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 Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 4:59 pm
When the wind blew across the world of Arcalís, most often, it fell only on the ears of the dead. Dead trees, their branches weighed down with piles of snow. Dead cities, their streets empty and many of them buried beneath frost and ice. Dead temples, long converted into makeshift mausoleums, full of dead people, most of whom likely hadn’t heard reality calling to them even when they had been alive. In more advanced stages, the Chaos that had come to Arcalís had prevented its victims from hearing everything really happening around them.
Any sound got replaced with the sounds of their own fears and troubles, conjured up by Chaos as it had drained them dry.
Tonight, the wind around the Sixteen Gods Temple whistled past living ears for once. It had likely been months since that had happened, if not a year. Perhaps two years? Lilitu Hi’skaryota did not know for certain how long his most recent excursion down to his world’s southern reaches had taken him. His body ached after several long days of travel, but it hardly felt that different from his normal state of being. Everything had ached for so long, Lilitu hardly remembered what it felt like to exist without some kind of pain. Spasms in this muscle or the other. Pangs behind the eyes. Throbbing that felt as though it came from the marrow of Lilitu’s bones.
Comfort found its ways to blossom amidst such suffering, though: at least he was alive.
Whatever else had happened, Lilitu was alive. However many others had perished, Lilitu remained. No matter how lonely his vigil, the world of Arcalís still had one fool who would fight for it. And regardless of how vicious the pain of his survival grew—regardless of how acutely his body felt that pain, so often thumping through him and rippling out from his chest with every sickening beat of his heart—Lilitu refused to yield until he had no more fight left in him. He would not—he could not—succumb in the way that the Chaos here clearly wanted him to do. Even if they were not alive to know it, everyone who had ever resented Lilitu for being so much his mother’s son depended on him to honor their deaths with that same tenacity.
Hence the need to travel, to traverse his world in search of something (someone)—anything (anyone)—that he could still save.
Ever since cremating Mauritz Yurak—the last survivor of their world and their people, excluding Lilitu himself—Lilitu had traveled his world, searching for anything he could. He’d wanted to start so much earlier, when perhaps he could have still saved someone. Regardless of Mauritz’s protests—everyone had already evacuated north, or so he insisted, and if they had failed to do so, then so much the worse for them—making their senshi hunker down to remain in one place hadn’t seemed in the best interests of Arcalís’s people. Yet, Lilitu had stayed. Had given Mauritz his way on that point, so he would not fret himself sick with the fear of Lilitu doing anything rash or dangerous somewhere Mauritz could neither see nor protect him.
So that Mauritz would not lash out, his worry giving rise to anger as it did so easily. So that he would not, in lieu of Lilitu—or Chrysanthos, at the time anyway—to argue with, turn any violent outbursts on their people, the people both of them had sworn, in different ways, to protect. So that Mauritz would not hasten their people’s slow destruction at Chaos’s hands by wreaking havoc of his own on people who did not deserve that wrath.
Instead of survivors, Lilitu had found corpses. Instead of strongholds, he had found wastelands. Instead of anybody he could save, he’d found people waiting for last rites that had never come because no one had been left to administer them.
Not until their useless senshi had finally arrived, so many years too late, and saw them properly cremated, their ashes properly interred.
As Lilitu drew deep, heavy breaths, staring down at the Sixteen Gods Temple, the sepulchral urn he carried felt heavier than it ever had. He’d worn it on a chain around his neck since the cremation, an old Arcalian tradition for romantic partners of the deceased. Even without knowing how many years had passed like this, Lilitu knew that it must’ve been long enough. He could’ve stopped carrying Mauritz with him by now. He could’ve put the urn in one of the countless shrines or temples that he could still access on this world, for safekeeping with the others he’d cremated in his travels. He would have betrayed nothing of Mauritz’s memory to let him go. To enshrine his ashes and at least let go of them, if not of Mauritz himself.
Yet, as he started down the hill toward the temple, tight-packed snow and ice crunching beneath his boots, Lilitu clutched at the glass that contained everything left of Mauritz. So cold it burned his fingers, the urn offered him no extra protection for the journey through the forest, toward the valley. Hand trembling around the urn’s neck and the metal fasten up at the top, Lilitu refused to let it go.
Even through the pointlessness, it felt better, holding fast to the urn like this. When the whispers that plagued every dark place on Arcalís started, Lilitu felt as though he could have stood against them, against the Chaos that gave rise to them. Little slips of words that snuck into the spaces where you felt alone, sounding almost but not quite like people you knew. Hints of what would always come for you eventually. What had always come for Lilitu, no matter where he’d wandered on his world, no matter how much he had thought himself entirely alone.
