Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mydei knew there had been a change in his Deliverer. That much was easy to see, from just his face alone, not even taking into account his actions and words. Or, lack of actions and words.

It had been just a day since that interaction up on the roof, when he was certain that he was going to head up there, guided by the jewels sewn into Phainon’s clothes, and encounter another futile and childish fight on his Deliverer’s part that he would have to correct.

He hadn’t been expecting what had actually occurred.

And now, he was… cautiously optimistic.

Part of him was disappointed. He had thought his Deliverer was stronger than that, to crack within the first month and a half.

He supposed it made sense then, why his Deliverer had never won against him.

“Mydeimos.”

Right. He should be paying attention.

Blinking rapidly, he lifted his head from where it had drifted, eyes staring blankly down at the documents he wasn’t reading, and gazed up at Krateros, who was giving him an inscrutable look.

“Sorry, what?” He asked, lifting his chin off of his hand, and Krateros’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Distracted?” The man questioned and Mydei shook his head. He got up from behind his desk, walking around the structure to instead lean on the side of it.

He barely used his office anymore, preferring his desk in his room with his Deliverer, but he hadn’t been feeling the Throne Room today and had left his Deliverer to finish figuring out whatever was going through his head. He was planning to head back to him soon anyway-

And he was getting distracted again.

“I don’t mean to be,” he replied with a rueful smile and Krateros huffed, slightly amused. The man crossed his arms and Mydei leaned forward slightly. “You had news.”

“Yes.” Krateros nodded, eyes looking off to the side for a moment before he looked back at Mydei. “Another of our supply trains was attacked. Chrysos Heirs.”

And there went Mydei’s good mood.

“Of course,” he grumbled, leaning on his desk and staring down at the papers sitting perpendicular to his eyeline. They were damage reports of the very situation Krateros was talking about. “They just don’t know when to give up.” The only positive he got from those reports, whenever they came in, was that it seemed he had permanently, at least so far, scared off that damned scholar from coming onto the battlefield. No doubt part of that was recovery, Mydei had broken his arm and certainly his ribs, but there was also a part of him that knew it had to be fear as well.

Nothing more could have come from that fight between the two of them, when the scholar thoroughly lost and had nearly been captured. Mydei doubted he would be seeing him for a while until it was absolutely necessary. Or if he found them first.

“I don’t mean to overstep,” Krateros started and Mydei raised his head to look over at the man. “But have you not pressed your Consort for the location of the others? Our interrogations of the others have yielded nothing, we’re starting to believe some of them don’t even know, but you certainly have more… leverage over your conquest.”

Mydei made a face.

He had certainly tried. But his Deliverer had been frustratingly tight lipped to his prodding and bargaining and when he had gotten close with that game of questions, his Deliverer had managed to outsmart him. Infuriating in the moment, cute in hindsight, but leaving him with still no information. And he wouldn’t torture him for it; he wasn’t his father.

“I’ve tried,” he groused, grinding his teeth slightly. “But he’s been very contra-.”

He paused.

The day prior’s events flashed through his brain.

His Deliverer, asking him if he loved him.

His Deliverer, calm and compliant when Mydei fed him.

His Deliverer, answering with no coercion at all that he was Mydei’s.

His Deliverer… who seemed to have finally accepted his rightful place in the world.

Hmmm. If whatever mood seemed to befall him the day prior stuck around…

“Mydeimos?” Krateros prodded, confusion in his tone, and Mydei pushed himself off his desk, rising to his full height. Whatever Krateros saw in his gaze was enough to make him relax, a small smile curling up his face. He could clearly tell that Mydei had a plan.

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Mydei said and then left the office.

He had a Deliverer to talk to.

He was barely aware of the walk back to his room, too wrapped up in the possibilities that went through his head. If his Deliverer truly had the information they had been seeking, which he was positive Phainon did, then this could solve almost all of their problems.

He would just need to get it out of his Deliverer.

Mydei nearly slammed the door open in his haste to get it, eyes already focusing on his Deliverer still curled up in the bed where he had been when Mydei had left that morning, and he didn’t even have a minute to think about how strange it was that he was still there, before he was crossing the room, hand coming out and grasping Phainon by the chin, pulling his face up to look at him.

“Deliverer,” he purred, mind starting to get distracted in an instant by his Deliverer just existing, and Phainon stared up at him, seemingly uncaring of the way that Mydei had just blown into the room. “I have a question for you. Will you answer it?” He leaned closer, watching the way Phainon’s eyes flicked around the room quickly before focusing back on him, and he decided to sit on the bed next to Phainon, pulling him quickly into his embrace.

He had missed him, after all.

Phainon cleared his throat, sounding shaky, and Mydei cuddled him closer. “Any-Anything you want,” he whispered and Mydei wanted to devour him right then and there, but he had to focus.

Still, he rewarded his Deliverer by tucking them closer together, slipping one hand beneath Phainon’s shirt and rubbing his side soothingly.

“Then tell me, Deliverer,” he murmured and Phainon shifted, tipping his head up to face Mydei. Mydei smiled, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Where are the Chrysos Heirs hiding?”

