cynicalmusings

[cynicalmusings]

boothill having a ‘long awaited reunion’ in his dream… fml

[cynicalmusings]

…𝚆𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜: Major character death, spoilers for 3.2 Amphoreus quest, spoilers for Anaxa's backstory. …𝙻𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚝𝚑: 18,955 words. …𝙰𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗: Gender-neutral reader, Socrates!reader. Further details about symbolism, references, etc. in the fic can be found here. AO3.

Comments and reblogs are appreciated.

‘𝐎𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋’

CHARACTERS OF THE DIALOGUE.

ANAXAGORAS, narrator  UNNAMED PHILOSOPHER, main interlocutor  ARISTOCLES, Nodist student at the Grove of Epiphany MELETUS, Nousporist student at the Grove of Epiphany ANYTUS, Nousporist student at the Grove of Epiphany LYCON, Nousporist student at the Grove of Epiphany EUTHYPHRO, Venerationist Sage  HYACINTHIA, physician of the Twilight Courtyard PHAEDRUS, Helkolithist student at the Grove of Epiphany CYNANE, Nousporist scholar at the Grove of Epiphany ELDER CAENIS, head of the Council of Elders CERCES, Titan of Reason OTHERS, who are mute auditors. 

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈, 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

Anaxa finds you slumbering on a rock, in a manner reminiscent, in his opinion, of a cat, or a reptile. You are in the habit of finding such opportune locations like this and making them your temporary residence; as such, it is not difficult to stumble upon you by chance within the grounds of the Grove of Epiphany both when he is and is not looking for you. Today, Anaxa has been searching for you, which makes the encounter particularly fortunate.

He clears his throat and approaches you. “Philosopher,” he says. You do not react, and remain sound asleep, your chest rising and falling with deep, even breaths. Despite the fact that you are resting, there are ever-present shadows circling your eyes which lend your eyes, when open, an uncanny sharpness. Your hair falls around your head in a tousled disarray of curls to form something of a halo which frames your face. If one were to compare your unkempt mode of existence with Anaxa’s own immaculate presentation, they could not be held at fault for thinking you come from different worlds entirely. 

“Philosopher,” he repeats, louder. Still you do not stir. With a sigh, Anaxa reaches over and plucks the olive branch you wear behind your ear from your hair in one swift motion. This wakes you. How exactly you can feel it, he does not know; but the method never fails. You spin around and face him with a scandalised expression, though your shock falls away when you see him. 

“Goodness, Anaxagoras, it’s you,” you sigh out. You stretch your arms above your head, stifling a wide yawn. He offers the olive branch out to you, and you tuck it back into its usual place. “I thought it might be more students coming to steal it from me for laughs. Was that truly necessary?”

“I tried to get your attention through other means, but they did not succeed,” he explains flatly. 

“Ah. In that case, I apologise for failing to notice you. What have you come for?”

Anaxa crosses his arms. “Do I need a cause to seek you out?” 

“Not necessarily, no; but considering your disposition, I would be surprised if you did not have one,” you reason. 

He sniffs a laugh. “Then you would be correct. I have come to ask whether you are in possession of that paper about the transmutation of the soul which we discussed a week or so ago. I haven’t seen it since, so I assume I must have left it with you by mistake, and I require it again for my research.”

You cock your head sideways in a bird-like fashion as you consider his question. After a moment, your eyes brighten. Despite the perpetual haziness of sleep still lingering upon your eyelids, your gaze possesses a remarkable clarity which betrays the astuteness lying behind your unsuspecting mien. “Ah, yes, I believe I know the one you refer to. I remember you reading it out to me. Recent experiments conducted on Titan creations have revealed a general trend which supports the hypothesis that notable similarities are present within the soul structure across both Titankin and humankind…”

Anaxa inclines his head. “That is the one.”

“Mm. I was wondering why you did not take it with you, considering you know I cannot peruse it myself. To answer you, I have kept it safely with me. Here.” You reach into the folds of your rumpled white robe and withdraw a paper scroll. Anaxa accepts it wordlessly from your hand. He unfurls it, double checks that it is indeed the right paper, and, satisfied, slips it into his cloak. Rising to your feet with another yawn, you say, “If I may ask, what time is it now?” 

“It’s noon.” The sky, of course, is in star-flecked darkness as ever, but the Grove maintains a system of timekeeping which separates the night into two periods, of waking and sleep respectively, for the practical purposes of scheduling if little else. 

“Ah, wonderful. Noon is my favourite time of day, for it is when the mind is at its most active.”

“And I take it that is why I found you sleeping on a rock?” 

“Precisely, good Anaxagoras,” you reply with a twinkle in your eye. “Dreams are some of the most vibrant machinations of the human mind. Whether in sleeping or waking, midday is always the period during which I receive my clearest insights.”

“You were dreaming?” he asks. “What of?”

“A white crow and a screeching owl.”

Anaxa fixes you with a dubious look. “You may indeed receive insights, but I would dispute your claim to their clarity.”

You shake your head, and he perceives for a strange moment that you are somehow disappointed in him. “Dearest Anaxagoras, I am afraid you misunderstand me; but that is my fault, for failing to express myself sufficiently. Clarity does not always mean immediate clarity.”

“If that is indeed so, beloved philosopher of mine,” he returns, rolling the fond moniker drily over his tongue in turn, “you can regale me with your insights once you make sense of them. In the meanwhile, I shall return to my office. You may join me there if you so wish.”

… … … … … … …

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐈, 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒

Anaxa first met you when he was a fresh student at the Grove. Well, he says ‘met’; in truth, it was difficult to avoid you. You appeared on the grounds one day, seemingly out of nowhere, and began posing questions to whoever would listen to you, asking to know the meaning behind justice, knowledge, beauty, the soul—anything and everything that was studied at the Grove—before politely refuting all of the answers offered to you. 

At first, nobody took you seriously. You were labelled a nuisance, a sophist, a ‘gadfly’ who tormented students for no good reason. Anaxa himself took you for an oddity, interesting but neglectable. As long as you did not bother him, he cared little for what people said about you. 

His interest was piqued after hearing you discuss the nature of divinity with one of his classmates in passing. You were inquiring into the authority of the Titans, refuting the idea that they were so different from humans because of their capacity for misjudgement. He stayed and listened for a few minutes without being seen before continuing to his class. The conversation lingered on his mind for the rest of the day. 

After you won a debate against a professor who had come to put you in your place, neither Anaxa nor the Grove could overlook you for any longer. You were told to leave, invited to enrol, accused of leading the younger students astray; yet nothing, neither threat nor request, moved you. When your motives were questioned, you merely replied that you were a “simple fool in search of a morsel of knowledge”. It was as if the rest of the world had no bearing on you: all that existed was you and your quest for understanding. 

By this point, you had evolved from a mere speck on his radar to a matter which merited investigation; one which he was determined to decipher. That same day, Anaxa sought you out directly. He found you sitting on the grass, having been banned from the central campus grounds, surrounded by a small flock of crows and tossing them grain from your hand. He marched up to you and demanded, “Tell me everything you know about the nature of the soul.”

The crows took to the air in a flurry of dark wings. You watched them scatter before turning your eyes to him. He remembers the way your eyes twinkled with intelligence under the moonlight, your irises shot through with coloured streaks which glinted like shards of bronze. He has yet to meet another person who can hold his gaze and direct it back at him in the same way you can. 

“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the soul,” you replied with a casual shrug. “It is a complete mystery to me, for I have never studied it. But perhaps, as a knowledgeable student yourself, you know something of value that you could share with me?”

The discussion which ensued carried on for five hours. You touched upon matters of divinity, identity, knowledge, truth, morality, purpose, moving through one topic into another as seamlessly as two streams converge into one and separate once again. By the time you finished, it was well past midnight, yet Anaxa had never felt so invigorated: while his body ached for sleep, his mind was more awake than it had ever been. You challenged him, made him consider perspectives he shunned on the basis of absurdity, forced him to question the assumptions underlying his beliefs that he had always taken as indisputably true. In turn he demanded you to take positions, to argue for conclusions rather than against them, and interrogated you with the same ferocity that you directed towards others. 

It was like you were caught in a highly synchronised dance or duel, playing off each other’s movements and meeting each other’s blades in perfect timing. Never before had Anaxa encountered somebody capable of matching his intellectual pace. He was unnerved, yet at the same time found himself irresistibly drawn to you, as if something within him was pulling him towards you, outside of his control. He is certain you would have spoken for longer had you not been interrupted by a foul-tempered professor who scolded you for keeping her awake. 

From that point onwards, Anaxa visited you more often, searching for you when he had a moment to spare between classes and conducting private experiments. He came to categorise you on the same level as his research: something of a passion, something of an obsession, a pursuit he could not abandon without losing some part of himself. 

(Yet the fascination he felt towards you was not only intellectual. There was something else which had snuck in quietly without his notice, planting its roots in the cracks that lay between the logical aspects of his nature: a fire stoked in his flesh rather than his brain, which excited the irrational parts of him and caused him to burn with a fervour he had thought himself immune to. This force, as he came to understand, was desire, and it is around this notion that Anaxa later developed his theory of the three components of the soul: one part reason, two parts longing, and three parts passion.)

Over the years, you gradually earned a begrudging sense of respect from the Grove’s academics. Anaxa’s own professor Empedocles, then the Sage of the Venerationists, took a liking to you and defended you from the more injurious condemnations levelled at you. Thus, though the rumours swirling around your name were still less than flattering, you acquired an unofficial following of sorts, which consisted of a small but dedicated handful of students and professors who were willing to engage with your reasoning, one of the most dedicated being an aspiring Nodist by the name of Aristocles. 

Despite this development, the majority of younger students as well as some older academics would still approach you and insult you in bad faith, or make a strawman of your arguments in order to better you. Anaxa despised such intellectual dishonesty. Any rudeness you were met with, however, you handled with perfect civility. Criticism and accusation slid from you like water. Once again, it was like other people had no bearing on you. Occasionally, Anaxa feared that this included him. But in the manner of all paradoxes incited by desire, your detachment served only to motivate him further: the more unattainable you were, the more he was determined to close the distance. 

After he established his own school of thought, Anaxa raised the possibility to you of doing the same. “You are certainly capable of leading your own school,” he pointed out, “and you have enough of a following to be successful in doing so.”

You replied, “I do not believe that restricting one’s scope of inquiry is the way to gaining true knowledge. If we are ever to discover the truth, we must remain open to every possible approach.”

He had expected such a reply and gave it little thought afterwards. Though perhaps, had you accepted the offer and officially affiliated yourself with the Grove, it could have assuaged, if not prevented, what was to come. For although the external world had no hold on you, your presence had all too acute an impact on the people around you. 

It was a conversation like any other, unremarkable in essence, which you were having with a couple of bright-eyed students on the topic of the soul. You said to them, “If you are making the claim that the soul is material in nature, you must prove it.” The students, newly enrolled and eager to give you your proof, did not suppose that you meant proof reached through argumentation rather than empirical investigation. They ventured into the wilderness beyond the Grove upon which, by a stroke of misfortune, the black tide had recently encroached; and, unaware of the danger, they met their ends at the claws of those corrupted monsters. 

Once news of this incident reached the academy, there ensued something of a scandal. The casualties were hushed up as the sages debated how to handle the situation. Many called for your punishment, while others, including Anaxa and Empedocles, defended your innocence on the grounds that you had neither intended nor could have predicted such an outcome. You gave no direct indications for the students to respond as they did: unfortunate as the accident was, the responsibility fell upon their shoulders, not yours, for they had the autonomy to act otherwise. Furthermore, had it arbitrarily been any registered professor in your position, they would not receive such extreme reproach. 

Eventually, on the grounds that the academy did not wish to alarm the students with the news of the deaths as well as the proximity of the black tide, you were pardoned, and the operations of the Grove of Epiphany returned, at least on a superficial basis, to normal. Yet an atmosphere of disquietude lingered on campus following the event. Anaxa himself felt the effects of this unease: it was the first time he had truly perceived the possibility that you may be separated by powers beyond his control; that your presence by his side, and his by yours, was not granted by necessity, but rather by favourable circumstance. 

Both you and Anaxa had something of infamous reputations, and until then the comfortable assumption had underpinned your interactions that whatever consequences of this reputation did not affect him would not affect you and vice versa. The challenging of this supposition shook him deeply, forced him to turn his eye back on himself and what you meant to him: the first time he faced the possibility of losing you was also the first time the full extent of what he felt for you revealed itself to him. Not long after Anaxa made this revelation did Empedocles pass and Euthyphro, one of your most outspoken critics, took the mantle of the Sage of the Venerationists. Your presence in the Grove was now vulnerable in a way that it had not been before; the potential of separation was more acute than ever, and Anaxa’s passion flared even stronger in response. The force of his own fervour astonished him as much as it frightened him. 

Ought he to pursue this newfound fire? To ignore it? What was the most reasonable course of action? Did reason have any bearing in the territory of desire? He attempted to gauge your response to these questions through your subsequent exchanges, and from this determine whether or not you, too, shared his sentiments; yet you remained as you always had, untouchable and immutable, giving no indication that you were subject to those fevers of whim and passion suffered by the rest of mankind. He began to doubt himself, and as his doubt intensified, so too did his covetousness for that he was not privy to and did not—perhaps could not—have.

Since he first met you, Anaxa has burned in silence, a cold green flame flickering in the darkness of the night, striving in vain to illuminate a truth which is not there.

… … … … … … …

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐈𝐈, 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 & 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋

After teaching his final class of the day, Anaxa heads across the Grove towards his laboratory. He can feel he is close to a breakthrough in his research on the soul. For the last few days, that sensation which always precedes great discovery has been pulling at his edges like a fishhook drawing him forwards. The answers he seeks are in reach, waiting only for him to seize them from where they hang on their branch. 

As he approaches the Sacred Tree, a medley of voices floating up from the main path catches his attention. Among them, he recognises your voice, as well as those of his own students Meletus, Anytus and Lycon respectively. He hangs back and listens to the conversation unfold. Once the three disperse and you turn to leave, Anaxa makes his way over to you. 

“I see you’ve been speaking with some of my students,” he says, falling into step beside you as naturally as an apple drops to the ground, compelled to its end by an unchanging law. 

“Ah, so they are yours?” you say. “I was curious as to which school they belonged to, but yes, it makes sense retrospectively when considering their interest surrounding divine nature. We were having a fascinating conversation about divine justice.” 

“Is that so? Having taught them for two years now, I did not take them as the kind to seek out additional discussion of their own accord.”

“There are many sides to people which we may never know,” you reply simply. “Perhaps your teaching methods do not suit their learning style.”

Anaxa hmphs. “You may be correct; but if that’s indeed the case, I severely doubt they would be any more receptive to your own methods.”

“You know that I do not teach anybody, Anaxagoras,” you say. “I only try to learn from inquiry. Besides, ought you not to place more faith in your students?”

“A professor’s job is to make accurate judgements about his students, not to flatter them.”

“I suppose that is reasonable, although I do find it questionable whether the judgement of those who are professors is truly any less fallible than that of everybody else.” 

He does not reply, and you fall silent for a while. The two of you take a walk through the winding passageways of the courtyard in unspoken appreciation of each other’s company. Despite the ever-present darkness, the temperature is comfortable, and a pleasant breeze meanders through the foliage of the gardens. Such moments of quiet between you are rare; Anaxa takes the opportunity to savour it. The occasional student shoots you a strange look as you pass by—every year, newcomers to the Grove are shocked to discover that Professor Anaxagoras would keep such peculiar company—but these are minor intrusions you are both accustomed to, and they do little to hinder his enjoyment.

“Say, Anaxagoras,” you remark, breaking the silence, “are you teaching any further classes today?” 

“No, that was my last. Why do you ask?”

“There is a matter I wish to discuss with you.”

“Very well. You may accompany me back to my laboratory, and we will talk there.”

You spend the rest of the way talking about inconsequential matters, such as the weather and recent news from around the Grove. After arriving in his laboratory, you sit down in your usual cross-legged position in the middle of the floor while Anaxa leafs through the contents of his desk. “So, tell me,” he says, idly flipping open a series of experimental reports, “what is it you want to discuss?”

You tip your head sideways and pin him with a curious look. “You.”

Anaxa’s hand stills. “Me?” he echoes, arching a fractional brow in your direction.

“Precisely. It has come to my attention as of late that, despite knowing you for quite some time now, I know very little about you beyond what we discuss together.” 

“Quite the revelation to make after seven years of acquaintance,” he comments drily. “What do you wish to know?”

“What are you willing to impart to me?”

Anaxa swivels his eye on you. “Anything at all, philosopher,” he says. “You need only ask the right questions.”

You lapse into thought. After a few moments, you ask, “Why are you so fond of dromases?”

“They are calm, quiet, and have a good temperament.”

“Why do you value these qualities?”

He replies, “They make for agreeable companions.”

“I see. And is ‘agreeability’ the most important trait of a companion?”

“No.”

“Do you have any family?”

“Not anymore.”

“Is there anything sacred in your life?”

“What do you mean by ‘sacred’? If you mean divine, then no. If you mean something which is revered above all else, then yes. Truth is the single sacred thing in my life.”

“Really?” You frown. “I have always been under the impression that humanity is the thing you take as sacred.”

Anaxa folds his arms over his chest and regards you closely. “Why do you say that?”

“All I have ever seen you pursue in your research is that which benefits humankind. It seems to me that you use truth as a means of revering humanity, rather than the ultimate end in itself.”

“An interesting observation,” he muses, kicking backwards in his chair. “Is there anything more you want to know?”

You fold your hands together in your lap. “I don’t believe so. For the time being, at least, my questions have been satisfied.”

“Then, as dictated by the laws of equivalent exchange, I hope you would not be opposed to my asking you some questions in return.”

“Why, not at all.”

Anaxa considers the many things he could ask you. He could ask about your own family; your life before the Grove; whether you have a favourite animal, or why you never settled into a home of your own. Yet, out of all the potential questions lingering on his mind, there is only one which truly interests him above all the others. He says, “You expressed the belief that my end is not truth, but humanity. Then tell me, philosopher; do you believe that truth can be an end in itself?”

“I suppose I do, yes. One can seek truth without needing a supplementary goal.”

“Would you propose that reason is the means by which the truth is uncovered?”

“I would.”

“What makes you think reason is capable of transcending the will?”

You frown. “I am afraid I’m not quite sure what you are asking. Could you elaborate a little on precisely what you mean?”

“It is evident through observing the behaviour of humans that reason and the will are often in contention. When somebody acts unreasonably, we say this because they have followed their will rather than their reason.”

“I am beginning to understand your point, but, good Anaxagoras, please be clear for my silly sake—what exactly do you refer to when you say ‘will’ here? Desire? Passion?”

“Those would be accurate terms, yes.”

“But is there not a distinction between the two? As in, it would seem to me that somebody cannot be passionate about something without first desiring it, in the way that one who is passionate about cooking first desires good food.”

