Chapter Text
Song of Orpheus
I sing you a song of love
About my fair Eurydice
Who last night in the world above
Took my hand and married meEternal love we both professed
We danced until she fell upon
A serpent lying in its nest
And all at once my love was goneI know our mortal lives are brief
And that I should be grateful
To the gods in spite of all my grief
But love has brought me here to youTo ask what no sane man would dare
And beg you to her soul restore
So she may leave and we may share
A lifetime or an hour more*
Chapter 1: A wedding night
The chapel was a ruin – a skeleton of gray stone that smelled of damp earth and decay. There was no incense here anymore, nor any sweet wine to accompany the rites, only the heavy scent of pine needles and the distant, steady murmur of a brook. It was no royal place, unable to match the pomp and grandeur of Oriflamme’s cathedrals – yet those cathedrals remained closed to the romantic hearts of the prince and his knight.
Terence stood at the altar, feeling the familiar weight of his best uniform. He tugged at the high collar that constricted him – a nervous reflex he displayed only when Dion was near. He looked around and saw the forest, sending its tendrils and shadows into the dilapidated chapel. A twig snapped, and from the undergrowth, which separated the chapel from the narrow forest path by many yards, Dion stepped forth. Terence smiled.
Dion wore no imperial silk today, but rather a simple, light-colored shirt of fine linen and plain beige breeches, cinched with a noble yet unadorned belt. Terence studied him in silence, allowing himself a brief moment to recall days gone by – brighter days that seemed less heavy and burdened. Dion’s attire reminded him of their little escapades into the outskirts of Oriflamme, and of those balmy summer nights beyond the walls of Whitewyrm, back when neither of them had yet reached the age of twenty.
“You look as if you’re about to lead a parade.”,
Dion said softly, and in his gaze lay an amused sparkle, one that Terence cherished deeply, for it was both rare and precious.
“And you look gorgeous.”
Terence retorted honestly, stepping toward him. He cupped Dion’s face in his slender, skillful hands, stroking his cheeks, his forehead, and his brows that accentuated his light-brown eyes. Terence knew them so well, yet he would never tire of marveling at them. Dion reached for the hands resting against his face and kissed their palms – lovingly, and without haste.
They clasped hands and looked to their side of the ancient altar, which the forest had long since reclaimed. Rainwater had cracked the stone, and the reliefs were crumbling away. No priests had stood here for ages, nor were there any witnesses left to attest to their union. It mattered not; for they had not come here to reveal themselves to the world, but rather because their moment was too precious to share with anyone else.
“I’ll go first.”,
Dion whispered. He cleared his throat, and for a moment, he was once again the boy Terence had met all those years ago in the mud of the training grounds.
“Terence... I do not swear to you the heavens, nor immortality. That is the Goddess’s domain – and she is cruel in it. Instead, I pledge to you my love: vulnerable and laid bare, flowing from my heart for you alone. I vow that I will still desire you even when we are both but shadows of our former selves. I do not promise that I will never stumble – I do promise that, should I fall to the ground, my hand will always reach out for yours. I belong to you – as the man who shivers at night by an open window, finding warmth only against your back.”
Terence swallowed hard. The honesty of those words burned more fiercely than his soldier's oaths ever could. He tightened his grip on Dion’s hands.
“Dion... my prince, my beloved. I have no illustrious name to give you, and no lands. All I have is my loyalty – and that you have long possessed. I swear to you that I will be your anchor when the storm in your blood grows too loud. I promise not to treat you like a shrine, but like a human – with all your love, your pride, and your damned stubbornness. I do not wish to die for you, Dion. I wish to live with you. I want to brush the dust of your travels from your hair and share wine with you when the world threatens to break us. You are my home, no matter how far we must ride to find it.”
They slid the rings onto each other’s fingers – simple bands of dark iron that Terence had bought from a village smith before they had set out from Oriflamme to Twinside. There was no applause, only the rustling of leaves in the warm breeze.
Dion pulled Terence down toward him by the lapels of his uniform. The kiss was tentative at first, almost reverent, before yielding to a deeper desire. It tasted of the wine they had shared on their journey, of fear for the future, and of an overwhelming gratitude to be able to share this moment together. When they finally broke apart, their foreheads rested against one another. Both were breathing heavily, their eyes gleaming in the golden light of the evening sun as it glinted through the leafy canopy.
“Come.”,
Dion murmured, his voice holding that rough undertone it adopted only when desire cast aside the strictures of courtly etiquette.