And everything seemed to pause for a second.

Phainon went stiff, eyes going wide, and Mydei reflexively tightened his hold on his Deliverer, ready for the man’s stubborn fight instincts to come roaring back. He truly didn’t understand his Deliverer’s attachment to the other Chrysos Heirs. None of them could match him except maybe the Goldweaver and the tyrant he now had in Castrum Kremnos’s Arena, and yet, he still fought with them all the same. None of them were from the same place as him, he hadn’t heard any of Aedes Elysiae’s language from them, and yet, he still saw all of them as family. None of them had attempted to rescue him back when Okhema had fallen, and yet, he would seemingly do anything he could for the ones threatened at the end of the knife.

He didn’t understand.

“Mydei-,” Phainon started, twisting a little in his grip that really spoke of instinctive actions instead of purposeful ones, and Mydei let his hand drift up to instead rest on his Deliverer’s throat, pressing him back firmly into Mydei’s chest. Phainon whimpered, jaw working, and Mydei pressed another kiss to the top of his head this time.

“Where are they, Deliverer?” He asked again, feeling the minute trembling of his Deliverer beneath his hands, but the man didn’t attempt to pull away in any capacity, further proving Mydei’s theory that whatever change that had happened the day prior was truly permanent.

Something that made him smile.

His Deliverer’s breathing hitched again, sounding like a mix between a sob and a choked inhale. Mydei was willing to wait. He knew his Deliverer knew, it was just a competition of who could wait the longest.

He was willing to wait however long it took

And then…

“There are tunnels beneath Okhema,” Phainon whispered lowly, eyes staring at nothing and hands working uselessly in his lap. “I suspect… they never left.”

Mydei’s smile curled up his whole face and he tucked his Deliverer into his chest, nuzzling the side of his face.

“Thank you, Deliverer,” he murmured and pulled his face back, cheeks wet with Phainon’s tears.

~

Once he had ruminated on it for a few hours as he started to organize the mission, the fact that the Chrysos Heir had been in Okhema this whole time was infuriating.

They had searched the ruins, had gone over them with a fine-toothed comb, bringing any civilians they found to Castrum Kremnos and looking for any records or possessions of the Chrysos Heirs. It had been nearly two weeks, going over the same area again and again, he had even been there for a few days during his first stint out since winning his Deliverer, when his father was still king, that he finally called off the search, because at that point, they had just been turning over the same stones again and again and just getting in each other’s way.

And the Chrysos Heirs had been beneath them the whole time.

It was enough to make his teeth grind.

“Are you sure the information is correct?” Krateros asked, standing behind him as Mydei looked out over the courtyard from the balcony, watching as the troops started to form up. Usually, a mission like this would take days to plan, especially with no prior knowledge that it was going to happen, but Mydei had made many changes once he had become king. Ramping up the military and their response time had just been one of them.

Honestly, the more he learned about how his father had run their city-state, the angrier he got. It was like Eurypon had wanted them to never win the war.

“It’s legit,” Mydei responded, looking over his shoulder partway for a quick second before looking back down. With the way things were shaping up, it would only be an hour or two more before they could move out and then two days to Okhema.

He could stand to wait that long, as much as he wanted to paint his hands with golden blood.

He was patient, after all.

“Your Consort might have lied to protect his friends,” Krateros started to caution but Mydei shook his head sharply once and the older man fell silent.

“He’s not.” Mydei’s hands tightened on the balcony edge for a quick moment before he released it. “I know he’s not.”

He was prepared to continue arguing, he was never going to be the type of king that his father was who just shut down arguments he didn’t want to have, but it seemed Krateros decided to trust him. “Very well,” the older man said. “I’m going with you though, right?”

Mydei turned back to face him with a smirk. Krateros had been in this fight for longer than he had been after all, and if anyone deserved to see the end of this war that had taken so much from them, Mydei’s mother included because his father would not have done what he did had he not gotten drunk off the power of the war, it was Krateros.

“Of course.”

He looked back out over the city, raising his eyes to stare at the wall and imagining the many miles of distance between them and the ruins of Okhema, under which held the Chrysos Heirs, scurrying around like rats.

He would have to be sure to bring his Deliverer back a… souvenir.

~

The ruins of Okhema looked just as they had been when Mydei had last seen them, walking away from them for a second time, heading back to Castrum Kremnos and to where his Deliverer waited for him.

Crumbled stone walls bordered the outside of the whole thing, shattered into millions of small pieces by Nikador’s divine lance. Buildings were each in different stages of deconstruction, some as crumbled as the walls while others mostly stood aside from a chunk here or there. The gold that used to inlay the walls and ground was smudged and stained, gritty with dirt and dust. Foliage had already started to retake the land, small shoots sprouting up from cracks in the ground and fed by the fertilizer of dead bodies.

Mydei’d had his soldiers burn all the dead after the destruction of the place, but even ash made for very fertile ground.

He couldn’t help but smile as he surveyed it.

