Chapter Text
That night, the silence changes again. Becomes something softer. Thicker. The way sand hushes after a storm; the stillness found between heartbeats.
The corridors of the stronghold are nearly empty. Most of the soldiers have withdrawn into assigned barracks and chambers, or retreated to the lower levels to prepare for what's coming. The light in the halls dims on a cycle neither solar nor logical, instead something only the breathing bones of the building know, casting them into the muted red of a false dusk.
Paul walks without haste, hands loose at his sides. He does not have to ask where to go, he simply follows the thread of knowing – not the bond, not anymore, but something almost vestigial, just as ancient. A type of instinct. It leads him up two levels, past humming walls and strangely damp vents that exhale warm, perfumed breath, until he reaches a plain and unmarked door that opens without a sound.
The chamber is spartan, but not cold, the walls smooth, curved like the inside of a shell, with subtle bands of color worked into the metal panels, blue and umber and muted bronze. A single low light burns from where it lives inside the far wall, the single window black with night. The air smells faintly of stone and leather, and underneath that, steel and spice, heat and earth – them.
Feyd is seated on the floor with his back to the bed, head tilted back and long legs stretched out, a half-empty decanter resting near one hand. He looks up as Paul enters, and his expression is bare, unguarded in a way that the rest of the world never sees – no performance, no mask, just him – before he drops his head back to the bed.
Paul crosses the threshold, shuts the door behind him, and silence settles again. But this one is different, too – weighted with the gravity of everything they did not say before.
Paul walks forward, slowly folds to his knees in front of Feyd, to one side of his splayed out legs. "Do you remember," he says quietly, "the first time we were alone?"
Feyd snorts, lips quirking. "Which time?"
Paul smiles, but continues. "The real first time, when we had an actual conversation that didn't involve threats of bodily harm." Feyd snorts again. "In that one narrow garden corridor. Remember? You told me that I moved like a knife."
Feyd exhales through his nose, almost a laugh. Finally tilts his head to meet Paul's gaze. "And you told me that I smiled like a trap."
Their eyes meet, and it is more than nostalgia or comfort that they exchange in that look – it is the strange relief of recognizing that, despite the anger and the trauma, the most important parts of them have remained exactly the same.
Paul reaches out slowly with callused fingers to cup Feyd's jaw. He tilts Feyd's face fully towards him – not to kiss, but to see. There are deep shadows beneath Feyd's eyes now, faint lines around his mouth, a permanent crease between his brows. More than what time alone can account for.
"You look older," Paul murmurs, one finger petting slow across a cheekbone.
Feyd doesn't pull away, says, "You look holy."
Paul snorts softly. "That's worse."
Feyd leans forward, just enough to rest his forehead against Paul's, the contact light, so careful. "I am sorry that I am not sorry," Feyd says, barely above a whisper.
Paul's throat tightens as he closes his eyes. "You died."
"I know."
"And you killed me."
"I know."
Paul doesn't move away, doesn't break the touch. Admits, heartbroken, "I hated you. For the first time, I – I really hated you."
"I hoped you would," Feyd reassures, his voice raspy and choked.
They stay there for long seconds. Just – breathing together. Letting the storm pass.
Then Paul pulls back a little, lifts Feyd's hand and presses it to his chest, flat over the slow beat of his heart.
"Feel it," Paul says, voice quietly ferocious. Feyd's hand curls reflexively, gripping into the fabric of Paul's shirt, as his breath stutters in relief.
Paul leans back in again and, this time, it is a kiss. Slow and deliberate, open-mouthed. Following their short conversation, it is not forgiveness or even apology, just -- presence. Understanding. But it deepens quickly in hunger long denied; despite the unresolved emotions, there is nothing hesitant about it.
The bond is not there, but without it, in that moment, their connection is all the more real, held together not by fate or soul, but by choice – only choice. And despite the anger and the pain, they still choose each other.
They will always choose each other.
They know each other's rhythms, and their hands map familiar lines with new urgency. When Paul tugs Feyd's collar down and presses his mouth to the pale column of throat there, Feyd gasps and arches into it, one hand clenching in Paul's hair. Clothes come off slowly, though, instead of torn or rushed, peeled away like memory, like armor: scar by scar and layer by layer.
