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There’s a child on her doorstep.
She doesn’t look older than six, with her large eyes and missing front tooth as she smiles charmingly up at her. “Good day, are you Miss Aglaea, the Goldweaver? My name is Stella.”
Aglaea had thought she was dreaming at first. When she had woken up from her short nap after an all-nighter of signing paperwork with Teacher Tribbie, she had sensed a small, unfamiliar presence enter the gates of Okhema. Strangely, though, her threads had buzzed in excitement rather than alarm, as if recognizing who it was.
She finally understands the threads’ peculiar behavior as she looks back down at the little girl. She might have lost her vision centuries ago, but she knows what—or who she’s looking at.
She senses the presence of two dear people who had mysteriously disappeared seven years ago in this girl named Stella. She has the missing Deliverer’s hair and the lost Prince’s eyes.
Her posture completely mimics Mydei’s regal one, while her smile holds the same warmth as Phainon’s. Aglaea’s threads wrap around her and tingle warmly, like greeting two old friends who’d just returned home after seven long years.
“Hello, Stella. Indeed, I am Aglaea,” Aglaea says after a few moments, realizing the girl had been patiently waiting for her answer.
“Are you lost?” Aglaea bends down so that she and Stella are eye to eye. She hesitates, then braces herself before asking, “Where are your parents?”
Aglaea watches as her eyes dim and her smile fades. Her chest feels heavy as little Stella sniffles, and suddenly she knows the answer. She almost doesn't want to believe it; Phainon and Mydeimos were two of the strongest people she knew.
However, the evidence speaks for itself. Aglaea’s threads take in Stella’s state, and she concludes that as long as Phainon and Mydei were able, they would never leave their daughter in this terrible state.
Stella’s chiton was dirty with dust, and her hair was caked in mud, as if she’d been sleeping outside for days. She was also holding a small knapsack and a tattered blankie, clutching on to them like a lifeline. In her other hand was a clearly beloved straw bear.
Thus.
“Daddy and Papa are gone,” she whispers miserably, and Aglaea feels dizzy actually hearing it confirmed. “And… and they said that if they were, I should go look for Auntie Aglaea in Okhema because she’d take care of me.”
Stella’s tearful eyes meet Aglaea’s horrified ones. “They left a letter, but I can’t read a lot of words yet,” she wipes away her tears and pulls out a rolled-up piece of cloth from her knapsack. When Aglaea peeks at it, she sees words written on it, recognizing Mydeimos’ handwriting immediately.
A letter.
Aglaea grimly accepts it, but doesn’t dare read it. Not yet.
Stella sniffles. “I miss Daddy and Papa. I wish they didn’t have to leave,” Stella confesses, breaking Aglaea’s heart. She’d thought she’d lost every trace of emotion after succumbing to her divinity, but it seems she’d been wrong. “Will Auntie Aglaea… take me in?”
For the first time in a thousand years, Aglaea opens her arms to embrace another. She tries to soothe the child by running a gentle hand through the familiar white locks, swallowing the ache that surfaced.
“Of course, Stella,” she pulls away to cup her cheeks. Mydeimos’ golden eyes stare back at her, and she finds herself missing the kind and gentle prince. They've never had the chance to be close, and she wishes she had talked to him more. “Don’t worry, now. Auntie… auntie Aglaea is here.”
Aglaea has no idea how to be an aunt. She didn't think that someone like her could be called 'Auntie' so warmly either. But she’s not about to turn away this little girl who looks at her with eyes full of hope.
——
Aglaea invites her in, ushering Stella to her kitchen. It has an ornate wooden table, made from cypress. Aglaea places her things on one of the chairs and tells Stella she may sit where she wants. Stella picks one quietly and sits, no longer crying, and looks around the open space curiously.
Aglaea has to look away for a moment. Mydeimos had fixed that chair for her once.
Stella’s eyes are wide as she takes in the trinkets Aglaea has collected over the years, most of them gifts from the heirs. One day, Aglaea will point out which ones were from her parents.
Her short legs swing from her chair, and remembering how she had to climb onto it to reach the seat reminds Aglaea how small and young she truly was.
(Phainon had done the same thing when Aglaea had first brought him here.)
“You must be hungry,” Aglaea says quickly as she opens her teleslate. She sends a quick message to Hyacine and Teacher Tribbie, asking them to come over as soon as they can. “What would you like to eat?”
She had wanted to invite all the heirs, knowing they were eager for any news on Phainon and Mydei, but she was afraid that too many people would overwhelm the already strung-out child. Aglaea hadn’t missed the dark circles under Stella’s eyes.
“I can eat anything!” Stella says proudly, puffing her chest. She looks like her dad as she smugly crosses her arms. “Papa said my teeth are strong enough for meat now, though I have only one big one,” she grins widely, the gap in her front teeth prominent.
“I see,” Aglaea nods. Papa must be Mydeimos, who was always the more health-conscious between the two. She looks down when her teleslate buzzes and finds that both Tribbie and Hyacine have sent her ‘OK!’ stickers. “Have you tried honeycakes?”
It’s been years since Aglaea had to cook, no longer as prone to hunger after she had inherited the Romance coreflame. Still, she’s pretty confident in her ability to make honeycakes.
Stella perks up. “I’ve never had those! But Daddy talks about how Papa loves them all the time! He said he even, um… modeled for them. Like this!” Then she strikes the pose from that billboard ad promoting Mydeimos and the honeycakes.
Aglaea’s breath hitches. It’s still up in the shop. The owner could not bear to part with it, and the Kremnoans would occasionally come in to eat honeycakes in remembrance of their prince and stare at the billboard—the only official portrait of Prince Mydeimos.
“We couldn’t have them in the forest,” Stella babbles, as talkative as her Dad, “We didn’t have the… um…” she puts a finger to her lip and cutely tilts her head, catlike. A habit she picked up from her Papa.
“Ingredients,” Aglaea offers softly, and Stella lights up.
“Yes! We didn't have them, but I wanna try!” She nods excitedly, but then her face falls. “I wanted to try them with Papa…” she trails off, looking down. But then she shakes her head as if to shake the sadness away. “Um, what's that?” She points at Aglaea's teleslate.
Aglaea has to smile. She was as stubborn as her parents and was as determined to avoid being seen as sad or weak. She has her hands full if she’s anything like her parents, she knows. “It's a teleslate.”
“So that's what a teleslate looks like!” She gasps, wriggling so much she nearly falls over her chair. Aglaea reaches over to steady her, and Stella shoots her a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Papa always says I have too much energy. He says I get it from Daddy, cuz he's like a big puppy, but Daddy tells me that Papa was full of energy as a child too…”
Aglaea lets the chatter wash over her, listening with a faint smile as Stella regales her with story after story about her parents. She’s well aware that this was Stella's way to process her grief, having recognized the method. She’s already been through this before.
Her threads buzz, sensing the deep sadness within Stella, but her natural optimism and love for her parents trump the grief. Aglaea would say that she was too young to understand death completely, but she was Phainon and Mydei’s daughter.
If there was one thing she'd learned about Phainon and Mydei, it was not to underestimate their emotional capacity… though their coping mechanisms leave much to be desired.
“…and then Daddy actually caught a huuuuuge fish!” Stella spreads out her arms. “It was this big! Papa's face was so funny, he was really shocked!” She leans back, overtaken by giggles. Aglaea lets out a huff of amusement herself, muted as it was.
Clearly, Phainon and Mydei had gotten over their pining because Stella existed, but it was nice to hear about them being happy as a couple and a family. Aglaea stands, and Stella trails off, looking up at her curiously. She shakes her head. “Don't mind me. I'll just be cooking breakfast. What were you saying about the fish again?”
“That they had a lot of colors!” Stella cheers, before she starts fidgeting in her seat. She reaches out a small hand, as if to grab Aglaea’s chiton, but she takes it back immediately. “Um… Auntie Aglaea?”
“Yes, Stella?”
She blushes cutely. “I’m supposed to take a bath every day because Papa says I’ll stink if I don’t, but I didn’t wanna get lost, so I just followed the song! And there were no rivers in the song! Am I… stinky?”
Aglaea has little idea of what she’s talking about, but she decides to address Stella’s immediate concern.
“No,” Aglaea answers honestly. She had thought of offering the little girl a bath and a change of clothes, but… “I’m sorry for not telling you, but I was hoping that we would wait until Hyacine arrived to check up on you. Injuries are more of her expertise than mine.”
Aglaea hadn’t noticed any injuries as she ushered Stella in, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Plus, she has no reason or plan to conceal Stella’s presence from the other heirs, so inviting Hyacine over was no problem.
“Auntie Hyacine is a super awesome healer, and she has a small, fat unicorn named Little Ica,” Stella chirps automatically, like she couldn’t help herself. “Okay, Auntie Aglaea! But why does everyone call Ica ‘Little Ica’ when Daddy said they were as round as a slime ball?”
A what? Aglaea has never heard of such a thing before. “Ah, you might have to ask Hyacine about that. Unfortunately, I have no idea myself.”
“Okay!” Stella agrees easily. She really was a bright and cheerful girl. She must’ve been the light of Mydei and Phainon’s lives, and she embodied her namesake perfectly. “I can’t wait to meet them!”
Aglaea smiles, turning to prepare the ingredients as she asks, delicately, “Stella, before coming here, where did you and your parents live?”
“In a forest. There were so many beasties, but Daddy and Papa always protect our home. They kill them off before they can get too close. But there’s a river nearby! It’s where we catch our fish for dinner!”
Aglaea is… surprised to hear the word ‘kill’ fall so easily from her lips, but she pushes it aside. Wherever Phainon and Mydei had been, it clearly had a tumultuous environment where they had to kill… beasties… to ensure their survival.
“I see,” Aglaea says, deciding not to push. She had heard the quiver in Stella’s voice earlier when she mentioned their home. “And what is a slime ball?”
“Oh! It’s one of my favorite toys! When Daddy gets to kill a slime, Papa cooks it and rolls it into a ball for me to play with, not eat! It’s so bouncy and fun, but it tastes kinda icky.”
Stella had deliberately lowered her voice as she said ‘play with, not eat’, mimicking Mydei’s cadence. It makes Aglaea huff with amusement.
What a cheeky child. Mischievous, too, considering she knew what it tasted like despite Mydeimos’ warnings.
Though… Aglaea has never heard of slime titankins, but they may be local to the ‘forest’ they lived in before… Stella had to travel to Okhema. Perhaps she’ll learn more when she reads Mydei’s letter.
But first, she needs to feed her goddaughter.
Aglaea prepares breakfast as Stella's voice fills her kitchen with joyous stories, something she hadn't experienced in a while. Phainon used to come over unprompted to talk about how his day went. They were usually about the ‘totally authentic’ antique he'd picked up, or how his training for the Strife coreflame was going. Though after Mydeimos’ arrival, he was all he could talk about.
(“You don't get it, Lady Aglaea. Mydeimos looked so radiant when he pinned me down. I thought I was going to go crazy.”
“Your nose is bleeding,” Aglaea pointed out flatly. “And get out of my house.”
“But I just got here!” Phainon whined, slumping at her table. He takes out a handkerchief to wipe his nose, though. Good. Or Aglaea would’ve done something drastic. “Oh, speaking of blood. Did you know that Mydei—”
Aglaea lets his chatter wash over her, content as she sips her wine. It’s always nice to have Phainon over; he never took her threats to kick him out seriously, and it reminded her of Phainon’s early days in Okhema.
He used to spend them sitting where he was now, chattering about Aedes Elysiae—the people he grew up with, his parents, his childhood friend—as if to commemorate everyone he’d lost. Aglaea listened to each story, watching as Phainon’s shoulders relaxed the longer Aglaea let him speak without interruption as he grieved in his own way.
Aglaea is pleased to find that his topics are much happier now, though she wishes he’d do something about his lovesick pining.
“Aglaea…” Phainon was saying, “If Mydei and I were to have a kid, would you be their godmother?” Phainon sighed wistfully, not noticing the stunned look she sent him. “You’ll be good to them, I think. I know.”
“I am the demigod of Romance, Phainon. My humanity is running out. It should’ve, centuries ago.”
“Yet you took me in and looked after me as much as you could, even with much pressuring from Caenis,” Phainon says stubbornly. “And look at me now! Okhema’s most charming youth. Everyone fawns over my good looks.”
Aglaea snorts, leaning back in her seat. “But can Okhema’s most charming youth confess his love to the crown prince?” She takes another sip of her wine. “Ask me again after you and Mydeimos get married.”
Phainon perks up. “That’s not a no!” He cheers, standing from his seat. “Just you wait, Aglaea. I’ll wear you down eventually.”
“Where are you going?” She calls just as Phainon reaches for the doorknob. She already knows the answer.
“I’m going to confess to Mydeimos!” Phainon says, determined.
Aglaea hums. She’s lost track of the number of times Phainon said those exact words. “Good luck.”
“Thanks!”)
They spend the next few minutes in peace when Aglaea’s kitchen door slams open, and Tribbie comes zooming in on a rocket. “Riding the west wind, here we come!”
“Please don’t break anything, Teacher,” Aglaea sighs gently, plating the honeycakes. Thankfully, she had the foresight to cook enough for Stella, Teacher Tribbie, Hyacine, and… hm, Little Ica. Perhaps Stella did have a point.
“Hello, Agy!” Tribbie greets cheerfully, landing safely on her countertop. She gives Aglaea a thumbs-up. “We came as soon as we could—Oh, hello!” She says once she finally spots Stella in her seat.
Stella’s eyes are sparkling as she stands on her chair. It wobbles dangerously, but she balances herself quickly. It seems Phainon and Mydei had already started on basic training. “Hello! Are you Teacher Tribbie? Daddy told me about you! And Papa says you taught him math and history!”
Tribbie looks pale as she takes in Stella’s features, already connecting the dots. “Agy, this is….” she trails off, stunned.
“Teacher, this is Stella. She is… Phainon and Mydeimos’ daughter,” Aglaea introduces. When Tribbie gives her a hopeful, questioning look, she shakes her head. “She came alone.”
Tribbie’s wings droop sadly. There’s a piercing glint of grief in her eyes before it disappears. Now was not the time to weep. Instead, she perks up and places her hands on her hips. “Hehe, that’s right. Snowy and De are… were two of our best students!”
There’s a pause as everyone takes in her falter, but then Stella smiles and says, “It’s okay, Teacher Tribbie. I forget sometimes, too. I wish they didn’t have to leave, but it’s okay! Stella is a big girl! So… it’s okay!”
“Oh, you sweet girl,” Tribbie’s wings flutter as she hops off the countertop and hovers next to Stella. She places a tiny hand on her cheek, eyes wet. “How old are you, little star?”
Stella’s sweet smile freezes, her body going stiff for a moment. Then she unfreezes, continuing as if nothing happened. Tribbie clearly notices this, because the threads around her shake and shiver with intense regret.
