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Fluixon pauses to wipe his brow, collecting the iron he had just mined and passing it up to Saps, who handed him a steak in return. “Do we have enough for full iron yet?”
“Only for one set.”
“I’ll get back to it then.”
“You really don’t have to.” Saps says, leaning against the cobblestone wall of the mine. “I’m not going to join your nation, you know that?”
“I know.” Flux laughs, “You’ve made it clear you’re a lone wolf.”
“Ugh, that makes me sound so cringe.” Saps squeezes his eyes shut momentarily. “I just don’t wanna get caught up in anything. I’ve had enough of all that, you know?”
Fluixon won’t pretend to really understand his friend. Saps had been through a struggle in the last event, and so it made sense the guy just wanted to relax this time through. “Sure bro. Keep cooking me steaks like this and I’ll keep you out of any trouble.”
Saps laughs, “Let’s get out of the mines for a minute. The sun is going down soon.”
Flux pockets his pickaxe and climbs the stairs to get out of the mine. The golden sunlight slants low into his eyes, and he pauses, leaning against the entrance to the mine. It seeps into him, smoothing out the anxieties of the starting days. “We’re going to have to leave soon. Me and the Luminarians, I mean.”
“I know.” Saps says, “but if it ever gets too much for you—if it’s getting to your head, you know you’re always welcome wherever I set up.”
Flux smiles, gazing out at the setting sun and its twinned reflection on the water. “Thanks.”
He turns his head and watches Saps as the other man sorts through his inventory. The evening sun makes everything more beautiful, and for a moment, Flux wonders if Saps is right, and he should avoid the politics of his event too. If him and Saps should find some deserted island and build a vacation home, just for the two of them.
“You good, bro?” Saps’ voice breaks him out of his thoughts, and Flux feels his face go hot as he realises he’s been caught staring.
“I’m good.” He chokes out. “It’s just a pretty sunset.”
“Yeah, it is.” Saps is staring Flux down as he speaks, and Flux can’t take it. He turns away, breaking the moment.
*
Saparata crawls away from the table, smoke and the scent of blood filling his nose. He pulls himself behind one of the sandstone pillars of his meeting house as screams of confusion and fear finally fill his ears. For a few seconds, all he heard was high pitched ringing and the panicked rasping of his own breath.
Someone’s dead. A number of people are dead. Items and blood are splattered across the floor, and dripstone spikes piece through several unmoving bodies. The Heads-Up-Display in the corner of Saps’ vision is going crazy with chat messages. Everyone is scared.
And Saps is too. He pulls himself up using the sandstone pillar beside him, sword in his free hand and shield already up in the other. “I didn’t do that!—I didn’t—!” He screams across the room, and a few people seem to hear him, turn to him. There’s hostility on their faces. Swords are out.
Through the smoke and chaos, Saps half runs-half stumbles down the steep, rocky hill he had built the meeting house atop of. He grabs onto a shrub halfway down to stop his fall and pulls his body underneath it, out of sight.
“Where’s Saps?” “Where did he go?” “Did Saps do this?” “We have to find him!” “Hunt him down!”
The voices overlapping in the chaos quickly change from bewildered and afraid to angry, and bloodthirsty. He can almost hear the scrape of swords and the clinking of armour over the screams of one of the injured leaders.
“Kill him!”
The last cry for violence spurs him into action, and he rolls down the rest of the slope, before crawling across the beach where someone had left a boat. Saps throws himself into it and rows away as fast as he can, and despite his blood dripping from scrapes across his arms and face, he’s moving fast.
With all the nations of Pandora after you, you get pretty good at running fast.
*
Fluixon leans across the spruce wood table, photos of leaders pinned to maps of territories and landmarks with frantic notes written all across. With each new notification on his HUD, he picks up one of the photographs and places it aside.
There’s two left, when the storm of messages has calmed. And Saparata. His photo is pinned to a file instead, lain off to the side. Flux’s heart is beating through his chest, but his mind is clear and calm. With each leader he kills, he saves a hundred lives. The posters and leaflets from smuggled across the water from Yggdrasil are still pinned carefully to the wall at his right, reminding him why he has to do this.
His allies stand on either side of him, and one of them speaks up. “We didn’t get all of the leaders.” Snowbird says, picking up the pile of ‘dead leader’ files and stacking them.
“Cass and ThreeBelow.” Flux pulls their photos to the centre of the table. “Seraphim is dead, but she was training you, Newkids. Can you get ThreeBelow?”
