaning to later paint a new picture.” Kayn finally lulls, voice unusually light. He combs through his hair with both of his hands, sweeping it away from his face and letting it cascade down his tanned back. It’s long, so long that half of it stays swaying above water.
Rhaast feels it. Through the throbbing and pulsing of their needy connection, he feels his hand run between the strands of Kayn’s hair. He feels it touching Kayn’s hot skin, quickly cooling in the crisp sea water. He rumbles something indiscernible, but the sound he makes must be one of satisfaction, almost pleasure.
“What made you so happy?” Kayn asks, turning his torso to the Darkin scythe where it rests on the shore, a safe distance from the running and going waves.
His body glistens with the sheen of saltwater clinging to it; his human eye beams bright gold, coloured with rays of the setting sun. Now is one of the many, many times where Rhaast yearns for a physical body. The inability to touch, to feel, to experience, is painful. Kayn’s form, the perfect host, his perfect human, taunts him, albeit unknowingly. He’s close, yet unimaginably, insanely too far.
The blood that Kayn’s washed off himself and out of his hair swells and sways in peculiar lines across the water, circling around him. Everything he touches, he colours it red.
Rhaast doesn’t bother to answer, retreating further into himself, trying to suppress the gross sensations with the dull ache of the connection unfulfilled, letting Kayn finish with cleaning in silence.
“Why are you sulking all of a sudden?” Kayn asks, refreshed, as he carefully places his clothes by the campfire to dry them over night.
Rhaast contemplates answering.
“You took too long.” He says, but keeps his voice judgmental enough, not letting the frustration seep through.
“What? And you started to miss me?” His human teases, clearly in a better mood than the one he was in during the past months that they’ve been travelling.
“The connection, Kayn.” Now, Rhaast sounds sincerely annoyed. How he wishes to take over. How he wishes to feel the sand between his claws, to feel the water running down his body, to feel the embers’ sparks blind his eye. But if he does, there won’t be any more Kayn for him to touch. No black canvas of silky, long hair to run his jagged fingers through. No neck to bite, no waist to claw into, no flesh to mark as the one belonging only to him.
“Do you know why it hurts, when I don’t touch your scythe?” Kayn asks, quieter now. His tone has suddenly gotten a careful edge that wasn’t there before; all lightness snuffed in an instant. He must’ve felt Rhaast’s thoughts, his vast desires. Rhaast doubts the human would bring it up.
“I don’t.” The Darkin echoes as Kayn lowers himself onto the sand, water still dripping from his frame. The scythe is placed over his bare thighs with a familiar motion. Rhaast can’t feel the tender flesh he lies upon.
But as Kayn starts threading through his thick locks, the feeling, clear and strong, comes over Rhaast like a gentle sea wave. He feels his fingers, the fingers of Kayn’s corrupted hand, touching the hair, untangling the knots and smoothing it over his palm.
“More.” He growls like he would on a battlefield.
Kayn stops, but only for a moment. “You can feel it?” The slow, meaningful motions, starting at the crown of his head and traveling down to the fading ends. It’s soft, damp, and as smooth as he had imagined.
“Yes. Don’t stop.” He orders, eager as usual.
Kayn obeys wordlessly, until there are no more knots to untangle. After that, he braids his still wet hair, taking his time, letting Rhaast enjoy the simple process to its fullest. Kayn has done this a million times before, he can do it in his sleep if he needs to, but he recognises how important, new, alive it must feel for the Darkin. So, he doesn’t rush, weaving the strands together tightly, every move gentle and deliberate.
He thinks how, for Rhaast, it must feel like an actual touch, like the sensations returning to your asleep limb, but for Kayn, it doesn’t feel any different.
When he is done with his hair, his fingers don’t linger. He lowers his human arm to rest on the scythe’s hilt, gripping it tightly, as his corrupted one lies on his chest, over his beating, human heart.
He wonders what it would be like, to feel Rhaast’s own hands going through his hair, tugging at it, causing a feeling akin to the one their connection provides when they’re separate. What would it feel like to be held in his ridged arms, encircled in his sharp claws. What would he feel like, standing beside Kayn on his own, towering and scaly, all plating and carapace, horns as wide as the sweep of Kayn’s arms.
He wonders if he’ll ever be able to see him in battle, in his full, bloodlusted glory.
“So fragile.” Rhaast says, and Kayn hears an unfamiliar warm hue in his tone. “So perfect.”
Quickly, Kayn rips his corrupted arm away, claws trembling. His heart picks up in speed, beating faster, banging against his ribs. Too much. This is too much.
Wordless, he goes to sleep, still clutching at Rhaast tightly as he does.
At dawn, they venture forth, and their battle continues.