The Diva's Paean

by Huinari

Summary:

At a point in history where Choristers are expected to become normal citizens after their (expected to fail) Ceremony of Ascension, Rin suddenly finds herself the first Diva in nearly half a century. And she is not happy about the ‘honor’, no matter what anyone says. Now if only Len would stop giving her the puppy-dog eyes, maybe she could actually quit.

Or

The story of a girl who insists on being pragmatic and logical above all, a spirit getting used to the physical world, and the life and world they opened their eyes to together.

Chapter 1: prologue

Summary:

Ripples running through the reflection on the spring’s surface.

As all living beings did, even the gods died. They died of old age, of heartbreak, and of inflicted wounds. And made up of divinity and power and the seven elements of light, darkness, fire, water, earth, wind and lightning as they were, when they died they left behind not bodies but traces that affected the nature and mortals where they fell.

Where the gods of animals died bleeding out there were born the shifters, stronger and sharper in senses compared to mortal humans. Where the goddess of fairies and forests slept for years there sprouted the World Trees that birthed elves from its fruit.

Where the goddess of muses and the arts wept as she held her dying lover there remained a promise to set wrongs right once more – no matter how long it took, no matter how many were drawn into the resolution and hurt from the unkind path of fate.

The first of that promise was the first Diva, the first incarnate of the goddess, and the Paean, the spirit that rose from the spring where the goddess had wept over her lover’s blood, and together they purified the demon-infested lands around the small pool of water and found a kingdom, and they called it –

Hamartia.

And so over the span of a century and several decades eleven more Divas would find their Paeans, but only the first was able to keep the forgotten oath between the parted lovers.

---

 The Diva's Paean

---

 

Rin was a fairly normal person.

She said ‘fairly’, of course, understanding that the concept of normal could be vastly different depending on the person, but as far as Rin was concerned, she could fit under the broad umbrella of the term without much difficulty. She was ethnically Hamartian and born in the kingdom, had nothing about her appearance that really made her stand out from a crowd of people, and did not have any particular talents or ambitions that drew attention to her.

She was a Chorister, yes, but that was nothing special. A lot of girls with the potential were – and that was all they were, before they failed their Ceremony of Awakening when they were sixteen or seventeen and became regular citizens.

That, Rin had always assumed since her early realization that the world was not a very kind place and, in the end, she would always have to stand alone, always believed since the day she had given up on dreaming of Divas and Paeans and becoming heroes, would be her path.

Some would have argued against her self-assessment of being normal, calling her too fatalistic to be normal. Rin thought she was just a little more placid and realistic than fatalistic. She wasn’t much of a believer in fate, just in decision making and the consequences that followed, be it good or bad decisions and good or bad consequences. It wasn’t her fault that from a young age she had been able to get a good, hard look at her situation, and mature early to plan for herself.

Be a Chorister, become educated. Fail the Ceremony of Awakening, become a regular citizen. Find a job – maybe one to do with the Temples – and live. Continue to do so until she died, either of old age, a demon attack, or some other unforeseen circumstances, though old age was the most preferred option. Painless old age, at that.

She had even narrowed down her talents and career options, too. Entering the Tower of Alexandria was out, because she barely had any Mana in her for use, and the formulas, circles, runes and incantations to aid with casting magic had always been too difficult for her to naturally understand in the way it was required. Becoming a knight was also out of the question – Divas aside the standards for a female knight to meet weren’t worth the return and threatened her plan of living in relative safety and peace. That, and she didn’t have the physical strength for it, let alone a talent with Aura manipulation.

She had a bit of the Force, and the Temples always accepted anyone who could pull up the divine light, but that was a last-resort, more for down the line when she was older.

Other than that, Rin was also smart and quick-witted, good at critical thinking. She was no genius with a photographic memory or revolutionizing ideas, but she was smarter than average.  

Perhaps she would apply for a job at the library as a secretary, or as an educator of future Choristers like the teachers that had taught her. She was good at paperwork, her reading comprehension was excellent, and she had great concentration skills. Less so on the social aspect, but that could be pulled up to a polite enough public front if she needed it. Customer service wouldn’t be a focus or a priority, but if she had to, she could. There was also becoming a governess for the young children of rich merchant families. She liked children fine and got along with them well enough.  It would depend on the demand for the job.

Whichever one paid well and was in her range of things she could do, both skills-wise and in terms of her comfort zone.

When Rin explained her plans to a Mentor a week before the Ceremony would start, the woman burst out laughing.

“That,” Cul gasped out between wheezes, “is beautiful.”

“You have an odd sense of beauty,” replied Rin. She liked her own plans for the future fine and believed that her self-assessment was objectively on-spot, but even she didn’t think it was beautiful.

There was nothing particularly beautiful about it at all.

Of course, she was also aware that Mentor Cul was a bit of an odd one with the weirdest sense of humor, so perhaps something had gotten to her funny bone and was making her act this way again. And she did also have an odd sense of beauty, if the way she had decorated her small office was indication enough. Looking at the room, filled with all sorts of colourful knickknacks that assaulted the visual senses, one would never guess or believe that the owner of the room was once a knight of relative renown.

Cul burst out laughing again, but luckily it did not last as long this time.

“What are you going to do if you don’t become a Mentor?” the redhead asked once she had stopped cackling. She dug with one hand in the drawer of her desk and pulled out a small clay jar, filled with candied ginseng. Rin refused politely – she wasn’t a fan, especially of the odd herbal smell – before replying.  

“Find a job elsewhere in the city,” Rin said. The capital was a little safer than towns, in part because the palace grounds were there. Maximum security for royals and all. If possible, she wanted to stay near the place of maximum safety in Hamartia.

It would be competitive, though, because other people thought like she did and wanted to stay as safe as possible, and in Hamartia, Rakia was arguably the safest place to be for regular citizens with no royal or noble blood in their veins. She did consider some of the alternative cities that were considered regularly safe. In the worst-case scenario, she could move. Former Choristers made for good clerks, if nothing else, thanks to their education, and her honourable discharge would be a credential in itself.

Cul took an interest and began tossing questions about different scenarios. Rin thought about it and answered according to her plan. She didn’t need much time to answer – she had been working on her future goals for years now, knew it like the back of her hand.

“One last thing,” Cul said as she glanced out the window towards the clock tower, checking how much time they had spent discussing Rin’s plans for the future. “What are you going to do if you’re chosen as a Diva?”

That one did leave her a bit stumped. Rin’s plans of normality did not include the what-if scenario for the case of her becoming a Diva simply because it was too unrealistic.

Rin had to think about this one for a little longer. Her entire plans started with the premise that she was not chosen, that she would fail as had all other Choristers for the past near-fifty years.

It was easy to see what happened, even hypothetically, when the entire cause was removed.

“I’d have to throw out my plans and make new ones,” she said at last. The thought of having to do so was a little annoying.

Cul smirked. “Any idea on what those would be?” she prodded.

Rin, tired of the charade, was tempted to answer disrespectfully but refrained. It wouldn’t do to be dishonourably discharged as a Chorister when she was so close, and for the stupidest reason of sassing her counselling Mentor.

“Not really,” she answered honestly.

The answer was too normal for Cul to be interested in, it seemed, because the redhead didn’t laugh again.

“Alright,” said the Mentor with a loud clap of her hands. “I guess we’re done here, then.”

Rin rose from her seat. “Thank you,” she said, mostly out of good manners.

Cul winked at her as she extended a hand to shake. Rin took it, and felt the strong, calloused grip nearly crush her fingers. This time she did send a bit of a resentful look towards the Mentor who taught the Choristers how to fight, but was ignored magnificently.

“Good luck with your Ceremony of Awakening, Rin,” she said instead.

Rin nodded, even as she thought that the only good luck she needed was the small amount necessary to not make a stupid mistake during the ceremony. Like tripping over her clothes, or twisting an ankle, or falling in the cavern when she and the other Choristers descended into the darkness to sing. 

“Thank you,” she said again. “Have a good day.”

Notes:

this story is going to break my heart but what the hey.
writing this because i have vocaloid otps, a love for fantasy and the urge to write a semi-original story without making up character names or appearances and vocaloid was always great for that.

Chapter 2: Dunamis

Notes:

Dunamis (δύναμις)
Potentiality

It was rare that Meiko wore something other than armor or the clothes of a military official, but it was the period of time where the seasons transitioned from winter to spring, and new beginnings to come were celebrated. Even for an old woman lacking sentimentalities like her that warranted dressing up a little.

Of course, dressing up for a non-ceremonial fashion in her standards meant grabbing something from her wardrobe that wasn’t the usual and yanking it on, but she counted it anyways. Besides, in this case, the red robe with cranes embroidered on it was actually quite pretty, enough to warrant even her best friend’s approval. It was more of her Paean’s taste in fashion than hers, a gift from five years ago.

Or had it been six? She twisted a lock of her hair too short to tie back into her thin ponytail around her finger as she gave it some thought before deciding that it was five if she said it was five. She had never been one to crease her handsome face over smaller, insignificant details. And the only reason it was her favorite was because it was comfortable to wear and had been a gift from Kiyoteru.

Across the table Luka poured the prepared hot water into the teapot, and then poured out the first batch before filling the bowl once more. While the tea steeped, she let the tea bowls warm.

All this, the Diva of the Dancing Water did with the grace and elegance she had been known for since becoming a Diva. Despite having lost the transience of mortals shortly after Meiko, Luka’s beautiful face, fine-featured and awe-inspiring, was something talked about in awe by many to this day.

But then again, one never could get sick of beautiful things, and Luka’s beauty did not fade with the passing of time like so many others, a rarity enough to be praised.

Making the unnecessary motions to hold back her non-existent sleeve, Luka soundlessly placed the filled bowl of tea in front of Meiko. Unlike the current fashion, with the sweeping long sleeves that were too bothersome to be bothered with, Luka wore a simple two-piece, with a sweeping, flaring skirt and a half-sleeved top that exposed her smooth, flawless forearms. She wore almost no jewelry, having no need to hold stones to store magic in like most of the mages of the present era, save for one blue-stoned ring on her left ring finger, and that was more for the sake of rare sentimentalities than for practical use.

“It’s hot,” she said. “Please don’t gulp it down.”

“I thought we were friends, Luka.” Meiko pouted, pulling her lips into a childish expression even as her eyes twinkled with laughter. “And you serve me musty leaf juice. I’m hurt. Where’s the strong rice wine? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my favorites?”

Luka’s face was as cold and as beautiful as a snowstorm, but the words that came out of her mouth were akin to an exasperated mother’s more than an unforgiving snow queen’s.

“Wine made from grains is prohibited,” she scolded. “You know this, Meiko. Drink the damn tea.”

Meiko briefly weighed the pros and cons of prodding at Luka’s patience until the elegant Diva lost her temper but decided against it in the end, reasoning that it wasn’t as fun to do so when she couldn’t get drunk. She raised the steaming bowl to her lips and drained it entirely of its contents. The heat couldn’t hurt her, and hot water, for all that it lacked the cheer of liquor, was soothing in its own, healthy way.

Luka gave her a most disapproving look as she enjoyed the fragrance of the tea, but Meiko had never been one to enjoy the flavor or the ‘finer’ aspects of food. Food was food, regardless of shape, and as long as it tasted fine and was edible, she wouldn’t complain. It was a trait of hers that rubbed against the sensitive grain of Luka’s very soul.

Still, they had known each other for too long, been through too much to try and change each other. Luka let it go as she always did and moved on.

“Miki wants to oversee the Ceremony of Ascension this year,” she said, sky-blue eyes cast downwards and making a picture that would make anyone with functioning eyes stare in wonder.

Meiko reached for a biscuit. The tea was probably something Luka had picked out and blended herself. It wasn’t bad, but Meiko was not the person to come to when it came to singing the praises of the finer qualities of foods. That was what Kiyoteru was around for, when he was in the mood to act cultured.

“That’s unusual,” she said, biting into the small teacake shaped like a flower. For all that she didn’t like flowers for their frailty, it was a good rice cake. Not too sweet, but chewy and giving more sustenance than its small appearance suggested.

And it was unusual, not just lip service to go along with whatever had Luka in such a fuzzy mood. Miki was usually the one to avoid public events, and as annual as the Ceremony of Ascension was, it was still something that would put the younger Diva in a lot of contact with different people. None of the Choristers, of course, that was usually a waste of time too valuable to be spent so frivolously, but Mentors had to be directed, festivities overseen and protected in case demons ruined the cheerful mood, and at least one Duet had to serve as the mascot for what was being celebrated.

Perhaps she wanted to be more publicly active?

Meiko cast aside that idea at the tight look on Luka’s face.

“She claims she has a good feeling about this one,” the Tower of Alexandria’s oldest Elder said in a clipped tone. She deliberately raised the bowl to her pink lips and took small sips.

Luka hated unquantifiable, unjustifiable things like ‘based on instinct’ and ‘gut feelings’. It was where she clashed the most with her student and fellow Diva on. A bit ironic, given their specialties, but they said the gods did so love irony.

Meiko shrugged, trying to remember if her old subordinate had mentioned anything about promising Choristers. Cul had said something about a few possible recruits into the Rhodon Knights, but nothing about a potential Diva.

“At least you don’t have to do it?” she offered. The Ceremony of Ascension was annoying on their parts as well, and just as frustrating. Fifty plus years of idiotic watchers always hemming and hawing at everything they did tended to do that. And even after she terrified each watcher, they never stopped putting one on her every time it became her turn to fill the role.

The pink-haired Diva had a long-suffering look on her face, but Meiko had faith in the resilience of her friend’s mental state. They’d been through far too much already to be affected by something as little as an unpredictable former student and fellow Diva.

Meiko had enough faith to poke a little fun, as well.

“Who knows?” she said cheerfully. “Miki’s always been pretty intuitive. She might be right, and we might actually get a new junior for once. I’m all for getting some new blood among our numbers.”

“I would like for you to know that I feel utterly betrayed right now,” Luka said dryly.

Meiko grinned, broadly stretching her lips and exposing her teeth. After a moment, Luka gave and smiled a little as well.

---

“Is that the last of it?”

Rin looked down at the small bundle of clothes and books she had set in the corner of Miku’s bedroom and shook her head.

“I still have some of the things I need for the rest of my stay,” she replied. It was more efficient that way, to leave the essentials until she was no longer to stay there. Even so, the bundle of possessions was so small and insignificant, almost pathetic.

Six years of her life, from the age of ten, and it was wrapped up into that.

Her friend nodded, having once been a Chorister herself. “Smart. You left behind an extra pad for your bleeding just in case, right?”

Rin tried to remember.

“It probably won’t be a problem,” she said when she couldn’t be certain of what she had left behind in her dorm room. “I’m too irregular, anyways.”

Then, because Miku looked ready to nag her for the terrible unpreparedness, she hurried to change the topic. “Thanks a lot, Miku.”

Her best friend’s eyes softened fondly, even as she fetched a pad and shoved it into Rin’s pocket.

“It’s not a problem,” she said, voice warm. “This was stressful for me last year, too.”

Miku was a year older than she was and had passed through last year’s Ceremony of Ascension in the exact way Rin planned to – quietly, without any fuss. There had been one other girl who broke down weeping in the cavern and had to be dragged out, but Miku hadn’t been her, though she had appeared a bit shaken and ready to burst into tears at the slightest provocation.

After the Ceremony of Ascension, she would stay with Miku, being her roommate. Before becoming Choristers, they had lived together, and known each other for far longer, growing up almost like family. There would be no problems with getting along with each other, and there was safety in numbers. Mikuo worried, but he was more relieved they would be living together.

And Miku was ecstatic that Rin would be living with her, just like old times before they had become Choristers.

“We can celebrate afterwards,” she said, pulling out a loaf of bread, cheese and some dried fruit from the storage box before she winced. “I mean I’m not saying you failing is a good thing or anything like that, but, you know.”

Rin didn’t mind.

“We both know I’m going to fail like everyone else,” she pointed out. Then she wondered if she was being a little too callous, poking at Miku’s past dreams. Unlikely and unrealistic as they had been, Miku once dreamed of being a Diva up to the day when she underwent the Ceremony of Ascension – and failed.

She didn’t dream of it now, not when there was no chance at all, but still.

“I feel like you drain me of dreams and romance,” Miku said with a sigh as she cut off a slice of bread and handed it to Rin. There were no signs of hurt in her face.

“Good, it’ll help you live more in the real world,” Rin replied, putting some cheese on top and taking a bite. She didn’t let her relief show.

Miku lightly slapped her arm. “I do so live in the real world!”

“You spent a good chunk of your life trying to convince me that your doll was real.” And then Miku, being the stupidly kind idiot she was, had given her childhood companion and favorite comfort toy to a crying girl two days before becoming a Chorister.

One year before Rin had joined her, she was left in a place isolated from others, ten years old and scared, without her familiar source of comfort.

Sometimes Rin felt like the older one.  At least once she was out she could make sure Miku wasn’t duped by anyone. That would be a relief, for both Rin and Mikuo.

“Oh, you.” Miku stuck out her tongue.

“Gross.” Rin wrinkled her nose, mentally adjusting ‘sometimes’ to ‘always’. “Swallow your food first.”

---

Every year, one hundred girls were picked from around the country to become Choristers. Through the six years of education and training they received, some would inevitably be discharged for reasons. Not being able to keep up with the lessons taught, bad habits that weren’t fixed, failing to meet with expectations of Mentors and so on. In Rin’s year, there were sixty-three girls remaining.

That meant, for this year’s Ceremony of Ascension, there was need of enough blessed water for sixty-three girls to take baths in. Having been someone with the Force, Rin eyed the small tub of water imbued with the holy force with a bit of empathetic pity. No doubt some unfortunate fourth or fifth year girl with the Force had been recruited to manually go around blessing the water that would wash a sixth-year and then be distributed to the citizens of Rakia. Said junior was probably going through what she had the last two years – lying down, dizzy and faint and excused from the rest of the activities to recover her strength.  

