A Househusband's Guide to the Abyss - blakkatNwillow5 - 原神 (2024)

Chapter 1: Section A: Entering the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section A: Entering the Abyss

Method 1: Accidents Happen

Ajax is twelve when he receives his vision on his first hunt alone. It glows blue in his palms, unearthly in the pale reflection of the snows of Morepesok. Hydro is only slightly better than pyro in Snezhnaya, and every sneering glance the villagers make when they think he’s not looking tells him enough.

In front of him, they wear congratulatory smiles because no matter what, a vision is a blessing from an archon. But in the coldest parts of Snezhnaya, a hydro vision is more of a curse. It’s similar to his name, the name of a great hero, but one who died a painful death, and it was a brilliant tragicomedy that his own father had named him so.

Ajax ignores it as best as he can for almost two years, turning his attention to the water at his fingertips and making it dance. It curls around him like spectres, little sprinkles of ice forming where his control slips. But it’s practice, and it gives him the chance to bring miniature animals to life and entertain his youngest brother.

The villagers never lift their gazes, staring at him like his water is a knife he holds at his siblings’ throats.

He hates the looks they give him, but Ajax is barely fourteen with a heart burning with anxiety and energy that has nowhere to go. His hands shake as he clenches them behind his back, ducking his head down when they stare a little too hard at him.

So what if Ajax dreams about tearing them to pieces? He doesn’t have the strength to do that. He’s depraved for this, for thinking and dreaming these terrible things, and all the more so for not feeling guilty about it. The boy wonders if the villagers somehow know. It would explain their poorly withheld hostility.

Or maybe it’s jealousy. There’s not a single villager in Morepesok who has a vision. The ones who did have either left or died. Eventually, people started seeing visions as an omen instead of a blessing.

Ajax isn’t strong enough even if he can push water into play animals or the sharpest knives. He lets the thinnest edge freeze just a little, and suddenly, Snezhnaya has given him a serrated blade. (It is brilliant that his country would give him a weapon when he would only use it against her people.)

That image becomes more vivid when water sharpens its edge under his touch. Ajax sees it bleed red and drip like wine. It’s a wondrous sight, and Ajax can’t help but simper at it.

Then, he remembers that his hateful eyes are the same loving ones he bestows on his family. Water crashes to the floor and freezes, and he doesn’t hear his baby brother begin to wail. Ajax can’t be near them the way he is; it's much too dangerous if he ever loses it and his siblings get caught in the crossfire between him and the world. That is the last thing he’d ever let happen.

So Ajax does what he can, packing two loaves of bread and his vision into a makeshift pack and holding his father’s old rusty dagger in a white-knuckled grip. He stares at Teucer before he goes, shaping one last play animal into a little narwhal and letting it freeze through. Silently, he prays to the motherland that she would not be cruel in her winters, nor would she let his last gift melt.

Ajax gets up, fingers tight around the cradle passed down from his older siblings to his younger ones. Teucer was so young and-

“Big brother?” A sleep-ridden voice calls, and the boy in question turns with widened eyes to see his younger sister.

“…” He almost forgets to answer as he watches her rub her eyes. “Go to sleep, Tonia; it’s late.”

She nods mid-yawn, turning around.

“G’night,” she murmurs, and Ajax never replies to it. (It sounds too much like goodbye).

He casts one last look at the cradle that he leaves behind and lets the image burn itself into his mind.

The forests of Morepesok are strange. It’s expected from all the stories his father told him, but that doesn’t mean he’s prepared.

The old saying goes: first into the cloud of fog, second past the still Witch’s Ring, third through the black bramble branches, last to slip and fall, and beware the one who returns home.

Pine leaves shimmer where moonlight catches on frozen dew, constantly changing between silver and verdant green. The trees sway ever so slightly, never enough for one to question it until it’s too late. The wind chill is unearthly, howling louder than the wolves.

Then, there is the Witch’s Ring.

It’s a perimeter of emptiness around thicker trees. No life grows there, and not even the air dares to move within it. But marked by bravery or stupidity or desperation, Ajax runs, panting hard with his fingers wound tightly around his father's rusty knife, now freshly blooded with his first wolf. It’s the reason he’s being hunted, but Ajax has already lost his bread. He can’t afford to lose his life.

He hears the furious thuds of paws chasing him and growls not far behind. The wind is shrieking, needles through his bare skin as if trying to push him back, but he doesn’t stop. The boy leaps, fearlessly—but full of fear; he can’t show it now; otherwise, the wolves will smell it—into the Witch’s Ring.

The world stops.

The wolves falter outside the gap, but Ajax never notices. He doesn’t hear how the wind has fallen silent, nor does he see the trees turn around him. The inner forest swallows him up, and all that’s left are the footprints of a boy, leading straight to the Ring.

Ajax keeps running through denser trees until the canopy blots out the night sky, and there is nothing left but quiet darkness. He can’t see anymore, so it’s no surprise that his foot gets caught on a gnarled root.

He loses the breath in his lungs, something sour rising in his throat as cold sweat sticks his coat to his skin.

There’s nothing to grab onto.

And then, he’s falling.

Chapter 2: Section B: Surviving the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

Step 1: Kill or Be Killed

Ajax screams for the first fifteen seconds of his fall. Too soon, he runs out of oxygen, so he takes in rapid inhales instead of letting more terror rip its way out of his throat. It's a good thing he learns early on. Being frozen in fear never helps. His skin is peppered with goosebumps from the sudden change in temperature—it’s hot and humid.

He crashes uninjured on red-baked ground. It’s strange; he’s never felt this much heat. If this is what countries outside of Snezhnaya feels like, Ajax doesn’t ever want to travel. It’s clinging to him like a second skin, except more like it’s seeping through his pores and invading his body, leaving his flesh burning but his bones freezing.

The vermillion ground is a darker reflection of the sky, where the moon hangs in three shattered pieces overhead. Ajax is in frightful awe as he lies there unmoving. His joints are aching, and he feels a lot like that old man in the market who complains about his rheumatism when it gets too cold.

Ah, that was the only villager who treated him like an ordinary boy, regaling his tales as a sailor on raging seas with all the drinks and men and women he could enjoy. It wasn’t the stories Ajax appreciated, but that old man’s cheeky smile at him while he talked about everything he did when he was young. If Ajax ever gets back to Morepesok, he’s going to buy that old man a drink.

Ajax doesn’t want to move. He’s in pain, tired, and the warmth is dragging him down. But something in him begins screaming at him to runrunrun . He figures it’s fear. So he pushes himself to his feet despite every protesting limb and holds out his—it’s his now, not his father’s—knife in front of him.

Ajax can’t take his eyes off of the creature before him. It looks like a wolf, fur matted and patchy. He can’t tell what colour it is, not in the red light of the strange place. It’s several times larger than the one he had killed earlier, towering over him and only has one eye. It stares at him, fangs bared with no growl. There isn’t a need for one for Ajax to know he is prey here.

To him, the acrid smell of his sweat, his fear, is all the more palpable. Ajax’s metaphorical hackles are raised, leg muscles twitching in preparation to retreat. He’s no match for the wolf, but Ajax also knows that he can’t outrun such a beast. It’s gorgeous as a predator, designed for hunting, but Ajax cannot be its prey tonight.

He’s shaking, though, even as he stares it down in the eye. His thoughts fly to Teucer, a baby who would never know him; to Tonia, whom he never got to say goodbye; to Anthon, who is too kind for his own good. Ajax still wants to be an older brother. (He still wants to live).

The fur on the ginger’s jacket is pressed up against the back of his neck, adding to the sweltering heat. It’s a reminder that he’s not home.

He stares down the wolf, refusing to baulk. Ajax has to make it back; he still has to see Teucer grow up. He wants to panic as it steps closer, one shaggy paw in front of the other, and it’s almost like the beast is playing with its food, and Ajax was the only one not having any fun.

He has to make it back.

Carefully, Ajax thumbs the edge of his vision, letting the moisture in the air coalesce.

The wolf takes a step closer, taking its time. Ajax should be insulted that the creature doesn’t think of him as a threat, but he’s quite glad for that underestimation keeping him alive.

Water is harder to wrestle here. It’s hot, bursting everywhere and so unlike the still coolness of Snezhnaya’s near-frozen water.

Wherever he is, the archons don’t bother to gaze upon.

Then, the barely-there water explodes, wrenching its way out of his grip the second he loosens it. It’s in the wolf’s throat, spilling from its mouth as it overflows.

Ajax takes the moment of distraction to hurl the rusty knife he had at the wolf, grazing it in the side of its leg. It was a lucky shot. A cross between a growl and a whine leaves its mouth. Crumpling to the floor, the wolf lets out a wet gurgle, spitting and choking on liquid as it falls.

It collapses, dead.

Ajax is left panting, eyebrows frowning. He’s wary of approach. It shouldn’t have died that easily, but he has no other weapon in the unknown space, so he inches forward gingerly, trying not to make a sound. The puddle of bile and water from the wolf steams from the floor, slowly evaporating once more.

The water is dark in colour, and something about it is inherently wrong. It feels detached from his vision—like he’s barely able to touch it—and impure. As an acrid smell wafts from the steam, Ajax’s nose wrinkles, and he realises why the liquid felt so strange.

Poison.

It explains why the wolf died so quickly, but not why Ajax was still alive after breathing in so much of the air. Upon closer inspection, Ajax sees the jut of the wolf’s ribs through patches of skin where its fur had stopped growing and the unevenness in its hind leg. Malnourished and injured.

A sense of dread prickles across the back of his neck. What kind of animal would play the prideful predator in such a desperate situation? Even the wolves back home would eat and leave, never hunting for sport. But this?

Ajax wants to inch away from the beast, from wherever he is because this isn’t the adventure he wanted when he had set out into the forest. Still, he walks past its stinking corpse, picking up the blunt, rusted knife in his hand. Flakes of ash-like metal brush off the hilt with his touch, and the remaining old, dried leather carves and engraves its way into fitting into his palm.

Ajax doesn’t look at the little knife because suddenly, it’s all that he has left of home, and he wishes that he had a nicer reminder of where he should be. He keeps his eyes on the carcass before him instead. The harsh red tint darkens all colour, and his heart aches with terror and desperation. The wolf’s blood is black, and so is his poisoned water, and so are the deadened eyes of the wolf.

It seems to swallow him in its depths, and for a second, Ajax cannot tell where he starts, and the wolf ends in their locked gaze. A blink jars himself out of the connection, and he rubs his dry eyes as a shudder runs through his spine. The last thing he wants is to be stuck in a moment like that.

Ajax is suddenly reminded of a moment with his mother; he had asked where dead people go. She cradled him in her arms, back when he was smaller than her sickly frame, and she whispered into his hair that they went up to the stars, and the light in their eyes simply moved from their bodies to the skies. A beautiful idea, so beautiful in that his loved ones would always watch over him, but then his mother stared at him hard, small hands cupping his cheeks. And she told him never to look into a dead person’s eyes.

(Because when you gaze long into the Abyss, the Abyss also gazes back into you.)

She told him that it was disrespectful, but now he thinks that was an excuse she gave because she didn’t want to tell him everything.

Here, wherever he is, there are no stars. The moon lies in three fragments, unmoving. The sky is cast a red darker than blood, and Ajax cannot see past the thick haze overhead that takes the place of clouds.

So where has the soul of the wolf that he slew gone?

Ajax doesn’t want to know.

He’s tired, and he’s so, so hungry.

Maybe this is his rendition of hell—of where the damned and the denied go—because he had been selfish and selfless enough to abandon his family; because he had been stupid enough to run through the Witch’s Ring even when everyone had said not to.

All he wants now is to go home .

But there’s no way back now, and everything he sees around him is in desolation, not even weeds, much less a telling direction to set out for. There are shadows in the corners of his eyes, flitting about, and Ajax can never catch them no matter how quickly he whirls around. The feeling of being watched creeps in, and the tiny hairs on his arm stand on end.

Stomach growling, Ajax can’t help but think that the hilt of the knife feels slippery in his fist even though his grip is more than white-knuckled. A sour smell hangs in the air, but his hunger has already started to overpower everything else. There is an ache in the bottom of his gut, and Ajax wishes he hadn’t lost his bread.

Dangerously, his gaze strays to the wolf once more.

Eat.

But he remembers the poison in the air, the poison he controlled only for a few seconds, and it had been deadly. Ajax has no fire or water, nothing to clean the innards of the wolf. Nothing is standing between him and dying the same way he killed the wolf.

Eat.

But there’s nothing else.

Eat .

There’s nothing guaranteeing his return home, nothing to show that he would survive if he did or didn’t-

Eat.

Poison is better than starvation, Ajax decides absently, already taking cutting into the fragile body of the dead wolf. He eats messily, blood dribbling down his fingers and chin as he tears into the raw meat. He forgets himself at that moment while he is too busy tearing into his food with a ravaging hunger he didn’t know he had.

There is no flavour on his tongue past the taste of ash. Yet, he cannot be satiated.

Eateateateateat-

His teeth are blunt; too blunt to rip meat apart properly. Ajax isn’t thinking when he raises the blade to his mouth. He doesn’t register anything he does until pain flares in his teeth from where he shaves off enamel into something sharper .