“Very well. Let us say that that desire is the root of passion, and the act of pursuing desire is what we call ‘passion’. If somebody, such as yourself, pursues truth, this would be because they desire knowledge of the truth. The conclusion is that truth cannot be an end in itself, because what lies at the base of the search for truth is the fulfilment of desire. So, reason cannot transcend the will, and is rather the slave of the passions. Desire is the force which governs us.”

You tip your head sideways and consider his argument. Something appears to be troubling you. Soon, you say, “I believe we have made a mistaken assumption in our reasoning thus far. Somebody can desire something yet choose against it out of their better judgement. Take once more the example of the person who is passionate about cooking. They may desire good food, and this desire may be what incites them to cook, but it will not always be the case that the choices brought about by their reason follow on from their desire. One day, when passing by their favourite food stall after having eaten a large meal shortly before, they may choose not to eat that good food out of the logical understanding that it would have harmful repercussions for their health, even if they do still desire the food. This would suggest that the will, as you put it, and reason can work independently of one another, and indeed that reason is capable of superseding the will.”

“Does not their concern about the repercussions arise from a different desire—the desire for good health?”

“That is true; I see now what you mean. You are suggesting that there will always be a desire which precedes the use of our reason. Perhaps you are right; but, unless I have misunderstood your argument, this seems to cause a problem of the regression of desires. If acting in accordance with the desire for good food is informed by the desire for good health, then what informs this latter desire? The desire for continued living, perhaps—and that is informed by the desire to avoid death? But why do we desire the avoidance of death? It seems that, if desire truly lies at the base of all human activity, we cannot explain what motivates us to act, or to use reason, for there will always be a preceding desire which influences the next. Indeed, if this were the case, we would not be able to act at all. So it still seems to be the case that reason, whose laws exist beyond our will, must at some point inform our desires, rather than the other way around.”

“Or, philosopher, there lies a fundamental, motivating desire at the essence of our being.”

“And there seems to be no way, at least not currently, of determining which it is for certain.”

“Hm.” He drums his fingers against the polished wood of his desk. “Assuming your view is correct, you would always strive to follow reason rather than passion?”

“That is so.” You pause. “Is that all you wish to ask?”

Anaxa considers this for a moment, before replying, “Yes.”

You nod and rise to your feet. “Very well. If that is so, I will be going now.”

“And where are you going, philosopher?” 

“I do not know yet,” you admit. “That is something I will discover once I have encountered somebody, and begin a new discussion. No doubt Aristocles will have something of interest to say if I happen across him.” 

You move towards the exit of the laboratory. Anaxa watches you from his chair, his eye following you with the close attention that a scientist lends its specimen. Or, rather, it is a case that his eyes naturally linger upon you, are drawn towards you rather than away. As you reach the threshold, you pause. He continues to observe you as you turn around to face him. 

“Upon further reflection, I’m afraid there is something I forgot to ask you,” you say. 

Anaxa spreads his hands out before him. “My answers are at your disposal.”

“What happened to your eye? I have always wondered how you lost it, for you do not seem the kind of person to place yourself in harm’s way.”

He feels a smile twist on his lips. He leans backwards in his chair and beckons towards you. “Come. I will show you.” You walk over, stopping beside the desk and staring at him as you await the answer to your question. Anaxa arches a brow. “Closer, philosopher,” he chides. “I won’t bite.”

You oblige with his instruction and without hesitation climb onto the chair, sitting yourself on his lap so that you are straddling his waist with your thighs. Your weight feels perfectly natural on his legs, even comfortable. As if you cannot help yourself, your hands immediately rise to hold his face. You lean closer, peering down at him with a ruminative quality to your expression, like he is a difficult metaphysical concept you are trying to grasp. 

“The loss of my eye was a foolish misjudgement on my behalf,” Anaxa explains casually. The feeling of your hands on his skin is making his stomach twist, but he keeps his voice and his gaze perfectly unaffected. “An attempt to bring my sister back from the River of Souls. Naively, I thought that one eye would be an equivalent price to exchange for her life.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Why do you apologise? It is useless to linger on what is already done.”

You make a thoughtful humming sound, walking your fingers across his brow and down his nose. His eyelashes brush against your palm. Your hand continues wandering its way around his face until it comes to rest above the dark, embroidered cloth which covers his eye. You lean closer still, staring with that transfixed, apprehensive curiosity that precedes a groundbreaking revelation. The thought that your attention is entirely focused on him is thrilling. “May I…?”

Anaxa dips his head incrementally. “Go on.” 

You raise the flap of his eyepatch and gasp softly. For some strange reason, your surprise incites a flicker of satisfaction with him, and he cannot help but smirk. “How fascinating,” you murmur. You slide your fingers up his cheek and rest them below the star-filled chasm where his left eye used to be. Anaxa stares up at you with cool indifference from his other eye. Your proximity is such that your noses would touch if only he tilted his chin higher. “Is it painful?”

The sensation is difficult to describe. The best way he can put it is cold, understood as a complete absence of warmth rather than a degree of temperature in itself. Your fingers card through his hair while he considers the question. “Not painful, no. Rather, it feels like death.” “An interesting turn of phrase that you use there, Anaxagoras,” you observe, winding a pale green tress around your finger. “Does this mean you no longer hold that death is merely negation?”

“Death does not exist,” he replies simply. 

You quirk a brow towards him. “On what grounds do you make such a claim?”

“I will demonstrate it to you. Tell me, philosopher, what does it mean to say that death is negation?”

“It is to say that death is no more than the point at which the individual ceases to exist.”

“By that logic, what would it take for death to not exist?”

“Why, for the individual never to cease existing, of course,” you say.

Anaxa shrugs, closing his eye as you continue to investigate his face. “And so my claim is simple.”

“I see. You believe that death does not exist, because you believe that the individual never ceases to exist.”

The hints of a smile creep onto his lips. “Precisely, philosopher. Now that you know, what do you think of my conjecture?”

“I am curious as to why you deny the cessation of the individual,” you reply, peering once again into the chasm of his left eye. Your fingers trace along the edge of the depression, dipping just barely into the blue void beyond. A cold shudder skitters down his nerves.

Anaxa says, “The ‘individual’ is nothing more than the soul, and the soul survives as long as the influence of a person continues on through others. Because the influence of every action a person takes stretches indefinitely into the future and touches an infinite number of lives, the individual continues to exist, and thus death, taken as negation as I would otherwise have it, does not exist. The only requirement for denying the existence of death is that people still exist in the future to receive the ripples of those actions. If there were to be a point at which no individuals exist to carry forth these influences, then yes, death would exist.”

“Your reasoning seems sensible, but how do you suppose you are correct?” you question, pulling your hand back from his eye. “It could be that you are simply mistaken in your definition of an individual, in which case death may very well exist.”

“I am working on proof,” he says. “When I find it, worry not; you will be the first to know.”

“You are very confident that you will succeed, Anaxagoras.”

He opens his right eye and pins it on you. “I am confident because there is no chance of me being mistaken. My proof is guaranteed. It is simply a matter of time.”

“I fear I may have judged too quickly.” You tap on his chin twice with your index finger. “Is it confidence with which you speak, or arrogance?”

Anaxa tilts his head so that it presses further against your hand. Your palm is warm, slightly calloused. “One cannot be arrogant when there is no room for doubt.” 

“And why do you not doubt?” you ask. “Is doubt not the greatest asset of the philosopher?”

“Doubt is the tool one uses to lead them to a conclusion. Once the conclusion is reached, doubt loses its purpose.”

“An interesting notion, though I am not quite convinced by it.”

Anaxa raises his brow. “Why do you doubt, philosopher?” he asks.

“I have too little faith in my understanding of matters to ever suppose I have reached a conclusion without overlooking something crucial,” you answer honestly. “Better to doubt what is true than accept what is false. In my experience, the search for knowledge is destined to be a pursuit without end.”

“Then why do you persevere?”

“It seems to me that value lies in the journey as much as it lies in the destination. If it were only ends which hold value, all of human existence would be utterly worthless.”

“Why do you presume that human existence holds value?” he presses. 

You sigh and lean away from him, your hands falling to your sides. Though you are still seated on his thighs, it feels as though the distance between you has multiplied indefinitely in length. Anaxa does not pull you back. He only continues to observe you through his one burning eye. 

“I am afraid it is because I am a hopeless optimist who does not know how to stop dreaming,” you admit in a rueful voice. Your gaze strays upwards as if you are perceiving a realm he cannot see. “In the absence of proof either way, I choose to place myself on the side of value. You may label me a fool for it, and I will not refute you; but I believe that the most human thing one can do is to try.” 

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐕, 𝐆𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 & 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐑𝐄

With every night that passes since that exchange in his laboratory, Anaxa feels himself being consumed by a force he cannot control. Even in your absence, he cannot tear the sensation of your hands roaming his face from his mind, and the memory smoulders within him, turning slowly in his gut like a spit over a fire. It is evidence of your physicality; your existence on a plane where he can touch and be touched by you. Of course you have made physical contact before, and on many occasions, but this was different. This time, you felt the inside of him, and brushed against the abyssal frigidity which lies at his core with such tantalising closeness that he is certain, had you proceeded further, he would have been unmade by you, and he would not have resisted. 

The more he observes his own reactions and thinks upon them, the more he thinks you are correct: Anaxa’s end is not truth but humanity, and his means not so much reason as passion. In recognising this, he finds that he can pursue his research to even greater depths. He discovers in his 55th experiment that the souls of Titan creations bear a remarkable resemblance to those of humans. Though the dissection is a time-consuming one, and although the procedure leaves him with severe injuries, he could not be more satisfied with the results. 

This research occupies most of his time. The fishhook which tugged at him before has become an anchor line pulling him up towards the truth. He cannot detach himself from it: his will is at the mercy of his passion, which is itself drawn to humanity. When he succeeds, men will stand at the same height as the gods—no; they will surpass the gods, and never again be subject to their indifferent whims, their false prophecies. (In the low flicker of his oil lamp, the shadows he casts along the floor of his laboratory appear longer than usual.)

News comes to him through Hyacine that the black tide has been observed closing in on the Grove. The sages are scheduling a meeting to discuss their course of action. “Tell them to begin evacuating the Grove,” he says to Hyacine, without shifting his attention from his microscope. He has not set foot outside of his laboratory for four days. “There’s hardly a need for a meeting.”

“Are you saying that because you believe it, or because you don’t want to be distracted, professor?” she replies. In response to her insight, Anaxa is silent. Hyacine sighs. She knows arguing with him in this state is a lost cause. “If the other sages agree, are you going to leave with everyone else?”

He considers the question for a moment. It is somewhat tempting to say yes; to escape is to survive, and to survive is to continue his quest for truth, for humanity. Yet something even more tempting urges him to stay. In remaining at the Grove in the case of an assault, he has the perfect chance to test his hypothesis; even to prove it. “If the black tide is to attack the Grove of Epiphany,” he decides, “I will seize the opportunity.” He does not elaborate any further: already the formulations of his final experiment are piecing together in his mind.

Beyond what he hears during Hyacine’s routine visits to check on his health, Anaxa is ignorant to what is occurring elsewhere in the Grove. This extends to you. He is too infatuated with his findings to pay other matters any heed—though this does not mean he has forgotten you. Once the wave of focus breaks its crest and his concentration wanes, he determines to find you and share his discoveries with you, as well as warn you of the approaching danger. Though his intellectual craving is, for the time being, satisfied, his other craving has grown only more pronounced in the time you have been apart.

Anaxa searches the Grove for you in between lectures. More often than not, you elude him. Perhaps it is the lack of sleep rendering him less shrewd than usual, but you seem more difficult to locate than before. Whenever he does find you, you are locked in conversation with somebody else, his three students and Aristocles being among your most frequent interlocutors. On one occasion he overhears you discussing politics with the former group. It is a topic he has never spoken about with you himself, for when you are together your conversations tend to concern the philosophical rather than the societal. His curiosity compels him to stay a while and listen. 

“If you are embarking on a long journey at sea,” you are saying, “would you rather have the experienced captain steering your ship and plotting your course, or an inexperienced crew member?”

Meletus replies, “The captain, obviously.”

You nod. “I agree. Now, is it not true that generally speaking, due to the social and economic inequality found in all societies, the majority of the population of a city-state lacks the knowledge to make informed judgements about the affairs of that city-state?”

“Yes, that’s true,” he says. 

“And is it not the case that, in the same way you would not want an inexperienced crew steering your ship out of fear of crashing, you would also not want an uninformed population to dictate the affairs of your city-state, out of fear that they will lead it to its downfall.”

“I suppose that sounds right,” concedes Meletus. “But surely the issue there isn’t with democracy itself, and rather with how knowledge is distributed across society. If everyone were informed, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“I would like nothing more than to agree with you, Meletus,” you say, “but how do we suppose that we can arrive at such a fair distribution of knowledge through democracy in the first place? Most people are naturally inclined to pursue their own interests over the general good, which is in this case the distribution of knowledge; and if this is so, the majority will always vote for that option which satisfies their own desires, rather than what would benefit others.”

Anytus interjects, “But do you really think that the other forms of government, such as the monarchy of Castrum Kremnos, are superior to democracy?”

“Ah, dear Anytus, take care that you do not jump to conclusions. Simply because I have my qualms with democracy does not mean I do not also have misgivings about other forms of governance. Indeed, in my view, the monarchic system of Castrum Kremnos contains flaws comparable to those found in Okhema’s democratic Citizens’ Assembly.”

“But you can’t just reject every form of government until there are no options left,” points out Meletus. 

Lycon expresses his agreement and says, “I’m not sure what to think now, either. What would you suggest as an alternative?” 

Your eyes brighten with the prospect of this discussion. “Now that, my friends, is an interesting question, and one which I am more than happy to examine. However, I predict it will take some time to answer; so I will only continue if you are all willing to lend your time and patience to the ramblings of an old fool such as myself.”

The three exchange a glance. “We have time,” answers Lycon.

“I’m glad to hear it. In that case, we must begin by settling on a definition of justice, for would you not agree that is the principle around which a good society is founded?”

“It seems that way, yes,” says Anytus.

“Then tell me: what does it mean for something to be just?”

As Anaxa listens to your conversation, a strange sensation, reminiscent of indignation but with a sharper edge, begins to whittle away at him. He knows he ought to be pleased that his students are developing their understanding by speaking with you, but he cannot bring himself to feel any true satisfaction. You are so at ease, as ever; there is no indication in your behaviour that his absence has bothered you at all. The gnawing sensation hones into needles of doubt. Could it be that, in these few weeks, your interests have diverged? Are you no longer concerned with his presence?

Anaxa reprimands himself for entertaining such childish and petty thoughts the moment they arise. It is hardly the first time he has retreated for a prolonged period of time into his research, and it has never impacted your relationship before. The only reason he is considering such notions now is due to this infuriating, captivating transformation you have incited within him: this dissatisfaction with what he has giving way to hunger for more. ‘More’, Anaxa knows, is the path to ruin. It is the force which brings men to their knees and eras to their ends, as well as the one no person can escape from. His sister wanted to grant him ‘more’. He has always given ‘more’ to his students, to his research, and spilt golden rivers of his own blood in doing so. He cannot help but wonder what he will lose if he pursues the ‘more’ of you.

(In the manner of any truth-seeker, the uncertainty of this outcome spurs him only further towards chasing it.)

At long last, Anaxa manages to catch you on your own on his way out of the Library of Philia. You look pleasantly surprised to see him. “Good Anaxagoras,” you say by way of greeting. The sound of his name on your tongue sends a rush through him.

“Philosopher mine,” he replies. “We have not spoken to each other for some while now.”

“Yes, that is so, isn’t it? It feels as though Meletus, Anytus, Lycon and Aristocles have been occupying all of my time recently.” You tip your head, your wide, sharp eyes falling on him. “And what of yourself? I take it you have been busier than usual, for I have not seen you around very much in recent days.”

“One could say that. My experiments have been progressing with much success.”

You nod. “You do appear rather more gaunt than when I last saw you. I suppose, then, that you have not heeded my advice about exercising care when it comes to pursuing your research.”

“Just as much as you have heeded mine about exercising caution around those who are hostile towards you,” he replies. To his knowledge, Euthyphro has been rallying public opinion against you in another attempt to have you removed from the Grove.

“True; but while I try to take my own advice, I have never once seen you place aside your principles in favour of protecting yourself from criticism.” 

“Hypocrisy in practice does not necessarily nullify advice of its value. The fault in this instance lies with the person rather than the principle.” Though you express your agreement with a nod, Anaxa feels a twinge of impatience. “Enough of this superficial exchange, philosopher. There are more significant matters to attend to.”

You blink. “There are?” 

“There is reason to believe the Grove is under threat from the black tide. I advise that you join the evacuation efforts to Okhema, when they begin.”

A frown flits over your features at the mention of Okhema. “You are suggesting that I leave the Grove?” you ask. “Why, good Anaxagoras, do not tell me that Euthyphro has swayed you to his side, too.”

Anaxa does not respond to your jest and says plainly, “You lack the martial prowess to be of use in the case of a direct assault, and your presence would only hinder those who can fight by forcing them to worry about an additional individual.”

The candidness of his reasoning does not offend you. You merely shrug and reply, “These are indeed sensible grounds for your suggestion. Though, may I ask whether you also plan to leave?”

“Will my answer affect your own decision?”

“No; I simply wish to know what to expect if such a thing is to happen.”

“I plan to stay and complete my research,” Anaxa says, to which you sigh. 

“Then I am afraid you are speaking hypocritically once more. You used my lack of martial prowess and thus causing a hindrance as a justification in favour of me leaving, yet you yourself plan to stay despite having no more expertise in that field than I.”

He retorts with a smirk, “I may appear feeble, but I have my own methods of defending myself. You ought to know better than anybody not to judge by appearances, dear philosopher.”

“And if those methods should fail?” you question. “Your research is something you would risk death for?”

“My research and my students,” he says. “Or as you would put it, ‘humanity’. I will happily seek death if it promises me answers, for there is no true ‘death’ to fear.” He fixes his probing gaze on you. “Are not your own principles something you would die for?”

“I would rather you leave with everybody else,” you admit, “but I cannot refute that. Let us then hope that all of this speculation never comes to pass.”

Though Anaxa voices agreement, his conviction is half-hearted. He realises, with mild surprise, that he wants it to transpire. If the Grove is attacked, he is almost guaranteed to die, and you and the other scholars to survive. If not, and life continues as it currently does, not only does he lose the valuable opportunity to validate his theory, but Anaxa risks the possibility of living long enough for you to perish before he does. In the former case, the consequences balance each other out, and a comfortable equilibrium is reached. In the latter case, all of the outcomes are undesirable. 

He casts an eye across your surroundings. There are a few groups of students loitering nearby, not to mention some of those who are among your more consistent interlocutors. It is only bound to get busier as the day draws on, and the possibility that your dialogue will be interrupted is too great for his liking. Be it for only one conversation, Anaxa wants you to himself. This is something he has come to realise in startling clarity over the last few weeks of your absence.

