the perfect glory, so all alone

by eclipscent

Summary:

An immortal prince meets a ghost in an abandoned grove.

Notes:

i wrote a lot of this during 3.1 but waited for anaxa’s patch to get a better feel of his voice. that being said—hi, i have a disease called “i love to push my favorite characters together like barbie dolls even if they’ve never interacted in canon”

this is an au without chrysos heirs, so no flame-chasing journey or the black tide, but with enough canon mixed in it's not an /entirely/ different thing

Chapter 1

Rejected by the Reaper and suffocated by the Sea of Souls, nine years of clinging to life with bared teeth and bleeding nails had trained his body to accept death would never be a viable option, or a welcomed relief. His mind hadn’t been as hardened by violence, less wrath and more feral instincts, sharp as glass and just as easily shattered. There was no thinking, no dreaming; just breathing, fighting, surviving.

As the years weathered by and his bones outgrew his childhood fears, Mydeimos the Undying had learned the only one who’d come to claim his life would be his own mind, the same way it’s done for his father’s father and all the fathers before them, passing down a merciless crown of patricide. Even now, with wounds disfiguring his body from jagged claws and fangs of monster hoards, he feels his skin stitching itself back together, his bones breaking themselves to fit back into the puzzle of his skeletal structure. Though his consciousness falters, his breathing slowing, he knows that the next time his eyes open, his feet will lead him back to the battlefield to do it all over again.

Before they close, he hears more than sees a pair of footsteps approaching, crushing the grass underneath. A quiet sigh soon follows, and then nothing at all.

When Mydei comes back to, what greets him is not the woods he’d faced off the monsters in, but the sight of a cracked wall. He sits up easily but warily, body healed but mind alert, as he looks at his surroundings with growing confusion. 

Years of surviving in the wild had honed his instincts into a weapon, but there was nothing to wield it against here, in what looked to be a near-abandoned, desolate library. 

The rows of books lined up against the wall, unlike the rest of the space, looked untouched by nature reclaiming what was originally hers, firmly closed, neatly organized, and obviously recently used, if the lack of dust on them was anything to go by. Vines embrace the shelves like the tender arms of a lover, and his gaze follows its crooked path up to the edge of one, where a golden butterfly flutters its wings and promptly takes off, the only sign of life in an otherwise deserted place.

Soon after, a more thorough search makes him reassess his previous assumptions—it is not that flora has grown around an abandoned building, but that the building itself was crafted in it. His fingers curiously trail along the wall as he paces around the library. Even through his gauntlets, he feels its pace stutter at every bump and cranny created not by the degradation of time, but from the walls themselves being the bark of a giant tree. 

The dots are not hard to connect. He hadn’t realized his battle had led him to the Murmuring Woods, but now the greater mystery at hand was who had brought him into the wrecks of what had once been a place of prestige for followers of Cerces. 

The Grove of Epiphany had been seized by ravenous monsters long before his time, devouring scholars and visitors alike, leaving nothing but bloodshed and unrecognizable bodies that could barely be claimed by grieving families piece by mangled piece—or so the story goes. There had been no survivors to disprove the claims, and the few who managed to escape could only cling to consciousness for so long before they perished at the gates of Okhema, their journey to seek help cut tragically short. 

(That they did not attempt to reach out to Castrum Kremnos, their close neighbor, spoke much of how their thirst for war overshadowed their might as warriors, and their lost prince purses his lips before shaking the thought out of his head.)

Mydei has no reason to doubt the story and no real investment in proving what was true and what was not from word of mouth tell-tales; this wouldn’t be the first city to have fallen from the violence of beasts or men, but he had known the Grove to be abandoned after the massacre, a ghost of a once prosperous city-state. Too much history tainted by the blood of those who wrote it, surrounded by grief and superstition, had scared away anyone who might’ve been interested in preserving the knowledge those scholars left behind, choosing to let the Grove of Epiphany return to the elements it was built around. 

Who had brought him here then, and why? The books showed signs of recent use, but the man-made pillars and statues were as cracked and scattered as the day the Grove had violently fallen.  

When his wandering blindly guides him through a corridor and out into what seemed to be the remains of a courtyard, the first thing to greet him is the light of day. Dimmer than the eternal sunlight of Okhema, but still bright enough to make him squint after walking through darkened halls, he raises a hand to protect his eyes. 

A flash of white catches his attention, and he lowers his hand to look at his forearm, seeing it wrapped in white cloth. Only now does he look down at himself, taking notice of the bloodied bandages around his torso, wrapped meticulously around the wounds that had given him the most mobility issues during his battle. Now-dried ointment sticks to his skin where he remembers lesser slashes drawing blood, not deep enough to cut through bone, but prone to infection. 

All useless. His body could not die, not forever, and his was an existence trapped in life and chained to prophecy. Still—the fact that someone had seen him passed out in the woods and brought him somewhere safe to tend to his wounds could no longer be denied. Though his body healed itself fully in his slumber, these wounds would’ve killed a mortal man, no doubt the assumption of his would’ve-been rescuer. 

Mydei looks around the courtyard, down the paths formed by the giant tree branches, and sees nothing and no one. His fingers flex uneasily at his side. It didn’t sit right with him to leave without thanking this person, but the ruins seemed uninhabited, and exploring the entirety of the fallen Grove required time he did not have at the moment. 

He lingers by the entrance for a second longer, gives the Grove behind him an evaluating gaze, and promptly walks out, unwrapping the bandages to reveal the perfectly intact flesh beneath. He’ll reconvene with his companions first, and then return to catch the culprit of this mystery.

His unknown benefactor takes a backseat in his mind for the next couple of years to follow, his unpaid debt shoved down the list of priorities he takes into account upon returning to the land that had exiled him upon birth. Nights by the campfire were spent discussing strategies among comrades—the number fluctuating with each clash against his father’s forces—and days upon days exchanging blows with the Kremnoan warriors who could not be swayed to his cause had kept his focus razor-sharp on his life’s sole mission. 

It’s a conversation on one such night that awakens those memories, a handful of his men speaking amongst themselves over the fire keeping the cold night bearable and their wild game dinner hot. 

“—it’s true!” One of them exclaims confidently, drawing in a small audience with the candor of his voice. “Lycomedes saw it with his own eyes, and I heard him say it with my own ears!”

A murmuring chorus of disbelief echoes his claims around the campfire, some teasing and others skeptical. One of them calls out to Lycomedes to back up the claims himself, only to prompt silence from the entire group when remembering he had fallen in battle not even a full moon ago, joining their departed comrades in a pile of bodies they had to leave behind in Castrum Kremnos. Their comfort was that he died honorably in his homeland.

Mydei chooses this moment to step in, turning the uneasy silence into quiet reverence with his presence alone. It’s something that had taken him a while to get used to, growing from feral child to future king, a childhood spent fighting alone to an adolescence learning how to command an army of men disillusioned by his father’s reign. They looked up to him like the second coming of Nikador, the only king worthy of carrying out his Strife. The discovery of the lost prince sacrificed to the Titans had given them hope, and looking at his back in battle reminded them that their fight had a meaning, and dying for him was an honor they’d willingly walk straight into a blade for. 

When he was younger, their adoring gazes had felt like the Sea of Souls had come to claim him once more. Now, he is much better at dissimulating. 

He nods his head at them. “What did Lycomedes see?”

Sometimes speaking of the dead helped ease the weight of their absence. Mydei, who clung to the future with desperate faith and kept his losses locked deep inside his heart, could not attest to this.

The soldier straightens, his audience now including his future king. “A ghost—but not just any shade lost on their way along the west wind: the Witch of the Grove!”

Mydei frowns. Someone else steals the question he does not voice.

“Witch of the Grove?” Another one of his men asks, leaning closer to the fire to warm the chills running down his spine. 

“Have you heard of the massacre at the Grove of Epiphany?” The older men hum in acknowledgement, but those Mydei’s age and younger look around in confusion. The storyteller leans closer to the fire as well, the flickering flames painting his face in harsh shadows and vivid lights, his voice lowering into a theatrical whisper loud enough to force everyone within earshot to pay close attention to each word. Even Mydei tilts his head. “Long ago, followers of Cerces used to practice their faith in their tree of wisdom. They turned it into a library, a research center, an academy, what-have-you—all in the name of Reason, to spread the knowledge the benevolent Cerces had shared with them.

“But one of the Sages, founder of one of their many schools, betrayed Cerces’ wisdom and blasphemed against their beliefs. He designed wicked creations with his dark magic, believed that he was above the authority of the gods, and tried to overpower the Reason Titan, but his greed soon caught up to him…” 

A poignant pause. The fire crackles in the silence. 

“...for it was his own immoral creations that had turned against him! Those monsters not only bit the hand that fed them—they devoured him entirely, and then set their hunger to the rest of the Grove! It’s said that Cerces cursed his foul soul to eternal confinement in the very place he ruined, never to be escorted by Thanatos. Not even the Sea of Souls would welcome him.”

Mydei’s frown deepens. He thinks back to a few years ago, when late adolescence was still fresh out of his body, when he hadn’t been as refined in a fight as he was now and had foolishly fallen to a group of monsters he’d chased into the Murmuring Woods. He remembers waking up in the debris of a forgotten city-state and finding no sign of inhabitants other than the well-used books with no dust, remembers leaving with the uncertainty of not knowing who had seen his unconscious body and chose to futilely nurse it back to health instead of trying to end him where he laid. 

The story had never specified the kind of monsters that had overtaken the Grove, and it certainly did not highlight any one heretic who could have been the cause of it. 

The prince looks away momentarily, unconsciously seeking the direction of his lost home in the horizon; it seemed that the flames of violence turned even the most bright minds to ashes, all through the greed of a single man. The world outside Castrum Kremnos was not so unlike the war-torn world inside it, and there will always be a King Eurypon in everything but name waiting to ignite such a fire. 

One day that would be him, too. The thought brings hope to his followers, but it makes him cross his arms across his chest, shielding his heart from their adoring eyes. Were the word terror in their language, no one would see it hidden within.  

