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Storm-dark skies crackle threateningly over the thrashing waves, a threat that carries with it the promise of a dance with danger over the bucking sea.
The world is hazy and without edges, sky and sea without border, without grounding horizon-line to differentiate the two. The grey is an enormous mass, hundreds of leagues in every direction, an endless mass with only two features: crashing foamy ocean beneath, and turbid storm-tossed clouds above.
Battered by this storm on every side is a lone vessel, a looming ship with soaked deck and soaked sails.
The figures onboard rush to and fro, scurrying about like bilge rats while fighting to regain either a line of sight or a sense of which direction they ought to be heading in. Far above all the confusion is the crow’s nest, which holds a single occupant, one who many have whispered about for all the nights he has spent on board, for there has been much talk of this man amongst the seafarers of the kingdom, hopping from ship to ship at every port he lands at, guaranteeing safe passage and protection from misfortune, like a living talisman.
Drenched in saltwater spray and cradled within the roiling waves with supernatural calmness, is a single man. He is not built like a swimmer or a sailor, does not have the bearing about him of a fisherman or a whaler. He is lithe and lanky, with the delicately corded muscle that betrays nobility.
Despite all of this, despite the fact that he seems as poorly suited as anyone to live on the water, he stands easy, with perfect, almost feline balance, his burning gaze fixed on the waters that swirl violently all around the ship, though they make no move to swallow it.
His shirtsleeves are rolled up messily to the elbows, revealing a row of a good dozen or so parallel lines burnt into the inner curve of his arm, and also leaving the messily crisscrossed scars that stretch across his skin and the mark on his wrist in view. Dangling lazily at the hollow of his throat is thin silver chain, holding at its center a pendant that appears to be a perfectly spherical piece of seaglass, translucent and glowing ominously amidst the darkness.
He leans his forearms on the rail, looking out into the mingled distance, dissecting every detail he catches onto, occasionally gnawing on his lip, along the edge of the scar that draws a jagged line over the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t play coy with me,” he murmurs, impossible for mortal ears to pick up on amongst the booming thunder overhead and jolting crashes of waves against the violent sea beneath, but the message is heard by its intended recipient clear as day.
An echoing scream rings out from below him: something has frightened the crewmates still on deck. His lips split in a rueful smile, and he delicately props himself up on the railing to grab hold of a rope to swing himself down to meet this threat.
Many have scattered and others are reaching for their weapons with shaky hands, and he coughs a laugh amidst the falling rain and desperate confusion.
A massive tentacle has curled up against the edge, its toothy suckers latched onto the side of the ship, gauzy pale grey and almost ghostly as it breaks the outline of the dark ocean around them.
He rolls his eyes at his patron’s dramaticism and lithely strides across the rain-battered wood, the pendant at his throat now floating off of his skin with the force of whatever magic is within it.
A stray gust of wind sends the overlong flaxen locks at the crown of his head rippling, and as he reaches his free hand to pull them out of the way and out of his eyes, the cracked signet ring on his thumb glints menacingly in the remaining firelight.
Without breaking his pace, he swings a leg over the railing, standing atop the tentacle, and only heartbeats later, he is awash with pale blue light, which spirals up his arms before circling his torso, like an animated ribbon of seawater.
Heard by the ears of others only as a dull, rumbling roar, the pendant rings with a voice.
“Did you honestly think that provocation would still work on me, Jason?”
“I don’t think, I know .” Jason laughs.
“Oh?”
“I provoked you into making a scene, didn’t I?”
The light sinks into him, wrapped tightly around every inch of his body that it touches. It is effervescent and impossibly weightless, and when Jason next opens his eyes, they are aglow with brilliance.
“You’re going to regret that, brat.”
“Will I, Perseus?”
With the speaking of that name, with the offer of that address, the tentacle pries itself loose from the creaking vessel, coiling around Jason to drag him under the waves.
“I don’t think , I know .” Perseus retorts. It is not an easy thing for Jason to be sufficiently convinced to allow him to have the last word, but that response was exactly what he was trying to elicit, so he will do so with satisfaction.
-
Many years ago—so many that it feels as faraway as a lifetime—Jason was but a child, born to the ever-wayward and ever-popular actress that eclipsed every other painted woman of the capital: Beryl.
She was erratic and prone to fits of rage, lived well beyond the means of most, and draped herself in empty luxuries gifted to her by her lifestyle. She was beautiful and terrible, with her perfect face curling in disdain and disgust at every inconvenience. She was a woman with an infamous reputation, and yet no one in the capital dared to lay a hand on her.
Jason had never known why, because all he had seen for his short life was Beryl going out of her way to stir rumor and gossip, starting arguments that usually ended with her tossing a half-empty goblet in wine in her denigrator’s face, and speaking without courtesy or even fear.
The only time he dared to ask why that was the case, Beryl had croaked a laugh.
“I’ve got you. It’s as simple as that.”
He hadn’t understood what that veiled answer meant until a few years later, when as a boy of not even ten, Beryl was discovered dead. Alone without a guardian, even an insufficient one, even one as poor of a parent as Beryl had been, Jason had sat alone in the rooms of the empty home he and his mother shared, wondering what would become of him.
It wasn’t until he was pulled from the life he’d had with Beryl in that busy, bustling city that he found out why Beryl had been untouchable.
He had been a fatherless child his entire life, only to learn that he had been sired by no mere mortal man, but by the great divine ruler that stood at the helm of the faith the people of the kingdom followed.
Small and frightened, he had been dragged before a court of a thousand divine eyes, all peering as they slit his palm open for blood, for proof of the blood of the gods that was in his veins. He had bled red and gold until he was dizzy, and before he crumpled to his knees, the divine symbol of his father’s house shone over his head in a golden halo.
The months that followed left him unable to be anything but numb, subjected to endless lectures and reminds of his place as a bastard lower than any other in the court of heaven, born not only outside of the bounds of his divine father’s marriage, but to a mortal woman.
They told him that he would never be a true prince. He had never wanted to be one, but they would not settle at that humiliation. They told him he would be no prince but a ‘noble son’ of his father’s house, and that he would be expected to behave in a manner befitting that title, condescendingly though it had been given.
And so he trained. He trained and he practiced and he wore himself down to the bone, until one day he knelt to take an oath as a knight of heaven, a paladin sworn to the service of a father that was aghast at the fact that he had even managed to survive infancy.
A few years later, it would be that very same father that would exile him as punishment for his failure to sufficiently please him, for his inability to satisfy the demands of the court.
As a young man scarcely older than a boy, he had found himself becoming a wandering knight, nameless and faceles to the very people he had offered his unflinching devotion to only a few seasons past.
The next time he would kneel and offer that devotion, he would know that it was worth more than all the power the court ever coralled amongst themselves, more than every promise and oath and vow he ever made to another, because his patron would remind him.