“Is something the matter, Anaxagoras?” you ask, noticing his wariness. 

“Accompany me around the Grove, if you will, to grant us more privacy as we speak.”

“Why, it would be my pleasure.” You begin to walk. “What is it you want to talk about?”

He answers your question with one of his own. “What do you suppose is the fundamental distinction between humans and gods?”

You think briefly before replying, “One would have to posit the difference in our natures as the answer.”

“Why do you say so?”

“The distinction can hardly be something physical, for Titans can take on forms much similar to humans, and there seems no essential connection between their ability to change shape and their divinity. Kephale, for example, no longer can change their form, yet we would not say they are no longer divine. Even immortality cannot be the distinction, for the Titans are not truly immortal, as the black tide has proven. The most obvious answer would be that Titans are divine whereas humans are not, but I do not believe this response solves our problem.”

As you continue to speak, Anaxa finds himself hanging on the end of every word you say. Of course he listened to you attentively in the past, as is required of any philosophical conversation; but now he drinks in every word as would a starved man, and they spill down his throat like molten gold, like poison, scalding his innards as he continues against all better judgement to gulp them down. This desire, he is certain, is a disease; a maddening, feverish burning beneath his skin. It will drive him out of his mind. He ought to stop, he thinks, and chastises himself for showing such weak mental discipline. He cannot stop. Is this not precisely what he has been preaching this whole time, about the dominance of desire over reason? Ought he not to rejoice in the proof he has found?

“Anaxagoras?” Your voice rouses him from his spiralling thoughts. “Are you listening?”

“I am,” he says. “You were explaining the problem of distinguishing human flaws from divine flaws which underlies the current definition of ‘divinity’, understood as the ‘complete absence of human flaws and a state of completeness unique to the gods’. For instance, bloodlust in humans is considered a flaw, yet in Nikador it is spared such criticism and the trait is accepted as a facet of their divinity.”

“Indeed. If we are to place the distinction between humans at Titans as divinity, or the ‘complete absence of human flaws’, we must first determine what is a human flaw. But if a human flaw is not a flaw in a Titan because we accept that the Titan is divine, this is circular reasoning, as both sides rely on each other’s truth to be themselves true.”

“Careful, now, philosopher,” Anaxa warns. “It would almost sound as though you’re blaspheming.”

“It would not be the first time I have been accused of that,” you admit. You turn a corner as you speak and come face-to-face with a student who is vaguely familiar to him. You draw to a halt, while Anaxa lingers by your side, watching the following interaction unfold. “Ah, Phaedrus,” you say amicably, “how do you do?”

Phaedrus—Anaxa believes he recognises the name. He is studying under the Helkolithists, and Anaxa has seen you talking with him every now and again. “I’m doing well, thank you,” replies the young man. “Could I run by you my speech on rhetoric before I submit the final draft?”

“Little would please me more,” you say. “However, as you can see, I am currently speaking with good Anaxagoras here, and I would hardly wish to be rude and abandon him so suddenly. How about this solution: I shall seek you out once our conversation has finished.”

He nods. “Of course, yes, that’s no problem. Thank you. I’ll see you later.” 

You smile and bid Phaedrus farewell. Anaxa finds himself wondering at the way you so casually withdraw your focus from him and bestow it upon somebody else. It feels like theft—like he has been deprived of one of the bare necessities for living, such as water or food—yet you do not seem to recognise the power you hold over him, nor anybody else in that regard. You are too humble for your own good, Anaxa thinks: in supposing yourself to be a candle, you do not understand that you are the Sun shedding light on the truths of this world. Is this a failing of yours? He cannot help but wonder. Are you blameworthy for your own ignorance? You have always existed in your own exclusive realm, but it is no longer a separation Anaxa can accept. Now he yearns for closeness, and fears the cold and dark of the night more than ever. 

“As long as they intrigue you, you will lend anybody your attention, won’t you?” Anaxa asks. His voice drips with a languid sardonicism which masks the more corrosive emotion lying behind it. 

You tilt your head to the side, your focus shifting back onto him. “Well, yes. Engaging with others is how one learns.”

He grasps the back of your head suddenly and pulls it towards him, holding you in place so that you face him and him only. Your expression betrays your shock.

“And if I were to tell you that I wanted you to look at me? To watch me, above all else?” He leans closer to you, until a few hairs breadths are all that stand between you and him. His eye bears down on you, burning with the intensity of a cold green flame. “Could you do that?” 

“That would depend on what you have to say,” you reply, meeting his gaze steadily. 

“Would you not be tempted to do so by your less rational inclinations? Your own desire, for instance?” 

“There is the temptation, yes,” you admit, “but one does not discover truth through desire.” 

“Does one not? Can desire not strip us down to our barest components, enlighten us to the most fundamental parts of ourselves? Is that not also a form of truth?”

“You do have a point,” you reply, “but even so, the truth one learns through desire is limited and dependent on the individual. Perhaps desire can be revealing of a single person’s character, but not of the nature of such things as justice, goodness, or knowledge.” As you speak, your eyes begin to wander the space behind Anaxa. The loss of your attention is unbearable. He thrusts your head right back towards him, so close that your noses press together, clutching your hair so tightly that it bunches beneath his fingers. Your eyes widen. 

“What if I told you that the Titans and humans are in essence identical?” he says in a low, cutting voice. 

You blink. “What?”

“If I said that I had reason to believe the Titans of today were none other than the Chrysos Heirs of yesterday, and that there lies no fundamental difference between us? If I said the nature of souls is memory, encapsulated within seeds of wisdom? Would that be sufficiently intriguing for you?” 

You stare at him in bewilderment. A smile curls at Anaxa’s lips. 

“Have I rendered the ever-querying philosopher speechless?” 

“These are grand claims to be making,” you say eventually, choosing your words carefully. “If you are truly convinced by them, I cannot overlook their implications, nor withhold from trying to understand them myself. How did you arrive at such conclusions?”

“If I tell you, in the manner of equivalent exchange, will you look upon me, and only me?”

“You know I cannot promise such a thing, Anaxagoras. I’m afraid that it is not an equivalent exchange which you entertain with this request, but rather jealousy. Do not let your judgment be clouded.”

“Whose authority do you cite to instruct me thus? Your own? You have never once had your judgement clouded by jealousy, nor desire, nor any other vice?”

You press your lips together. “I am the furthest from infallible, but I make efforts whenever possible to avoid any irrational inclinations which may affect the pursuit of truth.”

“I did not ask you a question for you to evade it, philosopher. Answer me plainly and truthfully. Have you?”

After a moment, you reply, “Yes.”

“In what way?”

“I was overcome by fear.”

“Why?”

“For your safety, when you were conducting experiments.”

“Do you desire me?”

This question throws you off-guard. You have practically given him your answer already through your previous exchange, but being asked so directly causes you to falter, your mouth opening and closing around empty sounds. Anaxa watches every shift in your expression with the keen zealousness of a starved hawk. He can feel himself smouldering. He wants to hear it from you. He wants your admission, your surrender to what it means to be human, from your own mouth, in your own words. No, more than that—he needs it.  

At long last, you say slowly, “I do desire you, yes.”

“And are you willing to pursue that desire?”

You open your mouth to answer. 

“—Professor! There you are!” 

It is like being dropped into ice. Footsteps hurry closer. With deep reluctance, Anaxa releases his grip on your head and turns to face the approaching scholar, Cynane, with an impassive expression. Too out of breath to notice what she has interrupted, she continues in gasping out, “I was looking for you everywhere. You said we would meet to discuss my research paper at three, and it’s half past.”

Anaxa blinks slowly. It feels like he has suddenly been torn from a dream and given no time to reorientate himself. His mind struggles to construct a coherent picture of anything beyond the contents of your interrupted conversation and the hunger of his will. Low tongues of fire still lick at his mind, obscuring his thoughts with a curtain of smoke. “Which paper?” 

Cynane pulls a puzzled frown. “The essay I submitted to you about the structure of the soul.” 

His head clears enough for a memory of speaking about this to emerge. “So I did.” The cogs in Anaxa’s head are beginning to turn again, grinding gradually back into their usual rhythm. He shrugs off his lethargy and returns to form, straightening his back as he speaks, the usual glaze of authority returning to his voice. “Very well. We may discuss it now.” 

“Thank you,” smiles Cynane. Anaxa does not react. He casts a final glance back at you as he leaves with her. You are standing by the path, looking into the distance, apparently in deep thought. You do not return his gaze.

Over the following days, you continue to interact as though nothing at all happened, yet Anaxa feels that something fundamental in the nature of your dynamic has shifted. In which direction, and whether for better or worse, he cannot tell. All he knows is that he has brought desire into the equation. The liminal, rational sanctuary of your previous relationship has been breached: it must now either adapt to this new variable, or else it must crumble.

… … … … … … …

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐕, 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐄

In his 144th experiment, Anaxa attempts the metaphase of soul fusion between Titankin and humans. It is a precarious procedure which requires his undivided attention, so he announces that he will not be available in the meanwhile and cancels his upcoming classes. Even Hyacine is not to disturb him. 

Fatigue eats away at him as he loses himself in the experimental process. The last meal he had was a day ago, and he has not slept for two nights in a row. His veins protrude from beneath his semi-translucent skin. Anaxa does not require Hyacine’s medical expertise to know that his health is deteriorating. Even so, his physical condition does not trouble him. He long ago recognised that his life belongs to his students, his body to his research, and his soul to you. Once he has given all he can, there will be nothing of him left. Good, he thinks; this is the optimal outcome. It allows him to spare any concerns he would otherwise have about self-preservation impeding on his research.

The experiment, to his great relief, is a success. The merged product is unstable, dangerously volatile, but it proves beyond doubt that the synthesis of the divine and the human is possible. Anaxa sends silent thanks to Empedocles for contributing his soul to the endeavour. With this cornerstone, he is now but one step from uncovering the truth capable of elevating humanity to the level of the so-called gods.

He is detailing the results of the experiment in his report book when there comes a sharp knocking at his door. Anaxa ignores the sound and continues to write. The knock returns, accompanied by a voice calling, “Professor! Professor Anaxagoras!” It is Aristocles. 

“I have made it clear that I am not to be disturbed at the moment,” Anaxa replies with a bite of impatience in his voice. 

“But it’s important,” insists Aristocles. “It’s—it’s them.” Anaxa’s eyes flick up momentarily from the paper. “Something’s happened. I don’t know exactly what, but… there’s some kind of trial. Euthyphro is involved.”

Anaxa rises so quickly that his chair clatters to the floor. “Take me there,” he commands.

Aristocles, panicked, leads him through the Grove’s vacant gardens to the Luminary Throne. A crowd has gathered in the clearing, and it takes some effort to push through to the front. 

You are kneeling on the ground in the centre of the wooden platform, your head hung, staring at the floor. The olive sprig is missing from your hair. Among your onlookers, Anaxa recognises the trio of Meletus, Anytus and Lycon, the other sages, Euthyphro, and those of his pupils who have yet to evacuate the Grove. Judging by the size of the crowd alone, almost everybody who remains must be gathered here.

“What is the meaning of this?” Anaxa demands of the assembly, stepping forwards into the clearing. Your eyes flit upwards at the sound of his voice, then away. Euthyphro, who is standing at the foot of the empty throne, sneers at his arrival.

“Professor Anaxagoras,” he greets, his voice laden with mock courtesy. “I heard you were so involved with your research that you were not to be disturbed with any other matters.”

“Exceptions can be made,” Anaxa dismisses. “Now, answer my question.”

“It’s simple: the ‘philosopher’ here is being put on trial for their crimes.”

“‘Crimes’?” echoes Anaxa. “On what grounds do you charge them thus?”

“On the grounds of showing impiety towards Cerces and corrupting the youth of the Grove of Epiphany. Meletus, Anytus and Lycon came forth with these charges, validating the concerns many scholars have reported over the last few years.”

Anaxa’s gaze darts towards his students. They stiffen and look away. A stab of confusion and something darker runs through him. Is he missing something here? Were they not the ones conversing eagerly with you? He shifts his attention to you. For one always so eager to discuss, you are strangely silent. Neither, though Anaxa knows you are more than capable of defending yourself, do you make any attempt to refute the words being thrown your way. 

He turns his focus back to Euthyphro and scoffs, “You would charge them, who merely asks harmless questions, with impiety and corruption, yet leave my position untouched? Not only is this a gross misconstrual of their behaviour, but also blatant hypocrisy.”

Euthyphro’s lips twitch in a frown. “Professor Anaxagoras, controversial as your standing may be, you are an established and valuable member of the Grove who aims to educate and develop understanding. This is entirely unlike the useless, misleading, and dangerous inquiry of the accused. For instance, it is not you whose guidance has led directly to the demise of others.”

“That was a development nobody could have predicted,” Anaxa counters. “Any professor could have been responsible for the same.”

“Any professor would have taken measures to ensure they would not be misunderstood. We do not prosecute on the grounds of possibility, Anaxagoras. People must be held accountable for their actions.”

“Why do you raise this incident now, after years have passed?” he challenges. “It seems a poorly made excuse to frame them as guilty by raising unrelated affairs and redirecting attention from the crux of the issue, which is the lack of legitimate grounds for holding this trial.”

Euthyphro smiles as though he was waiting for this response. “The sages have agreed that the situation was mishandled in the past, particularly by Empedocles. In light of the accusations of your own students, we agreed the matter deserves reconsideration, and found them guilty.”

“As one of the Seven Sages, why was I not involved in this process?” he demands.

“You explicitly stated that your research was not to be interrupted, even by matters concerning the sages,” points out Euthyphro. “We only respected your wishes.”

Anaxa cannot refute this: he did indeed make such a request. “Even so, your evident bias against them undermines the integrity of this trial. You cannot proclaim yourself impartial and fit to preside over the presentation of their case.”

“Can you truly say that you are not subject to bias in defending them?” he returns. “Everybody knows how much you favour them, Anaxagoras. Your judgement is the most susceptible to error out of all of us. In fact, are you not one of those who helped them cover up the deaths in that incident?”

“If that is where your qualms lie,” Anaxa says calmly, “it is myself whom you should be holding accountable, not them. They had no involvement in concealing it.”

“Then your part in this will also be considered. However, the identity of the principal offender remains unchanged. They are a danger to the very constitution of the Grove. You may disagree on the charge of corrupting the youth’s mentality, but the fact that their meddling caused such a tragedy is indisputable proof that they are a danger to education. With the black tide only encroaching further, the threat they pose cannot be risked.”

“And how will you sentence them?” asks Anaxa.

“They are to be put to death.”

He narrows his eye on Euthyphro. “Nobody at the Grove has that kind of authority.”

“Nobody at the Grove, no. However, in extreme cases, the Council of Elders may become involved. They have the authority to make such a sentence.”

As he speaks, Elder Caenis steps out from the gathered crowd into the unbreached circle surrounding you. Murmurs break out around her. “The matter will be put to a vote,” she announces. Anaxa wonders incredulously whether this is truly happening or whether he has gone insane due to a lack of sleep.

“Why does the Council of Elders have a say about the politics of the Grove?” demands Aristocles in a query he would also like to know the answer to. 

“Considering that the danger posed by this individual affects Okhema as well as the Grove of Epiphany, it is only right that the Council has a say in this trial,” says Euthyphro. 

Aristocles frowns. “Affects Okhema how?”

Elder Caenis clears her throat. A tense hush falls over the gathered crowd. “The charges against the accused, and the justifications for the charges, will now be stated in full, after which the vote will commence. First, on the charge of impiety, the accused has frequently expressed notions challenging the legitimacy of Cerces and the other Titans and has acted disrespectfully towards the gods during religious ceremonies, such as interrupting rituals with questions and walking barefoot into sacred spaces. Unlike Professor Anaxagoras,” she continues, “they do not proclaim to commit this blasphemy in order to better humanity, but for the sake of questioning itself. In doing so, the accusers believe they have overstepped the authority of Reason, as condemned in the Decree of the Seven Sages.” Caenis pauses. “The accused may now respond to the allegations.”

“I have little to say but that I believe this charge is misplaced,” you reply. It is the first time you have spoken since he arrived, and your gaze remains fixed on the ground in front of you. “The only thing I know is that I know nothing; so it cannot be the case that I have asserted any claims which undermine the authority of the Titans, for that would mean I know something, which I do not. If nothing else, surely using one’s rationality to question the things around us is a demonstration of Reason rather than an abuse of it. Similarly, I would think that etiquette, such as is observed in religious rituals, is not essential to the workings of Reason itself, for it is based in action and tradition rather than in thought. So, I do not see how my behaviour breaches any substantial considerations regarding the demonstration of piety.”

People begin to whisper among themselves. Euthyphro calls for silence, and Caenis continues. “Secondly, on the charge of corrupting the youth: certain people known to be involved closely with this ‘philosopher’ have sown discord within both the Grove of Epiphany and Okhema. In the Grove, they have proven a frequent disturbance to those trying to study and develop their knowledge and disrespected a number of established scholars. This is not to mention the direct harm which they have caused, such as in the previously discussed instance where two students were influenced to seek their deaths beyond the Grove. In Okhema, they have also been a cause of unrest. For instance, you have all heard of the failed political coup eight years ago, when the two soldiers Alcibiades and Critias tried to dismantle the Council of Elders and killed three highly respected council members in the process. When questioned, the soldiers claimed to have been inspired by their teachings. These are grave crimes which cannot be dismissed.” She raises her eyes from the wax tablet. “Once again, the accused may now speak to defend themselves.”

You stare at the ground in silence. Seconds tick by—precious seconds you could be using to argue your case. Anaxa observes you closely, puzzled by your hesitation, waiting for you to speak. At long last, you mumble, “I have nothing to say on this matter. I accept full responsibility for the harm, direct and indirect, which has resulted from my actions.”

Your response incites a wave of murmurs to rise from the audience. Anaxa narrows his eye. Just what game are you playing here? Do you not understand that your life is on the line? He wants to argue with you, to convince you to place your principles aside for once in your life. But you without your principles would be like Anaxa without his passion: no longer the same person. You seem determined to bear the outcome of this trial as yourself. As much as he wishes to change your mind, this is a decision he must respect. His understanding does not diminish his frustration.

Elder Caenis looks pleased by your concession. “Good,” she says. “In that case, according to the laws of the Grove, there is time for discussion amongst the jury before the sages cast the final vote.”

The assembled members of the Grove begin to converse before she has finished speaking. Anaxa hears a variety of arguments being tossed back and forth. From what he can tell, general opinion is weighted against you, but there are a number of people making points in your defence. After each school presents its overall conclusions, the sages discuss the results among themselves. When the time comes to vote, three of the sages, including Anaxa, vote to absolve you. Four vote in favour of the sentence.

Elder Caenis surveys the results and announces, “It is decided. By the vote of the majority, the ‘philosopher’ of the Grove of Epiphany shall be put to death for their crimes, by the standard sentence of drinking hemlock.”