Quickly, she stripped off, took a deep breath, and then squeezed her body into the small tub. Sixty-three girls to go through the purification phase meant there was no luxury of heated water. The Force used to bless it, was the logic, would wash away everything better than the heat could.

Whoever made that rule had clearly not understood the point of hot baths, Rin thought with gritted teeth as she began to scrub at her body with vigor to get it over with. It was freezing. Anything impure would more likely be chased away by the sheer cold, not by the small amount of the Force in the water that made it ‘holy’.

Skin red from the vicious scrubbing, blonde hair darkened from the water and stiff, Rin left the water with her teeth chattering fiercely. A younger Chorister, with the green badge on her grey robe distinguishing her as a fourth-year, handed her a warmed towel. Rin shuddered with relief at the warmth wrapping around her and wiped off any trace of moisture off her body as quickly as she could. Her hair, cut at chin length like every other Chorister, was easily dried by the warmed air.

The junior Chorister handed her a robe. It was the same shape as all the robes Choristers wore – loose, simple and meant to represent their pure and devoted souls, except unlike their regular grey clothes it was white, for the Ceremony of Ascension.

“Thanks,” she said when she took it. The robe was also warmed – most likely by magic. Every girl with the Force was brought in to purify the water, and every girl with a talent in Mana manipulation was put to warming robes and towels and being runners for the sixth-year Choristers. The ones with a talent with Aura would be distributing the holy water left from the baths to the public.

Rin tried not to look at the water that had been her bathwater, and definitely tried to not think about how some person – nameless and faceless but undeniably real – would probably be drinking that very same water later in the day and be grateful for it. She failed both miserably.

The younger Chorister helped her straighten her robe. Rin habitually reached for the violet badge that represented her sixth-year status before realizing she had no need of it anymore.

This was it. This was what six years of her life had prepared her for, and even the knowledge of her destined failure did nothing to take away the nerves.

“Good luck, senior,” said the Chorister, and the girl almost looked like she pitied Rin.

She really must have looked bad. Whatever breakfast she had managed to eat – purified water and blessed wafers that had a bland taste at best – churned in her stomach.

Rin swallowed and nodded. She felt sick. So much for the holy water.

---

Before Hamartia was founded, when the land the kingdom stood on was still infested with demons and a living hell for those who were unfortunate to reside in the wasteland, a runaway slave that had been captured from the Free Cities stumbled into a cavern, exhausted from having outrun both her captors and the demons in the land. She reached the spring within, not knowing that the deep waters held the remaining traces of the fallen lover of the goddess of muses and reached for water to prolong her life.

Instead of the water she had expected, a hand had reached out and grabbed her extended fingers, and from the depths of the spring of Tegyra rose a spirit with a physical body like demons infesting the world, and yet with origins much higher and closer to the divine than demons.

The two of them became the first Diva and Paean and formed the first Duet, and with their newfound power that stemmed from their partnership, killed the leaders of the demon packs in the land and destroyed their focal points. Humans who heard of their strength gathered, seeking protection, and that was how Hamartia had been created.

One hundred and thirty-four years after Hamartia was found, the sixty-three girls of the Seventy-Eighth Choristers followed Mentor Mew, who taught them music, into the very same cavern in the hopes of recreating the country’s founding story. The positions of the Divas of Darkness and Wind were still empty and needed to be filled once more.

With Tegyra being as important as it was to Hamartia, it was no longer able to stay the wild cavern and spring hidden within it had been when Queen Sophrona stumbled into it. There were layers of wards placed by intricate spell circles and formulas ensuring no one could enter without permission on the outside.

Inside the cavern, the air smelt faintly of musty water and damp dirt, a smell that wasn’t exactly unpleasant but by no definition of the word could be considered fresh. The only sources of light were the torches that hung from the walls, placed in intervals of ten feet.

At the end of the cavern, there was a large, wooden board carved with runes and spells that she couldn’t make out, glittering faintly with the materials of the catalysts they were been imbued with. Probably something expensive, like ground gems. Under the wooden covering sealed with a variety of protective magic there would be the spring of Tegyra. Purified as they were, the girls were not allowed to touch the waters lest they contaminate it and destroy the nation’s only source of Paeans, or worse, create whatever the demonic version of Paeans were.

That made the song the only method of being able to appeal to the sleeping Paeans below the surface of the water. Mentor Mew made light hand gestures, and the altos and the sopranos separated into their prearranged positions. As someone who could fill both roles, Rin went to where she had been assigned in the final rehearsal stages, in the soprano section near the border. Next to her stood Neru, who gave her a distracted nod in greeting. They weren’t friends, per say, but they got along well enough.

Six years of education as Choristers covered basic mathematics, grammar, social graces, how to use whatever talent the girl had been brought in for, the history of Hamartia, geography, the Duets – both passed and still living – and singing.

Only Divas, representatives of the goddess of muses, could use the power of the Holy Chant, but the basis of the Chant was singing, and music always helped in bringing a girl closer to the Hamartian ideal of a lady. Music lessons were also important for the Ceremony of Ascension, where the Choristers entered the cavern housing the Spring of Tegyra and sang the song of the Muse’s Vow in the hopes that a Paean would respond and choose a Diva from among them.

Mentor Mew, who taught the Choristers in the older years their music lessons, looked over them with cool eyes. All sixty-three girls in identical white robes reaching their wrists and knees stood in the cavern, lit only by the dim, flickering light of the torches.

The dark-haired mentor raised her arms, and the Choristers collectively drew in a breath of air. They were in proper singing positions, and their throats had been warmed by vocal exercises outside.

They knew the song by heart, needed no aid from an instrument to find its melody. Every word might as well have been engraved into their hearts at this point.

Their mentor, solemn-faced and intent on her role, gestured at them to begin.

“From the skies stretched above,” sang the sopranos, Rin among them. “Stars shining a path to the earth.”

“A pair of lovers descended to sing,” the altos joined in, their voice lower and more stable, giving the song a richer tone and stronger support than the high, weaving melody the sopranos wove. “A song of love, a song of joy.”

“A song of love,” Rin trilled with the sopranos.

“A song of joy,” the altos sang back.

“Joy in their hearts,” the sopranos picked up the last word before the altos were done, and carried the song onto the next verse. “They explored, hand in hand they loved the world.”

Mentor Mew expanded her arms as if to embrace everything and everyone in the cavern, and brought her hands together in a large, sweeping gesture. As one all the girls sang together. “They brought with them a gift, a song of bliss, a song of creation.”

Then it was the chosen altos echoing the last lines, Neru one of them. “A song of bliss,” was the hushed echo. “A song of creation.”

“But day falls to night,” trilled the sopranos. The song, the story of the spring’s origins and that of a god’s fall was reaching the part where tragedy struck in the happy tale.

“And autumn changes to winter,” the altos replied. All good things came to an end, and even the gods were no exception to the rule Rin had learned from a young age.

“The god fell, wounded and singing a song of vows, a song of blood.”

Rin was one of the selected sopranos for the soprano solo. “A song of vows,” she sang, voice high but by no means breaking. “A song of blood.”

It was the highest note in the entire song, and a difficult one to hit. Miku sang it last year, and it was Rin this year after auditioning for the part.

The dramatic part was done and now, it was the lamenting, slow section of the song they were on. The word ‘blood’ was drawn out in a melancholic whisper and covered by the low murmur of the altos.

“The goddess lamented that her love should leave her,” the altos sang as the sopranos hummed mournfully in the background. “She held him tight” –

“Held him tight,” the sopranos sang in canon, repeating the phrase in a different melody.

“And sang for him” –

“Sang for him” –

Then, all together now. “A song of sorrow, a song of tears.”

And so ended the love story of the goddess and the god, parted by the ultimate fate that awaited all, but the song was not yet done.

“And here we stand now,” led the sopranos. “At the sacred spring of lover’s farewell.”

Everyone.

“We remember, and we sing a song of hope, a song of reminiscence.”

Mentor Mew’s final gesture let them draw in breaths. This was the end. The part of the mortals, the humans affected by the tragic love of a pair of divine lovers before their memory.

“And here we stand now, at the sacred spring of lover’s farewell. We remember, and we sing a song of hope, a song of reminiscence.”

The last verse was always repeated, a little slower, more dramatic like many verses of a song was. Emphasizing the words of a future yet to come and a promise to be fulfilled.

Unlikely, Rin thought, but despite her thoughts her mouth moved and her tongue shaped the words precisely, and he words rang out clearly on a sweet, perfectly hit note. Six years of choral lessons, of learning how to sing all coming down to one ceremony. The feeling of sickness, of her stomach threatening to turn upside-down was banished now, unable to matter.

Even if she was going to fail this like so many Choristers before, Rin sang her heart out. It was the end and deserved something beautiful as a farewell.

Mentor Mew directed them to a halt with the last, definitive closing movement of her hands, and the voices stopped. The cavern, no longer filled with music, seemed larger and emptier than before.

There was something so terribly sad about the lonely darkness. Rin’s eyes prickled, and the sentimentality stung.

Stupid, she wanted to think, but a larger part of her wanted to stay in this cavern, this sad darkness. To keep it company and comfort its unspoken grief.

It was an unlit cavern, Rin told herself. She was just being stupid.

At least she wasn’t the only one. Someone was silently sobbing, and at least more than one pair of eyes were wet. It wasn’t just Rin enraptured by –

Wham! A loud crashing sound broke the spell and made her flinch. A girl behind her let out a small scream.

“Relax,” Neru muttered, though her voice was a little high-pitched from surprise. “It’s just something that-”

Another slamming sound, this time louder and angrier, rang throughout the cavern like thunder crashing through the sky. That was only a start, with the furious poundings that followed like a prisoner smashing at the walls of his confines demanding to be let out. The fire of the torches shook unsteadily, but there was no wind, no moving air in the cavern that would bring such large movement.

It was as if an invisible hand had seized the flames and were shaking them, throwing a tantrum.

“We will leave now,” Mentor Mew said in an unshaking voice. “Single file, girls.”

The Choristers all obeyed. They were too scared and yet too well-trained to turn into a raving mob. Or maybe it was the desperation of the pounding and the melancholic darkness surrounding them that made them reluctant to leave, like seeing a broken person and wanting to reach out to help. Most of the girls continued to turn their heads back towards the source of the pounding sound, not in morbid, fearful curiosity but from a lingering reluctance that made their steps heavy. It went against all common sense and logic but Rin could empathize.

So this was why some Choristers couldn’t leave until they had to be dragged out, and why Miku found it so difficult to speak about her experience last year, why no Chorister could ever really say something to prepare their successors. There was something haunting about this cavern that made them want to stay.

Stupid, Rin told herself, but she turned her head back and her steps slowed as well, until she was the last in the line. She kept up, but she constantly glanced back. Her chest tightened, and her eyes were stinging.

Furious at the feeling the cavern was giving her, she wiped at her eyes roughly with her sleeve. This was ridiculous. It was just the cavern affecting her. Other Choristers went through the same thing and they ended up fine. They lived their regular lives. This would all be over when she left the cavern.

As if her thoughts were heard, the pounding increased in frequency, and the darkness around the cavern deepened, writhing angrily. The shadows stretched ahead at the pace of the drumming sounds and covered the entrance with tangible darkness, preventing them from exiting.

Boom! The sound of exploding wood behind made them all scream and duck, trying to cover their heads with their arms. Mentor Mew called up a bit of magic in her hands, a small fireball, and lobbed it at the obstacle blocking their path. The shadows rippled where it hit like a pool of water and extinguished the small light.

The ripples, however, did not stop. The darkness churned and rose up like a tidal wave before crashing onto them.

More screams filled the air, replacing the loss of the furious pounding like war drums. Rin slapped her hands over the lower part of her face to hold back any sound and cover her nose and mouth, not wanting to inhale it. The darkness was tangible and hit her like something lighter than water, clinging to her and not passing by.

She struggled to raise her head above it, and broke her head free of the darkness. Mew’s magic hadn’t done anything, but maybe –

With a small prayer towards the goddess of muses, she pulled up all the Force she could. Her hands glowed white with the holy light, and lit up the darkness, making it shrink away.

Except it wasn’t, not completely. The darkness squirmed and writhed like boiling water and shrank into the shape of two arms tightly wrapped around her. She felt the presence of someone – slightly taller than her, male in body shape – behind her, and the sound of heavy panting behind her ear.

Blind panic took over at being restrained, this time by a living, breathing human being, and Rin thrashed, trying to break free.

“Let me go!” she shouted, chest growing tight with fear. The arms, which had the occasional feathers sprouting from what was otherwise bare skin, released her and she nearly fell forwards, only catching her balance at the last possible moment. She hadn’t actually expected her captor to listen. Choristers weren’t expected to become Divas anymore, but they went through the training, if only just in case, and Divas were what protected Hamartia from demons and other nations. In a room filled with several Choristers and a Mentor who taught them how to sing and use magic, it was illogical to give up on the hostage that could keep the invader safe. Any minute now, Rin thought as she looked up at the others, they would attack, especially now that she had been released.

But Mentor Mew and the other Choristers were staring in the direction behind her in a large mix of emotions, most of them with their base in shock. She also saw stunned joy, shocked despair, dawning realization and flustered embarrassment. Eyes were wide, jaws had been dropped, and some were even pointing, unable to say a word.

Two – mostly – human-shaped arms. Darkness that had risen up in the cavern where the Paeans slumbered, waiting for someone to call and claim as their Diva. Her, of all people, having been held. A tight hold that had been released at her demand for it.

With a very bad feeling turning her stomach, Rin turned around to see what her captor risen from the shadows looked like.

The young man wasn’t made out of darkness like she might have expected. Rather, he seemed the antithesis of the shadows that he had been born from. He had the faintly gold skin of a Hamartian who spent enough time in the sun, and hair like daylight. Like all Paeans were said to be, he was beautiful, cherubic in his youthful appearance like a young messenger angel shaped by the gods to represent their glory in the fullest.

A dark robe similar to the ones the Choristers wore hung around him loosely in a way no Chorister would be caught dressing, revealing up to part of the abdomen and tied incorrectly. Occasionally, there were parts of his skin where a feather would be, feathers as dark as the robe he wore.

His eyes, black as a moonless night, were focused on her.

Oh, no.

When Rin met his eyes, his red lips curved upwards in a resplendent smile meant to dazzle anyone who saw it.

“My heart,” he whispered reverently. “My soul, my other half. At long last we meet.”

No way, Rin thought numbly. This all had to be a dream. Any moment now she would wake up and then it would be her Ceremony of Ascension and then she would fail like everyone else and she would be honorably discharged as a Chorister and live a normal, peaceful life with Miku, talking about nothing too important as days passed on and they made their living together, relying on each other to get through this world as safely as they could.

But there was no waking from reality, and the Paean – her Paean – only deepened his smile.

“I am the Paean of the Dark Paradise,” he introduced himself, almost singing the words. “But you can call me Len.”

Notes:

I imagine Meiko's hair to not just be the usual bobcut but more of a thin ponytail, kind of like how she is in 'Iroha-ni-Jinseicho'.

Chapter 3: Enkrateia

Notes:

Enkrateia (ἐγκράτεια)

Power over oneself

“I was just a person,” she whispered into the darkness. It was a confession, words that could never be spoken to any other in a setting less private. “Just a regular human being, a citizen of the Free Cities.”

The spirit shaped like a man would take her secrets to their grave. “Until you were Called.”

And what had happened between, to transform a carefree girl from the Free Cities that liked to sing and dance to a damaged woman desperate enough to flee to a demon-infested land, if only to escape slavery.

She closed her eyes. “And then I became Queen.”

-a conversation between Queen Sophrona and her Paean

---

 

The news flipped all of Hamartia upside-down.

Not literally, of course, since even a Diva and a Paean couldn’t manage such a feat. Perhaps the first Duet could have accomplished it, but Miki hadn’t even been born at the time and so couldn’t testify with the reasonable certainty she might have liked in the same way Luka or Meiko could have.

But the news of a thirteenth Duet’s birth was that significant, to bitch-slap every other news out of the way and shove itself to the front like a leading actor demanding attention. To the general people it meant something special – another incarnation of the goddess to protect them from the demons. To the nobles and the royal family, it meant there was another player in the games, one that could be their ally or enemy depending on how the cards played out. To the surrounding nations it meant that there was an unpredictable factor in a potential war in the future for them to have to consider. To the Duets it meant another pair to join them in their conditional immortal lives.

Careful fingers brushed her long, cerise hair into a semi-controlled state, the one where the top half was tied up with braids and the bottom half hung loose and free, and made her hair look like a waterfall the color of fire.

“Forty-eight years,” murmured Piko, pinning up the upper half of her bright hair, softened with the oil he had applied and combed through. He always did like playing with her hair. It drew his eye, he claimed. It lit up the dark cavern they had first met in, he liked to say with the fiery strands wrapped around his fingers. He liked to kiss it almost as much as he liked kissing her lips or neck or any other place she was sensitive in. “And even now I have difficulty figuring out what you’re thinking sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?” Miki pouted, pulling the corner of her lips down in exaggeration. “I must be slipping from my game.”

Piko handed her the clothes for the day, a white dress with intricate embroidery of tangled vines crawling up one side of her skirt in intentional asymmetry.

“Your game is still very much going strong,” he said dryly. “Show the rest of us mercy, oh great one. Especially since we’re no longer the youngest Duet. Spare the young ones their poor virgin minds.”

Miki cackled.

“I’ll be gentle,” she lied without even batting an eye.

“Liar.” Piko leaned in and kissed her lips with small, soft pecks. “Liar, liar, liar.”

“Not even believed by my own Paean.” If it wasn’t for the hair Piko had made up for her, Miki would have thrown herself onto her bed in the most dramatic way she could. “Tragedy.”

His fingers skimmed her waist, and the layer of her chemise was too thin to protect her nerves from the threat.

“Don’t make me tickle you,” he warned.

She whined, but in the end complied and finished getting ready. The new Duet was going to be terribly busy with their sudden popularity, and she needed to get moving, to pick them up and check what their newly given names were and announce it to the world and finish up all the other boring stuff so she could get back to her work. Only the early bird got the worm.

