Chapter Text
When she comes back, Natlan halts.
The Stadium, thundering and blazing with joy and celebration mere hours ago, holds its breath; hundreds, thousands of scared eyes cling to her the moment the blue glow of the teleport waypoint fades and reveals a group of five with the Archon in the front. Blood pounds in her ears, and a dying breath of a freezing wind pricks her face, but she hears the discordant hubbub quickly hush into a uniform “It’s the Archon, the Archon’s back!” , and the fog in her head clears.
Mavuika presses another’s helmet to her solar plexus.
Mavuika breathes.
Mavuika lifts her gaze to the people, and that gaze is firm, solemn and mournful.
“Gather everyone at the Stadium”, she commands.
And leaves for her rightful place on the throne, hoping, not bravely in the slightest, that it does not look too much like a retreat.
The metal of the helmet, ever icy, slowly thaws under her fingers.
The heralds gather the people in the shortest time. When Mavuika makes it to her throne, the Stadium is two thirds full; the folk run back and forth, looking for their friends in the crowd or for a place where they won’t be pushed off their feet, whisper between each other, glancing at the goddess on the pedestal every now and then. She finds Mualani, and Kachina scoots closer to the girl, and Kinich is with them, and Ajaw is floating by his side, uncharacteristically quiet; she finds Xilonen and chief Pacal, Chasca and her human parents, Iansan; she finds Ororon, Citlali and Lumine with Paimon in her arms, and their sympathetic, worried, knowing looks burn like bile on the roof of her mouth.
She finds the Fatui, huddled together like orphans on the opposite side of the Stadium, and – on sheer reflexes – looks for the tall figure in a Harbinger coat.
From a finger jolting, or from a breath too sharp, but the chain on the helmet clinks against the inner edge.
Mavuika breathes.
The vacuum in the chest crushes her ribs.
When the Stadium fills up to the brim, she glances around for the last time and breathes in – and for a split moment, the words get stuck in her throat like a fishbone –
“People of Natlan!” And yet the voice comes out even, loud and clear, as if she’s conducting a usual ceremony for the returning Wardens. “For millennia, the Ode of Resurrection has kept us safe. Created by the first Pyro Archon Lord Xbalanque, the rules have been bringing the fallen victors home, granting the new Pyro Archons the knowledge of the land preserved in the Sacred Flame, and they were what gave us, all of us, the strength to defeat death itself when the Abyss invaded us. But every power comes at a price – and this time, the price was meant to be my life.”
The words leave her with a dizzying emptiness in her head, but the horrified gasp rolling through the Stadium gives her the only second she needs to push air into her lungs and come to her senses. Mavuika sees – Citlali purses her lips in displeasure and bitterness, Paimon snuggles closer to Lumine, and the Traveler shivers; Mavuika sees – Kinich’s and Chasca’s eyes widen, Mualani slams her palms over her mouth, and countless Natlanese stare at her in fear, helplessness and anticipation, and her own words about the burden of a leader and choosing the lesser evil ring in her head.
An hour ago, she was ready to die – and now she witnesses the echo of the grief that Natlan would feel at her death, and even this mere short echo is enough to choke her.
“But instead of me, Capitano paid the price,” Mavuika continues. The Fatui stare at her silently, standing at attention. “He saved my life, and he saved the life of the Lord of the Night, and he saved the Night Kingdom itself. Five hundred years ago he, his warriors and the warriors of Natlan protected our home from the Abyss, and ever since then, in his heart he has been carrying the souls of the fallen who could not find rest in the Night Kingdom – and today, they all have found the long sought peace. He turned the curse of immortality that had befallen the Khaenri’ahns into a weapon, he gave his eternal life to the Lord of the Night, he saved the Night Kingdom and opened it for all who drew their last breath in the land of Natlan.”
The metal of the helmet is warm under her fingers.
“Today we celebrate the final, irrevocable victory of Natlan over the Abyss.” The Archon slowly looks around the amphitheatre; the people move closer to the edges, forming neat rows on an unspoken signal. “Today we honor those who lived to see this day, those who lived their entire lives believing in and fighting for its arrival, and those who never returned from the Night Warden Wars and the fields of the Cataclysm. Today is the last time we sing the song of parting for those who will never come home. Today we honor the Natlanese that fell in the last battle with the Abyss; today we honor Capitano, the First Fatui Harbinger, Thrain the Centinel Knight, the commander of a khaenri’ahn platoon that protected Natlan; today we honor the Fatui and Khaenri’ahn warriors who fought by our side. The war is over. Natlan has won!”
