Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Fluixon was supposed to die.
He saw death over the shoulder of a friend turned stranger, and it had smiled upon him.
But his soul was not taken.
Not yet.
Saparata had brought his axe down on him, and even though it cleaved through his chest he staggered back and air rushed into his lungs.
Saparata managed to disarm him, sending his sword skidding across the colosseum. He kicked up the dirt in an attempt to get some cover and scrambled back as Saparata prowled out of it, his axe brandished in preparation for another swing. His pupils were dilated, black almost completely eclipsing the gold, darting around as if hunting before they locked on Fluixon.
The axe prepared for another swipe. The adrenaline coursing through his veins had his blood rushing too fast, his mind completely detached from his actions, too fast and too slow for the rest of his body. He acted completely on impulse; the raw, animalistic fear taking him whole. He splashed lava at the other and bolted for his sword. Saparata turned, seemingly unaffected as the lava evidently missed.
The axe screeched against the sword as he blocked it against the guard. They were trapped in a stalemate. He managed a kick at Saparata and slashed at his shoulder to follow through. He fell but quickly swept Fluixon’s feet from under him. He hit the colosseum wall hard as he fell back. As he struggled to stand, the other brought the blade of the axe to his throat and paused.
Fluixon stared at him, eyes wide. He dropped his sword almost involuntarily and raised his hands in a half-hearted surrender. His back pressed against the wall, mainly to stay upright without making a fool of himself. Saparata waited expectantly as if he thought Fluixon would say something.
“Can’t bring yourself to kill me?” Fluixon choked, speaking over his own rabid heartbeat.
Saparata opened his mouth to make a retort but was abruptly interrupted.
Shouts rose in the colosseum. There was a scuffle—the noise of armour crashing as a handful of Westhelm soldiers rushed into the arena. He used the distraction of the clamour to shove Saparata and stumble away to create distance, still facing him. Behind him he heard the clash of weapons, then a thud. The familiar sound of Thomas5200’s footfall now next to him made his adrenaline spike. He stepped in front of Fluixon, drawing his sword defensively as Saparata fell back a few steps.
Behind them he heard the rest of the conspiracy jump into the colosseum too, followed shortly by more weapons being unsheathed.
“Wow.” Saparata scoffed. His guard faltered. “You—w-well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about you cheating.” He coughed. Fluixon wanted to laugh at him, but he was sure he physically couldn’t between gasps. Instead, he forced his breaths to even out and raised his chin imperially, narrowing his eyes.
Saparata scowled right back at him. “Fine!” He wiped some blood off his mouth and raised his axe again. “Come on then, if you’re that desperate.”
The whole conspiracy moved as one. Fluixon forced himself to move and lunge in time to Thomas beside him. The other ran past to surround him. Saparata had nowhere to go.
“What the fuck are you doing, morons?! Get in there!” Schpood screamed, and Fluixon heard his heavy footsteps as he charged into the arena, followed by the remaining soldiers. It quickly became a proper battle again: one he knew they were going to lose. Somewhere between a block and a swing he felt a fist ball around a strap in his armour. He got yanked away, Saparata’s axe barely grazing his arm as a soldier fell between them and he was dragged out of sight.
Fluixon looked up at Thomas as he let go and cocked his head toward the entrance. Their comrades seemed to notice and consciously cover them. They sprinted for their lives, ducking into alleyways before sprinting through the empty streets. Fluixon followed the other without question into a mineshaft next to someone’s house and then blocked off the path behind them.
Thomas thickened the wall of stone and wood behind them as Fluixon hastily prepared another weapon. He had a bow and surprisingly, his axe. He brandished it at his side and turned to the other. “Is this—?”
Thomas gave the fake wall a once-over, and deeming it secure, he faced the other. “Someone’s mineshaft. Quick, we need to go.”
Fluixon took a step, but pain spiked through the wound across his chest. He leaned an arm against the wall. “Shit,” he murmured. His head was spinning. It was no surprise considering the sheer amount of exertion and blood loss he just ignored to get this far. His hand came up to touch his chest and came away crimson. It stung under the touch, and breathing hurt as adrenaline faded. “We won’t get far,” he managed hoarsely.
Thomas stared at him, clearly coming to the same conclusion as him; death was near. “We—we need to get out of here,” he glanced back tentatively, taking a step back. He shoved a golden apple into Fluixon’s hands. He gave a weary nod as his thanks and took a bite chewing as he followed Thomas down the mines.