---

Diva. Her.

Rin was, rather unfortunately in this case, a smart girl. Her Force was nothing to write home about, having just enough to maybe warrant being a priestess should she enter service to the gods. It was her thinking abilities that her Mentors had praised, calling her a girl with quick wits and talent they wanted to see made good use of. It was the part of herself she was most proud of, the part of her she relied on the most.

Her brain’s capabilities meant that she understood, and her pride meant that she could not play the game of denial for a long time, or pretend to not understand.

She was, against all odds, a Diva. With a Paean.

At least the news didn’t only take her off-guard. Everyone, even Mentor Mew, was caught up in awe and surprise.

But even the rare experience of watching Mentor Mew, the cool, unflappable woman who taught the Choristers for six years without once breaking face show uncertainty did nothing to raise her mood. As soon as she recovered, Mentor Mew considered something before putting Rin and Len at the front of the procession – politely, she noted with despair, as if Rin was her superior and not former student – and marched everyone out of the caverns.

The reactions outside had been worse. The officials attending, the scribe recording the event and whatever other people with nothing to do except witness sixteen-year old girls go in and out of a cavern for an annual event all froze, minds blanked and unable to process the sight of a young man amongst the midst. A young man that was very clearly not completely human, what with the occasional feathers he sprouted, and his unearthly beauty.

One not-quite-human young man among the Choristers, who were all girls, who had entered the cavern for their Ceremony of Ascension to hopefully bond with a Paean.

The answer was all-too obvious for anyone with functioning eyes and half a brain.

Shrieks of surprise, babbles of words like ‘honor to the family’ and ‘blessed sight’ and ‘heavens smiling down upon Hamartia’ and so on spilled from their mouths. The scribe, in a downy-grey robe the color of a pigeon’s feathers, flapped his sleeves as he scribbled something furiously.

One of the officials – the oldest man present – shoved his way to her with surprising strength for someone his age. The thick grey moustache covering his lip quivered like a wriggling mouse as he seized her hands.

Rin just barely stopped herself from snatching her hands away or slapping his with full force to avoid making things awkward. It still didn’t take away the unpleasant feeling of sweaty large hands holding hers tightly.

“An honor,” he gushed. “Oh my lady, this is such an honor, I can’t believe, to think, that in my time I would be able to witness with my own eyes before death such a thing!”

He didn’t look close to death at all, especially judging by the strength with which he held her hands, or the way he had shoved Mentor Mew aside to get to her.

Rin tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

“Please let go of my hands,” she managed to say.

“Of course, of course,” he boomed, and a moment later her hands were freed, though unfortunately still covered with the man’s sweat. Rin let them fall to her side and wiped them on her robe as discreetly as she could.

Her mood only fell further at his next words. “Please, come with me. We must head immediately to the Kipos – word will, of course, have gone to His Majesty, but we must prepare and greet His Majesty with proper respect as is due!”

She looked to Mentor Mew to guidance, but the elegant teacher demurely inclined her head. “Good fortune, Diva of the Dark Paradise,” she murmured.

Not what Rin wanted to hear.

“A most powerful and blessed title,” the man boomed, and shooed away the other Choristers as if they were flies. “Worthy of a Duet awaited for so long.”

Rin cringed. “Mentor,” she called, before she could get swept away. “Could you – Miku is waiting for me outside. Can you tell her-”

Tell her what? What would she be told? That suddenly all their plans had been destroyed? That nothing was going to be the same again?

“That, I won’t be able to make it?”

Mew’s eyes met hers, and she nodded slowly. “Of course, Honored Diva.”

Rin’s throat closed at the title that really sealed everything in.

“Thank you,” she said with some difficulty. She felt a little sick.

The sick feeling didn’t go away with time. Rather, it got worse when she regained her senses and found that she was at Kipos with a Paean that could not seem to take his eyes off her, regardless of the sights he was surrounded by, and a chatty man who couldn’t seem to stop talking at her.

Kipos. The inner part of Rakia that was like a city of its own where only important and permitted people could enter. Where the royal family lived in the different palaces.

It was beautiful, flowers in bloom and buildings of a rich beauty she thought she would never see with her own eyes, but her current panic was great enough to drown out any and all feelings of awe she should have felt.

Oh gods oh gods oh gods.

“It is most fortuitous that the Honored Duet has been found at last,” the man said, and Rin realized he was still talking. “We have been waiting for far too long.”

How he made such a gushing voice sound chiding towards her ‘lateness’, Rin would never know, and never really did want to know. Not having anything to truly say, Rin kept her mouth shut and as always, decided to ignore it until it was no longer a problem for her.

Len, who had been resting his chin on his hand as he continued to stare at Rin with a content look on his beautiful face, finally removed his elbow from his knee and straightened his spine.

“Perhaps I would have come out sooner,” he said, placing more emphasis on being delayed. “If it was easier for me to come out in the first place.”

The man protested at that. “But the seals were made to allow easy exits for Paeans, there should have been no problems with it-”

Crack!

The chair Len had been resting on was a long-seated one with enough length to support the legs should the occupant decide to lounge in it. Its wooden frame, made out of polished and carved rosewood, now had splinters and cracks ruining its beauty.

Rin felt her head spin at the sheer waste. A part of her balked as she remembered just how much – how little – money she had to pay for the destruction of such a luxurious item.

“Pardon,” he said in a voice that held absolutely no regret whatsoever. “Whenever I hear nonsense, I feel the urge to break things.”

If only he wasn’t eyeing the man’s throat as he said that and flexing his hand like his fingers were eager to grab something to break. The formerly chatty man got the message, loud and clear, and shut his mouth.

“And as for whether easy exits were allowed,” Len continued with a feral upturn of his lips. “Why don’t I try stuffing you into that stupid well, and then we’ll see how easy it is to get out, yes?”

Rin had never seen a man’s face turn pale faster. Shivering, he turned to send her a beseeching look.

She was confused for all of three seconds before she remembered. Right. Paeans were the spirits that did what they wanted without regard for anything else, and Divas were the ones to keep them in line.

At least, that was how all the stories went. It was one thing to hear about the twelve epic romances of the good girl taming the bad boy-slash-spirits, and another thing entirely to have to be the one in that role.

How, exactly, did one go and calm a spirit?

“Er, Len,” she said, a bit unsure of how it was supposed to be done.

The sheer amount of attention Len turned towards her that moment made her regret it slightly. She knew pressure, the weight of expectations on her shoulders. She had felt it from her mother, from her Mentors, and she had always worked to meet them and surpass them as much as she could so that she was not discarded. But this was a pressure unlike any other Rin remembered.

He looked at her like she was everything he wanted and needed in the world. Like he was a man who had just been greeted with salvation when he was suffering in the throes of despair. Her stomach curled at the weight of the stare, and she didn’t know if she could meet these expectations properly, if ever.

“Yes?” he asked, looking incredibly pleased that she had called his name.

Rin ran over a few words in her head, and settled on something that probably wouldn’t insult either party.

“Don’t scare him too much,” she said lamely.

“I don’t know if there was anything to be scared of in our conversation,” Len said, tipping his head slightly to the side as if he was genuinely confused as to why anyone would fear him. “But as you wish.”

He made a dismissive gesture towards the man without even casting a second glance towards him, and while Rin had never met a member of the royal family in her life she was fairly certain that the sheer imperial arrogance he portrayed in that moment would probably give them a good run for their money. Rin felt a headache begin to form.

The man left the room as she massaged her temple.

“What’s wrong?” whispered the cause of all her problems at the moment. He seemed genuinely concerned, eyes fixed on her face and hands placidly raised in front of his body, like he wanted to reach out to offer her touch as comfort while respecting her unsaid desires regarding contact.

Rin couldn’t very well say ‘you’ to him. Partly because that was rude, and partly because they were in one of the palaces, sitting in the richly furnished parlour waiting for their host to come. Whoever they were, the mysterious host was at least ranked highly enough to warrant a meeting in a palace.

It could even be a member of the royal family. Oh gods above.

“Stress and nerves,” she replied, because those were technically true enough. Even if she wanted to tell him that it was his fault that her life was like this.

She was waiting for someone Very Important to come and talk to her and knowing herself she might make a colossal mistake. And that was going to be her life from now on and she was going to mess it up from the start.

The spirit called Len cocked his head, taking in that information and mulling over it. “Can I do something to help?”

She felt something in her deflate. The – anger? Rage? Frustration?

That wasn’t his fault.

That was on her, for not being excited or happy about being chosen. It was an honor. Girls would have cut off their right arms for this chance.

Rin swallowed. She wasn’t going to explain to the Paean that it was her fault, there really wasn’t anything he could do to fix that since that was just how she was, and she had a feeling asking if he wanted to exchange her for someone more willing to be a Diva – his Diva – wasn’t going to go well.

She made a mental note to do that, later, just in case. There wasn’t a precedent of it happening, but she could hope.

“It’s fine,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

If she said it enough times it might almost become the truth.

A knock on the door broke the silence. Before Rin could do anything – get up to answer the door or call out for whoever it was outside the door to come in – the doors opened, and a young woman with vibrant cherry hair entered, in a simple navy robe with flared skirts to allow for easy movement of the legs and gray trousers that Rin couldn’t imagine any royal wearing. The sleeves of her robe were the only decorated part of her attire, with gold and silver embroidery of geometric shapes on the cloth around her wrists displaying her status as a mage from the Tower of Alexandria.

Close behind her was a man who looked around the same age as his companion, with a head of silver hair cut at chin length and glittering golden eyes that flickered between Rin and Len. He, too, was dressed in clothes made primarily to be functional so the chances of him being a royal or noble was low, and there was something about the cut of his face that made him odd to her eyes.

He was handsome, yes, but . . .

At her side Len stiffened and leaned forwards, dark eyes wary as he didn’t take them off the silver-haired man.

But in a way similar to the Paean she had just met not even two hours ago.

A Duet.

And there was only one Diva in Hamartia with hair of that shade. The Diva that had been the youngest up till that day was known to have fiery hair, though now that Rin was up close she saw her famous locks had more of a dark pink shade to it. More cherry than tomato, like Rin had imagined.

“Aww,” said Diva Utatane after she scanned the room. “I beat Princess Ia to the punch. Ah well.”

The woman that was young in appearance turned her attention to Rin, and her eyes seemed to glint with interest. Len tensed further, and to be honest Rin did as well.

“Hi!” greeted Diva Utatane with an almost unnatural amount of cheer. “I’m the Diva of the Storming Steel, and this is my life partner and soul mate. But you can call us Miki and Piko.”

The Paean Utatane – Piko, as Miki had introduced him – waved at them with an expression of mild interest, as if they were an oddly shaped rock or an unusually close bird.

“Gods, this is awesome,” Miki chirped. “I’m no longer the youngest. You have no idea how grateful I am for that, by the way. Thanks so much for that, by the way, all the love.”

It was, Rin reflected as she felt herself be swept up in the tide of words, a day of meeting many people who spoke too much for her own good.

“‘All the love’?” Piko repeated, voice low. A chill crept up Rin’s spine at the menace in his voice.

His partner, however, was completely unaffected by it.

“Except yours.” Miki rolled her eyes and kissed the air in his direction. He made a grabbing gesture, as if plucking the kiss from the air, and pressed his lips to his fingers like he was receiving it. Only once the Paean looked satisfied did she turn her attention back to Rin.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” she said with a beaming smile.

Rin’s chest felt tight at the pressure. Unlike the other two that had been insistent on talking her ear off, Miki was different in that she looked genuinely happy. Not for glory or for something to gain, but for Rin joining her.

She couldn’t say the same in reply to the Diva.

But . . .

“Thank you,” she managed.

Miki’s smile, almost impossibly, seemed to get even brighter, like a sun in the summer sky.

“Gods, you’re so cute,” she said fondly. “I’m almost sad I’ve got to go. Princess Ia’s coming to speak to you soon. Soonish? Yeah, soon – so I’ll catch up to you later, okay? Give you all the tips and tricks on the downlow and all?”

“Um,” Rin said intelligently. The Diva spoke very quickly.

“Fantastic.” Miki beamed, and then leaned in to quickly kiss Rin’s cheeks, once on each side.

Feeling her head spin in confusion, Rin stared back, unused to anyone like her, and unsure on what to do.

Apparently she didn’t have to do anything.

“See you around!” With a wave, Miki was gone. Her Paean had also gone with her, though his disappearance was noticed only once everything was over.

In the silent room, Rin looked to the only other living person, very confused.

“What was that?”

Len shrugged. Now that the Duet of the Storming Steel was gone, he didn’t seem all that interested in them.

His focus was, Rin noticed, back on her.

And the uncomfortable feeling of the pressure was also back.

She took a breath in, and then slowly released it. Take in courage, release fear.

“Len,” she began. “Can I – can we talk?”

Len leaned in closer to her, dark eyes fixed on her face. “Of course. Anything you desire.”

She bit her lip. The only Duet she had seen – for all of a scant few moments – hadn’t been like this. They had looked so comfortable, in their banter and interactions. So . . . natural.

Not like how she felt right now. Not like this.

Len looked at her like a damned soul would at his salvation and Rin really didn’t have it in her to be anyone’s salvation.

“It’s just . . .” Rin clenched her hands into fists, digging her nails into the skin of her palms. “Why me?”

Her Paean tipped his head, a non-verbal cue that he wasn’t quite sure what she was asking.

Rin swallowed and started to clarify. “I’m nothing special. I don’t – I didn’t even, it’s not-”

The words refused to obey her wishes and she flushed in embarrassment. She was making a fool of herself.

She took a deep breath. “Why me?” she tried again. “There were so many other Choristers worthy, far better than me.”

Rin felt like an imposter. She hadn’t wanted to become a Diva, something she had hidden from everyone – even Miku, really. She became a Chorister for the goal of using the experience as an in, for a better life. She wasn’t noble, not like Divas were supposed to be.

And in an ironic twist of fate it had been her chosen, over so many girls that had wished to become Divas.

She couldn’t tell the Paean in front of her that she had never wanted him, that was too cruel.

Len opened his mouth to answer her when the door opened again.

Notes:

AN: Took me forever to update but I'm not giving this story up.

Chapter 4: Stasis

Notes:

Stasis (στάσις)

Feuds between aristocrats and their struggles to be the best

Princess Ia was exactly what Rin might have imagined a princess – or a Diva – to be. Beautiful, for one, as if she had stepped out of a painting into reality, brought to life by a creator so in love with his own creation that his prayers moved the heart of a goddess. Pale hair, like moonlight through a cherry tree in bloom, was elaborately arranged and pinned with jewelled pins, each likely worth more than what Rin’s life had been before Len. Unlike Diva Utatane, who dressed for functionality, she was royalty in clothes as well as manner. She wore silk like a second skin, moving with light, graceful steps as if all the underskirts beneath her dress couldn’t weigh her down.

When she first came into the room, announced by a servant, Rin climbed to her feet and curtseyed as she had been taught.

Len stayed perched on his chair, and gave the princess a bored once-over before losing all interest immediately and returning to looking at Rin. She internally panicked at the rudeness, but no one else criticized it.

“It’s an honor,” said the princess, “to be alive and witness for myself the birth of a new Duet.”

What did she say in reply to that? It was an honor to meet her?

Rin pressed her lips together to prevent any stupidity from slipping through and bowed her head. Only after she did that did it occur to her that it might have been ruder to silently nod as if it was obvious.

But it was too late to try and make up for her insolence, and Princess Ia didn’t even seem bothered.

“To be honest,” she said. “I’m a little nervous. Everyone is, really. We all seem to be very unsure on what to do.”

Liar, was her first thought, one she immediately quashed out in case the thought showed on her face. Princess Ia looked composed. If anything, she looked like she was enjoying herself.

A smile curved her lightly-tinted lips upwards, and she made a picture artists would have wept to capture with paint and their brushes.

“Still, we do have precedence to follow as guidelines. Honored Duet, your ceremony is being arranged right this moment. Your Duet name will also be announced alongside your debut.”

Two years ago, Princess Ia was married, and there was a national celebration. Prisoners – within reason – were pardoned, food was given out, and festivities were held. At the time Rin was still a Chorister, and as thus she was, along with all the other Choristers, pulled into helping prepare for the celebration.  She remembered thinking that it would have been better for her to have lived through the wedding when she wasn’t a Chorister.

And now there was going to be a celebration similar to that in scale for her. For Len, too, Rin remembered.

She felt like there was a stone sitting in her chest – like indigestion, building up and up and up until surely she would burst at the slightest tip.

As if she could sense Rin’s discomfort, Princess Ia smiled knowingly. There were only a few years’ difference between her and Rin, and yet Rin realized that there was a world’s distance from a girl whose priority had only been her own survival and that of a princess. She was mature and relaxed, with the air of someone who was truly confident in every step she took.

It was the kind of confidence Rin would likely never have.

---

“Because it was you.”

Rin looked up – and in doing so, raised her head from where she had buried it into her hands. After Princess Ia explained what the ceremony would cover, she also gave the approximate schedules of the other Duets, and finally, the approximated schedule for her and Len.

“Of course, every person is different,” the princess had said. “But we’re estimating a half-year for your training to be a Duet, and then another half-year in the field.”

Because the primary duties of the Duets – was to fight. To protect the Hamartians from demons, and foreign enemies. Because she had just become the thirteenth girl chosen for the legacy of a pair blessed by the goddess with the power, the force to be reckoned with. A natural disaster in human form.

Of the twelve before her, only four were still living. The rest had died, most of them in battle.

After Princess Ia finished, she had given Rin a mysterious smile. “I look forward to speaking more with you.”

“Me too,” Rin said out of politeness, then wondered if her choice of words was fine. Was it royal-appropriate? “Thank you,” she added, figuring a little more politeness couldn’t hurt her situation right now.

Because the sun was setting and daylight’s domain diminishing, a maid led both Rin and Len to a bedroom.