They move onto the bed without coordination, limbs tangled, mouths finding skin, their bodies calling to each other. Paul's breath catches when Feyd bites his shoulder; Feyd groans when Paul wraps a hand around the back of his neck and holds him there.
There is no dominance here. No yielding.
Only convergence.
And when they do finally come together, it is not just a culmination but an alignment – a quiet, seismic shift. Paul bites down on a cry with the first slide, and Feyd shakes beneath him with his hands fisted in the bedding as he arches with the sweet ache of it. When they begin to move, it is as if they are trying to carve something permanent out of the moment, as if their bodies can make the shapes that their words failed to hold. And when it ends – after the gasping pleasure is wrenched from them both through broken moans and choked off half-whimpers – when sweat cools and breath returns – they do not separate.
Paul lies half-draped across Feyd, head pressed to his shoulder, while Feyd's fingers move lazily along the curve of Paul's spine, drawing meaningless, but familiar, patterns.
The silence returns and it is the true kind, the kind that feels like peace.
Paul says, "I dreamed of this. Even when I thought you were gone. Even when I hated you."
Feyd answers, "I stopped dreaming. It hurt too much."
Paul lifts his head. "Start again." There is clemency in the order.
Feyd meets his eyes, and in that look is everything: understanding, promise, surrender. He pulls Paul down into another kiss with helpless, aching intensity.
This, already, feels like a dream.
X
The next day dawns gray.
Not the golden haze of Arrakis, nor the slicing brightness of Kaitain, or even the misty wash of blue on Caladan, but instead something cloudy and murky, disconcertingly soft-edged. Mist clings to the low areas of the stronghold, dampening the edges of sound, as if the air itself is waiting.
Preparations hum through the compound like a second heartbeat as weapons are checked, orders relayed, skiffs refueled. The atmosphere is alert but not chaotic, these are soldiers used to sudden shifts. Used to Feyd.
Paul watches quietly from the main overlook, arms folded, as personnel below move in coordinated, practiced rhythm. Feyd's army. Paul's army. They are neither Fremen nor Atreides, but they are loyal. Fierce. Hardened in a different crucible.
Footsteps approach behind him – two sets. He turns.
The woman is tall, rangy, with sharp cheekbones and a braid coiled like a whip across one shoulder. Her armor is scuffed but immaculate, and her eyes, sharp and intelligent, framed in wide smears of black, rake over him unapologetically.
The man beside her is broader, a little younger, blue ink covering much of his skin, a faint scar at the corner of his mouth, and a look that suggests that he is permanently suppressing a grin.
"Adita," the woman says, giving a crisp half-salute. "First officer."
"Kirill," says the man, nodding through his own salute. "Second."
Paul offers a brief nod in return, recognizing the names. "You were with him when he found Sura." Feyd had recounted the event to him in more detail earlier.
"Among other adventures," Adita replies, folding her arms and leaning casually against the railing. She gives Paul a deliberately slow once-over. "So. You're the other half."
Before she can blink, Paul has whipped his hand out and stolen her dagger. He points at her with it now, arching a brow. "Your job to hand out titles, or just weapons?"
Kirill lets out a surprised bark of laughter, "Spirits, he's fast."
"Depends on who's asking," Adita grins. Then to Kirill, "He has the posture of a king and the reflexes of a warrior."
Paul tilts his head, "I cannot tell if you are truly impressed or not."
"Oh, completely impressed," Adita replies, deadpan. "I just hide it under aggressive sarcasm. Helps to manage expectations."
Kirill leans in, whispering stage-like to Paul, "She's nicer to people she doesn't respect."
"Then let's hope she never starts being polite,' Paul smiles.
"Politeness would make her unbearable," Kirill nods sagely.
They're relaxed around him in a way that unsettles him more than it should, not because it feels disrespectful – but because it's so rare. He thinks of the easy camaraderie that exists between Gurney and his men, that existed between even his father and his men. That Paul and his title have never known.
The Fedaykin, the Fremen – hell, even most of the Landsraad, despite how much they hate him – see Paul not as a man, but as myth. As prophet; weapon. But Adita and Kirill look at him – speak to him – like he's flesh and bone. Still respectful, but not – overtly reverent. Not fawning. Not with greed or hidden intent. Just. Normal.