-
It is many seasons prior to the spectacle aboard the Twilight Specter, but at the port nonetheless. Dawn breaks violently over the looming stone bluffs in a spectacular display of pale blues and purples, streaking the sky that is shot through in places with red. The silhouette of the moon still lingers above the city, which many is many weeks of travel away from the capital where Jason’s mother—may the wretch burn for generations to come—birthed and raised him.
Here, the mornings are heralded not with the day’s watch marching out from their towers to begin their patrol, or the sound of impatient hawkers and farmers clamoring at the gates of the city to be let in early enough to begin setting up their stalls. Here, the day begins with the sound of creaking wood as the moored ships begin to awaken alongside the city, with the whistling and singing of old shanties and jigs as fishermen return from their nighttime toils to deliver fresh fish to the families within the city as the dawn rises, and the cawing of seabirds overhead.
It is an altogether unlikely place to find a son of the king of the heavenly courts of the skies, but when one remembers that the son in question was cast out in exile, it becomes evident that wandering knights are wont to engage in their namesake wandering wherever it pleases them, seeing as they are no longer tied to a single home to protect any longer, whether it be by choice or not.
Skittering activity begins to rouse the city and its port, and out on the docks stand a wandering knight and a dear friend, murmuring terse well-wishes and anxious goodbyes.
“I have told you many times that this is foolish,” Jason frets, rifling through the bag to pry free the amulet he had collected from one of the traders they encountered on the way to the seaside.
Leo laughs, bittersweet and distracted.
“If I must be a ‘foolish youth’ in the name of love, then so be it.”
Jason, not looking up from the messy bag, bites back.
“Some ‘true love’ she is. All I know is her name; I have never even seen her. And you want to chase this ‘Calypso’ across the sea? When you have hardly any knowledge of her either?”
A wistful sigh escapes Leo and Jason’s nose wrinkles in distaste.
“Oh, you wouldn’t know. Why would you? You haven’t ever felt so strongly about anything in all the time I’ve known you.”
Jason pauses for a moment, unsure if he is impressed with himself, shocked, or simply upset.
“Well. That’s beside the point. I am in possession of an excess of sense, that much is certain.”
“What good does it do to possess sense when you lack any finer feelings? And need I recall, you are the one that shakes his head commenting on the folly of excess.”
“Do as I say and not as I do, Leo.”
A triumphant noise escapes Jason as he finally finds it, and he presses it into Leo’s palm worriedly, hands sweating and almost on the verge of visibly trembling. It is misery to imagine any harm befalling someone as cheerful and carefree and kind as Leo, especially while in pursuit of a faraway romantic dream.
With a soft huff, Leo nods and tucks it into one of his many pockets, before teasing,
“How am I to believe that a talisman charmed in the heart of the kingdom is supposed to keep me safe out on the water?”
Jason tenses immediately in fear, and Leo hurries to reassure him.
“Oh, don’t be like that. I was only jesting; I honestly don’t think these things matter all that much. I wasn’t raised with it like you were.”
Perhaps Leo believes he is only teasing, but Jason knows better. He has walked among the gods himself, so how can he be as blasé as Leo is? The worry haunts him like a specter of some unconfirmed guilt, because he is already blaming himself for a calamity that has yet to pass.
“There’s some way to guarantee that you have safe passage, I’m sure of it. Just give me a little time, I’ll figure it out.”
Leo laughs, unconcerned and unconvinced.
“I’m sure of it too. I’ve never met anyone who is as stubborn as you are when it comes to appeasing the gods.”
It cuts deep. Leo does not know of his past with the gods: Jason doesn’t doubt that Leo would never say something like this if he did know.
How can Jason be ceaseless in anything but? He has spent what feels like a lifetime away from the court he once called home, lingering at the edges of divinity while waiting for a nebulous someday or somebody to let him past the gates once again.
Appeasing them is all he knows, because they have never let him forget his failure.
“I ought to get aboard,” Leo yawns, snapping his fingers lazily over his mouth as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes.
“Safe travels,” Jason says, almost by rote. Leo nods.
“Thank you.”
“Oh?”
“What do you mean ‘oh’? I might think it’s not all that important, but you certainly seem to think so, and I appreciate the concern either way.”
Jason laughs with fond exasperation, running a hand through his hair, letting the seawinds rustle the fine flaxen strands without a care.
“Goodbye, then.”
“Don’t be so somber, you old killjoy! I’m off to find a lady love, not to war.”
“I am not somber, just overcome! You’re too much of a boor to see it, clearly.”
Leo laughs and Jason finds himself laughing in turn, free and light.
They wave at each other in much the way that children might, wild and full of unmitigated energy and laughter, even if it is early and the light is dull.
Jason stands at the dock until the ship is out of sight, as if it will ease the knots of anxiety in his chest, as if it will pry loose the worries in his mind. It does not, and he sighs to himself before he steps back onto the streets lining the shore, feet clacking against the cobblestone as he storms away.
He walks without quite looking at the world around him, singling out the path to the busy market without bothering to acknowledge any of the eyes that fall on him. He is dressed alike to them, but has a bearing that casts a clear divide between them. Stiff and tense with worry, he stomps more than he steps, and the irritation in his eyes clears a foot or so of space around him as he wades through the crowd.
The parting crowd seem like ripples darting away from a stone, and Jason doesn't lose the rigid sternness until he finds what he is looking for: a stall belonging to the apprentices of the local apothecary, who have been known to engage in some superstition of the sort Jason eternally frets over.
Face stormy and hands clenched, he pushes ahead of a busy line for a moment's audience, silencing any grumbling with sharp glares.
"Apprentice," he murmurs, voice kept purposefully low and quiet.
"I require directions to the nearest temple."
For a moment, the apprentice in question looks at him quizzically, because it is rather common knowledge that the local temple is at the heart of the town, only to have their eyes widen in sudden realization as Jason gestures at the conch pendant behind them.
He is referring not to the temples of the great court of the skies, no. He is referring to the temples belonging to the old native spirits and deities, some humble and no more than simple altars, others the grand ruins of a long-gone show of the wealth and power of the devotees that built them.
The apprentice lowers their voice also, and dips their head, stating,
"You'll have luck asking the pearl divers, sir. Most fishermen tend to lie when asked because they're afraid that they'll get in trouble with the priests, but the divers are so sure that they live only on the boons of their gods and spirits that they feel no shame in admitting who they are devoted to."
Jason nods, and passes a measured stack of coins in an unassuming pouch across the counter, dipping his head in response to the apprentice's thanks.
-
The divers are sequestered on a stony outcropping, with bands of thread braided and knotted over their wrists or ankles and their hands busy with bags and knives. Jason has been lucky to catch them in time to speak.
"We were led to old altars in the cliff caves and grottoes by our forefathers," one explains excitedly. Jason stares across the beach in the direction they point, ears following their busy conversation intently.
"They have been used for centuries, sir, and they are the true homes of our guardians! We are not defended by some cloudwalkers who have never even laid eyes on the sea, but by those who are a part of it."
Jason smiles indulgently at the assertion, and thanks them for their assistance before walking down the sands of the shore, feet crushing many minuscule shells and rocks underfoot.