The descent toward the temple was worse than anywhere else he’d traveled. From the moment he left the peak and wove his way into the trees, Lilitu heard the whispers he knew all too well. They grew stronger and clearer as he moved between branches and eons worth of snow and detritus. Never progressing to full words, the whispers mocked. They threatened. They felt like naysayers bidding Lilitu to give up already, to abandon his fight after so long, to let them win even though the only things he had left were this war he waged against the Chaos that had stolen everything from him and the ******** isolation.
The isolation that ached in his chest like pangs of hunger. Throbbed like a migraine that refused to yield. Flared up at the worst moments, digging its talons into every part of Lilitu’s insides that it could reach. Always, every single time, clawing through him with the reminder that everyone was gone. Those he had loved. Those he had hated. The senators with whom he had so viciously fought, thumping his feet and challenging them to do better, to actually live up to the ideals to which they so often paid lip-service. And Mauritz, who had somehow managed to be all three of those things at once and so much more besides.
Maybe halfway down, Lilitu focused on powering up. He had dwindled as Sailor Arcalís, during this whole affair. Once, he had worn the back-wings of an eternal senshi. But as the Chaos had ravaged his world, his power as a senshi had diminished. Arcalís could only guess why. For the moment, it didn’t matter, or at least, not nearly as much as it mattered that he get closer to the Temple.
It had probably been years since he’d last gotten inside the Temple. Pressing forward, Arcalís tried to ignore the nearby chill—a spot where the ever-present cold felt even deeper, where it made him shiver that much harder—and continue toward his goal. Little moments like that led to encounters with the Chaos that had infested his world. After so long fighting, he recognized them all too well. How could he not? But he couldn’t get trapped in this. He couldn’t afford to get trapped in this.
The meteor rested in the heart of the Sixteen Gods Temple, unmoved from where the priests had placed it after it had fallen to their world. Feeling snow slush up onto his feet, Arcalís struggled not to think about how many times he’d tried to beat an answer out of that accursed meteor. Focus on the snow, he told himself, and isn’t it annoying?
Truly, it was. More eager to swallow his senshi pumps than his traveling boots, despite the protection that his power as Sailor Arcalís afforded him, the snow seemed to want him bogged down in it. Trapped in some waist-deep, frozen sludge that wouldn’t allow him to move forward. Wouldn’t allow him to get past the forest and into the valley. Wouldn’t allow him to reach the temple. Arcalís’s pace slowed as he fought through the snow, but he refused to yield. Refused to stop.
If he stopped, that was as good as allowing his world to die, entirely consumed by Chaos.
If he stopped, then he was lost and all hope for Arcalís the world along with him.
The whispers on the wind had never stopped, but as Arcalís drew closer to the temple, they seemed to change. Still never becoming full words—at least, not any words that he could make out clearly—they sounded different regardless. Something about them felt warmer than usual, fonder, more intimate. As if they came from a specific voice, and Arcalís didn’t need to struggle to identify it.
“Lex,” he exhaled, chest heaving with the effort of fighting to move forward. “Lex?!”
But that didn’t make sense, Arcalís knew well. Lex—Sailor Madriu to most of the universe—he couldn’t be here.
Arcalís hadn’t been able to reach Madriu for years, by the time people started evacuating north to join Lilitu near this same Sixteen Gods Temple. For all he had known, Lex had long since perished. He would have died on his own world, perhaps fighting for his own people or under so many potential circumstances. If his transmissions to Arcalís had seemed to get out successfully, then Lex might have died thinking that Lilitu no longer cared for him, no longer cared about their mission to create justice and liberation for the Madriuan people after so many ages of painful, degrading subjugation by the Arcalians.
If the Chaos on Arcalís prevented any such transmissions from even getting out, then hopefully, Lex would not have thought such things, though Lilitu imagined he still would have worried. Because Lex did worry about His People, even if he often didn’t want anyone to realize it.
Either way, Lex had likely withered and passed on by now, sending his starseed on to a new senshi, as was the proper cycle of their lives. After so long, he must have been granted the mercy of death and reincarnation, in the same way that should have happened to Lilitu-Arcalís. In the same way that had eventually come for Mauritz.
He didn’t like this, the way he caught himself wishing death on Lex, his dearest friend. Yet, having survived for so long, Arcalís couldn’t hope for anything else. He hoped that Grieve had perished and reincarnated, too. That Alexis had fallen and found their way into a new life. Kaifeng had already perished by the time Arcalís had lost contact with the rest of the universe, and while dying of grief did not sound particularly desirable, Arcalís hoped that Helene had met such a fate. Better that he—that everyone from back then—should die and get another chance, slate clean, than need to live on and suffer the indignities of time.
