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In the deepest depths of the stony earth, the city turns to a mirror, a living reflection of the London above. Buildings hang from the cavern roof like stalactites of ornate and gothic masonry, doors upon their highest points and roofs upon their lowest stories, dropping the occasional clay tile into the abyss. As new buildings are erected above, new structures drip down below like the drip of water becoming a stalactite over a million years, but only over months.
The Other London is not a city built for ease of navigation, and certainly not for outsiders- most of it was certainly not built to be suspended as it is. Make-shift bridges hang from the rooftops as the mirror-denizens scurry from one precarious platform to another. But the great keep, more ornamented and richly decorated than the London Tower by far, has no such hanging roads leading to and from.
Why should there be paths, of course, when those within can fly?
Oscar Wilde has been trapped in the hanging tower for a time that could have been anything from weeks to months, as white stubble slowly grows from his chin. The days are difficult to track so far away from the warm, golden light of the morning sun.
He shivers. Though his captor has provided him with clothes, this place is born of the oldest, deepest magics, and though he wears the finest of silk brocades and glittering buttons, though he covers himself in a hundred beautifully made silk sheets, he simply cannot get warm. This place is the antithesis of warmth- the fireplace within his prison seeps cold into the air, and his breath is vapour upon the wind that blows through the bars of his gilded cage.
‘Bars’ perhaps is overly generous to what keeps him trapped there. The sides of his prison are free of metal, utterly open- but this lends little to the possibility of escape. The drop beyond them makes sure of that. He sits at the edge of a circular chamber, and most sides are open to the wind and the cold- and the fall. The sheer emptiness of it makes him dizzy even now, stomach dropping from him and far into the murky beyond, nothing to break his fall.
Wilde threw a silvery button down there once- it was so dark down there, but perhaps there was some way of escape, perhaps something he could fall to and be safe. Something that would save him from this place.
He needn’t have bothered. Wilde had sat there for what felt like hours, counting seconds until he gave in, half convinced he simply couldn't hear the sound in the echoing shadows- that he had missed it somehow. Perhaps he hadn’t heard it above the whistling wind. And then- a splash, far away, of a small thing hitting the water.
He hadn’t needed to do the maths. He knew it without.
There was no escape.
At least the silence has never been with him for long enough to give way to true boredom, the kind that itches in your bones and as you lay there listlessly screams at you to do something, to do anything.
When the silence breaks, it is little better.
Barret seems to find entertainment in his twitching away, his wary glances, in the way he jerks away from the sharp filed nails that Barret keeps- both as a sign of his power- he hardly need work as most do- and as a reminder what happened to people to cross him.
Wilde has felt those claws too many times, gently dragged across his soft skin.
A shadow passes over his window behind him, destroying the blue light from beyond his little piece of strange reality. For a moment he convinces himself it’s a trick of the light, an attempt to bring himself just a few more moments of peace. Perhaps it is a change in the guard rotations- he has never seen them, but he knows they must be there.
Perhaps.
Maybe.
Wind shudders through him, and he knows without doubt that he is not alone.
“Wilde.” Barret’s voice is hungry and he can hear the awful smile in the inflection. “Hello, dear.”
Wilde sighs in weary anticipation, the illusion well and truly lost. No part of him wishes to know what put a creature such as Barret Rackett in such a good mood. And yet still he turns. Turns to see his captor.
Struggle though he may, for him at least, the day has begun.
---
The blue-steel gates of the temple are much more looming than Zolf remembers. They’ve always been tall, sure enough- but now they tower over him, distrustful and superior. The monuments to Poseidon would be foreboding even if they weren’t framed by storm clouds, the far-off flashes of lightning and the too-close rumbles of thunder.
It’s enough to make a dwarf feel unwelcome.
Though it’s the middle of the day, the waves are dark and whip against the cliff sides with a fury that Zolf has never seen this close to land. Has not seen since the day his ship went down and he was the only survivor.
What a pleasant thought.