The cave system is cavernous and winding, and it is only the still-remaining attunement that Jason possesses to divine and arcane forces that allows him to find his way to an altar.
It is strangely bare, without recent furnishing of any kind or any recent offerings. It is decorated with visibly ancient strings of shells and pearls and beads, strung across the walls and in some places braided into long, waterfall-like strands that drift about in the dull sea winds.
The floor is covered in a thin film of silt or dust, and the sticky smell of underground water flows drifts past him as he enters. Upon closer inspection, the beads are all decorated themselves, painted or carved with symbols or records of events that the god or spirit that this altar is dedicated to experienced.
Jason pads across the floor slowly, delicately, as if afraid to shatter the silence. It is certainly the altar of a seaborne divine figure, considering the statue placed at the heart of the altar lies in a shallow pool of seawater, lit up by various microscopic bioluminescence.
He sees the face of a young, rakish man, with an angry brow that still holds a teasing lilt, fine jaw and cheekbones, and eyes that have been carved in exquisite detail, lively even in stone. He holds a sword and is poised to strike, and a part of Jason wonders if this man is a patron to pirates or other seafaring criminals, for he seems just as violent as the sea itself.
Slowly, hesitantly, Jason reaches out his senses.
This is most certainly the altar he sensed. It is, however, still dormant. Years, decades, most likely centuries have gone by since anyone last paid it a visit.
But that does not deter him. His dearest friend deserves the divine protection of a fearsome being, and if that is what he has discovered, then that is what he will consider it to have been a success.
He steps forward even closer, hands gently reaching to wipe the dust off of the name carved into the base of the rock.
Perseus.
"Perseus," Jason begins, and the room immediately begins to hum with magic: arcane, oceanic magic.
So it is a spirit that he has encountered.
Nervous, but determined, he kneels, drawing a dagger and cutting a thin line into his palm with a wince. The blood begins to drip, falling in a thin stream of red onto the stone before the altar.
"I-"
Before he can even finish speaking, before he can even make a request, a frisson of magic wraps around his hand like a bandage, sealing the cut away with what feels like a cool wash of water. As Jason darts his gaze upward in shock, a pillar of sea spray and mist begins to circle the statue.
He hears a voice before he sees a form that it could belong to, a rumbling, resonating voice that seems to bubble up from between the rocks like a wellspring.
“It’s been many lifetimes since I last felt such a pitiful presence kneeling at my altar.”
The foggy stream of magic that circles the statue snaps into the vague impression of a human form, eye-to-eye with Jason yet incorporeal.
Jason bristles as soon as the words are spoken, glaring the form right in its eyes. It seems that the gods and the spirits are quite alike in their derision of him, and he won’t allow himself to simply be insulted without complaint any longer.
He learnt that lesson the hard way after being put through the mockery that the courts made of him at every turn.
“Perhaps that tone of yours is the reason this place has been left abandoned for all those lifetimes, Perseus. ”
The voice rings out in a spirited laugh, consoling,
“I did not say you were pathetic , only pitiful.”
“Is there much difference?”
“I would assume so, considering I decided to say one thing and not the other.”
Jason scowls, clutching a fist of the hand he cut open for his summoning sacrifice. It is frustrating to work through a conversation with this spirit, yes, but it does not escape his notice that he sought to heal his palm: most of the beings he has summoned thus have not been quite so considerate.
“What is this difference, then?”
“I do not think you are pathetic. It would take exceptional skill to find this place; every marker the ancients made for the path to my altar has been long eroded or stolen. I also received your blood as a summoning sacrifice, did I not? I would not have appeared before you if I wasn’t curious.”
Still guarded, Jason asks,
“And yet you think I am pitiful.”
“In so far as that I believe you are to be pitied. Misfortune clings to you like a veil over a mourner, it is impossible to miss.”
Jason’s spine stiffens, and now that he isn’t hunched over the stone, he stands a few inches taller than the form, but their shared gaze does not break away at any moment.
“I see.”
The form begins to materialise a bit more, solidifying into a more corporeal state.
It seems now like a hazy, translucent blue image done in paint, depicting the looser details of this spirit without all the detail of the statue. The whole room reeks of sea salt and spray and overwater winds as it does so, and Jason is honestly a bit dizzy as a result.
“I do apologise for interrupting you, though. You were going to make a request of me, were you not?”
“Do you intend to fulfill it?”
“I should think so. I did tell you I pitied you.”
Jason levels the figure with a pointed stare but sighs in resignation. This is important enough to him that he will swallow his tongue. He does not mind having to humble himself to bury down his pride if it means it will help ensure that Leo is safe at sea.
After all, he has been the only friend Jason has managed to successfully make after being thrown from the court, thanks in large part to Leo’s unerring kindness and persistent concern for Jason’s wellbeing. It is only right that Jason, who often struggles to speak of such things, pay back the choice Leo made in action, if not in word.
“A dear friend of mine will be travelling aboard a ship. I came to request safe passage for him.”
Perseus, as Jason is starting to think of him, crosses his arms. The image ripples like a smooth pool marred by an errant skipping stone, and he sees the form become clearer. He is the shimmering blue visage of a man, not much older than Jason, and he narrows his eyes at him.
“Oh? Is that all?”
Jason nods, his nervousness making his gaze distant. Perseus’s form is still just intangible enough that Jason can still truly look through him, and he does, eyes glazed over as images of the terrible fates that could befall Leo rush past his mind’s eye.
“He has never been one to take caution very seriously. I told him it was a frivolous reason to be setting off on a death-defying journey, but he insisted on tempting fate.”
“A dear friend indeed, then, if you fret and fuss over him so.”
It is neg but Jason deftly sidesteps it. He is well-used to hearing as much from members of the court, who often spoke poorly of Jason’s occasional lapses in strernness or harshness, believing that a soft heart benefited no one, mortal, immortal, or otherwise.
Used to it as he is, he lightens his tone, forcing airiness into it.
“You would be worried too if a man who is otherwise sensible chose to rush across the sea in search of a woman he became infatuated with in all of a week.”
Perseus does not respond back with playfulness.
“Does it perturb you that he chose to leave you behind for her sake, whoever she is?”
Jason purses his lips.
“It perturbs me that he is reckless, but it is heartening and exciting when a friend is in love. I only worry that it all happened too fast…”
“I see.”
Narrowed eyes ease, though only slightly, and he nods.
“Very selfless of you, then, to use a powerful summoning only for the sake of a wish for safe passage. Any one of the others in these caverns would have happily granted you the same wish.”
Jason sighs, shoulders sagging just slightly. His words are wry with old hurts with he responds to Perseus.
“Selfless…I wonder what good it has done. Most of my life, I have been selfless, and it was never much able to help me.”
Perseus tilts his head, his eyes only growing more intense. Jason remembers people telling him in his youth, while he still held the powers of a Paladin to his father, that his eyes clouded over with stormy skies as soon as he gained his abilities. Perseus’s eyes are roiling , nothing like the contained, careful, purposeful aggression that Jason used to radiate as a younger man.