Little Star was almost certainly a nickname her parents often called her.
“I’m six!” Stella answers, wobbly, but she beams back readily at Tribbie. Aglaea will have to watch out for her. She may be bravely holding herself together for now, but she’s bound to break one day. She was just like her fathers. “Teacher Tribbie, I think you’re smaller than me!”
“Whaaat,” Tribbie pouts playfully. She clearly wants to apologize, but doesn’t want to step on the child’s efforts, so she plays along. “Agy gets Auntie, but we get Teacher?”
Stella jumps, her pupils narrowing like a startled cat. Mydeimos used to do the same when he thought he’d accidentally offended someone with his bluntness. “Um! A-auntie Tribbie! Sorry!”
“Ehehe! That’s better!” Tribbie pats her cheek one more time before turning back to Aglaea. “I think Agy’s finished with the honeycakes. Shall we eat, Sunny?”
Stella blinks at the new nickname, clearly surprised, but grins back right away.
“Yes, please!” Stella says, sitting back down. Aglaea approaches the table with the honeycakes, setting a plate in front of Stella and another in front of Tribbie, who had also taken her seat. “Thank you for the food, Auntie Aglaea!”
“You’re welcome,” Aglaea says as she takes her own seat, watching them talk as she touches Mydeimos’ letter, which she had hidden in her chiton’s sash. She feels ready to read it now, but she isn’t sure if she should read it in front of the child.
They fall silent as Stella reaches out to pull the plate closer to her, her tiny hands gripping Aglaea’s weighty silverware. Surprisingly, she has impeccable table manners. Well, impeccable for a six-year-old. Especially one that’s lived in a forest her entire life.
It seems Mydei and Phainon had taught her etiquette, perhaps in preparation for the day she comes to Okhema, with or without them. As high-profile people, they are well-acquainted with the scrutinizing eyes of Okhema’s polite society, who loved to take every Chrysos Heir’s flaw and work it against them.
The council especially loved this tactic, drawing them out in subtle baits whenever they made a move to discredit the Flamechase’s authority while boosting theirs. Mydeimos had been a target of this multiple times, and so was Phainon: the foreign prince and the country boy.
Stella is undeniably their daughter, as evidenced by her hair, eyes, smile, and mannerisms. She’ll have to watch her back as well; the council never took perceived threats to their authority well.
Aglaea and the other heirs will have to steel themselves for the fight Caenis would undoubtedly stir.
But for now, they watch, anticipatory, as Stella takes the first bite. There’s a pause as she chews, like she’s taking in and savoring the flavor, before she shudders, cutting more pieces of the cakes and shoving them into her mouth one after the other.
“Stella, slow down,” Aglaea reminds her, reaching out to still her hand just as she’s about to shove another piece into her mouth. Her cheeks are rounder now, and while she certainly looks adorable, Aglaea is more afraid that— “You’ll hurt yourself.”
Tribbie leaves her chair to flit around the kitchen for a jar of water and a glass. Stella’s eyes water, but she blinks them away and slows down, leaning back on her chair.
She chews and swallows, slower this time, as Aglaea draws comforting circles on her hand.
“It’s very sweet,” Stella whispers after she downs the glass of water Tribbie handed her. “Papa liked sweet. He always drinks nectar when we find the sweet flowers. Daddy said it’s cuz he has a sweet teeth.”
“Sweet tooth, darling,” Aglaea corrects gently.
Stella nods. “Daddy also said that honeycakes was Papa’s favorite sweet. I think I get it…” She trails off as she takes another bite, calmer. “Honeycakes are my favorite now, too. Thank you, Auntie Aglaea.”
“You’re welcome, sweet girl,” Aglaea murmurs, patting her snowy hair.
They finally settle, and Aglaea keeps one eye on Stella as she and Tribbie eat. She’s been oscillating between happiness and upset at a concerning rate. Stella eventually won’t be able to keep up, and she might shut down. Aglaea has to be ready.
The door opens as Tribbie and Stella converse, and Little Ica comes zooming in, immediately zeroing in on the honeycakes. Hyacine follows them closely, quickly snatching the unicorn to her chest before they could dive onto Aglaea’s table.
Aglaea stands to meet her. “Hyacine, thank you for coming. I’m sure the Courtyard was busy, what with the arrival of the latest batch of refugees.”
“Of course, Aglaea!” Hyacine chirps, tightening her grip on Ica as they squirm desperately. “And don’t worry about the Courtyard. My assistants can handle…” She spots Stella at the table, “…it.”
Her arms go lax as she gasps, hands flying to her mouth. Little Ica takes the chance to escape, but instead of making a beeline for the honeycakes, they circle Stella’s head, sniffing her hair in curiosity while letting out little confused chirps.
Aglaea sighs. It seems everyone was stunned upon seeing the little girl. She was the perfect mix of her parents, of two people who disappeared years ago. No one had been aware of her existence, and yet she appeared one day with no warning.
“Hello!” Hyacine recovers quickly, stepping forward. Her years as a healer have helped her, but she still can’t hide the bewildered look in her eyes.
“I’m Hyacinthia, but you can call me Hyacine. This,” she says, gesturing to the unicorn still hovering above Stella’s head, “is Little Ica. We’re healers! Are you hurting anywhere?”
Stella shakes her head slowly, looking starstruck. Her eyes follow Little Ica for a moment before she finally meets Hyacine’s eyes. “Nuh uh! Though I feel a little stinky, though.”
Hyacine laughs kindly. “Don’t worry. Okhema takes their baths seriously, so we’ll have one ready for you as soon as I finish checking you up. May I touch you?”
Stella nods, holding out her arm, and Hyacine takes it gently. Summoning her wand, she readies to cast a simple diagnostic spell. “I’m just gonna cast a little spell, okay? All you’ll feel is a light breeze.”
“Okay, Auntie Hyacine!” She chirps, and Hyacine waves her wand. Stella shrieks joyfully when bubbles appear, and Little Ica shows off by flying around and playing with them. “They’re so pretty!”
Hyacine giggles. “I think they’re pretty too!” Aglaea observes them closely, relief coursing through her when the thread reveals Hyacine’s steadiness. There was no fluctuation in her emotions, which meant that all was well with Stella.
“Um… Auntie Hyacine,” Stella squirms around in her seat. “I have a question.”
Aglaea has a feeling she knows what the question is. She hurriedly rises from her seat, making sure Stella was sufficiently distracted as she slips to the living room. Tribbie gives her a curious look, but she waves her off.
Tribbie nods, turning back to where she had been watching Stella and Hyacine.
Aglaea is almost out of the kitchen when she hears, “Why is Little Ica called little when Daddy said they were as round as a slime ball?”
Hyacine audibly blinks while Little Ica lets out a confused doot. “Pardon? Your dad said what?”
Aglaea softly closes the door behind her before settling on her favorite armchair. She takes Mydeimos’ letter out of her sash and unrolls it, surprised when one end bounces off her lap and down the floor.
A pretty long letter, then. Aglaea is finally going to get the answers to the questions that haunted her for the past seven years, and she isn’t sure if she’ll ever be ready to find out.
Nonetheless, she begins reading, because time has never waited for anyone.
Mydeimos’ formal, regal handwriting jumps out at her. Her threads assist as they run through the cloth, and they whisper the words Mydeimos had written into her mind.
Aglaea, if you are reading this, then it means our little Stella has reached you safely, and that the two of us are dead.
We hoped that this day would never come, but in this place we’ve found ourselves in for the past seven years, survival was never a guarantee. Phainon and I vowed that we would both die first before we would let anything happen to our daughter.
And now that it has come to this, we’re glad that we’ve prepared Stella enough that she’d be able to make her way to you even without us there.
We told her about you and the rest of the heirs as we raised her so that she wouldn’t be so disconnected from you should what Phainon and I feared the most come to pass.
Forgive us, Aglaea. Raising a child is not easy, and we regret springing her on you like this. We wanted to introduce her to all of you properly, but now that’s no longer possible.
In a better world, all of us would’ve met her the moment she was born, and we all would've watched her grow up together.
But this is not a better world. In this world, Phainon and I have left our little star behind, and now, you and the other heirs are the only people we can trust to raise her in the way we would’ve wanted.
So, please. We are aware how big a request this is, but please take our daughter in and let her live a life of peace in Okhema.
Aglaea’s hands shake. She can sense the desperation and worry in Mydei’s words. All for his daughter. His little star, he called her. Aglaea lets out an exhale, steadying herself, then continues.
You must’ve wondered where we’ve been these past years. Know that it had never been our intention to disappear. We were careless, falling into his trap, and we were too weak to get out of it unscathed.
In this letter, I will tell you how Phainon and I got into this situation. When Stella is a little older, please show her this letter as well. We wanted to wait until she was a little older to tell her how she came to be, but…
There are more scratched-out words. Mydeimos seems unsure how to begin describing their seven years apart, but he finally finds a way after a few false starts.
We were just finishing up the mission you sent us on when we spotted the city's only temple. It was as you said; the city was long abandoned, and there were no signs of human life left.
We couldn’t find where the survivors had disappeared to either, but there were only a few corpses scattered around. It was as if most had managed to escape before the black tide hit.
The temple was the only place in the city that was locked. Seeing that, we had the grim realization that the people might not have escaped after all, but might be trapped inside. So we opened it.
Even if we’d been wrong, we wanted to make sure the infestation of corrupted titankin was eradicated, so we entered the temple.
We were right. We found belongings scattered everywhere, from discarded clothes to scholars’ notes and even children’s toys. Strangely, though, there was a lack of people.
We found no signs that they’d been attacked by titankin or people. They were simply gone. They had vanished inside a locked building.
We tried investigating further, and that may have been our gravest mistake. We had barely set foot in the last room, the ritual room, when it had glowed and knocked us unconscious.
The next time we woke, we were in this forest full of unfamiliar beasts. Our weapons were gone, as well as our armor. We were dressed in plain white chiton and simple slippers.
We tried to escape by searching for the forest’s edge, but as soon as we found it, we encountered another problem. A shield of light blocked us, and absolutely nothing can phase through it.
So we headed back, killing monsters with our bare hands on the way. Except we noticed something. The monsters we’d killed on our way to the edge were back, and they’ve gotten stronger.
There were a few drawings of the beasts scattered here and there. Phainon must’ve drawn them, Aglaea thinks, recalling the countless unfinished portraits of Mydeimos she’d found in his home when she had gone over to search for clues. That had been a few days after they never came back.
She finds she’s right when she spots the notes beside the drawings. They were in Phainon’s handwriting. Each note spells out the unfamiliar beasts’ weaknesses.
Phainon will be adding portraits of some of the most dangerous beasts we have encountered once I finish this letter. Just in case.
Mydeimos doesn’t elaborate on what he meant by ‘just in case’. Aglaea is unsure if they were for Aglaea and the other heirs or for Stella, who one day might decide to look for her parents’ bodies and get them home… should Aglaea’s own attempts be unsuccessful.
Instead, he moves forward, explaining how they had found a cave where they could rest. They took turns keeping watch as they waited for the sun to come up. Apparently, the day-night cycle was working in whatever place they were trapped in.
We made plans for the next day, deciding to head in deeper. We planned to look for a clue, or even something that would get us out of here.
Phainon and I took turns with guard duty. The night was unsettling and we could barely see beyond our noses, so our sleep was uneasy…
“Deliverer, wake up.”
Phainon groans as he tries to open his eyes. They’re sticky with fatigue, and his entire body aches as if he’s been repeatedly stomped on by an infuriated dromas.
He feels a finger poking his cheek and he swats at it, whining, “Mydei, stop it.”
The finger pokes his cheek once more, with more force this time, the nail digging in sharply. Phainon yelps. “Ow!” He finally opens his eyes to squint blearily at Mydei, who is honestly just a blob of blond and white.
Hm? White? Mydei never wore white.
He blinks a few times before he sits up in a rush, finally remembering where they were. Mydei is crouched next to him, looking unimpressed as he allows Phainon to regain his bearings.
“It seems I was more tired than I thought,” Phainon tells Mydei while he stretches. He’s only slept for three hours at best, and that was after they spent the entire day fighting barehanded against beasts while running around in the forest.
Not only that, but Phainon suspected that whatever transported them in this place had drained most of their stamina.
It’s evident in the way a beast had managed to catch him off-guard just as they were approaching the cave, slamming into Phainon’s side like one of the bulls he used to feed back in Aedes Elysiae.
He took a nasty tumble, slamming into a tree as he fought off the rabid beast, holding its jaws at bay as it slobbered over him, snapping its sharp teeth.
Mydei came to his rescue by literally jumping on it and wrangling it away with its long, sharp horns, bouncing and holding on to it for dear life as he directed it into a tree and slammed its head into the tough bark.
(Phainon had watched the entire thing go down, breathless and a little hard. Sue him, but watching Mydei squeeze his thick thighs against the beast as it tried its damnedest to buck him off was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. Plus the way his breasts had bounced at the movement would’ve made him drool if he wasn’t still reeling from the ambush.
Phainon had very much wanted to drag Mydei down the forest floor and wipe the flushed, smug look he shot him as he confirmed his kill by fucking him senseless, but oh well, he’s yet to confess plus his back is hurting really bad. Ow.)
Phainon and Mydei had fought more titankin for much longer, lasting days and days on end, and yet as soon as night fell they felt the exhaustion crawling in their bones.
Mydei seems to agree, snorting as he turns away. “We need to go. The sun had risen an hour ago.”
Hm? But didn’t we agree to leave as soon as the sun peeked over the horizon? Phainon gives Mydei a curious look, but the man strangely avoids it, looking away with a tiny huff. Suddenly, Phainon understands.
Hah. Mydei was so cute when he worried. Phainon would squish his cheeks, but he prefers his fingers unbitten and complete.
“Sorry for the delay, then,” Phainon says, grabbing his pseudo sword, made from one of the horns of the beast from yesterday. He stands, and Mydei mirrors him. “Shall we?”
We encountered a beast we recognized from the day before. Phainon had held it in place as I crushed its head, and yet it stood before us. It was noticeably stronger, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle.
We both felt hungry at the moment, but only beasts existed in the forest. There was no other wildlife, such as squirrels and birds.
They were either hunted down to the last by the ravenous beasts, or their diet was simply other beasts, thus there was no need for them to exist in this space.
So we ate the beast we had just hunted. The meat was hard when raw, but turned tender the longer it was cooked.
Right next to the paragraph were doodles of meat-based dishes. It looked like any other ordinary dish, though its main ingredient was anything but. Below them was a short list of instructions detailing how to cook them.
Mydeimos does not elaborate the reason for including them in the letter.
Phainon watched me cook our meals sometimes, if we were safe enough. But most of the time he’d stand guard and pass the time chattering my ear off and… it was nice.
