Work Text:
They meet at the summit of the world.
Morax wears the weight of war on his shoulders, bronze and metal and rust. Barbatos wears innocence draped over his lap, white cloth melting from his newly-forged skin like frost in spring. The sky and the earth meet befittingly, where they first shake hands, as morn meets day.
“It must be an honour,” Barbatos hums, many voices in one and none at all, a breeze of a whisper, “to finally see you.”
What do you know of honour? Morax wishes to ask. Clad in the remnants of tyranny, having won your power through coincidence and good will? But then again, he foolishly reminds himself, there is no coincidence; not beneath these stars. There is only fate, and the webs it likes to spin around its victims, all prey waiting to be devoured by the endless ebb of time.
So, he says nothing.
“Although I must admit,” Barbatos continues, sitting down on a rock and letting his countless wings drape over the soil until they cover the entire cliffside, “I do not know honour. It is a human concept, as are many things. I did not even know of laughter until yesterday!”
For someone claiming so, the chuckle spilling from him comes much too easily. Barbatos, for reasons unbeknownst and uninteresting to Morax, has chosen quite the young face, a boy not older than sixteen. Thin twin braids billow in the breeze and frame his face. He looks strangely pale beneath the starlight, as if he was marble, unmoving and merely the illusion of life, or a ghastly spirit, ready to be whisked away to wherever it is the dead go.
Before the Archon War, Morax did not concern himself much about death. Now, he can spot it anywhere; in the craters left all across the land; in the salt spraying onto shore; in the moon, a lonely, untouched thing in the sky. He can spot it in the dust by Barbatos’ bare feet.
For some reason, the sight of this new creature, barely out of its natural form, unable to even partly mimic a mortal, or even further, mimic a young human’s or an old god’s grief, maddens him. Barbatos is the consequence of war bearing a ruler that does not even know what ruling costs. He gained his throne without much loss nor effort. The power brimming beneath those twin-sky eyes of his is not his own – even if, impressively, it is not the only thing brimming there.
Morax turns away towards the nightly sea. He feels strangely disgusted at himself.
“Quick to judge, are we?” Barbatos taunts behind him. For all the musicality of his voice, it sounds like grating rocks to Morax. “I can imagine your doubts. There surely must be many, after such a ruthless war.”
“What do you know of war?” Morax asks back. It is the first time he speaks up. Barbatos’ wings bristle in response. Morax would like to believe his own tone to be biting, to at least bear some of the bitterness he expects to feel – but there is only exhaustion. It tugs at his roots and bones.
Oh, how he wishes to return to the soil for a while. But the land is in unrest. Many gods are dead, and even more humans. There is no future to follow yet and no order to fall beneath. He must be there to guide them, as much as the thought feels dreary and worn out.
How many centuries has he spent under this sky, now?
“Perhaps more than you expect,” Barbatos replies, sounding light all the same. “I was crafted from it.”
“Then,” Morax asks, already feeling tired of this conversation, “do you know of loss and how it sings in the night?”
“Certainly,” Barbatos says, unable or perhaps unwilling to keep his voice from slipping in and out of the wind. “This form was crafted from it.”
“Then, do you know of terror and how it visits in the earliest hour?”
“But of course. This heart was crafted from it.”
“Then…” Morax pauses. “Do you know the sight of bodies and blood, brought by your own hand in defense? Do you know of prayers you cannot answer, preachers you cannot save? Do you know of guilt?”
Barbatos is quiet for a while. When Morax turns back around, he is being watched by eyes much too young and much too old for a being so fluid. Barbatos’ gaze runs through his palms like water. He can hear bells in the breeze, chiming in the distance; calling for many centuries of peace, and even more of war. He can sense time chipping away at him, sandcorn by sandcorn by hour.
“I do not,” Barbatos confesses. He waves his hand, and a loaf of bread appears, still steaming as he breaks it in two like thunder splitting the body of the earth. Next, he calls for a bottle of wine and pours it in two glasses, dark and inscrutable. He raises both to offer. “But let this be my body and my blood in exchange for your teachings, o’ wise dragon. There is much I wish to learn, and much I know you can tell me.”