Ajax screams.

But his arms are not his own, and they continue sawing off the edges of his teeth. Pain in his teeth starts shooting up his jaw and into his head. He finally tastes something—copper—when the knife nicks his tongue. The pain in his mouth is overwhelming, and then, it is overwhelmed by an outside impact on the back of his head.

Ajax crumples to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

The woman behind him grimaces.

She contemplates mercy-killing the child. She had seen his abysmal attempt at survival, and it would be kinder to let him go.

But she doesn’t.

(She remembers a boy with blue hair and stars in his eyes).

She carries his sleeping form back to her temporary camp instead, setting him in front of a ruin brazier. He lies on his side, so that he doesn’t choke on the blood in his mouth. Not ungently, she pulls his mouth open and inspects the cut he inflicted on himself.

It’s small but bleeding heavily. She doubts that the boy has experience in using Abyssal energy with how he bothered using his vision in here, so she has to heal it for him before he dies.

Siphoning the energy out of the air is a simple feat, and the woman steadies her hands on his jaw as the cut stitches itself close.

She pries the knife out of his grip. It’s not particularly difficult, but she is surprised at the number of calluses on his skin. He’s not some son of a nobleman who took a wrong step then. Placing his knife next to him but far away enough that he doesn’t accidentally stab himself, the woman inwardly berates the boy.

He was stupid for leaving himself so vulnerable. Granted, he had managed to kill the already half-dead wolf with mediocre mastery over a vision, but he somehow got stuck in the situation in the first place. Drawing attention from all the predators within the vicinity including herself was not the best idea, and the boy didn’t even do it on purpose.

(She remembers a boy who wore a practised smile for audiences, then turned and bared his fangs at his enemies. Sometimes, he couldn't tell the difference between the two, and she wishes she had taught him.)

Utter and complete fool, he is.

Because the soul of the wolf clung to him, and he succumbed to it.

(She remembers a boy called a prince, a hope, and never a boy).

The woman watches him, shoulders tense as if waiting for him to wake at any moment and attack her even as she cautions against the emptiness of their surroundings. She had killed everything around them, but it paid to be careful.

Dried blood is smeared across his chin.

The woman scowls, drying meat in the inadequate heat from the ruin brazier.

It would be kinder to kill him.

(But she remembers a boy).

Chapter 3: Section B: Surviving the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

Step 2: Find a Teacher

Ajax does not wake peacefully.

He’s dragged up by the arm forcefully, blunt nails digging into the dirty skin of his arm as a sharp hiss tells him to move. Ajax stumbles. The hand latched onto him belongs to a much taller person, so he’s barely got his feet on the ground.

He wants to struggle, to pull away, but the grip is so much stronger than he is.

“We have to move unless you want to die.” The sneer on her face splits the scar across her lip, tearing her face into two uneven halves.

Ajax doesn’t know who this person—lady, now that his eyes have adjusted and he’s seen her—is but she seems like a better option than oversized wolves that played with their food.

“Listen to me carefully, child, the plague is coming, and when it does, lie as flat as possible and cover as much skin as you can.” She glances at him surreptitiously, tossing him a thick blanket. “Do not come out until I tell you to.”

She presses down on his shoulders.

“If they see you, hide in the river.”

There is a buzz in the air, the sound almost palpable.

“Go!” She hisses, pushing him.

Ajax stumbles, clumsily putting one step in front of the other towards the direction of the red river. Something in him shrinks, telling him to hide as the sound grows louder.

He can’t help the hairs on his arms that stand, and the smell of his own fear. Ajax whimpers at the unknown enemy, huddling down with the tarp wrapped tightly around him. It’s hot underneath it, but the cocoon makes him feel safe.

It lasts only for a second, but Ajax can feel every part of him go into overdrive when the vibrations in the air grow to a distinct cacophony of wings.

He’s trembling and shaking with a fear that isn’t really his, and it lasts up till the noise is long gone and the woman prods him. Ajax doesn’t move—he can’t. The woman pulls the tarp off of him instead, rolling him over and watching with hard eyes as he scrambles backwards.

Rocks dig into his palms, but he can hardly feel the pain with the amount of adrenaline in his veins.

“Get up,” She commands, and when he doesn’t move, she scowls, scar twisting again. “Do you want to die now or later?”

The woman is already rolling up the tarp and marching away.

At a loss, Ajax pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the sweat that has gathered in the hollows of his knees and the crooks of his elbows. There’s nowhere else to go, and at least she seems like she knows what she’s doing.

The woman is tall, now that Ajax has a better look at her. She’s built slender, limbs long and lithe and rippled with corded muscle. There are other scars dotted across her skin, and she wears them like jewellery. Her black hair is cropped messily short to the base of her head as if she takes a knife to it whenever it gets too long. Her back is straight, shoulders set and chin parallel to the ground, even under the weight of the many blades and packs she carries.

Taller than anyone he knows, Ajax thinks.

He follows behind her, trailing in her impossibly large, silent footsteps. When Ajax finds his voice again, it comes only a little hesitantly.

“Where are we?”

She ignores him.

Okay, he can ask something else. Eyes lingering on dilapidated abandoned houses; gardens full of weeds; powder-white bone peeking through dead bushes, Ajax swallows and tries not to feel as fearful as he is.

“Where are we going?”

Silence.

“What happened to the moon? Where are the stars? Why is everything red?”

She swirls around, pinning him with a glare but not saying anything. Ajax does his best not to shrink, timidly asking, “Who are you?”

Her eyes narrow, looking past him for a second before coming back into focus.

“If I tell you, will you shut up?”

He tries for a toothy grin, and it comes out awkward.

“My name is Skirk.”

“Hi, Skirk, my name i-” Skirk interrupts him this time, patience wearing thin as she turns around again and continues forward.

“Idiot child. I’ll leave you behind if you tell me your name,” She bites out harshly, and it’s almost venomous, so Ajax takes the hint this time and snaps his mouth shut.

He isn’t sure where they're going. Skirk hasn’t said anything, nor has she stopped him from following her when he’s sure she could kill him faster than he could blink.

It feels like they've been walking forever. Ajax no doubt has sores and blisters on his feet with how his soles sting and burn with every step he takes from the continuous journey over grainy terrain. The ground here is nothing like the smooth ice and snow of home. He opens his mouth to whine, already set on being a pest, when Skirk speaks.

“This is the Abyss, as it is known to you overworlders.”

Ajax’s feet aren’t stinging as much now; he figures it’s because they’ve stopped moving. Stone walls covered with mould and ivy rise up and tower above him, and the gateway in the middle has its jaws gaping wide. Ajax is almost afraid to step in, but Skirk has started walking again, long strides taking her twice as far as Ajax can cover in the same number of steps.

He scrambles to catch up with her, almost missing the whisper that falls from her lips as they step into the dead city.

“Welcome to Khaenri’ah.”

There is no natural way to tell the time in the Abyss as far as Ajax is concerned. At any hour of the day (or night, he’s not very sure anymore), the three pieces of the moon hang in what he calls the sky, but Skirk scoffed at that and said it should be called the ceiling instead. She tells him when to sleep and when to wake up, and they rest twice in between journeying to eat, so he keeps track of time like that.

After three so-called ‘days’ in Skirk’s company, Ajax learns that for all her brash and harsh manner, Skirk is nowhere as threatening to him as any of the monsters. In fact, she’s rather protective. (She still refuses to learn his name though).

When they were walking through the city of ruins, Ajax had managed to bring up enough sore topics to know that she would simply ignore him if she didn’t want to answer.

The first was when he asked which house she lived in. She had glanced at him with a horrible chilling look that was a terrible cover for sadness while maintaining her silence. The second was when he asked if there was anyone else. Skirk let her head drop back to stare at the broken moon.

“Not anymore,” she whispered.

Ajax found himself strangely apologetic. He liked her. Skirk ignored him most of the time, but she taught him how to hold his dagger properly even if she did flick his wrist every time it was wrong. And she didn’t treat him like a monster for having a vision, only like an idiot for trying to use it here.

“How do you tell the time if the sun never rises?” He changed the topic unceremoniously, craning his neck to follow her gaze. And she snorted at the question, or maybe at the less than subtle switch of the subject.

“There is no sun in the Abyss, child, don’t make the mistake of thinking that light is a good thing. If you can see, so can every other creature around you.” She looked at him, a weary ghost in her face. “The time… it’s measured according to the tide of natural Abyssal energy in the air.”

He didn’t ask what Abyssal energy was, and she didn’t explain.

The third is now.

Skirk kills a monster effortlessly, flicking the blood off her blade as she rolls out a crick in her neck. Ajax, as usual, stands at the side, out of the way, in safety. He hates it.There’s a buzz of adrenaline in his veins, fingers stretching like claws he doesn’t have, half-sharpened teeth baring themselves, and the urge to pounce raring. But he’s so weak he’ll die the moment he gets anywhere near the fights.

(Eat).

He ignores that voice. (Or tries to; it’s very loud.)

“Train me,” he all but demands of her. Ajax can see the moment shutters block out her eyes, and she begins to resemble a gelid statue. She turns away but doesn’t say no. “Please?”

He doesn’t get an answer for days. In fact, he never really gets an answer, but at some point their marches through the city become runs back and forth until his body is aching with exhaustion, picking out different kinds of creatures, learning what water source is poisoned and what is not—everything he needed to know to survive this place.

Then she starts teaching him different forms, drilling attacks and blocks into his muscles until it's instinct. Ajax, more often than not, feels like a bruise. But some things are necessary, and the fastest way to get strong enough to return home is to be taught, even if it’s under a master who refuses to learn his name.

He could be the little prick he is and blurt out his name anyway, but that had a good chance of Skirk simply leaving him after that. It’s the only thing she’s ever enforced, and Ajax would hate to lose his only companion.

Sure, she never smiles or praises him, but somehow the approving nod at something he does right after hours of practice means more than anything else. Or it may be because those days, Skirk gives him a larger portion of food and lets him sleep a little longer. The woman tries to hide it, but it’s telling when she forces him to wash out whatever injuries he has at the river after a particularly dangerous hunt and when she scuffs him over the head gently for being an idiot.

It’s nothing like the village.

Ajax isn’t sure if it’s a good thing or not.

Eventually, Skirk hands him one of the blades she keeps on her back and teaches him how to use it beyond the sharp end goes the other way. It’s heavy in his hands, far heavier than the rusty dagger he stole from his father. But she trains him with it, until it's a sharper extension of himself rather than the unwieldy blade it would be for anyone else.

And only then does she let him join her.

Hunting in the Abyss is very different from hunting in the overworld. For one, the Abyss’s natural lighting is at least ten times darker. For another, while you hunt in the Abyss, everything else is also hunting you. There is no ‘prey’ in the Abyss. Everything is somehow adapted to be able to kill you, even the trees. Especially the trees.

Of course, there’s a hierarchy of monsters. The wolf Ajax killed on his first day here was one of the common ones, easily found, easily fought but not much to gain.

The first step of hunting is to find what you’re looking for. The second is to launch a surprise attack, but unless it’s extremely low on the hierarchy (like the wolf), it’s unlikely to die from the first hit. Thus, the third step is always to follow up with a swift attack to kill the creature as fast as possible.

Skirk never lets Ajax kill the hunts in the Abyss.

She lets him handle the entirety of the hunt except for any moment they have to kill. It’s not that she’s trying to coddle him or protect him. That would never help him survive here, but there’s something stopping her, and he has a feeling he experienced it when he first arrived.

“Why don’t you ever let me kill?”

Skirk is silent, going through the familiar motions of sharpening her blade as Ajax skins and prepares the monster. Its hide would be good for keeping warm when the tide changes, and they have to dry and salt the meat to let it last longer. They never do anything with the bones, but Skirk keeps them in a separate pack, carrying them to wherever they’re walking.

She watches him with one eye, clicking her tongue when he carves a little too deep. Ajax pulls his knife back automatically, looking at his mistake.

“You’re asking the wrong question.” The boy takes a pause, pulling back to crane his neck to the ceiling. He’s had the question in his mind for a long while… ever since he killed that wolf and gained that ravenous hunger.

“...Where do your dead go?” Ajax asks instead, staring up at the dark nothingness, already knowing and dreading the answer.

Skirk stops running her blade over the whetstone, looking at him bathed in the broken moonlight.

“Where do yours?” She murmurs, almost as if she doesn’t mean for the words to be spoken out loud.

“Above, they go to the stars to watch over the living.” There are no stars in the Abyss for the dead.

“How romantic,” she says near-apathetically. “Here, the dead cling to their killers. Souls latch on to the living and imprint their wills as legacies. You’ve felt it before with the wolf.”

His jaw aches; pinpricks on the insides of his mouth serve as reminders that he will never be alone again.

(Eat).

“Is that why you don’t let me kill the hunts?”

Skirk returns her gaze to the blade, whetstone in her hand as she continues to sharpen it again. She jerks her head at the beast whose fallen-over carcass is a head taller than Ajax, a sign to resume working.