He never expected me to respond, but I found myself wanting to, end its during these talks that we end up learning more about each other.
I found myself opening up more here than in the two years I’ve been in Okhema…
“Mydei, here are the plants you requested,” Phainon says, popping out of the bushes. He brushes off the leaves that stuck to him, wrinkling his nose. “They were pretty hard to find. Are you sure they could be used for cooking?”
“When out in the wildnerness, we eat what we can. Taste is nothing but a luxury,” Mydei tells him without looking up from the meat he was grilling. Phainon is tempted to pity the poor thing, having been bested the day before and turned into their meal today, but his back still twinges sometimes when he moves too much, so he doesn’t.
Phainon drops next to him with a relieved sigh, stretching out. “And since there’s literally nothing else around, we’re eating the very creatures that hunted us. How poetic.”
“Didn’t you say that Aedes Elysiae was full of poets? Then surely you’re enjoying yourself,” Mydei snarks, finally looking up at him. Then he frowns, displeased. “You’re covered in blood.”
Phainon waves him off. “Don’t worry, it’s not mine,” Then, he perks up. “Aww, Mydei! I knew you were listening to me even when you tried so hard to pretend you weren’t. You’re too cute!”
Phainon reaches out to pinch his cheek, but Mydei snaps at his fingers, quick as a flash and sharp teeth bared. Phainon throws his head back and laughs. “You’re really too easy to tease.”
“Shut it,” Mydei grumbles, snatching the herbs Phainon had dropped to the ground earlier. “And who’s worried? Our blood has never been red, Deliverer. Obviously it isn’t yours.”
“Then why bring it up at all?” Phainon asks lightly, reaching for his horn-sword to sharpen it. “Is it because red’s your favorite color?”
“Red isn’t my favorite,” Mydei corrects him, spreading the plants over the half-cooked meat. Phainon has no idea what he’s up to; he’s seen his Ma cook more times than he can count, and he doesn’t remember her doing this sort of thing at all.
“Ah,” Phainon goes quiet. He’s always assumed so, because Mydei wore nothing but red since coming to Okhema. Even the garments Aglaea gifted him sometimes were in red. Though he’s been harboring a suspicion for the past year. Could it be… “Is it pink, then?”
Mydei snaps his head up in surprise. “How do you know that?”
Hm, now how to answer that without Phainon sounding like a complete stalker. He shrugs, casual. “You really like adding milk to your pomegranate juice, Mydei. And you have this satisfied look on your face when it turns into a specific shade of pink.”
Mydei flushes and he quickly looks away, focusing back on the meat. “And how do you know that?”
“I like looking at you,” Phainon answers, subtlety out the window and, well, at least there had been attempt. “You’re an interesting person to look at, Mydeimos.”
“Save the flattery for the ladies of Okhema, Deliverer,” Mydei snaps suddenly, obviously flustered. “I am not a maiden for you to flirt with.”
“I never said you were? And even then, I don’t like leading people on, so I don’t flirt with just anyone,” Phainon says. You’re not just anyone, Mydeimos. “And I wasn’t flattering you. It was a compliment,” he adds earnestly.
“You sure seemed friendly with a lot of them,” Mydeimos mutters, though it’s too low for Phainon to hear despite being next to him.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
Mydei seems more cagey than flustered this time, so Phainon decides not to push. Instead he focuses on sharpening the horn-sword. Its as thick and hard as ivory, and certainly sharp enough to pierce through the soft underbellies of beasts.
He’s glad that he had correctly guessed Mydei’s favorite color. He thinks of the pink-themed courting gifts he had collected over the past year, stashed safely in his cabinets.
When they get out of this place, he promises, he’ll stop chickening out and give those to Mydei. He’ll finish up his portraits and finally confess to Mydei.
They’re both quiet for a while until Mydei sighs. “I wear red for my mother. She used to favor it, even before she was queen.”
Phainon looks up, heart pounding. Mydei rarely shared anything about himself, being more of a show-not-tell kind of person, so Phainon knows how momentous this moment was, the reveal that Mydei does trust him beyond guarding his back and those little competitions they had back in Okhema, talking about his mother of all things in an unfamiliar forest.
“Queen Gorgo,” Phainon offers softly, hesitantly, and Mydei nods. He doesn’t look at Phainon and just stares blankly into the crackling flame.
There’s a hard glint in Mydei’s golden eyes as he says, “Most of the Kremnoan detachment had been too young to witness my mother’s… murder, but some of them were there. Warriors who had left her for dead when all she wanted was to…” His breath hitches, then he shakes his head. “I never met her, as I was only an infant when I was thrown into the Sea of Souls by my own father.”
Phainon has heard the rumors. The crown prince of Kremnos that had been thrown into the sea as a babe had come back to haunt his father, killing him and thus closing the circle of madness.
He knows what people think of Mydei for killing his father, the names he’d been called. But not once has Phainon thought ill of him for it, a strange sympathy welling up in him.
Mydei clears his throat. “I want them to remember. And I… feel closer to her when I wear her colors,” he whispers into the space between them. His ears are flushed with vulnerability, and Phainon is hopelessly endeared.
“I miss my mother, too,” Phainon offers, fiddling with the collar on his neck. He’d been relieved to find that it hadn’t been taken from him. “My mother was Aedes Elysiae’s only tailor, but she was the best. Everyone adored the apparel she made. This was her last gift to me before everything… ah, well, you know.”
Mydei does know, and the way he meets his eyes solemnly is proof. Phainon swallows, nearly lost in the emotions swimming in the man’s eyes. Nonsensically, Phainon thinks that the depth in Mydei’s eyes can be attributed to his years in the sea of souls, though he’ll never say it out loud.
“This used to even have a jewel, an amethyst,” Phainon continues. He’s long removed the chain that had remained when the jewel had fallen into deep, murky waters, hating the reminder of what he’d lost. Of how careless he’d been while crossing that lake. “But I lost it on the way to Okhema.”
“…Teacher Tribbie mentioned that you were only twelve when you arrived in Okhema,” Mydei says, and waits for Phainon’s nod before saying, “You were a child, Deliverer. You shouldn’t blame yourself. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to.”
Phainon’s lips quirk upward. “Yeah?” He breathes, now only realizing how close their faces had gotten.
“Yes. Any decent mother would rather wish safety on their child, and from what you’ve been telling me, she was one of the best.”
Phainon nearly laughs. He’s only mentioned his mother one other time, and that had been in the baths back when Mydei had been completely new to Okhema and was trying so hard to ignore Phainon’s existence next to him.
It looked like he was supremely annoyed by Phainon’s presence, but it turns out he’d been listening closely the entire time.
“Ah, the meat’s ready,” Mydei leans forward and transfers the grilled meat into a wide leaf they’d prepared earlier. He picks up the plants on top and inspects them. “They didn’t turn blue. Good. The meat isn’t poisonous, then.”
“Is that what they were for?” Phainon asks, fascinated. “To check for poisons?”
Mydei nods, earlier vulnerability gone and looking like a seasoned warrior: tense and closed-off. Phainon hasn’t even noticed how much he’d softened until the set of Mydei’s shoulders straightened. He misses it.
“Yes. Now eat. We have more ground to cover.”
“Yes, my lord! As you command!” Phainon squeals mockingly, straightening up just to do as he’s ordered, earning an unimpressed look from Mydei. He snickers.
The food was good, despite Mydei telling Phainon that taste was a luxury.
The more of these talks we had, the closer to each other we felt. We were experiencing a new freedom from our duties that we could not afford to have in Okhema.
I had thought that Phainon and I were already pretty close before this entire debacle, but I was wrong. There were things I discovered about him that simply could not be found by merely observing and sparring with him, and I found myself falling deeper.
Despite the grimness of the situation, Aglaea finds herself smiling faintly at Mydeimos’ uncharacteristic rambling about how he had long suspected that Phainon found him attractive (that was no secret, apparently) but was unsure if he harbored something deeper for him.
He goes on to share that he felt stupid for falling deeper in love with the Deliverer when they were in a situation that could not afford any distractions. During those talks, he recounted, Mydeimos often wondered if Phainon felt the same.
Aglaea sighs. Despite being two extremely capable men, it seems both Phainon and Mydeimos severely lack sense in the romance department. She supposes Amphoreus should be glad that the duty of Romance had fallen to her and not these two.
Her good mood at their silly pining doesn’t last long, vanishing as Mydeimos focuses back on their situation.
However, neither of us had forgotten our responsibilities. We continue to venture deeper into the forest, resting and sleeping when we could. We decided not to head back to that cave, instead resting on barks and behind rocks to rest.
The longest we’ve pushed ourselves was three days. Normally, we could go further than that, but it was like the forest was sucking out the energy from us. We tire more, lose stamina easily, and sometimes our strength would wane.
Something was definitely messing with us.
Before we knew it, two weeks had gone by.
Our situation was hopeless. No matter how deep we went, only beasts and foliage greeted us. We encountered plenty of enemies, but even we had begun to tire. Phainon was unable to maintain that cheeky smile and upbeat personality of his.
It was then that we accepted the truth: somehow we had gotten trapped in someone’s pocket space and had no way out. Aglaea, you remember that you told us that that city was the only existing one that did not worship the twelve titans.
The traces we found in the temple earlier suggested they were more of a cult than an ordinary city. It is unknown how they had grown to this number without anyone’s knowledge, but it is likely that their devotion had given birth to a false divine entity.
The citizens of the city had also likely begged for their god to save them from the black tide, and they had responded with this pocket dimension. We’ve found traces of some belongings and clothes around the foliage, but no people. It was just me and Phainon.
We tried to figured out what had happened, if something had gone wrong with the beasts, or this had been the god’s idea of mercy for their worshippers, but in the end, one thing remains true: this place is the beasts’ domain, and this was our prison.
Phainon and I eventually stumbled upon our first evidence of human civilization: a half-finished wooden infrastructure…
“This is…” Mydei trails off, running a finger against the wooden fence. It’s dusty from all the gravel that had fallen from the top of the cliffside. “I didn’t think there’d be a cliff here. Weren’t we supposed to be in a forest?”
“I think I’d be more concerned about the unfinished house,” Phainon says, stepping into the front yard, sword ready. “Though, you’re right. But who knows at this point. Pocket spaces have their own rules.”
Phainon carefully peers through the open doorway of the house’s main entrance, and is surprised to see a bare room with wooden walls that extended into what seems to be a naturally occurring cave. “Hello? Anyone in here?”
Mydei remains by the gate, watching for any beasts that may come charging from the foliage. He grips his own horn-turned-sword in his left hand while he clenches his right.
He still favored crushing the beasts’ skulls with his hands, but with the rate they’d been killing them combined with the fact they grew stronger every time they resurrected, that was no longer enough, so he carries it in his left hand now.
Phainon waits for a few seconds for someone to answer back, but is unsurprised when no one does. From the dust that had gathered on the floors and windowsills, it was clear that the owner had either died or fled long ago.
“There’s no one around,” Phainon informs Mydei once he came back out. He had surveyed the entire property, found that the cave system ran deeper than he had initially thought before stopping at a dead end. No corpses, no things that could possibly hint at the previous tenant, just nothing. “We can use this place as our base.”
Mydei frowns at him, then up at the cliffside. “This isn’t really an ideal place for a base. We have blind spots everywhere, and being at the bottom of a cliff makes us vulnerable to both the beasts and the earth. I imagine it’s exactly why this place is abandoned now.”
“Well, we’re not just anyone, are we? We’re Chrysos Heirs. We can survive,” Phainon says and holds out a hand. “Come here, there’s a spring inside the cave and it looks clean enough. We could both use a bath.”
Mydei doesn’t take it. “And if this cliffside collapses? Will your golden blood protect you, then, Deliverer?” His eyes flash with something unreadable. “You’re too reckless for a mortal.”
Phainon is tempted to roll his eyes. There Mydei goes again. Every time he thinks Phainon is unnecessarily putting himself in danger, he goes into this spiel about he’s immortal and Phainon isn’t.
Phainon would be angry, except he knows it’s Mydei’s way of showing his concern. He grabs Mydei’s hand and laces their fingers together so he can’t escape. He yelps and starts to resist as Phainon pulls him into the house.
“If it concerns you that much, I found another exit within the cave system. It’s small and hidden enough that no beast can get through. We’re not getting trapped here, Mydei.”
Mydei sighs. “Alright. We can stay,” he acquiesces, though he doesn’t sound happy. “We’ll need to plan anyway. Killing those beasts has become more disadvantageous to us these days.”
That was true. Phainon and Mydei were both strong warriors in their own right, so it was easy for them to dispatch any threat that came their way. But there was no end to these beasts, and they only came back stronger every time.
“It was a bad idea to pick apart that beast, the first time,” Mydei continues as Phainon leads him to the spring. “You saw how it came back.”
They had initially thought that it wouldn't be able to resurrect if they had peeled off its skin and meat, then scattered its bones in different places, but they were wrong. It only came back as a whole, with thicker skin and sharper horns.
They were careful not to kill it this time, only injuring it enough that it wouldn’t die. Mydei had managed to cut a leg off, and they had both followed it around for days to see if it would grow back.
It had not.
It seems death was the only trigger for the resurrection and healing process, which meant that they would be fine as long as they didn’t kill them.
But the other beasts weren’t as easy as the bovine type one they had encountered. Some had venom and razor sharp teeth that could kill them in a snap, and so they had to eliminate those types first before it could eliminate them.
Then Mydei and Phainon would move to a far distance only to encounter that same foe a few days later, stronger and hardier. Mydei was right. They needed a plan if they were going to be stuck here for much longer.
“We’ll also need to mend our clothes,” Phainon says as they strip themselves naked at the spring. The water was cold and shallow; clear enough that they could see the flat, round rocks at the bottom. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually appreciate being half-naked all day.”
“You’ve got something to say about how I dress, Deliverer?” Mydei challenges as he joins Phainon in the water. It’s barely big enough for two men of their stature, so they’ve got their knees bent, with Mydei’s pressed together and Phainon’s on the outer side.
The water sloshes just above their chests, and Phainon can clearly see Mydei’s nipples pebbling under the cold water. Phainon has to close his eyes and swallow, praying to Kephale for mercy.
They’re both pretending really hard that their current situation doesn’t fluster them, though Phainon can feel his heart going into overdrive in his chest. He knows Mydei feels the same, with the way he has his head turned away, exposing his flushed ears.
Don’t get hard don’t get hard don’t get hard, this is not the time—Phainon laughs, breathy and clearly fake, shifting his crotch further away from Mydei’s wiggling toes. Fuck, the thought of them brushing against his cock has Phainon hard, and he hopes that Mydei’s knees are block his view of Phainon’s… problem.
“Of course not, Mydei. I’m just saying I don’t want to run around with holes in our chiton. It’s bad enough we aren’t wearing any armor while fighting these beasts.”