Morax accepts the bread and wine purely out of courtesy. For the first time in what must be centuries, he feels unsure of what to make of it. When he looks back at Barbatos, he is a child, leaning back and letting some of the wine spill on his chin as he drinks.
“Bread and wine is not equivalent to the body and blood of a nation,” Morax states. “Claiming it to be enough to teach you about the many pains of war makes you unfitting and unbecoming of a god.”
Barbatos sets down his glass and cocks his head. His many feathers shift and move in the wind like a sea of anemo-correlated swirls. For a moment, they both merely look at each other. The moon wanders and sinks into the ocean.
Finally, Barbatos rises from his rock with a simple laugh. “Well, then,” he says. “Let this not be my last attempt at befriending you, old dragon. You’ll find the wind able to weather down any stone in the world.”
Before Morax can fully decipher whether that was a concealed threat, Barbatos flourishes his hands towards the bread and wine still in Morax’ grasp. “And that, dear friend, is neither body nor blood; it is bread and wine, so very fine; but taste won’t matter to a master deciding to be blind.”
He pauses, glancing up at the dawning sky. “It is a symbol, too. You will find the world to be full of those, yet.”
With that, and laughter swirling through the air, he disappears.
They meet at the summit of the world.
They both wear the weight of war on their shoulders, bronze and metal and rust. There is no sky and earth to meet where they are. There is no air to breathe and no ground to stand on. There is only dust; crimson remnants and mirrored shards digging into both of their fabricated skin.
Morax, for the first time, would like to strip himself of it entirely and return to being a single grain of sand in the passage of tide and time.
“It must be an honour,” Barbatos murmurs next to him, in a macabre reenactment of their first meeting, “to finally see you.”
Morax does not answer for a long while. They stare at the wreckage together; at the gods buried, at the souls splurged, at the memories tainted. The fire crackles on. The dust does not settle.
The silence is too haunting, too loud. It is ironic, how much Morax had wished for it, when a thousand prayers, a thousand pleas, flooded his mind and he raised his spear regardless. It is ironic, how much he despises it now.
“Although I must admit,” he finally croaks, past a throat made of sand and weathered stone, “I do not know honour.”
Silence, furthermore. Morax wishes to close his eyes, but a god has too many.
Next to him, Barbatos divides a loaf of bread and pours two glasses of wine. “We came here to eradicate Sinners,” he says, “and became sinners ourselves.”
They clink their glasses against each other. The wine runs down the brim and stains his already stained hands.
“I was wrong about you, back then,” Morax confesses. “You are neither unfitting nor unbecoming of a god, for only a god could carry out such deeds. You were right about the symbols, too.”
What is a body, if not the bread nourishing a god’s power? What is blood, if not the wine quenching his thirst?
“I know of guilt, now,” Barbatos confesses, too, into the quiet of the aftermath. The sea lies in his voice, but it does not sing. The salt rises up his throat, kills all music, drowns all beauty. “I know of the sight of bodies and blood, brought by my own hand in defense. I know of prayers I cannot answer, preachers I cannot save? Without you ever teaching me, old dragon, I know of it.”
Morax distantly remembers that in the myths of Mondstadt, their god’s tears were what brought upon the First Spring after the Archon War. Barbatos cries no spring, now – merely poison, singing the dust beneath them. He weeps very humanly, for all the inhumane deeds he has carried out today. He weeps as if he had the right to.
Morax wishes he could do so, too.
“I shall never forgive myself,” Barbatos swears.
“Neither shall I,” Morax agrees.
“Neither shall anyone else.”
“I suppose,” Morax says, “after all these centuries, you finally managed to befriend me – for only a friend could look another friend in the eye and call such sins forgiven.”
Barbatos looks up at him, sky-less eyes and a time-less gaze, and raises his glass to his lips. “To friendship, then.”
“To friendship.”
This time, Morax follows his example and downs the wine. It tastes bitter. It tastes crimson. It tastes like that very first night when he witnessed the last birth of innocence amongst gods.