Newkids nods, shouldering his shield and sheathing his sword.
A few hours later, when most of his small group were by the furnaces, cooking something for dinner, the death-message came through on the HUD. While his crew cheered and clapped each other on the back, Flux carefully moved the picture across the table, flicking over it with his red-inked pen.
The messages in chat are increasingly distraught and paranoid, and when Flux ends up in Tricolour before the end of the day, he observes the builders start shoring up defences. He pauses to talk to one of them, and that’s how he gets the news of the end of construction on the Luminara bridge.
He smiles.
*
As soon as he enters The Commonwealth courthouse, the screams start.
“Murderer!” “Killer!” “Traitor!”
He holds his head high, helmet-less for all to see his identity. Saps takes his place at the stand and holds onto the lectern to hide the shake in his hands.
“Order! Order in my court! Let the trial begin
Thomas speaks to his guilt, and Saps feels rage rise inside of him. It’s all lies! It’s all— Saps wants to grab everyone and make them look at him and listen until they understand that he never wanted any of this.
“You killed our leaders. You destroyed our island. May your death today satisfy us all.” Zekor’s face is twisted with disgust, but Saps has to speak now. He has to repeat what he revised to himself the entire journey here from the Jungle Island.
He breathes in, and speaks, “All I ever wanted for this island was peace and cooperation between the nations. The loss at the meeting yesterday was extremely devastating and came out of nowhere,” Saps pauses, and swallows. He can’t let the emotions of losing so many friends get to him now. He can’t let the feeling of the walls closing in on him stop his speech. “But I can tell you right now, I’m innocent. It wasn’t me.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Saps can see someone shaking their head. They’ve already made up their minds about him.
“The leadership in Luminara helped me build the meeting area, and were the only people who knew about the area before the leadership meeting.”
He raises his head, staring at the judge defiantly. “That includes the prosecution himself, Thomas,—“ Gasps echo around the room, but he can’t stop now, “, Gotoga, Hvyrotation, Snowbird, and their ringleader, Fluixon.” The last word aches on its way out, but the adrenaline rushing through Saps stops him from cracking on that name.
“When I left to gather the leaders for the meeting, they must have snuck into the room of the meeting house to build the trap. The person who—the people who I thought I could trust the most used me for their malicious plan to kill the leaders and blamed it on me.”
The way the jury is reacting—shock, horror, and belief in him—makes Saps overconfident. He airs his suspicions of ThreeBelow, and the mood of the crowd turns. Shit! He stammers mid sentence, but it’s too late to take it back.
The judge slams his hammer down, quieting the room.
“Saps, is that all you have to say in your defence?”
“Uh—I guess?” He’s on the back foot now, glancing from one side of the room to the other, trying to gauge the crowd’s reaction. It’s not good.
“Alright. The court has come to a decision. I, Judge Timebomb, find Saparata…”
The world slows, and Saps feels his blood rushing in his ears, feels his heart pounding in his chest and his hands sweating where they squeeze the edge of the lectern.
“Guilty! Saps is to be taken to the top of the gauntlet and executed!”
The crowd screams in jubilation, and Saps spins around to press his back to the lectern as they all rush towards him. Someone’s diamond sword almost takes his nose off in all the excitement. The guards push him forwards by his shoulders, and as he leaves the courtroom and is almost dragged down the stairs outside of it, all he can think is I have to run.
The crowd rushing around him start chanting. “Death to Saps! Death to Saps!”
If Fluixon was here, would he be joining in? Would he lead the call, screaming with vitriol the nickname he could only smile while saying?
I have to run. I can’t let them kill me.
He can see the path to the gauntlet ahead of him, smooth sandstone leading him to the hand sculpted of ice. He glances to his right, where a stone brick tower wall leads away like a highway.
The choice is easy.
He runs.
*
It all goes wrong at ThreeBelow’s funeral. Fluixon had prepared a beautifully crafted speech; something with the right amount of mourning, encouraging words, and a subtle dig at the other Pandoran leaders. It was a work of art he had been preparing since before ThreeBelow’s assassination.
And then Cass and her merry band of self-righteous troublemakers show up, screaming about evidence and guilt. Cass has finally swapped out her casual hoodie and headphones for armour. Flux had always thought she would have been the first to go with her general refusal to wear armour. Most leaders wore it day and night and only travelled with a loyal group of guards.