“We could get silk from that spider beast nest we came across the other day,” Mydei murmurs, still not looking at him. He wriggles, settling further against the bank, head tilted back. “We could use it for traps, too. If we’re really going to make this place our base.”
“A good idea,” Phainon says, watching as a droplet slides down between the juncture of Mydei’s neck and shoulder before disappearing into the the valleys of his chest. “Yeah.”
Mydei peeks one eye open to glare at him. “Stop staring at me so obviously, you utter pervert.”
Phainon jumps, hands up and placating like Mydei’s a cornered animal ready to lash out. Phainon hasn't forgotten how close Mydei’s foot was to his crotch, and how easy it was for him to give a good, hard kick to Phainon’s balls.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I just…” He trails off, because he absolutely has no excuse. “Did I make you uncomfortable? I’m sorry.”
Mydei remains silent for a few moments, in which Phainon spends his time panicking and berating himself internally for scaring him off, when he finally answers, “…no.”
Phainon perks up, hopeful. “No?”
“Just keep the barking and growling down,” Mydei adds, almost shyly, his posture relaxing once more. “I’m going to sleep. Wake me up when we’re being attacked.”
“Okay,” Phainon agrees, dazed, still reeling from the fact that Mydei had essentially given him permission to stare at him… well, as long as he kept his mouth shut apparently.
He places a hand over his mouth and takes Mydei’s invitation, settling in to observe that inconspicuous, immortal body.
If Mydei really was alright with Phainon er, perving on him, then maybe… just maybe… Mydei liked him too.
A few months pass, and slowly, we settled into the house. We cut down wood from the surrounding trees to fix up the broken parts, and set up traps for the beasts.
We took a break from searching for an exit and instead set up a secure base since we had a feeling that we’d be here for a long, long time.
I found myself falling for Phainon more. We’d lay next to each other at night once the traps were in place and the fence fortified, no longer needing to take turns keeping guard.
Sometimes, I’d stare at his face when the noises from the beasts lingering around refused to let me sleep. It was this time that I had begun to believe that Phainon definitely returned my feelings.
There were some things he did that made me think so. Some were innocent enough, like picking flowers for me and pointing out the nectar because he knew about my fondness for sweets. The others were not so innocent, which I will not be elaborating for your sake, Aglaea.
Thank you, Mydeimos, Aglaea thinks. Had Phainon been the one writing the letter, she was sure that every five sentences would be poetic descriptions of Mydei’s beauty and body, which she did not need or want to know about.
Hit by the memories of Phainon’s enthusiasm, Aglaea has to close her eyes against the pain that flared up in her chest. She missed him fiercely, her silly little ward who had stars in his eyes as he fantasized a domestic life with Kremnos’ crown prince, merely three months after meeting him.
As the demigod of Romance, and as someone who lived over a thousand years, grief should not be a new feeling. It shouldn’t be something she feels at all. And yet, thinking of Stella, of Mydei, of Phainon…
Thinking of them makes her wish she could turn back time and stop herself from sending Mydei and Phainon on that mission.
If she hadn’t, they’d still be here, and Stella would be born here, and she wouldn't have to put on a brave smile even as she mourned them.
But there is nothing she can do. She has to live with her mistake, and do her best to give Stella a good life while granting her parents wishes.
Her mind settling, she opens her eyes once more, nudging her threads back to work.
Even so, I hesitated to confess my feelings. I feared that Phainon was only confused, heightened by his attraction to my body, because I was the only other person around him for months.
Aglaea sighs, a headache forming. She knows this was all in the past, yet she despairs nonetheless. These two were truly meant for each other. She massages her temple, then continues to read.
And so the tension lingered between us, and I felt like we were on a precipice, and one of us was bound to take a leap of faith.
You will be unsurprised to find out that it was Phainon who took that leap of faith. In the most dramatic and most awful way.
He confessed to me as he was dying in my arms.
Aglaea pauses. Surely, Phainon had not died this early. After all, Stella still needed to be conceived by this point, unless the not-so-innocent things Mydeimos had relayed earlier was an allusion to them sleeping together.
But Stella talks about Phainon as if he'd raised her alongside Mydeimos, which is something the dead cannot do.
Hah, what am I doing, Aglaea laughs unkindly at herself. She recognizes that she’s stalling, too afraid to read Mydeimos’ next words and have her fears confirmed.
It was really unlike her to be so… hesitant. It must be the shock from today’s events, and it was barely noontime.
She sets the letter down and spreads her threads out, relieved to find Tribbie and Hyacine entertaining Stella in the kitchen. They were all giggling at a story about Little Ica and Mydei that Hyacine was sharing.
Good. It meant that Stella was healthy enough to stay and rest in Aglaea’s home, rather than the Courtyard.
She must hurry and finish this letter, so she could take Stella to a bath like she promised.
Let me rewind a bit, Aglaea. It was a month after we settled in the new base, and we had decided to head out to look for clues once more.
We were finally confident enough to leave the base without worrying it would he stormed by beasts. We were also better equipped and armored, gaining weapons we made with our own hands and clothes mended.
We traveled the forest for two days straight when we stumbled upon a grove. Here we found more traces of civilization, like torn cloth and slightly damaged garments.
Our guards were up as we entered. We anticipated an ambush because these garments were splattered with blood, like whoever had worn them had been eaten by beasts.
That was when we encountered it. The largest and most dangerous beast of the forest, the dragon-like beast. It was as large as Marmoreal Palace and was as fast as Teacher Tribbie’s rockets. It also had the ability to breathe fire and ice.
We tried to fight it off, just enough for us to escape, because neither Phainon or I were foolish enough to think we could take it on by ourselves this under-equipped . Its scales were as black and as hard as obsidian, after all.
However, it never gave us an opening. We fought for hours without stopping, until both of us had finally slipped.
Phainon had managed to dig his sword deep into the beast’s heart, which was on its RIGHT SIDE… but he had been too reckless, and I had forgotten about its tail.
Mydeimos had underlined the words a couple of times, as if reminding the reader not to forget. But Aglaea can hardly focus on it, when her attention is taken by his next words.
Its tail was a beast in of itself. It had spikes as long as our swords, and were as sharp as the peaks of Aidonia.
I had seen it coming, and I should’ve been there to guard him, but the beast had just thrown me into the hedges when Phainon saw the opening and charged in.
I had been too far away to reach Phainon in time.
One of the large spikes had pierced his stomach, and he remained suspended midair before the tail flicked, as if shaking off a nuisance, and he got thrown back.
I managed to catch him before he could get even more injured, but he was losing a lot of blood fast…
Phainon feels dizzy. And sluggish. And exhausted. He wonders why, when he had just managed to slay the beast that gave them hell for the last few hours. He should be turning to Mydei, fishing praise from the reticent crown prince.
He should be watching those golden eyes assess him with new light, as if evaluating his strength and valor. The Kremnoans valued glory above all, and Phainon had slain a dragon, well, dragon-like beast. By all accounts, Mydei should be impressed—exhilerated, even.
And yet… why does he sound so distraught?
“Deliverer!” He feels arms gripping his torso, making him wince as pain lances through him like a lightning bolt, emanating throughout his body. “Get yourself together!”
“Mydei, what…?” Phainon slurs, liquid dripping out of his mouth. When he lifts a shaky hand up to wipe it, he’s surprised to see golden ichor staining it. Another stab of pain hits him as Mydei slowly, gently, lowers them to the ground, and it takes one look at his stomach to finally understand why. “Oh.”
There’s a giant hole in the middle of his stomach. He can see his innards from where his head was gently positioned over Mydei’s lap, and we would gag if he had the energy to do so. Instead, he lolls his head and looks up at the man cradling him:
What he sees, despite having been stabbed by a giant thorn and in the middle of actively dying, is what sends him to shock.
“Phainon, you idiot,” Mydei’s voice cracks as he presses a desperate hand against Phainon’s steadily bleeding wound. It’s futile, of course. The wound was too extensive, and Phainon is already going into shock. He’s going to die now, and there’s nothing any of them can do. “You can’t die here, Phainon. Don’t leave me. Please.”
Phainon’s has never heard Mydei this vulnerable, has never heard him beg like this. He forces his blurring vision to focus on Mydei’s pretty face, his heart twisting as he sees the tears fall from his pretty golden eyes. “My… dei…”
He sounds terrible; gurgling and choking on his own blood, but he pushes past that, using the last of his strength to raise his bloodied hand and cup Mydei’s cheek. He looks so, so beautiful.
His hair is a wild thing, disheveled and covered with leaves and twigs, and his eyes remind him of the topaz's his father used to favor, glinting under the pale moonlight.
Mydei watches Phainon with stunned, watery eyes, and his face is splattered with golden ichor… Phainon’s. If this is the last sight he’ll ever get to see, then it’s more than enough.
“You’re… so beautiful… Mydei,” he marvels breathlessly, nearly delirious. He chokes on his blood once more, but he soldiers on as the realization hits full force. ‘Ah, I really do love you, Mydeimos.’
Phainon closes his eyes and drops his hand, unaware of the turmoil that clouds Mydei’s eyes and how he’d chokes on his sobs as he says the words back desperately while hugging Phainon to his chest. He’s unaware he’d even said those words out loud, his world turning black as his vision fails, and his other senses follow.
Before he knows it, he’s sinking deep, further into the void as inaudible whispers echo around him. They sound like they’re weeping, mourning, and even warning him of the horrors about to come.
——
He has no name; he does not recall anything about who he once was, and assumes he was just another soul that had joined the other damned ones of this place.
He floats in the void in peace, drifting about, when a piercing pain strikes through him, tearing him apart inside out. He thrashes in agony, wishing the pain could stop. He wants to scream, but he has no mouth. He was only a soul, after all.
He feels himself changing, his soul shaping into something diffferent—something wrong—and he grasps onto a familiar emotion: fear. A miasma has took hold upon him, wanting to change him into something darker, more warped, and he has no way to stop it.
Until a voice, familiar and true, breaks through the endless abyss.
“…don’t… leave… back…”
It suffuses him, and the miasma rears back, as if afraid. He has no idea why, but he wishes to hear it once more. The voice was so dear to the soul, that listening to it weeping and grieving was making him restless, eager to soothe the ache.
“love… too… like this…I…”
‘Who made you cry, Mydeimos?’ the soul thinks as he strains to listen, slightly annoyed that the voice sounded so far away, like they were separated by a tall, imposing wall. ‘I’ll be sure to beat them up!’
The soul pauses. The name pings at his memory. Right… Mydeimos. That’s who the voice belonged to.
Mydeimos who was Castrum Kremnos’ crown prince. Proud and fierce as a lion, a true warrior in spirit who never once shed tears, even that one time a titankin had literally ripped his arms off clean.
Mydeimos, who was always kind to children and the elderly, who loved to munch on everything sweet, who always had a comforting word for anyone in distress. Mydeimos, who was Phainon’s kindred spirit.
“Phainon… dare… you leave… me… alone?”
That’s right, the soul remembers. His name is Phainon, and Mydeimos is the man he adores. Why was he so far away? Why does he sound so devastated? Phainon needs to know. He needs to wipe Mydei’s tears right away, he needs to be with him.
The miasma retreats further, unwilling, and latches on to Phainon like an angry leech. If Phainon had a physical body, it would be drawing blood, leaving sharp pinpricks on his skin. But he doesn’t care for the pain.
He needs to return to Mydei.
The soul starts kicking, swimming upward. The miasma tightens around him like brambles, trying to pull him further down. Phainon resists, focusing on Mydei’s low tones.
“HKS, please,” Phainon hears him more clearly now, “come back to me.”
Phainon fights and swims with all his might despite the brambles attached to him. He’s almost there, he can break through the surface. He just needs one more push.
“I love you.”
There’s a pause where the world seems to hold its breath, before Phainon’s soul breaks through the abyss’s surface like a shot, soaring through like a shooting star.
The brambles retreat, as if burned, and Phainon pays them no mind as he continues to soar right to where Mydei was.
He’s eager to reunite with Mydei, but before he can truly break free, he hears a voice behind him.
“Interesting,” it says blithely. “Looks like you can keep being human this time around, mortal.”
Not Mydei’s. It’s something sinister and guttural, but detached. Phainon has no idea what to make of it.
“But remember,” it warns, “you will never be free of the abyss. You were mine the moment you entered this place, Phainon of Aedes Elysiae. I will have you back sooner or later.”
Phainon falters momentarily, wondering what the voice meant or who it even belonged to, but only just. He has only one goal in mind, and that was to return to Mydei’s side.
——
The soul reunites with its body.
The body wakes up, chest heaving hard and fast, cradled in the arms of the man he loves.
“Mydei,” Phainon breathes, and watches Mydei’s red-rimmed eyes widen in hope and realization.
They crash into each other like two stampeding dromases as Phainon sits up and slots his mouth with Mydei’s, eager and relieved and ecstatic. Mydei responds in turn, winding an arm around Phainon’s neck while the other pats on his stomach to check. The wound is truly healed and closed.
Mydei kisses him back even as fresh tears fall from his eyes and Phainon’s blood stains the insides of his mouth. Phainon breaks the kiss, and Mydei shudders as he pushes him until he’s on his back.
Phainon kisses a path down his neck and into the soft skin of his chest, mapping the crimson tattoos with his tongue, making Mydei whine and moan as his fingers dig into Phainon’s nape.
Fuck, had Phainon wanted to do these things to Mydei for so long.
“Phainon…” Mydei groans as Phainon pinches a nipple. “You… how are you…” he cuts himself off with a loud yelp when Phainon sneaks his other hand up one of his thighs and squeezes.
“Dunno, don’t care,” Phainon growls, pulling his mouth off Mydei’s nipple to give him another kiss. He licks into his mouth desperately, and when they separate, there’s a thin string of saliva connecting them.
“I wanna make love to you, Mydei,” Phainon whines as he sloppily ruts their hips together. “Please? Can I? I know I made you cry, but I love you so much. I wanna do everything with you. I wanna show how much I love you. Please?”
Mydei looks at him incredulously. He’s the most beautiful person Phainon has ever seen. “Here? When the dragon-beast can revive anytime soon?”
“Then back at the base,” Phainon says, uncaring. “I’ll carry you all the way. You know I can, Mydeimos.”
He watches Mydei’s eyes darken as he wraps his legs around Phainon’s hips, taunting him with a squeeze of his thighs. Phainon groans. Oh, Mydei definitely knows exactly what his thighs do to Phainon.
“Fuck,” It’s the first time Phainon’s ever heard him curse. “Fine. If you truly can carry me all that way, you may fuck me,” his voice lowers to a whisper as he leans in and licks at Phainon’s ear, “my love.”
Mydei laughs all the way to their base as Phainon has him in a bridal carry, dodging beasts left and right with a nimbleness he hadn’t known he possessed.