She clutches the helmet with one hand and lifts up the other, her fist closed, and the Stadium erupts with cries, triumphant, jubilant; Mavuika looks at them, her people, and breathes, and a bitter exhausted joy curls up in her chest like a wounded animal, hugs itself with a torn tail, rests its head on its end and watched everybody from under a warm squint. The woman lowers her hand and holds the helmet in two hands again, and the unnaturally cold breath of the wind – she must have imagined it, for sure – chokes her, but she holds fast. Not a single muscle on her face must move.
The exalted uproar dies down.
Mavuika exhales. Holds still for a moment.
With the first short breath, a funeral song begins to flow.
Several voices join in on the second line – Mavuika hears Chasca’s mezzo-soprano and Ororon’s tenor; many more join them, thousands of palms lie against the hearts, and the river of human voices strengthens, widens, grows, and soon the whole Stadium sings the ode of parting for the very last time.
The war is over. Natlan has won. Mavuika sings, thoughtless, taking breath and pronouncing words on autopilot; the war is over, and Natlan has won, and the metal of the helmet has long since warmed up under the hot skin of her fingers, and the world around is both sharp and blurry – her mind is foggy, she can’t concentrate; did Gosoythoth’s tail to the head give her a concussion? Did she breathe in too much Corruption? Did she poison herself on Ronova’s power? Or was it the farewell burst of Cryo that reacted with her inner Pyro and still hadn’t been neutralized?
Mavuika breathes.
Natlan sings.
…she comes to her senses abruptly, and it takes her a few more seconds to register that what has brought her back is her own silence – the funeral song is over, and a solemn sorrowful quietness rings across the Stadium. Eyes, eyes, eyes dig into her like qucusaurus claws, eyes mourning, eyes lost, eyes exhausted, joy slowly kindling in them, asking her – all is over, is it not? Is it all finally over?
Fingers press into the helmet.
Breathe.
Mavuika speaks of the official victory celebration in three weeks, of giving orders on throwing a feast a little later, of her being in the Speaker’s Chamber should she be urgently needed. Of it finally being the time to go home. Then Mavuika descents from her throne, and the crowd moves as well – small groups of friends and families instantly huddle together, the Stadium fills with whispers and talks, companies flow somewhere in a general direction of an exit, skirting each other like oil droplets on water; someone leaves for good, someone disappears behind the doors on the arena, someone stays in the amphitheater rows. Mavuika walks, and the eyes, eyes, eyes grab her like the hooks of the Scions of the Canopy, piercing her back and cutting into her muscles with their crooked claws.
Mavuika walks away, her spine ever straight.
Mavuika tries to breathe.
Her legs carry her to the doors of the Speaker’s Chamber. Her hands push them, cradling the helmet, and close them so that they don’t hit the ancient fiery-red stone.
Mavuika stands in the dusk, alone.
Her gaze falls on the six stone thrones around the fire. Golden flames dance lively, their tongues soar, shimmering with sky blue and sunset red, and time and again the seventh, the main one, sun-crowned throne flashes behind them. Sturdy ancient walls guard the silence; out there, on the streets, the crowd cheers and hums, goes to celebrate, goes to wake, goes home, but the Speaker’s Chamber remains quiet.
Mavuika goes to the flames. Her legs stiffen.
The echo of her footsteps bounces off the walls.
Mavuika does not come to neither her throne nor the doors of her room hidden behind it – the thought of entering the barren, only walls, a floor and a ceiling, room twists her guts into a wisp and drags her away by it; instead, the goddess stops at the edge of the fire pit and thoughtlessly sits down onto the carved ledge, lowering her legs to the fire.
She stretches her hands out to the flames, the helmet held in them. She looks at it. The fire draws the silhouette in molten gold.
The void inside crushes her ribs and sucks everything in, in, in, like a ravenous wormhole straight to the Abyss, and Mavuika presses the helmet to her solar plexus, bends over, her eyes shut tight, her lips pursed, and hugs it like a child.
In a colorful darkness under the eyelids she sees the exhausted, crooked from all the old scars, grim gloating grin on a black-blue Corruption-covered face. She sees the last burst of the star-blue flame in the eyes, she sees the crimson glare on the blackened silver of the ornaments on the coat. She sees the clawed hands of dark metal on hers, and a ghostly freeze burns her palms; she sees the transparent-blue, darkened on the edges like frostbitten limbs, giant pillars of ice – the walls of the throne room for the newly-crowned Lord of the Night.
