Chapter Text
Phainon’s life barely changed after he broke into the real world.
That first week after Amphoreus joined the universe had been a haze, a maelstrom of such conflicting emotions that he’d spent half the time laughing, half the time crying. He was alive. They were all alive: Chrysos Heirs, Trailblazers, everyone. The streets of Okhema had been filled with song, dance, and more food and wine than Phainon had ever known existed, and he’d downed a bottle and danced with them. “Deliverer,” the people had called him.
He'd visited Aedes Elysiae. He’d run through the wheat fields hand-in-hand with Cyrene until they both lay breathless on the grass, so many words on the tip of his tongue but neither of them saying anything. How could they, after what they’d done? The sky had been different. The sun, too, more of a muted white than a brilliant gold, but it was home. It had been home.
He’d travelled the planet. The problem with Amphoreus going from digital simulation to physical location was that all of a sudden, geography had to make sense, wrapped to a globe than a scrolling plane. No more Evernight Veil, no more River of Souls, and no more Vortex of Genesis. The places that remained were concrete, tangible, and they’d barely survived the emergence.
Phainon had helped replant the Grove of Epiphany, pressing seeds into dirt with his bare hands. He’d rebuilt Styxia’s walls brick by brick. Everywhere he’d gone, “Deliverer.”
They didn’t remember.
The people from beyond the sky had come. They’d arrived in gleaming spaceships and dazzling uniforms, goodwill on their tongues and greed in their eyes. For all Phainon’s training in politics and rhetoric, he’d been out of his depth. Aglaea and Cerydra had handled them, and Phainon…
Phainon had left.
Amphoreus had been real for two months before Phainon fled, because he remembered. Each time he closed his eyes he saw golden blood and the world aflame, and that was him. That would always be him. Better he leave his home behind, then.
The universe was so much larger than he’d imagined. He dived through a planet of endless oceans, populated by amphibious fish-people, and soared through a gas giant colonised by insects. He trudged over a moon made of ice and wandered a hotel made of dreams. He travelled the furthest reaches of the cosmos, and everywhere he went—all those worlds—still called for a deliverer.
It was ironic, in a way, that the first place he encountered the Antimatter Legion was on a dead planet. He’d stood in a city of rust and shadow, and for a moment he’d been back in Amphoreus, facing down those abominations from the Black Tide. For a moment, he’d been overwhelmed.
The Legion hadn’t stood a chance. Phainon had razed their fleet to the ground, and that was how the universe first came to whisper:
A new Lord Ravager, one who turned his blade on the very Destruction that had given him birth.
A new blessing. A new calamity.
Khaslana.
He saw signs of the other Chrysos Heirs. Hysilens was the most common, any world connected by the IPC always plastered with posters and advertisements for her latest single. Professor Anaxa would appear in newspaper articles every so often, inevitably due to some new academic spat. Once, Phainon witnessed the coronation of some minor queen, and he’d known beyond doubt that the dress she’d worn had been sewn by Aglaea.
Amphoreus had established itself to the interstellar public, its people making a name for themselves. Thriving.
Phainon remembered. They did not.
They tried to find him. Cipher got close, once or twice, but no matter how fast she was, she never caught him. Cyrene was the only one who managed it, in the end, but she didn’t try to convince him to go back. She understood, after all. She remembered, too.
They bumped into each other, every now and then, and Phainon treasured those moments. It was almost like the dreams they’d had as children, the two of them travelling the world and taking all it had to offer, except they were both Emanators, now. They were both more.
Destruction and Remembrance.
Worldbearing and Time.
Five years passed.
#
The best part about saving a planet was the celebrations. No matter where it was, no matter the culture nor species, if there were survivors, there was joy. Phainon lived for these moments, that beat of silence as the last enemy fell and the dawn’s rays pierced the night sky. The ragged breaths, the sagging limbs, then—shouts, cries, laughter. Parties.
Trabar-5 was a sweltering place, a desert planet sculpted from blue stone and silver sands. Up until two days ago, it had been beset by the Antimatter Legion. Phainon had carved through them like a hot knife through butter.
He did his best to wipe all the Doomsday Beast blood off his cloak before he stepped into the city, grimacing at the way the fluid had congealed in half-dried clumps. A launderer, that was what he needed. A launderer and a bath, then maybe some hot food.