Is that the difference between spirits and gods? Jason ponders. Perhaps they are so wild because they are beholden to no court.
“I do make a habit of helping those who cannot help themselves,” the spirit offers, voice light and unhurried. Jason swallows.
What?
“So you will offer him safe passage?”
The figure narrows his eyes once more, before letting the frown ease into a placid, perfectly schooled smile. Inviting and energetic, he holds out one incorporeal hand, and for a moment Jason is just surprised that there is enough space between the two of them for that to happen.
“If that is truly all that you want. But I could offer you something more.”
“Such as?”
“A chance to do the helping.”
“Pardon?”
His smile stretches into a smirk, as if it is quite funny that Jason hasn’t picked up on whatever he is trying to say yet.
“I would offer you a chance to make a pact with me. In exchange for your pact, I will grant you powers within my domain.”
The words are both similar yet different from the ones that were spoken in formal ceremony when Jason was knighted and made a paladin officially. He stiffens his spine as rigidly as it will go, bones locking up in the memory of the court.
Buying himself time, he asks,
“And what, exactly, is your domain?”
“The seas, the tides. Freedom.”
Jason furrows his brows, gnawing cautiously at his lip in a tic he hasn’t lost since his childhood. Absorbed as he is in the motion, he fails to notice Perseus’s eyes following the action intently.
“I see. And why would you make me such an offer?”
“Did I not tell you that I pitied you?”
Perseus says it as if it ought to be obvious. Jason almost wants to glare.
“Oh?”
“What, ‘oh’? You’ve never lived for yourself, and any good you’ve done is for the sake of people that have never seen the value in your actions, your devotions, and your promises. I am the antithesis of that life you have led. I have offered help without a thought to law, have granted wishes that are repaid only in gratitude, yes, but I have also lived for myself. I have done as I pleased, journeying the seas and laying eyes on such distant shores as you have never seen. I have tasted delights now long-gone, seen ruins and rubble in their golden years, and enjoyed every thing of beauty that I encountered. I am not restrained. You are.”
Jason feels the air leave his lungs in a sudden, painful rush. Leo often told him much the same things—more kindly, more humorously, always quick to pass things off as jokes in case the reality was too much to bear. But Perseus is honest, it seems, brutally so. Not unkindly, perhaps, because there is a frisson of concern amidst all the derision.
It really is pity. But Jason cannot bring himself to hate it. It is easier for him to accept the pity of others than to to feel pity for himself.
“So because you think I am so ‘pitiful’...you would offer me power?”
“Not just power, no. Freedom. And the permission to live as you please, Sir Knight. You are without the propensity to commit crimes, so I needn’t restrict you. A man of such self-control that the restrictions he places on himself are greater than the restrictions placed on the world by society; I doubt you would endanger anyone by way of being granted my gift.”
Jason backs away almost imperceptibly, but Perseus follows, insistent.
“Well, I—” he mumbles, sentence broken off under the scrutiny.
“Well what?”
“It’s to soon to say.”
“Allow me to inform you that patience is not a virtue of which I am much possessed. Speak now, Sir Knight. Our time together runs short.”
Jason looks away in frustration, arms crossed and nails raking into his forearms just above the crooks of his elbows.
In response to his tense silence, Perseus offers,
“You know. Ritual demands that I am honest in my terms. I will not request any petty matter be resolved by your hand. I will not ask of you anything that you would not offer freely. I wouldn’t seek to possess you.”
Jason falters. Perseus takes advantage.
“It will be easy to say yes. And I will make it difficult for you to regret it.”
“Will you now? This is all too sudden—”
“I think you know that the bounds of time are of little import to beings like myself. Either you do or you do not wish to enter into an agreement that would free you of the shackles the world bound you in, it is that simple.”
The room glows with strange light. It reflects in a profusion of moonlight glows in Jason’s eyes, an eerie blue that is impossible to find in nature.
“I wish you wouldn’t press me so. It would be far easier for me to see myself agreeing or accepting if you would just give me time to think —”
“I will do no such thing. If you become my Warlock—” and hearing the word sends a cold thrill racing up Jason’s spine, chilling and cool as wintertime seawater. “—you will soon become accustomed to action without hesitation, to making choices on instinct and not logic. I would not deprive you of honesty.”
“Is logical thinking truly so dishonest?”
“It is not always what is felt in the soul.”
Jason stares at him, at the hazy, wavering image of a man before him.
“I do not believe I have the capacity for such feeling,” he whispers, and Perseus snipes back.
“You are more than capable of emotion when it concerns another. Yet you are incapable of it when it concerns yourself.”
Is he talking about Leo?
The lull hangs for an uneasy moment. Perseus is now the one staring through Jason, as if Jason is the incorporeal one and not him, and if the image of a solid being is nothing but a false image, a figure without shadow and light for depth.
“So? Your answer, Sir Knight?”
He hesitates a moment, and thinks of Leo again.
You need to work your priorities out…can’t just keep waiting for someone to tell you what they want from you forever.
“You can hardly sign a pact with me without knowing my name,” he says at last.
“I have consumed the blood-essence you gave in ritual manner, Sir Knight. I would not need to know your name to know enough about you to make an offer.”
Jason rolls his eyes before giving forward his hand.
“My name is Jason. And I would like to become your Warlock.”
The grin on Perseus’s mouth widen into a display of teeth, revealing wickedly sharp canines.
A burst of light rips out of the walls, the pool at the base of the altar, the carvings, and the many beaded ropes hung across the room. The light gathers into a rippling wave, cresting high above them. Jason feels himself instinctively drawing breath and holding it, as if it is really going to drown him.
It does not, of course. But it still falls upon him with a deafening crash, weakening his knees until he stumbles forward onto them, scrambling to balance on his palms.
Perseus leans just low enough to bring a hand beneath his chin, tilting it upward. As their eyes meet, a violent crash of thunder booms from within and outside of the caves, sound rushing past them in an almighty roar.
Lightning crackles between them and Perseus’s smile fades. The form becomes increasingly incorporeal, like a gathering of the clouds above an ocean storm, and then it is only a voice, the hand at Jason’s chin gone with the dissipation of the human figure.
Some of the mist winds into a thin rope around Jason’s neck, and a perfectly spherical droplet of water drips off the ceiling of the cave to meet it. The two join to form a necklace with a single, glistening pendant at its center, warmed by Jason’s thrumming pulse yet cold against the skin of his neck.
“I apologise for not shaking your hand in return, Jason,” the voice teases. “But I hope this token of my favour reminds you who your pact is with. If you ever have need of me, seek my eye within your pendant, as one would seek the eye of a storm; I will answer.”
-
It is no small thing for Jason to begin reaching out to test the powers his patron gifted him with. Perseus had reminded him often that unless he tried to use them, he would never have the courage and familiarity to use them freely.
But he had been kept from such things his whole life long. He had never even seen the ocean until he and Leo journeyed here at Leo’s insistence.