He follows-up on his promise the moment they arrive, with them giggling and kissing and bumping into walls, oscillating between relief and giddiness as they made their way to their room.
He sears the memory of their first night together into his mind. The look on Mydei’s face when Phainon first entered him, the noises he made as he came, cock-drunk and fucked out, as Phainon collapsed on top of him.
They fall asleep that night exchanging ‘I love yous’, and Phainon has never been happier.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(However, he’s forgotten all about his time in the abyss, including the mysterious voice’s warning.)
The pain I felt holding Phainon in my arms as he took his last breath was indescribable. It was like my heart had been ripped into two, only this pain was much worse than any physical pain I’ve endured.
He told me he loved me as the light faded from his eyes, and I felt elation and devastation wash over me equally. It was very like Phainon to confirm he returned my feelings in the worst timing possible.
As he laid motionless in my arms, I thought I would have to live with the knowledge that the man I loved told me he loved me back seconds before he took his last breath. That I’d have to find the way out of this forest all by myself, hoping I don’t go mad from the solitude.
I began to weep for the first time in years, breaking a promise to myself.
Oh, Mydeimos, Aglaea swallows as she takes in the knowledge of Phainon’s first death and Mydei’s heartrending response to it.
So Phainon had died more than once in that place, and Mydeimos had nearly fallen apart witnessing it. Aglaea had already been suspecting that that was the case, considering the strange occurrence of beasts resurrecting again and again every time they were killed. It’s not far-fetched to think that this rule would extend to all living things in that space.
She finds herself wondering about Mydeimos, who had not taken Phainon’s death well. He was not a man easily moved to tears, so seeing him admit he’d cried was…
While Mydeimos hardly flinched at his own deaths, he took the deaths of his comrades and loved ones like a personal failure and deep-cutting wound. It’s no surprise he had reacted like he had when faced with the death of a soulmate.
But then he shuddered back to life and kissed me. Also very like him to catch me off guard in this way when no one before him ever could.
By this time, we still had no explanation as to why Phainon had come back to life, but we suspect that it had to do with the pocket dimension’s rule: nothing truly dies in this space.
And you might have guessed it already, that this was the night Stella was conceived. Though we didn’t know it yet, and we continued to hunt for the way out while keeping beasts at bay.
We learned to avoid the grove with the dragon-beast once we confirmed it had revived. We listened to its roars before walking away.
We do not advise fighting it, demigod or not. It has already revived once, which means it’s stronger than before. This place also zaps your stamina as the sun sets, which is extremely essential when fighting this one.
We confirmed I was pregnant around three months later when I couldn’t stop throwing up everywhere. Initially, we thought my stomach didn’t agree with our latest batch of beast-meat, but Phainon did not display the same symptoms.
He forced me into bedrest after a few days, saying he’d be alright and won’t go too far. I didn’t want to let him out of my sight, the memory of his death still too fresh, but I was miserable and conked out after a few pats to the head.
Another two months and we noticed that my stomach was getting bloated. This, coupled with the vomiting spiel I had in the earlier months, was enough for Phainon to hesitantly suggest at dinner that I could be with child.
I admit I didn’t take the possibility well. Phainon and I weren’t being careful when we slept together, and I knew that I was capable of it, so it shouldn’t be as much as a surprise to me, but it was.
I didn’t want to be pregnant. In any other time, perhaps I would’ve been overjoyed, but we are nothing more than prisoners of this place. This was no environment to raise a child.
I didn’t sleep that night, fretting about our unborn child. Phainon was fast asleep next to me, exhausted after being away from the base all day. Yet, as the hours passed I found myself growing excited by the thought of raising a child together.
Mydeimos truly was as kindhearted as Aglaea thought he was. She had already sensed it the first time he stood in front of her as the Kremnoan representative, her threads picking up the same vibrations she usually associated with Phainon and Castorice.
She also senses it in his words now, the way he worried about his unborn child’s future. It was clear he loved Stella the moment he knew about her blooming inside him.
It’s something most people are unaware of, but ultimately discover about him after five minutes of conversation: that Mydeimos, the fierce lion of Kremnos, was also a gentle soul.
He was intimidating and cold to many, and while that was true, he was also as soft and fluffy as the honeycakes he favored. She’s seen him play with the children plenty of times, going along with their whims and taking them seriously when no other adult would.
Hyacine had also reported that he got along well with the chimeras, each one flocking to him the moment they noticed his presence in the garden. Aglaea had also heard about his dromas who liked to throw tantrums when Mydeimos got too busy to tend to him. She wonders how he’s doing now.
Mydei would be a good parent, Aglaea knows, even without Stella as proof. She finds herself wishing that she’d gotten to know him better. She had deliberately distanced herself; both were figureheads of ‘opposing factions' and she was well-aware of Okhema’s politics and hidden scheming serpents, so she and Mydeimos were cordial at best.
Aglaea shakes her head. She can regret all she wants, but there is nothing to be done. She can do better for Mydeimos—and Phainon—by doing what they asked and take their daughter in.
Their daughter. Who was only six years old and just learning to grieve her parents.
And I felt terrible right away. There I was, selfishly fantasizing about a domestic life with my lover despite the fact that we may doom this child to a confined life.
This child may never know of true freedom, yet I was nearly fully considering to keep them. My childhood was no childhood, and I might be dooming my child with the same.
I got up to prepare breakfast in our newly-built kitchen, but I could do nothing but stare at the bed of coals as my mind worked furiously…
Phainon finds Mydei kneeling in front of the hearth, eyes and mind faraway as he holds the flint loosely in his hands. He sighs and squats next to him, gently taking the flint before Mydei can hurt himself. “Mydei?”
Mydei doesn’t startle, sadly. Phainon usually sneaks up behind him while he’s absorbed with cooking, making him startle and hiss like a furious cat. Phainon loves it when he does that, and somehow, Mydei falls for it every time.
But today, he does none of that. Instead, he looks at Phainon with blank eyes and says, “Phainon… I’m pregnant.”
Hearing his name fall from Mydei’s lips is still a marvel to Phainon, even months later, heart soaring and sommersaulting in his ribcage. It still is now, even though Mydei sounded lost and… haunted.
Still, Phainon is here for him. Will always be for as long as he lived. He bumps his fingers with Mydei’s, checking if it was alright with touching, and when they barely twitch, laces them together. “Yes.”
“We’re having a baby.”
“Yes.”
“As in a human child.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll be really tiny and loud and needy. Vulnerable.”
“Yes,” Phainon says hoarsely, understanding what Mydei was getting at. He squeezes his hand and tries to look into Mydei’s eyes, but his lion refuses to meet his gaze.
“And we have no idea when we could escape this place. If we even can.”
“…yes.”
Mydei snaps his head towards him, looking visibly irritated. “Have you lost the ability to speak? Is yes all you can say?”
“Of course not,” Phainon says calmly. He shuffles closer and places a kiss on Mydei’s hair. “I was only agreeing with you. Everything you said is true.”
“Knowing all that, do you want them?” Mydei asks, nuzzling back. Phainon moves to sit on their kitchen floor, wrapping an arm around him as he thinks of what to say.
Mydei’s already feeling upset, so needs to choose his words carefully.
“I share your concerns, Mydei. I also think that being pregnant in a place like this won’t be easy… raising a child wouldn’t be easy either.”
“So?”
Phainon hates the thought of accidentally pressuring Mydei into doing something he doesn’t want, and it would kill Phainon if Mydei resents him for it one day. He imagines a Mydei who could barely look at him and their child, golden eyes dull and empty, and shudders.
Never that. Titans, just the thought of it has Phainon ready to jump out of his skin.
“I think the final decision should be up to you,” Phainon says carefully. “If you want it, then I want it. If you don’t, I will head out and look for herbs that could end the pregnancy.”
Mydei is quiet for a few seconds. “That is not what I asked. I’m asking if you want this child, Phainon. I want to know your feelings too. After all, I didn’t create this baby all by myself,” he looks at him, eyes piercing. “Do you want them?"
“I…” Phainon trails off, stunned. Then he lets out a little huff. He should’ve known that being upfront and honest was best with Mydei. He was never able to hide anything from him, especially when he demanded the truth like this. “Of course I do, Mydei. You know I do. It’s our baby. There is no world where I wouldn’t want any child of ours.”
Mydei sniffles. “I want them too,” he says, like he’s confessing a terrible secret. Like the desire is a shameful thing, meant to be kept in silence and never spoken. “I want to keep them. I want to see them grow into themselves. I want to know if they’ll have my hair or your eyes. I want to see them fluorish.”
“Then we’ll raise them to the best of our ability,” Phainon says gently. “We’ll give them the world, Mydei. Or die trying.”
“Yes,” Mydei agrees. His voice is stronger now, more certain. “I want to meet them. I don’t want to give up on them yet.”
“Then we won’t,” Phainon whispers, pressing another kiss on Mydei’s cheek.
His breath hitches, and his sniffles turn into sobs as Mydei buries his face in his hands. Phainon hurries to wrap his arms around his lover’s waist, trying to give comfort and warmth. He holds tight even as Mydei shudders so hard they rock in place.
“But what if keeping them meant shackling them to our fate? What if this prison is the world they’ll only ever get to know, when its truly so vast?”
Phainon keeps quiet and lets Mydei weep in his arms, trying not to give away how stunned he is. He had no idea that Mydei had been slowly resigning himself to spending the rest of their lives in this place, but he feels like he should have.
Mydei had always been the pragmatic one between the two of them. He was already taking the possibility of the two—now three—of them being stuck in this place for years to come into account, making plans and deciding his next moves with that in mind…
… while Phainon had been dreaming of the day they’d get out. They’d return to Okhema, announce their courtship, then Phainon would go to Krateros to ask for Mydei’s hand, and then they’d get married.
And eventually, when Era Nova comes, they’d start a family.
Phainon has always been the romantic, perhaps a product of being born and raised in Aedes Elysiae. And that was fine; there was a balance to be maintained, one Aglaea had once said was precious to the bond between kindred spirits.
Phainon can dream enough for the both of them.
“We’ll get out of here, Mydei, and our child would be able to travel the stars. They’d grow up surrounded by family who would spoil them rotten, and they’ll be loved by all."
Mydei laughs. “That’s a nice dream.”
Phainon nods, earnest. “It is.”
But then Mydei’s mirth doesn’t last long. He sniffs, his eyes swollen and tinged with red. “I told you about my childhood.”
Phainon remembers. Mydei had recounted his nine years in the sea of souls, dying over and over and over again as he stoked the fire and prepared their dinner that one night. Nine years of agony and loneliness. “You did.”
“I don’t want that for them.”
“And they won’t,” Phainon says firmly. “We won’t allow it. We’re their parents, after all.”
Finally, finally, Mydei looks up at him, a small smile playing on his lips. The storm in his eyes is gone and he reaches out to pinch Phainon’s cheek. “Mm.”
They sit there for a long time, basking in each other's warmth until Mydei shoves him away and tells him to leave the kitchen because he needs to prepare breakfast and Phainon would only distract him.
A few more months passed after that talk, and my stomach was steadily getting bigger as our child grew. I rarely left the base after the second trimester had passed, feet too swollen for me to walk long distances. Even walking from one room to another was hard, but I always rejected Phainon’s insistence on carrying me every time I got up from bed.
Sometimes I felt like I was nothing more than a waddling seal, or a dromas that overindulged on red soil, but Phainon was quick to assure me that I was as beautiful as the day he met me, and that he definitely still had dreams about me even as my stomach grew bigger, and that he would love me even if I was as round as Kephale’s Dawn Device.
Not only that, he was unable to stop staring at my chest once I had begun to lactate. Not that I haven’t caught him at it before I was pregnant, but this time he was visibly drooling. He was being extremely shameless, showering perverted comments so frequently that I was tempted to cover up for the first time in my life.
It was admittedly flattering, but it also got embarrassing quick.
Aglaea has to rub her temples after reading the last three paragraphs. It was very like Phainon, she thinks fondly, and she finds herself reminiscing the times he’d sit at her table and wax rhapsodic about Mydei. He held nothing back as he described how attractive Mydei’s physique was.
It was like she didn’t understand. Mydeimos was conventionally attractive, and he and Phainon drew interested stares whenever they were out in Marmoreal Market. Not that they noticed, too embroiled with each other.
On the rare occasion that Phainon looked away from Mydei long enough to notice the appreciative stares, he would cling to Mydei the entire day, following him around as the other man would go about his duties with his people and finally end the day by dragging Mydei to the baths earlier than usual.
Mydei, ever the enabler, treated Phainon’s clingy presence like he would with a clingy chimera. He lets Phainon trail him as he trained his men, and even indulged him with a spar. Allowed Phainon to drag him to the baths even as he put up a token protest.
By the end of Mydei’s first year in Okhema, everyone knew, or at least suspected, that these two heirs were romantically involved. Unfortunately, the Chrysos Heirs knew the truth: these two idiots were pining, thinking the other did not return their affections.
They were truly meant for each other, but this? Aglaea had always thought that Phainon’s mouth would get him in trouble one day, and she sincerely hoped that Mydei had put him in his place.
Aglaea, I admit I had no idea what to feel. On one hand he was clearly trying to comfort me by being completely transparent about his attraction, but on the other hand I wanted to kick him out of bed right then.
So I did.
If Phainon had been clingy before we discovered my pregnancy, then it doubled now that I was. Each morning was a spectacle, because Phainon would bawl like a baby as he said his goodbyes.
Here was the respected Deliverer, throwing a tantrum because he didn’t want to leave me and our baby all alone. I imagined that our baby’s cries would never be as annoying as his ‘Boohoo, Mydei’s.
(And I was right.)
He had to leave daily to make sure the traps still held up, and to incapacitate the beasts so they wouldn’t swarm the base. We also began to collect more and more silk and other materials for the baby’s clothing.
I knew how to build a loom thanks to my days with my detachment, but I did not know how to sew. Fortunately, Phainon knew how, and set to work using the needles he made from the beasts’ bones.
I had to stop him from dyeing the clothes yellow and purple several times. He pouted and accused me of falling out of love with him, which was ridiculous. He was clearly joking, but I still cooked him a terrible meal that night. Ha! The face he made when I told him that it was also my idea of a joke was priceless.
Sometimes I wondered who was truly the pregnant one between us, because Phainon was acting more irrational than I was. I’ve heard claims that pregnancy would make you emotionally unstable. And yet by the eighth month, Phainon had cried three times more than I had.
Whenever I felt sick in the morning, Phainon would rub my back with the most uneasy look on his face. At first I thought he was disgusted by the vomit, but it turned out that seeing me so ‘miserable’ made him want throw up too.
???
Which… whatever. I threatened to sock him in the stomach if he ever dared to, and while he whined about how it would only make him throw up for real, he listened. Good.