Anaxa flinches as the words are spoken. Your own reaction to the sentence is indiscernible. You are told to rise to your feet, and you do so without resistance. He rushes forwards and seizes your shoulder as you stand. “What is this?” he demands. “What exactly happened here?”

You do not look at him when you reply, “I was foolish, and misled into believing a deception. This is but the price for my misjudgement.” 

“What misjudgement?” he hisses through his teeth. “Do not speak to me in riddles simply because it suits you in the moment, philosopher.”

You sigh forlornly, and your whole body seems to wilt with it. “What I mistook for true curiosity in those three pupils of yours was in reality a ploy to exact revenge upon me. I failed to recognise that, rather than a desire for knowledge, I had instead incited a deep hatred for me within them, which they acted upon today. Considering the elaborate nature of the proceedings, I would guess that this has been their intention for quite some time.” There is true dejection in your voice of a kind he has never heard before.

A storm of questions barrages through his mind. Revenge? What plan? What is going on here? “How has the Council of Elders come to be involved?” he asks.

“From my understanding, one of the two who perished to the black tide was the child of one of the council members. This is likely the crux which brought their interest to my case.”

“This is absurd.”

“Perhaps.”

“I will not permit them to treat you in this way.”

“That’s enough talking,” interjects Euthyphro. “Once deemed guilty, the accused no longer has the right to voice their opinions. If there is something you must say, you can do it outside their cell in Okhema.”

The utter ludicrousness of the situation stuns Anaxa into silence. He watches numbly as you are led away across the grass and out of sight. It is over so simply, so quickly, that he almost cannot believe what has just happened.

A few moments pass. People begin to mumble amongst themselves. Standing a few paces away from him, Lycon turns towards Anaxa, his expression a twisted fusion of guilt and satisfaction. He begins, “Professor—”

“Be silent!” Anaxa snaps. It is a tone he has never used before; it carries an edge so sharp it threatens to splinter. The crowd obeys. In the ensuing silence, he can hear hot blood rushing through his ears. His shoulders rise and fall with shuddering breaths as he fights to maintain his composure, driving his nails into the paper-thin skin of his palms. This is—this is unacceptable. You are not to be taken from him like this. It is fundamentally wrong. How dare they—how dare anybody—suppose that they can come between you? 

Anger rises within him like a slow boil, starting from the frigid, dark place in his gut and gathering heat as it rises until it threatens to break out of his skin and burn him up from the inside out. People have begun to speak again in hushed voices. Their words spin together in a spiral of formless, indiscernible noise. Somebody says his name. He feels his eye twitch as the thundering ricochet of his heartbeat pounds quicker, quicker, quicker. He cannot remain here for any longer. Anaxa spins on his heel and hastens to his laboratory, ignoring the clamour that erupts behind him. 

As he walks, his mind is in a state of cacophonous disarray. Usually he delights in the sensation of thoughts clashing against each other, but now they are clamorous and incoherent, flailing wildly like a bird trapped in a net. There is no logical order or syllogism in the way they roar above his better senses. Why did he not notice the deceit of his students earlier? How did matters escalate so dramatically in his absence? Why has this happened to you? How dare they? He must find a way to undo this. How dare they?

When his sister was killed, Anaxa felt a kaleidoscope of emotions—grief, confusion, anger towards the callous indifference of the gods—but not this, never this. He has always been burning, true; but that flame has always been low, cold, persistent, calculated. This fury which blazes so hot within him now, kindled by a hatred which sets his soul aflame, is an utterly foreign sensation. He seizes it and holds it close. Perhaps it is the key to refuting a ruling made on such blatantly irrational grounds. 

But first, he requires evidence. His position will not be considered unless he has proof of your innocence. He throws open the door and seizes upon his desk, tossing files and papers aside as he searches for any materials which could help his case. There is a file somewhere in here, he knows, one which documents the tragic incident of those years ago and how it was dealt with. Anaxa is not certain why he kept the file, but he is glad that he did. If he can compile a defence before your sentence and argue convincingly for your freedom before the Citizens’ Assembly in Okhema, your sentencing will be overturned. 

No—there is no ‘if’. He is eloquent enough a speaker to convince an assembly, even if public opinion is weighted against him. The only reason today’s ruling was passed is because he was taken by surprise. With sufficient preparation, he will succeed. There is no doubt of that. The Council of Elders are all fools, as the events of today have proven. Fools, because they suppose they can meddle with his affairs without facing consequences. Anaxa will show them they are gravely mistaken. He will ridicule Elder Caenis—no, the whole council, for what they have done, tear apart their entitlement by the seams and reduce them to shreds. He will turn this farcical world complete with its farcical justice upside down with his own two hands and laugh as it burns viridian. 

Aristocles approaches him later that day and implores, “Let me help. I care about them, too.”

Coldly, Anaxa replies, “You do not know enough about them to be of use. If you want to help, focus on ensuring the evacuation efforts continue. I will resolve this matter myself.” He cannot afford to be distracted by another person. Not now. Aristocles is hesitant to leave, but eventually yields. 

The further he digs, the more Anaxa realises that this scheme has its roots far deeper than either of you would have known. That the Council of Elders have had their eyes on the Grove for some time now comes as no surprise considering the influence its scholars have on the other city-states. What is shocking is the extent to which the Council went in order to corner you in particular.

Like you said, the deaths of the students appears to have been the catalyst, but there are more threads involved than that event alone. On questioning his three students, Anaxa uncovers a series of letters revealing that one of Elder Caenis’ subordinates made contact with Meletus, using the bribes of both money and vengeance for a friend to manipulate the young scholar’s emotions to the council’s purposes. Meletus admits to sharing the plan with his close friends, Anytus and Lycon. Gaining the cooperation of Euthyphro, who already had an unfavourable opinion of you, was similarly straightforward. Anaxa is not surprised by Euthyphro’s involvement, though his disgust in the three of his students is immeasurable. But he will deal with them later. He must not get distracted. There are more pressing matters at hand.

The discovery of the letters ought to be evidence enough to prove the injustice of the trial. Anaxa is still not satisfied. There must be a deeper reason the Council would go to such lengths to ensnare a random, unemployed thinker from another city-state, considering that the charges made against you could as easily have applied to him. He cannot accept that the difference between your situations—the reason you are convicted while he remains untouched—is truly as arbitrary as the fact that Anaxa was protected by academic reputation and legislation, whereas you were not. 

Anaxa never inquired into your history because it was not relevant to your discussions. Now he finds himself regretting that he did not ask you sooner about your life before the Grove. Why did he sacrifice his opportunity to know, that day in his laboratory? Why did he prioritise such abstract ideals as ends and reason over the fundamental, effortless basis of connection? That knowledge would be invaluable in informing the present situation. He suspects that the missing pieces surrounding the Council’s motivations lie somewhere in your past. Since Anaxa cannot ask you for the answer, he must seek it himself. 

He scours the shelves of the Library of Philia, reasoning that you have spent enough time in the Grove that there must be some reference to your personal history in the library’s records despite your lack of official connection to the institution. He conducts a search for any information potentially related to you, drawing together documents about recent history from the other major city-states to improve his chances. The method is disordered and frantic, a far cry from the highly organised procedures which typically mark his research. Fraction by fraction, the agonising investigation yields results, and Anaxa puts together your story. 

You are originally a citizen of Okhema, but you were cast out after publicly criticising the democratic governance of the city-state in speeches preceding multiple different Citizens’ Assemblies. The contents of your criticisms included pointing out the corruption of the Council of Elders and making the accusation that they were not fit to rule, to the extent that you argued any form of democracy would ultimately lead to injustice and misjudgement. Records are silent regarding what happened to you following this exile; the next reference to you Anaxa can find is from a few years later, when you arrived at the Grove. 

After you left Okhema, the seeds of doubt you had sowed into the populus continued to sprout, giving rise to a number of turbulent events in the city-state’s political sphere. Citizens questioned the authority of the elders more than was ideal; those who were more radical even turned to the example of Castrum Kremnos as an alternative. Such was the thinking behind the disastrous coup of Alcibiades and Critias, two young soldiers you had mentored when in Okhema, who twisted your critiques to legitimise their short-minded pursuit of power. Anaxa knew of the coup itself, but he was not aware of your connection to it, trivial as it may be, until Elder Caenis raised it in your trial. 

With the assembly to determine the future of the Flame-Chase Journey looming ever closer, no wonder the Council wants you so desperately gone, when you can undermine their authority even from afar. Hearing of the evacuation plans through his students’ letters, Elder Caenis took advantage of the diminished student body and struck when those who would argue in your defence were fewer than usual. The condemnations made against you by Euthyphro, although not initially part of the scheme, made you an even easier target. In the end, you are but a scapegoat, singled out by misfortune and public opinion to be the one who bears this consequence. 

As Anaxa compiles his argument, he laughs at himself for believing that any sort of sanctuary, untouched by desire, ever existed to ground your attachment. Your relationship was never rational. Nobody forms a relationship on the basis of impartiality. There is always a motivating factor which draws people together, and this factor is desire, be it for knowledge, for a like mind, for intimacy, for security, for company. Every human interaction can be accounted for in these terms. It follows that, from the beginning, passion has been working within him, within you, colouring your thoughts with a tint of obsession. These things he feels now are but the fruits of that passion which has long lingered at the roots of your relationship.

Within three days, he has compiled his case and travels to Okhema by dromas. He has slept five hours in total since the day of your trial, and even less when considering the days prior. He does not care. His body has been pushed far beyond its limits and aches as it frays around him, but the blaze still raging in his mind is more than enough to carry him through the journey. When he arrives in the city, he heads straight for the Marmoreal Palace. He will need the support of the Chrysos Heirs, and Aglaea in particular, if he is to be granted permission to speak against the sentencing. Under normal circumstances, he would do anything to avoid an encounter with that woman. However, these are not normal circumstances. Considering the deep-seated corruption underlying your trial, the Council of Elders will no doubt deny his right to challenge the verdict. 

After an arduous discussion, Aglaea concedes, granting him permission to call for a retrial. Anaxa shortly finds himself standing before Kephale’s looming visage and making his opening statement. The citizens of Okhema know less of your role within the Grove than the sages, but they do know of your connection to Alcibiades and Critias, which is sufficient to set initial biases against you. This is of no consequence. Anaxa has come prepared: and as he previously asserted, he is more than capable of convincing an assembly. 

The retrial lasts for two and a half hours. Anaxa extracts the details regarding the deaths of the two students and the bias present in your sentencing, as well as your relation to Alcibiades and Critias, arguing that one cannot be held accountable for those who wilfully twist their words to their own ends. You are no more a ‘corrupter of youth’ than he is: if he is allowed to roam free carrying similar accusations, there is no reason for your treatment to differ. The fact that you lack a legal affiliation with the Grove is irrelevant. 

‘Impiety’ is even more sensitive a subject in the holy city than it is in the Grove of Epiphany, but Anaxa addresses it nonetheless and maintains that you have not defiled the Titans in any substantial way. He himself is more guilty of this charge, and even then, there are arguments to be made in his defence. 

He keeps private some of the more damaging details for the council’s reputation—these, he is saving for an even grander opportunity—though he reveals enough to make clear the unfair conditions of your trial and cast doubt on the handling of your case. The Council of Elders resists his arguments, but it is the citizens who have the final say. The last question posed to him by the assembly is, “How can you guarantee that something similar won’t happen in the future?”

Logically speaking, Anaxa cannot guarantee this for certain. He answers in the best and only way he can: “I will personally ensure that no repeats of these events occur.”

There is a hush as the Citizens’ Assembly make their decisions and cast their clay shards into the voting dolia. The result is narrow. You are spared by eleven votes. 

Exhausted, tucking the pardon into his coat pocket, Anaxa makes his way to your holding cell. 

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐕𝐈, 𝐃𝐔𝐓𝐘 & 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍

You don’t seem to notice him coming in at all. Typical. Anaxa clicks his tongue and knocks twice on the bars. You raise your head at the sound. Surprise flashes in your eyes when you recognise your visitor. Despite it all, you do not appear too much worse for wear, and for the first time in a week Anaxa feels a breath of relief pass through him. 

“Anaxagoras?” you ask. “Goodness, you do not look well. What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he retorts, crossing his arms. “I would have thought somebody as bright as yourself could work it out. I’ve come to take you out of this place, of course.”

Your brow contracts in confusion. “What for? My sentence has been decreed in no unclear terms, and I have no intention of leaving.”

“What reasons have you to stay?”

“Why, the fulfilment of justice, of course.”

“You would call this ‘just’?” he challenges, gesturing towards the bars of your cell. You look around as though noticing them for the first time. Then you chuckle.

“The charges against me on grounds of impiety and corrupting the youth? No; for if that were a just ruling, it would have to be applied consistently, and you would have long been imprisoned before I. But the loss of those students’ lives—that, I take full accountability for. Furthermore, if I accept your offer of bribery, in going against the law, are not the charges against me all the more founded?”

Anaxa laughs. “You think I come to win you back through bribery?”

“Have you not?” You frown. “It is the most efficient solution to this problem, and I do not believe you would expend such a great deal of effort on me to clear my name by other means. Neither do I not believe bribery would leave too great a mark on your conscience.”

Anaxa must admit, your first and third reasons ring true. You are correct that he tends to favour solutions which are swift and effective, and you are also correct that he would not lose sleep over one act of bribery committed against a corrupt ruling. But your second justification…

I do not believe you would spend such a great deal of effort on me to clear my name by other means. 

Those words, spoken so plainly and matter-of-fact, cut him deeper than he would have expected. Is this truly how you conceive of him? After all your years together, this is the conclusion you have drawn—that he values you so little that he would not bother to ‘expend the effort’ on you when you need it? A feeling he cannot place, directed towards himself, twists sharply inside of him. Is it disappointment that he feels over this miscalculation of his? Shame? Disgust? 

Anaxa keeps these thoughts to himself and retains a perfect composure as he replies, “Good philosopher, I fear you’ve jumped to a conclusion by underestimating my moral scruples. I am not, in fact, here to free you through bribery. Rather, having argued your case valiantly before the Council of Elders, I come with an official pardon for your sentence.” He arches a pointed brow towards you. “I expect you to thank me.”

Anaxa watches your expression shift from calm acceptance to surprise to consideration. “Thank you very much,” you say honestly. “I did not expect you to go to such lengths. But…”

He prompts, “But?”

“I suspect there is a catch you have failed to mention to me. No matter the strength of your defence, I doubt the council would pardon me with no strings attached.”

Anaxa must concede to this. With a begrudging sigh, he relates, “You are to remain in Okhema, never to set foot in the Grove of Epiphany again, and refrain from making public appearances unless specifically given permission to do so.” 

A wry smile curls at your lips. “Then you must know, Anaxagoras, that for me this is a fate far worse than death.” He knows. There is a reason he left out the catch. You continue, “You know that I believe the unexamined life is not worth living. Thus, if I am denied the ability to seek the truth in this world, I shall simply do so in the next.” 

“I won your pardon on honest grounds,” Anaxa says calmly, “but that does not mean I intend to honour its terms.”

This development appears to intrigue you. You pin him with a probing stare. “You would risk directly going against a ruling from the council on my behalf?” 

He crosses his arms. “I still believe you have been dealt an injustice, although those blinded by their own ignorance and authority refuse to see it. The terms of this agreement are far too severe in proportion to your alleged ‘crimes’.” 

You tip your head sideways, and your expression takes on a contemplative shade. “And supposing I accept your offer, where am I to go, when I am unwelcome in the only remaining safe havens of our world? Remaining in this cell seems to me a far better alternative. It is comfortable enough, and at least here I can speak with the guards who come to deliver me food and water, and not have to concern myself with safety.”

“I have no answer to that question yet,” he admits, “but I will find a solution. I swear it.”

You lean back against the wall. Something in your expression tells him you are not convinced. After a moment of reflection, you speak. “I am grateful for your help, Anaxagoras, but I do not know why you are so determined to get me out of my current situation. I have no qualms about facing my own mortality, if that is what concerns you. In practicing philosophy, I have long been preparing myself for death, so I do not fear it. If not sooner, then it is inevitable I will die later; and, since I am to die anyway, I would rather do so in the relatively dignified way that has been set out for me, rather than meeting my end in the jaws of some beast in the wilderness or perishing to the black tide.”

Anaxa foresaw this response as a possibility, but that does not make hearing it from you any less disheartening. “And I suppose no argument I make will move you?” 

“That of course depends on the argument; but I do not currently foresee anything you could say which would change my mind.”

Your reasons for staying are sound, and Anaxa has no doubt you are exactly as accepting of your own demise as you present yourself to be. And therein lies the problem: you may have no qualms about yourself dying, but he does. He is not giving up until it is with you by his side. 

Anaxa sighs. He was hoping it would not come to this, but you leave him little choice. “If that is so, my dear philosopher, I am afraid we must depart from reasonable discourse if I am to convince you of my position.”

A frown forms on your face. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” he says, “that I do not want you to die, if on no other grounds than my selfish desire for your company. The other reasons I have offered you hold true, but they are only supplementary to this fundamental principle. Mark me that I will find a way to clear your name and grant you the freedom you are owed, but until then, I only ask that you accept my offer and these temporary restrictions for my sake, if not your own.”

Your voice contains a note of sadness. “Anaxagoras…” 

“I implore you,” he continues, lowering himself before you, his voice dropping into a desperate whisper. “Do not make this where I must bid you farewell. I will not lose you. I refuse to.”

Silence. He raises his head to look at you. You are in a place of deep consideration, your head tilted to one side. “You say you will not lose me,” you repeat thoughtfully, “yet what am I to do with the implications of that statement? That you wish for me to stay by your side, so that I may live to lose you instead? That it is I, not you, who must bear the burden of loss?” Anaxa’s jaw tightens. “Your appeal is certainly moving,” you continue. “Indeed, I found myself swayed almost into changing my mind. But if these are the grounds upon which you implore me to join you—that it is not myself whom you care for, but rather the mere avoidance of losing me—I cannot accept them.”

“Will you ever?” His voice is pleading, pathetic; he does not care. He is too depleted to concern himself with dignity.

“When you are ready to let me go, I will accept them.”

The gears are already turning in Anaxa’s head. Now that you have given him a clear objective, it is now only a matter of completing it. “How long do you have?” he inquires. Various schemes begin to string together in his mind, a network of possibilities he can use to achieve his goal.

“My sentence is set for a little over two weeks from now.”

“If I prove it to you, you will come with me?” he confirms. 

“Yes,” you reply. “Although, if I may give my honest opinion, you are already setting about this matter in the wrong way. You need prove nothing to me, Anaxagoras. Only that you care enough to lose me to yourself.”

Anaxa is not listening, not truly. He is too preoccupied with planning how he will resolve this problem you have given him. He rises to his feet and brushes off the shoulders of his cloak. Before leaving, he says to you, “If you will not yet accept the pardon, at least accept this.” 