Clenching his fingers more tightly around the frozen glass of Mauritz’s urn, Arcalís stopped in his tracks. The trees around him were growing thinner in number, and the temple didn’t seem so far away. Yet, a chill slammed into him, full-force. Almost knocked him back, off his feet. As he shuddered, everything in him rattling, all the way down to his bone marrow, a memory of his resurfaced:
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Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 5:02 pm
The shelter wasn’t warm. Had never properly been warm. Fighting to keep the fire lit took more effort than Lilitu wanted to admit, but day in and day out, he did it anyway. Whatever it took, he kept the firelight gleaming, sometimes watching its reflection in Mauritz’s old dagger—the family heirloom from his mother’s side—as he fought to keep himself awake.
In the scant hours of light that ever blessed Lilitu, he foraged for whatever scraps he could find—which wasn’t much—and tried to make something out of them. All the animals had died off, whether from the unrelenting cold or from becoming food. Edible plants were now all but nonexistent, and they would too likely disappear soon, joining the animals of Arcalís in extinction. Even an almost-nothing was better than a total lack.
Yet, nothing had helped. Whatever effort Lilitu had put into this, Mauritz still lay now at Lilitu’s knees, pale as the snow around them. His once obsidian hair had all gone white, and so had the fur on his ears. His body’s frame remained as large as it had ever done, but the planes of his body and face had all hollowed out as famine had made him thin. Even in the wrinkles, it seemed as though Mauritz had nothing to spare. They might as well have been painted on his skin by a child, creating their idea of what a grandparent looked like.
Daubing sweat off Mauritz’s forehead did nothing to help, though. Nothing to erase those lines from Mauritz’s skin and even less to ease Lilitu’s mind. Did the least to ease Mauritz’s suffering, as each breath came to him more labored than the last. As his lungs protested more and more this idea that they should allow him the bare minimum requirements for a life.
From up here, listening to Mauritz hack and cough below him, Lilitu felt heavy. Felt the weight of so many years dragging down his shoulders, his spine, his entire body. He traced his fingertips down the high arch of Mauritz’s cheekbone, the hollow pit where his face had once looked so full and proud.
Would they have been in this situation if not for him, Lilitu wondered, resting his hand ever so delicately on Mauritz’s cheek. Holding the soft point of contact, even as Mauritz’s coughing grew worse. If Lilitu had insisted that they stay put instead of listening to Mauritz, would they be where they were right now? Might things have gone better? After so long enduring the Chaos from one stronghold, Mauritz had suddenly wanted to investigate rumors of a safe house somewhere to the east of where they’d holed up. Should Lilitu have told him “No” more firmly?
Should he have believed the idea had even come from Mauritz? What if he had pressed harder? Refused to let up?
“Sweet boy,” Mauritz managed to spit out, between his coughs. His voice, ragged as the cliffs out here in the northern reaches, pulled Lilitu from his infinite questions of what if. Made him look back down at the man who depended on him.
“I’m here, Mauritz,” he said, voice gentler than even his touch. “I’m here with you.”
Trembling with effort, Mauritz’s arm unfurled. Lilitu had to lean forward, to help Mauritz’s hand find his face. Even when Mauritz’s fingers ghosted up against his skin, Lilitu barely felt the intended caress. Despite knowing better, he found it hard, in moments like this, to recall the ferocity with which Mauritz had once wielded his dagger, the fear that he had struck in other Arcalians by simply fingering the sheath. That he could have had such strength in his hands, it seemed impossible.… Even knowing better from having personally seen different, Lilitu struggled to feel the truth in that idea.……
“Ever the beauty,” Mauritz spluttered, rough fingertips barely grazing Lilitu’s skin. “I knew you would be.… From the moment we first met, I knew.……”
“Save your breath for breathing, Mauritz,” Lilitu told him. “Don’t waste these moments on sweet nothings.”
Especially not nothings that could not possible have been accurate. Lilitu had barely been twelve years old when he’d first met Mauritz, then an aide to the senator he would eventually unseat in the next election. Still a chibi, Lilitu had hardly been a cute child, much less a pretty one. Never mind him being one whom Mauritz could have known would grow up into some ravishing beauty.