“Where are you planning to start?” Krateros asked him, the rest of the contingent fanning out behind them and starting to set up checkpoints and healer stations. Mydei was almost tempted to stop them, they weren’t going to be there long enough for them to matter, but found himself distracted.

In his head, memories of that night he destroyed Okhema danced in his head, his Deliverer’s final, desperate moments trying futilely to hold off the inevitable.

And the Chrysos Heirs, running into the…

“The remains of the palace,” he replied aloud, already starting in that direction and he heard Krateros start to issue orders from behind him. Technically, that was something he was supposed to be doing, but he didn’t mind Krateros’s actions.

The Titankins grumbled lowly as they walked over stones they themselves had smashed and Mydei knew at least a couple of the soldiers were sharing stories to the others that hadn’t been there of the day the Holy City fell. He was glad he had allowed such comradery to flourish.

In front of him, the bathhouse where the final battle had taken place stretched out, stone still stained a dull gold from the blood spilt there, and he found himself pausing again. He could almost see his Deliverer standing ten feet in front of him, defiant snarl on his face and sword at his back. So certain that he would never fall and find himself where he belonged in Mydei’s clutches.

How wrong he had been.

After all, his Deliverer now smiled at him, responding to every kiss, and his sword was the treasured centerpiece of Mydei’s collection, to be admired for as long as it lasted.

He had debated, in the beginning, giving it back to his Deliverer when they sparred after he had succumbed to Mydei’s wishes, but now he found himself shying away from that idea. He’d much rather have Phainon use a sword that Mydei had procured for him. Not the one that represented a point in time where he wasn’t safe in Mydei’s arms.

He took a couple more steps forward and stood over a familiar set of cobblestones.

Phainon, pinned beneath his blade as the lock got closer and closer to his chest.

Phainon, kneeling and restrained, watching as everything crumbled down around him like it was destined to.

Phainon, unconscious and in Mydei’s arms, ready to be taken to his new life.

Mydei’s lips twitched up into a smile.

Pulling himself out of the memories, he raised his gaze, remembering which direction the Chrysos Heirs had run in when they had retreated. He crossed the open space, past empty baths now coated with dust and no trace of their famous golden liquid. He eyed the area around him as he went, keeping a lookout for anything that might catch his attention. They had found nothing before, but now they knew there was something to find.

He stopped in front of the hallway, scrutinizing it for a moment before heading it.

They had gone through it extensively in the past, during the two weeks they spent in the wreckage. It was one of the hallways that circled underneath the higher-level baths, storage rooms branching off from the main hallway and ending in a back exit to the palace, which wrapped back around to the grounds. Several staircases sprouted from it as well, leading up to the baths placed above it, but there had been no clear indication of where the Chrysos Heirs had gone. They had assumed that they had gone out the backway, despite the fact that there had been guards all around the area, chalking it up to Demi-God and Chrysos Heir trickery, but perhaps…

Perhaps there had just been something they had overlooked.

“Start checking the ground,” he instructed over his shoulder, able to sense the soldiers that had followed him, no doubt on Krateros’s orders. “Unnatural seams, hidden hinges, anything like that.” There had to be something.

He stepped into the center of the hallway, allowing the soldiers to move around him in droves, going deeper into the hallway to check there as well, and allowed his eyes to fall closed, crossing his arms in front of his chest and just breathing. There was the sound of the soldiers around him, the ones behind him still in the city, the preparations they were making, and some stone being disturbed. There were murmurs of Kremnoan and the huffing of dromas. There was the scraping of tools against rock, boots against the ground, mutters of-

His head snapped around to the right side, twelve feet down the hallway.

He thanked Nikador for his Divinely given senses.

Crossing over the area, purposefully making sure his steps were quieter than they usually were, he kneeled down, dragging his fingers against the stone in search of an anomaly in the ground. Dust covered the ground, causing his vision to be slightly obscured, but when he was about two feet from the wall, his claws caught on just the smallest of cracks.

Had he not been looking for something specific, he probably would have just excused it as an imperfection in the ground.

Now, he knew better.

Gritting his teeth, he dug his claws into the ground beneath him with both hands, grinding his jaw together as he heaved the stone away from the ground. The hallway shook around him as a stone slab about five feet each way was wrenched away from the ground, and beneath him, shouts started up in the Okhema he had heard drifting up from the ground.

He took the first arrow to the shoulder before the soldiers were swarming around him, jumping down the ten foot hole and tackling the soldiers who had been huddling there.

Noise exploded all around them.

Mydei pulled out the arrow with a bloodthirsty grin.

Finally.

Seven weeks of searching, of having his plans interrupted, of the people beneath their feet doing everything in their power to be nuisances when they really should have accepted their defeat. And it was finally going to come to an end.

“Krateros!” He called, looking down the hallway for the briefest second and Krateros ducked in his head in understanding.

Mydei repeated the gesture and then jumped down the hole himself, grasping the first Okheman soldier by the throat and squeezing his grip until their throat gave out under his hand.

Another soldier shouted.

Mydei looked around him.