You look surprised to see him draw out an olive branch from his clothing. It is somewhat crooked as a result of the journey to Okhema; nevertheless, you receive it with gratitude.

Anaxa returns from Okhema empty-handed. The next day, the Grove is attacked by the black tide, and his soul, as planned, becomes the house of a god. A countdown begins. He has fifteen days to complete two objectives. First, to prove the truth behind Amphoreus; the truth behind the soul. Second, to show you that he can lose you, so that he will never have to. 

Fifteen days to solve one problem is more than enough. Fifteen days to solve two proves more of a challenge: but he will succeed, or else he will die trying. Anaxa no longer has a choice in the matter, after all. 

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐕𝐈𝐈, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐘

The night after the attack on the Grove, Anaxa dreams of you. He dreams that you are standing in a cave, and he is moving towards you, not of his own accord, but compelled by a force beyond his will. It is dark here, with tongues of red emitted by a smouldering fire glancing off the walls serving as the only light source. As he draws closer, Anaxa sees that a faint glow is radiating from your skin. It is as if you are the Form of all that is good illuminating this veiled world of falsehood and ignorance. You cast no shadow on the cave wall. 

He reaches out and places his fingers upon your cheek. Your skin is cold. Not in the same way that his, a dead man’s skin, is cold, in that it is a mere negation of warmth, but rather cold in its very being, like stone or marble. Indeed, you seem to him a statue, carved from truth and justice and moulded into human form; you take on the guise of humanity, yet are fundamentally different in your essence. 

This is an observation he has lingered on considerably. In person, you are polite and amiable, always willing to engage in discussion with a good-humoured smile and a twinkle in your eye. Yet Anaxa has always inexplicably felt that you are unapproachable: that you lie just beyond his reach no matter how much you converse with him, no matter how close he is to you. Your eyes never linger on him, because to you, he is but another footprint upon the endless path to truth. He knows you cannot and will not stop by the roadside to lose yourself in the brambles of desire with him. For this reason, Anaxa often feels you are less human than he is, content to be the solitary traveller shunning human connection where he still craves the attention of the masses and loves at the cost of his own self. 

Yet in his dream, you are transfixed by him. You beckon him towards you. Anaxa obliges. He pulls you closer by your waist and cups your jaw in his hand, caressing over the cool smoothness of your skin with his thumb. You stare at him as he explores you and commits you to memory. Your eyes, shot through with shards of bronze, are entrancing. 

You unmake him. You lift off his eyepatch and peel back his clothes, his skin, revealing the star-shaped chasm in his chest; and then you stand together in the cave, two souls borne in their most basic forms, set against the rest of the world. You reach into his chest and pull out his cold, dead heart, cupping it before you in your hands. Touched by your light, it begins to beat again. The rhythmic thumping echoes through the silent cave; you place it back in the chasm of his chest, where it remains, filling him with the same light which suffuses your being. 

In his dream, you allow yourself to want him. You slip your arms around his waist, and Anaxa responds in kind, drawing you towards him so that he can capture the entirety of you. He wants to pull you closer, to seal you inside his chest in the place where his heart used to be so that he never has to let you go. 

Slowly, still embracing, you both sink down to the floor of the cave. The ground is soft beneath you, and as you run your fingers along his collarbone Anaxa knows with more certainty than ever that it is you for whom he strives above all else; you for whom he burns with this insatiable cold green flame—

“My, my, you certainly care very deeply for them.” The voice cleaves through his dream like a bullet and shatters it. “Did you ever tell them?”

“Titan,” Anaxa growls, waking to his dark room, “get out of my head.”

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐕𝐈𝐈𝐈, 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐅

Over the course of his fifteen remaining days, Anaxa sets out his reasoning to prove that he can lose you. 

On the first, the same day he takes Cerces’ Coreflame into his body, he contemplates what it means to love. He cannot find a satisfactory answer. 

On the second day, in order to address this issue, he considers what happens when one loves as opposed to when one is reasonable. 

On the third day, he arrives at the conclusion that love is a kind of madness, one which surfaces when desire overpowers reason. He has been mad for a very long time. 

On the fourth day, Anaxa considers the difference between love and desire. Is there truly a distinction between the two, or do we merely perceive there to be one?

On the fifth day, he believes he has an answer: desire is that which is in conflict with our better senses, and love is that which informs our virtues. Desire leads reason astray where love complements it.

On the sixth day, he doubts himself. It could be that desire is not the antithesis of truth, but the ultimate revealer of it. 

On the seventh day, Anaxa realises he has led his inquiry in the wrong direction. He cannot address love and desire without first addressing human nature. Why is it that both animals and humans can desire, but only humans can love?

On the eighth day, he considers what it means to be human. What is it that distinguishes humans from animals? Does a distinction of this kind exist? 

On the ninth day, he postulates the soul as a solution. The human soul, constructed from seeds of wisdom, which are in turn constructed from memory, has a greater propensity for spreading itself. Humans live on in others whereas animals do not.

On the tenth day, Anaxa inquires into why humans live on in others whereas animals do not. Animals too can have memories; animals too have souls. 

On the eleventh day, he thinks that this is because of self-reflection. Humans can wilfully turn their eyes on themselves and identify the components which make up their souls. 

On the twelfth day, Anaxa makes a discovery. The capacity for self-reflection comes hand-in-hand with the capacity for self-deception. The latter is equally as determining of humankind as the former. 

On the thirteenth day, he identifies that love is distinctive of humankind, not because our passions are elevated above those of other animals, but because we are the only ones capable of self-deceit. 

On the fourteenth day, Anaxa arrives at a conclusion. To be human is to desire, and to desire is to covet that which is unattainable. Humans are distinct from animals because animals cannot recognise that what they seek is unattainable, whereas humans can, and often do, though they will live by deceiving themselves willingly. 

When we have attained something we perceive as desiring, we call this thing ‘love’. ‘Love’ is a false concept, a mistaken belief that we have attained what we covet and are satisfied with it. Whatever we have attained, it is not what we truly desire. 

True desire is that which motivates us towards our ends because we know what we covet is unattainable. If we were able to reach what we desire, we would stop striving, yet we do not. We struggle on in vain despite our better senses, because the most human thing we can do is to try. The wisest thing we can do is to let go.

On the fifteenth day, Anaxa visits you once more. He has found his proof. 

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐗, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐌𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋

As he comes in, you raise your head like you have been expecting him. “Greetings, good Anaxagoras.”

Anaxa sits down on the floor outside your cell and faces you through the bars. “It’s today, isn’t it?”

You nod. “That is so.”

A smirk twists on his face, and he cannot help but laugh. “What irony.”

“Irony?” you ask. 

“I am also set to die today.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean. Are you speaking in metaphor? Had you received a sentence, I would have heard of it from the guards.”

“Fifteen days ago, the Grove was attacked by the black tide, and I took the Coreflame of Reason into my body. Technically speaking, I am already dead; it is only the power of the Titan still animating my body. Unfortunately, a mortal soul cannot withstand such power for long, and today is the day my time runs out.”

You are quiet for a moment. Then a small smile finds its way onto your face. “I see what you mean. Whether or not one believes in fate, there definitely lies a twist in this development.”

“How much time do you have?” he queries.

“Around six hours.”

“How funny. That is also when the Citizens’ Assembly is being held.”

“What have you come for, then?” you ask. “To discuss the future of the Flamechase Journey? To bid farewell? It’s a little late to offer me that pardon again,” you add with a chuckle. 

“I have come to speak with you.”

Your eyes light up. If he could, Anaxa would capture that expression in a snapshot of time and slip it into his pocket so that he could take it out and look back at it for every remaining day of his life. (All things considered, he supposes that would be rather pointless. Then again, passion has never concerned itself with what is logical.)

“What about?” you ask. 

“Anything,” he replies earnestly. “Everything. We always spoke about so much, yet I feel we never arrived at any true conclusions.”

“In that case, I am still awaiting your proof for those claims you made, about the souls of Titans and humans being identical in essence, and the individual living on through memory.”

A smile raises the corners of his lips. “Then we will begin with that.”

The conversation which follows reminds him most closely of the first debate you had, when you were both younger and no more ignorant, discussing matters which were so much larger than either of you could ever hope to understand. You agree on some matters and disagree on others. On the authority of the Titans, you are united in your views, as are you on the immortality of the soul. You still contend that reason can transcend the will; he still maintains that passion is the ultimate governor of the soul. You debate your positions back and forth, finding flaws in each conclusion, taking two steps back for every advancement made. It is an intellectual tug-of-war, a dance without end, an equally matched duel destined to continue into infinity. It is as you have been saying all along: that the only real truth of philosophy lies in the acknowledgement that you will never know the answer. Philosophy is a discipline of attempts, not successes; of conjecture rather than of certainty. When you are called by the guards stationed outside, you have yet to reach any form of conclusion. 

You rise to leave, patting down your humble clothing with a sigh and readjusting the branch in your hair. “A pity. Had we both had a little longer, I would have come with you to the assembly. Then we could have finished our discussion.”

“Nonsense,” replies Anaxa. “You know better than anybody that such discussions as these have no end.”

“That is true. I am sure we shall continue it in the next world—or the next cycle, if your theory is correct, and keep going for as long as it takes to reach the truth.” 

“That will be eternity,” he warns. You shrug. 

“I have few qualms with that. In which case, may we meet again before the gates of truth, whenever and wherever that may be.”

“Very well. I shall hold you to your word, philosopher mine.”

“And I to yours, good Anaxagoras.”

Despite having said everything you need to in this moment, you both linger. Given the reality of Amphoreus’ history that Anaxa has just revealed, there are no true goodbyes to be made. Yet something, he feels, is missing. He suspects you feel it too, or you would already have left. 

You take a step closer. He does likewise, and places his fingers beneath your chin, tipping your head slightly so that he can study your face and commit it to memory one final time. It is a pointless endeavour—he already knows the forms of your face like the back of his own hand—but there can be no harm in the attempt. You scan him likewise. Your palm rests against his cheek, your fingers toying gently with the cloth of his eyepatch. 

You have shared many intimate moments together in the past. He recalls when you looked behind his eye and your faces were only an inch apart; all the nights you stayed up discussing alchemy and metaphysics and all the times something almost happened but never did. You have been this close to each other before, true; but you have always remained at this point, never truly crossing the threshold. 

Wordlessly, he draws you closer and closes the distance.

Anaxa has thought of kissing you many times. Not consciously, per se, but the possibility has flickered through his mind now and again, whenever your proximity was brought to the forefront of his attention. He has thought of kissing you passionately, of uncovering the deepest truths of you, of hearing his name whispered like a prayer on your lips.

Yet when your lips meet, it is barely a brush. Logically speaking, it should not be sufficient to convey all the words left unspoken between you. 

It is enough. 

You part, and he strokes your cheek with his thumb. You smile. And then you are gone. 

When he pulls Cerces’ Coreflame from his chest, Anaxa is not apprehensive. Far from it, he is flushed with the pride of closure, and laughs even as he feels his body break into fragments around him. Apprehensive? What a ludicrous thought. How could one be apprehensive? In this world, death is but an illusion, and there is a conversation waiting to be finished on the other side.

[cynicalmusings]

im thinking the texture of thick ink and the taste of slight black licorice

no clue how this thought came to me but it feels right

black liquorice is… not what i would have thought of, but that’s pretty interesting! i also like the idea that his blood is thicker than usual… i might nick that hehe

[cynicalmusings]

totally normal question but what do we think anaxa’s blood tastes like

[cynicalmusings]

speaking of jing yuan i just watched a sort-of character analysis of him and got struck with such a good idea for a fic… but i mustn’t… i have to focus on getting my other wips out first UGH

thinking about that cutscene with jing yuan and cirrus again… it still baffles me (and amazes me) that this one thirty second clip is what made me fall for him. not his role in the main story. not the epic fight with phantylia. a fucking forehead tap. and then i wrote 140k words

[cynicalmusings]

thinking about that cutscene with jing yuan and cirrus again… it still baffles me (and amazes me) that this one thirty second clip is what made me fall for him. not his role in the main story. not the epic fight with phantylia. a fucking forehead tap. and then i wrote 140k words

[cynicalmusings]

fellas i really want to talk about anaxa if anyone wants to talk about anaxa please talk to me about anaxa because i’m about to self-detonate

[cynicalmusings]

do you ever think, like… man. i’d actually really like to meet some of my mutuals in person one day.

[cynicalmusings]

A quick sketch; this could have happened.

omg… it 100% could have if they weren’t both so stubborn… it would have been so beautiful…

(and your art is GORGEOUS as always. you made them look so… serene. and absolutely stunning. thank you so so much!)

[cynicalmusings]

eyyyy any Socrates!reader head cannons when in partnership with anaxa?

okay… this is a difficult one, because if by ‘partnership’ you mean a romantic relationship, they don’t ever have an ‘official’ one. admittedly, you might not mean that, which is easier to answer, so here are a couple about their general dynamic (which does involve some more romantic elements):

the two of them vacillate between intense philosophical debate and being completely chill. like, you’ll see them discussing whether or not free will exists for two hours straight, leaving the argument at the pinnacle of a tense, inconclusive point of contention, only for the reader to be like ‘hey do you want to get lunch’ and anaxa to be like ‘sure’. and then off they go together, talking about student drama or something. tldr: they are, like, the only people on the same wavelength in the entire grove, for better or for worse.

the reader has half-kind-of-unofficially moved in with anaxa. they don’t have a home or any place to stay of their own (which is why you can find them sleeping on random patches of grass from time to time), but after a few incidents, such as them getting sick (which i wrote a oneshot about on my main blog) or eaten alive by mosquitoes or that sort of thing, anaxa got exasperated to the point basically adopting them. so now they live together. kind of.

because they half-kind-of-unofficially live together, this has facilitated their tendency to get into philosophical discussion even further, at the detriment of their sleep schedules. with nobody to interrupt them, they’ll be up until five talking about the titans and human nature and any number of topics before collapsing unceremoniously into a few odd hours of sleep, after which anaxa has to rise to prepare his classes and the reader stays snoring on until midday.

the reader also generally has no sleep schedule whatsoever. this is another reason why you will stumble upon them napping in the middle of wherever at 2pm. whenever they get tired, they just drop. it’s impressive, really. they’re also a really deep sleeper, so good luck getting them to budge. (this isn’t to say that anaxa ever had a stable sleep schedule either, but he did have some vague semblance of structure before they moved in, private research periods exempt from this. now that’s gone utterly down the drain. whoops.)

they care for each other a lot more than they’d readily let on, and the reader is better at hiding this than anaxa. anaxa thinks himself a master of putting on airs and pretending he doesn’t care when in reality he does, and to some extent he’s right, but there are a few tells which betray his true feelings: the way he makes reference to them in conversation with others, the way his attention is absorbed by them when they speak, the mere fact that he spends as much time with them as he does without getting tired of them or irritated.

the reader, on the other hand, is so good at this deception that they’ve practically fooled themselves. anaxa is yearning more than he’d like to admit, even though he doesn’t always understand or identify precisely what he’s feeling; the reader knows exactly how they feel about anaxa, but rather sadly, they’ve made the conscious choice not to pursue those feelings/ a romantic relationship with him, because they’re wary of how engaging with those emotions will affect their clarity of mind and their focus.

in another universe where they weren’t so incredibly set on their quest for truth, or where someone managed to convince them that welcoming their own desire does not necessarily infringe upon their pursuit, i can see them acting more on their feelings and making some actual moves on anaxa. for example, if you could convince them that what is preventing them from pursuing their emotions—fear, or at least apprehension—is on irrational grounds and not a legitimate basis for making decisions, you might be able to sway them.

also, in that universe, they have makeout sessions galore, trust me. they strike me as both 0 or 100 kind of people: they’ll go months without feeling the need to engage in any Ungodly Activities, and then one day they just. flick the switch and end up eating each other’s faces off in an empty lecture hall. and then afterwards they part in a perfectly cordial and decorous manner as if nothing ever happened and go about their lives for the next few months until it happens again.

unfortunately, this isn’t that universe. so, anaxa is doomed to love in vain, and the reader to knowingly cut him off at the price of their own satisfaction. truly a happy couple <3

[cynicalmusings]

if someone sends in a socrates!reader prompt or something i might legit write a short drabble or smth because i’m dead serious they will be the end of me

fellas i really want to talk about anaxa if anyone wants to talk about anaxa please talk to me about anaxa because i’m about to self-detonate

[cynicalmusings]

fellas i really want to talk about anaxa if anyone wants to talk about anaxa please talk to me about anaxa because i’m about to self-detonate

[cynicalmusings]

omg hey if youre in the mood for some heizou you have to read this one it’s really so GOOD

https://www.tumblr.com/butteronabun/786957306161217536/ready-for-it

thanks for the recommendation! i’ll have a read of it later.

[cynicalmusings]

i was thinking about this fic again and i just realised that you could take the whole of the reader’s character as an analogy for xiao’s own childhood innocence… it’s not quite the idea i was going for when i wrote it, but the parallels between younger xiao and the reader are made explicit, so if you wanted to take it further you could say that the ‘reader’ doesn’t really exist: it’s just a metaphor for his own past.

and so the ending, xiao (spoilers) killing the reader and the line ‘xiao always knew this would end with him putting you in the ground’ is really just a representation of the inevitability that he had to ‘bury’ his childhood innocence in order to keep going… ouch

…𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: In which Xiao befriends a young yaksha, but learns that the longer the night lasts, the more nightmares are had. …𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: Angst, no comfort. …𝚆𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜: Major character death, insanity.  …𝙻𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚝𝚑: 8,123 words.  …𝙰𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗: Gender-neutral reader, reader is a yaksha, older/younger sibling dynamic — found family, not romantic. The soundtrack ‘Sojourner’s Sweet Dreams’ is the OST which plays at night in Wangshu Inn. The pipa is a Chinese lute, and the dizi is a Chinese bamboo flute. Reblogs and comments are appreciated.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

夜长梦多 — 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙽𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝙻𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚜.

When Xiao finds you, it is in the bamboo forest, as it always is. He searches between the stalks looking for signs of movement—a bent stalk here, some flattened leaves there—while the lightness of his feet never betrays the grim weight inside his chest. The night is dark, and the bamboo rises like metal bars around him. Paths he has trodden after you many times seem narrower, harder to follow.

The last time he saw you, you told him to leave out of shame. I don’t want you to see what I’ve become, you said. He thought it foolish that you’d suppose his opinion of you changed for it, but still, he had gone as you asked him to, because he can never deny what you ask of him.

Looking for you as he does now, he wonders whether it was the wrong choice to make.

He locates you, eventually, by the Sandbearer tree. Of course, he thinks with the crumpled shadow of a smile. Even in madness, you return here. Perhaps the dim memories of kinder times still flicker somewhere in the depths of your subconsciousness; perhaps you—or whatever is left of you—still feels a tug of familiarity towards this place. 

For a moment, he sees you again as that young, bright beacon, and his heart throbs with the fading gold image of those precious lost days. 