The apple was not doing enough, he thought to himself. He was unable to give voice to this though, as they again broke into a sprint.
They found themselves at a dead end. “Fuck!” Thomas banged his fist on the stone. He pulled out a pickaxe and began to mine. Fluixon glanced back. “They’re coming,” he said with dismay. The other end of the shaft was illuminated, but he didn’t see anybody enter. His eyes widened as he saw a flash of red TNT. “They’re going to blow us up.” His voice wavered. He hastily blocked it off, immediately drawing out his own pickaxe to help Thomas. They mined and mined. The distant voices grew quieter until it turned into a silence only interrupted by the rocks falling softly as they slowly broke upwards.
The stone gave way, only giving them a glimpse of dirt before he heard the end of the mines detonate.
He swung around and tried to block it off again to absorb the explosion. The stone collapsed instantly, and the explosion caught him with pieces of flying rock, sending them flying through the dirt, breaking into water.
He burned and froze at the same time. A red trail was left in his wake. The salt stung in his wounds, and as if his body couldn’t take it anymore, his vision blurred, then blotted out, and then he saw nothing.
CHAPTER ONE
Fluixon stood on his balcony, staring as the people of Luminara protested below. The world leaders all stared up at him with varying degrees of resentment. Saparata stood in front of them. He pointed his axe at Fluixon and spoke. Before his words reached him, the building exploded. He tasted blood.
He woke. Sweat dripped from the back of his neck. He found himself shirtless, his chest wrapped in bandages. He blinked. The metallic taste lingered on his tongue.
He swallowed and felt the inside of his mouth. He must have bitten his cheek in his sleep.
He slowly closed his eyes again and sighed, shoving aside the muddled confusion.
It was just a dream.
But when was the last time Fluixon had dreamed? Was he growing soft?
His eyes slipped open again.
A gray ceiling looked down at him. Equally gray walls stood behind and to his right.
He called the first name that popped into his mind. "Thomas?"
His voice came out raspy, as if he walked for days without water on the desolate ranges of Infernus.
He attempted to prop himself up only to regret it immediately. His whole body instantly began a chorus of agony. He dropped himself back onto the bed with a hiss and appeased himself by staring venomously at the ceiling like it was the one that decided he should be bombed alive.
A door creaked open somewhere to his right. He tilted his head to watch Thomas carry in a bowl of fruit. The man paused in the doorway for a second, and Fluixon watched all of the tension leave his shoulders in one breath. "Thank god you're awake," he propped the bowl down on a bedside table and leaned against the wall, an apple in hand. "Ish visited. I was starting to think something happened."
"Still here," Ish said, appearing at the foot of Fluixon's bed. "Couldn't miss out on an interview with Flux, could I?" He smirked.
Thomas sighed in defeat. Fluixon furrowed his brows.
"What's up?" He asked tentatively.
The deity's grin widened. "What's it like so far?"
"What?" He looked down at the bandages. "I mean, it still hurts, if that's what you're asking."
Ish only smiled, as if he was talking to a toddler–or in this case, a lower being. "I think he meant about you turning," Thomas suggested, his eyes flitting to Ish. "Is that right?"
"Of course! I'm more than a bit curious, Flux: anything new yet? Any aches and pains? Mysterious urges?"
"What are you getting at? You'll have to get a bit more specific than that." Fluixon demanded. He mentally catalogued his injuries, trying to figure out what Ish would consider mysterious.
"You've heard the rumours about immortality," Thomas stated.
His gaze snapped to the brunette.
He definitely had.
There were rumours that Ish bestowed immortality on a chosen one from among the hundreds of people walking the two continents. There were whispers of people surviving when death was their only option, strange incidents scattered through time that began to build into theories, questions, and eventually rumours that there is something afoot beneath the surface.
"What about them," he prompted, beginning to grow irritated. He knew Ish had never introduced a totem of undying into the world. It was against the man's ethics: observing without interference. His gaze darted to the man watching them with an unreadable smile.
"Well, it wasn't a totem like most people thought. It was vampirism."
This gave him pause. "So, I'm a vampire."
"That you are." Thomas rejoined carefully. He toyed with the apple in his hands.
Fluixon stared at it, then at Thomas. "...Alright. That's wonderful. Pass me a golden apple."
Thomas blinked as he reached into the bowl... "You aren't going to question it?"
Fluixon sighed heavily. "If I seem delirious enough to you that you think a fairytale will convince me, then I'm clearly not awake enough to ask questions either."