It really did surprise Fluixon that Cass was the one to catch him out. He has been so sure that it was done. He had even planned out her death, scheduled for a few weeks time after the border dropped, when he could find a Yggdrasili hire-sword and pin the blame across the ocean.
“C’mon, he’s a murderer!” She shouts, rolling her head on her shoulders and pointing accusingly at Flux, who has his hands up and a perfectly surprised expression on his face. “Do you seriously want this guy as your leader?”
The crowd around Fluixon shouts a general yes!?! in response, and for a moment, he thinks that he can take this. Maybe there’ll be a war between Luminara and the Cass Coalition, but Fluixon is pretty sure he can win it. He has allies in the Commonwealth and of course, his sister, Queen Cynnika over at Infernus.
And then Cass starts talking about video footage: someone had rowed past Fluixon has he had been digging sandstone, and they had been recording on their HUD display for memories sake.
Thomas nudges him, and Flux nods, almost imperceptibly. “Ready the tunnel.” He murmurs out of the corner of his mouth.
“You accuse me of murdering the leaders?!” Flux exclaims with the appropriate amount of offence and anger. “I have always campaigned for the safety of Pandora! This is outrageous blasphemy! I demand a trial!”
The crowd around him is torn, half of them screaming about his guilt (the Coalitioners) and the other half throughly confused and shouting about the merits of a fair trial (most of the Luminarans). Flux lets them push him along the pathway heading towards the Cass Coalition, but he’s tense. He waits, he waits (he’s quite good at that) and when they’re as close as they’ll be, he begins to run.
The confusion buys him time, and he’s ten seconds ahead before anyone really thinks to give chase. Him and Thomas barrel down the Luminaran Miners tunnel, which he had outfitted with a dripstone pit only a week before.
As soon as they’re past the point where the floor changes from smoothed stone to cobbles (a physical change so that Fluixon can feel under his feet where the trap is) he shouts, “Pull it, Gotoga!”
His HUD lights up with red, nine people immediately falling to their bloody deaths. It buys him very valuable time, but not quite enough.
The Luminaran Mines are an endless maze of connecting, spiralling tunnels. Fluixon had been gradually adding his own, rough-hewn, dim and damp. Thomas is ahead of him, and Gotoga is behind him.
And they’re being gained on.
Flux glances back over his shoulder, and his heart sinks. Their pursuers are within touching distance of Gotoga.
He doesn’t have a choice.
Fluixon blocks up the tunnel behind them as he runs, dooming Gotoga to death by the violent mob.
He and Thomas make it to the beach, with maybe five people still hot on their tails. Arrows fly past centimetres from Fluixon’s skin, and he really, really doesn’t know how he does it. It’s a desperate clash of sword against boat against armour, but they get away.
They set a course due northwest, aiming for the setting sun.
The journey to Infernus, once they make it to Yggdrasill, is actually not that bad. Word of Fluixon’s treachery hasn’t spread far enough yet, but both him and Thomas keep their heads on a swivel. They could be killed for simply being from Pandora.
They end up going through the heart of Westhelm, hoods pulled low over their faces to obscure their identities. People bustle all around them, shouting about fights being held in the massive colosseum later that day, or homemade wares or the best bread in town!
They do buy some bread. It’s not quite as good as Barbieland’s bakery, but it’s pretty decent for people whose water boils them alive.
The volcano looms on the horizon, a colossal, domineering feature of the skyline. The pathway up is paved with black stone and littered with small animal skeletons and purple plants growing out of the rich volcanic dust. Crows hop across the rocks, their cries adding to the whole menacing atmosphere.
What’s the saying? One for sorrow, two for joy? There must be hundreds, and Flux is pretty sure the poem stops at thirteen.
When they make it to the top, they’re met with crossbows and a half-dozen soldiers, guarding the chain-link bridge to the coal-black castle, suspended over the boiling pit.
Thomas puts his hands up, and Flux flicks back his hood. He raises his left hand, the one with his father’s gauntlet, marking him as a member of House Aculon.
The soldiers gasp, and a few of them even bow. “Prince Fluixon!” Flux winces at the title. He doesn’t consider himself a prince, heck, he has maybe… five memories total of his Father’s court?
“Take me to Cynnika.” He says, a grin already pulling at the edge of his mouth.