“Every being in the Abyss generates some form of Abyssal energy to combat the taint in the realm. Fighting fire with fire, essentially. In the Abyss, the dead do one of three things; latch onto their killer, latch onto nature, or disperse into nothingness. Any way, the Abyssal energy that their souls generated must go back to something; the one who earned it, the one who is there, or the Abyss itself. You carry the wolf’s legacy on your soul because you killed it. When I found you, you weren’t able to resist its voice even though you were strong enough to kill it.”

She looks up at him now.

“When your mind is strong enough to resist, I’ll let you kill.”

Chapter 4: Section B(i): Surviving the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

(i) Weather Issues

The first time Ajax experiences rain, he turns fifteen. He can barely believe that he’s spent a year in the realm. But at the same time, he knows he’s grown because his swords don’t drag on the ground if he sheathes them on his back like Skirk.

The three-piece moon is smothered with thick clouds of poison green, and the land’s usual red haze turns near-black. It doesn’t affect their visibility, not after spending so much time in the Abyss. Ajax has long since gotten used to seeing in the dark.

There’s a sense of urgency in the air. Skirk’s nose twitches, eyes darting up to the ceiling of the Abyss. Something in her shifts, and she picks up the pace.

“It’s going to rain. We must find shelter.”

With that, she speeds ahead of him, and Ajax grumbles under the weight of the pack she has started making him carry as he follows as fast as he can. That old sailor in the market has told him old folk stories about the rain, where the sea and the sky were separated lovers, forever longing for each other.

The waves would rage for the sky, rising as high as they could go in towering fury and desire, and it would never reach the clouds. And in its anger, the sea would drown everything else, swallowing and capsizing ships. The sky, in mourning, would cry for being separated from the sea.

There is neither sea nor sky in the Abyss, but somehow, Ajax thinks that the thundering shower here wouldn’t be any different in power except for stronger. When he finally catches up to Skirk, he’s only half-panting. He supposes all the stamina training she makes him do has finally amounted to something.

“I didn’t know that... it rains in the Abyss.” She’s slowed down enough for him to run alongside her, but the pace itself is brutal, broken huts blurring past them. He wonders what it would look like—maybe like a blizzard but thinner, lighter… greener by the looks of the clouds.

“You don’t know a lot, child.” She takes a sharp turn, and a large temple structure looms in the distance. Its roof is mostly intact and it would provide adequate shelter from the rain. A building like that, though, usually houses some sort of monster high up on the hierarchy. Ajax grins, sharpened teeth cutting through his bottom lip as he chews it in anticipation, tasting blood on his tongue. The smell attracts monsters.

“The Abyss is far and wide, and in some corners, there is nothing but rain, in others nothing but fire. The only constant is the river that flows carved its way through the land, sometimes water, sometimes lava, sometimes thick with electricity,” she explains. They dart through the slow-crumbling entrance just as the rain crashes all at once behind them.

Ajax peers into the green rain, feeling the sheer mass of impure water falling before him. The ground steams, eroding away where the rain touches it. Skirk stalks deeper into the building, lighting up a ruin brazier. The air is damp and wet, colder than it normally is, but nothing in the Abyss is like Snezhnaya’s cold. (Ajax wishes its weather were like his Motherland’s sometimes, just for a glimpse of home).

“Do you think I could use my vision to stop the rain from hitting me?”

“Not here, child. You don’t want to bring the gods’ eyes here,” she says sharply, voice taking on an edge. “Come inside, we need to go in deeper to make sure nothing else is alive.”

There it is again—child. Skirk says it like she’s calling him a brat; like he’s a fool and she’s an idiot for taking him in.

Ajax pouts as he turns away from the shower outside, ignoring the urge to make it dance to his bidding. It would be difficult, and that’s all the more reason to master it.

“You mean I’m going to make sure nothing else is alive.” His voice is petulant. Skirk raises a challenging eyebrow at him.

“Are you complaining?”

Ajax shakes his head. A fight now would be great. All the energy and the stupid wolf in his head has been driving him mad for a fight and a feast, no matter how much he tries to hide it.

As soon as they step into one of the corridors that split off, however, tension curls up their spines.

Ajax’s fingers grasp his dual swords with familiarity, dropping into a stance ready to pounce. The corridor opens up to another room, one with murals of suns and moons and sciences beyond his comprehension. His eyes dart around, and he corrects himself. This never used to be a temple. Skirk told him Khaenri’ahns didn’t worship gods.

This used to be a place of alchemy.

In the centre, a lone being stands, more humanoid than any other beast Ajax has come across. Its back is to them, and Ajax lunges .

Or he tries.

Almost immediately, a hand snags the collar of his shirt and throws him backwards. Skirk propels herself towards the being with the force, blade at the ready to decapitate. The boy stumbles more ungracefully than he’s ever been in the past year. He lands on his back, the breath knocked out of him.

Eat!

Ajax blocks the sound out, cringing at the cut on his leg as he stands up. He must have gotten it when Skirk yanked him away from the fight. His own blade has tasted his blood now—Skirk will never let him live it down.

He turns his attention to the fight again, irritation building. Skirk and the other being are locked in an impasse, blades against arm guards. The wolf is howling in his head now, and a migraine buds behind Ajax’s eyes. There’s prey right in front of him, but Skirk won’t let him have this fight.

That doesn’t mean he can’t interfere though.

Ajax palms at a small throwing knife. It’s another one of Skirk’s blades; the woman carried a small armoury with her. He pins his gaze to the other being, monster isn’t quite the right term for it… it’s too polished for that. And if Ajax strains his ears a little over the scrape of metal on metal, he can hear the makings of a conversation.

“Have you made your decision at last, Skirk?”

“No.” Ajax raises his hand, aim steady.

“Then, that in itself is your decision!”

He throws and-

-misses.

A line of blue cuts through the air, deflecting the blade. The lapse in its attention is all Skirk needs to dash out once more. The following fight is beyond Ajax’s capabilities. He’s left at the sidelines, unable to keep up with the clashes of steel and water. It lights his nerves on fire, adrenaline pumping in his veins as he itches to be the one who cuts through water with a blade.

‘Blue,’ he thinks, ‘Hydro.’

Inside his pack, Ajax’s vision seems to weigh impossibly heavy.

“A child? I see. The Princess will know of these developments” The being growls out, head turning away from Skirk as it jumps back in retreat, putting space between the two of them. “The Order has let you have your time of mourning for far too long, General. We expect you to return within two lunar phases’ passing. Any later, and you will be branded a traitor.”

The air behind the creature splits, tearing into the fabric of space. Stars are splattered across the portal, and Ajax can’t help the step he takes forwards at the sight. The creature floats into it and out of sight, and the portal winks out of existence.

Immediately, Ajax turns his attention to Skirk as he barges fully into the room.

“Who was that? How was he using Hydro? I thought you said people don’t have visions here.” The child’s voice is almost accusing, but Skirk can barely find it in herself to give him a sharp look.

“A herald,” she says, “From an era long forgotten.”

She forcibly loosens her grip on her blades, jaw unclenching as the fight seems to drain out of her. Skirk sighs. She’s been hoping that she could keep the child out of the Abyss Order’s sights, but she also knows that he’d never pass up on a chance for a fight. And the way he’s near-bouncing on his feet with restlessness… Her eyes skim over the cut on his leg, but she makes no mention of it.

She gestures to the ground, telling him to sit as she takes her own seat opposite him.

“There are other people in the Abyss aside from me.” Skirk gauges his reaction to her words. “They call themselves the Abyss Order. They came about after the fall of Khaenri’ah to revenge against Celestia for the war itself. The herald you saw earlier is one of many. They are the vanguards of the Order, and they use Abyssal energy to manipulate water.”

Skirk kneads her fingers together, pushing and pressing on skin as if she could rub away imagined blood. It’s a bad habit.

“I am bound by blood and by duty to the Order, and no matter how long I stall for, unless I die, I am required to serve in it.”

“But you don’t want that,” he points out, betraying nothing in his expression.

“...no, the Order taints what it touches. Khaenri’ah already has a legacy of sinners.” She looks at the boy with an unreadable expression. “I think the past should die, lest the future be caught in the cycle of war and hatred.”

Skirk doesn’t tell him to make a choice. She doesn’t tell him he must become strong. She doesn’t tell him that if he stands against the Order then one day he will have to fight her. She doesn’t tell him that if he’s weak, she will kill him. But she thinks he hears it anyway when he looks at her with the same gaze he had when he asked her to train him.

Slowly, outside, the rain stops.

Chapter 5: Section B(ii): Surviving the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

(ii) Abyssal Energy

Ajax’s first kill that Skirk allows is an anti-climactic happenstance. There is no long, drawn-out battle or glorious victory. Instead, there is a routine hunt where he blindsides his prey, knocking the squirrel-like creature out of a tree and severing its spine.

It’s one of the first things that Skirk taught him; to incapacitate without killing. The method varies from monster to monster, but a knife in between what his teacher calls vertebra usually works. If it doesn’t, then blunt force trauma to the head should.

After the creature is no longer a threat, Ajax usually steps back as Skirk steps forwards. Normally, she sinks her blade through its neck in one smooth motion, decapitating it. Its head would thud on the floor, and she would kneel before it, closing its eyes and turning it away from the body. This time, though, Skirk’s fingers latch onto the collar of Ajax’s shirt before he can step back.

She pushes him in front of her, right in front of the creature’s neck. (Don’t call them monsters. They’re not the monsters here. Ajax wonders who Skirk is talking about.)

He’s surprised, to say the least. What does it mean to become stronger mentally? Or have the circ*mstances simply pushed Skirk to teach him? That herald had been… an awakening… for both of them.

Her hand is warm around Ajax’s as her calloused fingers guide his sword to the bobbing neck of the creature.

Prey.

Ajax co*cks his head to the side at the fluttering eyes of the squirrel. But that’s not quite right. It’s not a squirrel. It’s the size of a hunting dog. Should he feel sorry for it? Those fearful black eyes dart between his face and Skirk’s as if they can’t decide who would be a more merciful killer.

‘You’re not a monster. You’re a victim of the Abyss,’ Ajax thinks. ‘Too bad you tried to hunt the wrong prey.’

With a smile, he lets his sword fall.

Decapitation is not nearly as simple as Skirk makes it out to be. Ajax’s sharpened blade cuts through skin and tears through flesh easily, then it catches on bone, and he has to saw through the rest of the neck. The shrieks are haunting, ringing through his brain, and Ajax doesn't think he'll be allowed to forget it.

The cut is choppy and uneven, and both Ajax and Skirk grimace at it.

She nudges him towards where the head has fallen. The boy steps around the blood, kneeling before the head with his sword over his lap. He’s careful to avoid looking into its eyes as he closes them.

The Abyss is quiet. A collective hush sweeps through the atmosphere—a moment of silence for the dead. It holds him by the throat, leashing his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

Ajax feels something near imperceivable wash over him. It’s not something he would have noticed the first time he killed. An addictive rush lights his nerves on fire. It’s power and adrenaline like no other, like he’s bathed in the blood of his enemies and rejuvenated himself with their deaths.

‘Or maybe you were a monster,’ He amends. ‘Just too weak to fully realise it.’

Ajax can’t help the feral grin that overtakes his face even as the voices in his head rise to a shrill cacophony. It’s migraine-inducing, but right now, Ajax is on top of the world, and the legacies they leave to him might as well be white noise. (One tells him to eat and eat and eat, and another tells him to hunt and kill and leave a trail of bodies in the wake of a massacre).

The boy stands and turns to Skirk with his face split in two, a deranged simper cutting from ear to ear, and his body taut with energy. He wants to sink his teeth into her neck and claw her face apart with his nails. He exhales heavily in a show of ungodly self-restraint. Then, she jerks her head sharply, and he blurs into motion.

He attacks wildly, training and reflexes barely there in the savage brawling style he’s taken to. It’s almost sloppy, but then again, everything is sloppy to Skirk. Ajax jabs roughly at her neck, his mind seeing a fountain of arterial spray arching into the air. She sidesteps around him, always just a second faster than him, eyes curving in satisfaction when he begins to remember the things she’s taught him. (When he begins to remember himself).

He snatches up his forgotten sword and draws his second blade from its sheath on his back, locking away the voices to feed his own bloodlust. When Ajax lunges at her again, it’s with more finesse and grace.

He slashes and stabs, going for vital points. It’s useless though, Skirk is just better.She bats the flat of his blade away, not even bothering to draw her own swords. She doesn’t need it here; not when his arms are already burning with exertion and his movements are slowing down.

He spots an upward lilt to her right eyebrow, smugness radiating off every pore in her face. In a desperate attempt, he lunges at her near blindly, just wanting to wipe away that stupid expression that he can’t wear yet. Skirk doesn’t move, watching as his figure hurtles towards her. She digs her feet into the dirt, grounding herself as she drives her left elbow into his gut and flips him onto his back with his momentum.

Ajax loses the breath in his lungs, groaning as his swords clatter beside him. The forest is silent sans his harsh panting, and the voices in his head too have quietened. When his lungs are no longer on fire, he looks up at Skirk. She raises an unimpressed brow.