“Don’t need your beauty right now, sweet boy.” Mauritz tugged on Lilitu’s heavy coat until he had eye-contact from his sweet boy. “Chrysanthos. It’s getting bad again—”
“What, your breathing?” He’d barely slept in days, refusing to rest too long lest Mauritz never again wake up. If Lilitu had missed something–
“Not that.” Mauritz tried to explain, but before he could, another round of coughing seized him. Deeper than the ones before it, these coughs made Lilitu’s own chest ache with sympathy. And Mauritz’s grip on his parka tightened. “The whispers, sweet boy.… Those accursed…… We know what they mean.”
Lilitu felt his mouth go dry. He made himself nod, but trying to form his own words felt like an ask too far beyond him, now.
“Don’t let them take me, sweet boy.” Mauritz coughed, but only once. It sounded decisive. The sign of a mind already well made up. “Kill me yourself. Before they can. Don’t……” Shivers seized him, followed by another string of little coughs. “Don’t let them have my mind.… Let me die as myself.…”
“Mauritz……” Tears stung at the edges of Lilitu’s eyes. “Please, don’t ask me for that.… Please, you could still pull through—”
“Not this time, sweet boy.” The bleary-eyed smile he gave Lilitu seemed faded around the edges. But with visible strain at the corners of Mauritz’s thick lips, a sign of how much effort he was putting into this attempt at showing bravery. “Have I not given you everything for which you asked me?”
No, in point of fact, Mauritz had done no such thing. Lilitu knew that. He hadn’t listened when Lilitu had tried to say that he had no more right to call himself Chrysanthos Samara. Even though the right to decide one’s own name was one that the Arcalians had always prized most highly. A little moment of individual self-determination for the sake of a healthier and more cohesive whole.
But right now, Lilitu knew better than to make that point. Getting Mauritz angry would only kill him faster. Or worse, make it easier for him to succumb to the Chaos.
“How do you want it done,” he asked, voice barely above a whisper. “Poison might be hard to come by—”
“I don’t care,” Mauritz coughed out, oblivious to Lilitu gently shifting the layers of cloth covering his chest. “I don’t, sweet boy. Just do it quickly. Now, before your Mauritz is no—”
The heirloom dagger fit perfectly between Mauritz’s fourth and fifth ribs. He gasped. Croaked. As the tears spilled over, burning trails down his cheeks, Lilitu twisted the blade. He didn’t know if it would speed the death along. He didn’t know if it would only hurt. But it felt right to do, somehow.
Soon after, came the rattle, and the light left Mauritz’s eyes—
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Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 5:03 pm
“STOP IT!!!”
Arcalís screamed into the darkness. Wind whipped every which way, blowing his skirt and collar as though it meant to tear them off. Where had this black fog come from? He hadn’t seen any black fog from up at the peak. But—a light.
It seemed so close.
He could have asked himself why there would be a light in the temple. How long had it been since he’d come here? No one else could have lit any torches, or fired up the old magical lamps. Why would the light have been coming from the temple? Logically, it made no sense. If Arcalís had allowed himself to pause a moment and think about this, he would have recognized that, at best, he wasn’t running where he thought he was.
At worst, he was running right into a trap.
But Arcalís didn’t stop to think about that. About any of it. He had fought for so long. He had traveled every corner of his world and found only devastation waiting for him. After so many deaths—after everything he had lost—if he could only press on into the temple, maybe this time, he could destroy the meteor that had fallen to Arcalís so long ago, just before all the troubles had started.
Maybe this time, he could set his planet free from Chaos.
Right at the edge of the light, he hesitated. His breaths came in deep, but they felt so shallow. As Arcalís threw himself headlong into the light—as he surrendered and let it take him—he shivered with satisfaction at the thought that he would finally end this nightmare. Soon, his heels would clack on the smooth stone floors of the temple, and he would get this all done.
When he could breathe more freely, Arcalís heard snow and ice crunch beneath his shoes.
Opening his eyes, he trembled. Shivered again as he drank in the sights around him.
This was not his people’s Sixteen Gods Temple.
The buildings that towered over him felt more like those in the capital city than in his world’s northern reaches. But the architecture style—he didn’t recognize it at all. The bright lights everywhere didn’t look like any that had ever been built on Arcalís. Worse than that, he felt Chaos.
Twirling around, looking every which way, Arcalís couldn’t tell where the aura was coming from. It felt different from the Chaos on his world, too. This…… Wherever he’d wound up, did they have a Chaos infestation to deal with as well?
Arcalís laughed, the taste of it bitter on his tongue and the sound like ice fracturing. Carefully, he unhooked the chain that kept Mauritz’s urn around his neck. He placed the urn into his subspace pocket. Until he had a better sense of where he was and what he’d gotten himself into this time, he didn’t want to risk losing something so precious.
After all, he had nothing else left to lose.wc: 3,705.
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