He pushes down the fear as it rises in his chest. He can’t afford that. Not now.
A pair of copper statues, blue-green with tarnish watch him from far above, distant heads hidden within the heavy clouds that surround them and block their faces from view, dark fog . Still, he can feel a gaze upon him from their distant shadows, the sirens’ eyes as stormy as the seas below as they watch him with something that straddles the line between disgust and haughty disinterest.
A wonderful sign, he thinks to himself, a bitter taste forming in his mouth.
Of course, he had known his god would be unlikely to take him back into the fold with open arms, to fling open the doors for him and beckon him home. Not when they both know he has only found himself upon this path out of pure desperation- he did not abandon his faith lightly, did not give up on Poseidon for anything short of a complete failure of faith, and even now, they both know that he would never have stepped foot upon the holy stones of this place again.
Not unless he had no other options. No other place to turn.
Still, faith born of desperation is faith nonetheless, and all Zolf can do is hope that it will be enough for his god- and for himself.
The granite blocks are slippery beneath his feet, worn and smoothed by a hundred thousand storms and countless footfalls, threatening to send him tumbling to the rocks below. It’s slow going, making his careful way across the cliffside temple’s dark stones. His heart sits low and heavy in his chest, lead weighing him down.
Watching him from above is a navigator in a dark embroidered coat- one he is certain he once knew, perhaps even the one who first inducted him into the order. His eyes follow all who enter, but fix on Zolf as he fastens a new charm of driftwood at his lapel, hands shaking from the damp cold.
The doors close behind him with a resounding thud, and he is surrounded all at once by an unearthly silence. The thick carved wood of the door keeps out even the sound of the waves as they crash deafeningly against the cliffs, bringing an eerie silence he has not known for days. It's unsettling.
This is not the soft chalk of the Dover cliffs. It’s purpose is far greater than appeasing the merchants that use the channel- this is a temple to the open ocean, and all the power within. A true stronghold of Poseidon’s might, where sea meets sky meets earth.
He kneels upon wet stone, placing himself within reach of his god’s power, at the feet of his once-beloved lord’s statue. Tears of humiliation threaten at the corner of his eyes as they scrunch shut from fear and concentration.
And, for the first time in years, Zolf offers himself to the sea itself, and prays.
---
Another week passes. A month.
Precious little changes, deep in the lonely dark.
Wilde’s visitors come less often now, leave him alone with his thoughts for days at a time. Food is brought and left while he sleeps. He never sees a single soul.
Barret’s is the only face he knows now.
Time ticks on by, devoid of all meaning.
And, gods, he tries to pass the time, to drown out the whispering shadows, but the hours are just so long and empty and he is hungry and alone. His bones ache with it.
The winds shriek past. They laugh at him, howling past in the dead of night. Tell him such secrets, just out of earshot. Tell him what he already knows- he will never escape.
It still hurts.
Wilde has always loved company. Though he is perfectly capable of sequestering himself within an office for days at a time, capable of spending months within enemy territory with no one to truly trust, he has always relished the simple pleasures of human interaction, of the weapon that is his words, magic or no. That was the way that he had entered the service of the Meritocrats, had climbed the ranks so quickly as he proved time and time again just how good he was.
He misses Zolf the most, try as he might to turn his thoughts in a less bittersweet direction. He doesn’t know what would be worse- Zolf coming and getting captured, put through the same torment with him, or Zolf never coming at all. Still, he wishes for him. Wishes he would come, wishes for some daydream of a knight in shining armour he knows at heart Zolf is not, will never be. Zolf would likely just get captured, would have to stay with him forever down here, just the two of them down in the dark.
‘Would that be so bad?’
The thought shames him. He should want Zolf to be safe- but it is hard to not be the smallest bit selfish, in a place such as this. As he shivers before a fire that imparts only hunger and emptiness, he can’t help but wish he had another to share this awful suffering with, and he hates himself for it.
He is almost broken, and he knows it. Just a few more days, a few more weeks, it doesn’t matter.