The first time Xiao met you, you were a nervous addition to the yaksha’s forces. Outgoing as ever, even in times of war, Bosacius always made a matter of introducing the recruits to the rest of the troops. ‘To welcome them to the family’, he said whenever asked why. Even when, centuries later, the yaksha’s forces grew smaller and ravaged by karma, Bosacius kept this tradition until the day he vanished. 

Xiao never saw the point in such a thing himself: it was unlikely anybody would remember these yaksha’s names or even see them again beyond lifting their body from the battlefield when they were lucky enough to recover it. Nevertheless, under Bosacius’ insistence, he watched as you, like every other yaksha, was taken forwards and introduced to a half-hearted assembly of gathered warriors. This was back when the yaksha were newly formed, and victory still seemed within reach. 

“They may be small, but they’re a brilliant shot with a bow,” Bosacius declared, his booming voice reaching the furthest stretches of the makeshift training camp. Given how the adeptus dwarfed your quivering body, Xiao wouldn’t have guessed it. “Modest about their capabilities, but it’s nothing a little time can’t fix, and I’m sure you’ll adjust quickly, no?” He addressed this last part to you and waited for you to say something. You seemed to miss the implication of the silence, because your eyes remained fixed on the floor and your shoulders hunched close together. You had horns reminiscent of a deer’s which Xiao couldn’t help but compare to your nervous stance: you looked terrified out of your mind, ready to bolt at any moment. He wondered how suited you truly were for war if you could barely handle this crowd. 

Bosacius cleared his throat. He clapped you on the shoulder and asked to break the growing silence, “Well, then, is there anything more you’d like to say?”

You mumbled something barely audible which must have been a ‘no’, because Bosacius nodded and said no more. You immediately scurried away from the assembly with your head hung low. A slight pang of sympathy rose inside Xiao as you went: he’d seen enough of these kinds of skittish recruits to know you wouldn’t last long in battle. 

The crowd dispersed, and Xiao thought little about you until he passed by the archery stalls on a patrol around the camp, where he spotted you shooting at the moving targets. Curious, he hung back and observed you for a moment. Your posture was steady and your draw was swift and clean—signs he recognised as those of a skilled archer—and you hit most of the vital areas drawn onto the targets with success. Occasionally, your arrows strayed a little too far out, likely due to the fact that he could see you still shaking. You mumbled a curse as your last arrow embedded itself in one of the target’s wooden jaws, an inch or so above the marked ‘fatal’ spot on the neck.

It seemed Bosacius had spoken the truth: though you lacked confidence, it would be incorrect to say you didn’t have the potential to become a formidable warrior in your own right. When you were focused, your shots were fast, accurate, and if on flesh, deadly. Perhaps you’d survive a few battles yet.

He moved past the archery stalls to survey the rest of the camp, before heading to the bamboo forest nearby to train himself once it grew dark a few hours later. Bamboo was good for practice: it varied in strength, and grew back quickly when cut. It was not for training physical strength, but agility. If Xiao imagined the leaves as blades, he could duck between them, light on his feet, sending stalks falling in wide arcs around him. 

Usually, he trained until dawn, but today, only an hour or so after he began, he was made to stop. His ears had caught wind of a faint tune travelling down from deeper inside the forest. He lowered his spear and cocked his head to one side, narrowing his focus on the sound. It sounded plucked, but he couldn’t place the instrument. 

Could it be a human? he wondered, but shook his head as soon as the thought arose. No, the scouts would have reported any human activity nearby. This place ought to be uninhabited. 

Yet this melody was certainly not his imagination. He knew of nobody else besides himself who played an instrument among the yaksha, so who could this be? Warily, he followed the tune, stepping quietly through the forest as an assassin might as he approaches his target. Once close, he stopped. The sound came from just beyond here. 

Xiao pushed aside a leafed branch and peered through the underbrush, squinting between the trees. To his surprise, the one his eyes landed on was the young, timid yaksha from before, sitting on a stone in the grass. Your bow and quiver were propped up against a Sandbearer tree, exchanged in favour of a pipa. Your fingers struck the strings with effortless speed and fluidity which spoke of years of mastery. The way you held yourself exuded quiet confidence, so stark a difference from the timid, withdrawn stature you had worn before. A smile was settled comfortably over your features, and a sparkle danced in your eyes. Adept as you may be with a bow, Xiao could not help but feel it was this instrument which was truly your calling.

As you played, your eyes drifted across the surrounding forestry. They met his in the underbrush. Your fingers fumbled and a wrong note cut harsh through the air. In less than a moment, you were holding your bow, arrow notched and aimed at his head. You may be quick, but Xiao could see your arms were trembling, and fear had fast replaced that confident glimmer in your eyes. 

He stepped out from the underbrush. His movements were slow, careful not to risk igniting your fear. Xiao raised his hands before him; once you saw he carried no weapons, your frame relaxed somewhat, but distrust was still written in every line of your body. You had yet to lower your bow. For whatever reason, he was struck with the desire to calm you.

“I mean you no harm.” He spoke slowly, approaching you as he would a wild animal. “I heard your playing and came to investigate. That is all.” You swallowed, but didn’t shift your aim. He scoured for something to say which may calm you. His eyes fell to the pipa lying in the grass. “I… play an instrument, too.”

Your eyes widened, this time with a hint of curiosity which broke through your apprehension. The tension in your bow fell by a fraction as you loosened your pull on the string. “R-really?”

Xiao was struck by how small your voice was. Just how young were you? Nonetheless, speaking to you seemed to be working. He continued. “Yes. The dizi.”

“Oh.” You shifted in place, bringing to mind a skittish fawn. In that hushed voice of yours, you said, “I… I never knew any other yakshas played music.”

He dipped his head. A few seconds of silence passed. Xiao searched for something else to say. “Your bowmanship is good,” was what he landed with. “I saw you in the training field earlier.”

You stiffened and looked away, covering your face with your hands. “Y-you saw that?” 

“Is there something to be ashamed of?”

“My shots are usually much better,” you said dejectedly. “I was, um, shaking too much to aim properly.” 

“On a moving battlefield, you do not need complete accuracy,” he pointed out. “Your enemies are larger than your training targets; as long as you can hit them, you have fulfilled your duty as a yaksha.”

You said something from behind your palms. Even with his acute hearing, Xiao struggled to catch it. 

“What?”

“That’s exactly it,” you repeated, toeing the floor. “I don’t want to be on the battlefield.”

He blinked, dumbfounded. “Then why did you decide to join the yaksha?”

You mumbled below your voice, “I couldn’t watch everyone else do their part in the war while I sat by and watched.” 

“So you are afraid, then,” he concluded. You shook your head with a quiet laugh. 

“Who wouldn’t be?” 

“What of?”

You frowned at him like he was missing the obvious. “Death, of course. Of something happening to me which means I can never return.” You paused, eyeing him with suspicion. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

“I am one of the Five,” he answered. The meaning spoke for itself.

Your jaw fell open. Still gawking, you asked, “W-which one?”

“General Alatus,” he replied, with a gesture towards the mask hanging at his belt.

“And your real name?”

“…Xiao.”

“Wow,” you breathed. “So you’re so strong that you… don’t have to fear death?” He nodded. Your fingers twisted at the hem of your clothes. “Then… what are you afraid of?”

Catching him off-guard, the question struck him dumb. Memories of blood, snow, corpses burst behind his eyes. He was a quivering young child, looking so much like yourself. His shock must have shown on his face, because you lowered your eyes and apologised moments later. 

“…I am afraid of losing my flute,” he offered as an answer to lighten the mood. You looked away with a momentary smile twitching at your features, and curiously enough, Xiao felt on his face one of his own.

“You must be very courageous, if that’s the only thing you fear.” The words ‘unlike me’ hung silent but heavy in the air.

Xiao shook his head. “There is nothing courageous about facing what you do not fear. Bravery is born of staring into the eyes of what you fear and refusing to surrender.” 

“…Even if you lose?”

“Even if you lose.” 

Your eyes fell to the floor. Despite the comfort he’d attempted, you still looked unconvinced. Your fingers drummed an anxious rhythm on your bow. Xiao tilted his head to one side, wondering at your character. You were hardly in danger in the present moment: why was it that you were still on edge? Was the mere thought of the battlefield enough by itself to make you uneasy?

“Are you… truly so afraid of death?” he asked. Your head dipped in a nervous twitch of a nod. Xiao scrutinised you more closely, and it was then that he realised why he felt so strongly this odd wish to comfort you: it was like peering into a mirror. You resembled him closely, painfully so, as he had been all those years ago; a timid, scared, lonely thing, isolated from love and with nobody to rely on. He wondered what you must be escaping from that made you prefer the battlefield over staying.

Since Rex Lapis gave him the chance to begin a new life, Xiao knew that, had he been given a chance to protect the child he had once been, placate its fear, reassure it even slightly, he would have done all he could. Now, faced with one who looked so much like himself, given the chance to do just that, he knew he would go to the ends of the earth to prevent you knowing the same life he had.

Stepping forwards, he met your eye and vowed, “I will make sure nothing happens to you.”

The little smile you flashed him was fleeting. “It’s difficult to keep promises on the battlefield.”

Xiao shook his head. “I keep my promises.”

You are curled up by the base of the tree. Your legs are drawn up into your chest like you’re protecting yourself from an invisible foe. Not cowering, he notices. He distantly recalls something he said to you, once, about courage and the refusal to surrender. 

He still stands by those words, but he regrets—always regretting—telling them to you. You did not need to be brave. Cowardice would have been kinder.

Your hands are clutching your head as wreaths of black smoke rise from your body. In the silence, he can hear you caught in a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan. 

His next step breaks a twig. Your head snaps up. Bloodshot eyes fix onto him from across the clearing and you leap backwards, hackles raised as you pace like a caged predator in front of the tree. He searches in vain for a glimmer of those wide, expressive eyes he used to know, and finds nothing.

Wherever ‘you’ are, it is not here. It is not the thing which has stolen your body and is staring back at him like a stranger. 

Xiao raises his hands in front of him, approaching as he would a wild animal. He can not be certain at the moment which movements will provoke you to flee and which to attack. In his right hand he holds not a spear but your pipa. Your eyes dart to the instrument. From your reaction, he can not be certain you recognise it. 

After a morning of training on a warm afternoon, you were sitting by your Sandbearer tree again, contentedly plucking a tune on your pipa. Xiao found you sitting by the trunk when he followed the familiar sound again. The sunlight peeking through the canopy fell like gold leaf across your face. He lingered behind the trees and listened, careful to keep quiet and not alarm you like the last few times. You were growing more comfortable around him, but there was progress yet to be made. 

As he waited there, his mind wandered to your bright melody. By chance, he had brought his dizi with him today. On a whim, he pulled it out and joined your music with a line of his own. Your playing stopped abruptly. By the time Xiao realised he was the only one still playing, your initial shock had been transformed to awe, and he found you were staring up at him from the tree, rather indiscreetly. He lowered the flute and raised a brow towards you. You coughed and lowered your eyes to the ground, drawing your limbs into yourself. A twinge of guilt surfaced inside him: he hadn’t meant to disconcert you.

“If you’d like,” he began, and you raised your head slightly to look at him, peering at him with wide, watery eyes, “I can teach you how to play the flute.”

This brought you out of your shell. “Really?” you stammered out. He nodded. 

“Wait here for a moment. I will make you one.”

Bright curiosity shone in your eyes as you watched him walk a little way into the woods, where he stopped at a bamboo stalk. He summoned his polearm and cut off a length of bamboo, then skillfully hollowed it out and scored the surface with holes faster than your eyes could follow. He inspected his handiwork, made a few corrections, played a note, made a few more corrections, and returned to your tree all in the span of no more than half a minute.

He handed you the makeshift flute. “It is far from perfect, but…”

“It’s amazing,” you breathed. 

Xiao inclined his head, glad that you liked it if nothing else. 

“Hold it like this.” He demonstrated, placing his left thumb and three fingers over the fingerholes in the lower half of the flute’s body, followed by the right in a similar position just behind his left hand. “Your two thumbs and the little finger of your right hand support the flute. You should be able to hold it with just those fingers if you lift the others away.” You followed his example. The flute wobbled a little, likely more down to its haphazard creation than your own mistake, and stabilised a moment later.

“Now bring it to your mouth horizontally, with the membrane hole—no, the one to the right of that—under your lower lip. The flute you’re holding doesn’t have a membrane, so it will sound different to mine, but it can still be played.” You nodded, adjusting your position as he spoke. “Relax your shoulders.” He inspected your form for a moment, and, satisfied, instructed, “Now try to play a note.”

You swallowed and tried to do so. The note which sounded was low and feeble, barely audible above the passing breeze. 

“Use steadier breathing, and aim your breath deeper into the instrument.”

You tried again. The sound shook less, but was still quiet and airy.

“Harder.”

Almost there. 

“Again.”

This time, the note came forth clear. 

Xiao nodded. “Good. Now move your fingers so they cover these holes instead, like this.” He looked at your hands. “Middle finger down, not your index. Lift your index finger.”

“Sorry.”

He shook his head. “It is just another way of making music. There is no need to be nervous. Lower your shoulders, or the stiffness will constrict your breathing—good. Now play again.”

This note was better than your first attempt, but he could tell your nerves had slipped back in. 

“Remember what I said. You want a steady sound, so you need to breathe steadily, too.” You tried again. He sighed. “No. Take a deeper inhale beforehand. Watch me.” You watched closely, and took his advice without complaint. “Once more. Relax.”

Finally, after some time, the notes you played were consistently bright and full. He nodded approvingly. “Very good,” he said, and you glowed under the praise. 

“I think I’m better suited for stringed instruments,” you admitted with a sheepish smile, lowering the makeshift dizi. Hardly a moment later, your eyes widened, alight with an idea. You all but blurted, “Wait, what if I teach you how to play the pipa?” 

Catching yourself immediately in your own excitement, you covered your mouth and apologised quietly, withdrawing into yourself once more. Xiao observed this with an inward sigh; he was slowly managing to coax you out of your walls, but even now you had yet to be fully confident around him. Gently, he lowered one of your hunched shoulders and said, “I would like that very much.”

That little smile of yours flickered across your face. “O-okay.” 

You lifted the instrument from the tree trunk and handed it over to him; Xiao received the pipa carefully, aware of the attachment you held for it. 

“Okay. Um.” You hesitated. “So, you need to put it on your legs, like—yes, like that, but a bit higher up—and then the fingerboard sort of goes across your left shoulder.” 

Once the instrument felt comfortable against his shoulder and not slipping from his lap, he looked down at the strings and prompted, “How is it played?”

You gasped. “Oh, hang on, you’ll need to take my plectra for that. It’s good I have a spare pair.” You dug around in your clothes for a moment before you presented him with four ring-like accessories with points on the end. He took them from your palm and slipped them on the ends of his fingers. Interesting, he thought, inspecting the plectra closely.

“You, um, pluck it, by the way,” you explained. “W-which you could probably already tell. Your right hand does that. The plucking, I mean. Your left hand goes on the frets. Try, uh…” You rubbed your neck. “Could I take it for a second, actually? To demonstrate some techniques. They’re hard to explain.”

Xiao complied and handed the pipa over to you. You thanked him quietly and positioned it on your lap as you’d told him. The fingers of your left hand pressed down on the fretboard, your right hovering above the strings. You took a breath, then rolled your fingers over the top string in a rapid tremolo, keeping the sound continuous while your left hand slid up and down the frets in a simple yet elegant melody. You slowed your hand a minute later and plucked a final, low note. 

“This technique is called lunzi. It’s… just a long tremolo, really. Here; you try.”

His eyebrows rose at your phrasing of ‘just a tremolo’, but nonetheless he took back the instrument and did his best to mimic your fluid movements; an attempt which fell flat almost as soon as it started. The strings were dull and refused to respond as they had to your touch. 

“Um. Wait.” Xiao stilled his hand. “Sorry. Just… you need to pluck outwards, not inwards.” You reached over and demonstrated, making almost a flicking motion with your finger. “And then you do that with your whole hand. Like this.”

He watched carefully, realising his previous error. No wonder the strings had sounded so different. “I understand now. Thank you.”

“You can start slower if you want, too. I did it quite fast.”

Xiao tried again. His fingers were naturally quick, but the roll itself was uneven. He frowned and attempted to strike slower but with more force. You stopped him soon after with a soft apology.

“Your hand is a little stiff. That makes it harder to maintain a smooth sound. Go slowly, but keep your fingers relaxed.” A smile passed over your face. “I… suppose I know what you meant about being relaxed earlier, now.”

As Xiao played, you leaned inwards, squinting at his technique and offering advice where you could. By the time you lifted your head, you had moved terribly close to him, your face only a few inches away. Noticing your proximity, you flushed hotly and leapt backwards, stumbling out an apology. Xiao observed your reaction with a quirked brow and waited patiently for you to recover. 

“Maybe that technique’s a bit difficult to start with,” you admitted. “We should probably begin with single notes. I can teach you a melody instead. Can I… show you?”

Xiao gave the pipa back. You settled it comfortably on your lap and began to play a simple yet elegant melody, slowly paced, which unwound the tension in his shoulders and soothed his mind. Once finished, you returned the pipa to him. He looked down at the strings which you had so skilfully manipulated, now awaiting his own instruction. 

“Where did you hear this melody?” he asked.

“I… composed it myself,” you said with a bashful shrug. “I call it ‘Sojourner’s Sweet Dream’.”

“It’s very beautiful,” he said. You mumbled a small ‘thank you’ in reply. “How do you play it?”

“Well… your first finger starts on this fret, then your third finger goes here, and you pluck it with your right hand’s index finger—try not to touch the instrument with your arm—then put your fourth down…”

Eventually, under your guidance, Xiao grew confident in the melody. He played the ending note and glanced up to see what advice you had for him. To his surprise, your eyes were closed, and you were swaying gently from side to side. You opened your eyes to meet his: this time, when you smiled at him, it didn’t disappear.

As he approaches, he wonders, Are you still in there somewhere?

He wants to believe so, but all he can see is a creature who has ravaged your mind and tainted your heart and worn your face to taunt him. He’d known you for your kindness, your timid nature, the nervous but unwavering care you held for others. All of these traits he looks for in the dangerous sway of your body as he approaches you, step by step; but if they are there, he cannot find them. Do you think he is going to hurt you, or, judging by those tensed muscles, are you about to spring on him?

Either way, he knows you—the real you, not this false likeness—would never have done any of these things. The thing looking at him now is less than adeptus, less than human, a mindless creature caught between hatred and fear.

With you, at least, it had never been hatred.

He takes a step forward. The thing that isn’t you flinches. He ignores the painful contraction in his chest when you back away as he realises he doesn’t know whether he recognises you anymore.

I don’t want not to be myself anymore, you had begged him, and he had refused you: yet another choice he wonders whether he should have chosen differently. It is his own fault, his own selfish inability to let go, that has led you here. You wouldn’t have wanted him to see you like this; but he hesitated for too long, and now he has left you no choice. 