He recognizes the origin immediately:
Feyd.
Feyd, who never shrunk before the legend. Who provoked and teased the man beneath the godhead, and loved and challenged the god framing the man. These two carry that same irreverent ease, not out of ignorance, but proximity. They've been close to Feyd long enough to have become inoculated against blind awe.
Paul looks past them to where his cousin is speaking with the weapons tech, focused and intense. The swell of something tightens in his chest – affection, maybe. Or annoyance. It's hard to tell anymore.
Adita reclaims Paul's attention, admitting, "You're… not what we pictured."
Paul raises a brow. "Disappointed?"
"Honestly, we were bracing for someone taller. And meaner," Kirill grins.
Adita nods. "And glowing. Maybe levitating."
Paul deadpans, "I save the glowing for holy days."
That gets a bark of laughter from Kirill, and a smirk from Adita. "You're more human than the stories make you," she says, but it's not completely dismissive. She knows that those stories are still true.
"Only sometimes," Paul answers. "Mostly when I'm mad at him," he says, meaning Feyd.
The two officers exchange a glance, and Adita shrugs. "Could be. He always did have a habit of making gods bleed like the rest of us."
Kirill nods, "Gods don't bleed for nothing, though. He makes it count."
A quiet beat passes.
All three exchange a look, and something unspoken settles between them, a mutual type of understanding.
Adita straightens, her voice quieter now, but firm. "Whatever happens tomorrow… we'll be behind you. Both of you. All the way."
Kirill taps his fist lightly to his chest. "We don't just follow orders – we follow you. Your step is our step. Your war is ours."
Paul gives a short nod.
Their words do not warm him – they steady him. And this is not comfort – it is confirmation. In their conviction (not religious, not superstitious, instead grounded in Paul the warrior who was the impetus to what led them to what they are today) he sees the shape of what is coming, inevitable and absolute, and the weight of their belief settles deeper on his shoulders. These are more than just soldiers – they are his, sharpened by fire, loyal beyond reason. With this knowledge, he feels the cold, steady pull of inevitability, because this is how empires move – whatever else he becomes, whatever comes next, he knows they will follow.
Paul smiles (plus, he likes them) and then they move on to attend to their duties, preparations humming around them with the same low thrumming of a coming storm.
X
They are a writhing, panting mess of half-undressed limbs and poor coordination, bumping and tipping into seemingly every inanimate object that stands between the door and the bed, tripping on everything else, including their own feet. With a growl of impatience, and without breaking their kiss, Feyd reaches down and hefts Paul into his arms. Paul, caught off guard, lets out a short high-pitched noise of shock that he quickly smothers with tongue, not hesitating even a moment in wrapping his legs tight around Feyd's waist, nor in taking advantage of his new position, rutting forward against warm, hard muscle. With one hand sliding to grip Paul's ass with a tight squeeze, Feyd brings the other up to the curve of Paul's lower back and pulls him into a deeper arch, bringing their bodies closer together and ratcheting Paul's pleasure higher with the increase in friction.
Paul tips his chin up, disengaging from the kiss with a dirty wet sound to moan, the noise gaining a hissed edge as Feyd ducks to kiss and nip and bite at the column of his open neck.
"Feyd," Paul groans, arms wound tight around broad shoulders, "I need you to fuck me, Feyd. I need you in me." He can feel his insides clench hungrily in anticipation of it, and Paul wiggles and tugs at his cousin, tipping his weight precariously in the direction that he wants to go, as he tries to steer Feyd towards the bed more quickly. Feyd finally relents, but instead of letting Paul down when he reaches it, he instead climbs onto the mattress on his knees, sliding forward on them until he reaches the headboard, where he pins Paul fast. Knees hooked loosely over Feyd's hips, the new position has Paul dropping down a little so that their cocks are perfectly aligned, and Feyd lets out a hiss as he begins a filthy grinding thrust. The angle and sensation of his thick hardness sliding against his own makes Paul's fingers and toes curl, but still, it's not what he wants – where he wants. Latching his hands behind Feyd's neck, he curves his body forward while dipping his hips, dropping even lower, until –
"There, Feyd," Paul whimpers out as his cousin's cock rubs firm across his entrance, felt even through their however many surviving layers of clothes. "Touch me there."