And, as if the cold and the pain of the stone floor and his hunger for touch are not enough, something has begun to seep in through his window, sweet and acrid and floral on the breeze.
The sweet smoke swirls over the fire, the eddying currents of the winds above only serving to further spread the sickly odour through his air. Thinking has slowly become harder, and yet he cannot help but breathe the warm fog into his aching lungs as he shivers with cold. With every deep inhale, it becomes just that little bit easier to lie there, taking in nothing, barely being, as he waits for a rescue he knows in his heavy heart will never come.
‘In games like this,’ some terrible part of him whispers, ‘It is better to simply fold. There is no winning hand when your cards have all been burned.’
His stubbornness is waning, and he wonders how long it shall be before he becomes just another broken toy of the Rackets.
Ah, Barret had tried to control him, to bend him to his awful will, back to that impossibly distant time when he had first been captured, when first he had set his velvety chains around Wilde’s wrists. Had tried to worm his way deep into his mind, back when Wilde was new to this place, back when his will was strong. Unbreakable, he had thought, foolishly. He had learned, with a slow creeping dread, that no one was unbreakable.
And yet, there is little he can do, save lie there, and try not to think of the fate that awaits him, in the spires beyond his cage.
Instead, he lies there, and counts the candles in between the glass of the shimmering chandelier, and pulls his sheets a little closer in a futile attempt to ward away the bitterness of the cold. It takes the edge off, he thinks.
He will not fall tonight, he tells himself.
And yet, that horrible voice creeps in, at the edges of his mind.
‘It won’t be long now,’ it says, ‘You will fall soon, and you shall find your new cage shall be freeing, bird.'
In the echoing silence, Wilde tries not to listen.
Gods, how he tries.
---
He’s sure in a day or so the broadsheets will be calling it the 'storm of the century'. Long articles will recount the trees pulled and roots exposed, the damage to buildings, the flooding and all the fishing vessels lost. All things his own god will have brought.
Zolf had made his way along the slippery cliff face days prior, though the weather had not been much fairer. The wind had torn at his sodden coat, and his sense of self preservation had been screaming at him to turn back, to let Wilde go. To give up on this last hope, and live out the rest of his lonely life far, far away from the salty waters of his youth.
Instead, he had walked the cliffside until he had found the cave he had been directed to by a priest who had taken pity on him, and told him of a sacred place, out where the sea can never be tamed.
He had never felt any gale so strong as the one that had whipped at his clothes and bitten his skin, pushing and pulling him in gusts and sudden whooshing attacks that left him scrambling for purchase across his craggy path, doing their best to make him stumble, to make him just another sacrifice to the sky and sea. But the sea had not claimed him, and now, here in this sheltered spot- he waits.
He stays there in the cave for days, as the weather slowly worsens. He watches the tides, silently daring the sea to sweep in and drown him.
Instead, the sullen waves lap softly at the rock upon which he sits, their intent steady and quietly furious. There is a sense of waiting- they neither rise above the stone, nor truly ebb away.
It is a long time before he dares to speak. In that holy place, it feels like the worst of blasphemy.
“You can outwait me,” he says, his voice frank and unyielding as he stares down the frothing waves, “I know you can outwait me and I know all too well you could just kill me and be done with it. I left your faith, and now I have the audacity to come to this place, and present myself before your altar.
“But I am not averse to begging, when the time comes for it, and all things being considered, I’m just going to have to hope you’ll at least hear me out.”
He pauses, calculating his next words like his life depends on it.
'Well,' he thinks, 'If I fuck up too badly, at least I won’t have to worry about getting home in the storm.'
The thought is a sobering one.
Swallowing down his fear, his instinct to cut his losses and run- he clears his throat. It echoes just a little too loudly, but he carries on. This is too important.
“You’re a god- you’re powerful, beyond anything I could claim to understand. But you don’t have a vessel here, close as I can tell. Aphrodite has her heart, Artemis has her bow, but you don’t have anything like that anymore. And to enact your will outside of your natural domain, you’ll need one.