“The Red Lord protect you,” said one of the guards as Phainon passed, a grin on his face.
“And you!”
Phainon wasn’t sure who this Red Lord was, but the guard’s grin only widened so he must have said the correct response. Night had settled in, two moons high in the sky, and although cooler, the air was still muggy against his skin. Phainon slipped through the crowds with his hood up and his vest unbuttoned, but even then his clothes still stuck to him with sweat. Strings of lanterns illuminated wide streets choked with people.
Phainon loved it. He exchanged smiles and clapped arms with passersby, playing with children and flirting with adults, and when a tambourine beat started playing, he found himself gladly whisked into a ring of dancers.
A young woman spun around him, her dark locs threaded with glittering gemstones, and she didn’t seem to mind the blood.
“You’re a terrible dancer,” she said.
“Can’t a man have two left feet in peace?” Phainon said.
“On a night like this?” She laughed. “Come, let me teach you.”
She was a good teacher, as it turned out, and by the time the song ended and a new one began, Phainon could hold some semblance of a rhythm. The two of them parted and Phainon lost her in the crowd, but a delicious smell curled down the street and Phainon’s stomach rumbled. Hot food first, then, and a bath after.
The city was carved into a cliff face, streets sloping gently upwards until they met a zig-zag of stairs, and at each level a new group of merchants had set up stalls. Colourful cloths hung over houses carved into the blue rock itself, and where the stone had been weathered by countless feet, the night sky glimmered in smooth reflections.
“… it was a Galaxy Ranger!” said a young voice. “I saw him! He went pow!”
A pair of kids clambered up the stairs, both of them dressed in bright purple tunics. It was a boy that had spoken, a toy gun in his hands, and the girl he was with folded her arms.
“Nuh uh,” she said. “It was the Deliverer.”
“Who?”
“Kas…” The girl frowned. “Kasa…”
“Khaslana,” Phainon supplied.
“Yeah!” The girl beamed. “My mum told me about it. He saves planets like ours.”
The corners of Phainon’s lips curled. He must be doing something right, then, if those were the kinds of stories being told about him.
The boy scoffed. “Don’t tell me you actually believe that stuff. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a good Lord Ravager.”
“But…” The girl turned to Phainon, her eyes wide.
Phainon ruffled her hair. “Listen to your friend, kiddo. Lord Ravagers are scary.”
The girl scrunched her brow, hmphed, then kicked Phainon in the shin. “Are not!”
“Leena!” the boy said. “You can’t just kick people!”
“I’ll kick you, too,” Leena declared, and then the pair were off again, racing back down the steps. Phainon wasn’t sure whether they were playfighting or actually fighting, and for a moment he hesitated, but he shook his head and continued on. Not his children; not his responsibility.
Phainon finally tracked down the source of that delicious smell on the next level up: a small stall was selling fried cakes, crispy golden and sprinkled in all manner of spices. He swallowed. The triplets would love this. Mydei would have…
Phainon shook himself back into the present and approached the stall. “Three—”
“Six cakes, please,” said a voice next to him. “Two citrus, two cardamom, and two pistachio.”
“Right away, ma’am.” The stall worker nodded.
Phainon smiled so wide his cheeks hurt. “Cyrene.”
“Phainon.” Cyrene smirked. “How’s your shin?”
“You saw that?”
“I got it on camera.” She winked.
“Cyrene!” A bolt of panic cut through him. “You can’t—”
“Chill, dude, I won’t share it with anyone,” Cyrene said. “It’s just funny.”
Phainon glanced sideways at her. “You’ve been spending too much time with March.”
“There is no such thing.”
Cyrene had changed over the past years. She hadn’t grown any taller, of course, but her blue eyes had more of a sparkle in them, more hope. She’d braided her pink hair today, fastening it with small blue gemstones in the local fashion, and she wore a linen robe tied in a way that made the folds resemble feathers.
“Do you like it?” Cyrene flicked her hair and the gemstones rattled.
“You look gorgeous as always,” Phainon said.