I did have some cravings but they weren’t as outrageous as I thought. Phainon managed to prepare every request I had except for the time I had craved to make a meal ouf of the sea monsters I ate as a child.
Phainon had cried at the thought of being unable to fulfill my request. Somehow, the sight of his pathetic sniveling as well as the face he made once his sobs died down had strangely satisfied my craving.
To be honest, I still don’t know why it had happened to this day. Perhaps it was the salt of Phainon’s tears, or maybe it was the funny way his nose turned red and swollen. Who knows.
Aglaea finds herself chuckling softly as she read Mydeimos’ pregnancy journey. Phainon was still the same, eager to please Mydei and eager to worship the ground he walked on. Although, Aglaea sure hopes that Stella hadn’t inherited her Dad’s abysmal fashion sense.
Thankfully, it seems Mydei had managed to stop the nonsense from happening.
It was an easy pregnancy… or at least that’s what we both thought. I’ve seen pregnant women having a harder time than I did, and Phainon testified the same. The baby was calm, and would only occasionally kick on my stomach and lay on my bladder, which had led to the biggest scare.
I nearly strangled Phainon awake after the baby had sat too long on my bladder and I had nearly wet the bed. He had to carry me in his arms as he rushed all three of us to the toilet. But then it was dark and he had left out sewing materials by the living space because he’d been working on blankets for the baby.
He slipped on a roll of cloth.
Somehow, he had managed to lift me up high with his arms even as he bumped his head and back on the stone floor while I was entirely unharmed. I was stunned, he was stunned, but this man had just laughed and laughed.
I was irritated at first, because I had told him to clean up before following me to bed and look what happened! But the smile on his face was so infectious I couldn't help but laugh along too.
In this place that was our prison, we had managed to live and not just survived. I found myself being happy, living this domestic life away from our duties with Phainon.
It was around this time that we’ve also started preparing for the birth. Phainon claimed to have some experience with his father’s cows back in Aedes Elysiae, so at least we won’t be going in completely blind.
While I do not know what to feel being compared to a cow, I admit that there was the relief that at least one of us had an inkling of what was going to happen.
By this time, we’ve already picked out names for our baby. Aster if they were a boy, and Stella if they were a girl. We wanted to name our baby after a star because it was what we hoped for her. A shining star that would one day escape the cage she was born in and soar through the heavens untethered.
As my due date got nearer, I got more worried. This pregnancy had been too good to be true, and I feared that something would go wrong during the birth.
We had no idea if my immortality would work in this place. We also have no idea if I would come back like Phainon had should something go wrong or if his revival was just a fluke, so I spent the days worried.
I am aware that stress isn’t good for the baby, but some nights I would lay awake and pray to Kephale, Nikador, and every other Titan that would listen that our baby would make it through.
Phainon was feeling the same worries, though he tried to hide it. He would look at me sometimes like he was begging for assurance that everything would be fine.
We decided to do a water birth because Phainon had heard from his mother that he was born this way and he turned out fine. And it wasn’t like we had vast options either way.
Everything was not fine, Aglaea. While we safely got Stella out, I was bleeding excessively. I was losing blood too fast, and I felt myself fading out as I watched Phainon’s face turn from adoring as he cradled Stella to horror as he saw me bleeding out in the spring.
I had no idea what went wrong because everything from the contractions up to the labor and birth was fine, but as Phainon swaddled Stella up in the clothes we prepared beforehand, I realized I was bleeding abnormally…
“She’s a girl!” Phainon gasps in delight as he cradles Stella to his chest. He can’t stop staring at her. She looks so small and wrinkly and precious. She’s the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. “Welcome home, Stella. Our little star.”
He sniffles, feeling overwhelmed by the surge of love that swirled in his chest. He loves her. She’s the most perfect baby he’s ever seen, and there will be no one as perfect after her. Mydei is truly amazing for giving them such a lovely miracle. “Mydei, look at her! She’s so cute!”
A ragged, wet gasp is the only response he gets. He whips his head towards Mydei’s heaving figure in the spring. His head is turned away, so Phainon can’t see his face, but he feels his heart dropping to his feet anyway.
“Mydei…?”
Phainon hurries to place Stella in the bassinet he and Mydei had made months earlier, making sure her neck was supported and that she wouldn’t roll over, before jumping into the spring where Mydei was currently bleeding out.
His eyes were unfocused and his head was lolled to the side as Phainon gathered him up in arms. He was slipping, too, head nearly down under before Phainon had managed to haul him up.
“Mydei,” Phainon sits next to him, holding his face in his hands. He feels cold to the touch and was unresponsive to Phainon’s taps, staying limp in Phainon’s hold. No. No no no no this wasn’t happening. Mydei wasn’t… he wasn’t—! “Mydei! Mydeimos, please!”
He turns to look at where Mydei was currently bleeding out, the clear spring water tainted with golden ichor flowing from Mydei’s lower regions, where he had pushed Stella out just moments before.
Phainon doesn’t understand. Everything had been fine just moments before, with Mydei nearly crushing Phainon’s fingers as he let out these little grunts while pushing Stella out. Phainon had supported him from behind, feeling relieved that nothing was going wrong.
And yet… and yet!
“Mydei, please,” Phainon begs as he sobs, clutching him close to his chest. A reversal of Phainon’s death nearly a year ago. He wonders if Mydei had felt the same despair and desperation when he held Phainon in his arms.
“Don’t leave me and Stella alone, please,” He begs, looking down to meet Mydei’s eyes but all that meets him is an empty stare, a stark contrast to the usual intensity lurking beneath the golden sheen.
The depth that those golden eyes could hold was Phainon’s favorite part about staring into Mydei’s eyes. The tempest they held as they glared their enemies down… it was nowhere to be found. It’s gone.
“No no no no no Mydei, please!” Phainon has no idea if Mydei’s immortality would come through in this place or if it had been stripped away along with their armor and weapons when they first arrived. He still has no idea how he even came back to life, and if this rule would apply to Mydei.
Distantly, he hears a baby’s cries and he’s just beginning to tune it out when he realizes it’s Stella. Their daughter. Their newborn, who was crying. Titans, what was he doing? Was he really about to ignore his baby’s cries?
He’s torn. He knows he needs to go and comfort Stella. She must’ve been startled by Phainon’s yelling. They say children are sensitive to She must be cold too… but Mydei was cold too. There was no warmth in the body he was holding now.
He doesn’t know what to do. He needs Mydei to tell him what to do… No, he does. Phainon knows Mydei, and he knows what choice he’d make. He’ll want Phainon to do the same, and he would never forgive him if he made the wrong choice.
“Mydei, please come back to me,” he whispers as he carries Mydei’s limp body out the spring. The bleeding has slowed, but it’s only because he’s… Phainon carefully lays Mydei on the mat they had prepared beforehand just in case. He presses a kiss on his forehead. “I need you. Stella needs you.”
Then he rushes to Stella’s bassinet, making soothing noises as he gazes at their daughter. He startles when he realizes her eyes were open now. They were tightly closed while he was cleaning her up earlier.
Oh. She has Mydei’s eyes. Phainon might be a bit hysterical right now, but she looks like she’s staring straight at Phainon. He feels tears pool in his eyes, conflicting emotions swirling in his chest, as he carefully picks her up. “Hello, baby. Shh, it’s okay… Daddy’s here.”
Her cries don’t stop, but they quiet down a bit. He gently rocks her in his arms, stepping away from the bassinet to return to where Mydei was lying so still on the mat. Phainon sinks to the floor next to his head. “Look, Mydei, our little star has your eyes. From the color down to the shape and the irises.”
Mydei doesn’t respond, of course. Because he’s… “I think she has my nose. I hope she has my hair color… then she’ll be the perfect mix of us.” Phainon chuckles as he holds Stella up so Mydei could see her face.
“Look, baby, that’s your Papa,” he coos to her, trying to still his shaking arms. He feels restless. He wishes Mydei would wake up now, so he could hold Stella in his arms. He didn’t even get the chance before Thanatos had taken him. “Quite the beauty, hm?”
Stella’s cries taper down, like she recognizes what she’s looking at. Another impossibility, but it’s possible that Phainon is going insane at the prospect of raising their daughter without Mydei by his side.
“He’s just sleeping,” Phainon assures her—and himself—as he continues to rock her softly. “He got a bit tired pushing you out. You’re quite the big baby, y’know? I’m sure you’re gonna grow up strong and sprightly.”
He spends a few minutes whispering stories about Mydei, watches as Stella blinks and yawns. She’s about to fall back into sleep now. Phainon glances at Mydei, but his lover remains unmoving.
His heart is beating too hard in his chest, and he’s afraid it would wake Stella back up, so he starts singing a lullaby he didn’t realize he’d remembered. His mother used to sing him to sleep when he was younger, and the hazy memory of Aedes Elysiae’s golden wheat fields and his mother stroking his hair come back to him in a rush.
“There will come a soldier, who carries a mighty sword…”
Stella makes a cute little noise, scrunching up her entire face, before it smoothens out. Phainon lets out a helpless chuckle before resting his cheek on her head as he tries to recall what came next. “Oh lei-oh lai…”
“Your singing is abysmal as ever,” a voice croaks next to him. Phainon freezes. “Why on Amphoreus are you making our daughter suffer?”
Slowly, carefully, Phainon turns his head, looking at Mydei’s exhausted face. He looks so beautiful, looking up at Phainon and Stella like he wasn’t dead moments before. Phainon feels the disbelief, swiftly followed by relief and joy as Mydei smirks up at him.
“Mydei,” Phainon heaves, shifting to face him, already choking on his sobs. He ignores the jab at his singing skills (okay, so maybe he wasn’t the best singer), too focused on the way Mydei’s chest moves up and down as he breathes. “Mydei, you’re back. Thank Kephale, I thought… I thought you left us for good.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve yet to meet my baby. I’m not going anywhere,” Mydei huffs as he struggles to sit up. Phainon makes a protesting noise as he holds Stella on one arm and tries to support Mydei.
He swats it away as he steadies himself, looking down at his previously bleeding wound. “It sealed itself,” he murmurs to himself thoughtfully.
Phainon sniffs and wipes at his eyes. His sight was getting a little blurry, with Mydei looking like a red and yellow blob. “She started crying earlier,” he tells Mydei. “I think she wanted her Papa.”
Mydei’s gaze softens as he holds out his arms. Phainon passes Stella into his waiting hold before crawling behind him. He wraps his arms around Mydei’s waist and buries his face into his neck.
“She’s lovely,” Mydei marvels as he cradles their daughter. Phainon can hear the awe in his voice as he goes on, “I think she has your nose.”
Phainon huffs, amused. “I thought the same earlier.”
They go quiet as Mydei feeds Stella, letting her latch on to his nipple. Phainon wants to ask if it was safe, considering he had died and came back to life, but he figures that if there was anyone who’d be an expert on the affair, it would be Mydei..
“I’m sorry for leaving like that,” Mydei whispers eventually. “It really… came out of nowhere. It must’ve been terrifying seeing me like that.”
It was, but Phainon would never admit that out loud, not when Mydei was apologizing for dying. Titans. “I’m sorry, too. For not noticing right away,” He doesn’t lift his face from his neck.
He feels Mydei shake his head. “There is nothing to forgive. Stella is our first priority, now that we’re parents. Her needs come first.”
”I love you, Mydei.”
”And I love you, Phainon.”
They go quiet, basking in the warmth of their little family when Mydei breaks the silence. “Phainon…” He begins, unusually hesitant, “When you died before, did a voice speak to you?”
“A voice?” Phainon lifts his head, confused. He tries to recall the memory of his death, but its all a blank. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“… nevermind,” Mydei sighs as he wriggles in Phainon’s embrace, settling against his front more.
Then, he looks down at their little girl and presses a soft kiss on top of her head. “Welcome home, Stella.”
Dying is a strange affair. When I was a teenager, I had the opportunity to read a scholar’s thesis on Thanatos, and I found myself agreeing with one line: death is natural to the living, but dying was not.
I think of the first death I can actually remember. I was probably only three winters old and I had just drowned after my legs failed to keep me above water as the waves crashed around me. This storm had been particularly brutal.
I could liken the journey out of the nether realm with a hike up a steep mountain. You have to keep walking and climbing without looking back. You must resist the dead’s tantalizing whispers to keep you in place as your strength flags.
That is what death usually felt like to me.
This time, however, was different. Dying in this pocket space has confirmed a suspicion I carried as the months passed: my curse of immortality was inexplicably altered.
Outside this space, I healed faster. The bruises I gained were usually gone by the next quint, depending on their severity. In this place, however, bruises and wounds stayed.
My immortality isn’t perfect either. I have a weak spot, and striking me there would end me. Finally. I do not know how I came to know this, but the knowledge is something I carried my entire life.
And I have not told a single soul about it except for Phainon.
This weak spot is how I knew my immortality is not gone but changed. My instincts still went haywire if something came too near to it, a warning to guard it echoing in my head.
Death is different in this place. Instead of a steep mountain and the comforting air of the nether, I was greeted by a dark abyss. I could feel myself drowning, and I felt I was back in the Sea of Souls once more.
There was an instant where I had forgotten who I was, that I was more than one of the many souls swimming around in that abyss. But then I heard Phainon calling my name again and again, and swam up.
I was nearly out when a voice called out to me. Male. Robotic. It told me that I was the second person to defy the curse. It also warned me that I wouldn’t be so fortunate the second time around.
It also told me something else: those that died in this space are forever tethered to it. That the moment we lost our life here, we became part of the pocket space.
And then I woke up to Phainon singing a lullaby to our daughter.
I didn’t know what to think of that warning, if I could even trust that disembodied voice, but I admit it scared me. Both Phainon and I have already died in this place, and if what the voice said was true, then we are shackled to it. It truly was our prison now.
I asked Phainon if he heard a voice speak to him while he was dead, but he said no. Perhaps I should’ve pushed further, but I was exhausted from giving birth and was too infatuated with Stella.
Instead I chalked it up to the usual whispers of the nether realm. These voices were not uncommon. They were filled with envy of the living, and would tempt the weary traveler to stay with them through fear.
I soon forgot about it as Phainon and I began caring for our newborn. It was exhausting, but rewarding. Stella truly was the cutest baby in the world.
And so, we began to raise our little star, and before we knew it, she was turning one and learning how to walk.
“Agy?”
Aglaea snaps her head up, surprised, to see Trinnon standing in front of her. She’s wringing her hands anxiously, head tilted as she placed a hand on Aglaea’s thigh. “Are you okay?”
“Teacher Trinnon,” Aglaea greets distractedly, before coming back to herself. Glancing around, she realizes that nearly an hour has passed, and that she and Trinnon were alone in her home. “What are you doing here?”
“Tribbie and Cinny took Sunny to the baths,” She explains. “Tribbie said to wait until you finished before bringing you there, but we noticed that you looked distressed.”