And yet, when it is just after the twilight streaks across the sky, Jason walks down to the edge of the water, hand tight around the pendant.
It hums with a new, unfamiliar form of magic, and Jason is hesitant with every step he takes towards the water, especially when he is met with nothing but stillness and silence.
A moment.
Another.
The tides lap delicately, playfully, spiritedly at the sandy shore, and Jason watches silently over the water for any indication of Perseus's presence, an indication that does not come.
It all feels a bit silly, but as Jason’s feet carry him further into the waves, until the water reaches upto his knees, he feels a rush of rightness, like Perseus had said, as if this is somewhere he is meant to be, and not a magical favour he stumbled into by pure chance.
His hand clutches the pendant, raising it up into his line of sight. He watches, mesmerised momentarily, as the light even so late into the night seems to funnel through the bead of seaglass in delicate spirals, and as he continues to stare into the heart of the pendant, he notices the swirling patterns seeming to catch speed, spiralling faster and faster, until at the very center, like the eye of a hurricane over the sea, a single green eye stares back at him.
If he hadn’t known that would happen, he would have certainly dropped the pendant like it burned him, but for his part, he only tightens his grip. The eye blinks, and Jason swears he can see amusement within it.
A thread of magic winds out of the pendant as the eye slowly fades from view, and that thread winds itself into somewhere warm and familiar in Jason’s soul, somewhere deep within the recesses that have been left empty ever since he gave up his powers to live a mortal life.
The magic floods into those spaces, pouring more and more into his now long-gone magical core. Jason sees his silhouette reflected in the water, seeing not a shadow, but a brilliant shimmering shape of light. His skin is lit from within, shining with soft blue and green and white, scattering light across the water like the creatures of the deep.
“Come, Jason. Venture into my realm.”
Jason, if reluctantly, obeys.
In a few steps, the water reaches to his waist. A few more, and it brushes past his elbows. Deeper still, it soaks him through to his shoulders. Once neck-deep, he stares up at a sky that has forsaken him, and chooses to take another step forward, vanishing beneath the waves.
-
That first night had been confusing. Jason hadn’t known what to do, how his newfound magic worked, or even how it responded. It was only in the following weeks and months that the understanding of using this new power came to him at all.
But it is now almost a year after the fateful meeting between Warlock and Patron, and the skies are gray in the aftermath of Jason's casting.
Looming storms gather over the sea and crackle violently above the sleepy port as a figure stands alone on the beach, with delicate strands of magic encircling him in wild wave patterns.
Jason had once thought that he would never again feel the essence of a storm within his blood and bones, not after the withdrawal of his magic at his father's hands. Tonight, the storm races through his blood with a delirious, manic joy, coursing through his very body and soul in triumph, as if welcoming a long-lost lover home.
The thrill is something he had forgotten in his time living as a mortal, in that span of his life that he spent as a shadow of himself, a specter wandering without corporeal form. But tonight, he is the storm made flesh, made human, and he laughs, wild and without abandon, like the decadent crowds and dancers and bards he and his mother had lived amongst in that city he left behind all those years ago.
"I won't impose," Perseus's voice reverberates in Jason's bones, unseen but heard with perfect, booming clarity, like a faraway echo of cannonfire.
"I have done my duty in teaching you what you are capable of. I promised you freedom, Jason, and now it is yours to take."
The promise sends a burning exhilaration racing up his spine, flowing through his ribs and spurring on his heart into a crazed stampede of a pace.
Freedom.
The word is a drug. It was foreign and alien and almost unthinkable when he was younger, but now it is moments away from being within his grasp, only heartbeats and inches away.
Yours .
So little has been his in all this time. Now…now he can wrap himself in this new liberty, this new self-sovereignty, and he can cradle the shattered parts of himself in the covenant that lives between him and his patron, in the surety of the right to live for himself that binds them together.
He remembers the wariness and the abandon, the self-contradictory cautiousness and recklessness that made him accept Perseus's offer, but now he cannot find it in himself to be anything but endlessly grateful.
"Thank you," he whispers, and he knows that Perseus will hear, even if the storm is crashing over the seas, even if the words are quiet, even if the world were being rent to dust. The bond that holds Perseus to Jason is a thing more precious than anything else, a willingly offered and willingly taken relationship that need follow no bounds of reason.
He receives no reply, but the waves crash forward, high enough that they are many dozens of feet above his head, and circle him like an inviting embrace in celebration, in congratulation, and when he steps into the wall of water that surrounds him, wandering into the sea, he knows that Perseus has heard him.
-
As it turns out, Jason is ill-suited to being left to his own devices. Freedom had been incomparably exciting to have the moment he found it, but soon he found himself floundering, left without direction or any way to turn.
Perhaps another would be contented to continue roaming the ocean’s great depth in search of answers or treasure, or to travel between great cities, using their magic as a source of steady and often exorbitant income. But Jason has been roaming for enough years that it no longer feels freeing but aimless, as if he is a restless spirit unleashed with a curse, unable to find a place in the world it is tied to.
Even so, when he first returns to the temple to tell Perseus he wishes to take on quests, his reaction is incredibly amused, and laughter rings clearly until the echo travels well into the deeper seacaves.
“Once a knight, always a knight,” he says, with mock solemnity, and Jason rolls his eyes.
-
It starts simply, like most things. He offers to track down those lost at sea for the grieving, reuniting bodies to those who mourn them. He searches for old wrecks and the treasures within them, considering carefully whether to preserve or destroy, whether to return the treasures to those that sought them, or to let them sink beneath the waves forever.
But no good deed goes unpunished, and his flippant usage of olde magic attracts the attention of treasure and bounty hunters, merchant vessels, and even wealthy travellers seeking safe passage over the sea.
For months he is hesitant, almost entirely vanishing into solitude, but it is in that solitude that Jason comes to a realisation that unsettles him rather swiftly.
Upon his declaration that he would begin questing once more, Perseus began only speaking with him during those quests, only responding and answering when he was in need of assistance. In the intervening years before, when his powers had been fresh, Perseus had spoken to him often, his voice and hazy, distant presence quickly becoming a mainstay in Jason’s life.
But now…now he is often alone with his thoughts, the soul-bond welded into his core left dull and silent. The world is too quiet and his life is too empty without familiar voices.
And so the knight that Perseus so often teased laid down the scruples that had been so carefully constructed for him, because it was worse to be apart from his patron than it was to reject the rules he had lived within for all of his youth.
It would be worth it, it would all be worth it, because Perseus had promised, and that was enough.
-
Pirates of many confederacies and flags gather at the same few ports for fear of discovery at their most vulnerable, not knowing that it is not the navy that they ought to fear discovering in such a state.
With their battered hulls and sails, they dock, at odd hours of night and early morning, with broken, splintering mast rails and holes decorating their vessels in the aftermath of cannonfire.