Feyd lets out his own quiet groan and ruts in earnest, short jerky movements, while pressing tight, bringing their foreheads together so that the space between them quickly grows hot and humid with their panting breaths.
"Feyd," Paul eventually stammers, voice high in warning, and at once his cousin seizes his frenzied movements. Paul squirms as the denial of orgasm pulls his body tight in pain and flings his head back. "Feyd, please," he gasps, voice no less wrecked for how hushed it is. "Fuck me, fill me, fuck me."
Like a spell has been broken, Feyd, silent this whole time but for his sounds of pleasure, finally speaks. "I will give you what you want, Paul." With a twist of his torso, he flings Paul, who lets out a short yelp, into the center of the bed, and in a few deft movements tugs the rest of his clothes off while Paul does the same. Once naked, Feyd reaches out to grab Paul by both ankles, "I will give you what you need," he hums and yanks Paul closer, before pressing his heels to his thighs to force them back and open wide, exposing him completely to his sight. "I'll fuck you so hard and so good," Feyd continues, "I'll fill you so much, stuff you with my cock and my seed, fuck you so full, that you'll be dripping with it. Hot and wet and open and aching for more. Is that what you need, Paul? Hmm?"
If Feyd's grip on Paul weren't so secure, Paul would have already barreled him over and slammed him inside after being teased with such filthy words. As it is, though, he can only garble out a pitiful moan of desperation and agreement while he fists the bedding above his head.
Feyd grins wide and sharp – "Fuck but you're beautiful like this" – and then spits directly onto Paul's hole.
Paul gasps and clenches at the cool wetness, then dutifully hooks his arms around his legs to keep himself pulled open and waiting as Feyd lets them go to instead thrust his fingers deep down – Paul's throat.
Paul almost chokes at the sudden intrusion, but quickly turns the impulse into rhythmic swallowing, groaning as he lathes his tongue along the callused digits, his eyes falling closed as Feyd pulls them out only to pump them back in. Slowly, firmly, over and over again, until Paul is a drooling, choking, sucking mess.
When Feyd eventually pulls his hand away, Paul chases it with a whine. "Shh, Paul. Settle, now," Feyd murmurs and, as always, Paul does, giving over to his cousin's soft order and falling back to the bed with a humph. But while Paul mourns the loss of Feyd's fingers fucking his throat, no longer having them as a distraction brings the focus back to what Paul is really after.
Fingers now soaked, Feyd brings them to Paul's rim, where he draws maddening circles. Paul is about to bark out a complaint when three at once breach him, quick and firm and deep. Paul wheezes in a stuttering breath that is half cry, clenching tight on the sudden intrusion. "Feyd," he groans, equal parts encouragement and admonishment, just as the feeling is equal parts pleasure and pain.
Feyd's only response is to drop down onto his chest and to lick firm across Paul's taint before suckling gently on his sac. Jolting, Paul loses his grip on one of his legs, hooking his knee over Feyd's shoulder instead, urging him forward with his heel dug into his back. Feyd chuckles his amusement at Paul's impatience, the vibration around Paul's balls, half-nestled in the sucking pulsing heat of Feyd's mouth, only making him press that heel in even harder.
Soon, Paul is rutting up onto Feyd's fingers, both of his heels now locked over Feyd's shoulders, his hands, too, pressing tight on the back of his head, forcing Feyd's mouth harder against him, pure suction on his taint and the rim of his hole, Feyd's nose pressing firm into his balls. Paul humps Feyd's face, is probably half-suffocating him, but his cousin only groans and jacks his fingers faster into Paul's greedy heat.
"Feyd, Feyd!" Paul begins to chant, movements growing frantic as he nears his peak. His balls pull close and his shoulders hunch, breath becoming a gasp, seconds from dropping off the edge – when all of a sudden Feyd is tearing away, leaving Paul jerking impotently, body writhing, mewling noises of need sobbing out between curses.
Feyd kneels above him, spit smeared across half his face, cheeks red from lack of oxygen and exertion, and a manic grin stretching from ear to ear. He lets out a tutting croon as he watches Paul hiss and kick at the mattress. "Not yet, cousin," he chides, darkly amused. "I thought you were insisting on coming on my cock," he continues, and then reaches down to give said cock a leisurely tug as Paul's animal need clears away just enough for him to process the words.