“Is it going to be like that every time?” Ajax asks, feeling off-kilter, like he has someone else’s energy running under his skin, like the voices in his head have grown far past just voices and instincts. Skirk scoffs at him, turning back to the head of the too-large squirrel.

“You learn to control it-” she tilts her head down and looks down at him from the corner of her eye- “Or you die.”

Skirk tosses something beside his face, and it embeds itself in the forest floor. Ajax turns to look at it; it’s his carving knife. She must have filched it when she threw him.

The woman gestures at the carcass.

Ajax sighs, pushing himself onto his feet as he shakes out the lethargy that gathers in his bones. It falls away easier than he thought it would, lightness pulling his muscles into a high—he almost trips over his feet when exhaustion doesn’t hit him like he expected.

Ajax is star-struck. Raising his eyes to look Skirk, he thinks he can get used to this. She returns his gaze with a knowing look and wary pride.

‘Oh,’ He realises, ‘This is power.’

Chapter 6: Interlude I: Vicissitude

Chapter Text

Interlude I: Vicissitude

[ Vicissitude, a change of circ*mstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant. ]

A lullaby, a warning and a taunt all wrapped into one resounded in Tonia’s mind.

(First into the cloud of fog, second past the still Witch’s Ring, third through the black bramble branches, last to slip and fall, and beware the one who returns home).

She kept a vigil just a step shy of the Witch’s Ring every day, waiting at her campfire with the soft hum of trepidation and fear in her bones. Tonia’s mother always sat at her back, watching out for wolves and bears, lest a predator be tempted by still prey and catch them both unaware.

Tonia laced her pink-tipped fingers together, staring blanking at the flickering orange of the fire. To her mother, she said it looked a little like her big brother’s messy hair. But then when her mother's lips pulled into a half-smile—like her big brother had stolen the other half when he disappeared—Tonia turned her face away and pressed the bones of her fingers together as hard as she could. (It didn’t help. The cold numbed everything.)

She had been the last person who saw him before he vanished. There were so many questions that followed from everyone else because of it, and her answers were always the same. No, he didn’t act weirdly or mention running away or pack enough for her to notice that anything was missing or even say goodbye.

One measly goodbye would have been enough, but Tonia wasn’t even worth that much.

(Stop looking at me like that. Stop staring at me like I know something and I’m hiding it, him, everything. I’m missing my brother too.)

A cough jolted Tonia out of her head as she snapped her eyes to her mother. The older woman’s face was flushed—more than it should have been in this weather. That rasping sound had started on the second day of Ajax’s disappearance. Tonia removed her scarf, wrapping another layer around her mother’s neck. The girl breathed through the cold as her mother shivered under her touch.

Take care of your mother, Tonia. There was no one else to do it anymore.

Night spilt into the sky faster than she’d hoped, and Tonia scooped snow into the fire. She hooked an arm around her mother’s, and they trudged home alone for the fifth time.

To Ajax,
Son of Ivan

I am writing to inform you, in relation to your liability to a call-up for national service, that you are required to submit yourself to a medical examination before a medical board.

The news of your vision has reached the ears of Her Majesty, The Tsaritsa. Should you be in good health, your position in the 8th Brigade has been guaranteed.

Mikhail,
Son of Ivan
Colonel of the 8th Brigade

Parchment crinkled in his fingers. It was the expensive kind found only in the capital. Silently, he placed the letter on the wooden table where his eldest son and daughter sat. Alexei took it without a word, eyes widening as they flitted from left to right.

“This is what he sends back?” Alexei snarled. “Ajax is missing and the only word that has come back from that ungrateful bastard is a conscription letter?”

The paper was thrown unceremoniously back onto the table. Alina reached for it, ignoring her brother’s blistering rage.

“It’s only been five days… He might have written another letter by now,” came their father’s placating voice, but it didn’t sound convincing even to himself.

“Don’t,” Alexei sneered. “Excuse Mikhail. He’s a colonel of the 8th, the right-hand man of a Harbinger. Any letter he writes is given priority and mailed within three days no matter where in Snezhnaya. Short of receiving a direct order from his Harbinger or the Tsaritsa herself, there’s nothing that can stop him from searching for his brother.”

Alexei sucked in a breath of frustration, teeth clenched as he pushed himself to his feet and began to pace.

“Even Alina came back from the capital.” His eyes darted towards his younger sister. The woman’s eyes became pointedly sharp, pinned onto Alexei for a moment.

“Of course I’d come back for Ajax, who do you take me for, Alexei?” She dismissed him, eyes moving back to the crumpled paper. The unsaid “My twin?” hung in the air.

Alina let her father and brother stew in the uncomfortable silence. It had been far too long since any of them met, and the men didn’t seem to know how to act around each other anymore. Call her manipulative, but how else would she have managed to get to where she was?

“Someone has to go in Ajax’s stead.” Their gazes snapped to her in synchronised alarm. “Mikhail- ” She spat her twin’s name, “-promised his Harbinger a vision holder. And if he doesn’t deliver, it’s his head and our family name on the chopping block.”

Alina leaned back onto her chair, eyes cast down.

“One baseline soldier is better than no soldier at all.” Her voice is soft, but in the quiet of the room, it cuts through the air with the heaviness of a death sentence.

Silence. No one in their right mind would volunteer to take the fall for Mikhail; every one of them knew joining the fatui was nothing less than permanent.

Until their father sighed. He reached for the paper between Alina’s fingertips, gently folding and tucking it away in the folds of his clothing. The chair scraped across the floor as he stood, and neither sibling could muster up a sound of protest.

“Take care of the family while I’m gone.”

His back disappeared into the hallway. Going to pack, Alina guessed.

‘That’s what I’m doing,’ She thinks, and her lips twist before she can stop herself. ‘One person is nothing in comparison to eight.’

Alexei, for all that he was an idiot and a fool, read the guilt and the bitterness on her face. He who was no better than her kept his silence, nails biting crescents into his palms.

Alina returned to the childhood room she shared with Mikhail, leaving Alexei to brood in the kitchen. As she stood in the doorway, a strange dissonance seemed to echo in her. This wasn’t how she remembered this room being. Something was missing from it—something that used to make it hers.

‘It might be wonder,’ She thought. ‘Childish wonder that I never really had.’

Alina ran a finger across the wooden doorframe. There wasn’t a speck of dust. Her mother had been wistful, perhaps full of longing for her three eldest children who never quite knew when to return home.

The girl stepped into the room for the first time in three years, taking in everything. Nothing had been removed or added, but somehow, nothing was the same anymore.

Alina moved to where her luggage sat, opening the suitcase numbly. She reached in, palming her electro vision quietly, purple barely glowing under her thumb.

Perhaps, Alexei was better than her. In the end, he didn’t send their father to his death, and she was still a mirror of her twin.

‘One to eight,’ She reminded herself, ‘One to eight.’

“Something wrong, Colonel?”

Mikhail relaxed the grip he had on the reply his father had sent him. It was cold and damp with Snezhnayan air, ink smudging in places. He picked his words carefully.

“Nothing big enough to warrant your attention as of yet, my Lady Harbinger.” He smiled that suave smile he’d perfected, knowing it would be seen through.

La Signora raised a fine eyebrow as she flicked her pen across her paperwork.

“I don’t like liars, Colonel.”

“You don’t like liars when they’re lying to you.” The smile grew wider, a touch more genuine, more uncontrolled. Signora raised her head languidly, waiting.

At Mikhail’s silence, she returned to her paperwork.

“I don’t particularly care for your younger brother, Colonel, but failure to deliver what you have promised… That would reflect terribly on the Eighth Brigade, wouldn’t it?”

He didn’t stiffen, but it was a close thing.

“Yes,” he said without inflexion, “It would.”

Chapter 7: Section B(ii): Surviving the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

(ii) Abyssal Energy—Off-Balance

Greed is a dangerous thing to have. It comes with hunger, and hunger comes with a taste of something better. Ajax would’ve only started calling himself hungry when he first killed that wolf.

(eat)

He would’ve only started calling himself greedy after he decapitated the squirrel.

(kill)

There’s a constant humming in Ajax’s veins now, and it tastes like power. It’s as if the voices in his head have leaked into his bloodstream and tear at him in different directions. So much power, so much indecision, and every bit of it makes him high. They want him to do different things, but those are all things he can do now. It’s impossible for Ajax to be unaware of the pool of energy that runs through his body. It’s wild and difficult to control, even more so than his vision, the way it courses through him, occasionally congregating at the base of his spine before dispersing through his veins again.

But when he does control it, when they don’t slip between his fingers because their intentions align, it’s like something snaps into place. Suddenly, Ajax can see more colours than he knew existed. Power buzzes in his muscles, and it makes him feel so light.

All too soon, the energy falls from his grasp like sand between his fingers, and he’s left gasping in the dark again.

Ajax does this for three tides, fighting for a say in his own body, in his own actions, and it gets easier and easier until the energy comes when he calls like a petulant cat clawing at its owner for something. Three Abyssal days of meditation and hunting without a single opportunity to kill, and something inside him hungers for more.

On the fourth day, Ajax can’t take it anymore.

Skirk said they were hunting a goose-like creature. It had wings like a penguin did, but its shape was all wrong for one. It should’ve been accurately called a goose, though, since Skirk called it one. Not that Ajax would know; he’d never seen a goose before.

He studies the goose, hunting knife poised and ready. It’s a fat bird, more than enough for their dinner. As it flaps its battered, feathered wings, two curtains of dirty white shimmer in the air.

The knife flies, blood paints white, and a cacophonous shriek fills the air.

(kill)

In one smooth motion, Ajax darts forward and runs his blade through the neck of the goose, power in his veins given by the agreement of the voices in his head. Its neck is a thin thing, much easier than the squirrel as he cuts through it like butter.

The world spins with a heady rush, and his vision blurs as he’s slammed into the ground. There’s a sword at his neck and a pair of burning eyes in his face.

“What-” Skirk’s voice is a mix of a growl and a rasp, so much more aggressive than the deadened tone she always uses. “-did I say about killing, child?”

Indignation flares, and Ajax laughs.

He laughs and laughs and laughs because if he doesn’t, he might just bite out all the things Skirk doesn’t want to hear and then she might really leave him to die. It bubbles out of his lips, like boiling rage that he can’t suppress, and he presses the blade into his neck a little. A bead of blood buds on his neck, but Skirk doesn’t relent. It cuts deeper into Ajax’s throat.

(Always just a child.)

When his laughter slips into frantic gasps for air, Skirk eases the sword away from him. She doesn’t stand or move to let him catch his breath.

“Do not kill without my permission.” Her eyes are hard, but they’re always hard, so Ajax simply nods. (He doesn’t take those words to heart). He bristles. He’s not a child. He hasn’t ever had the chance to be one.

Three days later, Ajax disobeys her again.

He’s collecting water from the river when he smells it. There was a pungence of fear in the air, like a little creature awaiting death. Latching onto the scent, Ajax forgets the wineskins by the riverside, poisoned water rushing across the banks.

His sight sharpens almost instinctively, gaze pinning onto a ball of fur by the edge of the dead forest. It’s a good distance away, but it feels Ajax’s eyes almost immediately, giving a terrified squeak and darting off into the forest.

He can’t help the grin that takes over his face. A chase is always fun.

Ajax closes the distance between them with his feet digging into the ground in time with his heartbeat. As he breaches the forest, the taste of the rabbit’s abyssal energy clogs his nose and his mouth waters. The whole forest is flooded with leaking energy, enough to ward off any other creatures.

It’s terribly easy, though, to find one creature in a dead forest.

There is mourning in the air as Ajax stares down dispassionately at the mutated rabbit. It whimpers as if in grief for itself.

He’s cut off one of its legs and given it a small cut on the side. Its brown fur is matted with pulsing blood, the wound trembling as it heaves out shallow breaths to stave off the pain. Ajax sighs, leaning against a tree stump by its side.

Gently, he runs his fingers through its fur.

‘Soft.’

He stares off into the dead trees, spreading blood on fur absentmindedly. A little tune rumbles from his throat, an old lullaby that his mother once sang to him, but his voice cuts off suddenly, choked. He can’t remember how it goes. (He misses home).

Ajax turns his attention back to the rabbit.

“You poor thing,” he says.

Then he snaps its neck with the same bloodied hand.

He co*cks his head to the side, running his tongue over his sharpened teeth. Ajax muses in the silence, nose wrinkling at the carcass by his thigh. Maybe he was wrong… all that power might have been nothing but a hoax-

The chant of eatkilllaugh crashes all at once. It rings in his head, overlapping beyond his control, beyond what he can ignore. He groans, hands cupped over his ears as a guttural scream leaves his lips. He’s keeled over, head pressed into the ground as he tries to drown out the sound, but it only grows to eatkilllKILLKILLYOURSELFSLITTHROATBLEEDDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE-

Then, all at once, his own voice loses itself and his body slackens. His eyes are blank as he sits up despondently. The ringing in his ears cease, but its intent has long since embedded itself into the sinews of his muscles, and that’s all the rabbit’s legacy needs.