His eyes return to scan his group of men. Lycomedes was not here to back up the claims, but the mystery of it had the rest of them properly hanging on to every word, making them forget the space of his absence entirely. Mydei speaks up no further; if it took some juvenile ghost stories around a campfire to raise morale, he was content to sit back and let them talk. 

When his eyes close that night, he dreams of men who are monsters and monsters who are men. He wonders which one he will be at his journey’s end.

In all his years mastering the deadly art of battle, Mydei had sustained worse injuries than a spear through the heart, ribcage shattered by iron and flesh pierced by polished wood. Time hones his skills and his leadership, but it does not erode the Kremnoan warriors’ deadly loyalty to their mad king, and even an immortal amongst hoards of men was bound to take a blow that would have killed one less divinely blessed. He sucks in a labored breath through bloodied teeth, firmly grasping the shaft to rip it out and allow his body to mend itself. 

The bodies of his opponents littered the clearing floor around him in a pile of disjointed limbs and broken armor, a testament of their exiled prince’s strength and the courage in their choice to face him in spite of it. To die in battle had always been the greatest honor for a Kremnoan that could not achieve a perfect glory; if they could not win the war, they would reach the nether realm making sure their king would. 

But what became of those who didn’t? What happened to the men who threw their lives away in blind faith for a prince who promised them home but has yet to secure the throne—has yet to find the will to sit on it?

Mydei closes his eyes, lets his hand rest around the wooden shaft instead of pulling it out. Lets himself feel the pain for a moment longer. If he cannot join his men in the afterlife, he can meet them in their agony. 

Leaves and grass crushed under approaching footsteps. Wind carrying the scent of old books. A shadow blocking a patch of sunlight across the clearing, camouflaged between the willowing trees. 

Mydei’s eyes snap open, grip tightening and ripping the spear out of his torn flesh in one swift movement, immediately rearing his arm back and aiming the weapon like a bowless arrow, his body operating with the same wild, animal-like instincts that had kept him alive as a child. 

He hears the click of a tongue in response to his threat, and his vision adapts itself to the glaring sunlight to focus on the figure of a person emerging through the towering trees in the woods, the robes as dark as the shadows they were previously engulfed in flowing imperiously behind him, revealing a slight figure and a short stature. 

Looking much too calm for someone with a weapon pointed at him, there stands a man with his arms crossed, long mint hair tied in a low side ponytail swaying to the beat of the wind’s whistling song around them. The eye not covered by an eyepatch is only slightly narrowed, as if encountering a mild inconvenience in an otherwise eventless day. 

He doesn’t look like a Kremnoan, much less part of his father’s army. Mydei, however, doesn’t lower the spear even as he approaches, ready to put an end to possible danger before it has a chance to unveil itself. The man notices and rolls his good eye.

“You again,” he says flatly. 

Mydei’s glare does not falter, even as his confusion grows. “Identify yourself.”

The stranger hums quietly, almost with wry amusement. If the pile of dead soldiers surprises or terrifies him, he does not show it, and it is that which keeps the prince alert. Only two kinds of people were used to bloodshed, after all: those who caused it, and those who survived it. Sometimes, those were one and the same. 

“My name is Anaxagoras,” he offers, head tilting sideways as he watches not the weapon, but the gaping hole in Mydei’s chest. He doesn’t seem put off; instead, there’s something like curiosity in his otherwise indifferent expression. “ Not Anaxa, remember that well—”

“That means nothing to me,” Mydei growls, patience running thin. When he lured his father’s men into the woods, he had been sure his own companions would be able to handle the few that had remained behind, but if one had managed to reach him in spite of it, it didn’t speak well of the group’s status. He needed to check on them. 

In the first show of real emotion, Anaxagoras— Anaxa, the more childish part of Mydei’s mind corrects—glares right back at him, quick to snap back. “Do not interrupt me. If this is all it takes to wear your patience out, it is no wonder you keep showing up here begging Thanatos for an audience.” 

He was one to talk about bad tempers, but a light inside Mydei’s brain flickers on, and he abandons that train of thought to pursue a more pressing one.

“Keep showing up?” He repeats, arm relaxing minutely by the second, slowly lowering the spear to the ground. In his growing clarity, he takes a look at their surroundings with sharp, focused eyes, attention instantly caught by the giant tree towering above the rest, reaching as far as the elusive skies allowed. “You are…”

The Reason Titan had become unresponsive since the massacre that took place in their holy grounds, the wooden eyes of their vessel eternally shut as if in endless grief to the untimely, unjust deaths of their followers. When Mydei looks up at their serene face frozen in deep slumber, he recalls tales whispered over a campfire. 

The Grove of Epiphany has been abandoned for longer than Mydei has walked free, and the only sign of life within had been years back, when someone had taken misplaced pity on an unconscious warrior and patched his wounds up. 

No one else would walk these graveyard woods but its own ghosts and, from the looks of it, a madman. 

Mydei’s lips thin as he assesses this Anaxagoras anew. There’s some skepticism in his gaze, eyeing the thin figure of a man whom he easily would’ve towered over had they both been standing at their full height, but perhaps being in Cerces’ grounds give him some of their reason, for he exhales through his nose in wordless acceptance. It’s as good a truce as any, and the other man seems to read it as such when his arms uncross.

“It is true, then,” Anaxa muses, approaching freely now. He crouches where Mydei kneels, uncovered eye trained on the gaping wound in his chest. Dauntless, a bare hand touches his right pectoral, startling Mydei from wariness into pure, unadulterated bewilderment. Not paying him any mind, the other man ducks his head, taking a closer look at the dripping blood and tracing the crooked edges of the injury with clinical interest. “Your body’s already healing itself. I recall it taking longer last time, however... Perhaps the number of wounds affects the acceleration process.”

Mydei exhales quietly, the beginnings of a headache throbbing deep in his skull. “So it is you. You’re the one who found me back then.”

“In pieces,” Anaxa replies unhelpfully, finally giving Mydei his personal space back when he stands up, brushing imaginary dirt off his knees. “I thought I’d have to make space in the cemetery—with no name to carve upon the slate, at that. Fortunately, you saved me the trouble, even if you were the one to bring it in the first place.”

Mydei’s reunion with his benefactor had gone much differently in his head, during the few times in between battles that allowed him to consider how to properly thank the mystery person who had lent him their aid so selflessly. It’s so easy, he knows, for people to offer a helping hand in the guise of kindheartedness, all the while hiding less than pure intentions. He watches Anaxa walk away, unsure of which of the two categories he fits. 

As if sensing his intent gaze on his back, Anaxa pauses and turns his head slightly to look at him over his shoulder. “Is there a broken leg I’m unaware of, or would you like another enemy ambush to arrive as you sunbathe?”

What a mystifying, frustrating man. Mydei stands up swiftly, hackles rising like an affronted lion, but dutifully follows after him like a lost little kitten, keeping his eyes on the man but his ears alert to their surroundings. 

He’s not surprised when the courtyard he once dazedly walked out of appears in the horizon, the two men traversing through familiar branched paths. Mydei’s mind races a mile per minute, years of battle molding it into a tool for survival and victory only, wondering where this reunion would take them. Is it payment Anaxa seeks? To demand riches and gold in either ingots or information? Mydei had been ready to give it all, within reason; he could not let a debt go unpaid, but waging war against his father had left his own militia scraping for resources. He could survive off pride and wrath alone, but his men were mortal, and hunger devours even a righteous man’s justice, just like unprotected contact with the elements corrodes human skin and sanity alike. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to gather the proper ingredients for a full meal instead of relying on poor substitutes scavenged through their campaigns. 

“Sit.” 

Mydei blinks himself out of his mind. He almost does as told immediately, if only out of surprise; since leading the charge against his homeland, only his master had dared to speak blunt commands his way, and even then his words held lessons for his future king to learn. Those who did not know of his true identity respected him enough to keep discourtesy off their tongue, and his closer companions knew there was a time and place for insubordination. Anaxa is no one to order him around, and kings don’t take lip from subjects or outsiders.

But Mydei is not yet king, and as perplexed by this man as he is, it is not his instincts that keep his guard up. It’s a strange awkwardness instead that tenses his shoulders into a straight line, even as he sits down where prompted, slow and careful. He realizes he hasn’t said anything yet in their walk here, much less thanked Anaxa for…maybe not saving him, exactly, but putting in the effort to.

All he wanted to do was say thank you. Of the many scenarios he’d imagined could happen when meeting Anaxa again, all of them included a graceful thanks, a properly conveyed gratefulness as expected of a man of his honor. 

Instead, all that comes out of his mouth now is: “What you did was unnecessary.”

His jaw clenches shut, as if it could stop the words that had already escaped.

A flat look is what he receives for them, and Anaxa approaches him again with several things cradled in one arm and the other balancing a water basin on his hip. 

“I figured. After I’d already used up half of my supplies to stitch you back together, mind you,” he sighs, sitting next to Mydei and neatly unloading his haul. Bandages roll out of the bunch, leaping over the edge of the marble bench and bouncing once, twice upon impact on the floor before continuing to glide across the room. Confused (seemingly his default state of mind around this man), Mydei watches as Anaxa’s long, elegant fingers search for and successfully find ointment and a hand towel, keeping his silence as the man drenches it in the basin and raises it towards Mydei’s chest.

Mydei’s hand flies to grasp Anaxa’s wrist, stopping him midway. Their gazes lock.

“What are you doing?” he asks lowly. 

Anaxa meets him with a half-lidded gaze, unimpressed. 

“Your body may heal itself, but I observed it did so much faster with proper treatment. This will only be a speed-up process, if you will—and as much as I’d like to know whether a heart could recreate itself even with missing pieces, I’m not a medical expert and would prefer to avoid having to find out firsthand if that’s what kills you for good.”

His nose wrinkles.

“Also, you reek of gore and guts.”

They continue to look at each other in tense silence, a stalemate Mydei eventually breaks by softening his grip and letting go. Anaxa lowers his chin a little, as if giving a nod of thanks, then wastes no time in swiping the wet towel across his chest, cleaning the wound with practiced hands.