They toss words and waterskins and barrels back and forth between themselves, off of their ships and out onto the docks, out into the ramshackle towns that have the courage to still allow them to continue docking and repairing their ships on its docks. The townsfolk lock their doors tight and slam their windows shut, and crowds toward the taverns and inns fall thin at the height of busy seasons for smuggling, as pirates flood the rooms in search of a dry roof over their heads and food and drink in their bellies, and will guarantee it happens even if it must end with blood on their hands.
But it is also common knowledge that those in search of employ will disregard the worries for safety in order to make their willingness to work known to the various crews plying the town for rum and beer and wine. The fires burn late into the night whenever a crew docks, and it is then when desperate townsfolk arrive to offer themselves as carpenters, apothecaries, painters, tattooists, and cooks.
At the heart of one such tavern, lively music and dance flood the room as the troupe eagerly chase after the coin the crew carelessly throws in their direction.
Leaning up against the bar is a figure whose very existence is often debated to the point that seeing him in the flesh leads to a grumbling exchange of coins amongst the younger members of the crew, a figure who stares lazily from one to the other to the next, without a thought to who might catch him staring, or who might take offense. Of course, that is likely because no man among them would dare to take offense to the gazes of one of the sea’s chosen.
They seem to be almost seeking his eyes, watching as the pendant at the base of his throat glows menacingly in the darkness of the dim tavern, reflecting off of the visible skin at the middle of his chest, where the lacing on his shirt is too loosely tied to hold it together tightly.
His wrist rests carelessly on the hilt of his sword, and the many chains and pouches that dangle off of his hip on his belt clang together like bangles as he shifts his weight onto the other leg.
It is something of a rite of a passage for a crew to be chosen. It is not often that he ever chooses the same crew twice, so many tonight are hopeful, eyes darting to meet his eyes every so often, far too awestruck and timid for men that live their lives drenched in gore.
A frenzy of entirely still energy fills the room as he reaches out an arm. They all fall silent, watching as the sleeve falls to the crook of his elbow, revealing the mark of a sea spirit on his wrist, the identifying set of a dozen branding lines on his forearm, and the coiling tattoo of a kraken that just barely peeks past the edge of the sleeve. Enough of his skin is visible at the corner of his neck to see that it extends out from his shoulderblades onto his bicep, a coiling thing that wraps inked tentacles around his arm like a cuff.
“You,” he speaks, addressing the man he points at as if he is a strange child, undeserving of even an entire sentence, even an appellation of any kind. The man still answers in exhilarated joy, nodding as the marked arm singles him out in the crowd.
A sound like a violent storm crashing across the seaside bluffs fills the room. It is the booming laugh of a spirit of the bygones, and Jason shuts his eyes for a moment.
“I forget when you became quite so used to making dealings amongst pirates,” Perseus’s voice rumbles through his bones, audible only to Jason, through the link in their souls that holds them together. It sends a vicious feelings of triumph fighting through Jason’s blood.
When I learnt what it was to be without you, Jason thinks, knowing Perseus would never read the thoughts in his mind unless he gave him leave, which he has not.
“Lifetimes ago,” Jason responds airily, not speaking aloud but through their connection. He relishes in the shock that is steadily building in the room. He is sure his eyes are aglow now with brilliant light, as if he is some malevolent being himself, and Perseus’s eye will be shining at the heart of the pendant like the single eye of a kraken in the darkest deep.
“Have we spent so many lifetimes together, you and I?”
He pauses.
“We have, Perseus. It surprises me that you’ve forgotten.”
“I have outlived you by a great span already, have I not? All of these lifetimes blur together…I hardly know where one ends and another begins.”
It is earnest in a way that Perseus is often not, for he is far too accustomed to tease Jason to leave well enough alone.
Still, it is earnestness that cuts Jason deepest.
I remember every moment of my life that you have touched.
He does not know. It is a small mercy.
-
When the crew set off, pulling their anchors up off the seabed, Perseus asks Jason why he chose this crew, an old game between them both that he has grown quite fond of. He assumes it is because Perseus finds it amusing to see mortals treat Jason’s choice like it is the bestowment of a prophecy, when oftentimes, it is merely a stroke of luck, a careless decision of Jason’s part, made for some arbitrary reason or the other.
Not so this time. And because it is so, Jason is nervous—for the first time in a long time— to confess his motives to Perseus.
Still. Secrets cannot live long between Warlock and Patron, and Jason anxiously twists the pendant between his fingers as he sends Perseus his answer.
“You told me I ought to me selfish, Perseus.”
“I have told you that often.”
“I am being rather selfish in my choice this time.”
If Perseus took corporeal form now, Jason does not doubt he would have raised an eyebrow, because that is always audible even in Perseus’s very tone.
“Go on, ‘fess. Needn’t be shy.”
Jason rolls his eyes, gaze looking unsteadily from one vantage point to the next. He wants to be alone.
That solitude does not come until after the morning meal, but when he finds himself alone, he stands in the crow’s nest, fingers cradling the seaglass bead with the rune of the storm carved into it, unable to meet the eye that stares at him from within it.
“I’ve come to ‘fess,” he declares, and Perseus waits, having figured out that he is worried in a way he hasn’t often been in their past few years together.
Taking a deep breath, then a heavy sigh, Jason says,
“I chose this crew because they were sailing in search of the lands that Leo sailed to in search of his lover.”
The sky clouds over alarmingly fast, dark and pitch, heavy gray darkening the world and blocking out the sun in shadow. A distant crack of lightning strikes the town, and Jason wonders absentmindedly if that means that there will be fire.
When Perseus responds with only silence, Jason finds himself longing, for the first time, for an answer.
-
Perseus’s insistence on silence has aggravated Jason to the point that he has taken to responding in kind. It is childish and he does not care, because he had always thought that of all the people that have every offered Jason opportunity, Perseus ought to be the least likely to be disgusted by personal attachment.
But Leo was his first friend after losing his place in the court of heaven. The first to look upon him kindly. The first to think of him as not some reject stumbling through mortal life.
And now he has been gone from him too long to be excused, because Jason had let him go when he went, had let him be without pressuring or pestering him to return home, hadn’t insisted on dragging him back home on the grounds that he was making a mistake, even though that was indelibly clear to see.
He could have died. Jason might never know if he does not try. Enough years have passed for him to want to know if Leo is gone, or if he has merely been forgotten or replaced, which he has too much faith in their friendship to believe, even though Perseus often tells him that it is naive to think that way.
An immortal may tell him any number of things, but there are some things Jason will always believe regardless of advisory lectures and disapproving comments, because he has been dragged through those pits of hell by his family enough times that the furrows hardly even burn him anymore.
It is quite fortunate then, that the next time he wanders the deck in search of even a modicum of peace in the darkness, he finds himself leant against the rail, staring into the cool pitch blackness of the sea tiredly, because that is when the waters rise in a gentle spire, that slowly takes the shape of a hand. It grasps Jason’s softly, running the water-thumb over his knuckles. Within the palm of the hand is a dark pearl, the sort worn in mourning bracelets, and Jason’s eyes begin to flood as Perseus speaks a reply to him without a single word.