“Now, I’m not good at words, and I’m bloody awful at begging. But I need one thing, and if I have to break the world in your service to do it, I will.
“Let me be your vessel, and I will tear the world apart for you. The earth will crack and I will let your waters rush inland, if you only let me save one man.”
The words are barely his own- a cracked echo of the faith he once had.
For one long awful moment, there is only silence. Just Zolf and the glassy surface of the water, not even a droplet disturbing the pristine surface. 'All that time, wasted,' he thinks, as his god looks on impassionately.
Fear creeps in. He steps back, afraid. He’s not going home.
He’s not going anywhere.
He steels himself for his fate, tense and afraid and ultimately, resigned.
Then, like the letting out of breath- the ocean rushes in.
---
Wilde doesn’t know how long has waited there, as time moves slowly forward.. He finds it hard to concentrate on much, save the slow passing of the days and the way his prison rocks gently in the freezing winds like the pendulum of a clock.
Everything is slow now, now that Wilde has given up all hope of rescue. Now he understands just how willing his captor is to wait, how strange time is here, in this mirror-place. He can feel the many-layered enchantments wrap around him- a display of power.
Wilde will not age. He will not die, not before Barret chooses.
That strange smog is stronger. It chokes his every inhale, the scent cloying upon his tongue as he sits and breathes it in. It carries something with it now. Perhaps, Wilde muses dully, it always had. But upon the winds it now carries a song amongst the clouded pinkish-grey of it, under the disgustingly floral smell. Or- at least, the semblance of a song.
Wilde knows that once, in that distant surface land, he had been a bard. Had sung such songs, slipping through the minds of enemies and allies alike. Knows he mustn’t listen, he can’t let it in. He knows and he knows, and yet-
And yet, as something like spring arrives, and the winds quiet- it is so much harder not to listen.
It’s too beautiful, clinging to his mind like honey, cloying and wonderful and all for him. The sweet song seeps in, moment by moment, until it has him in its grip, and he forgets to turn away. Why had he ever turned away? It is the most beautiful thing he has ever heard, and all he wants is to sing it, sing it across the hanging towers of that awful mirror London.
And so, opening his mouth, and straightening his back as he stares out into the flickering dark
And a sweet note echoes out from his hanging cage.
---
Darkness has come again when Barret appears once more.
The fire has gone out, and yet it is no warmer without the ice of it, and yet even without the familiar silhouette, he knows Barret’s presence by the rustling of illusory wings, and the faint tuning-fork hum of magic at the edges of his hearing.
Wilde wants to make some sharp comment, to show he is not broken. To show he has not been truly claimed, cannot be claimed by this place. That somewhere in the surface above, there is not some mirror him who belongs in the true London far more than he ever could.
Instead, he sits against the thin stone wall and waits for whatever new horror to come. What else is there to do?
“Hello, Oscar.”
Wilde can feel the smile in his voice, but doesn’t even flinch this time.
“I thought you’d grown tired of me, my lord,” he says dully. He tries to keep some bite to the words, to not just sit there and be a helpless observer to his own fate- but the hatred doesn’t quite translate, and instead he only manages to sound tired.
Barret raises an eyebrow.
“We’ll have you saying that with real respect soon enough, dear.”
Laughing softly to himself, he leans down, and tutting at Wilde’s small jerk away, turns over a lock of Wilde’s hair in his hand, humming gently. The sheen of it is white and it falls silkily between Barret’s worn, calloused fingers, light and soft in a way it’s never been before. Colour washed away by his time here, much like everything else.
“Exquisite,” says Barret with a lovely smile, as he lets the hair drop, and presses a kiss to Wilde’s forehead.
The small touch is so nice, so rare, that he can’t help but let a small whimper escape him when the comfort of it disappears all at once.
The air warms. There is a thrum of something at the edge of his hearing. He pays it no mind.
Instead, he just lays there, staring up at Barret.
