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“Go to the Citadel of Shadows, you’ll learn what it means to be a Shadowgod.” Arkt tells her, sitting back lazily, sipping a blend of mint and cinnamon.
This is weird. She’s seen weird, and this was definitely up there. Where was the tall scary guy who wore a mysterious mask and had petty squabbles with his not-ex? This... guy in front of her, that’s not Arkt. Arkt doesn’t drink mint tea and meticulously arrange slices of strawberry on his buttered bread, no. He… he just looms and glares and sneers, sly like he knows all of her secrets, and he certainly doesn’t coo over the random cat that just showed up yesterday. Someone took his place.
“And what, did you un-learn what it means to be a Shadowgod?” Gisele crosses her arms, squinting in suspicion as she leans in, eyeing him up and down. “Because I feel like I’m staring at a stranger.” She sinks in her seat, almost… pouting. Pouting like a child that finds out that no, it’s Duras who’s takes teeth from under her pillow, and not a cute little mouse or a fairy.
He just shrugs. Arkt shrugs. Arkt never shrugs, at most, he’ll give a sly knowing look, a hint of a smile visible from how his eyes crinkle, his mouth hidden by his mask, but he’ll never confirm or deny, leaving her on the edge of frustration. But now he shrugs, like some… some common guy.
---
“I bet he’s just some guy underneath that armour.”
“Yeah, definitely. The skulls? I mean, he’s trying to impress someone, but it just screams ‘Look at me, I’m too cool to deal with you!’. Peh, bet he wears that and wonders why it’s not getting him any attention.”
“But it does look cool.”
“It does, yeah.”
Those were the words Gisele shared about Arkt once, with Kim. It was, unfortunately, a too common topic after either of them would bump into him – it was either that, or talking about how weird Narathzul was. Kim admired Arkt – his stature, his stance, how he held himself without ever showing his emotions even when he bickered. Would Kim like this? Would Kim be as put-off as Gisele about this new Arkt, or would she happily indulge in breakfast with him, begging him to take her on as her new mentor?
Both, probably. And then she’d rope him into teasing Gisele for hogging all the blankets last night, leaving Arkt with a sliver of duvet, unless he was ready to be too close to her out of the blue.
---
“I am a stranger, am I not? You only know a tiny facet of me,” Arkt points out. Fuck, he’s right. She knows five things. That his armour looks stupid, honestly. It's the same she has but never wears. That he was exes with both Narathzul and Zelara. That Artkwend was his. That he was a war Marshall. And that he likes strawberries. She doesn’t even know his favourite colour, or his favourite animal, or whatever people are supposed to know about other people.
“Ugh, fine, I’ll go to your stupid citadel. Where is it?” She groans, sliding her map across the table, avoiding the crumbs of bread and the few drops of jam here and there.
Arkt knows that it’ll be quick. To him, three weeks’ worth of travelling until she’ll be crawling back. To her, an eternity, time shifting around strangely in that Citadel, a personal scape shaped by her own fears and thoughts, until that last stretch, that glimpse into the future she’ll helped create by donning this new role. To an outsider, it'll be as if she stepped in, only to step out seconds later after changing her mind.
On the first week, he digs holes in the soil, plants his sprouting seedlings, waters them and puts up a scarecrow – no magical barrier here, he’ll do this the old-fashioned way.
On the second week, he gets to scrubbing around Zelara’s tomb, cleaning away the moss and dirt, before putting up a new headstone for Narathzul. There, they’ll rest in the same peace he now lives in.
On the third week, he cleans around the house, in between checking in on his plants. Tidying up the shelves, mending the torn curtains and blankets and Gisele’s clothes, shining up the floor, sprucing up the roof.
“You bastard,” Gisele grunts out, all bloodied up, her hair mussed and greasy, supporting herself on her sword as she enters his hut. Well, breaks the door down, almost, but he’s not pedantic and honestly, he did plan on changing the door, she's doing him a favour, really. But ah, the Citadel went as expected, it seems. “What, and I cannot stress this enough, THE FUCK WAS THAT?! What the fuck! You could’ve warned me! The ghosts? Yeah, fine, I’ve seen those bastards around, but the clown?! THE FUCKING CLOWN?! Oh, and don’t you dare get me started on what, Erothin? Up in flames with what, demons running around? People laying down on the ground all shrivelled up with their souls getting snatched?” She’s mad. Fuming, even. He remembers flashes of his own trials in the Citadel, when he was a fresh-faced Shadowgod like her. He wonders how Narathzul would’ve fared, if the fool had made it this far, if he would’ve managed to defy everything and make it to the Citadel.
“You made it out of the jail,” Arkt says simply, holding his cat – a fat orange thing he called Catllisto after taking her suggestion into account – in his arms, watching her throw her armour to the ground, sweat pouring down on the freshly cleaned floor.
“The jail fucking sucked.”
He puts the cat down, heading towards the bubbling cauldron in the fireplace, picking out a bowl and pouring in a hefty amount of stew, loading it up with meat. “How many times did you get caught?”
“I stopped counting after the eleventh time.” She grumbles, using the washbasin on his dresser to wipe the grime on her. “Anyways, are you going to tell me about the people in Erothin? They were all getting killed AND getting their souls sucked out, it looked like. Oh, and there was like, this giant beam of light up in the sky, real fucking scary.”
“That was the Cleansing, caused by the Beacon.”
“Right, right, the Cleansing, obviously.” She rolls her eyes, rubbing at her face with a cloth. “What’s the Cleansing? And the Bacon?”
“Beacon. And it's something you’ll hopefully have stopped.” He shrugs again, that sly bastard, putting a piece of bread down next to her plate.
“Sounds ominous as shit. Anyways, the fucking clown, don’t get me started on him…”
His words don’t register until it’s pitch black outside, the moon high and they’re sleeping soundly in bed – Arkt had the foresight to get them each their own covers, so that Gisele wouldn’t hoard the blanket for herself, even if he didn’t mind it. As long as she was sleeping well, he’d go without a blanket happily.
“Arkt.” She pats his face in the middle of the night, unable to see where he is but feeling him next to her in the dark, barely missing his eyes with her fingers.
A groan, a shift. “What.”
“Is the Cleansing the end of the world?” She shifts to face him, or at least, what she hopes is him and not the cat’s ass, the little beast sprawled over Arkt’s head.
“Mmh.”
Gisele frowns – he’s too calm about her question. About what he possibly knows. “What do you mean ‘mmh’? Is that a good ‘mmh’ or a bad ‘mmh’?”
“A bad one,” he yawns, before snoring.
Well, fuck.