Not missing a beat, and part in retaliation, Paul flips and presents himself, ass high, back arched, the side of his face smashed into the bedding. He knows how he looks this way. What it does to Feyd. But still, to further help and hurry things along, he reaches back with both hands to pull his cheeks apart. After a beat, he goes even one step further and reaches with one finger to pet at his hole, feels it clench rhythmically on nothing, closing tight then gaping open. He can feel spit dripping down his balls, over the backs of his thighs, and moans, picturing what else might be dripping down his body soon. Impatient at the thought, Paul spears forward with that finger, pushing into the furl of his own body with a sigh – but only gets to the second knuckle, as a steel grip wraps around his wrist and yanks his hand away.
Finally, Paul thinks, but the sound he actually makes is rather pathetic in its indignant neediness.
"That is not my cock," Feyd growls, voice low. Feeling bratty, Paul pushes in with two of the fingers of his other hand, then growls right back when that hand is snatched away, too. "Neither is that," Feyd admonishes.
"Then you better shove the damn thing in me already, or –" Paul begins to threaten, but is cut off when Feyd, grip still firm around both of Paul's wrists, uses that leverage to snap their bodies snug against each other, the jolt of it forcing Paul's face into the sheets with a muffled noise of indignation as he is cut off mid-word.
Feyd passes both of Paul's hands into the grip of just one of his own, his long fingers strong enough to hold Paul's two wrists at once. "You are an impatient thing, love," he comments, voice dry and amused, and Paul is turning his head back to the side to give a snarky response when the sting of Feyd's hand coming down in a smack, firm across Paul's bottom, has his eyes bulging wide and his jaw dropping open even wider at the brand-new sensation.
A moment passes, a measured pause weighted with a question. Paul, shocked, blinks. He sucks in a breath and shifts his knees. Swallows – But remains silent. An answer. So, that hand comes down again.
The second slap is harder, and this time Paul's eyes slide shut as he lets out a moan. "There you go," Feyd coos, the approval in his tone making Paul's bones feel like jelly, as Feyd proceeds to rain down a series of quick, successive smacks. "That's better. Look how good you can be for me." With every hit, Paul gives a full-body jerk, his cheeks blooming warm under the attention – both sets. The ones on his face are additionally growing damp as, despite his best efforts, he feels tears begin to drip – not in distress, at least not just that, but instead something far more complicated and layered and addicting. Sinking into the mindless pleasure of it, Paul lets his thoughts float, the weight of his physical body anchoring him through the most basic of senses and impulses, all centered on the pain and pleasure that Feyd is meting out.
Paul is incoherent when Feyd finally stops, ass on fire and cock fit to burst, not even capable of holding his own weight up. He collapsed onto his knees some time ago, legs folded beneath him, hands still trapped in the small of his back. He whimpers as the sting of those smacks is now given time to settle in fully, before Feyd is petting over the tender skin, his touch managing to soothe Paul emotionally, if not quite physically.
"So perfect, Paul," he praises, "You were so, so good. I'm so proud of you." And Paul can't help the way he releases a full body shudder at that. Can't help the way that giving himself over so completely to Feyd makes him feel so in control; how hearing those words seems to knit something together deep inside him, something howling and starved finally given care and attention and satisfaction.
"Feyd," he cries, fingers flexing weakly against his spine, imploring.
"I know, cousin," Feyd's voice is deep and warm and so full of affection that it is almost a physical thing. Paul feels a tender kiss against his fingers before Feyd readjusts his grip on Paul's wrists with a, "You want my cock," before he is slamming himself in to the hilt, filling Paul in one beautiful and brutal stroke that has him seeing stars. Fully seated, Feyd grinds there indulgently, kneading his sac between their bodies while he switches his hold from Paul's wrists to instead grip him above both elbows, petting his thumbs once in reassurance. "It's all yours, Paul," Feyd tells him. "So take it." And then he is using his hold on Paul's arms as leverage to pull him back and into an arch so deep that his breath is sawing from his throat half-choked due to the angle – and then due to the way that Feyd pulls out, only to surge back in with a desperation that borders on vicious, using that grip on Paul's arms to pull him back and onto his cock, forcing him to meet each thrust.