Why had he been so worried, really? Fear hasn’t served him in this place, hasn’t kept him in any semblance of safety-, all it’s done is steal his sleep from him, the twisting paranoia in his gut keeping him from his meagre portions of food. He is so tired, and thinking is so difficult-
“Oscar,” Barret’s voice breaks though his clouded thoughts, “Did you listen to a word I just said?”
He hadn’t. Hadn’t even heard enough to know his master was speaking. Mutely, he shakes his head, and Barret sighs.
“I will be moving you to the east tower soon. It has greater comfort- a bed, a bath- all those sorts of amenities. But I will need you to cooperate, or moving will be dangerous for you and your… guard, both of you will be at risk.” He looks into Wilde’s eyes, as if searching for something. He seems to find what he’s looking for, as he leans away. “Do you understand?”
Wilde nods.
Barret sighs.
“That’s not good enough, dear. Oscar, do you understand?”
The air disappears from his lungs, his eyes trapped in the light that emanates from Barret, that must be-
Wait.
Did-
Oscar stares at him blankly for a moment, before he realises he’s meant to speak.
“Yes, sir.”
Barret smiles, and, deep within- Wilde feels a strange warmth bloom in his chest. A wonderful understanding fills him.
After all this time, he’s done something right.
---
Light and dark come many times, and yet Wilde still does not move. He doesn’t let himself worry all that much, though. Barret will come when Barret comes.
A light fluttering feeling grows deep within him as he lies there, beneath the sparkling chandeliers, by the warm fire, drifting in and out of wakefulness with a calm sense of detachment.
Distantly, bit by bit, he realises he is not alone. He understands this from the strange sensation of movement, of the slow understanding that someone is shaking him.
How wonderful. His guards must be here to move him.
Without even opening his eyes, he bats away the hands softly. They’re calloused and strong.
“Sir, let me get up,” he groans out, still groggy from something not entirely unlike sleep, “One moment.”
The hands let go, and Wilde sits up, and rubs open his eyes.
The figure before him is much shorter and stockier than Barret, or any of his guards, and Wilde can’t help but feel the dull twang of disappointment.
He sighs, and tries to pull his thoughts together.
“Hello, Zolf.”
Zolf’s shoulders slump slightly in relief, the tension bleeding out of them just a little.
“Wilde, are you alright?” His eyes take in every inch of Wilde, desperately searching for something. “Did they hurt you?”
“Oh, I don’t know about alright,” Wilde says, with a sideways smile, “There’s not even a mattress in this room. How am I supposed to get my beauty sleep?”
Zolf doesn’t laugh, but the edge of his lip quirks up, try as he might to suppress it.
“Of course that’s your first priority,” he grumbles. His tone is warm.
Wilde looks up at him, mischief in his eyes, pulling him closer.
“And don’t get me started about the lack of real baths- gods know how I’ve stayed so clean.”
“Prestidigitation?”
He rolls his eyes.
“Naturally.”
It’s easy, in a way that conversations haven’t been for Zolf in a very long time. It feels too good to be true.
Knowing Zolf, the very same thought is going through his mind as well.
And In the distance, something falls.
The moment is broken. Zolf’s eyes immediately snap up, shimmering and intense, and there is something powerful in them.
Something dangerous.
For that long, sharp moment, his entire demeanor changes- back straighter and more imperious.
The moment passes quickly. Zolf shakes his head a little, and turns back to Wilde.
His eyes are wide and scared. It is a strange look upon him, the walls down and crumbling, where they had once been a fortress.
Zolf winces.
“Look, Wilde, I know this is all very fast after you’ve been stuck here so long, but it’s not safe to linger. We have to go.”
“Go?” Wilde asks softly.
Zolf turns back and stares at him like he’s grown another head.
“Wilde,” he says, slowly and carefully, “Why do you think I’m here?”
“Well,” Wilde replies, “I’m not entirely sure- Not that it hasn’t been lovely to see you, dear.” He looks up quizzically. “Why? Is there something wrong?”