The sensation of cold water against his bare skin makes a shiver crawl up his spine in tandem with the stray bloodied water droplets running down his torso, making him acutely aware, not for the first time, of the irony in having an invincible body that could still feel pain and discomfort. 

Pain is an old friend of Mydei’s, and it’s barely an issue to feel the fabric dap around his broken flesh and bone, cleaning the area to allow for a better view of his skin regenerating, threads of flesh connecting with unnatural ease. What’s foreign is the feeling of someone tending to such wounds, so used he is to carrying them with pride and stubborn stoicism, a symbol of his deathless glory in the eyes of his men. Mydeimos the Undying, body full of wounds visible to the eye, and heavier still with those unseen. 

He observes Anaxa as he works, the man mumbling things to himself he pays little mind to. Without the threat of his father’s army and being constantly off-balance from this man’s eccentricities, his shoulders finally begin relaxing, his lungs slowly releasing the breath he’d been unconsciously holding in anticipation of another fight. He doesn’t realize how often he’s in fight mode until he’s unceremoniously thrown off of it, and he finds that he’s not so sure how to behave with someone who is neither his ally or his enemy.

But this could be an ally, and Mydei should watch his paranoia before it leads him into the madness that consumed his father. This would mark two times that Anaxa found him wounded and alone, and two times still that he nursed him back to health even if he now knew there was no need for it. 

Mydei is not used to being seen as vulnerable. He cannot be; should his steps falter, he’d topple over and fall with the weight of his kingdom’s expectations of him, from those who believe in him and those who condemn his existence. 

Yet again, he wonders—what’s heavier for Kephale? Carrying humanity’s life on his back, or the weight of their dreams and hopes?

“You’re skilled for someone who claims not to be a medical expert.” 

Anaxa doesn’t look up from his self-imposed task as he responds. “My assistant lecturer was a skilled healer. I happened to pick up some of her tricks over the years.”

At the mention of another person, Mydei takes a good look around them, the first time he’s properly examined the library since that day years ago. Nothing has changed, but knowing that Anaxa has been here all along makes him view the place in a different light. Were the courtyard and library outliers, and the Grove wasn’t as uninhabited as it seemed at first glance? Or has he been here alone all this time? 

“Assistant lecturer?” A key word catches his attention, a mismatched puzzle piece he doesn’t know where to fit in the image he has of this man, and he looks back down at Anaxa, who’s finally pulling away, wiping his hands clean of Mydei’s blood. The roll of bandages remains spread across the library floor, as unnecessary as they were the last time. “You’re a professor?”

There’s a thin smile curving up the edges of Anaxa’s lips, sardonic—and a little melancholy. 

“When I had students to my name. As it is, the one before you is but a simple scholar. Although some would choose to say I’m more of a performer now, and they wouldn’t be incorrect,” he replies. Though there’s no real inflection in the breathiness of his voice to show how he feels about that, whatever that means, Mydei’s eyes catch on the smile, even as Anaxa ducks his head down to search for something else in his haul of mystery medical tools. 

What he takes out next, however, is not a clean roll of bandages, nor a set of stitches. It seems like he’d chosen to limit his meddling to cleaning up the blood and picking out wood splinters and metal shards from his now-closing gaping wound, and instead grabs Mydei’s hand to place a fistfull of mulberries on it. 

“Hopefully you’re not a picky eater on top of being ill-mannered,” he says evenly as he stands up to gather his things, having let go of Mydei’s hand with no preamble. The back of Mydei’s neck feels suddenly warm. “Hurry, eat up and run along. There’s people waiting for you, isn’t there? I’ve kept you long enough.”

“Why did you?” Mydei persists, because he cannot force the thank you out of his mouth, tongue heavy with apprehension and embarrassment and confusion. 

Anaxa pauses. They no longer sit side by side, but Mydei can see the dual colors of his eye much clearer now, notices the way it clouds over with memories, the way light does not bounce off of it, as if it were a black hole that absorbs all life and suffocates it.

A man rejected by life and a man rejected by death stare at each other anew, both holding on tight to words they cannot bear the wind to carry away. 

Anaxa looks away first, to the bloodstains darkening Mydei’s clothes into a deeper crimson, to the red smudging white marble. Mydei wonders if he’s still here, or if those memories have consumed his present, the way they do for his men in the middle of a pleasant conversation, in the cusp of their hearty laughter, interrupted by flashbacks stained in red and thundering echoes of the death rattles of their brothers in arms. 

He hears a sigh. Tired, worn, and harrowingly human. 

“This Grove has witnessed enough death already. It deserves to see wounds heal, even if they’re not its own.” 

The professor shakes his head as he turns around, a clear dismissal in the loud click of his heels against the floor. 

And Mydei understands. He rises from the bench and in a matter of steps crosses the distance between them, grabbing Anaxa’s wrist again to stop his escape, his grip around the thin limb loose, the barest ghost of a touch. His skin against Mydei’s is colder than marble. 

“Thank you,” he finally says, grave and solemn. “You’ve rendered your assistance twice now, knowing that it’s unnecessary trouble. I will repay you someday. I swear it.”

A huff under Anaxa’s breath, the sound of it more amused than derisive. 

“That’s unnecessary trouble.” He uses Mydei’s words against him, but when he pulls his arm out of his grip, the gesture has no heat behind it. “But you already know where to find me now, don’t you?”

He walks away with nothing else and Mydei watches him go, feeling his heart beginning to stitch itself back together.

When the footsteps fade, he takes a close look at the mulberries in his hand, raising them to his nose for a cautious smell. Recalling how thin Anaxa’s wrist was in his hold, he nods decisively to himself. 

Mydei’s next visit to the Grove is less accompanied by blood and carnage, only some weeks later after leaving Krateros in charge during a period of rest. He’s not surprised to arrive at an empty courtyard, but instead of walking straight into the now-familiar path to the library, he deviates his journey to explore the outer corridors with a single-minded goal.

Anaxa finds him under a tree eventually, arms stretched skywards as he picks the mulberries remaining at the top of it, the rest already gathered on a piece of cloth by his feet. 

“I wasn’t aware a Kremnoan’s definition of repayment was fruit theft. It seems the library records will have to be updated,” he remarks dryly, but he stays hidden within the shadow of the corridor, arms crossed loosely over his chest as he leans against a pillar broken in half. Despite his words, he does nothing to stop him. Mydei feels his gaze on him, following a trail of glistening sweat reflecting the midday sun’s glare as it runs down his bare back. “The mulberries couldn’t have been that good, surely.”

Mydei scoffs, rolling his shoulders after depositing the last batch of berries on the cloth. He grabs it by the corners and closes it like a sac, raising it for Anaxa’s better view. 

“This is me repaying the debt I owe. Is there a kitchen?”

A quirked brow shows Anaxa’s intrigue. Mydei follows after him as he walks back into the giant tree, taking turns previously unexplored. He observes them as they go, taking note of broken tables and chairs snapped in half, claw marks scarring the bark walls, vases broken and shards of glass scattered through rarely-threaded floors, disturbed only by a gentle draft carrying the scent of old books. 

Mydei knows much too well what the aftermath of a battlefield looks like. What he cannot see is the reason for this particular scholar to haunt this graveyard like a lone vengeful ghost. 

No—Mydei corrects himself, recalling the smile beneath the derision, the gentleness of his hands on his wounds, the harrowed gaze—not a vengeful ghost. One who has not yet let go of his dying regrets. 

The professor enters a new doorway before Mydei can dwell on it too deeply, and the sight of a dusty kitchen immediately makes him frown, fingers flexing by his side and nose scrunching up in displeasure. At his side, completely unbothered by the sorry state of a home’s most holy place, Anaxa nods at it. 

“Do forgive the mess,” he says, decidedly not sounding sorry at all. “It’s not every day a thieving outsider storms in demanding to see it.”

There’s an airiness to his voice, and Mydei can’t figure out whether he’s teasing or insulting him. Perhaps, to someone like Anaxa, it’s the same thing.

Mydei huffs but otherwise chooses to ignore it, making a beeline straight to the cauldron. The scholar follows close enough to hover over his shoulder when he leans down to inspect it, but he doesn’t sense any suspicion from him, only curiosity. He is beginning to learn that Anaxa would let a lot of things fly in the name of satiating his interest in whatever catches his attention. 

Whether that’s a good or bad thing remains to be seen.

“Everything works as it should,” Anaxa clarifies, leaning against the counter. Mydei notes this to be true as the cauldron, at least, looked recently used, the logs under it still charred. He continues nonchalantly at the prince’s cautious look. “My lab flasks exploded recently, and I needed a suitable enough replacement to boil solutions.” 

Mydei grimaces. “...I’ll go wash it.” 

The next hour has him mashing mulberries into the cauldron, a familiar enough routine he comfortably steps back into without much thought. It’s been a while since he’s last had the opportunity to use a proper kitchen instead of relying on open fires to cook meals, and he can’t help but find the process relaxing. 

Mydei had learned how to cook out of necessity, for a warrior’s strength was half training, half proper nutrition, but somewhere along the way, it also became a way to show appreciation. Anaxa had tried to save his life twice—the least Mydei could do in return was give him a little something to fill up those thin limbs. He knows the jam he’s making and the loaf of bread in the sac he brought back from camp are barely enough, but it was as good a start as any.

“Was my assessment wrong, and you’re no warrior, but a chef?” Anaxa ponders out loud, watching Mydei’s skilled hands at work. 

The prince grunts. “Those are not mutually exclusive.” 

“No, they are not.” Head tilted, Anaxa continues observing him, his cool indifference a stark contrast to the crackling flame beneath the cauldron warming Mydei’s skin. “It is indeed a wise combination of skills. Physical activity can only strengthen your body so much without the proper nourishment to sustain it.” 

Huh, seems like they’re more in tune than Mydei had initially assumed, despite the other man’s frail figure. He takes a look at him from the corner of his eye, but Anaxa meets his gaze with a dispassionate one of his own, unreadable as always. 

“Hmph. Good words.” 

Once the fire is out and the jam cools enough, Mydei wipes his hands clean, nodding to himself in satisfaction as he picks up the sac again. 