A bedroom. As in, one.

Rin realized the implication as soon as the door shut behind her, but the maid was gone and –

And what was she supposed to say, exactly? That she wasn’t going to share a room with the person she was now bound by soul to for the rest of her life? The life she didn’t even know how long it would be?

Rin was the thirteenth Diva, in a nation that had currently five including her. The rest had all died, mostly in battle.

She buried her face into her hands, and now she raised her head again. “What?”

“Because it was you,” Len repeated obligingly, eyes still dark and intense on her. The phrase ‘tall, dark and handsome’ didn’t apply to him – couldn’t, because while he was handsome, he was fair-haired to the point where gold’s luster would falter next to him.

That, and he was only half a head taller than she was. And she wasn’t exactly tall.

She still had no idea what he was saying.

Len, luckily, expanded. “You asked, why you. Because it was you.”

It took more than a few moments for Rin to remember the question she asked before Princess Ia entered the room.

All this time, and he still was waiting to answer?

And the answer he gave was too heavy for Rin to accept.

Len continued to gaze at her, eyes as dark and endless as the abyss. Not daring to look into the abyss in fear that the abyss would spill into her, Rin, coward that she was, didn’t let even a toe out of the metaphorical line she had drawn as the boundary.

“We should sleep,” she said instead, choosing to run away from the problem. And then she wanted to slap herself for her stupidity, because there was one bed.

Len smiled knowingly. “I can go without sleep for tonight.”

“That’s not healthy,” said Rin. Sleep was a precious commodity.

But Len insisted that she take the bed. “I won’t be able to go to sleep for a while, anyways.”

Having never heard of a Paean having insomnia – or, well, any sickness – Rin looked at Len with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?”

There was something about the way he looked at her, like she was a treasure, like her very existence gave him happiness every single moment, that Rin wanted to look away. “I’m afraid that this is all a dream, and that if I close my eyes, I’ll wake up back in that spring.”

Rin decided to not push anymore. She, too, wondered the same.

The difference, for her, was that she was tired, and a part of her was hoping despite knowing better that this was actually all a dream.

“I’ll wash first,” she said, and stepped into the connected bath chamber, the bath already full of steaming water. She began to pull off her robes when something fell out of her pocket.

For a second, Rin stared at the pad that Miku had put into her pocket, just in case. Numbly, she picked it up, before slowly setting it aside. She could throw it out. She would never need it again, not after having ascended into a Diva.

But she couldn’t, because it was a memento from one of her last moments as a normal person. As a Chorister. As Miku’s friend and sister.

Pulling her eyes away from the pad, Rin scrubbed herself in the hot water. It didn’t take much to get her clean – she had, after all, taken a bath just this morning, and she liked to keep herself clean – she dawdled, trying to avoid the inevitable.

But the water lost its heat, and she had to step out or be the first Diva to die of a cold. Wiping off water and pulling on a shift, she left the bathroom.

Len was leaning against the window, left wide open, and Rin saw the side of his profile as he stared at the twilight sky, his expression unreadable.

With her approach, however, he turned away from the outside scenery without any hesitation.

How many love songs, plays, performances and even novels had been written about the love between a Diva and a Paean again?

Panicked, Rin speed-walked to the bed. “Um, good night.”

Len did not approach, did not try anything.

“Good night, Rin,” he said softly, with a smile.

She doubted that she would fall asleep, but apparently the day had taken its toll on her. Shortly after laying her head on the pillow, Rin fell into dreamless slumber without any struggle.

---

The next day came with a bright morning and the knowledge that nothing that happened from the previous day and night was a dream.

As the new day was filled with far too much activity, and Len the only constant that stuck with her throughout, Rin was reminded over and over again that this was not a dream.

“This one,” she said, picking the black silk with the yellow flowers embroidered. This was the fifth choice she was being offered, and Rin had learned by the third that asking Len always meant being asked what she preferred because he would take anything she chose, and asking the opinions of the tailors and servants assigned to her meant asking for a long, detailed background explanation on every single stitch that she wasn’t ever going to have the patience or interest for.

All of the choices she was given were beautiful things that were worth far more than she had ever dreamed of, anyways. Rin gave up and let everything pass her by in a blur.

The most urgent priority was apparently the clothes. They needed to make the robes for the ceremony announcing her and Len to all of Hamartia, where they would receive their names, but even afterwards, they said, she needed clothes befitting her new station.

The weight in her chest area, weighing her down like she was drowning on dry land, reminded her once again of its existence.

When lunch was announced, Rin and Len were escorted to a dining room. The knot of anxiety in her stomach tightened when she saw Princess Ia, not yet seated at a table set with surprisingly simple fare. Bread, cheese, fruits, and some cold dishes – meats and vegetables.

“Honored Diva,” she greeted cordially, as if they were new neighbors not yet on bad terms.

“Your Highness,” said Rin in reply. This time silence was not an option.

“You must be famished,” the princess said, grasping her hands together close to her heart.  “I know I am, after every fitting.”

She would be, given the lack of food she’d had so far, though the anxiety was rather helpful in decreasing the effects.

Not having had enough fittings to know if that was usual, Rin tried to find in her memories what the appropriate equivalent for a shrug would be, as a reply to a royal. They were standing, and with Princess Ia holding herself with a poised smile as if nothing was wrong and Len just not caring, Rin was the only one that felt awkward. Chairs and a table with food, and yet –

“May we sit?” she blurted out, upon remembering that she was now a Diva. As for who was of the higher station, Rin wasn’t going to dare to try and claim herself as the higher one. Better to ask for permission.

“Oh, please, by all means.”

Rin only enjoyed that relief for a brief moment. Len moved, and pulled a seat out before waiting, his dark eyes on her. It was blatantly clear what that meant.

Princess Ia laughed, soft and sweet. “How wonderful, that the new Duet is already so close.”

“Thank you,” she managed to say, and sat. Only once she was seated did Len take a seat himself, and Rin wondered if she should have asked him to help Princess Ia into her seat.

But the princess didn’t even seem to mind, seating herself.

As they ate – Rin feeling like the food was being eaten through her nose and not her mouth – Princess Ia made small talk. Asking about Rin’s time as a Chorister, her hobbies, her friends –

There was only one person Rin could really call a ‘friend’. Two, if she counted Mikuo, but she couldn’t really, so it was just one person.

The bread and garlic cheese, despite being the best bread and garlic cheese she had ever eaten, was even harder to swallow now.

“I hope to stay good friends with them,” she said vaguely instead.

Something about that non-answer, however, made Princess Ia smile. It was a beautiful smile, as most upward curves of the lips on very beautiful people tended to be, but something about it made Rin’s heart stutter in fear.

Len, who had been sipping at a goblet, slammed it down on the table. Flinching at the loud sound, Rin looked at Len, who had finally taken his eyes off Rin and was glaring at the princess.

A hasty knock on the door was followed by a servant bursting in, but at a gesture from Princess Ia, he backed down and left the room without a fuss. Len didn’t say anything, only glowered, and Princess Ia didn’t protest, though her smile did slip away to a composed face that gave away nothing.

The expected thing, Rin knew, as a Diva, would be to stop Len, to chastise him. That was what would be right, to respect the royalty.

But Len, though he had never been someone Rin ever planned for in her life, though he was a source of discomfort that she wanted to avert her eyes to, had still stepped up for her.

She breathed, and then reached out to take one of Len’s hands. She was taking a risk, a risk of being rejected, but –

The moment she took hold of his hands, Len turned his attention on her, all of his animosity melting away without a single trace left behind, like snow met with the full force of spring’s warmth.

Slowly, like he didn’t want to frighten her, Len put his other hand on top of hers, sandwiching her hand between his.

One problem dealt with, Rin looked to Princess Ia, who had a thoughtful look.

“Princess?” Rin asked hesitantly.

The princess snapped out of her thoughts. “Apologies,” she said.

“For?” Len still had a hold on her hand – not so tight that she wouldn’t be able to retrieve her hand, but tightly enough that it was a very solid grip that wouldn’t let her slip out, even if she wasn’t to hold it up. He raised one golden eyebrow, as if throwing a challenge in Princess Ia’s face.

But it had no effect, nothing but water sliding off the feathers of a duck. Or in this case, a swan. Majestic, beautiful and collected.

“For testing you, honored Diva.” It was Len that had spoken, and yet it was Rin she was apologizing to. Princess Ia had her eyes on Rin, not on Len. “I needed to see where you were, so I could have an idea on where to start.”

“Start-” her voice cracked. Sure that a blush was blooming on her cheeks from the heat rushing to her face, Rin cleared her throat and tried again. “Start what?”

“Lessons.” Princess Ia tilted her head, and suddenly the image of the perfect saintly woman turned into that of a cynical disbeliever, sardonic twist to her lips changing everything. “On how to not be looked down on, and how to get everything that you deserve without the hungry vultures circling you stripping you down to your bones. How to hide your weaknesses.”

The princess was a predator, and Rin, who had always ever been a scavenger, a survivor, was prey, a rabbit who wanted to dig a hole for safety, or to run into the cover of the bushes.

Len, with the reckless, uncaring bravery of a Paean, took Princess Ia’s words as a challenge. “The other Duet has already volunteered for that.”

Rin tried to remember if the Diva Utatane had said such a thing. All she remembered was a blur, of the redhead’s lightning-fast words.

As if she had sniffed out Rin’s hesitant insecurity, the beautiful predator smiled.

“I’m sure they have,” she murmured demurely, silk with an edge of steel not quite fully hidden. “But Duets are always busy, and the primary focus will be to train you on your powers as a Duet. Not on the privileges of being a Duet, or someone with power, and how to protect what is yours – that which is precious, and that which is rightfully yours.”

Miku.

She still didn’t know how to reach Miku. Who to ask, and what to ask for. What should she even do? How was she to even see Miku right now? Her best friend, her sister, the Chorister who had wanted to be a Diva – would have made an excellent Diva, one full of compassion and justice.

Instead it was Rin who was chosen by a Paean. Rin, the coward, the one that never did anything without a reason, the selfish, small-hearted girl that could never be great.

Rin, who could never be as good a Diva as Miku would have, had trust issues.

“And why do you want to help me?”

What do you want, was the unasked, unvoiced question. No one ever did anything for anyone else without an ulterior motive.

The beautiful smile returned, but once Rin was aware of what she could be, it was no longer a mere beauty that sat before Rin.

“Connections are always important in the games we play,” said Princess Ia, and that was an answer Rin could accept. She might not trust the princess, not in full, but Rin could accept that answer as a reasonable response. “As are allies.”

Len scoffed.

“I could snap your neck with one hand,” he threatened silkily, and the shadows in the room darkened, enough to be noticeable.

Princess Ia didn’t even blink. “You could. But that would not benefit you or your Diva in any way.”

“You think your life holds that much meaning?”

“Len,” said Rin, because he was threatening a princess and there were so many things wrong with that. She didn’t want to be the first Diva that was imprisoned for harming royalty.

“In several ways, some of which are relevant to you,” the princess riposted. “For example, were I to be killed, I’m sure my father would grieve publicly, and use my death as a justification for laws tightening control over the Duets. Not just you and your Diva-”

It was here that Len reacted, eyes narrowing at the implied tightened control over Rin, but Princess Ia wasn’t done. “But also the other Duets. Whose Paeans will not appreciate or look favorably upon the young upstarts that made their Divas uncomfortable. And, of course, there is the matter of public perception, where you will be seen as a wild Paean whose Diva could not control you effectively – or, perhaps, your Diva will be seen as a dangerous, unstable woman-”

Len grabbed a plate and threw it. The plate shattered against the wall behind Princess Ia, narrowly missing her head.

The words didn’t just affect Len, however, and Rin knew she had to speak. “Stop, Len.”

The princess looked once at the spot where a plate had lain, now with bread lying in an otherwise empty spot.

“This,” she said. “Is why you only meet me, and not the king or his heir apparent until the ceremony.”

The mention of the ceremony felt like it had come out of nowhere. Until Rin remembered what she’d been trying to memorize in preparation for the ceremony.

“While they first came to see you,” said the princess. “The Duet of the Storming Steel was called to the palace to guard the side of His Majesty and keep him safe until you are to be sworn in, lest the unsworn Paean decide to kill the king. After swearing the oath of the Duets, you won’t be able to harm the rightful king, but until then, you are possible threats, hence the separation.”

She was speaking to Len, and yet, the ultimate message was clear to Rin. As the Diva of the Duet, she had the power in the dynamic, and she was the one who would ultimately be more at risk.

“That’s why I’m here, to offer my aid. Because if you go in blind, they will sniff the blood out and eat you alive. Better an ally upfront about what they want, instead of false friends wearing masks and speaking lies.”

There was the other shoe, the thing that had kept Rin from fully appreciating the power and fame that came with the status of being a Diva. Even if Rin had wanted it – and she hadn’t, because the responsibility that came with the status was something she wasn’t able to take on willingly – this was the other side.

Princess Ia had called it games, and Rin had just been dragged into the most dangerous games that she ever would play, for the rest of her life.

However long – or short – they would be.

Notes:

AN: However long - or short - it will take to bring the next updates it will eventually come!

Chapter 5: Koinonos

Notes:

Koinonos (κοινωνός)

Companion, partner

If he could, then he would keep the sun from rising. It didn’t have to be for good, just for a few minutes, maybe an hour or so. Just so that Gumi would sleep a little longer. Diva or not, she shouldn’t push herself like this, like she didn’t realize she had limits.

Even Divas and Paeans had their limits.

But no, the birds began to chirp slowly, and though the sun itself had not risen, the darkness was slowly starting to lighten as twilight approached.

Yuma knew Gumi was awake. He could all but hear her mind whirling like a storm. She might be calm and composed on the outside, but that only meant that her depths held things most couldn’t even dream of.

And she had too much to think about. He stroked her emerald-green hair and held back a sigh. Decades of planning, of biding their time and building alliances and pulling strings, and the entrance of a new Duet had put everything on hold.

Gumi wasn’t mad at the new Duet. She was angry at herself for not seeing it, and did what she always did when she was frustrated at herself, much to Yuma’s dismay.

She took it out on herself.

Yuma’s hand went from her hair to her lips, to trace their slightly swollen outlines. For once it wasn’t from his kissing her, but from her own teeth gnawing at them until they had swollen from the abuse.

Gumi didn’t push his fingers away like she had several hours ago. He waited, nonetheless, even if he would rather she was healed sooner than later. The longer she went with her self-sustained injuries, the heavier his heart grew.

“Fine,” she murmured, though he had not said anything. She was kind, the master of his heart.

Smiling faintly, Yuma leaned down to kiss her. He didn’t need to apply the Force this way, but it was a reward for himself, to do things this way.

From the way her arms snaked around his neck and pulled him closer, Gumi didn’t mind either. They remained intertwined in each other’s embrace long after her wounds were healed.

---

The second Duet she and Len met was also arguably the most flamboyant and extravagant one in the history of Divas and Paeans. The Diva of the Dancing Water was heralded as the most beautiful woman in all of Hamartia and had been since her ascension as a Diva. Light pink hair swayed gently, and though she dressed in clothes simple and old-fashioned, Rin realized that the rumors were not exaggerated, and that Diva Megurine was truly deserving of the title of most beautiful. Her features were radiant and elegant, arranged in what could only be called perfect harmony with each other, and the air of mystery and composure hung around her like a light perfume.

Her Paean was more known, however, for his preferences in fashion, and today was no exception. Wearing his violet hair long and in a ponytail, with the flowery robes of a woman draped over his broad shoulders, he made for a dissonant sight, but one familiar from the songs. Hanging from his waist on a belt was a single sword – the only weapon the Paean of the Dancing Water needed, because other than his fashion he was known for being a deadly swordsman. His blue eyes looked over Rin, gave a longer glance to Len, and then returned to stay on his Diva.

The two of them were a pair that would draw gazes regardless of who they were.

They dropped by just before she and Len would officially be sworn in as the new Duet. Dressed in clothes that probably costed more than everything she’d worn in her life before this combined, Rin waited in the building nearest to the border of Kipos. They would be revealed to the citizens in the center of Rakia, where the most people could see, because entrance to Kipos was restricted.

Diva Megurine was not like Diva Utatane. At least, not in her approach.

“Call me Luka,” the pink-haired Diva offered her kindly, after introducing herself and her Paean. “When you are comfortable.”

Rin nodded.

“And if you need to ask something, let me know,” she added. “I will help with what I can. And Gakupo will, too.”

“Of course.” The Paean Megurine’s voice was a deep baritone, which clashed even further with his sense of fashion.

A footman came to fetch her and Len, and the Duet of the Dancing Water let them pass.

---

“Are you okay with this?”

Too caught up in her stress, Rin had just made the assumption that Len was fine with everything, in the way those who did not care about their surroundings could not be affected. He looked like his mind was impervious to everything that made her feel stressed, as if they could not leave a mark on him.

But seeing Diva Megurine speak on behalf of her Paean, and her Paean immediately agree to it had made Rin wonder – was Len okay with this?

It was important that she knew where he stood on this, in case it came back to bite her in the ass later on.  Granted, this was a weird place to ask the question, but. Better late than never, and better now than later.

Len reacted in the way he reacted whenever Rin did something to pay attention to him. He smiled, like his heart was about to burst with joy and he just could not hold it back.

At the same time Rin wondered if this was the stupidest question she would ever ask.

“You are the only one in the world that matters to me,” he whispered. “I should be asking you, Rin – are you okay with this?”

His words were sweet in tone, and yet Rin could not shake the feeling that it was sweet not in the sense honey, but something more like a toxic flower.

If she said she wasn’t, then who knew what Len would do?

“I’m okay,” Rin lied immediately, when her mind pulled up the memory of Len throwing a plate at the princess. Though his feathers were gone now, and his beauty the only physically unearthly thing about him, Len wasn’t human, did not play or abide by human laws without her involvement.

“Then,” said Len. “So am I.”

She hadn’t eaten much, so the feeling of wanting to throw up shouldn’t have been present.