It is an apology, given in a way only the both of them know best, and the world is quiet in the face of the loudness in that silence.
-
Days and weeks pass during their voyage and Jason is beginning to get antsy, because the rumors of the crew have long since reached his ears.
The place they are searching for might not even be possible to reach at all.
Rumors speak of a ghost island that vanishes whenever a crew of any more than a single member makes its way to any known location of it in the past, of a woman that roams the shores of the island in search of the marooned and weak, always sole survivors, only ever one at a time.
Jason thinks and thinks, wracking his brain desperately for any memory of what Leo told him about Calypso, and finds himself horrified as he realises he cannot remember any description of her homeland, of any town or village or city from which she hailed, only that Leo found and met her while in a state of near death and delirium, and he had been healed at her hand on shores drenched in sunshine and sand before being separated from her.
If the tales he has heard are true, then it is clear that allowing Leo to ever return to her was a mistake. He does not yet know if it was a fatal one, but he has set into himself the grim determination to find out.
-
“I don’t think, I know,” rings in Jason’s ears as he gets pulled underwater. The storm will dissipate now that he is gone from the surface, but the turbulence of his emotions might end in disaster even in the dark deep.
The massive tentacles pulling him along are the ones he has inked into his skin. These are the arms of his familiar, a being Perseus taught him to manifest into existence through mastery over his powers. It is a kraken, a behemoth of a giant squid, capable of wrestling whales that have killed hundreds of whalers and boatsmen into drowning beneath the waves. Its horrible, staring eye would leave any other frozen in pure fear, but to Jason it is a reflection of the eye that looked back at him for all these years in that pendant, so its gaze is not unnerving but familiar.
It loyally pulls him along, fighting currents to drag him into a cave away from prying eyes, for there are eyes even in the depths, those whose gazes Jason knows to be wary of. The ocean, after all, is to be feared in equal parts to how wildly it is loved.
The journey is silent and all the better for it, because the violence roiling in Jason’s emotions has time to settle, so that he may speak and make his case before Perseus in any meaningful way. They are adrift and it is a comfort, watching everything and nothing at all as the water swells around him as if he is afloat in the womb, attached to reality only by a single cord.
-
When they reach the grotto that Perseus directed his familiar to guide him to, Jason reluctantly extricates himself from the grasp of the kraken’s arms, running a hand over the smooth sides of its wickedly sharp suckers in goodbye.
He is wringing the water out of his hair as he feels Perseus’s presence within the grotto, and his spine stiffens as if they are back to that fateful night of their meeting so long ago, before all of the events that led up to today.
Too stiff. Too rigid. Too much like how he was before and not enough like how he is now.
Perseus will be able to tell. Of course he will.
But Jason has been steeling himself for days, letting one stream of thought flow well past its banks even in the midst of fearing for Leo’s safety.
“I want to see you,” he blurts out into the empty air, and oddly enough, it is reassuring. It is reassuring because it is inelegant and crass and too abrupt and forward, all of the things that he only ever allowed himself to become after this bond was forged between the two of them.
He learnt sincerity after receiving it so freely. It is pure joy to know he is capable of it, despite everything, despite his father and his mother and the court that turned its back on him.
Perseus’s voice rings through the cave with a strange temperance, a quiet anxiety that Jason knows all too well.
“Do you?”
“I have to talk to you face-to-face,” Jason hurries, the rush of air making him breathless. Everything smells of salt and sand and heavy, humid air, and his heart is pounding .
Slowly, Jason watches the frissons of blueish light begin to join together into thicker lines once more, threading into themselves as they connect. They are forming the same silhouette he saw for the first time that night all those years ago, and the thought crosses his mind that he swore an eternity to this man without ever once seeing his face.
The figure before him begins to take shape, like a rough sketch etching itself into a sculpture, as the body becomes more and more opaque, like living watercolor and ink before Jason’s eyes.
And then, so soon, too soon, there is a flash, the thudding of waves hitting the outer wall of the cave, and the water beneath them that gathers at their feet begins to shine with delicate luminescence.
At the heart of the glow stands a young man, one who seems similar in age to Jason himself, with worried green eyes the exact color and shade and depth as the pendant at Jason’s throat, warm bronze skin that is littered with many lifetimes of ink as well, and a seawind-tossed mane of dark hair that falls in waves from the saltwater.
If anyone were to see them, they would appear to be peers, two young men alone in a cave on a crag that peeks out of the ocean, alone with each other and far from the world that surrounds them.
The silence between them is both familiar and unfamiliar, and the voice that comes from Perseus’s mouth is the same, still with the same cadence, the same lilting musicality, the same depth, and yet not so faraway and grand and divine.
“Well?”
Jason takes in a breath, hands clenched at his sides. His hair has fallen lopsidedly on his face, still damp and salty. He only unclenches a single fist for a moment to push it back and out of his face, before turning to meet Perseus’s eyes.
“I need your help to find the Isle where Leo is lost. If he truly found her…I have no hope of finding him without your help.”
Perseus looks at him strangely, eyes filled with some brimming emotion Jason cannot place, that looks almost like loss, or sorrow.
It is not, however, pity. It is not a shared grief. It is shuttered sadness, and it makes his stomach turn, because he did not think this is the way he would see Perseus when he arrived before him for the very first time.
He is silent and Jason is frustrated.
“What do I do? What can I do?”
Perseus goes very still, uncharacteristic and all the more chilling for it.
“Could I ask something of you first, Jason?” he says, and Jason goes still himself. Of course. This is a a contract, after all. Surely, even though he has been lenient beyond all standards of lenience up until now, a request like this is one with a toll attached, isn’t it?
“Go on,” Jason replies, and his tongue is bitten between his back teeth in worry.
Perseus is looking at him with such fear that it confuses him. It makes no sense to him. Surely Perseus is aware that Jason would not have room to refuse to answer. Surely Patrons know what their Warlocks do.
Before he speaks, Perseus steps forward, until there is only an arm’s length of space between them, until he is staring up at Jason, into that soul he tied himself to, and he speaks like he thinks it is Jason that wields the power over this contract and not he, as if it is Jason that offers life and strength and power and he is the one that takes.
“Are you truly fearing for his safety out of friendly concern? Or does your affection for him run deeper? Has the distance between you both made your heart fonder of him?”
The world ceases to spin for a heartbeat, and then another , and then another .
When Jason draws in a breath, it is unsteady, shaking and sharp.
“Will my answer affect what you do to help me?”
For a moment Perseus looks as if he has been shattered, as if someone has broken his legs from under him and left him to slump to the floor. Jason almost regrets speaking the words as soon as they are out of his mouth, but he asks it because he knows his trust—
“No, because I promised you freedom, and the ability to be selfish. I won't stop you from loving him if that's what you want, but I just have to know.”
—is no longer misplaced.
“I don’t love him.” Jason whispers, and Perseus bites his lip in surprise, as if that was the last thing he expected to hear, as if there was no way that Jason would ever refute his guess.