“Here.” Mirroring their last goodbye, Mydei grabs Anaxa’s hand and firmly curls his pale fingers around it. Not for the first time, he notices how cold the scholar’s skin is, and a deep crease forms between his brows. Bread and jam alone won’t be enough nourishment, but a little bit of sugar does wonders for one’s energy reserves, even for something as physically idle as reading. 

Anaxa looks up at his face slowly, as if caught by unsure surprise. His eye does a furtive scan of the kitchen around them, from the charred logs to the counter wiped clean and back down to the bag he’d been made to hold, as if seeing them in a new context bathed them in a different light he’d never thought to veer into.

“Keep it tightly closed to prevent the bread becoming stale,” Mydei advices. “It will last you for the week. The jam for a month, if stored properly.” 

“Heh,” Anaxa scoffs lightly, but it’s a soft sound, contrary to the stubborn hands suddenly holding on to Mydei’s as he drags him to the table. Not expecting it, Mydei instinctively makes to pull away, but the scholar barely seems to notice his resistance—he’s much stronger than the prince had given him credit for. “You’re more courteous than I’d previously surmised.”

Mydei colors a bit. “My people are not without manners. Last time, I was…”

“Embarrassed?” Anaxa finishes for him ruthlessly, caring little to preserve his dignity. He lets go of Mydei only when he takes the wordlessly offered seat, and goes to sit directly in front of him. The space between them is not big, and when Anaxa places the bag down in the table between them, the cloth easily falling and scrunching up around the now-revealed bread, their hands would still be close enough to touch, were they both to reach for it at the same time. He doesn’t know why he realizes this. “I’ve heard of the great Kremnoan pride; I was bound to bear witness to it myself someday. Let us push it aside and eat for now.”

Mydei’s frown deepens. “This is yours.”

The professor sighs quietly, like he’s asked a question to a class that gave no worthwhile answers.

“You’ll deny me the right to choose what to do with the gift you gave me, immediately after you’ve given it to me? You’d do well to revise those manners you speak of.” 

What a roundabout way of saying he wants to share. 

Perhaps Anaxa was a little embarrassed himself. A proud scholar who, despite his straightforwardness, did not speak his more private feelings for the world to hear, but his actions were clear for those with unclouded eyes to see, and Mydei’s have always been sharp. 

“Besides,” Anaxa continues, taking the initiative and breaking the bread, taking a small piece for himself. “You need it more than I do, don’t you? I would ask whether Castrum Kremnos is currently at war, but I’d be better off asking if Kephale’s arms have finally given out and crushed Okhema's foolish faith once and for all.”

Caught at a stalemate, Mydei acquiesces and takes a piece of bread for himself as well. He looks down at his own hands when he smears jam on it as he chews on the other man’s words too.

The current war at Castrum Kremnos is not breaking news to the rest of Amphoreus, but King Eurypon’s descent to madness was a popular topic of gossip for all city-states alike, some whispering their fears of a possible invasion so his conquest reached the farthest sea, and others mocking it in form of songs sung by drunken bards, creating a melody out of their tragedy. 

That Anaxa hasn’t heard of it is odd, even more so since the Grove of Epiphany was one of his kingdom’s closest neighbors. Was Anaxa truly so isolated from the outside world that the latest world news hasn’t reached him here? He couldn’t understand his ignorance—and willingness to help him—otherwise. 

“The king has lost all reason,” Mydei reveals curtly. The words should not cut him so deep anymore; he’d never known his father as a sane man, and he’d never felt love in his touch either, not when the first time he’d held him in his arms as a child was to sacrifice him to the gods. “He is beyond saving, but Castrum Kremnos is not.”

“Did you come here seeking the reason he lacks?” The question is accompanied by a tilt of the head, lazily glancing out the open window, where the Sacred Tree stands in plain view. “I’m afraid the Titan will not give you the answers you seek.”

Mydei shakes his head. If the Lance of Fury could not pierce through the knot in his heart, he doubts Cerces’ words of wisdom were something that could loosen it. “I don’t need a Titan to guide my way. My path is for me to carve with these hands of mine. Such is my destiny.”

His words prompt Anaxa to look at him again, long strands of pale hair brushing against dark lashes as they lower minutely, shrouding the cool blue of his eye in shadows. Mydei cannot read his deceptively passive expression as he speaks.

“You speak of destiny yet wish to follow your own path. Do you not find that to be contradictory?”

When Mydei was born, it was prophesied he would be his father’s killer and his kingdom’s downfall. That he would single-handedly destroy everything his home ever stood for, and that its ancient legacy would be crushed under the ruinous weight of his throne, destined to walk a path of unfairly shed blood. A dynasty as old as time turned to shrapnel by a lone exiled prince with a heart too indecisive for the war it should thrive off of. 

He wants to prove it wrong, but to become king and bring upon the changes he wished to see, to bring the people who believe in him back home, he would have to kill his father. He holds no love for the man, but would that not set the prophecy in motion? Was he not willingly walking into his marked place on the stage of the gods’ theater? 

Mydei knows it’s contradictory. He’s been a walking contradiction since he died for the first time and resurfaced amongst the living, again and again.

“That’s a good way of thinking about it,” Anaxa suddenly says, startling Mydei. His delivery reaches his ears like a gentle morning breeze, lacking the usual sharpness he’s come to associate the sardonic man with, and the cool tune of his voice serves as a soothing balm on the prince’s wildfire heart. “The strength of humanity when they don’t blindly lean on the divine to guide their paths is their free will, and to doubt is to be human. The fact that you doubt at all tells me you mean to do well regardless of the decree of the gods, who are no better than us—there is nothing wrong with being human, after all.”

However high he holds his head up for his men, he’s battled with feelings of insecurity since he’d learned his birth was the last drop of madness in his father’s bloodied wine goblet. He’d never dared to share these thoughts with anyone, for it was his burden as crown prince to bear. What good was a king who could not support his own warriors, who could not meet their expectations? He would be no better than Eurypon, using his people as weapons for his selfish glory.

A king should not be just human. A king should be something only beneath the god they worship, a flesh and bone successor to Nikador’s strife, an inheritor of their people’s wrath, forging fury into a lance for warmongering. 

He does not know Anaxa well enough to have anticipated his response, but it leaves him a special kind of breathless anyway, like he’s nine years old again and gasping his first full breath above the sorrowful current of the Sea of Souls. 

Seeing the conflict in his face, Anaxa seems to grant him the mercy of not pushing further into the topic. He hums under his breath instead, his fingers twisting and turning his share of bread. Somehow he looks both lost in thought and at a loss of how to eat a simple bite. Mydei’s torn between feeling offended that he’d believe his food poisoned and simply accepting this as yet another oddity from an already strange man. 

The professor catches his judgmental gaze and gives him a flat look in return. “I’ve survived cleverer schemes than a nameless Kremnoan tampering with my food.”

Mydei’s jaw clenches, feeling the tip of his ears turn hot. He hadn’t realized he’s failed to introduce himself for all their meetings thus far, though he was unconscious for one and wary in the other. Now…Anaxa’s peculiar company was not unwelcome. Though his tongue is a blade sharper than Kremnoan lances, it has been a long time since Mydei has found companionship with someone who speaks to him as an equal. 

It’s refreshing to not be treated as the crown prince he doesn’t truly feel like yet. 

He chooses his words carefully. “You may call me Mydei.”

Whether he trusted Anaxa with his true identity or not was one thing; if his father’s army were to catch word of his visits to the Grove, he’d be pulling an innocent civilian into a conflict that didn’t concern him. This was Mydeimos’s war, not Anaxagoras’s, and it should stay that way. 

Anaxa tilts his head again in that calculating way of his, but says nothing more of the matter. “Mydei, then.”

When he finally takes a bite out of his bread, there’s a brief, stilted movement in his mandible, as if he’s not used to chewing something as easy on the teeth as bread. He takes his time with what little he’s gotten, a dash of stray mulberry jam staining the corner of his pale pink lips before it disappears with an absentminded swipe of his tongue. 

His eye slips shut, the perfect picture of peace. 

“It’s sweet.” 

Now that Mydei is aware Anaxa’s palette prefers the sweet to the bitter, it’s become easy to pick a selection of food to bring him. The unforeseen difficulty hid in making the professor eat all of it.

“Your arms are thinner than my spear handle,” Mydei observes, less judgment and more blunt, undisputed fact—he’s fought alongside warriors lighter than a sac of feathers who made up for their lack of size with the agility to rival a sparrow, and he’s experienced firsthand the true strength that belied Anaxa’s fragile figure.

He doesn’t seek to reprimand him from a place of bad faith, it’s just difficult to spend entire afternoons with the man and not see him eat anything unless Mydei himself pushes food his way. With his deathly pallor and the tight corset accentuating his thin waist, he worries Anaxa has the blood sickness of people who stay indoors too long and don’t exercise long enough.

“Warmongering is not my job,” Anaxa argues drolly, gesturing at Mydei’s imposing statue without sparing him a single glance. “My alchemy experiments don’t require me to be built like an impenetrable Kremnoan fortress to succeed.”

Arms crossed, Mydei pins the scholar under his reproachful glare, a frustrated grip around his biceps. Impassive as always, Anaxa counters it with cool indifference, not even giving him the benefit of his attention as he instead begins rearranging books he’d taken back from wherever else he goes when he’s not in the library. 

The Grove of Epiphany is more maze than academy; Mydei has learned not to wander too far off from the few places he’s already been to, lest he wishes to take a wrong turn and step right into one of the many cracked floor tiles, no doubt falling down to his most humiliating death thus far.

Living here seems dangerous. A beauty in ruins is the perfect coffin for the curious, and Mydei knows no one more curious than the scholar before him—or more willful.

“I’ve met less stubborn dromases,” he grumbles, unaccustomed to being helpless, the corners of his mouth pulled down in clear displeasure as he realizes he knows not how to handle the feeling. His men heed his words, in battle and out of it, and Krateros knows when to stand down when their views don’t align. Mydei had learned to lead an army, but in Anaxa’s presence, he has to reevaluate everything he’s ever known; in a culture where fighting till your last bloodied breath was a vital virtue, Mydei finds that complete inaction makes him uneasy. “When Kokopo dislikes one of his meals, he still knows he must eat it to stay strong.”