Rin swallowed, despite her throat feeling dry with anxiety. This was happening. She was going to be a Diva, with a Paean and all that meant. The weight of this unfounded affection was heavy and made her nervous, but that was something she’d have to deal with, as was the ceremony they were about to enter as its stars. The Diva and Paean equivalent of marriage.

Also something that had never really made its way into her plans. Rin had never planned on being a Diva, never planned on being married, and yet here she was.

“I’m nervous,” she admitted. Len was focused on her in the way a hawk might on its prey – his gaze, dark and piercing, was something of great weight. “I’m scared. I don’t know what’s coming in my life.”

Life was full of the unexpected. All her careful planning after getting her life into a semblance of order had been completely shattered along with the covering that Len broke to reach her in that ceremony.

It was, if Rin was to be completely honest, not something she appreciated, but she couldn’t let that possess her for long. Princess Ia had made it clear that there were going to be games she was going to have to take part in. Either as a piece or a player.

She reached out, palm up. Hesitant in action, but eyes filled with a yearning that burned like hellfire, Len slowly reached out as if to make sure he didn’t displease her by doing so, and carefully took it like it was the most priceless of treasures.

He symbolized the power she now had, the power she still didn’t feel was rightfully hers. But this wasn’t a dream and she wasn’t one who wanted to be swept up in the storm.

Princess Ia, for all that Len had been furious, had truly given her a warning, a reminder that she needed to stop pitying herself and get ready. If not for herself, then at least for Miku and Mikuo, who she still hadn’t been able to contact yet.

A Duet was called in to protect the king and heir while the princess met with them, all because they had not sworn to never raise arms against the rightful king. If Rin were to hazard a guess from the blatant hint Princess Ia had given, it was simple. The king didn’t want to meet the two risks that Rin and Len had become – unexpectedly, at that – but also didn’t want to lose them. Sending Princess Ia, who was known to be the princess most loved by the king, was to appease them with the – honor? Something like that.

And once she and Len did swear, then what? No one had expected a new Duet, so everyone would be interested, forced to make new plans.

In the games they were about to be thrown in, Rin didn’t want to be a piece. She didn’t want to be a player, either, but it was better than being the puppet of someone else.

“Can I trust you?” Ironic that she asked of trust, when she did not trust Len herself, not fully. It was only because he was a Paean and the significance of the bond between the Paean and the Diva that made Rin even be asking him this. “To be on my side no matter what, to not betray me?”

And yet that bond was exactly why Rin needed reassurance. Because this bond was something that had not taken part in over fifty years, and there had only been twelve other cases before, all that took place well before her birth.

Rin herself did not feel any particular bond towards Len, nothing that would fit what he displayed towards her. Nothing like what the Duets Utatane or Megurine had.

If she learned that they were broken a pair, that there was something wrong with them, she wouldn’t be surprised. Disappointed, irritated that she would have to deal with the fallout – because Rin had no doubt that the blame would somehow find itself pinned to her – but not surprised. It would make sense, even.

Still, soon she was about to be legally bound to him in front of the king, so Rin wanted verbal confirmation. That would be a step towards – something she could work with.

To the blunt distrust, Len’s reply was silence. Silence because he looked so full of ecstasy, so overwhelmed with emotion that he was unable to speak. His hold on her hand tightened – not to the point of pain, but so that he was clutching her hand like he never wanted to let go.

If he wasn’t the greatest actor in the kingdom, then Len was genuinely happy at her question.

“You describe what defines the most important parts of me,” Len said, once his rapture had apparently eased enough for him to regain his words. “I am yours. To use, to abuse, to do as you please.”

Rin didn’t blink or break eye contact with him. Eyes were the windows to the soul, and it seemed that as the Paean of Darkness his soul was molded from the shadows of the night.

She didn’t have any way to read the soul, but she was good at reading behaviour, and his, at least, was that of an honest person.

“I hope you’ll prove it to me,” she said, tightening her grip on him once before releasing. A long moment later, Len slowly released it, as if waiting for her to say he could continue holding onto her. When she didn’t, Rin could almost see in him the soul of a disappointed puppy.

“I will,” Len promised.

Maybe one day Rin would be able to trust him.

---

Rin had expected for the ceremony to take place in front of a crowd. In the open air, with people.

The first day of rehearsals – which, why had she not expected rehearsals, even Choristers rehearsed so why would a Diva be above such things – she learned that was not the case, that they would be in a hall in the palace instead.

“Of course there will be people partaking,” said Princess Ia when Rin voiced a question. “A good deal of noblemen will witness your naming.”

The common people, said Princess Ia, would see her after this.

By the time the actual ceremony came to be, the fittings and rehearsals had her near the end of her ropes, and the only reason she was managing to hold onto the fraying ends of her patience was because she had Len. If she snapped, he would snap, and then they’d be in trouble and she did not need that right now.

But the real ceremony was still, despite the almost unnecessary amount of rehearsals they’d been forced to cram in, nerve-wracking. The cue was given, and the doors opened. Somehow, Rin managed to keep a straight face despite the countless pairs of eyes in noble heads glued to her face as she and Len, dressed in clothes that were too heavy and too expensive, made their way down the great hall, to where the king and the high priest awaited.

Most of the speech – covering the history of the Divas and Paeans and Hamartia, and the honor of today as well as the ascension and other things Rin had mostly heard through one ear and spilled out the other – had been finished when the doors were opened for them to enter, so there was really only one last part of the ceremony they had to participate in.

“Kneel, children,” said the priest, an old man with a surprisingly booming, robust voice.

They did, and thankfully there was no tripping over the clothes onto her face in front of everyone.

“Diva Rin, and Paean Len,” said the priest. “By the magnanimous love of the goddess, you are two parts who have come and become a whole. Treasure this harmonious bond, and become a Duet to sing blessings upon Hamartia as others before you have done. May your songs go down in our history as one of love and peace and hope.”

Next was the king. Maybe it was the age, but he did not share the ethereal beauty of Princess Ia. He looked, well, like a well-groomed middle-aged man in very regal clothing who could carry himself with the grace and mannerisms of his station, which was probably a very inappropriate thing to think of one’s king one was about to swear to.  

“Diva Rin,” said the king. “Do you swear to serve the kingdom of Hamartia and its rightful king, to uphold its peace and wellbeing, to be its sword and shield, song and blessing?”

All words that were included in the oaths sworn by previous Divas.

“I do,” she said.

“Paean Len,” said the king, and repeated the same words he had asked of her.

She felt Len glance to her, and after a second, nodded slightly.

“I do,” he said, and managed to not sound bored like he had during rehearsals, which she deeply appreciated.

"Then, as King of Hamartia, I welcome you as the thirteenth of the blessed pairs that have watched over this kingdom since its birth. Rise, Duet of Dark Paradise. Your name is Kagamine, the Sound of Mirror.”

So that was their Duet name. They’d been keeping it all hush-hush, because it had to be revealed at the ceremony and not a moment too soon or something. Rin didn’t like mirrors, but she wasn’t going to very well say that to the face of the king.

Rin offered a hand to Len, because if they did rise, then they needed to do it as a pair, as they were now pronounced. Len, predictably, took it with joy radiating from his face.

And together, with a new name, tied by their oaths, they stood up. One pair together for however long the rest of their lives would be, for better or for worse.

Notes:

AN: And now they're married (or the Diva-Paean equivalent of it, anyways). The ceremony is traditionally kept short and the words minimal because some Paeans threw a fit (see: Kiyoteru and some others) so they quickly learned to not make it unnecessarily long.

The five Duets:
Rin-Len: Duet of the Dark Paradise/Kagamine
Meiko-Kiyoteru: Duet of the ???
Luka-Gakupo: Duet of the Dancing Water/Megurine
Miki-Piko: Duet of the Storming Steel/Utatane
Gumi-Yuma: Duet of the ???

Chapter 6: Agathon

Notes:

Agathon (Ἀγάθων)

Something good, the good

“Which one should I wear today?”

Luka paused in brushing her hair to see her soulmate holding up two different colors of eyeshadow. One was a bright pink, just a shade peppier than that of her hair. The other was a glittering gold.

Gakupo hadn’t worn eyeshadow in a while. Luka considered them both, before she decided that a decision was boring.

“What about blue?” she asked, taking out an eyeshadow she’d made herself but never really worn in public. The color was blue, nowhere near as beautiful as the shade of his eyes, but it was an attempt to mimic it.

He set aside the choices he’d held up without a second glance towards them. “Paint me?”

Luka gathered the necessary brushes as he sat on the ground to put his face in her lap, and then gently pushed aside his long hair from his face. He was handsome, always had been. There had once been a time, though, when he had decided to learn from performers how to paint his face the way they did to make her smile.

“Why the eyeshadow?” Why now, more specifically.

Ever since he realized that it had made her relax around him – back when she did not trust men, did not trust anyone, not even herself – Gakupo had worn face paints flamboyantly, and dressed in women’s clothes. Or, because his build limited him, had tried, and ended up settling for wearing women’s robes around his broad shoulders because that had been how Luka set them on him after bursting into genuine laughter for the first time in years at seeing him.

It never shamed him, but Gakupo was a Paean. At heart what mattered to him first and foremost was her preferences – her, to be more exact. If she was happy with him as he was, if she just wanted his presence at her side in a comfortable quiet, then he saw no need to have to waste his time bothering with face paints.

Gakupo smiled up at her.

“Am I not allowed to seduce my wife?” he asked, lowering his voice into the pitch that she liked – the one that caught in her ear in all the good way and sent a delicious crawl down her spine.

It was a good thing he’d been pondering over eyeshadow and not lip paints, Luka reflected after about five minutes, because it meant that both their faces weren’t stained.

---

Her chance to get in contact with Miku came sooner than later.

After the initial rush of meeting people, and waving and smiling at strangers cheering her and Len’s new title for a day, there was the issue of them needing training. As a Chorister her education had been about the basic subjects – math, history, language, literature, music, and in her case, the Force.

As a Diva and a Paean, they needed to learn how to fight.

Ironically, the place she had spent the last few years of her life in was the best place for it. Rin found herself staring at the very familiar entrance of the Choral Academy, and then a startled giggle burst out from her lips.

Len looked at her quizzically.

“Sorry,” said Rin, trying to wave it away. “It’s just – one of my plans for the future was to be a Mentor. I thought, after the Ceremony of Ascension, that would be the only way I’d really come back here.”

Not having the same knowledge of her plans – now scrapped – or, well, her weird sense of humor, Len did not share her mirth. Slightly embarrassed, Rin cleared her throat.

“Let’s go,” she said. She knew her way around here, and with the certainty she lacked in her own future, as well as in her and Len’s relationship, she began walking down the familiar halls, Len following her closely.

Three Mentors were waiting for her in the classroom that she once took history lessons in with other girls. Mentor Cul was the same as always, giving her a bright grin and a wave that was the same as the ones she’d given back when Rin was a Chorister. Mentor Mew retained her same politeness from after Len’s debut, and gave a bow towards them.

Mentor Galaco, the woman who taught math and students with Mana, was more like Mentor Mew. She too bowed in greeting before jabbing Cul’s side with her elbow.

“Ow,” complained Cul without much heat. Galaco, who was a follower of the path of magic and held less regard than most for social niceties, moved on, as if to say she’d done what she could.

“Welcome back, Diva Kagamine, though I believe the circumstances are much different than when you left,” she said.

Rin nodded.

Galaco grinned slightly at that, the smile she got when one of her students made a witty joke. “Nonetheless, some things don’t change. Treat these halls as a place of learning as they always have been for you.”

For about three months, the lesson plan was, she and Len would train. They already knew she had the Force, so she could split time between here and the Temple if necessary, and also delve into the powers of a Diva. Whatever that would be, because honestly Rin didn’t feel much different from before except more well-fed and now in possession of a living, breathing shadow at her side constantly.

Meaning, it was the addition of Len that they would focus on. His strengths, weaknesses, the combination they would make, the strategies they would learn so that in actual battle they could move smoothly like flowing water together instead of against each other. His fighting style, her fighting style, their fighting style together as a Duet.

“Because you have the Force,” said Mentor Mew, “your primary aid and contact would likely be me, or any other Temple associate of your choosing.”

Rin’s mind immediately went to Mikuo at that, though logic caught up afterwards. At the very least, this was something she needed to ask him in person about before deciding on her own for him.

Cul waved. “And my boss – Diva Sakine – says that I’ll be your contact with her if you don’t get a chance to meet her in person in about a moon or so.”

That made her tense in surprise. The Duet Sakine – the Diva and Paean of the Fiery Verse – was the oldest and most powerful of all the Duets in Hamartia. And here Cul made it sound like – she wanted Rin to contact her?

“She’s pretty chill, when it comes down to it,” said Cul, like she didn’t speak of someone who had been a hero and inspiration to everyone in this kingdom since its creation. “And she’s always up for helping out the newbies, so don’t be shy. She’ll love it if you make the first approach.”

“Similarly,” said Galaco. “Divas Megurine and Utatane has let me know that if you wish to contact either of them, then I am to be your liaison.”

Again, it made sense. The two Divas who were known to be genius mages, would naturally have connections with a Mentor who taught magic. Right.

“While not a user of the Force herself,” said Mew. “Diva Morine has also sent me a letter asking that I be a route should you be in need of contacting her.”

“She’s not a Force user?” Then why Mew?

Mew gave a faint smile at that. “Her Paean is blessed with the Force, and Diva Morine has always been one who prefers the role of support, rather than direct fighting.”

Right. So she could contact the Divas – the living, breathing incarnations of the goddess that every girl looked up to, that every person in Hamartia knew about through the songs and stories – through her former Mentors. Because she was now one of them.

Rin discreetly pinched herself in the same place where she’d been going for her regular checks of reality, and found that unfortunately it was still not a dream. The bruise in that spot was starting to get tired of being used to draw pain.

“And,” said Mentor Mew, “I have someone you might like to meet.”

Rin’s heart soared in hope at that, because there was only one person that she could possibly mean.

---

“Rin!”

“Miku!”

Miku was, between the two of them, the one more in touch with her own emotions, the one that was not afraid to wear her heart on a sleeve, the one that was extroverted and social and touchy and open. Rin did not like letting her emotions come out openly on her face, at least not in front of people that had not made it past her boundaries, and she didn’t really like prolonged physical contact with those she wasn’t sure she could trust.

None of that mattered right now.

Rin threw her arms around Miku, and Miku threw her arms around Rin, and they both nearly hit each other in the process. Narrowly avoiding the accidental assaults to the faces, they hugged each other tightly.

“I thought,” admitted Rin quietly, muffling her voice into Miku’s hair. It tickled her face but she continued speaking anyways. “I thought you’d hate me.”

She was so afraid that things would change. She had replayed simulations of meeting Miku as a Diva.

Miku, coming into the room, talking to her with respect and reverence and politeness in a way one would direct to their social superiors – and therefore placing a distance between them that physical steps could not possibly close.

Or Miku, looking at her with jealousy and blame in her eyes, for Rin’s being chosen, for Rin’s betrayal.

It had been unfamiliar, that kind of Miku, but Rin’s imagination had decided that now was an excellent time to discover a talent in simulating the worst possible outcomes, and chosen source materials from her worst, most feared nightmares.

But the moment Miku had raised her head when Rin stepped into the room, her eyes had lit up with pure glee and joy, and she had sprung up from her seat without any hesitation and next thing Rin knew, Rin was also throwing herself forwards with the kind of enthusiasm, the kind she usually didn’t have but came with ease now along with sheer relief.

Miku made a sound like an offended donkey into Rin’s shoulder, and Rin had to stifle laughter.

“Did you hit your head during the Ceremony?”

“No.”

She didn’t. Did she? Did the struggle of panic when Len wrapped himself around her in that cave count?

No, Rin decided, and let go of Miku. Miku did the same, and they leaned back just a little so they could look at each other.

“You look the same,” observed Miku, and Rin knew what she meant. The clothes that were far more expensive than anything she would have ever bought for herself, the accessories that were provided for her, the luxurious baths available in their suite of rooms at the palace that was probably her favorite part of being a Diva – none of that seemed to make her a Diva of legend. She was just Rin, even now.

Every time she looked in the mirror she felt like a fake.

“I know,” she said instead of voicing out her insecurities. “You would think I’d get a little taller.”

Miku burst out into giggles, and Rin took that as a personal victory, one that cushioned the sharp self-doubt in her stomach making themselves known with their edges.

But now that her greatest fear had been dealt with –

“Miku,” she said. “This is Len.”

It felt too short, just saying his name. What did she add? My Paean? ‘My’ felt too possessive. ‘The’ Paean felt too distant and formal, which Len didn’t deserve either.

While Rin faltered at what to say and how to identify Len and who he was to her, not just by the title the world would know him as but who he was to her as a person, Miku, who never had any issues with social interactions like Rin did, beamed at Len.

“Nice to meet you!”

“Len,” Rin said lamely. “This is Miku. She’s, um, my best friend and adopted sister.”

Miku gave Len the same bright smile she gave to everyone she was introduced to, the smile that lowered one’s natural defences against meeting a stranger and put them at ease. It was always so effective because Miku was always genuine and had hope in the good of humanity.

Len, however, looked at her the way he had at Princess Ia. That is to say, he looked at her like she was any other person, unimportant and unnamed to him regardless of anything else.

Not that it affected Miku – or rather, not that she let it stop her.

“Please take good care of Rin,” said Miku. “She’s smart, she really is, but sometimes when it comes to taking care of herself she gets so careless and-“

“Miku oh my god it was once,” Rin blurted out before Miku could tell Len of That One Time that should never be spoken about out loud. “I never did it again.”

“I actually wasn’t going to talk about it, but you know what, now that you mention it-”

Rin flailed because she did not want that story ever being repeated to someone else, especially if that person was going to be Len, who was going to basically be with her for the rest of however long her life was going to be.

“What about Mikuo?!”

The change in topic was a correct choice. Miku did not expose her greatest secret out loud.