Suddenly, Ajax feels so tired.

It’s like exhaustion has burrowed its way into the marrow of his bones, and all he wants to do is tear it out of his blood through his throat, but he doesn’t even have the energy to breathe, much less shout. (He wants to go home. He wants to stop. Isn’t this enough? Hasn’t he run long enough already?)

He raises his nails to his neck, energy-sharpened nails tracing his Adam’s apple. It would be so easy to end it now, and he thinks, ‘Why not?’

A small cut on the edge of his skin comes to life, and it dies small because his wrist is ripped away from himself and he’s thrown flat on his back. He thrashes. Sweeping a foot out to knock her off-balance. It only succeeds in making her retreat for a moment, but it’s all Ajax needs to dart backwards, a tree at his back as he snarls at her.

(Die changes to run, but somehow, he doesn’t move).

Ajax is feral, eyes dripping with desperation as he wants to push her away, cling to her, be one second too slow and let her hit all at once. He doesn’t want to die. (He’s never wanted anything more).

(Do you want to die now or later?)

Now.

(laterlaterlater)

He whimpers, like the rabbit, eyes flickering shut.

Skirk flickers forward, and she pins her forearm into his throat, red seeping onto her skin as the tree digs into his back. Her weight presses down against his struggling body and clawing hands. She floods him with Abyssal energy all at once, and he freezes like a deer in headlights.

“If you cannot obey orders, then you can die on your own,” she says into the silence, eyes burning right into Ajax’s, and for the first time, he realises that they’re a blazing blue.

Ajax is not her soldier, but Skirk will treat him like one because she doesn’t know how else to treat him for him to survive.

His darkened nails recede, and he latches onto Skirk’s arm as his vision blurs. She pulls away, and Ajax falls to his knees, coughing. He sniffles, frantically wiping away tears. The intent of the rabbit finally fades to a quiet whisper in the darkest corner of his mind, and somehow, it sounds like an apology.

Ajax thinks that it should’ve taken more than that for it to silence itself. But then again, it’s not exactly silent, is it? It takes up so much more room than any of the others, and he can’t help but wonder if it would really leave him alone.

Then his head flies to the side, cheek stinging from where Skirk had back-handed him.

“Stupid child!” Her voice is barely above a hiss, but there’s so much more rage than she’s ever held against him. “There is a reason I do not let you kill at your every whim.”

She points at the quickly rotting rabbit.

“That was not a creature that needed to die, nor did it need to die that way. It was a cowardly being, and that means if it didn’t remember its life before it became a monster, then it at least remembered that it never wanted to be that way.” She sucks in an inhale. “This world is not a stage for battle. It is the aftermath of a war, and if you cannot respect the dead, then you do not deserve to stay living.”

Ajax barely hears her, thoughts stuck on the weight in his mind that didn’t belong to him. He returns to himself with his head bowed, fingers digging into the ground as salt stings his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps out.

Skirk raises his head with a hand under his chin. It’s surprisingly gentle.

“Cruelty is not a good look on you,” she says, “Fight, and have mercy in a quick death.”

His tears fall.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, voice broken.

Chapter 8: Section C: Shelter in the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section C: Shelter in the Abyss

Khaenri'ah's Palace

For the longest time, they ignore the first point on the criteria for finding shelter. Skirk says it’s because there’s two of them there, and they always sleep in shifts. As long as one of them is awake to pick up on the changes of the environment, whether it’s the weather or a stray creature, there’s no real issue with sleeping out in the open.

They have a whole ritual before settling down, though, just to be safe. Skirk starts them off by marking a four-pointed star into a tree, carving into the bark with one of her blades and flooding it with her Abyssal energy till it bulges. It’s mouth-watering and repulsive, both bait and trap all at once.

Ajax wrinkles his nose at the smell, unsure of whether or not he likes its flavour. It’s nothing pungent, but he can’t help cringing at its concentration. He walks away from the beacon of a tree, leaving Skirk to scale the tree in preparation for the hunt. Five hundred paces away from the tree, Ajax begins marking a circumference, bleeding his energy signature into the ground with every footstep.

It’s rarely a calm thing; not when he’s assaulted by greedier creatures every seven steps he takes. Skirk refuses to let him kill any of them, calling it an exercise in control ever since that one time he lost control. He pumps them full of energy instead, frying their minds into a limp catatonic state.

It’s not the hardest thing that Skirk has made him do to earn the vice-like grip he has on the legacies he’s stolen. That title would belong to the time when Skirk made him float in the acidic part of the freezing river and continuously purify it while maintaining his body temperature and position. If he let the river move him, then it would’ve spelt death for him. Days of doing that brought his control up to par, and he can feel the effects when setting the perimeter becomes easier.

He retreats back to the tree after that, the barely-living bodies of the creatures slung over his shoulder as he stalks through the forest in silence. Usually, by the time he gets back to Skirk, she already has at least two fresh carcasses set over a crackling white flame.

She watches with a heavy eye as he decapitates the creatures he brought back, the motion smooth with practice. The constant draining of his Abyssal energy when setting the perimeter has prevented him from having imbalanced energy, but Skirk always has a careful eye on his energy levels.

She takes the first shift after he’s eaten, letting him sleep until the tide peaks.

Something changes one day. They make no pit stops for hunting, simply eating dried jerky from their supply. They run for hours, and Ajax knows even if they’d wanted to settle now, there wouldn’t be enough time to set up a camp without facing a lot more opponents than he’s used to. Skirk would’ve been fine, and she’d probably laugh at him trying to fight his way out of the mess, but they both appreciate their sleep. Having to wake her up would be the absolute worst.

When the forest runs out of dead trees, Ajax finds himself back in the abandoned city once again. They’d only come here once before; when he’d first met Skirk. She was on her way to collect scraps, only she ended up collecting him too.

Now they’re back here again.

Except this time, she doesn’t make them stop to ransack abandoned houses or restaurants, and Ajax is beginning to feel the ache in his muscles after running for so long. He flushes his legs with Abyssal energy, washing away the build-up of lactic acid.

He grits his teeth, and pushes on, keeping pace with Skirk.

She stops abruptly, kicking up dust and dirt with her boots as she stares before her. A castle towers up in the air, blotting out the lowest fragment of the moon. Ajax can only see its silhouette in front of the moonlight, and its stark shadow against the sky of the realm was cast in silence.

The river runs around the castle, runes etched into the walls of the moat to turn the river bubbling with electric fire. Skrik steps onto the bridge unhesitantly, muting her energy signature as quietly as her footsteps on old stone.

Ajax follows in step, clamping down on his legacies.

There’s a strange tension in the line of Skirk’s shoulders, and Ajax is hit with the sudden epiphany that he doesn’t have to crane his neck to look at it anymore. Their run has slowed to a quick set march, and even though his mentor doesn’t like returning to this place, her shoes begin to clack on the broken stone floor. Ajax wonders if it’s the palace’s way of saying ‘Welcome home'.

Ajax creates a mental map as they trudge deeper into the castle, taking winding stairs down and down until he’s confused himself with the layout of the building. As they step out onto a landing and into another identical corridor, something in his mind perks up in familiarity.

He’s never been here before. (He has through another life, through the eyes of a timid rabbit.)

The arches and columns of stone here are lit with torches powered with Abyssal energy in the air. It’s easier to breathe here, where there is less of the Abyssal taint in the air, and the walls rise up in nostalgia. This was a fortress once.

They meet the end of the corridor suddenly, double doors blocking their way forward. Ajax raises his head to admire the twisting silver branches that overflowed onto the wooden door. He thinks it would feel cold, but in the Abyss, he’d never know without touching it himself.

Skirk closes her fingers around the silver handles and drops the slightest bit of energy into them. Ajax watches in awe as the silver lights up blue, like water flowing through cracks. The branches glow and something shifts.

And with a heave, the door swings open.

Skirk steps in without hesitation, so Ajax follows after with only a careful sniff. It sends him sneezing from the dust in the air, and his mentor gives the slightest snort of amusem*nt. She lights the room up with a careful flick of a switch and another drop of energy, and it opens up into warmth.

Ajax has never seen so many books on one shelf, much less in one place. He drops his bag on the floor uncaringly, walking towards the closest bookshelf. He stops himself suddenly, jerking as he remembers he’s not alone. Ajax turns back to Skirk, who’s looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

He sniffs, turning away to hide his embarrassment.

“Why are we here?” Ajax asks, petulance heavy in his voice.

Skirk seems to mimic his first reaction to entering the library. She drops her bag onto the floor carelessly and marches towards the shelf he was walking towards before.

“We’re going to clear out the palace.”

She pulls out a scroll from the shelf and walks to the nearest table. It unfurls with one smooth motion, and Skirk beckons him over. It’s not the answer that Ajax wants, but it’s the only one that Skirk will give and he knows it from her emphatic expression. He glances down from her face to look at what she’s studying, frowning.

His mental map looks nothing like the blueprint of the castle.

Chapter 9: Section C(i-iii): Finding Shelter

Chapter Text

Section C: Shelter in the Abyss

(i-iii) Libraries, Armouries, and Kitchens

C(i): libraries

In the library, there are books that Ajax cannot touch. They repel him the moment they pick up on even a little bit of his energy. They somehow generate some kind of barrier that is almost identical to his signature, and his body always rejects it when it comes close. He’s learnt that if he filters out the rabbit’s energy, though, he can pick out the books safely.

Ajax doesn’t know if it’s because the rabbit’s energy on its own is the furthest thing from his own, or if it’s because of the waves of familiarity of being in this room. Either way, he’s only a little resentful that the books have better control than him. He hadn’t stayed in the freezing river for days just to be shown up by paper.

When he manages to gingerly peel a book out of a shelf, though, he’s thoroughly surprised by the world that presents itself before him. He barely knows what he’s reading, but he can’t seem to stop. It’s like falling into another abyss, but this time, he’s not sure he wants it to end when it’s a better adventure than any story he’s heard before.

After that, he can’t stop. Ajax hunts for another book, carefully tamping down on his Abyssal energy as he flips every page. This time it’s filled with creatures he’s never even dreamed of, much less seen. And when he swallows that too, he finds another and another and another.

It doesn’t take long for him to find a diary. It takes him even less time to absorb everything about it. He reads in quiet horror about watching loved ones turn into monsters because of a curse and a desperate yearning for revenge that surpassed the yearning for survival. (He would be the same if it happened to his family— his family whose faces he can’t quite remember .)

The reminder that Ajax still hasn’t gone home slaps him in the face. Since when did his goals change from finding a way home to growing stronger? At some point, he’d become more focused on being able to keep up with Skirk rather than being able to keep up with Skirk enough to find an exit.

“If you’re done with that, child, put it back.” Skirk’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts. He’s gotten to the point where the suddenness of her interruption doesn’t send him flying away from the book. It’s not a reminder Ajax hasn’t heard before, but he merely takes note of where he’s stopped and closes the diary, pushing it away from himself. The darkened blotches on the bound leather bring sourness to his tongue. He turns his attention back to Skirk. “I barred this entire floor already, but if a creature breaks through from the lower floors, then we’ll have to ward the area again.”

That meant they were probably going down to clear out the next level. She throws his empty pack at him, and he catches it while making a face, glad to have something to take his mind off the diary.

“We’re going to the kitchens.” She turns, adjusting her belt buckles and sheaths. “Oh and child?”

Ajax tilts his head in question, not trusting his voice yet. Skirk peels her eyes from the book on the table back to his face. Her lips tilt upward, and Ajax will swear there’s some kind of cruel approval in her blue eyes. His energy remains calm even as he swallows with a too-dry throat.

“Kill everything.”

C(ii): kitchens

Food and water aren’t nearly as accessible inside the underground palace as it is outside. It was one of Ajax’s first concerns when Skirk said they would be using their stock instead of hunting for fresh meat. There is a plumbing system in the kitchens, according to the castle plans, but the system for clean water is broken.

The two of them don’t have to worry about purifying the water, but if Skirk really wants to clear out the castle like she said—to make a base—then they needed fresh water because they were supposed to be safe here.

Once they take a look at the problem, they can see if there are any books on fixing self-sustaining runic systems. But first, they have to purge everything in the kitchens.

They exit the landing silently, not meeting a single creature as they move. Skirk inclines her head every few moments, and Ajax realises it’s because he’s become so used to hiding his energy from the books that he’s still doing it now. Skirk actually needs to use her other senses to know if he’s keeping up with her now.

It brings something smug onto his face, and Skirk wrinkles her nose. Ajax knows the only reason he doesn’t get scuffed on the head then is because they’re trying to be silent.

They slow by the corner, peeking around the edge to find the next corridor having creatures crawling all over it. Ajax pauses next to Skirk, and she nods. To which he responds with a feral grin, his blades cutting through air as he rotates his wrists. Then he takes a step forward, and blurs-

And two heads roll.

He flicks blood off his blades, inhaling deeply as he watches the rest of the creatures pause, hesitating. These ones weren’t used to hunting each other. They’ve been living together, ransacking the palace for things they could find.

These ones were once citizens of Khaenri’ah. They were much too intelligent for anything otherwise.