It appeared the opening to the hallway was at the center of a junction, four identical tunnels stretching out around them. The ceilings loomed high, eight feet at least, and it was reasonably wide, giving him the impression of a sewer system.

It nearly made him laugh. The remaining Chrysos Heirs once revered throughout the world, hiding in the sewer system like rats.

He charged at another soldier, throwing him into the wall hard enough that he heard his bones crack, and he turned on his heel to spot two of the Okhemans sprinting away from the intersection, shouting and yelling the whole time.

He looked down at the ground, seeing the bodies remaining. Each was armed and ready and unless there were a lot more people down there than he had thought, it was too big a group to just be a normal patrol. The Dressmaster was a strategist, like him, she would known.

Mydei narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked down into one of the tunnels. They way they had been reacting…

They had known.

Known more than they would have had they just heard or felt their arrival.

It seemed he would have to re-vet the servants and guards around the palace for the traitors who would dare to work with the enemy.

“Spread out,” he barked as more soldiers made their way down to the junction, kicking aside the body of a poorly armored Okheman to peer into the darkness. “Corall the civilians, gather any supplies you find,” he rolled his shoulder back as he snapped a sword beneath his foot, “and capture the Chrysos Heirs.”

He would add more to his collection in the Arena. He was sure that group was getting lonely anyways.

With that, he picked a direction, the one the soldiers had been heading down, and stalked down it, eyes swinging around to keep an eye on everything. He heard the soldiers follow his orders, the sounding of dozens of slamming boots ringing through the air. The tunnel system couldn’t be that big, in the grand scheme of things, so really, he wasn’t in a hurry.

The tunnels loomed in front of him, wide and inviting, and he would take it.

For a while, there was simply quiet, accompanied by the distant sounds of footsteps and fear. Chatterings in Okheman drifted to his ears, meaning nothing to him, and he half wondered if there was something else at play here, as he should have run into someone by now.

Perhaps the Chrysos Heirs had chosen to-

Something slammed into his chest, sending him skidding back two steps.

His eyes were already fixating on the culprit. After all, he had already had interactions with them.

The scholar.

What a fool, engaging in battle with Mydei.

Perhaps this time he would achieve his goal. True, dragging the scholar back to Castrum Kremnos could certainly open up some opportunities for his Deliverer to find him, which would present some unfortunate questions unless he managed to convince his Deliverer he had been hallucinating. It wouldn’t be hard to do that per se, but it was something he didn’t wish to have to do. And there was also the fact that the scholar was one of the most tenacious Chrysos Heirs he had met.

Maybe instead of putting the scholar in the Arena with the others, a few weeks in a dark room in the catacombs that barely anyone went into anymore would be enough to squash at least a part of his rebelliousness. Isolation was a good tool for that, he would know.

It made his face twitch up into another smile as he pictured it, ducking under another volley of fire.

The scholar was perched up on a ledge halfway up the wall, a repaired gun in his hand and eye narrowed. Mydei huffed a chuckle, already debating a way to get up there and incapacitate him, but a swath of golden threads shooting across his vision blocked his path.

The Dressmaster landed on the ground in front of him, sword in hand and one of her creations at her other side, and she shouted something in Okheman.

A blur rose up, casting wind gusts up to the ceiling, and when Mydei looked back, the scholar was gone, absconded with by the fast one.

He gritted his teeth. Fine. He would just capture the Dressmaster instead.

“Mydeimos,” the Dressmaster said, her Kremnoan obviously rusty and tinged with an outsider’s accent, and he snarled at her, shooting forward and not allowing her another word. He was not in the mood for pleasantries.

She responded in kind, sword coming up to press back on his gauntlets and the fight was on.

He swiped at her, easily batting away her second swing of the sword, and she ducked out of the way, creation rearing up next to her and stabbing down at him as well. He grasped the blade, yanking the metal beast towards him, but the Dressmaster got in the way before he could do anything, bringing her blade down on his head. He moved, so her sword bit into his shoulder instead, and golden blood flew as he took the opportunity to slam a fist into her chest, sending her staggering back. Her threads swarmed around him, moving to clearly restrain him, and he grasped a clump of them, yanking hard enough on them that it looked like it was physically painful to the Dressmaker.

The metal beast came back, moving to stab him in the chest again, and Mydei moved, spinning around him and grasping it by its strangely shaped head, holding it tightly and slamming the creation into the ground beneath them. He stomped on the hand holding the sword, doing it twice more until he heard a crunch, and then he threw the beast into the wall just in time to block the next blow by the Dressmaster.

They parried back and forth for a minute, her attacking and defending with her sword while he defended with the sides of his gauntlets and moved to swipe at her at other times, and her threads came back to try and circle around his neck. It was clear that they were fewer now, perhaps because she wasn’t in Okhema proper or because she was fatigued, and it wasn’t enough to stop him from digging his hand into them and throwing them off to the side.

When he circled them around his hand and yanked hard enough that he felt something snap, the Dressmaster gasped, eyes going wide, and he shot forward, planting a kick on her chest and throwing her into the wall.

She was good, she was probably one of the best fighters the Chrysos Heirs had.