Was she? It was true that the information Mydeimos revealed deeply disturbed her, but she hadn’t realized that her facade had slipped. It was a hard thing to read, and Mydeimos’ casual description of death left her wondering about something else.
“I’m alright,” Aglaea assures Trinnon as she stands. Trinnon backs away to give her room, looking up at her like she didn’t believe her. “Shall we go? Stella must be wondering where I’ve gone.”
“But… you haven’t finished reading,” Trinnon frowns. “It’s a letter from De and Snowy, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Aglaea confirms. She must've recognized his handwriting. After all, Tribios had been Mydeimos’ teacher before he disappeared. “But it’s alright. I can always finish it later.”
“…okay,” Trinnon looks like she wants to ask about it, but thankfully does not. She reaches up to hold Aglaea’s hand and pull her forward. “Let’s go, Agy.”
——
They’re almost to the Hero’s Baths when Aglaea speaks. “Teacher, can prophecies be broken?”
Trinnon glances back and slows down their pace. “Are you talking about Snowy and De’s prophecies?”
“Yes. I was wondering if the prophecies detailing their destinies had changed within the last seven years,” Aglaea keeps her voice low, wary of eavesdroppers. Though it was unlikely, what with the loud chatter and the sound of water falling filling the baths. Still, it didn't hurt to be cautious.
“We have not received new prophecies about them,” Trinnon answers. “Janus’ visions do not change. They reveal paths unseen but do not control the destination. Prophecies are finicky, Agy. Their way they are fulfilled are not set in stone… but they all come true, in the end. One way or the other.”
Aglaea keeps quiet as Trinnon gathers her thoughts.
“It is true that one action can open up a thousand paths, thus increasing the chances of breaking it,” she adds, “but prophecies like ours are not so easily swayed. Every possibility will end on the same outcome.”
“I see,” Aglaea murmurs as Trinnon confirmed her earlier suspicion. “Then it seems we’ve misinterpreted theirs.”
“… yes,” Trinnon admits. “We all thought that their prophecies were related to the Flame Chase. We thought they were when we first received them but… it seems like we were wrong.”
“So Phainon and Mydeimos are truly gone,” Aglaea says wistfully. Trinnon sniffles. “They seemed to know that they were going to leave Stella behind.”
“How did they… did the letter mention anything?”
“I was getting to that part,” Aglaea admits. “They were trapped in a place they almost had no hope of escaping, yet Stella somehow made it out all alone… I believe these two points are connected.”
Trinnon doesn’t answer, and slowly, they make their way to where the others were waiting.
——
“Auntie Aglaea!” Stella gasps happily as she spots her from where she was splashing around with Tribbie, Trianne, and Little Ica. “You’re here!”
“Hello, Stella,” Aglaea greets, nodding to Hyacine when she waves at her. She’s sitting on a nearby kline, watching Stella play in the baths with hawk eyes. “Are you liking the baths?”
“Yes!” Stella cheers as she swims around, Little Ica on her heels. Trianne giggles as she chases them down. “It’s as nice as Daddy and Papa told me. It’s their favorite place in Okhema!”
“They do spend a lot of time in here,” Hyacine chirps. “Your Dad used to drag your Papa to bathe with him twice a day.”
Stella laughs. “He does that at home, too!” She says, tickled.
Hyacine beams back at her, but Aglaea can tell she’s barely holding back her tears. Thankfully, Trianne quickly distracts Stella by tagging her and saying that she had told chase Trianne now, and Stella lets out a delighted squeal as she moves to do just that.
Trinnon quietly leaves Aglaea’s side to join her sisters in the fun. Aglaea watches as Stella performs a dive that should’ve been too complicated for her age, and everyone claps when she surfaces with a proud smile.
Aglaea takes the empty space next to Hyacine, and they both quietly listen to Tribbie complimenting Stella’s form, Trianne egging her to do it again, Trinnon trying to stop Trianne, and Little Ica’s doots of excitement.
Looking at them, Aglaea can almost pretend that Stella was only over to have a nice day with her aunts, and that she’d get to go back home to her parents at the end of the day.
“How is she?” Aglaea softly asks Hyacine.
“She’s healthy,” Hyacine answers just as softly. “She’s even a bit chubby for her age, but that’s fine. Children at her age can adjust easily to any diet… though she did have signs of recent starvation, as well as scabs on her feet from walking a great distance. I already healed the wounds but… we’ll have to keep feeding her properly for the starvation issue.”
“I see. That’s good.” It could've been worse.
Hyacine nods, as if hearing the unspoken words. “Lord Phainon and Lord Mydei treasured her.”
Aglaea recalls the way Mydeimos spoke about her in his letter, the way his fondness seeped from every letter. “They really did.”
Hyacine wilts. “She told us on the way here that they were gone. She said that when she woke up, she was all alone. That they left her a flower that meant that they were dead and that she needed to run.”
“They seem to have prepared her for the worst case scenario,” Aglaea tells her. “She told me about she had to follow a song they taught her to reach Okhema. They… taught her a lot of things so she could survive. And Stella is a smart girl. She followed every lesson flawlessly.”
Hyacine sniffs, discreetly wiping at her eyes. “I asked her how long it took her to reach us, but she tells me she doesn’t know since the sun never rose, but that it felt like forever. I’m worried about her; I don’t think their deaths have fully sunk in yet. Has she cried even once?”
“Yes. She did after I asked where her parents were.”
“Oh, poor girl,” Hyacine lets out another sniff before straightening in her seat, trying to regain her composure. “Will she be staying with you during the rest hour?”
“I told her that I would take her in,” Aglaea confirms. “She’ll sleep in my bed while I clean up the guest room.”
“Then you’d better watch out for a possible breakdown,” Hyacine advises gently. “Let her cry, and try to keep a jar of water nearby so she won’t dehydrate.”
“I will,” Aglaea says, and they fall quiet. The Hero’s Baths is filled with joyous shrieking, and Aglaea wonders if the people below were confused about the unusual noises coming from upstairs. “Did anyone see you on the way here?”
Hyacine shakes her head. “We had her wear a cloak on the way here. The council has eyes everywhere. I’m sure they won’t be happy to discover her existence.”
The Flamechase had lost traction over the years of Phainon and Mydei’s disappearance. The Kremnoans were restless as well, but they behaved for the most part, still believing that their prince would be back. Naturally, the council was elated by the turn of events, and they were slowly regaining the authority that they’ve lost since the arrival of the Deliverer.
Stella’s arrival would change that, sweeping the tides in the Flame Chase’s favor and becoming Okhema’s new symbol of hope. Just like her Dad had been many years ago.
“Does she carry golden blood as well?” Aglaea asks. She doesn’t know what answer she wants to hear, but she hopes that Stella isn’t. Being a Chrysos Heir was a heavy duty, and like her parents, she wants this little girl to be healthy and to grow up happy.
“She is,” Hyacine says, and Aglaea has to close her eyes in resignation. “Should I include that when I make her file?”
“No, don’t,” Aglaea opens her eyes and looks straight into Hyacine’s, glad that they were on the same page. “Let’s keep it secret for as long as we can.”
“Cassie and Ciphy are going to be devastated when they hear the news,” Hyacine says, voice wobbly. “Those three were really close, though Ciphy rarely shows up in person. I caught a glimpse of Cassie’s phone one day, and they had this group chat called Calami3.”
Ah, Castorice. She was away at Aidonia for personal business, but she was supposed to be back the day after tomorrow. She’ll take one look at Stella and she’d know what occurred while she was gone.
And Cifera… Aglaea sighs.
“We’ll have to inform Phainon’s professor as well,” Aglaea says stiffly. She wonders what face that eccentric man would make, knowing his student had passed before him.
“I can tell Professor Anaxa on your behalf,” Hyacine says. “He probably won’t take it well. He used to say that while Phainon was his most troublesome student, he was also one with great potential.”
“Indeed. Thank you, Hyacine.”
Hyacine agrees, then excuses herself, wading into the bath to snatch Little Ica away from where they were chewing on Stella’s hair. Aglaea watches them for a moment longer, before taking the letter out.
When Stella was born, Phainon and I agreed that raising her would be our first priority. Finding the way out would have to be put aside until she’s a little older. With that said, we turned the base into a home, a place where Stella can grow up happy and safe.
.
.
.
Year 1: Stella learned how to walk the same week found a river nearby. We set up a fence to keep the beasts at bay. We used the river as a place to wash our clothes. We planned to teach Stella how to swim here.
Strangely, fish thrived in this river. They were not beasts, but simply ordinary fish. And since we cannot afford to be picky, we both shrugged the strangeness off and fed some to Stella. I think she liked it. Her smile was gummier than usual.
Her first word was neither Daddy or Papa. It was HKS. I would say it was my fault, but Phainon really should’ve behaved himself more.
.
.
.
Year 2: Stella was an energetic child. She would barrel roll instead of walk if she could. She liked to sing, so we taught her a song. One of the Kremnoan lullabies refashioned into a song that would guide her to Okhema just in case we couldn’t be with her.
We told her it was important for her to remember it, that it would help her if she would find herself alone. She still doesn’t fully understand it, but she’s a bright girl who listens to her parents.
While she can’t pronounce all the words yet, it’s become her favorite tune. I pray that this song would really work.
.
.
.
Year 3: We found a field of flowers deep in the forest. This was our first attempt to find an exit for years, but Stella thought it was just one of our trips. so she was excited.
Phainon taught her all their names, while I pointed out their uses. She learned of a flower that made a person pee, because that tidbit is strangely interesting to children.
We taught her another meaning of that flower. That if she woke up all alone and had that flower with her. It means that we’re gone and that she should run. It hurt to say these words to her, but we must.
She doesn’t really understand. She’s yet to even learn the concept of death, but she nodded really seriously. Phainon said she looked exactly like me at the moment.
How utterly ridiculous.
.
.
.
Year 4: We started teaching Stella some basic exercise techniques to build up her stamina for when she grows older. Kremnoan children usually begin earlier, but I did not have the heart to do so.
Phainon followed my lead in this, saying he was but a mere farmer boy with no formal education in sword art until he learned under you. He is her biggest support though, sitting next to her during lessons and letting out the biggest cheers when she managed to compete an exercise.
She has the makings of a warrior, fit to be Kremnos’ next crown princess. We also discovered that she bore golden blood like her fathers. We worry for her, and what it meant for her future.
Would she receive a prophecy detailing her own death like we had? Would she die before she could lay her eyes on the new dawn? These questions plague us.
Aglaea, we request that you let her choose whether she wants to dedicate herself to the Flame Chase just like we had. Please, do not sway her either way. We’d like for her to choose her own path.
Aglaea pauses, her fingers brushing against Mydei and Phainon’s plea. It was very like them, to wish for their child’s freedom to choose what she wanted. Aglaea would respect it, of course, even if she wanted Stella far from the Flamechase journey.
She was Stella’s guardian now, as she quietly resolved to herself when she first invited Stella into her home. She would do what’s best for her.
“Stella!”
Aglaea looks up in alarm, only to sigh in relief after realizing it was only Hyacine looking scandalized. Stella had tried to bite Little Ica’s round stomach, pouting in disappointment as she declared that the taste was different from what she’d been expecting.
Chuckling, Aglaea goes back to reading the letter.
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.
Year 5: Stella learned how to swim. She really likes it, too, always begging me and Phainon to take her to the river so she could play. She’d be at home at Okhema, with all the baths she can dive into.
We also started telling stories about everyone. The Chrysos Heirs, her grandparents, our childhood friends, and even my people. She knows she’s a princess, now, but I also had to explain that we no longer had a kingdom.
She doesn't really have an opinion on it, since all she knows about princesses were from Phainon’s bedtime stories. He likes telling her romantic stories between a prince and a hero, or a princess and a farmer. He’s so obvious sometimes.
Stella really likes bedtime stories, she asks for two every night. You might want to prepare yourself, Aglaea.
We also started taking longer trips in an effort to search for clues. We didn’t have much hope these days, but to our surprise, we did find one.
We found a notebook buried under a rock formation far from home. There was blood and some torn clothes next to it. We read its contents, hoping it would tell us the way out but what we read horrified us.
It seems that all the beasts in this forest were the lost people of the city. The owner detailed that they had asked their deity to keep them safe, and it granted their wish, creating this pocket space for them.
But then, the owner watched as his friends and family turned into mindless beasts one by one. He did not elaborate further, only saying that it was their fault. The entry is cut there, the paper torn and stained with red.
Phainon and I had no idea what to feel about it, knowing we’ve been killing them over and over, and even eating their meat. We stayed up all night trying to reconcile this new knowledge and our actions for the past six years. What we’ve unknowingly eaten. What we’ve unknowingly fed our daughter.
The next morning, we started teaching her how to read.
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Year 6: We’ve spent seven years in this place now, and Stella had just turned six two weeks ago. She started learning how to write, but we didn't have paper around so she drew her letters on the dirt with a stick. She’s hardworking and studious. Professor Anaxagoras would like her.
The long trips have become tradition now, and so we set out to find more clues. It was our first one after finding that notebook, as Phainon and I were quite shaken.
I had no idea why, but I was feeling particularly anxious about this trip. It’s not something I usually experience, so it made me incredibly restless on the morning of our trip.
Phainon had asked what was wrong, but I told him it was nothing. In truth, I had a feeling that we’d make another terrible discovery that day, and we would never be the same once we got home.
I was right.
Somehow, while walking in the forest, Stella had spotted a temple. It should’ve been impossible, because this was a spot we frequently passed, and nothing but trees was marked in the map Phainon and I made over the past years.
It was the same temple that trapped us here years ago.
We wanted to head back, be better prepared, but we feared it would disappear and we would lose our chance for answers. So the three of us had entered and…
A voice greeted us. It claimed to be the owner of the space. It revealed that it had been watching us for years now and decided to take pity on our mortal selves. It said it had fun watching us struggle to survive, but we’ve gotten boring, having adjusted completely to the pocket space. So it decided to give us what we wanted.
It told us that there was a ritual we could do that could get us out of here.
Phainon was furious; he demanded answers from the entity as it laughed in our faces. Stella was getting scared. She had never heard Phainon ever raise his voice, so she had buried her face in my neck.
I was terrified for another reason. I recognized this voice. It was the same voice that called out to me while I had been dead, and its warning had come back to me in a rush.
I felt so stupid, Aglaea. How could I have forgotten? That’s when I realized that we’ve been had. Our fates had been sealed the moment Phainon and I had died in this place.
There was no hope of escaping for us.
But… perhaps there was for Stella.
So I asked what the ritual was, ignoring Phainon when he turned to me in shock. The voice laughed cruelly, perhaps knowing what I had realized, and told us the scroll on the altar would tell us everything.
Then its suffocating presence disappeared. I couldn’t look at Phainon in the eye as I pocketed the scroll and headed out, Stella in my arms. He still looked furious, but held himself back for our daughter's sake.