Queen Cynnika takes her time, as usual. By the time she finally strolls into the large entrance hall, Flux had been considering jumping off the Castle and taking his chances with the fiery pit, instead of listening to another minute of what these people considered small talk.
“Fluixon.” She says, dryly. Cynnika crosses her arms and looks down her nose at him. “You certainly haven’t lost your knack for getting in trouble.”
“And you’re as welcoming as ever.” The soldiers around the room tense, and only relax when Cynnika and Fluixon shake hands. “It’s good to see you. Father would be proud of this scary emo castle you’ve made.”
“And he’d be proud you killed all those people, the crazy old man.”
*
Saparata has set the world ablaze.
The lava pouring down the slopes of Infernus’ volcano home makes the air crack with dry heat, and his amour feels hot where it brushes against his pale skin. Arrows whistle through the air, raining down on the hundreds of people slowly, slowly scaling the burning mountain.
It takes a long time, but eventually, they make it to the top of the volcano, and then it’s a mad rush in, an unorganised clash, running room to room, sword on axe, half a dozen different banners nailed to shields to pledge alliance.
Saparata is almost surprised he’s not dead yet, as their alliance works from room to room, climbing the central tower of Infernus.
But he still hasn’t seen him yet. When they were climbing up, Saps had peeked out from behind the hastily constructed cobblestone barriers and thought he caught a flash of golden epaulettes, but an arrow had flown by inches from his nose and he had ducked back behind cover.
He follows the screams. The higher the blood thirst, the closer he must be. Saps rounds a corner, and there he is. Fluixon, cornered above the molten slopes, sword and shield raised. He stands tall, defiant in netherite armour from head to toe, in spite of facing five foes, all fresher and angrier than the last.
And then Fluixon notices Saparata. The moment is obvious, because his entire posture changes—his sword lower, his shield ever so slightly out of position. His amethyst eyes, focused beyond the immediate danger.
Someone swings, catching Fluixon in the side of his chestplate with the flat of a blade, throwing him off balance. Saparata lunges forwards in some aborted, useless attempt to do something, but he’s too far away, he’s too slow.
Fluixon falls backwards into the lava, staring at Saparata the entire time.
It takes three minutes for him to realise something is wrong—the battle is still raging, but there are bodies and injured across the slope, and the fighting has reduced to pockets and roving assassins—and by that time, he’s down at the camp where the Blue Cross had set up, pausing to catch his breath. He reads through the death-messages in chat on his HUD display, and there must be more than two hundred, but not one of them is Fluixon.
Is he moving now? Is he hunting Saparata down? Is he crawling across basalt plains, burnt and bleeding?
This can’t go on. It can’t.
His Hail Mary solution is to pull up his private messages with Fluixon, the last one sent the morning of the leader’s meeting—something stupid like “do you think I need to provide food or what?”— and he types in a new one.
“Meet me at Westhelm’s Colosseum. You and me.”
Thirty seconds pass, and Saps is almost about to read through the death-messages again, in case he missed it, when a reply comes through.
“I’ll be there.”
Saparata’s friends want to come with him. They shove golden apples into his hands and offer to swap armour with him—speaking all over one another about setting up an ambush. “Guys. Guys, stop. I told him it would be just him and me.”
Cass snorts. “Fluixon went back on half a million promises. You show up alone, and you’re a dead man, Saps.”
“Cass. I said I’d come alone. I’m not going back on my own word.” He pauses, glancing south-west to where he can see the massive building, golden in the hazy afternoon light. “I’m tired of all of this. I want it to be over, and I’m sure Flux does too.”
The group is silent, but Cass steps forward and claps him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you back on Pandora when this is done.”
The run to the Colosseum is perhaps the longest of his life, second only to his escape after the rigged trial in the Commonwealth. His armour makes ‘clink-chunk’ sounds with every step he takes.
He enters through the traditional gladiator’s entrance, cobbled roads turning to packed earth and then sand underneath his feet as he carefully passes through into the arena. But Saparata isn’t expecting an ambush.
Both of the have come here to die by the other’s blade.
When he steps out onto the bleached sand, he can almost imagine a crowd of spectators cheering—maybe they’d scream his name, or Gladiator! Or just kill! Kill! Kill!
It takes him a second to spot Fluixon. Always playing for appearance, he’s standing on the lowest row of seats—supporting himself with his sword like a crutch, but still looking like a king.
It’s poetic, that when they fight for the last time, Fluixion has to fall down from his self-made throne, and Saparata enters through the tunnel made for marked men to redeem themselves through battle.
