Chapter Text
The world was dark and murky. It had been for as long as he’d known it. It clung to him in a stagnant weight that never shifted on its own but always dragged him back whenever he moved and buffeted him with the movements of something coming towards him.
They came for him often. Blurry figures that moved through the world with an ease he didn’t have. They lashed out faster than he could dodge, caught any weak hits he threw at them, and retaliated with tears everywhere they could reach and cracks deep in his body.
When they lost interest and discarded him to sink, those cracks and tears were the closest things he had to warmth.
Warmth. A bright light. A gentle voice that held him and didn’t want to hurt him.
The whole world was nothing but darkness and pain but, somehow, he knew of these things from beyond it.
Sometimes, when his body was still putting itself back together, it almost felt like he was somewhere else. Like there was something at his back. Hard or soft, it didn’t matter, just that he wasn’t sinking anymore. Like there was someone beside him.
Often times, the voice was higher but firm when it spoke to him in words he couldn’t understand but knew the meaning of. Fight with all his strength, endure any hardship, never waver. Other times, the voice was deeper but softer when it told him with certainty that he could survive anything.
So when he felt his body sway, he tensed. His fingers and toes curled, returned from the burning pain to the cold world and his own control. He opened his eyes and they stung with their newness but he could see again and dodged the lunging dark shadow.
Another one swung in his peripheral vision but he couldn’t stop his own momentum in time to dodge that too. He could only throw his hands and grapple it the same way it grabbed at him.
Soft. Slippery. But he clawed in and felt it puncture. The tentacle thrashed and more snapped around his arm. Yanking. His fingers creaked with their hold in the wound, on the brink of breaking with the force of fighting the creature’s pull. If he let go and it wrenched his arms apart then he would lost them again.
Colour spread beneath his fingers. A dark blot that blocked his view. But he didn’t stop. A tentacle dove for his neck and the snap he had once felt still echoed in his ears. He jerked his head down, opened his mouth and snapped his jaw closed.
The creature spasmed around him, under his fingers, between his teeth. It clenched and unclenched in raw panic as a foul taste filled his mouth and he bit harder anyway.
It shot off. He didn’t know where they were going but it thrashed in eagerness to get rid of him. He dug his nails and his fangs in and didn’t waver. Never. He would do better than survive. He would kill this thing.
But then something changed. Pressure and coldness. It was different. Lessened and warmer.
He wrenched his head back and any resistance was torn away. Something cracked in his chest this time when it shuddered in pain and crushed him. His hand slipped and it felt the loss of his two footholds because it flung him away.
He flew backwards and—
And hit something.
Under his feet, his back. It moved when he pushed against it. Unhelpful but better than the nothingness he was used to. It was like the gold around his neck and in his mind alongside a deep voice. But dulled. It fell apart into chunks, then smaller, when he dug his fingers in.
Everything was brighter around him. Easier to see. His eyes didn’t feel as if they would burst in his head even as they stung.
The creature was more than a dark blur. Its tentacles flowed against the water, pushing smoothly and quickly as a pair of big eyes darker than the world he knew stared at him. Circling him but not attacking. The stump of the tentacle he had ripped free flailed. It was nervous.
The light dimmed. There was something above them. Another dark shape, rounded on either side until it met at a sharp point at the top and bottom.
It didn’t seem to notice the two of them. If it did, the creature’s bleeding wound should make it the primary target while he escaped or lurked to finish off the injured victor.
The creature looked at him and he dug his toes into the thing beneath him in preparation. It was coming again.
Then it darted straight up.
It was injured and it would rather take that unknown creature above them than him? He was smaller and weak than anything else in this murky world.
The tentacled creature smacked the newcomer and it… it rolled over immediately. Two more shapes appeared. Extra limbs?
But he watched the back and forth of their bodies, bobbing, and he knew the shape of them. It was the same every time he looked down at himself.
They were like him.
He kicked off and sped through the water. The tentacles grabbed hold of them and they struggled uselessly. They didn’t even try to dig their fingers in, stamp their feet or use their teeth. They just flailed around. Weaker. Both of them weaker than him.
A tentacle flicked at him but he dodged. Easier than before. There was less dragging him down up here.
He whipped his head round, seized it, and bit hard. The tentacles writhed but he grit harder, gripped harder, and tore.
Not a blink later and he threw it away, launching himself at the two trapped prey. One of them had stopped moving. The creature tried to flee but it was too late and he sank his finger, toes, teeth in to free the one still moving.
He pried them free. They stared with wide, glassy eyes. He didn’t have time to get them to safety. Were they so weak they would just accept death and not even try to flee?
He darted for the next prey and the creature swung them out of the way but he closed the distance easily. While he was quicker, the creature was slower up here and he snatched it before it could curl away from him.
He tore it as mercilessly as the rest and flung the unconscious one at the motionless one. That seemed to finally spur them into action as they caught their ally and dragged them up, up, up with them.
He didn’t bother watching where they went as he lunged for the creature again and ripped it to shreds with the same viciousness done to him.
Only when it was reduce to a mess of floating limbs, twitching like they could still escape, did he wade out of the mess.