But he had grown up under his father’s hand and had spent the last half of the war fighting his Deliverer.

‘Good’ hadn’t been enough to stop him in a long time.

Moving to further incapacitate her, perhaps knock her unconscious, her creation shot back between them, fighting this time with their other hand. He grasped it by the folds of its dress, yanking it down close to him, and he heard the Dressmaster scream as he plunged his hand into its chest, forcing it clean through.

He almost expected it to bleed.

A gust of wind shot between the two of them as he started to advance on the Dressmaster again, and the fleetfooted one appeared, staggering to a stop. She recoiled at the sight of the broken creation, turning on her heel to face the Dressmaster, but Mydei was faster than her when she wasn’t using her Demi-God abilities.

Charging forward, he grasped her by the back of her shirt and threw her into the wall to the side of them, hearing her shriek of surprise and pain when she collided. The Dressmaster gasped, forcing herself to her feet, but Mydei refused to be stopped now, grasping the metal beast by its head and bodily throwing it at its creator, sending them both down to the ground in a mess of limbs.

He focused on the fleetfooted one.

Stalking over to her, he narrowed his eyes as he saw the way she was scrambling on the ground, hands skittering over the ground as if looking for something.

He pursed his lips. Demi-God abilities always came with a caveat, he knew that well. His father had made sure to hammer that into his brain. So perhaps…

She lunged forward, fingers grasping something small and circular, and he pounced, grasping her by her face and neck and slamming her back into the ground. She yowled in pain, disk falling from her fingers, and he grabbed it before she could take it back.

It seemed to be… a coin of some sort.

He looked back up at her, seeing the way her eyes had settled on it, and decided it was some version of important.

He debated for a second crushing it.

The fleet-footed Demi-God lunged forward, eyes locked on the disk, and he shoved it into the space between his gauntlet and his skin, rolling with the tackle and planting a kick on her stomach to throw her over and off of him. That didn’t stop the claws that scratched his skin however, and he hissed in pain as he felt skin slice and peel as she scrabbled at him. He shoved himself to his feet, looking back over to where the Dressmaster had been and saw that she had stood, wavering on her legs and wrapping an arm around her side.

He flung out a hand and let his crystals do the rest, pinning her to the wall like a butterfly in a case. She gasped in pain.

Turning back to the fleet-footed one, he found himself tackled to the ground again quite quickly, slamming his back against the ground as she pinned him down, eyes wide and a snarl set on her face. Her fingers scrabbled at his gauntlet, nearly frantic in her movements, and he grabbed her by the front of her shirt, holding her still for the briefest second as he slammed his forehead forward, colliding with her hard and making her slide off of him dazed. Not giving her a second to rest, he rolled over, kneeling over her and grasping her by her hair.

He saw the way her eyes went wide in panic, the way her face twisted up in denial and some frantic words spilled from her lips, but he ignored her utterly as he slammed her head into the ground, sending golden blood spattering everywhere. He did so three times, until she had gone completely gone limp, letting her go only then. She slumped to the ground, face twisted up in pain even in unconsciousness and tail limp at her side.

One down.

He turned over his shoulder, ready to deal with the Dressmaster and-

A delicate hand landed on his arm.

It was suffocating and it burned and there were hundreds upon thousands of voices screaming in his ears and there was fire in his veins and he was cold cold cold shaking shivering shuddering couldn’t breath couldn’t breathe blackness blackness burning burning burning-

He gasped awake roughly. Through his blurry eyes, he could see a woman in purple standing a few feet away, staring at the Dressmaster as she extricated herself from her crystal prison.

The Lady of Death. Of course.

The two of them were talking hurriedly in Okheman, the Lady of Death looking back to where the Fleet-Footed still lay, and Mydei huffed. They hadn’t realized he was alive again.

Slowly, his hand circled around a piece of stone, torn from the wall during their fight. He didn’t know if the Lady of Death could kill even when she was unconscious, but he would be careful.

The Dressmaster landed on the ground with a gasp of pain, golden blood covering her entire body, and the Lady of Death took a step back, clearing the way for her to walk towards the Fleet-Footed.

Mydei struck.

Shoving himself up to his knees in an instant, he hurled the rock at the Lady of Death, striking her cleanly in the chest. She doubled over, dropping her scythe as she did so, and he pushed himself to his feet fully, swinging his gaze over to the Dressmaster.

The Dressmaster, who had lost her sword, her creation, and her fellow Demi-God.

“Surrender, Dressmaster,” he hissed out and she glared at him, pulling herself up to her full height. But he could see the way she was shaking, wavering, the way her eyes kept sliding back to the knocked out Demi-God behind him.

“Never,” she responded and Mydei was forced to duck away as the Lady of Death swung her scythe at him. He backed up a step, blocking the next blow with his gauntlet, and his eyes flitted back to the Dressmaster, who was watching the fight, eyes moving from them to the passed out Demi-God.