Paul feels his body winding tighter and tighter, his head thrown back as he mindlessly screws himself back on the thick heat impaling him as he chases his climax. The sounds of their bodies slapping together echoes the cracking hits from earlier, Feyd's pelvis against those same sore cheeks, his heavy balls smacking against Paul's own, stoking the fire further.
Feyd fucks him relentlessly, hard and fast, so fast that Paul can eventually no longer match his rhythm. As Feyd told him to do, Paul can only take it. He is reduced to a mess of heaving breaths and pitiful cries of "ah, ah, ah" timed to Feyd's thrusts. As Paul nears his climax in earnest, those cries grow higher in pitch, and Feyd pulls him up from the mattress to dangle helplessly from the grip on his arms and the dick in his ass.
"Come on, Paul," Feyd urges. "Show me how good you feel. Let me feel you come around my cock, feel you milk me. Make me fill you deep inside, let me fill your hungry hole." And, well, what else is Paul to do when asked so politely? So he does.
Paul's pleasure drowns him so deep that he stops breathing, his body stretching and straining as he finally cums, his breath only coming back to him in wrenching gasps as he convulses from the pleasure.
Feyd moans deep, "Fuck, Paul, yes, just like that," and pulls Paul's body up all the way into his arms so that they are back to chest, one arm around Paul's ribs keeping his arms bound to his sides, the other high across his chest and shoulders keeping Paul arched just so. Continuing to pound deep, Feyd's fucking grows harder and sloppier all at once, his hips finally beginning to stutter. "Squeeze me tight, cousin," he groans as Paul's body obeys without concious effort, his insides clenching rhythmically through the aftershocks of his own orgasm, as Feyd continues to fuck deep. Paul, head laid back limp on Feyd's shoulder, groans and jerks through the growing overstimulation of Feyd's continued movements, which start to teeter on the edge of too much. With the few remaining brain-cells that Paul has left, he manages to gather himself enough to turn his face towards Feyd. Mouthing under Feyd's jaw where his pulse pounds frantically, Paul uses his last drops of energy to simultaneously bare down on the cock inside him and to murmur brokenly, to beg – to demand – "Cum inside me, Feyd. Now."
Feyd's arms around Paul spasm tight as, immediately, he shoots his load. Paul moans again as heat fills him, and Feyd echoes that moan as his thrusts first go frantic before growing more gentle, working his way through his orgasm and pushing his cum deeper with each move, just like he said he would. "Take it, Paul," he gasps, mouth open and damp at Paul's shoulder. "Take my cock, take my cum, it's yours, all yours, only yours." And for all that they are filth, these words leaving his lips (words neither eloquent nor even very unique), they still speak to a very real promise and truth, transcendent in its purity.
"Mine," Paul hums, eyes slipping closed in utter contentment. A smile pulls lazy at his lips as he sighs against Feyd's neck; feels Feyd's heart beat solid and steady against his back; feels him kissing horribly tender across the slope of his collarbone; hears him echo that same absolute truth back in his own reverent whispers: Mine.
X
From the vantage point of their craft, Paul watches how night fades on the planet of Tleilaxu, and how the morning breaks without light; there is no dawn on this world, only a pale softening of the dark. The clouds above remain low and swollen, tinged violet and green with suspended poisons, but the night thins just enough to make the shapes of the landscape visible.
The ravine that holds the city stretches like a wound through the rock, what remains of its structure leaning inwards, curling in on itself like a dead creature on its back, twisted spires, collapsed walls, and scorched towers sunken half into the ground. A once-living city, it is now swallowed by silence and ash.
Paul stands at the edge of the deck of the craft transporting them from their larger ship docked outside of the planet's atmosphere, his cloak pulled tight around his shoulders, the wind humming low against the ridges of his armor. His stillsuit, dark as wet stone, bears the dust of one more world now.
Beside him, shoulder to shoulder, Feyd watches the approaching ruins.