That strangely round and pointed shadow was gone. So were the two creature that looked like him. No sign of where they had gone. So they could flee just fine after all. But for beings as weak as them to survive all this time… how? Where had they gone?
He dropped the creature’s head and let it sink back into the depths. He tipped his head back. It was warmer up here. A bright light came from above and he thought of blue, white and gold and reached for it.
His hand broke through first. The weight he thought lessened suddenly vanished completely.
His head passed through next and—
Hot. Cold. Pressing down on his skin and blowing against it. Noises in his ears. His chest ached and spasmed, rough sounds and something else trickling out of his mouth and merging into everything around him.
There were more things in the distance. Everything new and unknown and dangerous but if those two weak being could survive up here then he would be fine.
He paddled towards where the thing surrounding him ended and merged into something gold like what he’d found underfoot earlier.
Small things darted below him and shadows passed overhead. But nothing ever attacked. They only ran away. Everything up here was weak.
Eventually his feet touched something solid again. It still broke apart and moved every time he tried to push off but it was enough for him to stumble the rest of the way. When that weight finally let go of his ankles, he collapsed onto his back and didn’t move.
His body ached. Not in the way of limbs ripped free and growing back. This was different but still so familiar.
It was blue with a bright light above him. Closer now than when he was weighed down. He reached for it again and the warmth gathered in his hand.
The hardness at his back. The burn in his nose even without blood or injury. The… sky and the sun. Like he had seen them before. Like he had laid here to see them before.
His hand was too heavy to hold and it dropped beside him. His eyes followed, slipping closed and even then the world was less dark than it had been his entire life.
There was one thing left on his mind. Two words. The only things that never left him no matter how many times he sank into darkness and reemerged.
They were all he had even when he opened his eyes not on something hard—but soft. The light and warmth were different now. They didn’t come from the dark thing that had replaced the sky and joined with the four solid things all around him. It was somewhere beside him, in a colour that reminded him of the marks on his body and not the sun.
But he didn’t entrust those words to the being he found when he emerged from a lighter, easier darkness than what usually consumed him when he closed his eyes. The being was one of the two he had saved from the creature and it made all sorts of noises he couldn’t understand. It bared its teeth but didn’t bite. A warning?
Now that the former prey was safe again, there was no reason to assume it wouldn’t attack him too. They were both alone but weak things usually attacked in numbers, using trickery and force to overwhelm him. So when it wasn’t looking he snuck away and ran before its allies could arrive.
Unlike in that cold and darkness, his movements were free of that clinging drag and there were lots of places to hide. The beings who looked like him came to search when they realised he escaped. But they were easy to evade in the tall golden stalks.
When the sky began to darken, the rustling and shouting stopped. It was quiet again except his own breathing. He could occasionally hear things moving but they were just as hidden as him and nothing ever approached him as he crawled further away from those things that looked like him.
The sky lightened and darkened as he roamed. The gold stalks thinned and disappeared quickly but he found more shelter, more hiding places, with ease. If he heard the loud noise of something bigger, stronger than him, he ducked out into the open where they didn’t prowl. If he saw a thing that looked like him out on the open paths then he wove his way into the green.
He was right when he assumed that everything was weak up here. The most anything did was scratch and bite him. No missing fingers or hands, toes or feet, or eyes. No crunch or snap when they grabbed him. And they crumpled easily in his hands before he ripped into them with his teeth.
And still those two words followed him. He mouthed them to himself with every step, every bite, every gaze up at the sun as it rose, held and sank again three times.
It was when the sunlight accompanied him that fourth time, some of those beings that looked like him finally chose him as their prey. There were five of them, hunting him in a group. They were smarter and stronger than the ones he first encountered.
He tried to lose them by winding in and out of every obstacle or hiding spot he could find. He was smaller and quicker and quieter. Every new corner he turned, it was like he’d seen it all before. He knew where to drop, where to jump, where to slow down and speed up. They were persistent but so was he.
It took another two rises of the sun before they cornered him.
It was his mistake. He’d fallen into a ditch trying to make a tricky jump from one ridge to another, hoping it would be enough to lose them for good.
His leg snapped and burned in a way he hadn’t felt since before he had slain that tentacle creature. He ignored it and clawed his way up. It would take them time to get to him safely. He would need to be somewhere else before they found a way down.
When he finally emerged from that pit, the five of them were already waiting.
He bared his teeth at them and bent low to the ground. That thin one looked like the easiest to kill but he had seen how well it moved. Either way, he had to take that one first.
“Mydeimos.”
Mydeimos. He knew that word. Except for those two voices that held him together in the depths, it was the first time anything had ever made a sound he could understand.
The thin one’s lips curved upwards, not baring teeth, and lowered himself. Not low and ready to pound, but to one knee. And then he tilted his head and exposed his neck.
The other four followed.
“Mydeimos,” the thin one said again.
Mydeimos. That high, firm voice.
Mydei. That low, soft voice.
These five knew something. Knew him or those voices.
So he gave them those two words burrowed somewhere deeper than his mind or body. Aedes Elysiae.