Cyrene laughed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
The worker boxed their cakes and handed them over wrapped in a yellow cloth, and Phainon took them with a smile. He followed Cyrene further upwards, through narrow streets and steep staircases until they reached a small alcove near the top of the city, overlooking the shifting desert below. The smoking hulk of a Legion ship was still visible on the horizon, but with the way moonlight glinted off pale white dunes, it was almost breath-taking.
Phainon unwrapped the box and set it on the floor between them where they sat.
“You look like you haven’t bathed in days,” Cyrene said.
“Oi.” Phainon scowled.
She sniffed. “Smell like it, too.”
“I hate you.” Phainon took one of the cakes and shoved it into her mouth, the cake crumbling as Cyrene spluttered around it. He bit into his own cake before Cyrene could return the favour, sugar and cardamom spilling across his tongue, and it tasted so good he moaned. “These are amazing!”
“I’m going to go back and buy twenty boxes,” Cyrene said.
“You have that many friends?”
She stuck her tongue out. “I have more than you.”
Phainon faltered at that. It was true.
Cyrene’s smile fell. “Sorry.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
It was an awkward silence that stretched between them, familiar but no more comfortable for it. Phainon tried one of the citrus cakes. The flavour was more sour than he’d been expecting.
“Did you know some of the tribes here have a way of working memoria into gemstones?” Cyrene gazed out across the desert. “They say there’s a moonstone that holds memories of the first ever person to step foot on Trabar-5.”
“That’s what you’re here to find?” Phainon said.
“I’ve already found it.” Cyrene patted her pocket. “I saw you on the battlefield and thought I’d say hello.”
“Hello.” Phainon chuckled.
Cyrene watched him, moonlight catching on her aquamarine irises, and for a moment her eyes seemed to glow. She cupped his cheek and traced her thumb under his eye. Phainon could feel her pulse through her fingertips.
“It’s been so long,” Cyrene whispered.
Phainon closed his eyes. “Why are you really here?”
Something rustled, and Phainon opened his eyes again to find Cyrene slipping him a piece of paper. “For you.”
He opened it with a frown. “Coordinates?”
“Check it out for me?”
“Why?”
“Please, Phainon,” Cyrene said. “You… You’ll see. You’ll understand.”
Phainon committed the coordinates to memory then folded the piece of paper until it fit into his coat pocket. A lonely wind rushed through the alcove, bringing with it tiny grains of sand that scratched against his skin.
“This had better be worth it,” he said.
Cyrene rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “I hope so, too.”
#
It took a whole month for Phainon to finally visit those coordinates. He hadn’t meant to leave it for that long, but a Stellaron had been discovered on Trabar-2 and Phainon had already been in the solar system, so he’d decided to observe. He hadn’t even had to take action; the Stellaron Hunters had cleaned it up in mere weeks.
So here he was, at a space port just barely at the edge of IPC space, on the distant arm of a spiralling galaxy. A small planet rotated down below and Phainon’s brow furrowed.
1224.5, 89.3, 778.0.
That was all Cyrene’s note said. No name, no label, nothing.
Phainon had looked it up, of course. Planet name: Rodi. Population: 2.42 billion. Main export: barrum, a red grain that gave Rodi its crimson hue. It had been colonised for thousands of years already, and humans were the only sapient species on it. The only unusual thing was how small the population was for a planet its size, but that was hardly something to be concerned about.
Was the Antimatter Legion there? Was it another Lord Ravager? Something worse?
Why had Cyrene sent him here?
The shuttle ride to the surface went without incident, only a handful of others on the ship, and landed to a temperate climate, a warm breeze rustling across his skin.
“Welcome to Kaira Major,” an announcement said, the space port’s speakers interfacing with his synaesthesia beacon to translate the words for him. “We hope you enjoy your stay on Rodi, and thank you for choosing Gennai Travel.”
Phainon’s grasp of Sanu, the IPC common tongue, was basic at best, so he’d jumped at the chance to have the synaesthesia beacon implanted in him. It came in handy during times like this, because scanning the signs around him, Phainon had no idea what any of them said. The space port exited onto a wide square of white cobbles and buildings made from neat yellow bricks, trees lining the roadside with leaves a brilliant scarlet.
He checked his nav: still thirty miles away from the exact coordinates.