“He really wanted to be here as well,” she said, and Rin knew this wasn’t just a flat comment with little meaning given out of social obligation because it was Miku saying it about Mikuo. “But two days ago there was that outbreak up north, so…”

So as a warrior with the Force, he was called to assist with the fight, and to deal with the cleanup.

Despite not seeing Mikuo in person, Rin wasn’t as anxious about his reaction after seeing how Miku was unchanged. Mikuo might have been choosier about people than Miku – said like that, the bar was really low – and he had a temper that he wasn’t afraid to aim at those he didn’t like, but he’d also been family to Rin growing up, and he and Miku had the same kind of attitude towards family. There was probably a snowflake’s chance in hell that Mikuo would try to hold her on a pedestal.

Although now she had to worry about his safe return.

Wait.

“Do you think,” she began, and then wondered if she was getting too far ahead of herself. “Um.”

Miku gave her a curious look.

“If I could, maybe get Mikuo to work for me instead of just being associated with the Temple?”

It was honestly a lot of responsibility, and just the thought made her stomach turn at being responsible for Mikuo’s life. If she messed up, if she wasn’t good enough, it was already bad enough that the entire kingdom was going to be looking at her with the same expectations as the other Divas, but Mikuo’s life? Under her responsibility personally?

The thought made her stomach curl in on itself.

But it made Miku brighten. “Oh my goddess, that’s perfect! That way he can make sure you’re taking care of yourself, and keep an eye on you and-“

Well, there was no taking back her words now. From what she had picked up, each Duet had a team of sorts that assisted them when they went to kill the demonic beasts – a team that was smaller and more efficient than having to make a squad of Force-users and other combat-capable fighters to make up for the lack of a Diva and a Paean’s raw power. The team’s primary purpose was support, not direct engagement and combat, so by being on it Mikuo’s life would be at a lot less risk. If she really needed to, Rin would make him her secretary.

“What about you?” she asked, because if she was going to get Mikuo to work with her, then she might as well grab Miku too.

Interrupted, Miku looked at her with wide eyes before she beamed.

“Maybe in the future,” she said. “Unlike Mikuo, I don’t have as much experience, so I need to work some more in the temple before I can say I have the skills to really be working for a Diva.”

Years of Mikuo and her worries and Miku was finally realistic, and there was something so deeply satisfying about this that Rin didn’t even mind having her offer turned down. Rin said as much, and Miku pouted.

At least Miku would be safe, even while working in the temple. Unlike Mikuo, Miku would be working as a healer, not a fighter. She would stay in the cities and learn how to use the Force to heal those who were injured or ill. Far safer than having to leave to fight demonic beasts.

Notes:

So introducing etiquette is that the higher ranked person is said first, and if both are equal then the person you know better is said first, which is me just writing that either way you look at it Len still has a ways to go if he wants to be higher ranked than Miku in Rin’s rankings.
(Readers: I thought you said you were writing all your Vocaloid OTPs
Me: yeah but also my platonic female friendships need to be written)

Chapter 7: Telos

Notes:

Telos (τέλος)

End, purpose, goal.

Kiyoteru didn’t need eyeglasses, per say. At least, not for his vision.

It really should have been obvious to anyone with half a working brain. He was a Paean – a spirit that had taken physical form out of a miracle, born with one purpose, one focus for his entire existence. His form was made similar to a human’s, yes, but that was because it was modeled after the divine beings that no longer remained on the surface of this world.

But he was not a god, and the decades living among humans had taught him a thing or two about restraint and hiding himself. Hence the eyeglasses – something that helped disguise the fire of his nature, the madness that sometimes flickered out despite his hiding it.

Was it annoying, to conceal this part of him? Yes, but he was no longer the same being he’d been when he first acquired a body.

A casual flick of his staff, a spare moment to organize the flow of Mana, and the fire that erupted from the focal point – a ruby as red as his own eyes – burned the demon’s remnants before him. It wouldn’t purify them in the way the Force could, but it would burn away at every trace until there was nothing left, and that was all that was necessary. For good measure one of the Force users that followed would bless the land, but that wasn’t his problem or concern.

A pity that the same couldn’t be done to solve the newest problem. But Meiko was fond of her fellow Divas, and Kiyoteru, though confident in his power and skill, knew better than to make himself public enemy number one. At least this problem had the potential to make themselves useful.

Kiyoteru turned his gaze towards the one person in his life that made him feel like fire and not an inevitable pile of ashes. Meiko was checking on one of the idiots that had gotten injured. Why she bothered, Kiyoteru still didn’t fully understand, at least not directly. He was not one of the Rhodon Knights that she trained and led. He was very much an idiot because he’d gotten injured in foolish bravado, disobeying orders and thinking he knew better when he had not the brains, the power or the experience to back up his confidence.

In other words, this was a problem that had no potential of making himself useful.

“You should be fine,” said Meiko, who didn’t have the Force but had survived and lived through enough battles to recognize wounds and whether they were fatal or not. “The priest can take a look at you once he’s done and fix you up.”

Non-fatal wound. Kiyoteru idly played with the thought of burning the fool, the same way he had the last of the demonic beasts and their remnants. It would be so easy, to change that verdict.

But then Meiko looked at him over the shoulder of the fool she had been speaking to, meeting his eyes through the eyeglasses that made him appear genteel and scholarly, as a sophisticated mage. She saw through the eyeglasses, saw through the façade he wore to placate the shallow world he had manifested in, and saw him directly. Just like she had when they first met.

There was a warning in that gaze she held him with, and Kiyoteru smiled before silently acquiescing to her. No burning fools alive today.

---

Everyone had a manifestation of their life’s energy. The potential and amount might have differed, but at the end one’s manifestation could be categorized into one of the three – Force, Mana or Aura.

Even Paeans fell under this rule.

When Len had first been tested, his manifestation had been declared as Mana – that was to say, he had a talent for magic.

“In other words,” said Miki, around a mouthful of pastry, “you two are kind of like mirror opposites of Piko and me.”

She swallowed, and then took another bite. Paean Piko neatly poured tea into the cup in front of him, picked it up, and held it to her lips just when she looked like she would choke.

“Thanks,” she said, gasping slightly for air after hastily gulping down its contents.

Diva Miki was a mage, one known for intricate work like laying out the foundations for Boundaries. Her Paean was the fighter, the one who wielded the Force like a weapon. In other words, Miki supported Piko in battle, and outside of battle helped enforce defences so that any future demons that decided to wander close would be discouraged from attacking villages or cities.

To have them be teaching Rin and Len so . . . so casually, and with something as basic as these – something non-Duets could have also taught them – felt almost exorbitant and wasteful, as if she was spilling wine into a privy, and so Rin frantically tried to organize everything in her head as fast as she could to make the most out of this opportunity. 

Rin couldn’t wield her Force like a weapon, not quite. She had a talent for healing and purifying, but using it to strengthen herself was always hard. Miku and Mikuo had never had any issues, but that was something beyond her.

In other words, Len would probably have to be the combat oriented one, but manipulation of Mana was infamous for being the manifestation that was most time-consuming and intricate for best results. It took more studying to be really efficient, in other words. If his magical talent was less battle oriented and more support oriented like Miki, then what?

“What do you think?” asked Miki, breaking Rin out of her worries. “Len, that is. Do you think you’re more of a direct combat type, or more like me – the preparing mage kind?”

Len looked at Rin, and Rin had to make an effort to not evade his gaze.

“Whatever Rin wants me to be.”

Miki sighed and patted Piko’s arm fondly. “That takes me back to when you and I first met. They’re so cute.”

“I was cuter,” said Piko immediately, and Len made a face of disgust. Rin had to keep her jaw from dropping because, just, what.

“Oh, absolutely,” agreed Miki, completely unshaken by what left Rin reeling. “But it’s still cute. You were so eager then, too, and I was all, whoa, we just met, hold up a little, give me some time to get used to you and your unfair attractiveness in my life.”

Piko laughed. “How could I hold back? I just wanted nothing more than to be close to you. To love you, and worship you. Every second I wasn’t able to felt like I was wasting the most precious resource in the world by the ton.”

They were gazing into each other’s eyes dreamily, and Rin just decided to not touch that with a ten-foot pole. Their emotions were making her uncomfortable, which honestly just felt unfair. Why was she being affected by their openness?

“We could,” she said to her own Paean, who turned his attention back to her in a blink when she spoke, “um, just figure things out. Magic takes time to learn, so whatever works best for you, we can make strategies and training plans around that.”

After having read through the summary of all the Duets and their fighting styles and notable battles in history, Rin was fairly sure that the odds of Len being more direct-combat oriented was pretty high. There was only one Duet, the Duet Suzune, that had a Paean who was more support than combat oriented. Sure, there was the Duet Sakine, but they were more of an all-offense combination, with Diva Sakine having been a knight using Aura and Paean Sakine a Mana user who picked up on offensive magic like dry wood catching on fire. Duet Suzune had been the only one where it was the Diva that was the fighter.

And, the pessimistic part of her pointed out, they died relatively soon after being bonded to each other. She wanted to not die so soon, so hopefully the odds were in their favor.

Len smiled as if that was the best news he’d heard all day. “I’m always happy to spend more time with you.”

Having finally snapped free of the moment she was engrossed in, Miki threw in some more advice.

“Mind you, Rin,” she said, “don’t force yourself into one role and think that’s just it for you. The basic summary you’ve read might have categorized most of the Paeans as offense, but it’s more than that.”

Rin tried to make sense of that. “So . . . we should both be fighters as well as supporters?”

“Kind of. It’s nice to train to your strengths and come up with strategies, because there’s nothing like practice that really makes reactions come out fast enough.” Miki was serious about this, Rin could tell. None of her usual cheer sparkled in her eyes. “Heck, I might be what you would consider ‘support’, but if push comes to shove I can put up a decent fight.”

“All-rounders,” Rin guessed. Someone who could support and fight well enough that identifying as one alone was inefficient.

Miki smiled a little at that. “That’s the road to the end goal.”

The way to the end goal was being a powerful being talented in all areas? What the hell was the end goal, then? Becoming the goddess herself?

“What’s the end goal?” asked Len, eyes focused on Miki. Piko leaned his head slightly, not quite glaring but also not taking his own gaze off Len, as if he did not like how Len looked at his Diva.

One of Miki’s hands reached out, and without tearing his eyes off Len, Piko immediately took it.

“Survival,” said Miki. “Once you and your partner survive everything that gets thrown at you – or, well, that you get thrown at – then you eventually become experienced enough that you can fight or support as needed. Get yourself the time you need to live as long as you can as a Duet, because if you can survive what tries to kill you, you’ll live.”

And, well, Rin couldn’t argue that.

“Basically,” added Miki, though she didn’t remove her hand from Piko’s grip. “Becoming someone like the Duets Megurine or Sakine.”

If the end goal was survival – to live through everything that got thrown at her – then to live for over a hundred years and becoming living legends, that seemed almost excessive. Overachieving. Overly ambitious.

“Isn’t that a little much?” Rin asked skeptically, and honestly she thought she had valid reason to do so. Miki and Piko, and the other younger Duet that they hadn’t met yet – everyone in Hamartia knew them as well, yes, but neither Duets were as famous or as accomplished as the two current oldest Duets.

How was she supposed to achieve that? None of the other Duets had managed it.

Miki shrugged, carelessly letting her red hair slide down her shoulders with the movement. “I mean, I’d like to live as long as they did with Piko, and maybe even longer, so. Goals and dreams, Rin. You have to make them big, so that even if you fail, the sheer scale makes you unable to settle for lesser easily. That’s how you motivate yourself to keep going.”

That went against every part of her, nature and nurture, but Rin knew better than to say that out loud, so she bit her tongue instead and didn’t say anything instead.

Len, however, did not.

“When do we start?” he asked. Rin glanced at him, but unlike other times when her gaze fell on him, he didn’t immediately turn to meet her eyes, only stared with his dark eyes burning towards Miki and Piko like they owed him money and he would stop at nothing to get it.

Piko grinned, but it looked more like he was baring his teeth. Miki laughed and clapped.

“Ten out of ten for enthusiasm. And what better time than now?”

Rin assumed lessons, like the kinds that had been taught when she was a Chorister. Something with a lecture, a teaching plan. Basics built up so that pieces were within her and Len’s hands to be built into something for use.

She did not expect to be sitting off to the side of a training ground, watching Len and Piko fight. No lessons, no books, just – Piko made a gesture at Len to come into the impromptu arena and Len had just accepted the challenge at the glint daring him in Piko’s eyes.

“Paeans follow their instinct,” said Miki, and Rin was fairly sure that her stunned face was showing exactly how flabbergasted she felt. “You have to remember – they’re not human.”

It was surprising to hear that, because she and Piko had been so, well, so lovey-dovey with each other.

Miki giggled. “I didn’t say I didn’t love him. Or that he’s not the most important person in my life. It’s just that I love someone who isn’t a human, and I’ve grown to accept that. Just like the other Divas.”

Not human. Loving someone who wasn’t human.

The only people Rin really loved were Miku and Mikuo, and both were human, but Rin wouldn’t say that being human was a requirement to love someone. There were far more humans in the world than the siblings, after all, and she didn’t love them.

But that meant Rin would love Len, and was it all so inevitable?

Rin struggled with that, the thought that she had no control – that it was all just fate, predestined, and that now she must love Len.

Len, who was like a beast right now. Darkness streaked around his forearms as he lunged and blocked, beautiful face twisting in exertion and frustration towards Piko, who neatly parried or threw off the power Len threw at him like fluid water.

Len, who was always so intense in how he looked at her.

Rin didn’t know how to deal with something so intense. Someone so intense, and about her. Annoyance she could deal with. Frustration at her existence sometimes, she knew how to bear with. Being a scapegoat for something that wasn’t her fault or in her control, Rin was familiar with and had overcome.

This was too new, too out of what she knew. She felt like an imposter yet again, someone who didn’t fit forced into a role she couldn’t fulfill. Trying to reconcile two parts not meant to be put together.

“He’s got motivation,” mused Miki, breaking Rin out of her thoughts. “Piko’s playing with him at this point – gods have mercy, my man’s so sexy when he’s sadistic – and he knows it, but he’s not giving up. Good. If you want to stay alive, you have to be willing to fight to do so even when the odds are stacked against you.”

Motivation.

That reminded Rin of her own motivations, and the promise she had made to Miku. Right. Miku and Mikuo. She had to make sure they were safe and happy as well.

Just for them, maybe, she could. She didn’t have to be the strongest Diva in the world, just enough that she could protect them. And survive. And that could be done, right?

---

The whispers outside were just loud enough that Rin knew they were outside, in the hallway. There were Choristers looking at her. Rin recognized the familiar clothes she’d worn for years, and she was also fairly sure she recognized some of the faces, though she didn’t have a name she could put to them. Miku might have been able to, but Rin had never been one to reach out towards those not in her year.

At last, Mentor Mew returned with the books she had left near the end of the lesson to grab, and Rin nearly exhaled in relief.

“Still not one to enjoy attention, I see,” her mentor said wryly, a faint smile twisting her lips upwards.

“No,” Rin admitted. And it said a lot about the past few weeks that not having Len at her side felt odd.

But he was with Galaco currently, learning how to harness the Mana he had access to into magic. As for her, until yesterday, she had been with her Mentor going over her use of the Force.

Today, though . . . .

There was a faint giggle coming down the hallway, and Mew lightly rolled her eyes as she handed over the books to Rin. They were fresh copies, meaning some Chorister – possibly one of the girls out there right now – had spent time copying it, either by hand or by practicing scribe magic. If it was the former, Rin hoped it was legible and copied correctly.

“And here we are, sir!” piped a high-pitched voice. Rin didn’t recognize the voice, but she knew what kind of emotions were in it. The curiosity, excitement, attraction of a young girl who ran into a handsome young man who was polite and kind in mannerisms.

“Thank you,” said a voice Rin did recognize and could put a name to. “I appreciate it, truly.”

Rin jumped out of her chair. “Mikuo!”

Anyone who ever saw Miku and her brother would know they were siblings, from their identical colorings, their near-identical features, to even the way their smiles lit up their eyes like stars on a clear night sky. Mikuo grinned when he saw her, and opened his mouth to say something before he paused.

“Blessed Diva,” he said, and bowed solemnly. It was a little like when he’d been practicing courtesies with Miku and her back when they’d been younger and he first started working at the temple, refusing to let something like rough mannerisms drag him down in the currents of temple politics. “It is a great honor to be permitted to enter your presence.”

It wasn’t like her nightmares, because he was grinning wildly and winked at her, safe in that the only people who could see his face were Rin and Mentor Mew. The Choristers in the back would just see his perfect posture and not know he was wearing a boyish grin.

Rin didn’t even remember what she said in reply. She was all but vibrating with impatience, and when Mentor Mew got the Choristers gone, herding them away with reminders that lessons were coming soon, and closed the door with a light roll of her eyes, she jumped to give Mikuo a hug.

“Things happen unexpectedly, huh?” asked Mikuo, rubbing her back, and Rin felt some tension leave her.

“That’s putting it lightly,” she choked out, suddenly feeling tears spring in her eyes, which was just stupid, she had no reason to cry, so why –

But Mikuo just kept rubbing her back.

Miku was her best friend, her sister of the soul, but Mikuo was the kindred soul, the one who, with Rin, was focused on making sure Miku was okay. He was the one who had encouraged Rin to not stay settled in her cynical safe corner of the world, to plan for the future that Miku made it possible for her to dream of. He was her staunchest ally in this world, and it would have been her, Mikuo and Miku against the world, this odd family that was.

Mikuo was, essentially, the only person who had really been a guardian to her, the one person who had said that he would take responsibility for her as an adult, even when he’d only been some years older than her.

“By the way,” he said, “if – and I do say if, just in case – you’re thinking something nonsensical like ‘I’ve ruined everything’, I want you to knock that silly thought from your head.”

Rin poked his side, where she knew he was ticklish. “You’re ruining the moment.”