“You try to rescue her, and I’ll kill her,” he promised, seeing the way the Dressmaster froze in place at that. “She could be useful, but I won’t let her become an enemy again. If you take her from this battlefield, the next time I encounter her, I’ll leave a trail of her organs from here to Castrum Kremnos.” Not like the Dressmaster could carry her anyways. She was in too rough a shape and it wasn’t like the Lady of Death could. And it was clear the Dressmaster was realizing that fact.

Speaking of…

He knocked the next blow aside, trying to figure out how to fight her without touching her, he didn’t know if his gauntlets would work or not, but then-

A hand landed on his inner arm.

Sobbing and screaming and cold warm hot bruning suffocating and it burned and there were hundreds upon thousands of voices screaming in his ears and there was fire in his veins and he was cold cold cold shaking shivering shuddering-

He awoke this time with a growl.

He needed to find a way to kill the Lady. Perhaps a long range weapon.

Shoving himself to his feet, he swung his gaze around. He was alone in the tunnel, the Fleet-Footed’s body still lying prone on the ground and he lurched forward a step, eyes scanning the ground until he spotted the trail of golden blood.

He charged off.

He was not letting the rest of them get away. The scholar was still somewhere within the tunnels, unless the Fleet-Foot could really go far distances, he didn’t actually know what the limits of her powers were. The three priestesses were around, as well as whatever other Chrysos Heirs there were, but those weren’t as interesting to him as the Dressmaster, the Lady of Death, and the scholar were.

The gold blood stench only grew stronger, and he turned another corner.

He saw several things at once.

The scholar was leaning on the wall, one hand on the head of one of the priestesses. The Lady of Death was keeping her distance, hands clasped in front of her chest. The Dressmaster was speaking with another priestess. And the third one spun around to stare at him.

“NO!” She shrieked and threw up her hands.

The world was awash with light.

Mydei realized what was happening a second too late.

He had forgotten, about the gate the Priestesses of Janus had control over.

He was a fool.

Mydei dropped his hand with a growl as the light died, grinding his teeth.

The room was empty. All of the Chrysos Heirs, besides the fleet-footed one, he had been seeking had escaped.

Because of course they had. They loved to mess up his plans.

Something scrabbled in the corner.

Or… almost all of them got away.

His eyes landed on the small form of one of the High Priestesses, the one who had thrown up her hands, weakly trying to push herself up to a sitting position. She was shaking, obviously exhausted, and her hands slipped against the rough cobblestone, leaving streaks of gold against the grey ground.

His jaw set.

Within an instant, he strode over to her, looming over her small form. She tipped her head up to face him, an expression of childish determination crossing her face, and he lunged for her, grasping her throat in a punishing grip and pulling her up to face him.

Her feet dangled three feet from the ground.

“Where did you send them?” He growled, heedless of the way her small hands weakly dug at his gauntlets, face twisting up in pain. She shivered, every single one of her choked breaths sounding like drumbeats in the quiet room, and he shook her once, ignoring the way it made her choke and gasp. “Where?”

Her eyes glowed weakly. “We do not fear you,” she wheezed out, flowers having come askew from her hair and were now barely clinging to the few strands that they could grasp onto. “We are hundreds of years older than you. We have seen the darkness come and go, and your reign will just be a simple passing cloud. Amphoreus will-.”

He threw her into the wall.

She shrieked in pain, head slamming into the stone a second after her body did, and she slumped to the ground, panting and shaking. Her breath wheezed harder, perhaps her ribs were broken, and he towered over her, seeing more golden blood stain the grey that surrounded them. “Your city is gone. Nearly all the land in the world belongs to Nikador. And your Deliverer is mine now. I am not a ‘passing cloud’, I am the new order on Amphoreus.”

He knelt, slowly reaching out and resting his hand on her head, digging his fingers into her delicate scalp and pulling her face back up to meet his. Her childlike appearance was twisted in pain. “Now, even I know Nikador once respected Janus and their prophecies, respected their choice to remain neutral. Tell me where you sent the others, and you and your remaining selves can live in peace within Castrum Kremnos until you expire.”

He didn’t really want to be giving out that deal, she and her others had certainly been pains to the same level as the other Chrysos Heirs that fought back, but it wasn’t like he could make them useful to Nikador. They were too fragile to go through what would be needed, even if their Century Gate would be invaluable help. No, it was much nicer for him to simply give them a nice house somewhere on the palace grounds where they could live out the rest of their, probably very short, lives until they expired like the other versions of hers.

Again, he was grateful for their library, gathering knowledge in spite of his father. He knew they were the last three and clearly on the edge of their expiration.

He could simply give them a nice room with one door, constantly guarded, and by the time the war was done, the three of them would be too tired to do anything against them.

Perhaps he could model it after the domicile they found under the floorboards of the ruins of Janusopolis.

“You could even visit your home.” He tightened his grip on her slowly the longer she spent being quiet, and the priestess whimpered, tears beading in her eyes. “I know you’ve missed it.”

“You conquered our home,” she hissed weakly, hands scrabbling at his and doing no damage at all. “If we miss it, it’s because you’ve stopped us from visiting.”

He hummed. “And I’ll give you that chance back.” He pulled her up higher, her toes just barely scraping the ground beneath them as she struggled for purchase, and he gave her a patient look. “Isn’t that worth it?”