He winced. "You don't believe me."
"I don't, sorry."
He turned the golden apple in his hands and took a small bite from it. It went down like adrenaline, making his heartbeat accelerate and his breaths deeper. He swallowed and turned to analyse the look on Thomas's face.
From the corner of his eye, he detected an almost imperceptible change flash across Ish's expression.
He snapped, "What, now you're going to tell me it's true, too?"
Ish folded his hands behind his back. "I wasn't going to say anything."
Thomas stared at him with a mix of exasperation and desperation. His fist clenched and unclenched: Thomas's most obvious tell when he was frustrated. Fluixon was starting to buy it.
He eyed them both suspiciously and then sighed. "Okay. Say I do believe you. What then? Will you tell me I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life sucking blood and cursing at the sun?"
Slowly: "You probably will."
"Oh."
He stared at his hands. The golden apple only had a bite taken out of it, but he already felt the effects of it in full swing. His blood rushed faster than it should. Now that he thought about it, the pains from when he woke up were slowly fading to an ache he could almost ignore. That had never happened before, either.
If this was true, what would it mean for the future? Will he be confined to lurk the shadows, only free at night? The threat of the Alliance still loomed over him. There stood a whole world that wanted him dead, and here he was, alive. Will he be able to escape like this? Will he be forced to live in isolation, on the run until everybody forgets him, or will he be caught, and locked in a cell for all of eternity being tortured and healed?
Or is this a good thing?
Maybe he would get his chance to fix everything when the dust settled. Maybe the world could still find salvation.
Maybe—
He must have fallen silent, because Thomas spoke again. "It doesn't have to be a permanent thing, if you want. If you transfer the curse to someone else quick enough, you can live without the consequences as a normal person. It can only affect one person at a time."
In other words, if he transferred it to someone, he had a whole immortal being to worry about.
"No." He said decisively.
"Sir?" Thomas raised his brows.
He forced himself to sit upright, propping himself up exactly the same way he'd attempted, only it no longer hurt too much to bear. "No," he repeated. "I'll keep this... curse."
He smirked. "Who knows? It might give us an unexpected advantage."
Thomas grinned, folding his arms. "Alright."
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ish disappear without a trace.
He was left to his devices as Thomas walked out muttering about livestock. Standing up, he spotted his clothes on the adjacent bed. By the looks of it. Thomas had cleaned the bloodstained to the best of his abilities, though the crisp white was now dulled into something like ivory. He carried his coat folded over his arm as he looked around for a bathroom.
The room at first glance looked uncomfortably similar to a prison cell; only there were no bars to keep them from walking out the door in the adjacent wall, which was contrived of stone and exposed bricks rough to the touch. His bed consisted of a thin mattress on an iron frame, an exact replica of the others that lined the walls. It was this detail that caused him to realise he was in an infirmary.
He suppressed a wince. He normally wouldn’t be caught dead in such a dingy place, but his circumstances right now were anything but normal.
Directly beyond the door to the room was a staircase three paces ahead and two doors on either side. He found that the one to the left was the toilet (the other opened to a balcony) into which he locked himself after testing the shower and faucets.
The room was dim, lit by a single sea lantern that cast the room in a sickly green. He was mildly surprised to see himself in the mirror—he thought a major part of vampire lore was that they couldn’t see themselves in mirrors—but his pallid face was reflected back at him, nevertheless. His violet eyes stared back. They were laid in shadows as his skin betrayed the effects of his poor sleep for the past several weeks.
His eyes surveyed the bandages diligently wrapped and held together with a small clasp at his side.
He unravelled them and his breath hitched.
What he saw was unsightly.
It was the first time he had seen the full extent of the injury the battle caused him. They felt better from within, but outwardly they have evidently not fully healed yet.
He was surprised he survived at all.
He shouldn’t have.
As he stepped into the shower, the heaps of bandages lay on the floor discarded.
He felt much better after finally cleaning the grime off him. He wandered downstairs after donning his coat, slipping seamlessly into a façade of perfection. His body protested him with a throb that consumed like a tumour. He forced himself to walk with his full weight on his injured legs. The act came to him naturally—the payoff from dozen nights spent walking through corridors with his head held high even as the war etched fresh scars into his skin. Thomas had seen everything, sure, but there was no need of dragging out the melodrama of being in pain when he really wasn’t; especially when they had larger matters at hand.