“Three more.” Skirk’s voice drifts across the room, sounding hard even as she gives the command and it spurs everything into action. Ajax lunges at the nearest creatures, a blinding grin on his face as the rush of power builds and builds. He’s painted with blood, and in the lighting of the kitchens, he can see the colour purple.

He’s always thought blood would be red like in the overworld.

Ajax barely blinks at the cajoling that begins in his head. The voices had never sounded so sentient before or so full of wanting of him. These ones are excitable, bursting with non-malicious intent because all they want is to survive .

He flinches away from them at first, immediately clamping down on the noise in his mind and dispersing the voices. It’s almost staring into the overworld’s sun, and Ajax feels a little blind-sided from how little he expected the compliance. They hush themselves, moving along with his direction without complaint, and Ajax can’t help but look at Skirk.

Not even the rabbit was like this, and he too was once human.

Skirk’s not paying attention to him, though. She’s hidden her energy signature as well, far beyond anything Ajax can sense.

“This is where it starts,” she says, and Ajax knows she’s fully prepared to throw him into the fight alone as a test for his training. Skirk steps over the fallen bodies of her once comrades, towards the doors at the end of the corridor. They’re identical to the library entrance, runes marking its hinges with dull silver branch handles.

Neon blue flows like a river through the silver, and the branches come to life as the door heaves inward with a groan.

Light spills into the kitchens from the outside, but it doesn’t reach even halfway to the back wall. Immediately, Ajax’s body loosens, gearing up for a fight as six eyes peel open and hissing starts.

His eyes glow with Abyssal energy, and he grins at the abomination before him. Maybe this is what Skirk meant by monsters.

It’s nothing compared to him.

Kill.

Half the kitchen is covered in some kind of purple slime when Ajax is done. He grimaces at the stickiness of it on his clothing. The last thing he wants right now is a dip in the river. He’s had enough of that for this lifetime.

“Not bad, child,” Skirk comments as she avoids the goo. “You could’ve left less of a mess.”

Ajax scrunches his nose at her, huffing. A migraine is starting to set it. It’s strange; that’s never happened without the urge to do something he absolutely would not want to do. Now it just feels like his brain is being squeezed.

“You fight the giant slime monster next time then.”

“Start packing.” She gestures absently to the pack that is also covered in slime. Ajax grimaces but picks it up anyway. Skirk kneels by the dead runes, studying the systems. “That was an amalgamation—amalga for short. That’s what happens when the sentient ones gain too many legacies and lose too much of themselves. They become one combined mindless mass of its strongest desires.”

Ajax swallows, opening the drawers mechanically and taking anything that could be salvageable. That could’ve been him. If Skirk hadn’t found him fast enough-

‘Do you want to die now or later?’

“Those ones were monsters before they turned.” Skirk stands, making her way past him as she leaves. The words are a cold comfort—Ajax doesn't remember the time before he became a monster. “The systems can be fixed, but I need to look over the schematics again.”

Silently, he gathers the things he’s collected and follows her back to the library.

C(iii): armouries

“The ones here are different,” Ajax says, still staring at one of the humanoid creatures. It was missing an eyeball.

Skirk walks past him, straight to the doors again. She hasn’t bothered with unsheathing her blade.

“These ones were bred for war.” She waits until he’s stood up again and moved to her side, gesturing to the bodies. “My soldiers.”

“You were their commander?”

Skirk’s lip twitches, almost like she’s not sure if she wants to frown or smile. (She had been proud of them, never proud of what she made them do).

“I was The Commander .”

Ajax doesn’t know what to say to that, so he simply laughs.

“Can I open the doors?”

She eyes him for a good long minute before making way before the doors. He grins excitedly, hands latching onto the silver handles. But the moment he releases the dam on his energy, he’s blasted away from the doors, flying across the room and into the far wall.

There’s a chuffing sound, and as Ajax sits up, rubbing his head, he realises the sound is Skirk’s laughter. He’s never heard it before. He supposes it’s fine to trade a bruise for that much. Still, he doesn’t appreciate reliving all the trauma he got from the books so he whines at Skirk until she does the equivalent of rolling her eyes and places her hands on the handles.

“I’ll deal with this one.” Ajax is left looking at her back. She’s as tall as the day he met her. “I was their commander after all.”

“Pick a new weapon.”

Ajax doesn’t take his eyes off of the display of weapons. They’re all dusty, but with the stasis cases still intact, they’re in perfect condition.

“Anything?” He asks distractedly, gaze still glued to the countless weapons on display. He wonders if Skirk knows how to use all of these. She probably did—does.

“Anything, child.” Her voice is unbearably soft, but Ajax doesn’t pick up on it.

He’s too busy staring at the warbow hung on the wall.

Chapter 10: Section C(iv): Shelter in the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section C: Shelter in the Abyss

(iv) Pyrrhic Victories

They fix the plumbing system within two days, and Ajax has his first shower in the past year and a half. He hasn’t realised how much he’s missed having heating until now, when he no longer has to actively circulate his energy to keep the nights warm. If you ask him, Ajax would never leave the palace if he doesn’t have to.

But he would’ve been blind not to notice how tense Skirk gets when the last floor is brought up.

They go together on their fourth day in the palace, with his heavy bow slung across his back. There’s no quiver that comes with it, but it’s carved and engraved with runes to help focus Abyssal energy. Of course, it is. His aim is terrible, but he figures out how to solidify his energy into an arrow. And if he’s more effective throwing the damn thing rather than shooting it, Skirk makes no comment, but he can feel her judging look from miles away.

There are no doors on the twelfth floor. There aren’t any corners to turn or any headache-inducing labyrinths. It’s a straight corridor from the stairway landing, and the room that it opens up to is bright enough that Ajax can almost see into it from where he is. There isn’t anything standing in their way, but something in the air is definitely wrong.

Skirk unsheathes her blades before they even start moving, and so does Ajax.

With every muted step they take forward, Ajax can feel his hackles rise higher. There’s a burning in his lungs, and he doesn’t remember when he started to hold his breath. But as he steps through the doorway, he loses the air.

The Queen is gorgeous, Ajax thinks. She sits perched elegantly on her throne, even in her state of mindlessness, as if her body remembers being the queen that she was. Her dress wraps around her chest in blue satin and silver silk, falling into layers of bloodied feathers from her waist to her feet and dripping down the crack-filled dais. A crown of flowers and thorns adorns her head, soaked red from every other monster she’s already killed.

Somehow, Ajax wonders if this is it. All the effort put into securing the palace to be thrown away at a monster in human skin. If he’s not careful, it would be his blood next on the Queen’s crown. He looks at his teacher for instruction because this is so far out of his league and he knows it.

But she’s not fairing that much better than him.

Skirk’s knuckles are clenched white around her blade, every muscle tight with tension and hesitation. It’s the last way she should be going into a fight. Her eyes are trained on the Queen, full of an emotion that Ajax has never seen on her before—fear.

But not for his life like him. Inwardly, he’s screaming at himself to move, to do anything at all, but he’s frozen to the spot under the Queen’s unnatural gaze.

(Do you want to die now or later?)

Skirk looks like she’s seen a ghost. Her fear twinges with loss.

The monster on the throne cranes its head mechanically, neck cracking as it returns Skirk’s gaze. Then, she croons sweetly, brokenly, so much more gently that she has the right to be.

“Sis...ter.”

‘Oh,’ Ajax thinks.

‘Oh.’

He’s outclassed. He’s so outclassed it’s not funny. Stupid fear. He can’t keep up with the fight at all. It’s not like that time with the herald. Here, he can’t even see the moments of impasse between the two, only the leftover firework of Abyssal energy clashing in the air. His bow is slippery in his palms.

Ajax thinks, ‘Amalga aren’t really monsters anymore.’

His legacies flinch at a particularly harsh ring of energy, a subconscious reflex to protect himself, and suddenly, he’s face-to-face with the Queen. He loses his balance, forgetting how to breathe under the pressure of her presence as his knees buckle. His bow clatters on the floor heavily. She grabs his face to hold him up, claws drawing blood from his cheeks.

Then, Skirk is there and she rips the Queen away from him. He can breathe again, but he’s shaking and every voice in his head is cowering.

It’s so quiet in his mind, he can hear one word that spills from the Queen’s lips.

“Childe.”

There is cacophony. Ajax’s soul, intertwined with all the souls he’s stolen, twists at the command, turning foul. Vaguely, he can hear someone’s screaming, and he thinks it might be him. His Abyssal energy is overflowing and ripping itself out of his body. It’s like he’s trying to hold back rapids with nothing but his bare hands. The legacies rebel, falling out of his grip like sand. They coalesce, thickening against his control and tightening around his body.

He’s not sure when he closed his eyes, but when he opens them again, he’s not seeing the right way. Everything is in black and white, save for the burning blue of Skirk’s and the Queen’s Abyssal energy. His muscles are trembling with power, black armour curves down his arms and extends into claws, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from moving from where he stands on the air.

Somehow, he’s sane enough not to lunge at Skirk the way every other part of him wants to. His eyes flicker back and forth, and when he sees the Queen, the voices tell him to obey; when he sees Skirk, the voices tell him to kill.

Their images blur together. Blue lit hair and eyes, differentiated only by a few shades.

(Do you want to die now or later?)

Skirk’s voice is stuck in his mind in a way no other legacy is—willingly—and that makes all the difference.

His claws sink into the back of his master’s sister. There’s a snarl of betrayal. Rebellion against his monarch. His nails draw black blood, but it’s ineffective, and he’s thrown off with enough force to send him crashing into the throne. (It doesn’t break, but it cracks).

That one moment of distraction is enough for Skirk to run a blade through the stomach of the Queen. The monster smiles crookedly and drives her hand through the same place on Skirk’s body and floods it with Abyssal energy in retaliation.

Choking on the blood dripping out of their mouths, they stumble away from each other, crumpling. The Queen whimpers a horrifying sound, injured and broken and waiting to die. She drags herself away from her sister, lower body limp as she leaves a trail of blood and feathers on the floor.

Childe shifts, the crack in his black armour already beginning to mend itself as he thinks, ‘Skirk.’ And suddenly, he’s in front of her, nausea dying as soon as it builds with a sear of Abyssal energy. She’s looking through him, too far away from the present. He cauterises the wound with his overflowing legacies, knowing that anymore more energy would kill her faster instead. Then, he pulls her back to safety. (There’s nowhere safe here).

When he turns back, the Queen has collapsed at the foot of the stairs, slowly choking on her blood. Skirk’s blood is bright blue on his hands and the Queen’s is a black that swallows everything. He drifts forward, feet never touching the ground as the pressure in the air somehow lightens.

The Queen looks at him like a wounded animal.

(Like a squirrel he once killed, her eyes dart between him and where Skirk lay, wondering who would be the crueller executioner).

Silently, he draws the sword from the sheath on his back and swings, decapitating her effortlessly. The voices shrill. His body drops like a stone, black armour melting off his arms like thick sludge.

He breathes, trying to remember how his lungs work around the abundance of energy running through his veins. When he gathers some semblance of his wits, he kneels by her side, scooping an arm under her knees and grabbing her head by the hair.

The ascension to the throne is slow as his armour drags, dripping off his body like tar. He props her body on the throne, her head held in her arms.

He walks down the dias, never turning his back to her body. At the foot of the stairs, he kneels again, then drops his eyes as he presses his forehead to the ground.

The voices in his head silence themselves.

His senses pick up on movement almost immediately, and he snaps his head up to find creatures slinking up from the shadows.

Something tells him if he throws the Queen’s body off the throne and takes her place now, he’ll be safe while every other creature fights it out to get to him. But doing that would mean leaving Skirk alone and vulnerable, and that is simply not an option.

Dealing with a power vacuum is the last thing on his mind now, so he reinforces his aching back and stinging cheeks with energy, picks up Skirk and high tails it out of the throne room. Something like approval hums in the back of his mind. The armoury and kitchen are already overrun with amalga and monsters again so he brings Skirk back to the library instead—where the runes are stronger.

Maybe it’s because Khaenri’ahn’s guarded their knowledge like it was their most precious resource.

Somehow, in his desperation, the doors peel back to let him in when he filters the Queen’s legacy to the forefront of his mind. There’s no word for him to put on what she urges him to do, but the amount of influence she has on him is scarily great. He buries her to the furthest corner of his mind again, resolutely not thinking about her, but it’s difficult when her presence is simply so big.

Skirk hasn’t taught Ajax how to heal his own wounds because she had acquiesced when he asked to learn how to use the bow first. It’s too late for him to regret that right now, but the moment Skirk wakes up, he’s going to make sure that she teaches him how.

(She will wake up. She has to.)

Ajax slams another book shut, frustration and fear building in the back of his throat. Text after text after text tells him that there’s nothing he can do about Abyssal overloads except to place Skirk in a stasis barrier. She’s been lying in the innermost corner of the library, removed from the environment with a runic barrier. It’s tied to his energy, filtering out the remnant Abyssal taint in the air to prevent it from infecting the wound. But that barrier also means that Ajax can’t get closer than two metres, and not being alone in the Abyss has never felt so lonely.