“You are a child, scion of Nikador.” The priestess narrowed her eyes, the orbs glowing for a moment, and Mydei got the feeling that he was talking to the Demi-God of Janus now, instead of the child of Janusopolis. “You take and take and take and then think yourself merciful for deigning to allow those you took from to glance upon what they once had. You think yourself the inheritor of Nikador’s legacy, refusing to acknowledge that he fought to protect. You think if you make the world worse for everyone around you, they’ll be grateful for your hand to pull them out of that squalor.”

He dropped her.

She gasped roughly as she collided with the ground.

“Stubborn,” he huffed out, rolling his eyes, and the child crawled away from him the best she could, which really wasn’t anything too special. “All of you Chrysos Heirs are. Just like my Deliverer.” She glared at him, tears coming to her wide eyes, and he pushed himself back up to his full height.

She pressed her back into the wall.

“That didn’t last him long. And it won’t serve you either.”

The child raised her chin. “Snowy is stronger than you give him credit for. As are the other Chrysos Heirs.” She tipped her head slowly to the side, breathing becoming heavier. “You will not win this war, in the end. And we will all reunite tomorrow, at the end of the west wind.”

A smile twitched her lips, something like determination alighting in her eyes.

Before she slumped over, clocking her head against the ground, and went limp.

He was kneeling by her side in an instant. He needed her alive if she was to be useful and if she had just broken her own neck-!

His hand rested on her chest and came away wet with golden blood, carefully hidden in the folds of her dress. His eyes scanned her form, raking over every detail in the low light of the tunnel, and he was able to see where her form was sallow, shrunk, near unhealthily thin even for someone of her stature.

She looked… wrung out.

He realized then, what he had missed.

The priestess had already been dying. She had used the last of her strength to get her friends away. She had no doubt been running herself ragged, sending the different Chrysos Heirs to the different battlefields as they fought desperately against the tide, and this last use of the Century Gate was just the thing that pushed the balance that final inch over the marker.

No matter what he had done, she had spelled her own doom.

With a growl, he dropped the body, letting it ragdoll onto the ground, dust staining her white dress. The flowers finally dislodged their way from her hair, drifting down onto the cold stone, and he turned away with a huff.

A body would be useless to him.

He shouldn’t have allowed her to stall for her death.

The light from the entrance to the tunnel was abruptly cut off and he looked over his shoulder to see Krateros standing there. He raised an eyebrow at him.

“We’ve corralled the civilians that have been down here, Mydeimos,” Krateros told him, eyes skating over the room behind him but not saying a single thing, no doubt even when his eyes landed on the dead priestess. “They were deeper down in the tunnels and-.”

“Kill them all.” Mydei cut him off, teeth still grinding from the way that the priestess managed to trick him and Krateros paused, eyes widening the slightest bit.

“Mydeimos?” He questioned and Mydei huffed, shaking out his gauntleted hand and moving to pass Krateros and head back into the main tunnel system.

“If they’ve stayed down here as long as they have, they’ve chosen their side.” He inspected his gauntlets for a moment, seeing the golden blood that was starting to drip from them, and he shook them out again in disgust. Only his Deliverer’s blood was good enough for him to drink. Not even the blood of one of his kills or defeats. He would have to remember to send people to pick up the Fleet Footed One. Her coin still pressed against his skin. “The children before their teenage years, keep them, they can be taught and raised the right way, but the rest of them will be buried down here.”

“Very well,” Krateros answered after another second and Mydei moved to walk away, to check in with the other captain, to arrange the transport of the Fleet Footed One and any other Chrysos Heirs they had caught, only to be stopped at a sudden shout.

“Mydeimos!” He turned his head back at Krateros’s exclamation, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, and found the man staring behind them, back into the tunnel.

“What is it?” He asked, heading back to stand at his side, but Krateros didn’t seem to hear him. He placed his hand on Krateros’s shoulder as he passed, shaking the man slightly, but found himself pausing as well as he realized what his old mentor had been staring at.

The priestess’s body had vanished, sinking away like it had never been there, and instead, sitting in its place was a… wooden doll?

Frowning slightly, he crossed back over to it, kneeling down again to get a good look. It looked, frankly, like the priestess’s body had just suddenly changed properties, all the way down to the flowers in her hair. A childish smile sat on its face, much too innocent to be the expression she had worn in her last moments, and its clothing was unstained and unripped. As if the doll had gone through none of the trauma that the priestess had.

He should have guessed that a creature as inhuman as the priestess had been in her final moments wouldn’t have rested as a human does either.

For a moment, he got the urge to stomp on it, to watch the wooden face crack into a million pieces and the dress get ripped to shreds, but he stopped himself. Not only would that be bad form, even for someone that didn’t deserve it like the Chrysos Heirs, there was also something else.

He huffed slightly in amusement as he reached for the doll.

It seemed he had a souvenir for his Deliverer after all.