Sparks crackled into living flame as Thomas struck a match. It was tilted carefully into an old lantern hat flickered aglow before he snuffed the match and placed it on the dusty stone island. The lantern cast a warm glow through the room.
Fluixon alighted down the stairs and scanned the room sharply. A sad excuse for weapons rack held up a simple iron axe by a small arch where there would have been a door. A few feet from that the crumbled remains of a window gazed out into the desolate land painted in failing sunlight. It presented more like a larger arch that happened to have a stack of bricks in the way. A quiver of arrows leaned against it, fully stocked. This house had clearly been through some griefing. He speculated that this had been done somewhere during the war.
“Healing well?” The secondary enquired without looking away from the bow he took in his hands.
“Where are we?” He peered outside at the lifeless stone plains.
“A coast to the east of the Covenant.” He acquiesced to the other’s lack of a response. “They’ll come this way soon.”
“How long was I out?” He drew out a wooden stool, warily examining a patch of mould at its legs before slowly taking a seat.
“Two weeks.” His hands moved carefully to unstring the bow. “At least, that’s what Ish told me. I’m sure I slept for like half of that after I dragged us here.” He yawned; “But I’m still tired.”
“I am too, but we can’t rest yet. Did Ish tell you anything about Westhelm’s movements after the colosseum?”
“They’re issuing a nationwide search. Saparata’s leading the hunt.”
“Now, that,” he muttered under his breath, “is a problem.”
Westhelm was a large enough threat without that white boy calling the shots. Even if Fluixon outlived this war, Saparata would not forget him after everything he’s done to him. He would hunt him down personally, regardless of whether the world backed him up on it. He would make his life a living hell.
“Should we kill him?” Thomas prompted.
“It’s tempting,” he agreed, then contemplated it. “But it’s not possible while the whole world’s watching him. He’s hunting us. His death will basically confirm we’re still alive.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “We just have to keep hiding out until the dust settles.”
Thomas hummed in agreement, pulling out a new string for his bow. Fluixon wasn’t particularly disturbed by his silence. It let him organise his thoughts. Thomas’s input was sparse, giving Fluixon optimal opportunities for him to go through his options out loud.
“And if they find us?”
It was not asked out of anxiety, but rather to ensure he didn’t tunnel vision on one possible outcome.
“They won’t,” he said decisively. “We’ll keep watch, so we have time to escape.”
Their discussion went as such for a while longer. Thomas updated him on everything he learnt from Ish, and Fluixon adjusted his schemes in turn. Their conversation then shifted to supplies. They were in the middle of debating where to acquire a map when Fluixon’s stomach growled.
“God,” Thomas chuckled drily.
“What the hell?” He cried indignantly. “I just ate!”
“It’s the curse,” he said with a shrug. “It changes how food goes down.”
“And why do you know that?” He snapped.
Thomas raised his brows. “Micro told me?”
“You’re telling me Micro was the vampire before me?”
“No. Well, not the one who gave you the curse. He just happened to have it for a while.”
Fluixon was too exasperated to point out how suspicious that response was.
“So, I assume we need a supply of blood soon?”
“I’m working on it.” He glanced outside. “Once I find some animals you’ll be set, but nothing sane lives on Yggdrasil.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I took yours, right?”
Thomas choked. “Yeah—you can—!” Then the coughing dissolved into something that sounded a bit like laughter before he forced himself to stop.
He furrowed his brows. “Only in emergencies, though,” he added quickly.
The other nodded, still grinning slightly as if he’s told the funniest joke in the world.
He stared into his soul, trying to piece together whatever was happening. Thomas quickly averted his gaze to look innocently at the darkness. Fluixon cursed his unfaltering poker face.
It abruptly shifted, his brows knitting as he squinted at the void outside. “What is that?”
Fluixon followed his gaze. Something glowing pierced through the darkness almost half a kilometre away.
His voice fell. He spoke without looking away: “Turn off the light.”
The warm light disappeared behind him as he took a step forwards, fixated on the small white figure. It glided slowly over the land without betraying a single motion. The apparition glowed hauntingly, only illuminating itself and a small circle on the ground beneath it.
Framed by the destroyed window, he stopped and looked behind him. Fluixon saw only half of a face. The other was obscured by a small white wing attached to his head. He was dressed entirely in white with the rare flash of golden embellishments that matched the laurel wreath weaved into his white hair. There was not a single drop of blood on him, like the fight in the colosseum never happened.
His voice wavered uncharacteristically as he murmured; “it’s Saps.”