A quick query with the staff at the space-port had Phainon a town name—Ypolaia—and directions to a train station, but he soon ran into the second unusual thing about Rodi: apparently, the majority of the population did not have synaesthesia beacons.
The man at the ticket office had the bushiest eyebrows Phainon had ever seen, and he spoke Sanu so fast that Phainon was only able to make out the word “you”.
“I don’t understand,” Phainon managed to say. It was one of the only phrases he remembered under stress.
The man tried a different language. Phainon shook his head.
“Rodari?” The man switched languages again. “Don’t tell me we don’t speak anything in common.”
“That one!” Phainon said. “Rodari, yes! I can understand you.”
The man raised his eyebrows, a quite frankly astonishing feat. “Really?”
“It sounds like my mother tongue.” Rodari was eerily similar to Amphoreus’ common language, and Phainon was beginning to understand why Cyrene had sent him here. Was it a coincidence that their languages were so close? Rodi and Amphoreus were on opposite ends of the cosmos.
“Weird—” The man used a word Phainon didn’t recognise.
“What was that?”
“Similarity?” the man tried.
“Coincidence?” Phainon said.
From the look the man gave him, Rodari didn’t have that word.
“I’m trying to get to Ypolaia,” Phainon explained.
The man nodded, and Phainon finally managed to board a train. He sat in the corner of the carriage where he could keep an eye on both doors, but wherever Ypolaia was, the only people travelling there seemed to be geriatrics.
The carriage rattled as the train moved and Phainon leaned his head against the window. Fields of barrum stretched out before him, the stalks a soft gold just tinged red at the ends this time of year, and a turquoise river wound through the plains. Familiar. It was almost like the wheat fields of Aedes Elysiae. Heaviness spread through his limbs.
You’ll see, Cyrene had said. Phainon wasn’t sure he wanted to.
The train arrived just as the sun was beginning to set. Phainon stepped out to golden fields, the earthy scent of barrum clinging to the wind, and he held his hood down as his cloak billowed. A roof of corrugated iron covered the platform and the green paint on the train station door was beginning to flake, the hinges squeaking as Phainon pushed through. He crossed the station onto a small dirt road, cart tracks carved into the ground, and clouds of tiny insects flitted through the air.
Ypolaia was a small town. The roads from station to centre were barely cobbled, almost all the rooves thatched, and a dog chased a gaggle of laughing kids down a street. It was a rustic place, a homey one, and the adults Phainon did see were cheery and rosy-cheeked.
Phainon skirted around the town centre, avoiding the bustling square, and he kept his hood up. It was a normal town. Cyrene can’t have sent him all this way for a normal town.
A bell chimed, some kind of church rising up from the town centre. Horses brayed as farmers drove their carts in from the fields.
Nothing was off. Wasn’t that the most unusual thing of all?
The sun continued to fall, casting its amber rays through the sky, and Phainon was just resigning himself to the fact he might have to ask the locals questions after all when he found it. On the outskirts of Ypolaia, nestled against a small orchard, was a building.
A stone roof sloped over carved pillars, the style unmistakably Amphorean, and red and gold curtains fluttered in a gentle breeze. The windows were open. Phainon hid in the shade of a low tree, and he could just make out rows of dark wooden shelves inside. A sign to the front of the building displayed a single word:
“LIBRARY”
Phainon’s chest tightened. His fingers curled against the trunk of the tree, the bark gnarled and knotted beneath his touch.
The library doors flung open and a small boy dashed out, cackling madly. The doors swung open again and—
Phainon sucked in a breath.
Castorice, her cheeks flushed as she yelled after the boy. She wore a simple white blouse and purple skirt, the fabric falling in waves, and she called to someone still inside. Someone else joined her on the threshold.
Mydei.
A wine-red cardigan stretched over his bulk, his trousers tight, and a pair of small reading glasses perched on his nose. It was the first time Phainon had seen him without his armour, dressed in modern clothes, and to say he looked good would be an understatement.
Mydei smiled as he said something to Castorice and she laughed, punching him in the arm. Mydei wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Castorice leaned into him.
The woman who’s touch only brought death, hugging someone at last. The man forged into a weapon of war, finally at peace.
“If there’s a chance in the next life, you should come visit my library.”
Phainon left before either of them could see him.