“Our night is short.“
They sought out a resting place beneath an ancient oak, whose roots formed a natural bed within the moss. There, in the forest’s twilight, they cast aside all distance between prince and knight. It was an ancient ritual they followed – simple and familiar in its interplay of strength and tenderness. Terence knew exactly how much pressure to apply to Dion’s hips to elicit that deep, throaty sigh. He knew how much Dion loved it when he gripped his shoulders tightly, as if to anchor him to the earth at moments when Bahamut's spirit threatened to pull him away into the distant beyond.
A wedding night.
Terence tasted the salt on Dion’s skin – the sweat and warmth of a body he had explored a thousand times over, and which he longed to rediscover a thousand times more. He felt the soft skin of Dion’s back beneath his fingers, the firm muscles, and the distinct curve of his buttocks as he slid between his legs. He savored the familiar trembling in his thighs and the tight grip of Dion’s hands around his neck as their pleasure reached its peak. They were no longer prince and knight – they were two lovers clinging to one another, as if the other were the only solid point in a world crumbling into ruin.
Later, they lay tightly entwined in the moss. Dion’s head rested against Terence’s chest, his breathing shallow and steady.
“I’m hungry.”,
Dion murmured suddenly into the silence, sounding so wonderfully ordinary that Terence couldn’t help but chuckle softly.
“I’ll fetch some water from the brook. And there’s still some bread and cheese left in my satchel.”,
Terence replied, pressing a kiss to the tousled hair of his beloved, his husband. Dion scrambled to his feet, naked and uninhibited in the cool night air.
“Let me go. The movement will do me good after... you.”
He winked at Terence, threw his shirt over his shoulders, and grabbed his drinking tube. He shuffled barefoot toward the water, brushing aside a few branches as he stretched his limbs. Terence watched him go, admiring the line of his back in the pale light. He began to neatly fold his uniform – a soldier’s habits die hard.
Then he heard it. A dry, vicious hiss, followed by a stifled curse.
“Damn it...”
It was the startled cry of a man who had stumbled barefoot over a root – nothing dramatic, but painful. Yet as Terence sprang up and ran toward the shore, he saw the snake vanish into the tall ferns – a thin, pale creature with large eyes like lumps of deep-black coal.
Dion sat on the ground, clutching his ankle.
“Nasty little beast!”,
he said, attempting a smile, though his lips were already trembling.
Terence dropped to his knees.
“Let me see.”
The venom was alien, though Terence was no healer and not well-versed in such matters. It was blacker than old blood – a violet veil racing upward beneath the skin. Dion gasped and suddenly, there was no longer lightness in his gaze, no mere annoyance at his own minor mishap. His skin, still hot moments before from their passion, turned ice-cold within seconds.
“Terence... I’m... so cold.”,
he stammered. His eyes grew glassy, his pupils dilating until the beautiful amber of his irises all but vanished.
“No, no, no! Dion! Look at me!”
Dion tried to breathe, but the sound that escaped his throat was a wet, rattling gasp. He clawed his fingers into the damp forest floor, tearing up moss and earth as his body arched under the onset of the first spasm. Dion did not scream. He could not. His mouth gaped wide, the tendons in his neck straining so tautly that they threatened to snap. He writhed in Terence’s arms, his back arching painfully – an unnatural bow, as if his soul were attempting to flee the dying flesh.
“Look at me! Breathe, my love, breathe!”
Terence pressed his full weight against Dion’s chest, as if he could single-handedly force life back into his body - yet it flickered now like a dying wick in a storm.
Terence rubbed firmly over Dion’s ankle, pressing his fingers into the very skin he had only moments ago caressed, trying to squeeze the poison from the wound; but it had already penetrated too deeply, leaving him to watch helplessly as Dion grew heavy in his arms. The life that had just moments before been so vibrant and demanding now drained from him like air from a tattered sail. A final, trembling exhale, a brief twitch of his fingers within Terence’s hand – and then came the silence.
Terence held him tight, burying his face in the crook of Dion’s neck, still catching the scent of their lovemaking – the fragrance of freedom and heated skin clinging to the linen of his wedding shirt. It was unbearable. The banality of death, that stupid twist of fate, a bite in the grass following a night filled with eternity, shattered his mind!
He gently laid Dion back down upon the moss. The prince’s eyes stared blankly up into the treetops. Terence touched them with trembling fingers, yet he could not close them; he dared not accept this crushing finality. He did not weep for the pain was still too deep for tears. He felt as if his very ribs had been blasted apart.
He looked upward, toward where the stars were fading. His breathing grew frantic; he gasped in a frenzy of panic and disbelief. Sadness and a profound helplessness washed over him, followed by despair and a raging fury he could not grasp.
“You won’t have him,”
he whispered, his trembling, raspy voice as cold as the body lying before him.
“Good Greagor, do you hear me? He belongs to me. I know every corner of his soul and the secret desires that belong only to us. Give him back to me!”