It’s the second day of Skirk’s coma, and Ajax isn’t sure if he can make sure they both make it out of this alive.

He exhales or attempts to at least. Whatever breath he has in his lungs shudders out when a slam on the library doors shakes the runes. His head snaps in the direction of the barrier, watching it glow silver-white. The visual assurance isn’t something he needs anymore. The barrier was once the Queen’s, and after he killed her, everything became his.

The castle was alive, and he could feel it in his bones.

The amalga have been attacking the barriers routinely—they know exactly when his energy spikes and falls, so they know exactly when it’ll be most alarming to disturb the runes. The smarter ones have been studying the patterns of the hunts and raids that Skirk and he used to do. They know Skirk is incapacitated, and the stronger of the pair is out of the picture.

He has enough food to last himself another six days, seven if he stretches it. Water is an issue, though. Water will run out the next day because the barrier siphons water to clean out the air and to keep Skirk alive.

That means Ajax will have to leave.

The runes groan again as monsters ram against the door, only to be repelled across the outer corridor the same way he was a few nights ago. Ajax stands, moving across the library. He picks out the blueprints and lays them out on the table, marking the path to the kitchens.

It’s all left to him now.

Chapter 11: Section B(iii): Surviving the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

(iii) Imbalance

There is a drum in Ajax’s head, and it beats like a tattoo. Memories that don’t belong to him are scars in his mind. He’s lost count of how many he’s killed.

He swallows despite his dry tongue, having run out of water for the second time. It’s been a little over a week, and Ajax hasn’t had a mirror to see what he looks like in the past one and a half years, but he knows right now this is the worst state he’s ever been in. His brain feels swollen, like that time his father gave him some firewhiskey and he got hungover the next morning.

He’d kill for some firewhiskey.

Then again, he’d kill for no reason so that wasn’t such a compelling argument, was it. (No, it’s not.) And that voice sounds just like mother’s admonishments.

laugh

He’s hearing voices and isn’t that the joke of the century. Ajax brings his knees up to his chest, tucking his head between them to stop him from looking at the sallow figure of Skirk’s prone body. He doesn’t have to look at her to know what she looks like though. She has sunken cheeks, and it twists her scar out of place. Her skin is so grey, he could believe her dead. She isn’t yet, but she will be if the water poured through the barrier runs out.

Ajax hadn’t realised how much Skirk had been protecting him until she couldn’t anymore.

He lets out a rasping gasp before raising his head again, staring at the blinking rune on the barrier. She had one more night. Wishing he could carry more water at one time is useless though. He can’t kill every monster he sees and get locked in the second, third, fourth, unending wave of amalga while trying to assimilate the increasing number of screams that ruins his hearing.

That’s death for both him and Skirk.

He shifts, heavy bones groaning as he uncurls himself and slings his blades behind his waist, leaving the warbow behind. Before the exit, he exhales through the desert of his mouth as he places one hand on the seam between the doors.

He blasts out his energy, uneven waves shocking through the doors and throwing off the hoards of monsters on the other side

‘Don’t stop.’ He hears, and he really hopes it’s his voice, but he can’t be sure anymore.

Then, he pushes the doors open.

Later, Ajax figures out why he hasn’t gone mad with how full his head feels when he slaughters his way to the kitchens, letting the wineskins fill as the second wave of amalga descends on him. He remains on the defensive, barely able to keep up with his cotton-like brain and slowing reflexes.

If he continues this way, taking on legacy after legacy after legacy, he’s bound to end up in the same condition as Skirk—in a coma from energy imbalance.

Ajax jerks, body spasming out of his control, and that’s all it takes for a monster to get in too close, rows of razor-sharp teeth ready to bite off his head, and he can’t move-

But then it isn’t him moving.

Black armour snaps into place on his right arm, blade abandoned on the floor as sharpened claws swipe faster than he can see. In a blink, the head of the monster thuds against the far wall of the kitchens, and the rest of the creatures hesitate.

They recognise Ajax’s weakness, but they recognise the energy that seeps off him all the same. Then, it’s gone, black oil melting off his arm like sludge, and the monsters lunge for him again. He doesn’t stop this time, bringing up the blade in his left hand to protect himself.

He has no time to think about the Queen watching through his eyes.

Ajax can’t really hear over the white noise in his head anymore. He’s back in the library, knees to his chest on his chair across from Skirk. He presses his eyes into his kneecaps, hands cupping his ears in some attempt to block out anything, but it’s a useless endeavour.

doesn’tmattereveryoneisdeadyoukilledthemallmurderer

He’s stopped relying on his hearing, and the energy in his body can’t help but compensate for that by tuning his other senses to the finest degree. Seeing isn’t so bad—colours in the Abyss are weirdly saturated now that he doesn’t need as much light to process them—the biggest issue is smell and taste.

If Ajax so much as opens his mouth, the pungence of corrupted energy leaks off from the amalga into it.

He can purge it by burning it out with his own energy, but he can’t afford to waste energy that way. So he’s just left feeling this terrible loud deafness, seeing like he’s high (he might be), and smelling and tasting everything in the air, and maybe he really should just diemurderer -

“Childe-” but this time it sounds like a reprimand. And with that one whisper of that voice, his head enters silence. He stumbles, almost falling off his chair as he gapes a little at how much he had missed with that much noise in his head. He can hear Skirk’s heartbeat from across the room.

The rest of his senses calm down as well, as if no longer sensing the need to worsen his raging migraine. He sucks in a breath through his mouth tentatively, almost sagging in relief when all he can taste is the cold air.

Then, Ajax is thrown out of his shock as a loud slam on the door thunders. His ears twitch, carefully augmented with a touch of Abyssal energy. There’s only one amalga outside, but if Ajax stops breathing, he can hear the screams of all its legacies.

Just one last monster to kill.

He stands, rolling out the tense line that is his shoulders. The barrier that protects Skirk from the monster is draining his energy so he has to do this quickly. Ajax is quite literally the last thing standing between his mentor and death via amalga.

The door slams again, the runes flickering as the systems shudder.

‘Don’t stop,’ He hears, ‘We’d rather die later.’

Ajax thinks he passes out after he kills the monster. The Queen doesn’t interfere from the overload this time, and he isn’t sure if he wants her to. It’s clear to him that he doesn’t have as much control over himself as he’d like anymore. And if the Queen could silence all the voices with one word, then there was no doubt she could trigger all of them the same way she did to him when she was fighting Skirk.

The reminder of black armour and monochrome vision sends unease down his spine. He remembers the spasms of energy running unevenly through his veins after that, sending his muscles out of control as he slowly recovered. He’d never felt so powerful and so weak at the same time before.

Ajax manages not to think about it in his exhaustion, though, but even that doesn’t last for long. A blanket of fog is pulled tight over his senses, and he hasn’t felt so light in days. He could get used to this—not having to wake up every hour to check on the runes.

He stirs slowly, unlike how he’s ever awakened in the Abyss. Fingers are carding through his hair, and blunt nails scratch his scalp so soothingly he almost wants to purr. He’s surrounded by warmth, and he doesn’t want to wake up.

“Open your eyes, Childe.”

Ajax flinches, rolling away at the sound. (Anything but Childe ) . He desperately sucks in inhales as he reaches for his blade, only to grasp on air. A growl escapes him, and he darts away, the instinct to run flaring. Then a pulse of that familiar energy sends a shock through his system, and he deflates. He hasn’t felt it since Skirk went into her coma, but now it’s back, healthier and stronger.

Breathing comes easier after that, and maybe that’s because he’s finally safe .

Chapter 12: 12: Section B(iv): Surviving the Abyss

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

(iv) Lunar Phases

The first rush of air into her lungs leave Skirk nearly breathless. The air is clean, without the Abyssal taint that she has spent the last five centuries living in. Her tongue is dry, somewhere between uncomfortable and awkward, but there’s no stickiness behind her teeth from the overexposure of Abyssal energy. It’s been a long while since she’d breathed in air like this—it tastes like safety. She takes it in greedily, gaspfuls at a time because she knows it’ll run out, and with a shattering sound, it does.

This time she chokes on dirty air, rhythm stuttering after the brief reprieve. But as always, her body adapts to what it’s learnt to live with, and it evens out again. A broken sterility barrier lays at her feet, meant to keep her sectioned off in the corner of the library.

When she moves to stand, her gut twinges with the last vestiges of a healing wound. Skirk lifts her shirt to find an ugly knotted mass of scar tissue on her abdomen, grimacing as she finds that it extends through her body, and has a matching scar on her back. The barely healed wound pulses in time with her heartbeat, and it feels like her sister. She lets her shirt fall and inhales deeply, letting the pain fall into the back of her mind.

That last attack left her with abyssal imbalance, she remembers, but if she’s still alive, it means that child—

Or rather Childe, as the title her sister had bestowed—

Had survived and protected them both.

Skirk recognises the traces of energy in the outer runes of the barrier, now unlit and dead as its source runs dry. She swallows around her dry throat. The stupid child should have left her to die.

Instead, she finds him passed out on the floor, just outside of the library, Abyssal energy running low, but not low enough to warrant any worry. His skin is greyer than usual, blood and exhaustion hanging off his frame. She clenches her jaw at the sight of it, and at the faint outline of the woman sitting beside him.

Seeing the legacies that linger on is a skill exclusive to the royal family’s star-shaped eyes—a First-order mark. And Skirk’s sister stares back at her with the most sanity she’s had since Khaenri’ah’s fall. When the woman takes a step closer, her sister inclines her head, like she knows everything. Her shadow fades into a thickened coalescence of energy tightly knit around his prone form, nearly swallowing him up whole.

‘Breathe through the pain,’ She tells herself. (There is no time to mourn a sister who had crumpled under the weight of her crown).

Skirk crouches to the ginger-haired boy who survived past her expectations—she remembers a boy—and they look nothing alike. She slides her hand under his body, carrying him back into the library. It is the gentlest she has ever been with him, and it is the gentlest she will ever be with him.

She lays him on the makeshift cot they had set up before, combing her fingers through his matted hair and transferring energy to him. The colour returns to his cheeks, and his breath comes easier.

“Open your eyes, Childe.”

Skirk watches as he jerks, flinching away from her and fingers sharpening into claws. It’s a good instinct, even if a little slow. He hasn’t quite gotten a hold of himself, so she sends a pulse of energy through the room, and he calms a little.

Cautiously, she approaches him and reaches a hand onto his head awkwardly. He stays still, barely tensing under her touch.

“You did well.”

And slowly, slowly, he relaxes.

Skirk gestures to the floor, letting the boy retreat into the corner.

“Sit down.”

The boy slumps to the floor, kicking up dust with a thump.

He’s grown.

Skirk pushes a wineskin towards him but doesn’t close the gap between them. He’s still too on edge from fighting. Still, his control has skyrocketed so much that she can’t quite sense his Abyssal taint even if she could feel the lingering scent of death around his shoulders.

How many legacies is he carrying now?

“I didn’t expect to wake up again,” Skirk says bluntly. “Nor did I expect you to survive without me.”

The boy doesn’t reply. Instead, he reaches for the wineskin gingerly, sipping slowly and wetting his lips.

“Well, you did, and I did too.” He shrugs his shoulders, too nonchalantly to be natural. He refused to meet her eyes.

“I’m sorry you had to kill her.” Skirk bows her head. It’s the first time Ajax has ever heard an apology from her.

“What was it you just said?” His head snaps up, and he locks his eyes on hers. Of course, something like that would get his attention.

“I’m not repeating myself,” She deadpans, clicking her tongue. The lighter atmosphere dies as Skirk twinges with emotion and she looks out towards the rows of books. “She was my sister and my responsibility.”

“I have a younger sister too,” The child says, a wistful smile on his lips. He’s thinking about a memory, no longer present in the same realm as nostalgia swallows his vision. “Her name is Tonia.”

There is silence for a while after that, and Skirk brings out her own wineskin and drinks like she could drown in it.

“Can you hear her?” She asks. “The Queen?"

He stares at her for a while, the same way she did at him at first. It looks haunting on him—the familiarity of long-lost family. Then he settles for a shrug.

“She hasn’t said anything.”

Skirk nods, expecting such an outcome. She, too, would resent herself if she were in her sister’s place.

“The tides will reset soon.”

The boy’s face goes chillingly cold.

“I read about that…” He blinks, and the shadow on his features disappears. “The amalga will congregate again so that they can reach the heart of the Abyss.”

He raises his head to glance at her, and Skirk feels like she’s looking at an old mirror. She looked like that once too.

“We will have to fight.”

“Yes,” Skirk murmurs, lips pursing. “We will.”

“Tell me your name.” The words jar after hours of silence. They’ve been clearing through the lower floors of the palace, scouring and saving whatever resources they could use. Ajax looks up, startled.

Skirk continues digging through one of the chests in the armoury, testing and collecting different arrows. She doesn’t raise her head with her question. Ajax wrinkled his nose, huffing at how sudden her demand was.

“Why should I tell you now?” A lot of things have changed since they first met. Ajax is no longer the boy who Skirk saved when he first fell.