“Kokopo?” This finally catches Anaxa’s attention. The book is promptly forgotten as he instead rests a hand on the shelf it’s been slid into, tilting his head up to look at Mydei’s face with the glint in his eye Mydei has come to recognize as interest.

Holding the professor’s interest was a double-edged sword, but Mydei has never been one to stare Death in the face and run with his tail between his legs.

“My dromas.” …But perhaps more daunting than having Thanatos’s shackling grip drag him back to the violet tides of the Sea of Souls is having to speak the name of his animal companion out loud. It is not out of shame for his friend, but experience has shown him not all outside of his kingdom share the same reverence, and he won’t stand for anyone dishonoring his name, savior or not. “He is The Fierce Beast of Kremnos: Kokopo III.”

His golden gaze narrows, chin jutting out and arms crossing tighter across his chest, as silent as a blaring challenge can be. Peculiarly, Anaxa breaks eye contact ever so briefly to glance down, blinking once slowly before meeting Mydei’s face again.

“A strong name.”

The rebuttal sitting at the tip of Mydei’s tongue is forcibly swallowed back, becoming little else than a choked out sound at the base of his throat.

“...It is,” he agrees tentatively, half suspicion and half assuage, as conflicting as his emotions always are in this man’s company—but that is not always a bad thing, as he’s beginning to accept. “He has accompanied me to many battlefields and contributed to victories as much as our most seasoned warriors.”

Anaxa simply nods, accepting his words in stride.

“Because of their reputation as gentle giants, they are perceived as dull-witted beasts who would passively stand by and eat the soil at their feet even amidst pandemonium. Assumptions made by fools who are easily deceived by taking things at face-value instead of looking past what’s right before their nose, of course; the only thing grander than the height of an adult dromas is their sense of loyalty. It stands to reason they’d accompany their partners to battle. You’ve been blessed with a good companion, Mydei.”

That was the most positively he’s ever heard the cynical man speak of anything, and perhaps with the most passion too when the Titans are not involved. His brow further creases, this time out of perplexity rather than vexation.

“You like dromases?”

Anaxa huffs, “I’d likely question the state of mind of someone who doesn’t.”

Mydei isn’t aware of his muscles relaxing until he feels his hand brush against his thigh.

How unexpectedly…cute.

The professor reads the question in his lips even before he voices it, exhaling softly.

“Does this place look apt to keep such an enormous creature? Of course I don’t have one.” Though his tone is dry, it is without barbs, almost distant. There’s moments where Anaxa seems far away, toeing the line between memory and reality, where he seems to bypass Mydei’s presence entirely in favor of dwelling in the solitude of his own head. Mydei knows too well that one’s mind is a prison, one he’s not sure he’ll ever finish serving his sentence for.

Gently, Mydei redirects the professor’s attention back to him.

“There’s a big dromas workshop in Okhema. They let visitors feed and ride them—I station Kokopo there when I’m in the city.”

Anaxa takes a moment too long to answer, a pause so heavy it makes Mydei start to wonder if he’s said something wrong. The professor’s hand that had rested on the shelf tightens its grip, a shadow under the curtain of his bangs, sunlight trapped between mint strands leaving the clear blue of his eye in darkness.

“I can’t—”

A sharp crack cuts his words off as cleanly as it snaps the wooden shelf in half, rotten with age and unable to stay stable under Anaxa’s white-knuckled touch. Mydei’s instincts kick in instantly, and in that second, he’s not in a semi-abandoned library, but in the middle of a battlefield, trapped between enemy counterattacks and friendly fire. He pushes Anaxa down before the large bookshelf has the chance to, sliding a hand behind the man’s head as he goes down with him, protecting his skull from a dangerous collision to the floor. He hisses at the damaged wood falling on his back, books dropping with each thud louder than the last, and he hears Anaxa take a sharp breath beneath him.

Mydei grunts, shaking a book off the back of his head once he feels there’s no more to follow. It falls right next to Anaxa’s face with a muted thud, open as pages flip askew, and the wood on his back creaks weakly with the movement.

“You alright?” Clicking his tongue in irritation, he at least feels grimly vindicated in his earlier assessment: this place is falling apart, and it is bound to take Anaxa down with it.

“How gallant,” Anaxa replies, looking up at the prince with a half-lidded eye, long dark lashes fluttering against his cheek in a slow blink, the way he tilts his head sideways almost playful. “I suppose you’ve repaid your debt now. I saved you when you couldn’t die anyway, and you saved me from a minor bump on the head.”

Guess that answered that. In spite of himself, the cheeky words almost tease an eyeroll out of him, and he instead settles for pinning the professor under his unimpressed stare—until he realizes he’s physically pinning him under his body too, the only thing between their chests a gap of empty space so thin a single deep breath would negate it entirely…but when Mydei looks down at Anaxa, the professor’s fair hair sprawled around his face for once not obscuring half of his delicate features, a mischievous mint-colored stray strand stuck on the corner of his pink lips, he finds that it is hard to breathe.

He’s beautiful. 

Every other word in his vocabulary suddenly vaporizes in that very instant, like the barest touch to his inexplicably overheated skin set them aflame. 

Anaxa’s brow raises. 

“Is this the undoing of a mighty Kremnoan warrior—a single fallen bookshelf? I thought you were built to endure more than that,” he drawls, but there’s an amused tilt to his lips stretching them into a small smirk that Mydei wouldn’t have noticed from their usual distance, crystalline eye bright. Mydei glowers back at him, but he’s embarrassingly aware he does not cut an impressive figure like this, so he pushes himself up, the movement easily sliding the broken furniture off. He makes sure no debris hits the scholar, and his palm tingles with the aftertouch of Anaxa’s soft hair trickling through the gaps of his calloused fingers as he pulls away. 

When he finally stands back up, Mydei doesn’t waste time in offering him his hand. Anaxa slowly blinks at it, expression carefully blank, only to shake his head and instead sits himself up, staying on the floor and beginning to gather the scattered books around him. 

However well-preserved the library was, simply wiping the shelves clean and organizing the books in them was not enough to prevent decay. Mydei had known it from the first time he’d come here—this place was a ticking time bomb, however frozen in time it seemed. Today was a failing shelf, tomorrow might be a deteriorating ceiling holding itself together for long enough to wait for the professor to pass under it. Today Mydei was there to save him, but what of tomorrow? What of the times Mydei is away for days and days on end, with no way of knowing his status until coming to check on him himself?

It’s hard to speak the words out loud, but he can’t deny the thing squeezing at his chest is nothing less than worry. 

“This place is dangerous. If you keep living here like this, your poor eating habits might not end you, but an accident will.”

Anaxa doesn’t reply, and Mydei remembers their previous conversation cut short. It was clear the man loved dromases, and the desire to see one was not absent—but he had been about to deny something, and Mydei might have an inkling as to what. 

“You avoid Okhema,” he concludes carefully. Or perhaps it’s not Okhema alone, but the world outside of the Murmuring Woods as a whole. 

Kneeling on the floor, gathering fallen book by fallen book in his arms with the same care and reverence a beggar holds his gold, Anaxa hums lightly. “It’s not home, is it? It isn’t for you, either.”

Mydei stands over him and finds that he has nothing to say to that—the sudden knot in his throat will not let him.

So he kneels down by his side, helping Anaxa pick up the little pieces of his world.

When he next drops Kokopo off at the Okhema workshop, he eyes his companion consideringly. The massive beast looks down at him too, unhurriedly chewing on redsoil feed after a long trip from Castrum Kremnos, and Mydei chuckles to himself at the thought of a certain professor struggling to reach Kokopo’s mouth to wipe away the red dust staining his jaw. 

He couldn’t bring Kokopo with him to the Grove of Epiphany. Though the towering trees of the Murmuring Woods could camouflage his impressive height, it was too easy for his thundering stomps to attract unwanted attention, and Mydei would have to bid his visits goodbye the moment his father’s men caught wind of his unusually frequent presence in his neighboring city-state. 

Mydei didn’t want to end his…companionship with Anaxa so soon. He hasn’t yet found a way to repay his debt in full yet…and it’s been nice to step away from everything for a few hours, to have his biggest worry be how to force a stubborn man to eat properly, to have the chance to cook dinner for someone and sit down in a kitchen bathed in moonlight, their conversation as gentle as the night breeze sneaking in through stained windows.

The prince strokes his noble steed’s side in thought and gets an affectionate huff in return, long neck curving low just enough to rub his snout against wild blond hair. 

“You there!”

The presence of an uninvited arrival makes both master and mount tense with caution. Though Okhemans were not heartless enough to turn away hosting a visiting dromas, they were less welcoming to the few Kremnoans who brought them in. His detachment loathes the idea of their mighty king-to-be mingling with the likes of them, but Mydei often is the one taking the duties of buying supplies and picking up commissioned weapons at the forge. An incident some years back had made it clear to him that his people would need a miracle—or a tragedy—to feel at ease in a city untouched by the hardships of strife.

In the improbable case Mydei did not manage to overthrow his father and lead his people back home, he knew in his deepest heart that they would not settle down here peacefully. Okhema couldn’t become a paradise for everybody: not for homesick warriors, not for homebound scholars, and not for homecoming princes.

The approaching merchant’s steps falter when pinned under the molten gold of his gaze. Mydei watches, unimpressed, as the man’s throat bobs, visibly reconsidering his approach as soon as he’s close enough to take a proper look at whose attention he’d just called out for.

Still, he seems to steel his nerves and gives the Kremnoan prince a wide, friendly grin that strains at the corners slightly. Mydei will commend his courage, at least, so he turns to face him properly and waits for him to speak.

“Excuse me, dear patron, my heart couldn’t help but melt at the sight of you and your magnificent friend’s bond,” the merchant starts, hands clasped near his chest as in prayer. Mydei’s flat look makes him chuckle nervously, and he hurries to rummage through his bag instead. 