The colour drains from Zolf’s face, his skin taking on a decidedly grey pallor. He sits down hard against the ashy stones, hands tense against the silken sheets, a slight tremor
“Of course,” he mutters, “Of course he has you under some gods-damned spell.”
What?
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Wilde.”
Zolf squeezes his eyes shut, as if in anticipation of doing some horrible thing- Wilde has seen that expression only before the most dangerous of missions. The ones where they had never expected to come home.
Then, standing, Zolf stretches out his hands in an achingly familiar gesture and the air shimmers with magic.
The effect is instantaneous, and Wilde doesn’t even have the time to yelp before his limbs lock together and he is suddenly on his back, and then hefted up in a bridal carry. He tries to fight against Zolf’s tight hold, to be reunited with sweet solid ground, but his body ignores his commands. His eyes sting with betrayal. Why would he-
“Zolf,” he tries to say “Zolf, what are you doing-” But all that comes out is a choked cough and a strangled half whisper.
Zolf ignores him, and swiftly turns towards the ledge.
Panic claws its way up through the haze in his mind, and vertigo fills his motionless body, his ears ringing as his instincts try to make sense of the fact that he isn’t struggling, he’s about to fall and he isn’t even struggling-
Magic fills the air, Zolf beginning to cast some grand spell, perhaps something that will save them even, anything-
And then, deep laughter fills the echoing cavern
And the beginnings of a weak smile tug at Wilde’s mouth.
At last, he is safe.
His master is home.
---
A shadow falls over them both, and Zolf curses under his breath as he loosens his grip on the celestial magicks, just slightly, letting the spell he was forming sink just out of his waiting grasp.
Not yet.
He doesn’t let go entirely- the power of his god crackles and swirls just below his finger tips, ready to leap to his aid at the lightest of brushes. He holds himself low and steady, and readies himself for what approaches.
There is laughter in the air, deep and thundering. It echoes across the cavern and multiplies- a thousand voices in an ecstatic, booming harmony.
A lone stalactite is shaken from its thousand year home far above, and disappears into the void.
Zolf turns, and the stench of salt rises into the air as it crackles with electricity.
It’s a man. For all that fear rises in his throat, heart hammering in his stock-still chest, Wilde’s captor is just a man.
Just a man, who looms over him and Wilde with all the power of a passing stormcloud.
He could be any banker upon the streets of the true London. He stands before them, perched at the edge of the stone, radiating power in his simple grey suit and tie. He could be head of any well-off -perhaps even well-respected- London family, with his hair slicked back neatly and an elaborately decorated dagger sheathed at his side, as Wilde had suggested once to be a new fashion amongst the wealthy. Zolf would never have noticed, himself.
Even the lightly shimmering rings that adorn his hands are not all that unusual- with the dawn of industrialisation sending fabric prices plummeting, the wealthiest of England’s landowners and nobility found themselves in search of a new status symbol to differentiate themselves from the common man upon the street.
Enchantments had served quite nicely to that purpose.
But even Zolf, with his untrained eye can tell there is something more to the figure that blocks out the light. Something other. The edges of him flicker just slightly, like reality itself disagrees with his presence, is trying to remove him from itself, like a body to a particularly nasty virus.
Some of those enchantments must be really something.
As the stranger makes a quick hand signal, a pair of similar shadows appear, a little ways above.
‘Great,’ Zolf thinks to himself wryly. ‘Friends.”
Might as well make introductions, now it's a whole bloody party here.
“Who,” Zolf says flatly, “The fuck are you?”
The stranger doesn’t seem that surprised to find him there, heavily armed and bristling with anger in the heart of his fortress Zolf has slipped through his defenses, is about to free Wilde, and there is not even the slightest concern upon his face.
“Barret Racket,” the stranger says, “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Zolf Smith.”
A shiver runs down Zolf’s spine. He’s expected.
“Can’t say the same.”
“Well, it always pays to be prepared, my dear.”