You promised, the mask of your face seems to jeer at him, mocking him for daring to think he could ever love without loss. You promised to keep them safe and look at where that got them.

Xiao shakes away the thought and lowers himself onto the stone you used to sit on. Your eyes are still fixed on him, unblinking and hollow. He sets your pipa on his lap, like you did years ago, and taps into the memory of a sweet dream you once taught him. First finger, third finger, fourth finger…

On the dawn of your first battle, Xiao found you pacing the archery stalls of the training ground. Some monsters had been spotted by scouts in the area, mutated from the remains of a fallen god. Xiao knew these kinds of creatures to be many in number but weak: as long as one maintained their stamina, few casualties would be suffered. 

You, on the other hand, knew nothing of them, and had no idea what to expect. Your quiver hung around your waist, stuffed full of arrows. You raised the bow and pulled back on the string, then lowered it and released the tension, again and again, practising your aim. 

He walked over. You brightened up when you saw him, if only a little. 

“How do you feel?” he asked; a needless question, but he knew conversation often settled your nerves. 

“Terrified,” you admitted with a nervous laugh. “I can b-barely,”—you swallowed—“hold my bow without dropping it.”

“Remember, you won’t be on the front lines. I have fought similar monsters to these before, and they don’t have the range to attack from a distance. As long as you maintain a distance, you will be safe.”

“‘Safe’ isn’t a word I’d ever use when describing a war,” you replied in a small voice.

A warhorn sounded in the distance, alerting everybody to their posts. Xiao took hold of your shoulder, his grip firm. You jolted. You were shaking like a leaf: he could practically taste your fear from here. His eyes, boring into your own, burned with conviction. “Remember what I told you. Nothing will happen to you.” He enunciated each word. “Is that clear?”

You swallowed and set your jaw. Meeting his eyes, stiffly, you nodded. 

Satisfied, Xiao inclined his head. He stepped back and summoned his mask over his face. Throwing you a final glance from the corner of his eye, he said, “Fight well. I will see you after the battle.”

You jump when he plays the opening note of the piece. This instrument was your lifeblood once, and he doesn’t know what you see in its place through those bloodshot eyes of yours which scares you so much. (What do you see in his place?)

Even so, as he plays, slow and deliberate so as not to make a mistake, he can see your frame relaxing from the corner of his eye, as he once did the first time he heard the melody. The tense line of your shoulders gradually falls. You tilt your head to one side, a gesture which once betrayed your curiosity. 

What, he wonders, are you feeling now?

The moment the enemy had fallen, Xiao pushed his way through ranks of yaksha until he found you. Save from some minor injuries here and there, you were untouched, sitting on the ground by your bow. He breathed a sigh of relief before heading closer. You looked up when you caught sight of him and shot him a smile of exhaustion. 

“Are you alright?” he asked when he reached you.

“I… I think so. I don’t know,” you replied. “I’m not hurt, but I feel a little strange.”

“Strange?” He crouched down beside you to inspect you closer, but saw nothing out of the ordinary beyond your face being a touch paler than usual. 

You nodded. “I don't know why. It doesn’t feel like an injury, more like… a headache, almost. But not just a headache. It feels hateful. Like there’s something angry inside my mind.” 

Xiao frowned, disliking your description. He had overheard some other yaksha speaking of similar symptoms; but these were likely a result of adrenaline after a battle, he reassured himself, or of prior stress. “Whatever it is, it will pass shortly.”

“I hope so,” you mumbled. “And you?”

“Me?”

“How are you?”

“Oh. I am well.”

“You don’t feel anything funny?”

“No.”

You smiled weakly. “Good.” 

His finger slips, and he strikes a wrong note. You flinch backwards as all the coiled tension returns to your body. He takes a breath to steady his hands, which have begun to shake without him noticing, and carries on. Now is not the time for mistakes.

The piece is short, so he repeats it over and over again until you calm down once more. Please, he wants to beg you, come back to me, but he is not certain you’d be able to hear him. No doubt the screeching cacophony inside your head would drown out what little he can scrape together of his voice. He wants to drop the instrument, to simply reach out and hold you, but he holds himself back, as he always does. He thinks you would hate him if he touched you when you’re like this.

Xiao would never forget the day you came to him after Indarias died. Until that moment, ‘headaches’ had been spreading like plague throughout the yaksha; Xiao himself had begun to feel them, too, but they were disregarded as post-war symptoms. Even when some yaksha went mad, it was drawn up to their inability to cope with the increasing pressure which came on the battlefield.

When Indarias fell, the wave of fear which rippled through the yaksha was tangible. Whatever these ‘headaches’ were, they had brought down one of the Five. Soon later, the yaksha had developed a name for the affliction: karmic debt, they called it. The price to pay for their aeons of slaughter, for daring to face the deadly hatred of gods.

Xiao knew he could withstand the symptoms of this karmic debt. His devotion to vanquishing these monsters was second to none, and no degree of pain would hinder him. For a yaksha such as yourself, who had never held his dedication nor matched his mental fortitude, he was not so certain. Though he didn’t let you see it, Xiao worried for you. He had sworn to keep you safe, but how could he protect you from an enemy inside your own head? 

You shared similar sentiments, because you called on him one night with both a confession and a request. 

“I can feel that I’m losing myself,” you confided to him in the hoarse shadow of a whisper. There was no wind in the forest that night, so quiet as it may be, your voice cleaved through the suffocating silence like an arrow. “With each passing day, I… I can feel it.” You raised your eyes to meet his. “I’m slipping, Xiao. This ‘karmic debt’… I’m not sure how much longer I can last.”

He pressed his lips together. “Don’t speak like that.”

“It’s true.”

His jaw tightened, but he had nothing to say. 

“Just… promise me one thing.”

His throat was dry as he nodded. 

“When I start going insane, kill me.”

Silence.

Firmly, he replied, “No.”

Your face fell. Your eyes, always so large and bright, swam with disappointment. “Why not?” you asked, and your voice was barely the imprint of sound. 

“Any other promise I will make you. Not this one.”

“Please,” you begged, holding his arm. “Every other wish of mine, you’ve granted. Why not this one?”

He shook your hand off. “I will not harm you,” he reiterated sharply. There was no room for opposition in his tone. “I will not say it again.”

“But I’m not even one of the Five. I’m hardly importa—”

“Don’t say that,” he snapped. 

You shrank away from the edge in his tone. He had never interrupted you before, much less raised his voice at you. In a trembling voice, you mumbled, “At least… at least take my pipa before something happens to me, then.”

He narrowed his eyes at you. If you gave away your instrument, it was akin to a goodbye: one he was not—and never would be—willing to make. You caught his hesitation and set your jaw in agitation.

“Look. I’m going to die, Xiao,” you hissed. He stiffened. “Don’t try to pretend I’m not because that won’t make it any less true. But I want it to be by your hand, because I wouldn’t want to die anywhere else. I won’t ask anything else of you again.” He opened his mouth to interject, yet you ploughed on, sparing him no time to speak. “I’ve seen how the other yakshas died, even those in the Five. Alone, and in pain, and terrified out of their minds. I don’t even recognise them by that point. I don’t want…” Your voice wavered. “I don’t want that to happen to me, too. I don’t want not to be myself anymore.”

His jaw was tight. He repeated coldly, “I cannot make you that promise. Never speak of this to me again.”

Your mouth pressed into a thin line. You withdrew your hands and, in silence, left him alone in the forest.

The next morning, he found your pipa leaning against the tree. The next time you saw it, he was playing it to you.

Xiao thinks something died between you then, the first and only time you made that request. After his refusal, you grew more distant from him with time. 

He had thought it unthinkable, when you told him what you wanted. Of all the blood he had stained his hands with, yours was one he would never dare touch, not even a drop. When he’d sworn to keep you safe all that time ago, he had meant what he said. 

This was before he was forced to watch, day after day, as you succumbed slowly to madness in pain, mistrust, and loneliness. The brightness of your eyes faded into what he sees staring back at him now: a stare of little more than an animal fuelled by primal fear and hunger, barely recognisable as your own. If there is any flicker of recognition towards him in your gaze, he can not locate it.

Still, you do not run from him, and for that he is grateful. 

He sets down the pipa once you have calmed down. Still, your eyes follow his every movement, darting between him and the instrument once he’s placed it on the floor. He lowers himself into a crouch: the smaller he is, the less of a threat you will see in him. (He pushes down the thought that you see him as a threat at all: if he lingers on it too long, he is afraid he will fall apart.)

I won’t hurt you, he wants to reassure you, but his throat chokes and prevents him from speaking the words. He has never been good at lying—he hopes he isn’t lying. Instead, he holds out his hand. Come, says the action. He hopes his eyes look warm. There is no need to be afraid.

You narrow your eyes on his palm. Your gaze is wary, flicking from his face to his hand. In turn, he regards you patiently. Tentatively, you take a single step forward. Then a second. Shrink back as soon as you do. Xiao doesn’t move. However long you take, he is willing to wait. For you, he will always be willing to wait. A third step. You shake your head, backing away with a confused cry. Are you still in there somewhere, fighting to take his hand, or is it only the demon speaking?

It could be for hours that he sits there, hand outstretched, waiting for you to take it as you waver back and forth and back again. By minute fractions, the space separating you diminishes. You are confused, he can see in the twitches of your head, and panicked, and distrustful. How scared must you have been, alone in the dark all this time while demons ate at your mind? Why had he not tried harder to be there for you when you began to lose your footing? 

With the next step, you reach out your arm towards him, then withdraw it just as fast. It is like the first time he met you here, vacillating between reclusiveness and openness, replayed in a dark mirror which turns everything upside down. 

All the time he’s spent with you, and he is back at the beginning again. 

You dare to reach out again. This time, your skin makes contact. He’s shocked by how cold your fingertips are. 

Lightly, slowly, he closes his fingers around your hand. You flinch, but don’t draw back. Pulling by your hand, he coaxes you closer inch by inch until you face him only an arm’s length away. Your pupils are dilated and tremble inside watery eyes which scan over his facial features with an emotion he cannot place. 

He doesn’t know whether or not you are in there, but when he closes his arms around you in a shaking embrace, you make no effort to resist him.

Months after you made your request, and only a few before this very moment, Xiao became convinced you were hiding from him. He asked after you, but you had never been known for telling others of yourself, and his questions were met with shrugs and apologies. Some said you may already be dead, but Xiao knew this could not be true: he would know it if you died. 

He began to search on his own around the areas he knew you lingered in, but the archery stalls and the forest were empty. He searched the whole camp, overturned every stone, yet you were nowhere to be seen.

One day, whether it be by chance or by fate, he found you at the outskirts of the forest. You were turned away from him, but he could tell by the shaking of your shoulders that you were crying. 

He felt himself freeze. In all the time he’d known you, despite all your fear, Xiao had never once known you to cry. In that brief moment, he didn’t care for distance or conduct or the fear of loss which had always prevented him from being completely open with you. He was overtaken with the need to pull you into his arms and wipe away your tears. 

But Xiao stopped himself, as he always did. If you had been purposefully avoiding him, an embrace may not be what you sought from him. Instead, he advanced slowly, unsure how you would react to his presence. The fact alone that he was unsure hurt him more than he would like to admit.

His shoe scuffed the ground. Your head whipped up at the sound. Fear flashed in your eyes and you leapt off the ground. Hardly a moment later you were on your feet and running from him, desperate to get away. 

“Wait,” he called after you, in a smaller voice than he’d meant. 

With your back turned to him, you paused—but your legs were tense, ready to run again at a moment’s notice. His heart felt like lead in his chest. Were you afraid of him?  

“I haven’t seen you recently.” He swallowed. Took a step closer. “Why?”

“I told you before,” you replied, not turning to look at him. Despite your tears, your voice was hollow and devoid of the furtive eagerness he knew you so well for. For a moment, Xiao was taken with the horrible sense that he didn’t know you anymore. Not like he used to. “I’m slipping. I’m trying, but I… I’m not strong enough. Not like you are.”

Gently, he said, “And this is why you’re hiding from me?”

A moment of hesitation. You nodded, so subtly he almost missed it. His throat was hoarse.

“Do… do you believe I think less of you for it?”

“…No.” Your hands tightened into shaking fists. You hung your head. “Please go, Xiao. If you won’t kill me, then go.”

“Is that the reason you have been avoiding me?” 

“No.” 

“Are you afraid of me?” 

“No.” 

“Then why…?” The rest of his sentence went unspoken. Why are you so distant? Why do you doubt how much I care for you? Why are you afraid to even look at me?

“Please. I want you to go.” He could hear the strain in your voice as you fought to keep it steady. 

“Once you give me a reason to, I will do so.”

Your shoulders stiffened. Even now, Xiao knew your mannerisms like the back of his hand, knew that you were passing your reply back and forth inside your head in uncertainty. 

There was a tremor in your voice when you finally answered, so softly he almost missed it, “I don’t want you to see what I’ve become.”

Xiao froze. He was struck, then, with the need to speak words which he had never voiced before; words which were raw and vulnerable and would burn his throat to say. He lingered, teetering on the precipice of love.

Clenching your jaw, you said, “You said you would leave.” 

The words died on his tongue. Xiao walked away as you wished, not daring to look back at the distance stretching between you. 

He folds you into his chest, holding you gently but close. Your skin is feverishly hot and your breathing fast and shallow. He can feel your heartbeat pounding through your ribs in an erratic pulse, the way you shake with fear and madness. His fingers graze your scalp, stroking back and forth, soothing you as one would a child. You press yourself closer to him like you’re trying to hide. 

Your heartbeat gradually slows to a regular pace. He feels you lean into his arms, your own arms coming to wrap around his torso, holding him like he is the last bastion of safety in a world which has fallen away beneath your feet, and one you want to stay with forever. (He, too, wants to stay forever.) He steels his heart as he guides your face to rest in the crook of his neck and places his hands lightly on your cheeks. Eyes falling closed, he savours the warmth of the embrace. 

A sharp crack, and it is all over. 

Xiao feels you sag against him. Your neck lolls onto his shoulder and is still. He takes a shuddering breath and cradles you closer, closing a fist around your hair. His heart pounds like the beats of a wardrum in his chest, so hard he can barely breathe. For a while he stares blankly into the distance: he doesn’t dare look down. 

There may be no tangible blood on his hands, but Xiao can feel it, sure and true, sticky between his fingers.

Slowly, he stands up, careful not to disturb your position in his arms. You almost slip from him as he rises, your limbs hanging loose where he doesn’t hold them. He can hear his own breathing, far too loud, as it shudders past his lips. 

He walks forwards some paces. The world swims in strange angles around him, dizzying and unfamiliar. Those few steps are the most difficult of his life. It is like he is learning how to walk again, unsure where to place his balance on this shifting earth, not knowing whether he drags his feet or the grass simply snags at them as they lift. He walks slowly, because he knows that should he stumble, you will fall from his arms, and he will not be able to pick you up again. 

When he reaches the Sandbearer tree, he lays you gently down on the ground, trying not to think about how small your body is. (You were barely a child when all this started. All of you were. You hadn’t known what you were getting into—none of you had.) The moonlight bathes the peaceful planes of your face in silver. The shadows hang soft across your face, like cobwebs of another time he can banish with a brush of his fingers. The illusion of movement stirs your expression as these shadows shift with a single sigh of wind. Your eyes are closed; you look as though only sleeping. 

Xiao turns his head away. He hopes that your dreams, whatever they may be, are sweet. 

Some hours later, his fingernails are caked with earth. A mound of earth rises beside a deep pit, dug from nothing but cupped palms and unwavering persistence. Roots break through the pit here and there which he hasn’t been able to break. He tried, but they were too firm, so he left them there. 

He turns towards you, still sleeping silently in the moonlight. He looks back down at his filthy palms and, disgusted by them, wipes them on his trousers: he can’t touch you with such dirty hands. The dust cakes away from his skin, but he can’t get the rusty stain off them, no matter how hard he wipes, even when his palms are raw from trying. 

He swallows and kneels down beside you, lifting you up from your legs and the back of your shoulders. You aren’t as warm as you were a few hours ago. The weather is hardly cold tonight: why are you already going cold?

Reverently, he lowers you into the hole. His arms tremble, but not from your weight. You weigh barely anything at all. He tries his best to avoid resting you on the roots. If only he could have gotten rid of those roots. 

It looks like something is missing. You are missing something. He looks around and his eyes land on a flower growing near the base of the tree. He doesn’t know what kind it is, or whether you would have liked it, but he picks it anyway. He tries to tuck it behind your ear, but his fingers are shaking and it keeps falling off, so he places it on your chest instead. Dazed, he steps back and pushes the mound of earth over you until it is filled up, but there is still some left over on the side when he is finished. Oh, he thinks, of course. You are taking up some of the space now. He lifts your pipa from the grass and props it up against the tree trunk. Then he sinks to his knees and cries. 

No matter what you become, he had wanted to say that last time he saw you, I will love you regardless. 

If he had said so, would it have changed anything? 

No, he supposes. No, it wouldn’t have: Xiao had always known this would end with him putting you in the ground. 

[cynicalmusings]

thinking about the empath!reader x boothill pairing again… the reader is naturally a fairly serious (or at least deadpan) character, and i feel like boothill would intentionally do silly things and make a slight fool of himself to make them smile: like, crazy tap-dancing, going insane on the harmonica, singing off-key on purpose etc etc. and whenever he manages to crack a smile, he’s of course very self-congratulatory and proud and whatever, but also very… grateful, in away? like, grateful that he’s the one who’s been able to witness you with your walls down, be it even for a couple of moments. and he goes SO soft too. like, the few seconds where you’re chuckling? yeah he’s 100% moon-eyed staring at you with the most tender expression known to mankind… god i need to stop

[cynicalmusings]

to be clear tumblr wouldn’t even let me POST all of the tags i had on this reblog so i screenshotted them and have to put them here

god

i hardly know what to do with myself now

as it was and as it will be.

summary: To Anaxa, there is no world where you do not exist by his side.

notes: 4.4k words, author's notes, angst, unhealthy relationships, obsession, minor self-violence for the sake of rituals, grief, disregard of one's health, art trade with @uncookfish

i. body

It’s been four months, three weeks, five days, and thirteen hours since Anaxa has received news of your death and he’s first formulated his plans to revive you. 

Since then, the eternal night of the Grove blurs into a meaningless smear of time, broken up only by his incessant research and the physical limitations of his own body, where exhaustion overtakes him and he’s forced to either eat, sleep, or collapse on the spot.

It’s this that bothers Anaxa the most: the inability to keep going, a reminder of his own mortal failings, irritating above all else. The time he spends resting is time he can spend working, and yet, he has to concede defeat to his own need for sustenance. 