After passing out last night, Paul had woken in the pre-dawn early hours to a Feyd that was clingy in his neediness. Cooling ointment had been applied to the sore skin of his bottom, the mess inside having been cleaned away at some point, and Feyd was doing his best to smother Paul in his sleep, legs and arms wound like vines keeping Paul plastered to his cousin's chest. Once Feyd joined him in wakefulness, it had been gentle kisses and barely-there strokes of skin and breath. Paul came shaking down his lover's throat with a shivering floaty sigh, before drifting off again for one last scant hour before they were then making themselves ready for departure. Feyd had not left his side since.
"You're sure he's down there?" Feyd now asks as they both turn to Sura.
She stands behind them, her frame still but charged with focus. Her eyes, their gold color gone dark and unblinking, are seemingly fixed on the city below but extend to something far beneath its surface. Through her connection to Paul and Feyd, Sura is the tuning fork to that ear-splitting silence, the singularity of Forget that neither man can track alone.
"I see the echo," she says quietly, "the same one that struck through the bond. That hollow resonance – it came from here. It is where his mind returned after touching you."
Paul absorbs her words without flinching at the reminder of the violation, remembering the laceration that Forget left on his psyche.
"He is deep," Sura continues. "Not moving."
Feyd asks, "Do you think he knows?"
"He suspects," she says. "He is waiting. Not hiding."
Paul nods, "Neither are we."
The soldiers silently prepare the skiff to begin its descent, and the other ships in formation around them show the same movements, efficient, almost anticipatory despite the danger ahead. They've been given no false hope to buoy their energy, only the knowledge that their leaders are both with them now, heading the charge into the fray.
The skiffs descend.
They cut low through the ravine, mist churning in their wake, the city below unfolding through the fog like a corpse half-consumed.
The first contact is swift and without warning.
Enemy scouts blink into existence out of seemingly thin air, their forms warped by time anomalies and Tleilaxu experimentation. Biotech war-beasts howl, and the city seems to breathe in response, in expectation for the blood about to be shed – it feels hungry.
Feyd leads the charge.
He leaps from the skiff before it even fully lands, blades drawn, carving through the first wave in a burst of movement too fast for the eye to follow. He moves like fury unchained: savage, deliberate, untouchable. The Fedaykin follow close on his heels, swift shadows in the corrupted mists.
When Paul steps forward, it is calm, composed, un-rushed. He looks down his nose at the first creature that charges him, every line of him radiating quiet but absolute disdain, before dispatching it with one crisp slice of his blade and then pushing on. He fights with cold focus, each motion exact. Where Feyd burns, Paul carves with icy and focused precision.
The battlefield is grotesque, a broken land of writhing biotech, skeletal remains of organic machines, glistening spores and shattered bones, while the air glows purple and green from unknown sources, every breath tasting like poison. Worst of all, the armor and hides of what they fight are mostly resilient to lasgun blasts, necessitating close confrontation.
They are maintaining the upper hand, gaining ground at a steady rate, when the air r i p p l e s. As the biotech weapons shriek, timeline distortions suddenly become a part of the fight, and seconds begin to repeat, to collapse, to invert. More than once one of the enemy flickers, mutating mid-strike, and then skipping through space to appear where they weren't before. One of Feyd's soldiers is dragged backward into a shimmer of light – and disappears with a scream cut short. Another must be subdued as, eyes unsteady, he turns on his own comrades, shouting words of nonsense.
Confusion and chaos begin to bleed into the battle.
Feyd stumbles, a hallucination slamming into his senses, appearing in the air in front of him with the quality of a mirage: himself, but twisted. Screaming. Broken. A mirror of every fear: the Baron alive; him become the Baron; Paul killed in the duel; Paul dead now; he, Feyd, become the predator his uncle groomed him to be, the wretch he was becoming before Paul showed him that he could be so much more. Hideous. Degenerate. Subhuman. Alone.
For a moment, everything goes silent, and time is suspended. Feyd, drowning and lost, falls to his knees, hands coming up to clutch at his head.
"Feyd!" Paul shouts, slicing through a creature that bleeds gasoline, straining to reach him as more close in. "No!"
Feyd stares into the depths of the splintered version of himself, and Paul fears for the worst –
– until he sees the smile.
