Chapter Text
Phainon—no, Khaslana, he needed to be Khaslana again—came to gasping, the twilight of the land on the very edge of Evernight an eternal, hazy purple. He choked around the pain of the newly inherited coreflames, the searing heat he could already tell threatened to rip him apart only hours after assimilating them. He knew, due to the infinitely, unfathomably endless well of memories that it wouldn’t take more than two weeks before his body began to break down this far into the recursion. He could handle the pain, though. The memories were so much worse.
Titans. Titans. What had he done? Was this the true weight of his mission? He’d thought he’d understood, vowing to be the villain and tear apart those he loved to save them in the end. At the edges of his awareness, he could recall millions upon millions of times he had taken his sword to those he loved, again and again and again, cutting them down as quickly and painlessly as he could manage but never faltering. Titans, how long would it take for the coreflames to leech his feelings away like they had for every Khaslana before him? As much as it was disgusting to imagine, he feared he would welcome the distance now. Perhaps, despite the ancient whispers of companions past, it was for the best. No one could bear this weight without numbness.
He knew in a detached way that every version of him tried to make the ending of cycles as efficient and painless as possible for all involved. Hunting the Flame Chasers one by one, taking their coreflames, and striving for the end. But it didn’t always work out that way, no matter his eons of existence.
Freshly reset, he clearly had both sides of the last cycle’s end forefront in his mind. The way Lady Tribbie had screamed as she was thrown against the jagged spears of Mydei’s crystals, Aglea’s blank eyes as she lay in a bloody heap, her final bath a pool of both her and Cipher’s blood. Khaslana tried to avoid group conflicts like that, his memories whispered, because they were inevitably more brutal. Messier. More heartbreaking. It was easier for all involved if Phainon never had to see the proof of his friends’ deaths before the chaos of recursion blunted the information. The process of assimilating all that information was always dangerous for his self control, but that was the whole point of the false Aedes Elysiae he retreated to between cycles.
Distantly, he could also feel the knowledge that the numbness would set in soon, a day or two at most, but the first few weeks of any cycle were the worst, especially after a more emotionally fraught ending. That he shouldn’t have left the null space out of time before coming to grips with it all. Khaslana could feel tears wetting his cheeks as he gasped again, trying not to recall the feeling of Mydei’s blood soaking his clothes, his skin, as he futilely worked to force him stay despite the damage done to his spine. He’d seen Mydei die dozens of times even just in the life he left. But at the end of the world, the corpses of his friends surrounding them, hot blood pouring between his fingers, and knowing bone deep that this was not a death his husband could ever hope to come back from… it was so much worse than he could imagine.
He had the memories of millions of years at that man’s side now, infinite deaths both witnessed and executed himself. None approached the raw feeling of going from begging his lover to live to gaining the memories of having been the one to kill him, even if it too had happened again and again and again.
The cruelty of his duty made it hard to breathe. He choked on his sobs and curled in on himself amongst the grass of wherever Time had left him this cycle. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He was aware it was supposed to be a driven choice of his own where he arrived after a reset. He’d not bothered with the early years of the Flame Chase for millions of years, not since he stopped trying to participate. More often than not, he left the edge of nowhere that so resembled Aedes Elysiae once he had a modicum of stability and stepped straight into the Black Tide taking his village, explained the situation to Cyrene, took her coreflame, then all but hibernated until the end of days were approaching. He could get all the past demigods’ cores from the vortex in the end. He knew those who would survive to need to be defeated personally.
He wished he could simply close his eyes and sleep until the white-hot iciness of divinity sapped away his ability to feel, gripping at his hair and trying to bring himself under control. He could not break. He had not broken the first time he needed to kill those he loved, nor the hundredth or thousandth or millionth. He could survive now. He had to endure. There was no option.
“Deliverer?”
The voice made him jackknife upward, horror and terror and confusion and agony ripping through him. The parts of him that had assimilated to his long, long duty stilled in shock to realize they were very, very late in the cycle for Phainon to be recognized. The rest of him stared in abject panic at Mydeimos, standing tall and proud and whole before him, brow twisted into a perplexed frown. Dizziness seized him as his stalled breath came back only for the world to narrow as he choked out panicked, wheezing gasps for air.
Khaslana hadn’t confronted any of his friends as himself in epochs. Even for one as stubborn as he, twenty million iterations was enough to wear him down. Assassination was easier than negotiation that always, always resulted in having to fight those he loved anyway. By the time those he loved best were to be tracked down, he was long since deteriorated and masked. Being seen, being recognized at all was already pulling him apart the seams, but even more so seeing Mydei so soon after he had been desperately feeling hot blood pour between his fingers was enough to shatter him even through the suffocating burn of divinity.