“Yes, well, I’m not the one in the family who’s got the natural talent with emotions.” Mikuo finally released her, and looked at her, really looked at her. “I’m the one that likes to jump into business first, and then save the pleasure for later.”

Grimacing a little, Rin gestured at the chairs she and Mew had been using for the lessons. Mikuo slid into the one Mew had been in, and Rin returned to her previous seat.

“First things first,” he began, “I don’t have much sway or say.”

Rin nodded. That, she knew. It had been what Mikuo was working on, finding a stable enough foundation for their safety, just as she had been aiming for after the Ceremony of Ascension. He didn’t have enough currently to not be immediately swept up should someone decide to use him as a pawn, and certainly not enough to give a new Diva strength.

But he was enough to give Rin strength, he and Miku. Without them Rin knew she would shatter.

She said as much and he half-smiled, meaning he was trying to appear stern but was having a hard time holding back a smile. It was a look usually aimed at Miku when he was trying to scold her but was also proud of her. Rin usually just got the full smile, since she didn’t have to be scolded as much.

“If I do have you as my ‘connection’ though, I could probably get away with some things, although I’d still have to make nice and tread carefully,” Mikuo continued. He looked at her. “How are the other Divas treating you?”

Mikuo sometimes worked near the Paeans on outbreaks, and he was observant. He didn’t bother asking about the opinions of the Paeans, who cared about one person.

Miki, she had spent the most time with. She was helpful, undoubtedly, eager to give aid and education. And Diva Megurine – Luka – in the short interaction they had, had offered something similar, too.

She relayed as much to Mikuo, whose thought processes ran similar to hers.

“Ideally, they’ll watch out for you because it benefits them for you to be alive and powerful,” he summarized what she relayed to him. “Because you’ve spent the most time with the Duet Utatane, it could just be more of a younger generation thing, but the Duets are always busy and there’s never an end to the threats they have to deal with, internal or external. It would make a sound investment, to make sure that you two are trained and on good terms with the rest of them when the demand and supply is so skewed. They’re not going to say no to another Duet joining their numbers and easing things out for them, when new blood is hard to get for Duets.”

So long as your end goals are similar enough that they don’t clash, was unsaid but heard for both of them.

“My end goal is that you and Miku are safe and happy,” Rin muttered. For that she could play nice with a bunch of people who were far older and more powerful than she was, if they were also willing to do the same with her. It wasn’t like her end goals were even hard, anyways.

For that, Mikuo flicked her on her forehead, which made Rin sputter in objection. What was with the way he was treating her like he usually treated Miku today?!

“You are going to live far longer than Miku and I will,” said Mikuo, and Rin felt her heart seize in fear. When she tried to shake her head to deny it, he took the finger he used to flick her and shoved it against her lips to make her stop talking. “No, Rin, you will. Because your end goal needs to be your happiness and safety. Me and Miku’s safety can be one of the requirements for it, but that can’t be your only objective. Do you understand? It can be part of it, but not the goal itself.”

He made it sound like there was going to be much for Rin to live for if he and Miku weren’t in her life. But Rin knew better than to say that out loud right now.

“I’m the – we’re the thirteenth Duet,” Rin muttered instead. “Stupid superstition about unlucky numbers aside, there’s only five Duets currently, and some of them are nearly old as this kingdom. There’s no guarantee that I’m going to live longer than you and Miku – stop flicking me, I’m telling the truth!”

“No, you’re telling possibilities. And you need to stop setting yourself up for failure.”

Rin couldn’t help it. She stuck her tongue out at him. There was the difference between her and Mikuo. At the heart of it, Mikuo was more optimistic than she was.

“Stop thinking about how you’re going to die,” said Mikuo, ignoring the tongue aimed his way like he was above such things. “And how you’re going to live.”

“All my plans got scrapped,” she said dryly. “My life is going to be live without aging, fight, and probably die fighting if I’m not good enough.”

Mikuo didn’t like losing, and he never made it a point to lose what he didn’t have to. “Then you need to be more than good enough. Use anyone and anything so you live, Rin. And I’m talking about your Paean, too.”

Notes:

AN: Rin is the kind of person who looks at motivational phrases and becomes more pessimistic.

I usually write Kiyoteru as a mild-mannered but secretively mastermind kind of character, but also I've always wanted to write him as someone with Madness Enhancement EX.

This is partly because of my long-unfulfilled wishes being written at last, but also because my favorite Kiyoteru songs are Guilty Verse and Fragments of the Night. Honestly I was pretty close to making him a berserk Cleric type of character because Fallen /Corrupted Priest probably fits the song better, but I also wanted someone who appears to be an intellectual / mage whose thought process is more berserker /arsonist.

Chapter 8: Dogma

Notes:

Dogma (δόγμα)

That which one thinks is true

Most people assumed that Gumi loved the kingdom of Hamartia. They knew of her history as a Diva – as one half of a Duet, the legendary lovers blessed by the goddess with powers whose lineage had started this very kingdom, knew that she had been a daughter of a noble house, knew she did her duties as a Diva with her Paean. They assumed that she loved the kingdom because it would have been the right thing for her, to love Hamartia.

Just like how her brother had assumed she loved him.

In both cases the assumptions weren’t completely off, because Gumi did love Hamartia, and she had loved her brother. It was just that there had been more to it than love.

Hamartia as a whole hadn’t yet realized this. Her brother, who passed away at the age of fifty-eight, might have realized it but had never let it show to her if he did, and at the time she had been too caught up in her own life to really know.

Maybe he had, in the last years of his life. That might explain some of his actions towards his own daughters. Maybe that was him finally understanding that it had been a festering mess of love and hate Gumi had held for him, the kind of emotion she had towards Hamartia. Hate at what he was, what Hamartia was, and love because despite it all she could not just hate. Love because despite it all, Gumi did and had loved her family back then and loved her home, and hate because of that very love causing her suffering.

“It would be a dreadful waste,” Gumi said, words slow and measured, “if our new Duet were to meet an end so soon.”

Lord Sora of the Suiga House was one of those that made Gumi want to just hate this kingdom, because he was young and arrogant, and believed that his actions had no repercussions on those around him. Or, if he was aware, then he thought it to be unimportant because it was not he who paid the price.

He hmmed in a way that said he was trying to look thoughtful but just appeared cheesy and dramatic. All air and no substance. “But, at the same time, they’d be a lot stronger for it.”

He reminded Gumi a lot of how her own brother had been.

“They are also young,” she said patiently, because it wouldn’t do to bash his head in. “You’re absolutely right in that experience in true combat is important, but so is proper guidance. This isn’t wartime – we certainly have the predecessors and the experience to ensure they can learn how to be a fully fledged Duet.”

Yuma made a sound that resembled a growling wolf, drawing Lord Sora’s attention. “I hated that war.”

Gumi made a show of letting out a low soothing sound, as if Yuma was a beast in need of such a thing. “I know, Yuma, I know.”

He made a grumbling sound before settling.

Lord Sora, who was like his father and his grandfather minus their experience, wavered.

“And I’m sure the Duet Kagamine appreciate it as well,” Gumi continued smoothly. “It wouldn’t be a terrible thing, Lord Sora, to have the new Duet be indebted to you in some way.”

That ‘advice’ was what really struck the ambition in the young man, and Gumi knew he would back their argument that the Duet Kagamine should learn more on how to fight – how to live, really – as a Duet before they were thrown to fight the demons.

Before this talk with Sora, she and Yuma had gone to speak with Loke, who, for some reason, had thought it might be wise to ask her why she wouldn’t want to have them jump right into action.

“Weren’t you and your Paean forged in war?” he had asked, and Gumi’s poker face was far too practiced and polished to slip at the words of a forty-year-old man with less sense than a child’s, but Yuma had snarled and broken a wall in his house in her stead.

Gumi remembered being fourteen, throwing herself into becoming a Chorister to try and escape arranged marriage only to meet Yuma and becoming a Diva, a part of a Duet. Remembered that after three weeks of training – rushed, half of it on the roads – being thrown into the frontlines because they were at war, the same war that had killed not one but two Duets.

It was in that time that she hated Hamartia, and even the end of the war hadn’t managed to remove that emotion from her. There was enough love in her to be who she was now, struggling to make it better for others so they didn’t have to go through what she did, but sometimes, Gumi wanted to just lash out at everything, ending the cycle of pain with her be damned.

When they were finally alone, the first person in her life who let her love unconditionally without having to also hate pressed the side of his body against hers, and Gumi leaned into Yuma’s solid warmth. Just like in the nights on the battlefield when she had silently seethed at the world, only to be comforted by the quiet support he’d offered her.

---

Because Rin was a Force user, and Miku was also a Force user, when it came to Mana and Aura she only had the cursory knowledge of the fields. There were probably more to it than the stereotypes of Aura equalling brawn and durability and Mana equalling intelligence or wisdom, just as Force didn’t always equal faith or emotion.

It meant that she was next to useless to teaching Len about how to use his Mana, and had told him outright that he should get help from others to learn.

Len, surprisingly, had not resisted or protested. Maybe Miki and Piko’s plan had been well-thought out and based on past experiences.

Or maybe, she thought now, looking at him from afar, maybe she had underestimated Len.

Len was writing. Rin blinked, because somehow, that normal act just seemed so out of place when it was Len doing it with a focus that shut him into his own world, unaware of his surroundings.

And yet, it was a pen in his hand, ink being put on the papers in what appeared to be scrawls. Above his notes were a scroll he was either reading through or had read and set aside.

He looked up, as if feeling her gaze on his back, and when he saw her he smiled like he had just been given the world and could have nothing more to ask for. Ah. That was the Len she’d grown to know.

“How is it going?” she asked, hoping it was the right question to ask, while also simultaneously cringing inside at how it sounded. How is it going? Could she be any less original?

But her lame attempts couldn’t dampen Len’s spirits. “I believe rather well.”

Rin tipped her head at that confidence. It wasn’t his choice of words, but rather the shine in his eyes that came from pride.

“The mage tells me that Paeans and humans have a different way of understanding magic,” he explained. “The red Diva’s notes were more helpful, but she was useful in explaining what they meant.”

“Mentor Galaco could understand Miki’s notes?” Rin had seen those notes, and they’d been hard to understand. Writing-wise, it was fine, perfectly legible and organized, if a little adorable in how round the letters were, but the formulas they wrote out and explained had gone over her head completely. Basic arithmetic, she understood, and geometry, but Miki’s notes went into what seemed like mathematics from dreams induced by drugs meant to distort the mind.

“She could,” Len said. “In a roundabout way. I suppose she did well enough in explaining what she didn’t fully understand herself.”

Rin winced. Galaco was a mage who was skilled enough for a position at the Tower of Alexandria if she wished.

Before Rin could go through an internal debate on the pros and cons of telling Len to maybe not trash-talk her – and his – teachers, Len raised a hand.

He was a Paean of Darkness, a spirit who manifested with physical form and had the affinity for the shadows. Len had already known how to manipulate darkness around him.

But back then, they had been rough. Not uncontrolled, just – brash. Like rough brush strokes made against paper.

Compared to then, what he did now was fine calligraphy. Darkness formed in his hand, not writhing but instead almost dancing with the finesse he displayed. Thin and fine like threads of silk, the darkness swirled in his palm before weaving itself into a shape.

A flower. A rose to be more exact.

Looking immensely proud of himself, Len offered the flower of darkness at her. A gift, and he sought approval from her, searching. It was beautiful, a work of art, and Rin knew without a doubt that if she said she didn’t like it, he would probably toss it aside without a second thought despite the pride he’d shown only moments before.

Rin took it.

“Thank you,” she said. The Paean-made flower was incredibly detailed, as if Len had taken a mold of a real rose and then filled his darkness for the shape. “So . . . your studies are going well?”

You are the biggest idiot in all of Hamartia, she screamed internally at herself. He just said that. He just proved it. Why are you like this.

The words were beginning to sound suspiciously like her mother back when she’d been angry, which was never a good sign.

But Len beamed, and the angelic face looking boyish was almost too bright for her eyes. “I think so. The mage was complaining about how it was unfair how fast I was learning what takes most people years to understand, so I’m assuming my progress is faster than most.”

She nodded, and scrambled to continue the conversation without looping back. “I . . . don’t know much about magic, so you’re going to have to tell me more for me to understand better.”

Which he had already done when telling her again that he was a genius in magic. The corner of that table Len had been using to study was looking like a pretty good place to start bashing her head against.

His eyes widened, and Rin quickly backtracked. “Only if you want to, I mean, I’m sure it’s frustrating to go over what you finished mastering-“

“Not at all,” said Len immediately. “I would love to. I – I just hope you won’t be bored.”

The pride that he’d been filled with, the shining light in his eyes flickered with uncertainty, and it was only because he was worried Rin might be bored.

“If it makes you uncomfortable to ‘use’ your Paean,” Mikuo had said when she cringed in discomfort at the choice of words he’d used when giving her advice, “then consider it as working to make a mutually beneficial partnership.”

“That’s a mouthful,” she had complained.

But Mikuo had merely looked at her, like he did when he was silently conveying to Miku that she was being ridiculously silly about a matter.

“What?” Rin had asked defensively.

“It’s okay to love someone, you know,” he had said.

To that, Rin had gaped at him before asking if his sanity had been damaged while facing down the demons.

“My sanity is intact,” Mikuo had replied with a roll of his eyes. “And stop trying to change the subject, Rin. Evasion can’t be your answer to every emotion that scares you.”

“I’m not scared,” she had protested. “And besides, it’s ridiculous – how would I love him? I’ve only known him for a short time, you can’t like someone based on that. I- he doesn’t know me.”

He doesn’t know my past, the way you guys do. He hasn’t seen me at my weakest, my worst, and still stood by me. He hasn’t shown with actions and words that I can trust him enough to love him.

“Attraction is surprisingly a real thing, Rin,” Mikuo had said dryly. “Believe it or not, sometimes, when a person finds in another person qualities that they feel positive emotions about, they can find themselves attracted to said person. And – correct me if I’m wrong, but your Paean is showering you with affection, isn’t he?”

Damn him and his insight. And also his snarking. But mostly his insight.

Rin scowled, which was an answer to Mikuo’s question that satisfied him.

“I’m not saying you have to declare undying love to him, or marry him, or even bed him,” he said, recognizing that if he didn’t back off this emotional reunion was going to end on a sour note. For all that Mikuo liked to say Miku was the emotionally intelligent one, he knew how to read people as well. “Just – don’t dismiss him without at least giving him a chance.”

She bristled, wanted to protest that she was giving him a chance, but he had already pointed out enough of what she’d been denying that she couldn’t, not really.

“At the end of the day, your Paean is going to be your best ally,” said Mikuo softly. “He’s going to be your ally in a way Miku and I can’t. At the heart of it, he’s going to be your life-long partner. Get to know him. Let him get to know you – parts of you, if you’re still scared.”

He’d added the last part, Rin knew, at the flare of panic at the thought of someone knowing all of her. That much was obvious.

Damn Mikuo for always being right. He’d be unbearably smug if Rin admitted that and so that was going to be a secret she’d carry to her grave, but he had managed to reveal what Rin had desperately been denying and lying to herself about since she met Len.

Len was attractive. He was beautiful, almost painfully so, and Rin doubted that she would ever meet someone in this world who she might consider to be more beautiful. Maybe Rin might have been able to deem his physical appearance less attractive if his personality or his actions had offended or threatened her, but even on that front Len had managed to not trigger her. Make her feel taken aback, maybe. Feel overwhelmed, absolutely. Disorient her with the unfamiliarity of such an abundance of affection from someone other than those already in her boundaries, very much so.

He smothered her in affection and made her feel like she was drowning in honey, and it was so sweet Rin worried that she’d grow used to it because Len gave all this to her without even knowing her.

And that was the issue. Len did not know Rin. Len did not know the years of her life that had led her to this point, the Rin of the present, the one he showered his endless affections on. Rin could try to explain to him, tell him her story – the raw ugly parts, or maybe a sanitized version of it – but could she? Could she lower her guard enough to do that? Her?

And then – what? When Len learned about Rin, the ugly things that had made up the person she was before Miku and Mikuo, then what? Would he look at her differently? Would his affection for her, seemingly as endlessly vast as the oceans were supposed to be, would that dry up? Sour like food gone bad?

It was unfair, just how tantalizing what he seemed to promise her. Unconditional affection – unconditional love. To just let what he offered her sweep her up, if only she would lower her guard and let him do so.

If she would trust him enough to do that.

“I like having plans,” she said, instead of spilling all of that out. “And schedules. I’d like to make a schedule based roughly around the timeline Princess Ia gave us before, so that we can make the most of the time we have to prepare before we have to head out into actual fieldwork. So . . . you know . . . in between training and planning, it would be nice to talk.”

Miku would probably cringe internally if she heard Rin right now. Mikuo would probably be in stitches laughing.

Len, almost unsurprisingly, looked at her like she had just promised to hang the stars on the skies for him.

Rin was absolutely, most definitely a very terrible person. That much, she was certain of.

Notes:

AN: When Princess Ia mentioned the half year training and half year in the field, this is the background on how that time to train was achieved – by Gumi going around making sure enough people would agree with that.

Gumi: yes, I was thrown into war almost first thing after being a Diva and you know what, that absolutely sucked, that’s why we’re Not Doing That.
Some people who think they know better: But what if-
Yuma: *Growls with the meaning of 'Shut up and do what the smartest person in the room is telling you'*

Chapter 9: Epistēmē

Notes:

Epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη)

To know, to understand, to be acquainted with

“When will you meet the Duet Kagamine?”

Meiko glanced at Princess Ia. Physically, she didn’t resemble Queen Sophrona. It was to be expected. After all, the royal family was descended from her adopted daughter, not the First Diva herself.

But there was something in her eyes, the determination to not just improve herself but those around them. An ambition that had seen Sophrona become queen of the people who wanted to stop being eaten by demons, and now, in her sort-of descendant, it shone again, wanting to make a change.