His teacher takes no pause as the side of her lip twitches. She fires back, “I’ll trade you a question for it.”

Ajax’s eyes sharpen. Skirk has never had a reaction like that before. Her tone is almost… easy-going. A noise of contemplation escapes his throat as he ponders that. It’s almost as if she’s encouraging him to question her. Ajax frowns.

What kind of information can Skirk give him that the library cannot?

He turns back to his observation of the weapons, though his mind isn’t with his actions. Quiet falls into the armoury, broken only by the occasional clink of metal on metal.

“Why did she call me child too?” Ajax asks at last, “Some sort of sibling telepathy?”

Skirk scuffs him over the head, exasperation lined in the pull of her lip.

“Idiot. She wasn’t calling you child the way I do. She was titling you, Childe.”

Ajax co*cks his head to the side, pausing in his search to stare at his mentor.

“Childe refers to the son of a noble who has not yet attained knighthood.” She doesn’t do anything as dramatic as sigh, but Ajax still gets the feeling of her impatience.

“But I’m not the son of a noble.”

This is when Skirk finally stops, quiet, and Ajax wonders if she’s gone back to ignoring him once again. She continues digging through the old stashes, turning away from him.

“No,” She refuses to look at him. “She sees you as mine.”

There’s a long silence after that as he stares at her. Ajax knows, somewhere deep within him, Skirk means mine as in to take care of, to guard, and to train. The title that the Queen gave him has sunk into his bones, engraved into the marrow like an anointing, and it ties him to both the Queen and his mentor.

“Ajax.” He harvests a set of throwing knives with glee. “My name is Ajax.”

’Like the hero, like the fallen,’ He thinks but doesn’t say. The name has always felt like a tightening noose, except for the past one and a half years, when he had no name.

Finally, Skirk turns back to him, standing upright with her hands empty. Her gaze is intense in a way that makes him straighten fully. Like this, he realises he’s gotten taller than her.

“Ajax.” She tests, the name falls easily from her tongue, familiar in the way it can only be after months of surviving together despite her never saying it before. “I want to make you my heir.”

The boy in question looks at his teacher. She’s solemn, and it weighs like a legacy.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you will be adopted into the Alberich line; you will be educated as Khaenri’ahn royalty; you will be groomed as the second prince, as the vaunted general.” Skirk stops, taking Ajax’s face in her hands like a pale imitation of her sister. Her fingers do not claw into his cheeks, and she draws no blood as she stares into deep blue eyes. “You will be mine.”

The boy looks at his teacher’s face and sees a scarred warrior, a tired royal, and a mourning sister all at once.

“I accept.”

The words feel like falling off a cliff.

“This is irreversible. Khaenri’ah will forever have a hold on you if you agree.”

He bares his teeth at her, pointed teeth ripping into his bottom lip and something feral burning in his eyes.

“You’d be mine too.”

(Ajax hasn’t had anything else in one and a half years; no name or family, just the weight of the legacies he stole.)

There’s nothing she can say in response to that, so Skirk lets him walk in front of her, and lets the Queen guide him to their ancestral hall in blessed, haunted silence. She feels like an executioner, walking her sentenced to his death.

When she crowns him, she will kill him, and he will live again.

Chapter 13: 13. Section B(v): Ancestral Hall

Chapter Text

Section B: Surviving the Abyss

(v): Ancestral Hall

The walk to the ancestral hall is kept silent in eerie witness. Ajax takes point before his master, leading them down back towards the throne room. His mind is a plane of blankness, a demand from their queen to hold themselves. Ajax’s own voice is muted, tucked behind his ribs. His mouth is thick with her will, and he feels every legacy weighing on him without a single ounce of the power they provide.

This is their warning, this is what he will carry for the rest of all their lives.

Skirk follows behind him with her boots thudding through the dust and the tip of her sword dragging on the stone floors. Like a rhythmic procession, she scrapes the sword against the ground as they walk, letting the sounds echo in the corridor.

(It sounds like reluctance and inevitability in his executioner’s blade).

Before the double doors of the throne room, Ajax is met with the same pair of silver handles as before. This time, his hands come up, the Queen’s legacy sparking at his fingers when they close around the silver and push. The branches glow a brilliant blue and the doors creak open.

(In mute wonder, he thinks, ‘Hydro.’)

The chamber is an abandoned battlefield, scorch marks and scarring on every wall. The throne where he had left the Queen’s body is empty. Only black bloodstains linger as any sign she ever sat there.

Behind the throne grows a tree of blue and white, its roots reaching down through the ground and its leaves brushing the ceiling.

Ajax’s tongue curls behind his teeth, words and memory bubbling as he turns to his master. Skirk stiffens when he does, grip tightening around her hilt. His eyes are star-shaped and glowing.

Her sister speaks her broken croon through his mouth, the words whole and damning.

“Where do your dead go?”

The line of her throat trembles as Skirk swallows her dread to answer.

“You stand before the Royal Irminsul, where our dead go to rest.”

Ajax’s eyes fade to its normal blue, blinking rapidly. His posture slumps a little and he turns to face the tree. The souls within it are invisible to his eyes, but he can feel their energy curled around its roots and its branches, familiar and foreign all at once.

“Kneel.” Comes his master’s voice; before the dais, before the throne, before the Irminsul. Skirk raises her blade and cuts deep into her wrist. It drips into her hand, onto the floor and into Ajax’s hair when she forces his head up.

“I crown you, Ajax, as my heir, with my blood, as the Queen has decreed and titled you Childe, before the Irminsul of Khaenri’ah.” She draws her blood into a star on his forehead. Then she draws away and watchesit flow down his face with abyssal energy. The black lines sneak past his neck and spread across his skin, Lichtenberg marks sinking into his body with painful paralysis. “May the ancestors judge you and find you worthy.”

But by then, Skirk’s voice is far away, a warbling underwater sound that fades as the buzz in Ajax’s head grows insurmountable. The pain thickens at the base of his spine, pushing through skin and muscle and bone to whatever he hides in his body.

Ajax would scream and flinch away, but he cannot move from his kneeling—he cannot move at all.

The ancestors treat the pain as a gate, entering and learning and taking their home in his flesh. There’s a burning sensation, every wild thing under his skin raging at once. In an abrupt moment, all the voices of the souls that cling to him quieten. And then, it rings out clearly, many voices as one.

“Hello Ajax, Heir of Skirk, Killer of Mine.” There is an empty gap, but they are far from done. That sweet croon comes again. His mouth has fallen open, blood pouring and an infernal sound comes from his own throat through his immobility. “Childe.”

He can give no response, nor is he allowed to; jaw locked tight and bound and dripping black. (He accepted this).

“We would welcome you to the Irminsul as the second Alberich Heir.” His chest stills, breath ceasing as Abyssal energy leaks out his pores and keeps his heart beating anyway. The pressure eases slowly, like a gentle rocking to sleep. “This is the palace of sinners. We have seen who you are and who you will be.”

He loses feeling in his fingertips first, then his whole body sans the point in his lower back. His eyes peel open of their own accord, tearing at the edges and bleeding tears, but he can see.

Countless souls stand before him, and their mouths move in unison—the voices never stop. “You shall become the Commander of your generation and be granted a Second-order mark; a tether to us from the base of your spine. When you awaken, you shall be made new. When we call, you shall answer.”

“When you die, you shall return here.” They force his eyes to close, and his head to fall, prostrating before the throne. “Do you accept?”

Finally, they let go of his mouth. His own voice, finally found, echoes through the chamber.

“I accept.”

The words fall—the executioner’s blade, then his heartbeat dies, and Ajax crumples to the floor.

Skirk shifts from where she stands to the side, bones creaking as she lets herself reach for her newly crowned heir. His face is covered in blood from every orifice, his exsanguination fresh and sticky. She leaves it be. The blood will dry and flake off as he sheds his old body.

He will rise when the Abyssal tides reset again, when the burst of energy in the atmosphere triggers his awakening. It is lucky that the first reset is tomorrow. She will only have to wait half a month.

The spirits shift around the Irminsul, watching her with wariness. Their gazes make her feel like a traitor in her idleness as she deigns to remain a bystander instead of picking a side in their war. Revenge is a heavy legacy, one that belongs to many, and Skirk has fought too many battles to carry it on.

She waves them away, and they disperse, unsettled and discontent. Her heir is flooded with Abyssal energy, and it pulses as a substitute for a heartbeat.

Skirk cradles him to her chest easily, the boy tall but light, clinging single-mindedly to the pulse. She lays his body among the roots of the Irminsul. When she retreats, she sees the spirits peek out again, ghosts flooding hungrily around and into his body. It’s a new home for them.

The tree’s roots curl and pull his body in until Skirk can barely see his body behind white and blue—a cage and a womb—it feels symbolic somehow. He is no longer only hers, the way he has been for more than one and a half years. He is all of Khaenri’ah’s now, simply because she wanted more for him and more of him.

Ajax has walked to his death willingly, and when he wakes, he must live with it.

(He would thank her for it, but to her it will always feel like her hand around his throat, guiding him to a grave of white and blue).

Skirk told him that Khaenri’ahns didn’t worship the gods, but that wasn’t the whole truth. The gods they worshipped had simply fallen, cast away from Celestia in ruin and betrayal. They followed their people into desecration—as below, so above.

For the first time in five hundred years, Skirk prays to old dead gods who were forsaken by their people. Her heir will wake in sixteen tides, as a monster and a vessel, the way all of them are. And if he cannot control their power, then it will be her duty make his second death permanent.

She has much to prepare for his awakening. She doesn’t think about the chances of him failing. Ajax survived without her for more than two resets with her sister in his head. His control is not what worries her. What comes after—her responsibility of imparting the ways of Khaenri’ah—weighs on her like a burden.

She will teach him the history that bears their pride and their shame; a kingdom fallen and a nation cursed.

‘It will be different this time,’ She thinks.

(But she remembers a boy).

Childe gasps, joints cracking from stiffness as he sucks in desperate gulp after gulp of air. His throat is burning from the sudden intake of oxygen, one sharp line of pain from his mouth to his stomach. He’s starving, but it’s not the same hunger he’s had since he’d killed that first wolf in the abyss. He feels his skin crack as he struggles, squirming out of his binds.

It falls away from him easily, pale unmarked skin kissing air for the first time.

There’s silence in his head, too quiet now that he can’t hear any voices. He swallows dryly and nearly gags, the reflex strong and new. He wriggles his fingers and toes, instinct telling him to climb and reach the surface of his prison, so he does, clawing dirt and branches and his own dead body off and up and up.

And when he breaks the surface, the world is lit up in a way he’s never seen before, colour seeping into his vision and everything oversaturated. Abyssal energy has sunk into his bones, his blood and his marrow. That foreign detachment he’d always had feels gaping now, an Abyss within himself ready to swallow anything that’s unlucky or weak enough to fall to it.

He pushes himself out of the ground, half-feral and legs as shaky as newborn cattle. Still, Childe can tell this body will be strong, far stronger than his previous one. Already, it begins to recover and he stands a little straighter, taking in his new senses. His jaw aches. (He’s starving, but there’s no voice screaming at him to eat).

Instead, he has a yawning hunger in him, all-consuming and patient.

Childe stretches the side of his neck, vertebrae popping has he cranes his neck to face Skirk. She looks at him strangely, like she’s staring at someone she met a lifetime ago.

“Ajax,” She breaks the silence with a name that jerks him out of the haze of getting used to his body. Right, Ajax. That’s his name. Childe is his title. He’d almost forgotten after not having heard it for nearly two years.

“Skirk,” He exhales her name like a prayer and feels a little less like his ribs are crushing his lungs when the taut line of her shoulders relax and she approaches. She hands him his wineskin, and he drinks gratefully, the water cooling on his throat. He stops only when he empties it, wiping his mouth with his arm.

He feels a little more human after that—more Ajax than anything.

Then Skirk ruffles his hair.

“You did good.” Her voice is swollen with relief, tender and aching like she had truly been fearful he wouldn’t come out, or that he wouldn’t come out the same. Ajax breathes in slowly, the mixed smell of amalga lingering over Skirk’s natural scent. She’d been fighting.

He nods under her hand, looking around the throne room.

“How long did it take?” He winces at the gravel of his own voice, too loud for his new ears.

“Seventeen days. The tidal reset was yesterday.” Skirk moves away, beginning to pack up her temporary camp before the Irminsul.

“You killed everything already?” Dejection colours his words. Skirk’s lip curves in amusem*nt, and the doors give a great rattle.

“I saved a couple for you.” She gestures to the pulsing runes, similar to the ones he had used before in the library. He can feel them at the base of his spine, a map of the old magic in the palace connecting to his body. Ajax grins at her, feeling Childe peeking through the points of his teeth when he flicks his new Abyssal energy, and the runes shut off.

The doors slam open, crashing against the walls as the amalga rush in.

Childe feels power drip down his arms, black oil coalescing into a sword, clawed fingers closing around its hilt. The hunger in him swarms, and he lurches forward, mania in his eyes as he tears through the wave of amalga. Laughter bubbles from his lips, exhilaration sending him high.

Monsters fall under his blade, and he eats.