Archive of Our Own ^beta

This place was a fever dream.

Zenos had had a fever, once, when he was twelve. He'd called out for his father - begged, cried, pleaded - for three days, according to the medical report he'd read afterwards. Most uncharacteristic. Varis yae Galvus had, of course, been two continents away overseeing a military intervention at the time. As far as Zenos could ascertain, he didn't know his son was sick, even upon his return.

His boots crunched faux bone with every footstep towards the Iron Womb.

There was nothing of Varis zos Galvus here. The creature that resided here was a mere representation. Fandaniel had asked him to think of his father. And so he had. Unflinchingly. No glorious emperor rested here. No proud son of Garlemald. No father of his.

Just a sad monster. Born in chains. Pain bound by pain begetting pain. Senseless and nauseating and endless. And Zenos had no cause to flinch from it - after all, he'd grown up with it. All Fandaniel's little ritual had done had made it literal.

He regarded the slumbering beast.

"Hello, Father," he said.

It woke and shuddered and screeched. Blue flame burst from its maw and filled the room - Zenos, unaffected, waited until the tantrum was over. Father had ever been like this. Responding to unwanted things by trying to control them.

It never did work.

"Dignity, Father." He looks at the creature. Their roles reversed like this, him being the one to scold this petty creature... he can't see the appeal.

No. There's nothing to be gained or lost here. One may as well throw onesself into the hedonism of it all. His father never understood that - never understood him. Intellectually, aside from anything else. Father was never very bright.

He approached it.

The hands around its neck let go of their prize and began instead to clamour for the living option. They represented the will of the Garlean people - blind and grabbing and pulling Varis zos Galvus to his doom, weighing him down with more duty and neediness than any man could stomach. They'd do the same to Zenos if he let them. They'd tried. But just like now, their weak grasps slid off his determined stride as he climbed the primal's form. They only had power over Varis because Varis let them.

One of the disembodied arms didn't release its grip on Anima's neck. It tightened it, clinging to the spiked chain it held so tight that it should have made itself bleed. It, Zenos knew, wanted no part in the mortal debauchery it was about to witness. It had, when the person it represented was alive and hadn't - by Fandaniel's claim - been thrust through the chest by the Warrior's Light, wanted Varis' whole existence dedicated to one purpose and one purpose only. Rejoinings.

Petty sophistry. Pointless. Emet-Selch had taught Zenos the folly of violence in service; of killing in the name. Far greater atrocities came about to no end whatsoever when the creature committing them was convinced of his own inviolate righteousness. He sneered at the arm shying away from his presence as he summited the primal's chest, standing atop its shoulder. Emet-Selch would hate this. Not what he was about to do, even - just the thought that Varis zos Galvus was capable of emotions, of worth, outside his stupid apocalypse game.

This wasn't Varis. But there was no point in pretending it didn't represent him to Zenos. That was how it had been summoned, after all.

He shed his trousers, maintaining gaze with the single yellow eye. It looked so much like Father's.

He didn't flinch, even as his stomach turned. This was part of it.

"You won't harm me," he stated. Its teeth were blunt like a person's. He was in no more danger as he lowered his legs into its mouth than he would be pressing his fingers into Fandaniel's. All bark, no bite. The inside of it was cold (was anything about Varis ever warm? Zenos was certain he'd been conceived with the aid of a cloning machine) and smooth on his thighs, on his member, as he put his ankles behind the fangs - not that it had a throat which he was aware of, but it would be a pain to have to explain to Fandaniel why he'd cut his way out of their carefully prepared primal.

It keened and he felt the vibrations through his whole lower body. The pure mechanical stimulation began to stir his member to life - the inside of its maw felt like viscera, lukewarm and complex. Bone here and there, improbable and unsettling. A quickened breath passed his lips and he analysed the emotion behind it. Disgust and... something else. He rocked his hips and the monster made another sound. Like a man gurgling on his lungs; choking on a sword. Zenos' cheek twitched. Disgust and... and...

The emotion was gone before he could pursue it further. Hm. Disappointing. He had hoped something so blatantly blasphemous to everything most men considered decent would--

Something at the back of his thigh. Another creature? No... part of this one. He twisted to make sure one of the grasping hands hadn't found a way through the neck flesh, but no. They were too preoccupied turning his discarded trousers over like they might hold the answer. Whatever it was - some kind of... tongue - pressed between Zenos' thighs and--

"--ah!"

It was lukewarm and wet and it pressed into him a little too fast. Sharp pain burst through Zenos and at least gave him something to focus on. He looked it in its eye and it was looking right back at him. Nausea swept through him and this time he got a chance to snatch at the feeling - disgust, hatred, and grief. Grief for what could have been, perhaps. What should have been. Not what was.

What was... was here. A man being fucked open on the tongue of the primal he summoned with his father's corpse and the twenty-six years of nightmares that went with it.

He didn't know how long he bathed in the sensations. The gnawing abrasion of the disgust roiling in his gut as the primal worked itself deeper, split with the bright agony and the thrumming arousal that brought with it. He didn't flinch from Anima's gaze once, even as the flesh inside seemed to mould itself to his form, intent on forcing an orgasm from him. As it had ever been. An exchange of intimacy only when it benefitted both parties - Varis got his war dog, Zenos his thrills, empty as they were. At least here he was guaranteed something--

Something stroked his cheek and he did flinch from that. He looked. It was a hand, but not one of the ones from below - not even like the corpse-purple one around its neck like a noose. It was formed out of the flesh inside of the maw, stuck there like one of the mad experiments downstairs, and it looked just like Varis zos Galvus' had in life, armour and all. Though to look at it, the plates were formed from chitin. Or bone, perhaps.

It hesitated. Then caressed Zenos' cheek.

A cold laugh came up from Zenos' throat along with bile. This primal was born from his nightmares. Did this represent something he hated, then? Or something he needed?

Maybe it was the same. He thought about the eikon-slayer. His foul, feral beast. His perfect mirror.

A cry ripped from his throat as the creature found a place inside him which fizzed with sensation. He felt his member leak hot against the flesh it was pressed into. The digits closed on his cheek, the thumb pressing past his lips-- all of a sudden it was happening too quickly for him to keep track of, and he tried to grab onto something to steady himself and get a grip but all there was were teeth. A human-sounding moan, and he was pretty sure it was his. His third eye tells him he's upright but he feels reclined, and more nausea rolls through him as the thumb-thing presses his tongue down, makes him choke, and all at once his pleasure swept up and over him like an ocean wave he could drown in, and just like an ocean wave it dumped him hard into the metaphorical seabed, and,

and,

and...

...

...

...

...his third eye told him he really was lying down this time. He was clean and dry and under bedclothes. Someone was humming an annoying tune.

"You really must be more careful, my lord," Fandaniel sang as he did fuck knows what over by the window.

Zenos grunted and turned over onto his side, away from him, but Fandaniel never took a hint.

"Why, I found you positively drained of aether in Anima's maw. Any more and you would surely have died!"

Zenos heaved a sigh.

"If it's playthings you want, then really. I've told you I can furnish you with them. You really need only ask. But, well... we're really only interested in that one,"

and Zenos did not like the tone Fandaniel took one little bit, and he sat up to meet the fucking clown's gaze dead on, ilms from his face,

"special little someone..."

He touched the underside of Zenos' chin with a single forefinger and Zenos felt nothing.

"Aren't we?"

Hating.

Needing.

He saw it in Fandaniel's eyes too.

He just hoped Fandaniel knew that if their target was the same, then Zenos was going to get there first.