Some might call it ambition. Meiko saw no need to define that hunger so pedantically. If Ia could keep to her ideals and not compromise too much, she – and the other Divas – saw no need to turn against her. Their alliance could continue so long as both parties remembered what they wanted.

“Soon,” she said., absentmindedly stroking Kiyoteru’s hair with a gentle finger. He had decided to forego social niceties today, apparently in a bad mood, and was currently resting his head on her lap, sitting on the floor crossed-legged instead of any of the perfectly suitable seats around them.

Ia hadn’t batted an eye at the sight of the most dangerous Paean’s actions. That girl had a spine of steel.

“When you do, I’d like your opinion of them.”

The thought of her observing – of paying attention to – the new Duet made Kiyoteru huff lightly. She rubbed a thumb against the back of his ear, a soothing reminder that he was the one who was her partner, the chosen half of her soul.

“You must have done your own research on them,” she said. “And I’m sure Cul and the other Mentors who taught her gave you their reports.”

“I have,” Ia admitted. “And I’ve seen them for myself, but – I trust your keen senses on reading a person.”

Meiko didn’t smile. She had ignored a gut feeling on a person once, and that had led to the throne passing to an ambitious man with no qualms about overthrowing his nephew. She wasn’t naïve enough to say that was the root of the troubles Hamartia faced, but it was certainly a large source of it, with so much of her headaches tracing to that one event.

“I’d like to see them as a unit,” she decided, looking down at the head of her own Paean. Despite their bloody, violent start, Kiyoteru had been hers from then. It had taken Meiko a while to accept the truth of it, and make of the violent, cruel-streaked Paean what she could. And as she did when faced with a challenge, Meiko had steeled herself, figuratively girded her loins and jumped at it to fight it to submission.

Duets were made of a Diva and a Paean. It was a partnership, two as one and one made of two. But to become such a thing was never instantaneous, no matter what most of Hamartia seemed inclined to believe. Behind the famous love stories were, like all relationships, time and effort to make such a thing stable.

She would give them some time to become a united two instead of a pair in name only.

---

Since she was currently the only Diva using the Force, Piko looked over her use of the Force while Miki supervised Len’s magic.

“You lack confidence,” he said, after his brief assessment that hadn’t felt brief enough to Rin.

That, Rin couldn’t argue with. Not just because he was correct, but also because she was too busy huffing and puffing for air, after he made her dodge things he threw at her. Miki hadn’t been kidding about his sadism, though Rin found nothing sexy or appealing about him then.

“No,” he amended. “Not confidence – something else. Your healing and purification are fine, and yet you can’t strengthen yourself properly. Who taught you the use of the Force?”

“My Mentors,” she answered hoarsely, feeling stung in her pride despite the poor results she’d shown. She knew that her weakness with the Force was with using it to strengthen herself, so it shouldn’t affect her. She was being ridiculous.

“And they let you pass like this?” Piko sounded incredulous. “Do you want to live, Kagamine?”

“Yes,” she rasped out. She did. Want it.

He didn’t look convinced. “The instinct for survival – for self preservation – makes strengthening and self-healing the easiest use of the Force. The latter you’re capable of, so it’s not a complete loss, I suppose. But it’s better to not be hurt than to fix what has been damaged. The Force can heal and reverse injuries, but pain wears down the mind and the strength of will in even the most experienced of us.”

Rin took note of it. Hoped he would move on, hoped he wouldn’t figure out what the definition of ‘wanting’ something was.

Unfortunately, Piko wasn’t done. “What I don’t understand is how your purification is far better than your own fortification. That’s the hardest aspect of the Force for most.”

Piko, Rin knew, was smart. He might be, like Len, very focused on his Diva, but that didn’t mean he didn’t notice things, especially if said ‘things’ were a field that he himself used to fight for decades.

Her heart thudded hard and fast in her chest.

But rather than tear into her mental issues and problems and lay them out bared for the world to spit upon, Piko only huffed.

“I don’t care what your Mentors said,” he said. “That’s a deficiency that could mean your death. Miki wants you alive, so try to stay alive.”

Piko was bluntly honest with her. Rin wondered if all Paeans were incapable of softening their words. At least it only rubbed the way such blunt honesty did, instead of trying to smother her with affection like Len’s words tended to do.

---

“How was your day?”

Since Rin shared her quarters with Len – a luxurious space that had more space for the two of them than the dorms where she used to live as a Chorister – they had their own rituals, of sort. While Rin had no doubt that Len would bend over backwards to meet her every demand, no matter how ridiculous or inconsiderate, Rin couldn’t make herself be cruel to him. And, as Mikuo had astutely pointed out, this was a partnership. Partnerships without some equality would fall apart, degenerate.

So Rin had made the effort and Len had followed enthusiastically for their own private rituals of daily life, something that gave Rin familiarity and comfort.

Like Rin asking him about how his day, or more specifically, the time he spent away from her had been.

Len smiled, and not for the first time Rin thought it didn’t seem appropriate, for a Paean of the element of darkness to seem so beautiful as the sun, the stars. Or maybe that was why, because everything would appear dark compared to his radiance.

“We worked on enchanting weapons, to fortify them,” he reported eagerly.

Fortifying. Rin tried to keep her face blank and knew she had failed even before Len looked at her with concern.

“Rin? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” she said, and hoped he would let her gloss over it vaguely.

Maybe a human would have. Even if it wasn’t disinterest, it could have been picking up on the cues of her being reluctant to speak of it.

But Len was not a human, was a Paean. As Piko had been, he could be bluntly – almost brutally – honest. While he would avoid harming her because it would hurt him as well to do so, Len would also not follow human conventions. Not when he was a Paean and she his Diva.

“But it made you upset,” he said.

And – he had a way of saying it so simply. It was true, she was upset. Not because she was unable, but because Rin suspected why.

Tired of the hard day, of the prolonged stress of everything, of the terror of failure haunting her constantly like heat on a summer day, Rin’s words spilled out. She knew now Len was someone who would be with her in the way only an inhuman could, with single minded devotion. And Mikuo had told her to use him.

“I’m – I can’t fortify things with the Force.”

She poured out a secret to him, knowing that this confidant would never repeat her words to anyone else. Maybe it was faith, as much as Rin could have in someone, or a trust established upon what Len had consistently shown her.

“I can heal, and purify, that’s how I first used the Force. But to want to fortify my own body means that I think myself worthy of being protected. The Force is – it’s belief. And I can’t believe that, because I’m not a good person.”

You chose the wrong Diva, she nearly said, but held back at the last minute. Rin might not understand the why of Len’s devotion, but she could recognize the strength of it, and he did not deserve to be hurt for her lack of understanding.

Len, who had listened to her words intently, reached out to her, and carefully took the tip of her fingers into his hands, as if handling a fragile, expensive object of great value to him. When was the last time they had touched? The naming ceremony, when they became known as the Duet Kagamine? And before that, was it when they first met, him breaking out and scaring the living daylights out of her as he clutched her tightly like to let go meant his death?

Her touch meant a lot to him, and that was why Rin was always so hesitant to touch him, fearing that she would treat it as currency. She knew it was a fucked-up thing to do to him, and that she was probably fucked up enough to do just that despite being aware of the wrongness of such a thing.

“Rin,” he said. “I don’t particularly care about the good and evils of this world. I told you – I am yours to use and abuse. You could be the most evil person foresworn in this world and I would still be at your side, until my existence is no longer. I wasn’t drawn to you for something like virtue or moral or – or some inherent goodness.”

“Then why me?”

Why her over so many other people who were surely worthier? Why not someone like Miku, who had a heart like a virtuous hero of myths?

She had asked him this before, and he had answered her then. He did so again now.

“It was you,” said Len with a dazzling smile that would shame the sun with its brilliance. “And – if you can’t fortify yourself with the Force, I’ll grow stronger to protect you better. And if you don’t want that, then I won’t fortify myself with Mana either.”

Faced with such eager devotion, Rin had a choice. Shy away and try to pretend she wasn’t affected like she had been, or . . . .

Faith – that blind leap – was hard for Rin. Maybe even impossible.

But trust, built upon by time and experience and knowledge – that, that was possible for Rin. And cowering in fear, doing nothing, was tempting, but ineffective.

Sometimes doing what was unpleasant, like catching the particularly large insect making Miku shriek in terror, was a necessity.

Rin decided that she needed to at least give Len some parts of herself. The ugly part, the history that she tried to forget but was still a part of her nonetheless. What Miku and Mikuo knew and still loved her for, which was why Rin was able to love them, to consider them hers fiercely.

Len, being a Paean, had only that short span of time since his ‘birth’, the epoch of what would be their time together. Her history was technically the longer one, and if he wanted to know her better so she could trust him, she needed to open up.

“My mother was a prostitute,” Rin said.

She hadn’t ever told anyone this herself. Miku and Mikuo had already known, so there had been no need to speak of her past. Most others didn’t, and she preferred it that way. Was she ashamed? Kind of, yes. Because to be born from a prostitute implied that she was unclean, that she also kind of wasn’t fit to be anything but a prostitute herself. Being an orphan, at least, child of unknown parents could warrant some pity. Name her mother’s profession and she lost any and all advantages.

But Len deserved to know, if anything. People probably already knew, because there was no way they wouldn’t find out. If the entire world had to know, then at the very least, she wanted to be the one to tell him.

“I don’t know who my father is.” All of her features – the golden hair, the blue eyes, the shape of her face, they were all identical to that of her mother’s. She did not want to have fathers coming out of the woodwork now claiming to be her sire. He had not been there for her life before she became a Diva, and she did not want or need one now as one. But when Rin had been younger and scared of her mother, she had sometimes searched in reflections for any clue she could find.

Mirror Sound. The name had seemed to taunt her, when she first received it.

Rin didn’t like mirrors. Looking into it always made her remember a woman that had abandoned her.

“Usually my mother would just drink some . . . concoction to abort any,” she gestured towards the general area of her womb, an organ that would no longer work for her. “But for some reason I didn’t die.”

The mixture of herbs they used to abort life in wombs were poison, clear and simple. During her years as a Chorister with the Force, Rin had treated a few women with the signs of the poison’s effects having stacked up over the years. Weakened limbs. Eyelids twitching uncontrollably. Abdominal pain. Irregular frequent bleeding.

Rin used the Force on them to erase the pain, to soothe the symptoms and relieve the wounded organs and tissue of the poison’s damage, and she wondered how she had survived. How an unborn baby, bearing the brunt of the poisonous concoction and a mother’s dispassionate wish for her to die had not ended up wiping out her life.

“After the third time she drank the concoction and I still survived, she ended up having to give birth to me.”

Because it had been too late. Killing Rin, then unborn, would have only resulted in her dead body being stuck in her mother’s womb, and what would that have done?

So Rin was carried to birth, and was allowed to see the world with her own eyes. Later, when she studied as a Chorister, Rin theorized that maybe her potential for the Force had been high enough even when she was barely a babe in her mother’s womb to protect herself from the poison.

“I would have probably been raised to be a prostitute as well,” she said. “But around that time the red-light district was being shut down.”

After the birth of Princess Ia the king had decided that he would do something in her name, just like he had with his other grandchildren.

For Princess Ia, the king wanted to put an end to the ugliness of prostitution. No more of selling flesh for coin on the streets, the distasteful trading of desire for money. Hamartia was a kingdom made by a Diva and a Paean, it had to be better than this, was the reasoning for the law she read in the library, in the book of recent bills that had passed. It had been announced shortly after Princess Ia’s birth, but it had only started rolling into effect a few years later – when Rin was born.

With the only job Rin’s mother had available to her made illegal, she needed a different way to support herself.

Rin, born small and weak, became that method. The temples gave to certain parents of children younger than six years of age a small amount of money so they could be fed. Those who were unable to work due to injury, those who had to take care of a child alone, and those who were so poor they could not afford food to put into the mouths of their child.

Until she was eight years old, Rin’s mother used her as a method of getting money. Every month she would be taken to get three silver coins. Even when she was past the age of six, she pretended to be younger until they caught on.

After that, she had no value to her mother.

From her mother Rin could say with confidence that she was lucky in three different areas. That she hadn’t died during her attempt to abort her, that she had not been sold off as a prostitute herself, and that she wasn’t killed, merely abandoned at an orphanage.

Due to children being given money only till the age of six, a lot of orphans in that age group were left at orphanages. Rin, despite her small size, was still two years older.

Miku and Mikuo had been like her, in that their mother had been a prostitute before the ban and that they were older than six when they came to the orphanage. The key difference between them and Rin was – other than having a sibling – that unlike Rin, their mother had loved them. It was her death that made Mikuo, fifteen and already aware of how the world could be cruel, bring his nine-year-old sister to the orphanage run by a temple.

His choice turned out to be a good one. He and his sister – and Rin, separately – were found to have the Force, an amount far more than average, enough to give them opportunities. Mikuo joined the temple as a novice priest, and Rin and Miku were likely going to follow his footsteps. Being girls, they also had the option of becoming Choristers, and they took that chance as well because Mikuo said they should dream big.

They couldn’t dream any bigger than dreaming of becoming a Diva, in Hamartia. Even if dreams didn’t come true.

Miku had done what her brother had told her, heart open to dreams and always optimistic, always able to hope. But Rin hadn’t really dreamed big.

Mentor Cul had called her life plans beautiful, back then. Rin really didn’t think that was a proper assessment, even now. It was just realistic, at the time, and horribly so in the way reality tended to be.

There was nothing beautiful about a dreamless struggle to survive.

“Miku was the first time I really learned what love from another person was like,” Rin said. All things considered she was fairly well-off, as a person. Some children at the orphanage were cruel, brash and loud in their attempts to seize attention. Desperate for any kind of attention for the lack of affection they had craved.

Sometimes her mother had called Rin a monster, for being such a quiet child, for not dying to the poison. Maybe she was, in a way, because she certainly wasn’t normal.

Miku had been the one to not shy away from a monster of a girl and make her human. Mikuo wouldn’t have – he was too busy forcing himself to be mature, to find a way to take care of himself and his sister after the loss of their mother, a loving woman. It had been Miku that reached out to Rin, taught her the warmth of companionship and what unconditional love felt like.

And even then, Rin had doubted it. Doubted it until Miku saved Rin’s life with the Force she awakened to help Rin during that terrible winter when a sickness was going around the orphanage. Then, when Miku had fallen with exhaustion, Rin had awakened the Force, too, the life debt and the question of why making it impossible for Rin to not do something, and kept her alive until Mikuo and the other priests were able to take over for her.

That exchange of life debts had given Rin a reason to believe because without a reason she could not take that blind leap of faith onto something as frail and immaterial as emotions. She had needed proof, and only once it was given could Rin reciprocate and believe.

What her mother had failed to fill and teach Rin, Miku had done.

“Without her, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

If there could be only one truth in Rin’s life, it would be that. Miku wouldn’t think so, if Rin ever told her such a thing. Rin could just imagine her friend giggling, embarrassed, before telling her she underestimated herself.

Objectively, Rin knew her own assessment to be the correct one. And she could easily imagine herself without having known Miku, and knew that between that alternate future and her present self, she much preferred the status quo.

Len released a breath, and it came out ragged and tense.

“I see,” he said quietly.

Jealousy filled his eyes, though Len made his effort to hide it. Even now he tried to be considerate to her to the best of his ability, and Rin knew her choice to try and open herself a little more to him had been the correct one. It wasn’t payment, or currency – at least, not a strictly equivalent exchange.

Rin reached out and held his hand, wrapping her fingers around his and holding them tightly, sharing heat and touch. Not a reward, not really, an attempt for her to try and build upon this.

“We’re already going to be together for as long as we live,” she pointed out.

And given how the oldest pairs were over a century old, they had a lot of time at their disposal. If they survived, a cynical part of her whispered in the back of her mind.

“Don’t hurt Miku, or Mikuo.” she said. Miku wasn’t a Diva. Her friend would inevitably grow old and die.

Rin was no longer a part of the cycle of time. The Divas she had met – all in advanced ages, yet eternally young and beautiful, one step removed from the limitations of mortality.

Rin was like that now. And depending on how long she lived, she had that conditional immortality for however long.

Miku did not. One day she would lose Miku while she stayed the same, a monster in a different way than what her mother had once called her, but a monster nonetheless.

Rin was realistic. She could accept that. Probably. She would cry, and her heart would break, and she would have a hard time. But she had to accept that.

One day, would Len be the only one with her? Mikuo certainly wanted that for her, in the distant future. Wanted her to have one person absolutely on her side, even if said ‘person’ wasn’t human. He was the planner between him and Miku, and he worried for the future when he and Miku wouldn’t be with Rin anymore.

Rin was also a planner. It was time for her to start planning a career path, factoring in Len as well as their status as a Duet.

“You said I could trust you,” she said. “And that you would prove it to me.”

Len smiled, as if pleased that she remembered. “Yes.”

“This is the first step to it,” she said. “You don’t need to do anything, or hurt anyone, just – know. That’s a part of me, in the past.”

Len nodded immediately.

He wasn’t affected by this revelation with disgust or pity. Just – happiness that he had been given a piece of her, affected as he was by her asking him to not hurt the two people she cared about most right now. That transparent show of his emotions, strangely enough, gave her some relief – that he knew Rin’s biggest shame and was more focused on her trust of him than what it meant.

Maybe this was why the other Divas cared for their Paeans so much – when someone looked at you like you hung the stars themselves in the canopies of heaven, it was an overwhelmingly heady thing, to know they would not just approve of but support anything and everything you did.

Notes:

I got a really nice comment and got super motivated to update so thank you kagaymine_rin for summoning this with the shrek circle

Kiyoteru: *pouting because he doesn't like having Meiko pay attention to other Paeans*
Meiko: You know what you're not commiting arson like you used to so, good boy.

Notes:

this story is going to break my heart but what the hey.
writing this because i have vocaloid otps, a love for fantasy and the urge to write a semi-original story without making up character names or appearances and vocaloid was always great for that.
You can find me on my Tumblr where I usually ramble and post snippets of future uploads.

Sweet Dreams~