Besides that, sleep has not come easily to him, not since you’ve been gone. He spends late nights in his office, the wick of his candle burning long past the hour everyone else has retired to bed. Alchemical equations scatter across his desk while tomes on Thanatos and the nature of death spill off his shelves and pile on the floor in messy heaps.

To wrench someone back from the hands of death requires a sacrifice of equivalent worth. Anaxa has experimented with his own blood, with the ragged chunks of his remaining soul, with organs he can live without, even if it becomes slightly inconvenient: his spleen, a kidney, his liver.

But nothing is enough to pull you back. Anaxa only summons snatches of memories that dissipate like mist under sunlight before he can cling onto them more closely: lotuses floating in the steam of a warm bath, golden blood tracing patterns onto his back, the soothing motions of your fingers in his hair. 

It’s a sweet distraction, the recollection of old memories, but it pales in comparison to what he really wants. So, he keeps going.

Anaxa takes a leave of absence from teaching to further his own research, announced without any room for debate. The notices from his coworkers pile up at his doors, full of both reprobation and concern. It’s all inconsequential compared to his mission, and he’s long since stopped reading the requests for him to return or to give up on his current blasphemous research.

He hasn’t heard another voice in a long, long time, outside of Hyacine’s, who still knocks on his door and leaves plates of non-perishable food for him. She shows up like clockwork every evening, dedicated and kind even though she is no longer officially working as his assistant. 

“Please, Professor Anaxa,” she urges. “If you need anything, you can come to me. Whatever you’re going through, we can face it together. The Twilight Courtyard will always welcome you.”

She’ll linger for a few seconds, as if giving him time to answer, before the sound of her footsteps recede. She was a great assistant and she is a talented healer, but even Hyacine cannot remedy death.

To understand death, one must first understand the body. The human body is a miracle of machinery, a system of countless, dizzying components that combine into one relatively efficient being. He’s studied each system and organ in exquisite detail, pouring over every diagram he can get his hands on. 

Anaxa has gathered all his materials, calculating the average percentage of elements that should compose your body mass and form into something for you to inhabit. The human body is sixty percent water, and comprises over twenty elements. This is simple enough to understand. He could reconstruct every inch of you, cell by cell, if he has to.

Yes, the body is simple. But it is the soul that still eludes his grasp.

No matter how many times he attempts to call you back to him, you refuse his summons. The hands of death are gentle and firm, gripping your soul much too tenderly for you to slip free from them. Or perhaps you’re the one who’s been enchanted by the fragrance of flowers in the land of the dead, and you’ve forgotten that he’s waiting for you.

It should be easier for him than most, considering that Anaxa has insurance just for this circumstance. The alchemy symbol on his back burns whenever he thinks about the piece of your soul sewn to his, the one part of you that he has left. Even this part of you, which should have been ample enough motivation for your soul to return to him, is not tempting enough.

What is it that he’s missing, then? Does he need to offer his entire body, as battered as it is? Or is there something he has yet to discover, some simple knowledge about the soul that will make all the pieces click into place?

No matter. He can formulate his theories later, and adjust his practice accordingly.

Anaxa kneels in front of the alchemy circle in his office, knife in one hand, and notebook in the other. The circle is lined in golden blood that’s long since dried–perhaps he will retrace it later to insure potency. The runes shine faintly under the candlelight, and, in a single, practiced motion, he pulls his knife across his palm.

It hardly registers as nothing more than a dull sting, and his blood falls like a river, and the circle glows with a new, greedy intensity at his offering. Sweat beads down his forehead, his mind blurring as he struggles to focus. 

Anaxa croons your name, more divine than the gods he shuns. There’s a flicker of light within the circle, and he calls you again, more incessantly. The light burns bright, bright enough to hurt his eyes. He has not seen the sun in a week, and this is as close as Anaxa will get.

But it’s all worth it: you’re so close now. He can almost hear your voice, imagine the touch of your fingers, the smell of your shampoo–and the connection snaps, the light fading, his concentration broken. Anaxa falls back, warm blood still spilling down the length of his forearm as he brings his free hand across his tired eyes.

So he fails yet again. You remain just out of reach, irresistible in death as you were in life. But you’ve stayed just a few seconds longer than last time, which is a victory in and of itself.

Anaxa brings his notebook to his face, wearily penning his next entry, muttering the words out loud: “Experiment #1343 has failed, but the results have proven to be rather valuable…”

He will do this again, and again, and again. Until his body falls apart. Until you’re back by his side. Because you’re his, and he’s yours, and there is nothing in the world that can ever separate you from him.

ii. heart

The night before you leave on an expedition to look for rare tomes, Anaxa sleeps in your room. 

There is nothing particular salacious about the gesture. Since you were students, he often camped out in your room to study or to pester you with his ideas. You always had something interesting to say, whether it was with a bite of annoyance or genuine reflection, which meant he found it worthwhile to stay by your side. That hasn’t changed even now, and it’s strange to remember a time in which you two weren’t close.

Anaxa can still remember the day you met. You were one of the Grove’s librarians, someone he had classes with on occasion, but had never talked to for long. He and you existed in your own orbits, and any interactions were simply momentary intersections of your respective paths.

One unusual day as he was visiting the library, you had, for some reason or another, looked him right in the eyes and asked if you could witness his story, the sole audience to his heretical acts. It was the sheer confidence it took you to ask him that question that piqued his interest. It was also true: every great performer needed an audience to witness their deeds. 

After that, Anaxa spent every moment he could spare in your presence. On one hand, it was for the sole sake of satisfying his curiosity over who you were. And on the other, he enjoyed the way you never shied away from any topic of conversation he broached, and never watched him with judgements already formed regarding his character or theories. 

Time with you contained a curious ease, in a way Anaxa had never experienced before.

Before he could explain why he let you so close, you had become entangled in his small world, as vital a part as the sun or the wind. The Grove was a place of transience. It was the nature of academia for scholars to come and go, and for a new bevy of students to sprout up every semester. And yet, you were always there.

His visits to your room gradually evolved to the point that he often fell asleep in your room, awkwardly positioned against piles of books on your floor, until you started dragging him to sleep in your bed instead.

“If you’re not going to leave, the last thing I want to do is trip over your body in the mornings,” you reasoned.

That was when Anaxa developed an errant habit of his. The two of you began sleeping side by side in the same small, cramped bed, limbs occasionally touching, so close your warmth was a fever he couldn’t ignore. Whenever he couldn’t sleep, which was often, he would listen to and calculate the number of times your heart beat per minute. It was steady and constant in a way few things were, and every thump was a reminder of your presence.

If it wasn’t that, then it was the length of your slow, sleepy breathing that he measured. The human body was truthful in ways words were not, and he could rely on its precision to tell him everything that you would not voice.

You often blame his intrusions into your room on his lack of regard for your personal space. If anything, it should have been a sign he regarded your space highly. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have seen the benefit in staying near you. Yet, despite your complaints, you never locked your door and always let him in.

This night isn’t any different. As you sleep, Anaxa lays his head on his chest, counting each and every beat, feeling the steady rise and fall of your breathing. This is a melody that proves you’re still alive.

Your hand strokes his hair, one long, lazy movement through his silky locks. He stills. You’re still awake. He has been too uncharacteristically careless to notice.

“I’ll be back before long,” you murmur. “There won’t even be time to miss me.”

For the rest of the night, he listens to your heart, and you card gentle fingers through his hair. 

The next morning, you leave. The days stretch into weeks as Anaxa waits for your expedition to return home. And then it does, without you, half its members lost to monsters and the Black Tide.

The only part of you that returns home is a tattered book of children’s fairytales, the binding already falling apart and made worse by the long journey. It was your father’s, and then it was yours, and now, it is his.

The cover is disintegrating, the pages yellowing, the paint fading. But you’d kept it in as pristine a condition as you could. When he flips it open, he thumbs through simple stories about heroes who save their lovers from every trial, and sons who return home from terrible journeys, and monsters who are always vanquished. Would the world be so simple, that a child could believe in it still.

Anaxa has never believed in miracles.

Most miracles are born of the interference of gods, and gods are as fallible as any man. If there is any miracle he could trust, it would be the miracles he wrings from his own hands. So he cannot call it a destined miracle that he’s met you, something woven by the works of Mnestia’s golden threads and drawing the two of you together, like some of his pious peers would claim.

If anything, your meeting is nothing more than simple, random circumstance, and your continued relationship is by choice. He chooses to approach you, again and again. He chooses to keep you by his side. He chooses to have you in his life. The gods have nothing to do with it.

If it is a miracle you’ve met, then it is a miracle he will recreate to pull you back to his side. Death is a simple nuisance, your loss only a temporary impediment to your relationship with him. Others may call it madness, but to him, it is only logic.

You’re gone. That is the simple truth, like harsh, bleached bone. Anaxa is no fool, has no time for misty tears or stammered denials. He knows the others call him cold for his reaction, but he has no time for their judgement.

You’re his, nothing more, and nothing less. You may have had the audacity to leave him without permission, but he will simply pull you right back where you belong. 

iii. blood

The only time Anaxa remembers his sister’s face is when he looks in a mirror. 

Somewhere in the planes of his face, the ridges of bone and seas of flesh, he can find her again. She exists just below his skin, a ghost trapped beneath, that rises every time he traces the shape of his own skin.

They have the same hair, though she kept hers just a bit shorter. Similar eyes, some combination of green and purple, a miniature galaxy. He is intimately familiar with mapping out the shape of her where he can, though he suspects that, at some point, he must have confused his own features for hers. Her face has faded, her voice dulled. It’s only human fallacy, the mind’s trick to protect itself, to try to forget what pains it.

People are lost so easily, if not to death, then to memory, so he must find a way to circumvent both. Humans are not gods, but they will transcend them in time. With your help, Anaxa might find a way to do it sooner than expected.

It’s early morning, some time where even the most stalwart academic has returned to their bed for the night. The two of you are an oddity, made even more so by your ready agreement to participate in one of his experiments, a few days before your expedition away from home, searching for some rare book or another that caught your attention, with a group of enterprising students.

Anaxa hasn’t expected your cooperation in his experiment to be so ready. Maybe it’s some latent curiosity within you, or perhaps you’re simply participating for a selfish reason of your own. Either way, no one except for you would be willing to assist him with this experiment.

“Are memories inscribed in the soul, as well as the mind? If souls are made of the same material, could one transplant pieces of a soul to someone else? If we are to believe in reincarnation, where do new souls come from?”

You hold up a piece of parchment, straddling the edge of his chair, reading off the list of questions he had scribbled one night, facing away from him. Your back is bare in the dim light of his office, flickering candlelight gilding each bone visible through your skin, shadows pooling in every hollow. 

From this angle, you can’t see his own bare chest, the ribs emerging under his skin like shipwrecks, skin stretched tight over missing organs he’s long since given away for his alchemical research. You’re both partially naked, but there’s no lust in his gaze as he assesses your back, mapping out where he’ll draw his diagram. The body is simply another tool for his pursuits, nothing more and nothing less.

“By the end of this, we’ll have answers for one of those questions,” Anaxa says.

“If we’re lucky,” you say.

“Luck has nothing to do with it.”

He can’t see your face as he moves to stand directly behind you, knife gripped in his hand: plain, unadorned, with a thin blade. He drags it along the meat of his palm, and golden blood blooms across the cut, the pain of which registers as little more than a quick sting.

He dips his finger into blood pooling on his palm, and begins tracing alchemical patterns along your back. Golden ink shimmers against your skin, and he can feel the slow shift of muscle and skin beneath your back, the swell of your breath. He’s closer to you than he’s ever been before, and soon enough, he’ll be closer to you than anyone else will ever be.

The shape on your back slowly takes form, concentric circles and alchemical runes placed at even intervals. There’s a certain mathematical precision to his work, and it’s soothing how each piece falls into place.

Your voice breaks through the stillness. ���After this, I’ll have a part of your soul within me, isn’t that right?” 

“And I’ll have a part of yours.”

“An experiment in transplanting pieces of the soul… If the other Sages found out, they might really kick you out. Or burn you at the stake.”

“Which is why they won’t learn anything about what goes on here. Now, it’s your turn.”

Anaxa hands you the knife, still wet with the edge of his own blood. You stand, and the two of you switch seats.

He hears a faint hiss as you cut your palm, still receptive to physical pain in a way experience has trained him out of. Then, there’s the smooth glide of your fingers along his back. Your movements are slow, hesitant, light to the point of ticklishness; you’ve memorized the alchemical circle required for the transfer, but it’s still unfamiliar to you. 

“Anaxa, are you afraid of anything?” 

“You think there’s anything in this world that I have reason to be afraid of?”

“Well, aren’t you? Everyone is afraid.” Your fingers press into his back. “You just hide it better than others.”

Your perception, Anaxa thinks, is something that irritates him at times, and yet, is also annoyingly endearing. “You frighten me more than anything else I’ve known,” he says. 

You say nothing to that, and only continue your slow movements. He wonders what face you’re making now.

After a while, your work is finished. You let your fingers rest against his back for a touch longer than he expects you really need to. Anaxa stands, and holds out both his hands. With golden blood weeping down your own palm, you interlace your fingers with his, pulling your hands flush, palms pressing together so close it chafes at his new wound.

Your touch is painfully warm and he can feel the fluid drip of the blood from your palm mingling with his own, like gold temptation, carving new paths down his wrist and yours. He has the sudden urge to lick the trail it traces down your forearm, but it would be a fruitless waste of time, satisfying nothing but his own perverse desire.

“We’re beginning now,” he says, and at your nod, he launches into a slow recitation of spells under his breath. There’s a pinching sensation somewhere in his chest as he continues, a sensation that feels akin to a loop of wire tightening around his neck until it explodes into red-hot pain, lopping off his head as he continues to speak.

There’s a phantom void within him, born from a sudden absence in his soul, before it’s soothed by the sensation of something cold and uncomfortable, like a block of ice being slowly pressed into his wound. Your soul, filling the newly vacant space. 

Your fingernails dig into the back of his hands as he continues to chant, your face glazed with sweat. You sway slightly, but remarkably, you still remain upright, keeping your gaze locked onto him as if he’s your only anchor to this world.

Maybe he is. When this ritual is complete, you’ll be indelibly intertwined, in ways even the Titans could only dream of. One day, perhaps he’ll be able to transfer all of his soul into you. As of now, it runs too high of a risk of fracturing your mind in the process.

As an experiment, this simple transaction is good enough. It serves as proof of his theories, of course. And for more selfish reasons, it also serves as insurance. No matter where you go or what happens, the two of you will always be bound so closely no one can tear you apart. Not any human, not gods, not even fate itself.

iv. eyes

Though public baths are primarily an Okheman cultural phenomenon, the Grove is not altogether devoid of its influence. Baths here are more quiet, cramped affairs, housing a maximum of several people at a time. Instead of pure marble where every sound echoes and the presence of  constantly flowing water, there is aged wood and still, perfumed water, with flowers drifting on the surface of every bath.

Anaxa has never had a particular affinity for the practice of bathing, though he has known the occasional academic who luxuriates in the scented water, claiming it to aid in their thinking. It is an activity for solitude, not for socialization, though some students still cram into a single room together to gossip. Personally, he believes showers are altogether more efficient, and there has never been a single person who passes through the Grove’s meandering halls that he has wanted to take the time to share a cramped bath with.

Alas, you have always been an exception to his every rule. 

This is why, in the early hours of the morning, he finds himself sitting across from you, your legs occasionally brushing if either of you stretch your limbs out far enough. Your respective white clothing billows out in the waters like the reflection of clouds, as small, blue lotus flowers drift slowly along the surface.

Neither of you speak. This is something Anaxa enjoys about you: how you never force his conversation with meaningless chatter, how he can pass his rare free time in relative quiet in your presence.

You lean forward, one smooth, graceful motion, and he closes his eye in anticipation. Your fingers smooth over the thin skin of his lowered eyelid, hands cool and damp from the bath waters. “You haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Is this what the lotuses are for?”

“They are known to be sleep aids. I read it in a botany book,” you admit. You remove your hand, and he opens his eyes again.

Anaxa lowers himself farther into the water. “I can function well enough. Are you worried for me, librarian?”

“Me? Worry over you? That would be quite presumptuous of me,” you say. There’s a hint of mirth in your voice. “But you do have a habit of pushing yourself a bit too far.”

“Ah, so the pot is calling the kettle black. I recall you spend quite a bit of time reading into the early hours of the morning, and wake up at an unreasonably late time.”

“In the Grove, all geniuses have their own eccentricities,” you say. Your eyes skim across his body, the simple eyepatch on his face. He feels naked under your scrutinizing gaze, flayed alive by your keen observation. And yet, he would never desire you to look away from him. Your eyes are devoid of all judgement, and instead are full of nothing save a deep curiosity. You observe all, the flawless audience to his performance.

He knows what you see when you stare at him. Ghostly pale skin, beneath which bones jut sharply like broken rocks. The limp fall of his hair. The dark bruise under his eye. The various scars, gleaming silver in the light: scattering of dots from needles, healed cuts and starbursts of burns stretching across every inch of him. 

You lean forward again, this time brushing your hand over his eyepatch. It’s less elaborate than his usual one, a simple piece of black fabric meant to be soaked by the bathwaters. You don’t ask for permission, but you don’t need it. You push back the fabric until the galaxy in his eye socket is revealed, slow inch by slow inch.

Anaxa has seen his own empty eye socket enough that it feels like nothing more than a simple parlor trick, white diamond stars set across the blue-purple velvet of space, but you stare at it as if you’ve never seen anything quite so fascinating before. Your mouth parts slightly as you press your thumb into the hollow beneath. You’re close enough that he can hear the hitch of your breath, see the dilation of your pupils, and feel the droplets of water sliding down your face as they land on his own body.

The press of your thumb is insistent. It reverberates out from his eyesocket, a ripple of warm motion that he can feel lap across his entire body, straight into his very marrow. Your finger descends deeper, and he tilts his head back to grant it greater access. He can feel the weight of your touch, every motion you make resonating outwards, like a stone being dropped in a pond.

You swirl your thumb, and he lets out the faintest sigh. For just a few seconds, it’s you and the press of your finger, deep in the spaces within him, before you slowly withdraw. You don’t pull his eye patch back down, and he doesn’t make any motion to do so, either.

You stretch your legs until your feet nudge against the side of his knees. “This isn’t too bad, don’t you think? I see why baths are so popular in Okhema.”

“It’s too crowded in Okhema.”

“I agree. I prefer it like this,” you say. “Just you and me. We don’t need anything else.”

Anaxa can still feel the shadow of your finger in him. If there was a way to capture your touch and keep it close to him, he would have done so. Nothing is assured. If he can’t have anything else, he wants to have this moment where it’s just you and him, to let it stretch and linger into infinity, so it will last forever.

[cynicalmusings]

yk, despite your name, you dont seem cynical to me

yeah… it was meant primarily to be a cyno pun back in the day before i kind of went off him…

now, the cynic philosophers i can get behind, though, so i guess we could just… discretely swap out the intention behind the name… i’m sure nobody will notice…