He couldn’t breathe. His gasps turned soundless as his chest heaved futilely, vision blurring with tears and lack of oxygen.
Strong, warm arms seized him, fingers twining in his hair to tilt his face upward as Mydei crouched before him. He couldn’t hear what was said, but when one of Khaslana’s hands were seized and pressed firmly against Mydei’s chest to feel him take a huge, exaggerated breath, he obeyed as he had a million times before when faced with this man.
“Slower,” he heard muzzily over the ringing in his ears, and he tried his best to do so.
In eternal twilight, his mind a mess of assimilation of millions of years of memory, drowning in the consuming rage at this awful, hopeless situation, with the warmth of the love of his cruelly endless life pressed near, he fought to regain control. He had no idea how long it took. He only knew that eventually he found himself with his face burrowed into Mydeimos’s neck as he sobbed, gripping him close for all he was worth. “I’m sorry,” he chanted. “I love you, I’m sorry.”
Eventually he calmed enough to be embarrassed by his behavior and terrified of the consequences. He pulled away and cleared his throat, unable to meet the piercing gaze he could feel drilling into his head. “Sorry,” he said once more, muted, as he fought not to wrap his arms around himself.
The silence stretched before Mydei finally broke. “What the fuck, Deliverer? Not only should you be nowhere near here, but what the hell happened to you?”
Reflexively, his eyes snapped up at the harsh growl in his lover’s voice only to be pinned by intent, burning eyes. “A-Ah, well—”
Mydei’s arms were over his chest, his gauntlet wrapped tight enough around his elbow that Khaslana fears he was puncturing his own skin. He needed an exit strategy. He never should have been seen by another of the Chrysos Heirs if he wasn’t prepared to explain it all, and most especially not this one. Mydei knew him better than anyone, his every tell; only Mnestia’s threads would be more dangerous.
Unfortunately, his thoughts must have shown on his face, as Mydei’s scowl became truly thunderous. “You twitch like you’re going anywhere, HKS, and I’ll make you regret it. You’re acting suspicious as hell right now and it is unacceptable. I will drag you with me if I have to.”
Grief welled in his throat once more as he raised his palms, trying to plaster on a smile. Be normal. There was nothing to see here. “Now, love, you know what Aglea says about our methods of conflict resolution. If you drag me back to the city by the hair again she’s going to follow up on her threat about marriage counselling and—”
He halted at the wide-eyed, twisted expression that overtook Mydei’s face. His brain instantly caught up with him. This was such a fond, old argument that he’d responded automatically. But Khaslana had no idea where in the happy years between meeting Mydei and him taking on the coreflame he was.
His hands fell, grimace on his face. “Ah. We’re not married yet, are we?”
A dark flush was overtaking his lover’s cheekbones. “Who would marry you?” he snapped, taking a stumbling step backwards that Khaslana knew he would never admit to.
“Well, you, obviously.” He shook his head to dismiss yet another fond argument. Fuck. Damage control time. “I’ve been struck in the head, I’m talking nonsense, please ignore me and pretend this conversation never happened. In fact, we should go our separate ways at once and forget all of this entirely.” Khaslana took a small step backwards, eyes flicking around to see if there was any direction that seemed a more likely direction to run, when his collar was seized in a harsh grip.
“Who the hell are you?”
The rage on Mydei’s face was familiar, if not magnified. Khaslana raised his hands again, slowly, and tried to quickly go through his options. He was in no state to fight. He was emotionally compromised in the worst way right now and even if he was prepared to kill his husband (which he absolutely was not), he didn’t feel the coreflame of Strife on him yet at all. He knew how much it came to mean to Mydei to inherit Strife. He never took that away from him if he could help it. But escape with a suspicious and wrathful Mydei on his heels was unlikely to work out well. Sure, he could get away. He had skills and experience that Mydei couldn’t hope to match. He could open a Century Gate right now and be through it before the shock wore off. But Mydei would make it his mission to track him down, likely even alerting the others, and making this cycle into a messy, heart-rending spectacle right on the heels of another.
“Do you really wish me to answer that, Mydeimos? Even if the answers you seek are ones you will never be able to unlearn, that will shake the very foundations of the world you stand up on?” He could see the way Mydei jerked at the sudden dip of Khaslana’s voice, the blank eyes of his eyes, the inevitability of this moment leeching him of all attempts to sound like the Phainon he knew.
“There is no word in the Kremenoan language for fear—”
“But there is one for devastation. I can spare you that, my love, if you forget you ever saw me and let this cycle go on as millions before it have.”
“Who. Are. You.” Mydei’s face was resolute. He would regret it, Khaslana knew, but would soldier on nonetheless. Of anyone, Mydei was the only person who could even come close to his level of stubborn resolve.
