Chapter Text
The sky was leaden; the air charged with static suspense before a looming storm. Distant clouds piled up into towering, menacing thunderheads such a deep blue, they were almost black. The biting wind drove its teeth into Drifter's face no matter which way he turned, as though the King's decree that all Kaithes be banished was not enough to ensure that he could not reach his mentor Teshin in time to save him.
He ran anyway. He didn't know exactly where Thrax had taken him, so he leaned into the wind and ran whichever way it opposed him the hardest. That took him up the road to Castle Town and towards the high spired Palace. That road took him through patrols of the king's Dax. Literally through, melting through their metal armor-flesh with the fire, ice, and toxin of his decrees just as much as the sharpness of the twin nikanas Teshin lent him back when he first started his long escape from the kingdom of Duviri.
He took strength from their defeat and decreed that which he needed most now: speed. Fear made him fleet footed. He rushed through the streets, but not as quickly as his Kaithe could have flown above and past the ranks of hammer-wielding Dax who blocked every archway. Each battle cost precious seconds.
King Dominus Thrax watched his progress from high on his throne. In the courtyard below, two of his Dax dragged a old man who had once been a renowned warrior to kneel in front of the king's lackey, Lodun. "You never cared this much about me, Drifter," Thrax whined. "If you had, I wouldn't have had to break something of yours. Justice comes swiftly in my kingdom."
Lodun snarled out the charges. "By the order of his Majesty Dominus Thrax, you are charged with treason."
The Dax drew their swords.
Teshin raised his eyes to Lodun's furious face with the calm of a true warrior, which only infuriated him more. "It is not treason to help the true king of this place escape his own kingdom. Perhaps he'll even figure it out this time."
Three levels lower in the town, sprinting up the stairs, stabbing one Dax in the chest and shooting another about to stab him, Drifter spoke the words of the sentence along with Lodun. "The penalty for which is death."
He knew every word of this sentence, because every day he'd been caught trying to escape, sentenced to die, killed, and then Thrax banged his fist on the throne and made him do it all again.
"Death by IMPALEMENT!"
Thrax laughed, high and childish in anticipation of victory. "This wouldn't have to happen if you'd just stay safe where I keep you! What do you see in that world outside, anyway? There's nothing but war and death and madness out there."
At that moment, in the midst of Fear and on the cusp of Sorrow when there was absolutely nothing funny about any of it, Drifter rediscovered his sense of humor.
This wasn't his daily routine, where he'd be the one kneeling at Lodun's feet waiting for a stabbing pain in his back like a hot fire poker, in, out, always in the same damned place. Then the creeping blackness that took him just before he smashed his face on the ground. The last sound he heard? His own nose breaking and then a fist slamming down on the arm of a throne.
No, Teshin knelt there in his place, and he couldn’t save him.
He looked up at the sky as the storm clouds rolled overhead and said, "I could really use a meteor right about now."
Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. It would have been absurd for a miracle to happen twice, and besides, wasn't it absolutely ridiculous that "Death by METEOR" was the best thing that ever happened to him? That he'd have a literal "helping hand" fall from the sky, replace his own, and grant him mysterious powers from magic children on the Other Side who wanted to help him for no discernable reason? Simply ludicrous!
A cold, fat raindrop splashed down right between his eyes.
He laughed.
The Dax squads assembling on the second tier to keep him from the courtyard actually backed off at the sound. Not that it saved them. Curtains of rain swept over Castle Town, drumming on the roofs and pouring down the streets in rivulets. They looked for him in vain. He found them first and wasn't that ironic, how the tables turned?
Maybe some of Mathila's mad happiness was rubbing off on him, because he held onto that thought, taking grim refuge in dark humor all the way to the castle courtyard where Teshin knelt, bleeding from a fatal wound.
Lodun turned tail and fled. The Dax died. Humor's shield gave one last gasp. Hey, who would've thought that the muscle memory of stabbing one stubborn asshole in the exact same place every day meant that Teshin lived a little longer?
Then he crashed to his knees in front of him. He could not staunch that piercing wound. Though thunder beat out a drumroll of grief, the rain lifted for a brief moment of peace.
They knelt in the eye of the storm. Here, he made space for love. Love for an old man who'd persevered through countless loops to pull him from despair. Gratitude so great he choked on it and could not gasp it out.
Teshin grasped his shoulder. "You're feeling again."
"Yes," he managed. He had so much to say, so little time to say it, and above all he wanted him to know he wouldn't waste his sacrifice. "I know what I must do."
"Then take care of Sol for me."
It suddenly occurred to him that when Thrax's goons came to Teshin's cave to arrest him and replace him with a false Dax wearing his guise, Teshin must've stuffed his sweet, gentle Rablit pet into the dormizone to hide before going to fight them off. And so he hadn't seen. He didn't know.
Completely inappropriate laughter spilled out of him. "Sol. Teshin, he- Sol, he ripped out that Dax's throat like it was nothing."
Though pained, his incredulous smile was very real.
"I'll take care of him," he promised, holding him upright as he began to lean. "He doesn't need it, but it'll give me something better to do than wallow in my routine."
"Good."
Strange that such a solid support in life should be so light in death.
From on high, Thrax observed, "I feel nothing."
He laid Teshin back down, crossing his hands over his chest. The eye wall around them began breaking down. The sky turned red like fire.
He faced himself and named what he felt squarely; anger hot enough to scorch the land bare.
"Ah, ah," Thrax scolded.
Thrax was right there, up in his tower. Fireballs rained from roiling skies.
"Your little tantrum won't bring him back. And now that he's dead, maybe you'll get the picture. You're safe here in Duviri. And You Don't. Get. To. LEAVE.”
He knew what he must do. Teshin had not merely playacted the wise old mentor in the cave when he sent him on fetch quests to reconnect with his lost emotions and memories as though a broken doll's pieces were sacred succession scrolls that marked him the true king of a Void-made make-believe kingdom in the skies beneath the shattered wreck of a spaceship.
Piece by piece, each fragment that painfully snapped back into place rebuilt him from the traumatized child he'd been into an adult who could stand on his own two feet and, even in the midst of anger, forgive himself for what he'd made of his life and resolve to do better with what the future brought him.
"I made Duviri." He told Thrax. If Teshin was correct, and he was certain he was, then Thrax was also a reflection of his own self, made for the sole purpose of keeping him safe. "I made you. I have grown beyond the need for a hidden sanctuary. I do not need your protection any longer. Let me go and this Outlaw Drifter will not trouble your reign any further."
Thrax shrieked back, "I don't care how angry you get. You can't change anything. You can't even change yourself!"
"I already have changed myself."
"Oh, yeah? Then prove it!"
On the heels of that boyish taunt, a portal ripped the sky open. Five Orowyrms spilled out their immense coils. They jostled for position and preeminence until Thrax shrieked in rage. All as one, they swarmed towards Drifter.