“Wow, you actually showed up.” Saps’ voice is hoarse from all the screaming and shouting earlier during the battle, and his throat aches. Not with tears. Never with tears. All that could have been tears, all that was love, now is rage.
“Can’t say no to a friend, can I?” Fluixon sounds the very same; cocky, sure, speaking like there’s always a smile right at the edges of his lips.
“Let’s make this a fair fight.” Saparata says, taking a few steps backwards so he can stand in the middle of the Colloseum’s starburst mosaic. His HUD lights up with a line of red text, and a moment later, another. “Flux, look at all these people, dying right now because of you.”
“You know Saps,” Fluixon lowers himself down onto the lowest ring of seating, still a good ten feet above the sands of the arena. He moves slow, stiff.
Fluixon is injured. There are burn marks all over him, and parts of his armour seem almost melted. Fire-resistance has to be drunk half an hour before for maximum protection. “None of this would have happened if you had died, like you were supposed to.” Vitriol fills his voice, and for a moment, Fluixon downer seem injured in the slightest. He looks tall and strong, but then he visibly deflates when his eyes meet Saparata’s. “I’m sorry for all you had to go through.”
When he leaps into the arena, he stumbles. Saps was always the better fighter of the two, and his time on the run and with the Covenant has only sharpened his skills. But Fluixon fights like a demon.
But still, it’s luck, mostly, that gives Saparata the sleight of hand to throw down his lava bucket, and then knock Fluixion through it while jumping over it himself.
The battle is over five blows later. Fluixon’s items lay scattered in an arc from the force of Saparata’s last blow, and the body of his first friend lies twisted and slumped, bleeding into the sand.
Saparata drops to his knees beside the body, and all the aches he’s been hiding behind adrenaline catch up to him, making his head spin. His heartbeat pounds through his whole body, and the force of each sobbing, aching breath rocks him like an earthquake.
He pulls off Fluixon’s helmet, and if it weren’t for the burns and gashes, he would almost appear asleep. Raven-black hair sticking up every-which-way, long eyelashes brushing his cheeks. There isn’t even a scowl-line between his brows.
Distantly, Saparata can hear cheering. He can see the chat messages in his HUD flowing in. His group have all messaged him, telling him that they’re on their way.
No. No. Saps needs to do this alone. He can’t let them take Flux and parade him through the streets.
And so, with his own blood running down from a hundred different cuts across his body, Saps picks up Fluixion’s body in a bridal carry, and stumbles towards the other exit of the Colosseum, which should spit him out near one of the beaches, away from the battle.
He’s halfway back to Pandora by the time Ish appears above him. The god snaps into existence with a rrrrip-crack!-ing sound that Saps can only assume is the universe itself warping around him.
“Saps! You survived! Wow, this is going to make for great viewership numbers. We can foreshadow the whole dripstone thing right at the beginning…” Ish snaps his fingers, and a pad of paper and pen appear in his hands, and he begins frantically scribbling down notes.
Saparata stares blankly up at him. Viewership… foreshadowing… He feels like a child when he whispers, “I just want to go home.” His voice cracks on the last word, and Ish looks down at him. His face morphs from the detached excitement he usually wears, to genuine concern.
“Are you… going to be okay?” Ish floats down to stand on the edge of Saps’ boat. The boat doesn’t tip at all. Maybe gods have no weight.
“I— I just wanted to build a vacation home, man.” Saps puts his head in his hands.
“Oh, Saparata.” Ish sits down, brushing a hand across the various injuries across Fluixon’s body. They heal up as his hands passes over, and eventually, it just looks like he’s sleeping. “You will. You’ll build a pool where the meeting table was, and your friends will be there all the time. You’ll never forget the blood and smoke, but you’ll keep on living.”
Saparata never expected a god’s hands to be warm. He always expected them to be cold, indifferent. Ish rests a hand on his forehead, and the aches across his body fade away.
“Go home, Saparata.”
Saps rows. He rows and rows and rows until the sun is rising again and he can see the sandstone columns of his vacation home.
He drags the boat up the beach, and then he digs. The sun is high above him when he finishes. The grave was a proper six feet deep, and the headstone a beautiful carved piece. He adds dripstone stalagmites to it as an afterthought.
Flux would have laughed at him.
He sits with his back against the cool stone, and he closes his eyes and lets the sun warm his face.