“What?”
“I don’t love him ,” Jason whispers again, and he is half-convinced that the sound of his heart beating is even louder.
It is one step to close the space between them. It is one movement to clasp Perseus’s cheek in one hand, threading fingers with the other. It is one breath between the Jason’s profession of love and the exact moment when Perseus hears it, truly hears it, and it is one perfect moment in eternity when Jason bends to let their lips meet.
For a moment both wonder if the other will cry, only to find it futile, because it is a moment that cannot be marred by tears or anxious dallying. They have made their choice, and for once, it is Jason who allows his actions to be an answer.
It is a kiss that sinks a deep contentment into those restless spaces in Jason’s soul, those places that Perseus’s soul and magic filled until he could no longer believe any part of himself to be empty. They taste brine and sweet fruit and rum off of each other’s tongues, noses pressed along salt-soft cheeks and hands made rough from rope entwined in the luminescent darkness.
“Oh.”
“What, ‘oh’? I kissed you—”
Perseus laughs, amazed that Jason still has the capacity to be annoyed. They are pressed forehead to forehead, and he waits for the word to sink in. It does.
“Oh.” Jason says, softer. Perseus meets his eyes expectantly, and he continues,
“If you’ll grant me leave to do it, I should like to kiss you a great many more times on this search.”
Perseus colors slightly but smiles either way.
“Now please cease looking at me as if I’ve ruined you and help me figure out if the idiot has gone and gotten himself murdered or…eaten…or something.”
“Oh, certainly not eaten…Calypso isn’t a siren, Jason—”
“What in spirits’ name is she then- ?”
-
The world is dropping away beneath Jason as he passes through the warded boundaries of the Isle. He hasn’t asked Perseus where they’re going or how, hasn’t found out how Perseus is bypassing these wards to begin with, but he finds that it honestly doesn’t matter.
What matters is this promise, this newness of joy, and the fact that he will be able to see Leo again after years apart.
They rise together from the shallow sea surrounding the Isle’s shores, and as the wind blows away the low-hanging mist, Jason can just barely make out the outline of a home, a building that has its doors wide open, and a woman in white running out across the sand.
Her pace only lets her reach them after they have reached the beach, but her thudding feet come to a halt as she directs her flustered gaze at them, warm brown hair in mild disarray and eyes wide in open shock.
“Perseus?”
“Calypso.”
“How did you—”
It is unbearably rude of Jason, certainly, to interrupt, but Perseus taught him well.
“My friend, Leo. He’s here, isn’t he? With you? He told me he was going to search for you years ago, and I was trying to find him myself.”
“Years?” she says, eyes narrowed in confusion. Jason nods, uneasy.
“Quite a few of them.”
She looks between them, knowing in an infuriating way, and then nods as well.
“You may go speak to him, visit him. Perseus and I will have words with each other in the meantime, Warlock.”
Jason looks back at Perseus, not quite as if he is asking for approval, but moreso as if he is seeking an assurance of the safety of what he is about to do. But Perseus nods and squeezes his hand, tilting his head in the direction of the house.
“Go. Speak to him. I will be here when you return.”
Perseus and Calypso watch Jason’s retreating form as he hesitantly crosses the beach in search of the telltale signs of Jason, and when he is little more than a silhouette in the distance, they turn to face each other.
Before either can speak a word, an exclamation of “You idiot! ” and “Who are you calling an idiot?” rings over the island, accompanied by the sound of something falling and breaking.
Calypso only smiles when Perseus raises an eyebrow, and he smiles in turn at the fact that there is only fondness and no condecension in her expression.
“I was quite alarmed when I realised you returned to Ogygia.”
“What, does the Sorceress of the Phantom Isle need a note in advance?”
“It would have been appreciated is all, Perseus.”
They both let their gazes turn toward the house once more, which now only echoes with muffled tears, and their gazes turn warm in turn.
Calypso breaks her eyes away first, catching sight of Perseus’s expression, and it prompts her to speak.
“I know we are old dalliances, Perseus, but I believe I have useful advice to offer you regardless of earlier estrangement.”
He raises an eyebrow once more, and Calypso shakes her head, lifting her hands placatingly.
“There is a great deal of merit in taking a consort, Perseus. That is why I have done it.”
Perseus feels his breath catch, mind spinning with the possibilities created by that statement and the casual intimacy inherent in it. A consort?
“He only just kissed me,” he blurts, and Calypso laughs.
“Ever direct as usual, I see.”
He sighs and she rolls her eyes, saying,
“You needn’t proceed exactly as we have done. Go on and just ask him. You gave him an eternity beside you anyway, didn’t you? It does not make a significant difference then, does it?”
He wonders for a moment if that would perhaps suit Jason better, if he would prefer to remain unfettered by the bounds of the spirit realm. He thinks of every quest Jason took on just for the sake of seeing him again and knows that it isn’t true.
-
The sky is free of storms when Jason walks back down to the beach, his eyes red-rimmed and his hands shaky. His cheeks are flush from crying as well, and his gait is less stiff, loosened from the lack of weight on his shoulders.
The rain has cleared and the sun has long since set, and the moon above them plays a game of pulling and pushing at the tides, dragging them further and then nearer to their feet as they stand together barefoot on the sand.
“A moment, Jason?”
He laughs, a bit wetly, at the formality.
“As many as you’d like.”
“Ah, well. Times like this it feels right to ask.”
“Times like what, exactly?”
Perseus takes a page out of his own book and cuts him off, taking him by the hands. Jason looks at him with something like contentment and trust, like mild bewilderment and amusement, and he cannot help but smile.
He meets his eyes directly, trying to let the smile stretch but feeling it give way to nervousness.
“All your life you have knelt for others. I have promised you from the moment you swore to me that we would join our souls together in a pact that you would never kneel before another ever again. Allow me to kneel before you to ask the question that I have been waiting for a lifetime to someday ask you.”
There is no time for kneeling, alas, as much as Perseus tries, because Jason is all tears and kisses and embraces the moment the words leave his mouth.
He almost wants to laugh but he is too breathless, wants to wipe his tears and kiss the tear tracks off of his cheeks, but he is too lost in the feeling of a melded soul ringing with such pure delight that it brims up within him.
“I was going to ask if I could take you as my consort,” he teases, voice falsely cross. Jason laughs in response, wiping his tears messily with his sleeves.
“Why even ask? Didn’t you think I would say yes?”
He knows in that moment that this is a memory they will keep forever, and yet cannot resist the urge to have a bit of mischief, because he wants Jason to laugh whenever he thinks of this someday in the faraway future, many hundreds of lifetimes from now, because he wants to keep him beside him until all the souls in the realm of spirits fade and the world collapses in on itself. He wants to hold onto his soul and wrap it in his until they are so melded that one cannot be found apart from the other.
But mostly, he knows that having the last word will send Jason into either hysterics or an outrage, and those are things that make good memories.
“I don’t think, I know .”
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