Whatever Mydei was expecting him to be selling, a stuffed doll sewn to the likeness of chimera-sized dromases ranked last. The merchant sees the bewilderment in his narrowed eyes and quickly continues.

“It must be difficult to leave him behind in an unfamiliar city.” Raising the purple dromas doll closer for his hopefully new client up to his face for better inspection, he pushes onwards. “Why don’t you take one of these to numb the heartache caused by distance?” 

Against his better judgment, Mydei does take it, the soft plush easily denting under the harsh angles of his gauntlets. The sight of him must be laughable—but Mydei stares at it intently, long enough to hear the merchant’s loud, nervous gulp.

He gives Kokopo a furtive glance from the corner of his eye.

“Do you have one of these in indigo?”

Try as he might, Mydei could bring down entire armies with one hand and he could defeat a pack of bloodthirsty beasts with the other, but he cannot make his ears hear only what he wants to hear, and doing his rounds through camp is bound to end in him picking up conversations as soft as the crackling campfire. 

“The prince seems in high spirits lately, doesn’t he?”

Naturally, as their commander and future king, Mydei himself is a popular choice of topic regardless of the time of day. He tries not to linger more than necessary as he makes sure everything is in order. 

“He’s been going off on his own more often.”

This makes him frown, pausing his walk. He does not turn his head in the direction of the voices, crossing his arms and lowering his gaze.

A thud and a sharply drawn breath are promptly heard, like an elbow jabbing into ribs. 

“The young lord can go wherever he wants! Besides, he’s just covering our bases, isn’t he? The king’s men haven’t sneaked up on us since.”

Another hit and an undignified yelp. 

“I’m not implying Prince Mydeimos is neglecting his duty, ignorant fool! I’m saying, don’t be surprised if by the time we reclaim Castrum Kremnos, we will already have a new queen too.”

What?

“What!?” The second voice echoes, much more loudly but no less confused than Mydei himself feels. 

The first voice hushes them, lowering its candor to keep it safe from prying ears. Mydei hates that he consciously strains his own to hear them.

“Didn’t you see it? He brought something else back from Okhema… A wrapped-up package. A gift. I’m certain of it, the young lord has a—”

“Mydeimos.”

Mydei’s nails dig into the meat of his forearms, snapping his head up from where he’d been drilling holes into the ground with his wide, disbelieving eyes. There’s a low buzzing reverberating around his skull like a trapped hummingbird, numbing out the words that automatically filled up the unfinished gossip—and that is something he won’t think about, not with Krateros’s own suspicious look pinned on him. 

A disappointed look from his mentor is enough to sober him up; once upon a time, when he was younger, it used to be enough to change his mind too. He’d been a discarded orphan barely out of childhood taken under the wing of his late mother’s most trusted, a wizened warrior disillusioned by his king and hoping his exiled son could take up the bloodied mantle… it’d be stranger if Mydei didn’t think highly of Krateros as both a veteran and a person, even if now he was old enough to weather the weight of his disenchantment. 

“...I apologize, I was ways away,” Mydei concedes. Krateros’s already severe countenance further tenses.

“We are a push away from breaking down the citadel’s last line of defense to blaze our path to the throne,” Krateros reminds him gravely. “Distractions are fatal.”

Mydei knows this. He agrees with it. He had been there, his men gathered around a papyrus map of their lost kingdom, to speak those same words himself.

When had he allowed space for something else to linger in the back of his mind, settling into his thoughts like the sweet aftertaste of mulberry wine on his tongue?

“Reminders are unnecessary,” Mydei replies with a shake of his head. “My path has not changed.”

“But it has strayed.”

Despite Krateros’s tempered tone, the accusation rings loud as a shield blocking a spear. Both men regard each other tersely, each holding on to things they would not yet say.

Mydeimos, known for his word of honor, does not reply. 

The dromas plush is light as a feather, but Mydei is constantly aware of its weight in his hand as he searches the Grove for a certain scholar. It’s odd not to find him in his usual hangouts, typically perched near a window reading a book or locked away in his lab for hours on end with his backlog of experiments, but Mydei knows he frequents other places in this labyrinth of a place. 

He finds himself hesitant, gripping the wrapped up gift with inexplicable nervousness and willing his grip to relax so as to not damage the stuffed doll inside. Mydeimos has never run away from a fight, but he kind of wants to turn around and forget he even bought the thing in the first place.

The choice is made for him when he catches the smell of something. Frowning, he raises his head and sniffs the air like a hound detecting blood, and he lets his nose lead him into a familiar pathway.

Seeing Anaxa in the kitchen was nothing new when the man has been unfortunately known to use it as a second lab—it’s the perfectly normal ingredients displayed on the counter that make Mydei stop by the doorway in his surprise, wondering if he’s died again on his way to the Grove and is currently suffering the deliriousness of the departed dragging their feet through the Sea of Souls.

Perplexed, and perhaps more than a little bit happy, Mydei sets the gift down on the table before approaching Anaxa, whose narrowed eye and pursed lips aimed at the pot makes the prince fight a smirk. He’s not sure he succeeds.

“Save your unnecessary commentary for when I’m not boiling water right next to you,” the professor warns impassively, not looking up from what seems to be an attempt at vegetable soup. It’s a valiant effort, at least; the broth has a color unfamiliar to any dish Mydei knows, but the boiling carrots and potatoes are innocuous enough, the green kale leaves bringing a nice balance to the warm hues. To Mydei’s trained eye, it’s simple enough to be easy on the stomach while also being enough to meet proper nutrition requirements. A good meal.

But Mydei doesn’t worry about the food itself. He’s busier looking at Anaxa’s face scrunching up faintly in concentration, feeling light on his feet, soft at the edges with a quiet joy bubbling within his chest. He doesn’t want to say any unnecessary commentary—he doesn’t want to speak at all. He wants to stand here next to him and watch him cook with the same focus he puts into his experiments, his elegant fingers firmly gripping the knife dicing a tomato into fine cubes. 

Anaxa is not entirely averse to food, that much Mydei has learned. He eats only when prompted and in small portions, as if self-sustenance is but an afterthought. One too many times has the prince arrived at the Grove to find him sprawled on the floor after spending hours too fixated on his choice of research for the day, but he doesn’t protest when Mydei offers him a snack he fixed up for him back at camp. 

He’s atrocious at taking care of himself, and Mydei shouldn’t feel so at home in this kitchen, watching this troublesome man learn how to love himself little by little. 

The thought makes him pause. He’d be lying if he said their last conversation hadn’t been running circles around his head. It sneaks up on him when he’s doing rounds and watches the Kremnoan detachment preemptively celebrate their inevitable return, and it is in his dreams too, where he imagines himself sitting on the throne, his father’s corpse at his feet and their kingdom set ablaze in blood-red flames.

The truth is he does not hold any love for Castrum Kremnos because it has never been home to him. Home had always been the people he’d met in his journeys as a wanderer with no name, and even those who chose to follow him when his past and future had been bestowed upon him like a curse dressed up in golden robes. He fights for their birthright, to reunite them with the land their heart leads them to—but his own heart still wanders the streets of Amphoreus, like the lost child who’d surfaced from the Abyss looking up at the night sky for the first time and leaning that hope was a shooting star. Fleeting, and all the more beautiful for it. 

But he wants to take Castrum Kremnos back to be a home for his people—and now, he wonders if he could make it into a home for Anaxa, too. 

Mydei could bring him back with him once he brought this war to its end. He’d help him pack up his belongings, but it would be unnecessary to bring his alchemy tools along because Mydei would make sure to replace them, worn with use and prone to breaking as they are. He’d build a bigger lab for him too, one with a curtain window spanning from wall corner to wall corner so that he could get sunlight, even when he’s too busy with his current fixation. It’d have to be close enough to a bath as well, for the times the professor will no doubt burn his hair again from an experiment gone wrong. 

The image makes Mydei exhale an almost-laugh in amused exasperation, noticing Anaxa’s ponytail is currently dangling dangerously close to the cutting board. He doesn’t think much about it; he moves to stand behind Anaxa, reaching out to gather the mint strands to pull them back to safety, their slow slide over his shoulder attracting traitorous eyes to the nape of his neck. The professor pays him no mind, the steady sound of the knife hitting wood not stopping for a second. 

Having been given unspoken permission, Mydei pinches the golden hairpiece between his fingers and pulls at it, tugging it down the long cascade with a careful slide. His other hand follows closely behind, brushing through the strands until they’ve all loosened free, and he automatically begins separating them into three sections, then intertwining them with each other with absent-minded expertise. 

Warriors of Kremnos often wore their hair in braids to keep them out of enemy reach in battle, adorned with gold ornaments tying it together. Anaxa, self-described feeble scholar, may not belong within the battlefield, but his mind is as sharp as a blade and as deadly as a flame, and he would no doubt fit right in at their strategic meetings, where Mydei’s most trusted gather around to decide how to turn the tides of war to their favor—and when that becomes another bloodstained page in his kingdom’s history, Anaxa could find a place by Mydei’s side once he claims the throne. 

It’s easy to picture him like that, standing under the throne hall’s canopy with deceptive nonchalance, being given utmost respect second only to that for the king himself. Courtesy of being the royal advisor, he would be able to engage in the game of words Mydei has no real patience for, and his nature as a scholar would allow him to read into double meanings meant to deceive anyone less bright, his sworn duty to uncover hidden truths and the nature of both things and people.

He would cut an intimidatingly dignified figure standing on Mydei’s right side, where only the queen had the right to be.

…

The queen…

A hot flush passes through him like a flash of lightning, numbing his fingers with the shock of it and turning his practiced hands clumsy, accidentally pulling the hair they’ve been busy braiding. Caught off guard, Anaxa pliantly lets his head be pulled back along with it, the crown of his head colliding with Mydei’s chest. They both stare at each other with varying degrees of surprise, one pink-faced and the other with his brow quirked up in wordless inquiry.

Though his mouth barely opens, Mydei can already hear the dry retort it’s about to utter, but he has no time to brace for it when his eyes stray further down, where the knife had missed the vegetable on the cutting board in favor of the hand gripping it.