"You are nothing but a shadow," Feyd tells it, his words, spoken with extreme effort, only a murmur at first, but then quickly gaining volume and ferocity with his conviction. "I've torn my soul open and drank what spilled out, faced the truth of myself and walked out laughing. You think you can scare me with my own face? You can't drown the sea!" Feyd leaps to his feet, roaring, "I am the black tide! The wave that crashes in on itself, the teeth in the water, and I will swallow you whole!"
His blades tear through the illusion with the viciousness of his intent, propelled by his own mental will made tangible, visible as a glowing edge on each blade, and – it collapses into itself, a shock wave in reverse. It disappears in a soundless implosion, and a weight of pressure that nobody had even noticed was pressing in on them breaks. Ears pop and eyes blink as time – at least for the moment – rights itself, and Paul allows himself the shortest moment to sag in relief.
With the lifting of the psychic offense, however temporary it may be, their soldiers rally with a cry and surge forward. At last, a breach opens. Feyd, Paul, and Sura make for it, slipping through with as little attention drawn to them as possible.
Inside, the city is worse – not in violence, but in perversion. A center of bio-mechanical experimentation, the abandoned city reflects the corrupted industry that formed it. It is a grotesque spectacle of living machines and organic architecture: walls breathe, flesh-vats churn, organs pulse in tanks of red light while bioluminescent fungi drips from above like sweat. The air hums with the quiet sounds of genetic manipulation, soft clicks, wet sloshes, and the whisper of synthetic muscles flexing. Far ahead, a jagged citadel looms, a black, bone-like fortress carved from the planet's living core. It breathes, shifts subtly, shadows twisting and warping along its surface.
Sura points towards it, "He is under the tooth." It is an appropriate moniker, it guards the entrance to the maw in which they must descend. Through the mouth and into the belly of the beast.
With the battle raging on the city's doorstep, their arrival is no longer a secret. Sentries roam the streets, metallic carapaces on long spindly legs the length of ten men stacked, their bodies peppered with roving eyes, small arms swinging with large lasguns itching for a target.
So they go under.
Just as Sura had planned, an old utility shaft two streets in leads to the sewage channels, down which a narrow vent gives access to a series of equally narrow service passages threading throughout the belly of the city, connecting to various labs, forges, and plants. Blessedly, there are no sentries here. Possibly, any that would have been charged with guarding these spaces have all been recalled topside, in anticipation of the battle still raging on just outside the city's limits.
Using their purloined schematics, they begin to weave their way forward towards the center of the city where the 'tooth' sits. More than once their path is blocked – buried under rubble from collapsed ceilings and walls, or simply stopping in a dead-end that never made its way onto the city-plans. Every time they have to double back and pick a new route, Paul feels it chip away at his calm. They are losing valuable time.
The further they go, the quieter it becomes, a jeavy threat that mutes their surroundings so that even their footfalls seem swallowed.
Eventually, they reach a door. It's actually a hatch at the top of a rung-ladder, but all the same, it is their entry point, and Paul feels relief. They made it – unaccosted and unharmed – and, despite the setbacks, much more quickly than if they had gone through the city itself, where they would have most likely ended up both of those things. They climb up and through into the lowest basement level of the Tooth, a relatively tame space compared to all that they have seen so far, being made up of just pipes and valves long abandoned.
They continue forward – the Shadow waits for them even further down – looking for a stair. They hurry through leaning corridors of stone and twisted metal, and past facades carved with half-melted symbols, until they reach the only one the building has to offer, evidently. Like a giant nautilus shell, it twists through the very center of the building, disappearing into murky nothingness at either end.
The color of obsidian, its edge is slick with condensation, its steps etched by time into curves worn down over too many years of passing feet. There are no guards.
Paul pauses only to look at Sura. "If we don't come back," he says simply, "bury it."
She pats the small bag on her back that carries the explosive charges in confirmation of the agreed upon contingency – Paul's own idea.
Feyd glances at his cousin and says, half serious, "Last chance to change your mind." Paul knows that if it were up to him, he would be going down there all by himself, Paul staying topside.
Paul smirks faintly, the only hint of humor he will allow himself. Tells him, "If I fall, you finish it."
Feyd's voice is steady, a promise, as he tells Paul, "If you fall, we both do."
There is a single moment of silence where all three share a look of utter understanding, that expresses more than words could ever allow in this moment, and then the fated-pair turn away and begin their descent side by side.