“My name is Khaslana. I am the man you know as Phainon of Aedes Elysiae, and I am here to stall a great calamity the likes of which I cannot even begin to fathom.” He explained in short, curt sentences that explained just enough facts to let him draw his own conclusions. He knew this was how Mydei preferred it.
He looked away towards the faint light of the Dawn Device. “At the end of every Flame Chase journey, Phainon of Aedes Elysiae is confronted with the truth of this world. And every single Phainon agrees to take over that burden, taking the memories and accumulated coreflames of all the cycles before, and rewind the world anew to start again. As the villain who must again gather all twelve coreflames and again pass on that knowledge to repeat it yet again.”
“How—” Mydei stopped and cleared his throat roughly. In his dilated pupils and quivering jaw, Khaslana read his terror. “How long?”
“This is the 29,000,351st cycle. I have weeks at best before my body turns into a shell, and a day or two at most before I can feel nothing at all under the weight of those memories. I… did not mean to appear suddenly, this late in the journey. Generally I start much earlier and have long since stopped showing myself.”
“You were in the middle of a breakdown when I came up on you.” Mydei’s matter of fact tone was at odds with the way the fingers still clenched in Khaslana’s collar shook. “How is that feeling nothing?”
Khaslana put on his best Phainon smile, knowing it was stilted and wrong. “When one watches their friends die, is soaked in the blood of the one he loves, and then gains the memory of those murders at his own hand, I fear it does not lend to a kind transition. It was a bad cycle. I’ll endeavor to make this one cleaner.”
The horror on Mydei’s face was more emotion than he ever showed outside of battle or sex. Khaslana didn’t get to decide whether to admire the rare moment or try to soothe him before he was tugged in close and made to press his face back into Mydeimos’s neck. He didn’t fight it; even if only for a moment, he was happy to indulge. The end of every Flame Chase saw Mydei working to hold back the Black Tide, so they never got much time together in the last year of each cycle. The scent of his husband, the overbearing warmth of him, made it easy for Khaslana’s spine to go limp as he wrapped his arms around his waist.
It was silent for a long time, Mydei’s breath harsh but even against his ear. Khaslana relished in it. But the moment was broken as Mydei went stiff. Khaslana leaned back to see him staring at him with something like shock only to realize he’d unconsciously traced up his husband’s back to find and cover his weak spot. Khaslana huffed out a humorless laugh. “Did you not consider that I’d know, my love?”
Through the shock, Mydei’s ears and cheeks darkened. “Stop calling me that, HKS,” he hissed.
Ignoring him, he pressed his fingers against that small dip of separation between vertebrae. Tenderly, he tipped forward to rest against Mydei’s forehead. “You know, I have more memories of killing you than watching you be killed. It took me many cycles to need to start merging with my more innocent, idealistic self to continue on, so there are a million cycles where I was simply the villain rather than both. It took many fewer cycles for me to become so cold that none of you would just entrust me with the coreflames any longer, necessitating that I take them by force. But none of that can overshadow the millions and millions of years I have of loving you.”
Mydeimos’s face burned brighter. Khaslana smiled more truly now as he idly tucked a bit of hair behind Mydei’s ear. “You’re being so shy,” he dodged the hand that immediately moved to punch him. “Are we not even together yet, love? Depending on a thousand small things, it can take a while before we break. I can hardly recall a dozen lives where we did not, though those had extenuating circumstances.”
“As if I’d lower myself—”
He laughed, startling himself at how fond and soft and real it felt. “You forget I have the memories of millions of lives where I know you fumbled your way through trying to court me without saying anything within weeks of our duel. I was and remain an idiot, so you should just kiss me already. It works best.”
Visibly restraining himself from being provoked, Mydei’s eyes cut away. “How do you survive with so many memories? With so much divinity, if I understand correctly?”
“Because I will not let a single one of the deaths of those I love be in vain. If I must endure thirty million more cycles, I shall see us through this nightmare. It is a stall tactic. I will likely burn myself to ash by the end. But I swear to you, I will not go softly into the night. I will endure for the sake of our future until help arrives, even if it means you all will despise me until the end of time.”
“Idiot,” Mydei rasped, once again yanking Khaslana into an embrace. Despite the slow encroachment of frigid emptiness already toying at the edges of his heart, Khaslana let himself weep, just for a moment. He wept for the frustration and rage that was steadily consuming him. He wept for the unfairness of this false world. But most of all, he wept to imprint his adoration for the man that held him into the deepest cracks in his heart, Mydei’s arms so tight around him that it was crushing, warmth and life radiating from him.
“You are stronger than any warrior I have ever known,” Mydei said, rough and sincere. “Never give up. Don’t you dare falter. We will never hate you for bearing us on your shoulders as you do. If you say this is the way it must be, I trust in you to carry us onward.”