Clicking his tongue, Mydei quickly sidesteps Anaxa to grab his hand, taking the injured finger into his mouth. The limb twitches but does not pull away, blue eye snapping up to where his finger disappears into pursed plush lips, his own parted into a small o. He laps at the wound to stop the bleeding, a swirl of his tongue over the cool skin creating a dip to his brow that makes him pull back. Where he’d expected the familiar taste of copper, there is nothing.

His confusion is validated when he squints down at the spot he’d been sure had been slit by the knife, only to find…

“Are you about to tell me I made these vegetables for you only to confess to having a taste for blood?” Anaxa quips, calmly sliding his hand away from Mydei’s, as if he saw no issue in the small rift on his skin, like a crack in a porcelain vase. There is no blood and no tender wound, only a deep blue line tracing a crooked path down the side of his index finger. 

Mydei watches his face unsurely, but ultimately sees little reason to draw attention to it when the man himself appears safe, however much his head is swimming in circles. 

Still, the question lingers—what was that? He’s never met a person who does not bleed. Even he, who cannot die, bleeds as much as a mortal man. 

“Made?”

His brain stops at one choice of words. 

A smirk adorns the arrogant man’s face as he stirs the ladle in the pot, much like a sorcerer brewing potions of dubious origins. Though, thinks Mydei as he sneaks another glance at the strange color of the broth, the truth is not so far off.

“They say the Reason Titan is the origin of all organic life in this world not given a soul by Kephale, yet it is I who breathed life into these dying lands.” 

A flash of something clouds his eye over, but Mydei has no time to discern it when the ladle is suddenly thrust upon him, probing at his closed lips. The prince starts, flustered, but the expectant gaze and his now undeniable trust in this person convinces him to open his mouth. 

Earthy flavor floods his senses, coating his tongue in a strange wave of something he could almost name, if he concentrates enough. But he’s eaten worse things while on campaign, and he’s not one to waste food—he does take mental note of how to improve Anaxa’s technique, though. 

“Well, what do you think?” Anaxa prompts, relentless. When he’s sure Mydei has properly chewed and swallowed his share, he brings the ladle to his own mouth, sipping on the leftover broth. Mydei stares at the spot where his lips had once been, now replaced by Anaxa’s. “All it took was some coercion for seeds to speed up their growth process, and some modifications to their core components to switch the goal of such growth… Hmm. Say nothing; words are unnecessary. I see the flavor needs some more testing.”

“What does coercion entail from you?” Despite the less than dignified treatment, Mydei cannot deny his intrigue. Growing plants was a valuable skill, but sprouting them overnight, and changing what they grow into? The Kremnoan detachment could use that knowledge for when their rations and expenses both ran low, not to mention the aid it could provide to the rebuilding the kingdom from the war ravaging through it.   

“Oh? Are you interested in alchemy?” The professor perks up slightly. “If you wish to become my student, you must first know there are requirements to be met.” 

Alchemy… that explains the strange-colored broth. A synthetic meal near-indistinguishable from the real thing, then… Mydei had known Anaxa to be talented, but he’s nonetheless impressed. He’d have to inquire about the nutritional value of it, but for the time being, he’s just glad to see him eating. 

“I would benefit greatly from learning from you,” Mydei agrees. “Once…”

Anaxa hums, turning to put out the fire. 

“Once there’s no more war for you to fight, hm?”

Without his penetrating gaze on him, Mydei allows his thoughts to wander to places they both avoid.

It looks like Anaxa misses teaching. He misses animals he could find anywhere beyond the Murmuring Woods, and he creates his own synthetic food instead of going to another city-state to buy the real deal. He speaks of worldly matters as things outside his radar, his only source of news from beyond the Grove being Mydei himself. 

What was stopping him from leaving the Grove of Epiphany? If Mydei were to offer him a place in the kingdom he’s fighting for, would he accept? 

Would it matter?

As he watches Anaxa set two bowls of steaming soup on a table wiped clean from frequent use, a nostalgic mirror of the mediocre bread they shared together so many moons ago, Mydei realizes—it might not matter, but it matters to him.

It’s been a long time since he allowed himself to wish for something for him and him alone. 

“I have something for you,” he declares, feeling his tongue sit heavy in his mouth with embarrassment he stubbornly refuses to pay attention to, let alone acknowledge. He’s the crown prince of a kingdom worshipping the Strife Titan, who strikes fear into hearts and splits land into halves with a single sway of their lance; he’s braved deadlier battles than giving someone a gift he specifically bought for them. He has never hesitated before crossing enemy lines, and he will not start now. 

Clearing his throat, Mydei picks up the wrapped-up gift from where he’d left it upon entrance and offers it to its recipient, who blinks down at it and takes it wordlessly. 

“If it is another loaf of bread,” Anaxa begins, not without a hint of deadpan humor, as he gingerly unwraps the package, “I fear your efforts to feed me may be venturing into overindulgence.”

So he did notice. No matter—Mydei crosses his arms and stares him down, refusing to back down from that particular fight. It helps ground him a little, too. He doesn’t like feeling so self-conscious. He barely has the time to; between fighting the war his birthright decreed on him and leading the people who put their trust for Castrum Kremnos’s glory in him, it is only in times like these, hiding away in this abandoned Grove and keeping an eccentric scholar company, where he’s allowed to breathe, think, and feel like a person first, king of prophecy second. 

The wrapping falls to the ground with a muted thump, almost silencing the surprised breath Anaxa takes upon uncovering its content. 

His slender hands are pale against the deep indigo fabric, fingers barely digging into its sides, the cotton stuffing firm enough to withstand rougher treatment. Mydei had requested for that himself—he’s seen how carefully Anaxa handles his lab tools, but also how destructive his touch can be. For something to be durable, it has to be made well, and Mydei didn’t mind spending extra to make sure this was a companion that would not easily corrode with the passage of time. 

The shape of a dromas was unmistakable, but Anaxa stares down at it so intently, so long, that Mydei starts questioning whether they had different definitions of the earth beast. Perhaps Anaxa was referring to the species that lived in the wild, away from the domestication of man, and Mydei was getting ahead of himself. The visits, the dinners, and now the gifts… The great furnace in Castrum Kremnos invites its citizens to wear loose clothing to avoid overheating, but the sudden heat creeping up his neck could not be alleviated by discarding his garments. Perhaps taking the dromas plush back and never speaking of this again would be the wisest solution. 

He opens his reluctant mouth—and the words shrivel up in his throat, quietly dying alongside his wishes to bury this incident under the rubble of the Grove.

Anaxa is smiling. Not his smug smirks, or his sardonic grins—it’s a tender thing instead, softening his features into something younger, something softer, something untouched by the ruins of the Grove of Epiphany he’d made a fragile home out of. His eye squints with the curve of his lips, rosy cheek smooshing against the plushie as he hugs it close to his chest, breathless laughter accompanying the warm display. 

Mydei gapes. 

“Is this the noble steed you spoke so highly of, Mydei?” he asks blithely. It takes Mydei a moment to realize he’s teasing him. “I pictured him big enough to carry you through battle. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, and you’re the glorified chariot?”

Mydei snorts, unable to fight a smile of his own off his face. 

“Only the color is the same,” he says, the admission in itself a confession that he buries beneath Anaxa’s words rousing his competitive spirit. “As a Kremnoan warrior, Kokopo is naturally taller and stronger than most domesticated dromases.”

“Hmm, a Kremnoan warrior, then? What shall I name you…?” Anaxa ponders, bringing the plush up to his face, where he could stare into its beady eyes, speaking to it as if it could reply back. “Since you are of Kremnoan origins, it is only natural your name should reflect your culture. But you will be a new resident at the Grove of Epiphany, so you would do well to adopt our customs too…”

Anaxa then directs his smile at Mydei like the first ray of sunlight gently beckoning in the dawn sky from the horizon, a glint shimmering in his eye.

“Then let’s combine both, shall we?” He raises the little dromas up for both of their better views. “Henceforth, you shall be known as The Erudite Beast of The Grove of Epiphany: Kokopo IV.”

Anaxa laughs at his own joke from deep within his belly, shoulders shaking with the force of it. It’s ridiculous and more than a little bit lame—but Mydei can’t look away.

…Happiness is a good look on him. If Anaxa couldn’t see the outside world, Mydei could give the world to him. 

“You went to Okhema again? Tell me, does Dawncloud still threaten to tip over and fall with the weight of the masses prostrating themselves to beg Kephale for miracles?” 

Somehow, a visit once every other week had turned into Mydei taking every second of peace to excuse himself for the rest of the day. His people are self-sufficient, and Krateros is willing to turn a blind eye as long as his prince returns safely and without his mind clouded. War is not won in a day, and a kingdom that took lifetimes to be built would not crumble in a single night. Both sides know this intimately well, and their search for glory lies in the time spent shedding blood for their lords, not in a swift, lossless victory. 

Their prince being adverse to needless carnage was unthinkable; none would dare guess Mydeimos The Undying spends his downtime at the abandoned Grove of Epiphany after scouting their surroundings for Eurypon’s army. 

He’d call Anaxa’s company anything but peaceful, however. Mydei’s last arrival had been brusquely welcomed by a large cloud of smoke through a window, which had kicked his instincts into overdrive, believing the worst had finally happened. He’d jumped through the broken stained glass without a second thought, searching for the source of the fire, fearful of finding a scholar fallen to his father’s vengeful men—and had found him hunched over a desk littered in shards of fuming flasks, unknown liquids melting the wood into sizzling goo. 

Anaxa had simply hummed to himself, hair a singed, frizzy halo around his face with dust turning porcelain skin a sickly gray, and unhurriedly wrote something down in a scroll. 

It was just the first of many, but at least it kept Mydei on his feet even outside the battlefield.

Mydei remembers that incident when he notices a faint smudge staining Anaxa’s cheek, who’s too preoccupied by the book he’s currently got his nose buried into. Even when he’s focused on his reading, he has no trouble keeping up with the conversation—he’d never miss the chance to blaspheme against the Titans, even in a passing offhand comment. The other hand not supporting the book instead holds the glass of juice Mydei made for him, having bought a couple of pomegranates from Okhema in his last excursion for gear and rations. 