She sees the ghostly half-smiles in the translucently warm autumn dark. She sees the raven hair, ruffled as the helmet is taken off. She sees the bared hands, striped and speckled with scars that are barely visible on the pitchy black with lazuli veins that covers the skin – the Heavens’ mockery of life, the weave in the bark of the White Tree seared into the human flesh like a brand. She hears a hoarse baritone, a half-whispered song in a tongue long forgotten by the world, a rare muted laughter.
She hears, she sees – weariness, weariness, weariness.
She sees-imagines how a chest goes up and down in rhythm with the calmed breathing.
Just this morning Mavuika has thought that by the sundown her life will be over – the second time, and now for good. And now it is Thrain who fell into eternal sleep, not her.
And Mavuika is not stupid, and she does understand in her mind that this is the best possible outcome – Natlan lives, and no one needs to frantically look for a new god to replace the dead her, and there is no hourglass above her people’s heads to count down the few centuries before the Sacred Flames drinks her life to the bottom and fizzles out, having run out of fuel, and the five hundred years of torment have finally come to an end, and all the restless souls have returned home at last – truly, no better outcome could be desired, but…
But her nose and eyes still burn like she choked on phlogiston, and a vice grips her throat.
A forced breath gets cut by a sob.
Mavuika does not cry – Mavuika wheezes and heaves and gasps for air in short choked breaths, hissing through her teeth, pushing the helmet into her as if it’s a piece of her torn-out guts; unfulfilled fears and dreams of a sacrifice accepted, of a noble death, of a road into the setting sun and to her home awaiting her where the sunset ends – all are hawked up like flakes of cinder and pieces of lungs and burn in the gentle sway of the eternal magical flame. Her eyes are dry as stone, not a single tear in their corners, and the ingrained, pushed and compressed, coked-up grief is breaking and tearing out of her in jolts and soundless screams and scorches her worse than phlogiston.
In the darkness under her tight-shut lids, she sees Thrain.
After Thrain comes Chuychu. After Chuychu comes Atea. After Atea come, like beads being strung on a thread, the Natlanese and the Fatui who have fallen in the battles against the Abyss; Vichama and Mallko, Tlilhua, Hunza, Wayta, Batz, Tenoch, Sundjatta, Sanhaj, Menilek, Burkina-
A muted knock comes through the thick stone, and the heavy door groans as it opens.
Mavuika jolts up and turns towards the entrance on sheer reflexes, just half a second before a slim ribbon of light from the street flows into the twilight, and four sneak into the Speaker’s Chamber.
The girls freeze at the entrance – at least they close the doors. Citlali looks at her goddess, and there is both relief and bitterness in her knit brows and pale pursed lips; Paimon and Xilonen both open their mouth to call the woman but halt halfway – the fairy grabs herself by the wrist and Xilonen slowly, painfully slowly lowers the hand she lifted to reach out. And Lumine…
Lumine stares at Mavuika – with pain. With understanding. With the unspoken I know.
Lumine dashes and – no, she does not run, but she very quickly and boldly, like a grenadier, strides to the goddess and grabs her into a hug, burying her face near her right collarbone, and squeezes her with all she’s got.
For two long, long seconds Mavuika does not breathe, staring into the void.
Then exhales. Grabs the helmet with one hand and puts the other onto the Traveler’s back. Lightly tilts her head to the girl.
Then the other three crash into her.
Paimon clings to her right shoulder, hugging both the goddess and her friend as tight as her tiny hands allow her, Citlali and Xilonen hug her on her left, and the blacksmith hunches over and presses her forehead to the woman’s shoulder and pats her gently, and she’s trembling, and Mavuika struggles to breathe. Hold fast, she commands herself, gulping and clenching her teeth, blinking the blurriness away, hold fast, breathe through the nose, a slow inhale, a slow exhale. Xilonen almost lost her friend and didn’t even have a slightest idea of what was about to transpire. Citlali, Lumine and Paimon barely managed to buy enough time for Ororon and Thrain, and the goddess can practically hear the millions of what-ifs buzzing in their heads: but what if they came too late and Mavuika had already fulfilled her part of the deal with Ronova? What if no one came at all? What if Thrain did not conspire with the Lord of the Night?
Mavuika is almost angry at them for making deals behind her back. Mavuika mentally slaps herself – look who’s talking.
It’s not you who is to cry now, Mavuika, she commands herself when the warmth of the human cocoon crawls beneath her skin and gnaws phlogiston cracks through her. It’s not you who is to cry. Take care of the others.