~

“Deliverer,” he crooned and Phainon raised his head up to face him, already leaning into the kiss Mydei was going to press on him before he even saw the action. Mydei wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling him up to meet him, and his Deliverer melted easily into the hold, hands hanging limply at his sides. “You were correct. The Chrysos Heirs were right where you said they would be.”

Phainon twitched in his hold for a moment, breath hitching. A repressed sob, perhaps.

Mydei wasn’t focusing on it.

He pulled back from his Deliverer, pressing another kiss to the corner of his eye before he started to lead Phainon away from the window, hand clasped in his and rubbing his thumb soothingly against the inside of Phainon’s wrist. His Deliverer followed willingly, allowing Mydei to sit him down on the edge of the bed, and he blinked slowly up at the king as the man turned away.

“Just a moment,” Mydei soothed, running his fingers through Phainon’s hair once before he headed back to the desk, picking up the thing he had been so excited to show his Deliverer.

He had told his Deliverer he would bring back a souvenir.

“Close your eyes,” he murmured, hiding the thing behind his back as he turned around, just in case Phainon hadn’t listened to him, but thankfully, his Deliverer had and Mydei moved closer, kneeling down in front of his Consort.

Watching Phainon figure out what the eyepatch had been with no sight had been such fun for both of them that he figured he should do it again. Anything to make his Deliverer happy.

With careful reverence, because he knew Phainon would care and he wouldn’t begrudge him that, not yet, he placed the delicate wooden doll down in his open and waiting hands. “What do you think it is?” He asked quietly, reaching up and pressing an open palm to Phainon’s eyes when the younger Chrysos Heir attempted to open them on instinct. “No no, guess.”

Phainon’s face twitched.

“I don’t know,” he confessed instantly and Mydei drew back just the smallest bit, face twitching into a frown for a moment. His Deliverer had at least tried before. And had even guessed it correctly.

“Fine,” he muttered, pulling his hand back and letting his Deliverer blink rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the light again. If his Deliverer was so certain that he wasn’t going to be able to guess, then he wouldn’t force it. He had been looking forward to watching his Deliverer guess what it was, for he was sure Phainon would have been able to, but if he insisted…

Phainon’s eyes slowly slid down to his lap, to the thing in his hands, and his face fell instantly.

Tears gathered up in the corner of his eyes.

“Trianne,” Phainon whispered hoarsely and Mydei blinked. He hadn’t realized they had different names. Nor that his Deliverer would have been able to tell who was who with just a quick look.

“Yes,” he replied anyways, cupping the side of Phainon’s face with his hand and pulling his Deliverer’s gaze up to him. He didn’t want Phainon looking at it for long, not if it was going to make him sad. “She was very brave, in the end. Just like your scholar.” He quirked an eyebrow up, seeing the way Phainon had full body shuddered at that sentence. “You tend to surround yourself with very brave people. It’s a good quality.”

Thankfully for his Deliverer, Mydei would never leave him like the others had. He wouldn’t allow it.

When Phainon’s face didn’t change, still stuck in that wretched lostness that made him look like a chimera, Mydei rose from his kneeling position, pulling Phainon up with him again and curling his hand around the back of Phainon’s neck. His Deliverer’s hand stayed tight around the doll and Mydei was tempted to take it out of his hands. He had meant to give his Deliverer something that would make him happy, another lost artifact of the friends who had abandoned him, because that had made him happy before if the rabid way he had defended the scholar’s eyepatch said anything, but if it was only going to make him sad…

“The Chrysos Heirs are scattered, directionless,” he murmured in Phainon’s ear, pulling them back a step or two so the light from the windows bathed across them both. “They won’t be bothering us for a long time. We have peace, finally, under Nikador’s greatness.” He pulled back a little, tipping Phainon’s face up to press another kiss to his lips, and Phainon shuddered in his grip. Mydei waited until their eyes met again. “Doesn’t that make you happy?”

Phainon blinked slowly at him.

Mydei waited to see if whatever mood had taken over him the past week was going to stick. He hoped it would, he would finally have his Deliverer, utterly and truly if that were to happen, but at the same time, he didn’t mind if he needed to spend the next couple of weeks of this peace time finishing up his molding of Phainon.

The next few moments passed between them in tense silence, Phainon’s eyes staring directly into his and body shaking slightly before-

Phainon slumped forward, tucking his head under Mydei’s chin, and the Trianne doll clattered to the floor with a sharp crack.

“Yes,” Phainon breathed out, one of his shaking hands coming up to curl around Mydei’s necklace, and Mydei smiled.

The Chrysos Heirs would probably return, and they would probably attempt to make problems again, but that was something to think about another day. They had been cut off at the knees, their sanctuary, supply line, and support from the people all stripped from them in an instant. Their fellows remained under supervision in the Arena and would be very soon start to be turned to serve Castrum Kremnos. Their main bearer of the Century Gate was dead and their ability to access their stronghold, their ‘Vortex of Genesis’, whatever that was, was gone as they fled from Okhema’s ruins.

The Chrysos Heirs could try to return, but it would only spell out their doom.

But all of that was to be thought of another day.

Today was a day for celebration.