Dinner was quiet that night. Not even Stella and her sunny personality had managed to lift up the mood because she was quiet as well, perhaps sensing the tension between her parents.
We tucked her into bed that night, with Phainon regaling her with bedtime stories as I stroked her hair. Once she fell asleep, we quietly moved to our room and…
Phainon paces in the space of their room. He feels agitated, like he wants to crawl out of his skin. He’s angry, too. He wants to hurt someone, wrap his hands around their neck until they finally cease to breathe.
He wants to kill a divine entity.
“He’s playing with us,” Phainon mutters darkly. “That false god trapped us in this space for years, and then he gives us hope by revealing that temple to Stella, and now he wants us to… what, play into his hands by doing that ritual?”
He shoots a disgusted look at the open scroll on their bed, the instructions to said ritual written clear. He hates it. There's no way they were going to do it. Not when it meant leaving Stella alone.
“I’ll find another way. Who’s to say that scum was trustworthy, anyway?” Phainon goes on, “It’s all a game to him. He knew we were here for years and yet he only decided to reveal himself now. What good person does that?”
Mydei is silent throughout his entire rant. He doesn’t seem to be listening to Phainon at all, just staring blankly at the view outside the window. where beasts lurk and wait for them to lower their guards.
“Let’s do it.”
Phainon spins around to stare at him. “What?” he whispers, stunned. Mydei doesn’t meet his eyes, just looks at what he’s holding in his hands. One of Stella’s dresses that Phainon had meticulously sewn two years ago. He’s never been so glad that he’d inherited his mother's talented hands. “Do you understand what you’ve just said?”
“I understand perfectly,” Mydei says stiffly, stubbornly looking away.
“Ha!” Phainon chuckles disbelievingly as he runs a hand through his hair. “Then you must be out of your mind!”
“Out of my mind?” Mydei echoes, still infuriatingly calm. Phainon wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to get rid of that resigned look in his lover’s eyes. “Is it truly so outlandish of me to wish freedom for our daughter?”
“Of course not!” Phainon bursts, then hunches his shoulders when Mydei whips his head to glare at him. So now he looks at Phainon.
But he can’t even blame him for it, when Stella is sleeping only next door. Voice softer, he says, “I want her to be free, too!”
“Then stop looking at me like that!” Mydei hisses, just as soft, throwing the dress on their bed and stepping forward until they’re nose-to-nose. “You knew it could end like this, that one day Stella might have to stand on her own. That’s why we let her learn that song, taught her everything we knew about the other heirs, so she’d be able to survive even without us there. So what’s with this look you’re giving me?”
“And just how am I looking at you?” Phainon demands, irritation rising.
“Like I’ve betrayed you,” Mydei answers. He steps away and sits on the edge of the bed, looking tired all of a sudden. Phainon feels his anger fade away, looking at Mydei’s usually set shoulders curled in defeat. “Think about it, Phainon. We’re stuck here for seven years and we’ve never found any clues that could get us out until that entity appeared.”
“Mydei—”
“You were right. It’s playing us, but I don’t care. If it meant Stella could leave this place and see the world was beyond this prison, then I’ll take the chance,” Mydei looks up at Phainon, gaze imploring. “Doesn’t she deserve a life of peace?”
A life of peace. A life where she won’t have to leave a small knapsack at the foot of her bed just in case she needed to flee the beasts managed to break through the perimeter. A life where she won’t have to sleep so lightly just so she can wake at the slightest hint of danger.
Their little star, who is only six years old, has every survival tactic drilled into her, She has yet to meet a child her age, or talk to anyone who aren’t her parents.
Their daughter deserved a life of peace where her biggest worry would be a math exam or if her favorite flavor of ice cream had run out for the day. Not… not this life, where they’re never sure if they could survive the night.
“But Mydei,” Phainon goes to kneel in front of his lover and hold his hands. They’re cold, colder than usual, a sign that betrayed how anxious he really was about this whole thing. “Must we die here as well? This doesn’t have to be the end. We could still look for—”
“There is no other way!” Mydei snatches his hands away, breath ragged. “Do you really think I wouldn’t want to see our child grow into a happy adult? Do what she dreams of becoming? Watch her reach for the stars?”
He looks up at Phainon, completely heartbroken. “Of course I do.”
Phainon swallows. “Then tell me why,” he begs, “why are you so eager to do that ritual when we both have to die for Stella to leave?”
The room is silent, save for Mydei’s ragged breaths. Phainon can tell that Mydei is trying not to cry. “Phainon… we can’t leave. No matter how much we desire it, it’s no longer possible for us… because we’ve already died once here.”
“What are you talking about?” He feels dread seeping into his bones at the look on Mydei’s face. He looks frustrated with himself, but his eyes remain resigned… hopeless. It does not suit him at all.
“Do you truly not remember anything when you died?” Mydei laces his fingers with Phainon’s and squeezes. “Think about it. Is the voice in the temple not familiar to you at all?”
Familiar? Why would the bastard ever be familiar to Phai—
[But remember, you will never be free of the abyss. You were mine the moment you entered this place, Phainon of Aedes Elysiae. I will have you back sooner or later.]
“Kephale above,” Phainon croaks, and he feels all his strength leave him. Mydei catches him though, gently laying Phainon’s head on his thighs and petting his hair. “Mydei. Oh Titans, Mydei!”
Mydei sighs. “Do you remember now?” Phainon whimpers, burying his face to hide his choked sobs. “What did it tell you, Phainon?”
Phainon repeats the exact words, somehow so clear to him now when he’s forgotten all about it for seven years. It might be the voice’s work… but maybe it wasn’t.
“It told me something similar yet different,” Mydei tells him as he continues to pet him. Phainon feels his tears dripping into his scalp, but doesn’t dare to look up. “It told me that all those that died here become part of the space. We both did… which means we can’t leave anymore.”
“And if we somehow manage it, we’ll probably be dragged back here,” Phainon concludes bitterly, and Mydei hums in agreement. “The beasts… do you think we were supposed to turn into one when he both died?”
“It’s what I’ve surmised as well,” Mydei admits quietly. Then, “Should we do it? We probably won’t have another chance if we missed this one. The ritual needs a blood moon.”
“And somehow the temple has some writings on its walls telling us there’s going to be one tomorrow night,” Phainon snorts. “How convenient.”
Mydei remains silent, and they sit there, occupied by their own thoughts. “I love you, Mydei.”
“… and I love you.”
“I love Stella too.”
“So do I.”
“I don’t want to leave her yet,” Phainon confesses brokenly. “She’s still so young… she’s got her whole life ahead of her. I want us to be next to her as she grows. I want more time for all of us.”
“I know, Phainon,” Mydei leans down to embrace him. “I know.”
“I’m sorry for yelling at you.”
“It’s alright. Shall we go to bed?”
They decide to do the ritual.
That night, Phainon and I had decided that we would do it. If we no longer had any chance to leave, then there was no reason to hesitate. It’s for Stella’s sake, after all.
It’s the next morning now, and while I am writing this letter, Phainon has taken Stella out to the river for one last swim together.
They’ll be back by lunchtime, and then I’m going to ask my little star to help me cook. She’s been interested in cooking lately. Perhaps you can show her my old cookbooks, Aglaea. If you still have them.
After lunch, Phainon will tell her her favorite stories as she settles down for her afternoon nap. She likes to nap on the kline in the living room rather than her bed.
And while they do that, I’ll go to her room and pack her things: her favorite blanket and her bear. Both were gifts from Phainon and I respectively.
Once she falls asleep, we will place her in one of our baskets and bring her to the temple to do the ritual. She’ll be asleep the whole time, the sleeping herbs I slipped in her meal taking effect.
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.
I’ve come this far now, yet I don’t know what else to say.
This will be the last time you’ll hear from me, and I apologize. You’ve taken my people in on the condition that I partake in the Flamechase, yet I failed to uphold my end of the deal.
Stella is now the heir to Castrum Kremnos. Please convey this to Krateros. If he does not believe you, then you may show this letter. He may be stubborn, but he is a good man. He knows when to listen. Please tell him to treat my daughter kindly.
To Stella, please know that your Papa and Daddy love you dearly. We wish you the best in life. You might have a lot of pressure mounted on you as you grow up, but you don’t have to fulfill their expectations, little star. As long as you are happy, then Papa and Daddy are happy as well.
Aglaea has to look away. These words are clearly not for her, and yet something compels her to look back. And that’s when she spots it: a different handwriting below Mydeimos’. Perhaps its not as regal as his, but its clean and familiar.
It’s Phainon’s.
Stella, we are so sorry for leaving you so soon, but know that you are our most precious baby, our little star, our darling. We love you so much, Stella.
We might not be here with you, but you can trust that we’ll be watching you all the way from the nether realm. We can’t wait to see you embrace your destiny. I’m sure it’s as radiant as you are.
All you need to do is live a happy life with no regrets. That’s all that matters to us.
Love, Phainon of Aedes Elysiae and Mydeimos of Castrum Kremnos
P.S. Aglaea, if you are still reading this, then I’ve come to fulfill the promise I made years ago. I know Mydei and I aren’t married but… will you be the godmother to my kid?
Aglaea can hear his voice as if they had this conversation just yesterday. His boisterous laugh, his charming voice, and that ridiculous confidence of his as he bragged about his good looks.
“If Mydei and I were to have a kid, would you be their godmother?”
Yes, Phainon, she thinks. I’ll be her godmother, you silly child.
Phainon may not be hers, but she had taken him under her wing for years. She had taught him the fundamentals of swordsmanship, schooled him in Okheman etiquette, and let him cry on her shoulder. He was her ward, if nothing else. She had grown fond of him, and missed him like a lost limb. She does even more so, now, knowing that he was truly gone.
She carefully rolls the letter back up and hands it to a waiting garmentmaker. “Keep it in my safe,” she instructs, and it bows.
She stands to join the others in the water, watching Stella’s face light up when she sees her. Yes, the storm might not have truly passed, but Aglaea will be here for her when it hits.
And so will everyone else.
You don’t have to worry much, Phainon, Mydei. Your daughter will be cherished by us, she thinks.
(Unseen by everyone is a pair of beetles up high in the banister, one red and one blue, huddling side-by-side as they watch the lovely view below.)
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“You remember what to do, right?” Mydei asks, smiling at Phainon like he wasn’t asking him if he remembered how to end his life.
Phainon swallows, his grip on the dagger shaky. “I do.”
They’re both kneeling on the altar, where the ritual said they needed to perform the sacrifice. The altar must be bathed in their life’s essence, it said. The lives of two for the freedom of one.
It was a cruel ritual. As if it was tailor-made for them.
He turns to look at Stella who is peacefully sleeping soundly in her basket a few feet away from them. In her arms she clutches her only toy. This will be the last time he sees her.
They’ve placed her on the door-shaped pattern on the floor. Stella’s exit, her only way out of this dreadful place. He misses her already.
“She’ll be alright,” Mydei assures him, also looking at her. “We’ve prepared her enough. She’ll know what to do.”
“But what if something goes wrong on the other side? What if the corrupted titankin are back, and are just waiting to pounce on the first living thing they see?”
“Stella is safe in her basket. They won’t find her. We’ve masked her scent, and she knows how to hide whenever beasts are around. She’ll know to do the same with roaming titankin.”
Phainon looks at him doubtfully.
“Trust her, Phainon. Not only does she have good instincts, she is also very clever. She is a survivor. She will make it to Okhema.”
Phainon lets out a deep sigh and finally focuses back on their task, looking straight into his love’s eyes. Mydei squeezes his free hand, grounding him.
“Remember to aim precisely at my tenth thoracic vertebrae. It’s my weak spot…”
“…and the only way to kill you,” Phainon finishes in a whisper. “I know, Mydei.”
Mydei goes quiet for a few seconds, and Phainon regrets snapping at him instantly. Before he can apologize, Mydei lets out a wistful sigh. “I’m sorry for making you do this. I know it’s not easy.”
“It’s…” Phainon cannot even lie and say it was fine, because it was really not. He’s imagined many things with Mydei, but never this. He never thought he’d end the life of the man he adores with his own hands. “It’s the only way.”
Mydei leans forward, bringing Phainon into one last embrace. He hugs him back, one hand on the small of his back, and the other poising the dagger against Mydei’s weakspot.
“I love you, Khaslana,” Mydei says, voice wobbly, like he’s trying to hold back tears.“I’m glad that it’s you. Until the very end.”
Phainon can feel his tears slipping down his cheeks. He can feel Mydei’s rapid heartbeat against his, and knowing it will slow down to a stop in the next few minutes breaks his heart. “I love you too, Mydeimos. Until the very end.”
[One day, you shall die with a wound on your back.]
Then, he plunges the dagger into his tenth thoracic vertebrae. Mydei makes a soft noise of pain, tensing in Phainon’s arms, then goes limp.
Phainon knows what it means. He’s gone now. Truly.
He lays Mydei on his back, letting the altar absorb his golden ichor. His eyes are closed, and there’s a faint hint of a smile on his face. Phainon can almost pretend that he’s only fast asleep.
The door-shaped pattern begins to glow, but it is not enough to open it. Phainon will have to offer his blood but… he knows he’s stalling, but some part of him wants to believe that this was all a sick joke, that Mydei was going to come back to them, and they’d all go home in that little home they’d made for themselves.
He waits for a few more minutes. Mydei does not come back.
Truly resigned now, he lays next to Mydei and carelessly slits wounds all over his arms, making sure they’re open and bleeding heavily.
His will be a slow death, but he needs to hold on for as long as he could. He needs to make sure that Stella had truly gone through the portal, and that he hadn’t just killed Mydei for nothing.
He can feel his life fading, but thankfully, the glow under Stella’s blanket grows stronger, and stronger, filling the room with bright light and blinding Phainon.
The next time he opens his eyes, Stella is gone. All that’s left on top of the door-shaped pattern are images of pink butterflies.
Good. She made it through… Goodbye, Stella. Please live a long and fulfilling life.
[All shall bid farewell to one, and that person alone will witness the miracle.]
Phainon was truly alone now, dying in a temple of an unknown deity. He had witnessed his little star finally escaping their prison. Something both Phainon and Mydei had thought was less and less possible as the years had gone by.
With the last of his strength, he wraps his arms around Mydei’s body. Strangely, he isn’t afraid to die like this. Instead, he feels relieved. That they had managed to save their daughter, and that he and Mydei died together.
Before he closes his eyes for good, Phainon thinks he sees a woman’s silhouette. She comes nearer, and he sees her multicolored eyes shine with compassion.
“How romantic… Do not fret, Mydeimos and Khaslana. Your sacrifice will not be in vain. I will keep you safe… until the day you and your daughter shall reunite.”
When Phainon closes his eyes, all that greets him is white.