Slowly breathe in. Slowly breathe out.
“I am sorry.” Her voice comes out quiet and sorrowful, but not broken; good, she’s holding on, no one must start worrying about her more than they already do. “I will not lie that there was any chance I would forsake my plan had it not been for Captain’s proposal. But I should have told you the truth – at least you. You deserved to have me bid you a proper farewell.”
A proper farewell. Like the one Natlan had five hundred years ago. Like her friends, her mom and Hine had. Why has she decided to take that right away from her close ones this time? Did she get scared to see others mourn her, still alive, and look away, having no strength to face her? Did she get scared of long send-offs, of tears and prayers to wait, to not rush, to not go, what if another, a better idea arises? Did she get scared that she would listen, that her resolve would waver, that her heart that has been awaiting the day for five hundred years would falter?
It wouldn’t, Mavuika thinks detachedly. For five hundred years, she has been riding an endless empty highway into a sunset frozen in time, hoping that one day she would arrive home, and the sun would melt and flow down below the horizon, and when she would have opened the doors, the last golden rays would fade and the twilight sky would settle into a blissful violet at last. And maybe her home would have no doors, and maybe there would be no house at all; and maybe her home would turn out to be a cliff, and her friends and mom and dad and Hine would be flying above the precipice, just go as fast as you can and then a little faster, send your motorcycle off the cliff and fly with them –
but she was cut off. Pushed off the highway and onto the roadside, thrown off her motorcycle, and she hit her head and lost consciousness, tumbled a few more meters on the ground by inertia, tore her costume to pieces and flayed everything under it and then was left to lay there – and when she woke up, instead of ending in a cliff the road stretched on and on.
Into the dawn.
A childish hurt wails inside.
And Mavuika is not stupid, and in her mind she understands that everything went as good as it possibly could and she should be happy, but…
(She wanted to go home. She thought she almost made it.
How long is the road before her now?)
She hears a pained sigh by her ear and turns her head. Xilonen stares at her intently, her mouth slightly agape as if she’s feverishly thinking of what to say – and then, having thought up nothing, she purses her lips and shortly shakes her head. Her palm still lies on the other’s back and gently draws small circles.
“We deserve to have you live,” Lumine grumbles into the woman’s shoulder.
Citlali moves a bit away from the embrace to look Mavuika in the eyes and, her brows furrowed, nods in the Traveler’s direction, as if telling her to listen to the smart people.
“And I am alive.” The goddess smiles warmly – and not a single drop of grief must leak into the smile, they must not start worrying about her more than they already do. “And we all are alive. Natlan is saved. Thousands of years of war have come to an end, and we are the winners. This is the fruit that our, of all of us, efforts have bore. So I believe that, along with my survival, all of you also deserve a long, long rest and the greatest feast in the world; the second part is still in the planning stage, but the first part can already be arranged. What do you say about hot springs and some surfing, my heroes?”
All four girls lift their gazes to her, and in each and every girl’s eyes she reads disbelief. Citlaly frowns, Paimon and Xilonen squint at her in displeasure, and Lumine stares open and straight, but it’s easy to see – she hasn’t bought her distraction tactic for a second.
Mavuika keeps smiling warmly and encouragingly.
…Lumine sighs.
She frees the woman from the hug – Paimon and Citlali follow suit, Xilonen’s hand still rests between the other’s shoulder blades, – cups her hands together and closes her eyes; a golden light shimmers as it pools in her chest, in her heart, pours into both of her hands with the bloodstream and gathers in her palms.
A moment later, the most precious diamond lies in them, reflections and glares of the Sacred Flame glimmering inside.
“The Archons hear me when I call them through their gems,” she explains as she takes Mavuika by her free hand and places the stone in it. “I don’t know if it’s gonna work with me, but still – call me if anything, anything at all, happens. If I hear you, I’ll come running. If I don’t…”
She shrugs with uncertainty, pursing her lips in a sour expression.
“If you do not hear me, this gift alone will be enough to give me strength. Thank you, Traveler.” Mavuika nods in gratitude – and then adds jokingly, “I will try to not exhaust your supply of kindness too quickly.”
“It’s pretty much bottomless,” Paimon huffs mirthlessly, “so yeah, call us whenever you want! Paimon will come too! With snacks! We’ll have a girls night and cry about our lives like all normal people do!”
Mavuika only nods again with the same supportive smile.
The helmet, mindlessly pressed against her belly, is bodily warm.