This. This was why he endured.
Without being asked, Mydei stayed with him for the next two days while the tsunami of years engulfed his heart.
“Spar with me,” he demanded for the fiftieth time as they walked along the dark, Evernight coast.
“No,” Khaslana repeated yet again.
“Come now, Deliverer, surely you’ve not gone this soft.”
Despite the icy blankness that was slowly numbing his mind and heart, rage was always the easiest emotion for him. With a scowl that made Mydei’s eyes widen, Khaslana pressed a hand to his chest and forced himself to transform, keeping his eyes on his husband even as he pointed towards an ancient, crumbling Temple of Phagousa that was far up the beach. He could feel the Titankin overrunning it.
After a long, silent bout of staring, Khaslana tipped his chin to indicate where he pointed. Once Mydei turned his attention to it, he flicked his pointing finger. He had enough control to keep the devastation to only the abandoned temple, but the shockwave of the meteor’s impact ruffled his wings and made Mydei brace.
Slowly, golden eyes traced back to him, gaze stalling on his cracked open chest glowing with the combined divinity of his coreflames before darting between his wings and eyes. Khaslana forcibly tucked his rage deep inside him and sunk back onto his feet as he wrapped himself in mortality once more.
“My body contains 348,004,212 coreflames. I cannot even begin to imagine regulating that much power to be nonlethal. Even if I wasn’t traumatized by the mere idea of hurting you, I do not trust myself not to.”
“Do you think me weak, Deliverer?” Mydei’s scowl was dark and so familiar. “You dare look down on me?”
Khaslana exhaled and closed his eyes, trying not to sink into blankness. Mydeimos would not take that well. “Never, my love. But you are still mortal, Undying or not. If your body is obliterated, not even Castorice could ferry you back. I have to live with the weight of killing you over and over and over again. Do not make me add to that unnecessarily. Once you have taken up your destined mantle, I will give you the fight you want. But not before. Please, Mydei, not before.”
The continued their quiet walk, and Khaslana knew that the unfathomable emptiness was encroaching. By morning, he hoped he could convince Mydei to go back to whatever mission he had been on and leave Khaslana to crumble physically as he hardened emotionally.
They eventually stopped and made a slapdash camp. Mydeimos still needed to eat and sleep, for all his resolute stubbornness. Khaslana cherished a few last, quiet moments of his face in the firelight, tucking away his adoration into the sliver of humanity he retained.
Mydei approached quietly, eyes on Khaslana’s neck. He idly raised a hand and felt there, nodding as he felt a branching fracture in his skin creeping towards his choker. Ah, his little display had hastened things, then. “It’s no matter,” he said softly to the concerned pinch of his husband’s brow. “I will lose the ability to care before enough of me flakes away to be an issue. I know where to find coverings to hide it.”
Sitting heavily beside him, Mydei’s fingers trailed along the warm, crumbling skin. “It matters,” he said, softly and simply and without elaboration.
“I’ll be held together by spite alone, then start anew. It is just how these cycles go.” Discomfited, Mydei looked away with a sigh. It was impossible to know the hour without a teleslate, but the heavy set to Mydei’s shoulders and the droop to his sharp eyes told Khaslana all he needed to know. He settled back and on his hands, gaze up into the darkness. “Sleep, Mydeimos. I can keep watch. I only bother sleeping to pass time, so it is the best choice.”
After a quiet pause he could sense Mydei moving around their makeshift campsite. The hardships of his life left him unwilling to give up on small comforts when he could; Mydei was habitual in his nightly routine to his hair, his teeth. It wasn’t any sort of vanity, just an appreciation for being in a position to care.
Khaslana found himself surprised by one of his companions for the first time in… titans, he wasn’t even sure how many millions of years. His entire body flinched as his head jerked down to find messy blonde hair covering Mydei’s expression as he rested his cheek on Khaslana’s thigh.
“Mydei?”
With a visible sigh and no other physical reaction, Mydei snorted. His nonchalance might have been convincing if not for the redness of his exposed ear. “Easiest way to make sure you don’t disappear before I wake up, Deliverer. Now shut up and let me sleep.”
With a sharp pang that raced through the emptiness in his heart, Khaslana threaded his fingers through the familiar, red-tipped strands and smiled. “Sweet dreams, my love.”
Hours later, despite his husband’s attempts at subverting him, Khaslana crouched beside him and traced a simple farewell in the dirt beside the remains of the campfire. On a whim, dredged from the tiny spark of humanity he still held, he added a small heart beneath before he forced himself away without glancing back. He would keep watch at a distance until Mydei awoke and then disappear until he was needed once more.
‘May you ever triumph, Mydeimos. Until the end of the world.’