Kokopo IV watches them from its usual place by the grand stained windows of the old library, sitting atop a cushion like a king on a throne of feathers.

The blond nods. It’s not the first time Anaxa has spoken so irreverently of the gods; though it had been jarring at first, he admired the other man’s ability to stay true to himself, even if it goes against the very laws of the world. 

“They are scared,” he answers, scanning the bookshelves. The variety of topics in their array doesn’t shock him, and it makes him wonder what the Grove of Epiphany had been like in its prime, bustling with students of all walks of life from all kinds of towns. What had Anaxa’s students been like? Surely as bullheaded as the professor himself; he couldn’t imagine someone with a weak determination being able to unravel the wisdom from the tangled ivy of his poison tongue. “They’ve known nothing but peace within their walls. If the war were to reach them, they would not know how to defend themselves.” 

Anaxa sighs, closing his book with a firm clap. “The situation is dire enough to reach even the holy city?”

“It won’t.” He stares down at his flexing right hand, fingers curling in and out, the gold of his gauntlets catching a stray ray of sunlight from the open roof above them. “I will put an end to it before it does.”

“How are you so sure?” 

Mydei has learned the hard way that Anaxa argues not for the sake of being a contrarian, but to challenge beliefs. His goal is not to disprove them, not to change the faith he so loudly scoffs at, but to measure the strength of the convictions backing it up, even if it’s something he personally disagrees with. Mydei is not a particularly skilled orator; his kingdom spoke more with sharpened weapons and closed fists, but he thinks they could use someone like Anaxa to help steer them away from blind glory, to help them find purpose in their bloodshed.

Krateros is a good teacher, but Mydei sees his frustration, his worry. He knows he can’t hide his own doubts from the man who’d taught him everything he knows, and it makes both of them circle the other like wary wildcats when Mydei does not act the very way Krateros expects his future king to. Sooner or later, this tentative truce would succumb and snap at the distance of the widening rift between them, and he can feel the day fast approaching with no solution for the inevitable conflict. 

This is not the case with Anaxa. Anaxa is candid and direct; when he doesn’t like something, he doesn’t pull any punches and cares little for hurt feelings—but he gives advice in the very same breath he uses to criticize, encouraging Mydei to defend his point of view when both of theirs clash. Instead of giving answers outright, he makes Mydei work for it, forcing him to face facets of himself he has yet to make heads or tails from; more often than not, Mydei himself finds the answer was already at the tip of his tongue, but it was his own apprehension that kept him from speaking it. 

…Sometimes Mydei wishes they had met earlier, when he was a kid crawling back to life right into a prophecy much too big for his young shoulders. He wonders how his life would’ve fared with someone by his side who didn’t take his insecurities for an unforgivable weakness and instead saw his mistakes as steps towards the truth.

He exhales softly through his nose, tipping the rest of the juice in his goblet into Anaxa’s. Despite his efforts to bring him food from the outside, the scholar remains as thin and pallid as the first time they properly met. Mydei suspects, heavily annoyed with disapproval, that Anaxa still forgoes proper meals as soon as Mydei takes his eyes off of him. He loathes to think of his diet during all the years he’s spent hidden away in the Grove.

Anaxa looks down at the swirling liquid nearly overflowing his goblet, then cocks a brow at Mydei, who meets his eye cautiously.

The other man has not pried into his private affairs, and there’s much Mydei does not know about him in return. It used to suit him just fine before, but each visit has a new question wishing to push past his reluctant lips, held back by the invisible barrier he himself had built between them.

It can’t be denied anymore—he wants to get to know Anaxa, but he cannot demand for something he has yet to offer first.

Tentatively, he extends an olive branch of honesty…and, perhaps, he’s also looking for guidance. 

“When I was born, so was a prophecy,” he admits, holding Anaxa’s appraising gaze. “It spoke of a wretched future I’d be responsible for, at the cost of winning this war.”

“So you’ll be the victor, but you will lose…what, pray tell? Your mind?” A scoff is the cynical professor’s response, pushing the book back on its shelf with a little more force than necessary, threatening to spill his juice with the strength of it. Mydei’s hands raise by pure muscle memory; one too many times he’s had to stop one of these old shelves from toppling over, sometimes with Anaxa himself standing directly in the line of fire. He has the urge to clear his throat at the reminder of the first time it happened.

“It’s not without foundation,” Mydei frowns. It’s less divine intervention and more family tradition, after all. Whether he can win the war or not goes without question, because he will do his damndest to bring his people back home. It’s what comes after that keeps his steps unsure. 

Anaxa turns to face him so sharply he almost takes a step back. 

“You are no fool, Mydei, so don’t you dare insult either of us by spewing foolish rhetoric to me,” he warns, a low growl in his voice. “Who gave you that prophecy? Your god Nikador, known for their mercy? Or Janus, whose words are taken and disfigured by the very priests they’re revered by, because those pests love power to the point of the sacrilege they pretend to condemn?” 

Mydei opens his mouth, but Anaxa doesn’t let him reply.

“Don’t make me laugh. None of the Titans know you well enough to determine how you’ll deal with the sorry cards they dealt you, it matters little who said what.”

“How are you so sure?” Mydei shoots back, fists clenched. He’s frustrated, at Anaxa and himself both, one for having so much faith in himself and the other for not having enough. It builds a tension from within his bones, swelling up his lungs with the same acrid air he’d breathed during the endless night within the Sea of Souls, forcing his feet to drag against the current, the anguished moans of the passing dead his lonely company for years and years and years.  

Anaxa raises his chin confidently, never one to back down from his blasphemous ideology. 

“Because I do know you, and you are not the mindless brute type.” He points an accusing finger at Mydei’s chest, right over his heart, where he’d once been pierced right through. “Whatever the future holds for you, it will not be wretched because you made it so—and if it is wretched indeed, I know you will unmake it.”

Mydei stares at him in open disbelief. 

“...That’s it?”

“What more is there to it? You don’t bend the knee to destiny, and you challenge the authority of your god’s domain over your home. However much your doubts weigh you down, you don’t bow your head and let yourself be ruled,” Anaxa waves his free hand dismissively, taking a sip of his juice. “I know this to be the absolute truth because I, Anaxagoras, am always right. Instead of believing in prophecies from a farcical world, believe in me.” 

The tension steadily bleeds out of him like an open wound, leaving his body a husk emptied out of the wrath that guides his spears in the battlefield and leaving no traces of the uncertainty in his feet when marching up to meet his destiny. His shoulders shake with the sudden laughter under his breath, the sound so foreign to his throat it comes out hoarse with unuse. 

“...Haha.”

Anaxa’s accusatory hand slackens, his good eye wide, as Mydei grabs it by the wrist to pull him closer, palm now spread flat over his chest, pale skin against blood red ink, letting him feel his eternal heartbeat. 

“Anaxagoras,” he mumbles, lips only just stretched into a private smile, equal parts breathlessly disoriented and unequivocally fond. His other hand reaches up to Anaxa’s cheek, rubbing off the faint smudge just below his eyepatch from what was no doubt another failed experiment. He wonders when he’s become so familiar with this unpredictable man, and when the ease to touch him appeared—when the desire to do so was born, and if it would ever die. “You are the strangest man I have ever met.”

What he receives instead of one of the many snippy replies he’s used to is a similarly dazed expression, a pupil like vibrant bougainvillea flowers blown wide, the blue of his iris a thin ring around it. The cold fingers against his warm skin twitch slightly, then press down with more confidence, as if he could phase through Mydei’s skin, open the cage of his bones, and take a hold of his heart. 

Mydei thinks he’d let him. 

Some time later, when the twilight skies signal Mydei’s time of departure, Anaxa accompanies him to the courtyard and waits for him to reach the end of the staircase to speak up behind him, standing higher at a few steps above. 

“I had a sister.” 

It’s just quiet enough for the words to get carried by the cool evening breeze. Mydei doesn’t feel it right to turn around and catch the expression on his face, like one does not stare directly at the sun above. 

“When our hometown was attacked, she didn’t make it. No god I prayed to answered, so I decided I would simply not need their help anymore.”

The scholar’s disdain for the Titans makes sense, now. Mydei looks down at the base of the stairs he currently stands on, where white tiles meet the green forest floor, where strife had once met wisdom, and Anaxa’s shadow overlaps with his from behind, distorting his lithe silhouette into something not human. 

“...I’m sorry for your loss,” is his sincere reply. He understands the people’s fear and hatred for Nikador, but the Savage God had brought hope to Kremnoans too, a symbol of endless glory to emulate in their life of continuous war, and gave a warrior’s honor the chance for comfort at the deaths they could never escape. Mydei could defy Nikador’s authority, but he could never deny his people their faith—that goes for the rest of Amphoreus, too. 

Anaxa might be the sole soul in this pious world questioning their piety’s purpose, and Mydei should be put off by a heretic’s talk, not admire his courage to stand by his principles.

A pause, then a gentle touch on the top of his head. It prompts a breath to be sharply dragged into Mydei’s lungs like swallowed glass, and he resists the urge to turn around. 

“I wouldn’t trust the life of my loved ones to the Titans,” Anaxa confesses softly, fingers lightly threading through golden hair dyed in dusk blues. “But I would trust them to you. Perhaps, if the gods were anything like you…hah.”

He chuckles at himself, abruptly cutting off his train of thought and taking his hand off of Mydei’s crown.

“A secret for a secret,” Anaxa declares imperiously, the heels of his shoes clicking pointedly as he begins his walk back into the Grove. “That is the law of equivalent exchange. Well then, lesson adjourned. Farewell.”

Spoken like a true alchemist. Mydei shakes his head with an amused huff of his own, his feet lighter than they have felt in a long time.

…And in the secrecy of the Murmuring Woods with nothing but the glimmering moon as his witness, the crown prince of Castrum Kremnos gingerly touches the same spot the blasphemer did and his undying heart feels alive. 

Next time, he will have to tell Anaxa there will be a gap between that visit and the next, even if he could not divulge the reason why. Once it all settles, he will come clean. 

Next time, he arrives to the Grove of Epiphany swallowed up in flames.