Zolf looks down at his hands grimly, feeling the power that prickles beneath the skin in painful pins and needles.
Barret tilts his head in amusement at the deafening silence.
“Now don’t worry, dear, we’ll put the two of you up quite nicely here.”
Zolf’s eyes snap up.
“I,” he says slowly, anger rising in him like a tide, “Will not let you take him again.”
Barret smiles.
“I’m afraid, cliche as it is- you have little choice.”
He whistles, and amidst a rustling of fabric and a whooshing of air, at least a dozen new shadows appear upon the ground. Zolf doesn’t have to look up to know that he is flanked and badly outnumbered.
Zolf pushes the rage down. He needs to keep his cool for just a little longer.
Carefully, he speaks.
“What do you want.”
Barret steps forwards, fingers curling under Wilde’s lolling chin, gently brushing away a stray hair.
“This one is rather precious to me. I’ve had to work quite hard on making him…” He searches for the right word.
“Compliant.”
Zolf stares at Wilde.
He’s just lying there, where Zolf had put him down, some vaguely pleased look drifting emptily across his face as he regards Zolf passively, head perched in Barret’s hand. Zolf’s been through hell with this man, and to see his sharp mind reduced to this- it’s quite possibly the most terrifying thing he’s ever seen. On par with the creaking support beam that buried his brother.
He swallows the lump that begins to form in his throat.
“Get to the point.”
“A little bird told me you’ve given up your faith, set your love for dear old Poseidon aside. Now, such a powerful priest doing that is not unheard of- but gods tend to not be all that forgiving. Tend not to take apologies all too well.”
Barret gestures at the new driftwood broach.
“And so imagine my surprise when you come here, proudly displaying that symbol. Desperate to find him, were we?”
“What are you trying to say?”
Barret looks away from Wilde’s blank stare, and looks Zolf in the eye.
“I’ve always wanted to steal someone from a god.”
There's a beat- and then Zolf snorts and shakes his head.
“Because the gods have a history of being oh-so-sharing.”
“Oh, don’t worry about all that, my dear.”
“Why?”
Barret sighs.
“We have too many protections here for you to worry about such things. We’re warded well enough that a god would have to physically come here themselves in order to exact any kind of revenge.”
Zolf swallows.
“Oh, yes,” says Barret, “And I activated those wards when I arrived here. You should be feeling those effects any moment now.”
And then he feels it, feels his bones shake as though they have been carved out.
Zolf sways and staggers to the ground, his balance failing him as the ground is suddenly closer, closer than it should be. Closer than he had meant it to be, surely.
Barret smiles, and lets go of Wilde. His limp form slumps to the ground, and Barret advances forward, peering triumphantly down at Zolf’s prone, kneeling form.
“So, what will it be? You come willingly, and I let our lovely Wilde go, or you fight and I take you both?”
Zolf stares at him, horror growing in his eyes.
“Take your time,” Barret says, pulling out a small pocketwatch, “It is an important decision, after all.”
Zolf is silent for a long while, conflict clear on his face as he glances between Wilde and Barret warily.
“And you will free him from all forms of your control?”
“Of course.”
“And you will not harm him or try to capture him again?”
Barret gives an affirming nod, victory sparkling in his pale eyes.
Zolf looks at Wilde, trembling and empty and wide eyed by his side, terrifyingly uncomprehending, his sharp wit stripped away by Barret’s magic.
Wilde has been here for months, destroyed bit by bit by the power of this terrible man, by the slow creep of magic and the aching loneliness of imprisonment. Even the strongest of men would fall, given so long close to that awful precipice. Even Wilde. Even him.
Something deep in his gut clenches at the thought. He will not leave Wilde to this fate.
Gritting his teeth, Zolf kneels.
If Barret’s smug smile got any wider or more disgustingly condescending, his face would slip right off. The victory in his eyes is an assured one- he had planned, and he had waited, and now? He has won.
Zolf keeps his head low, even as the low hum of magic begins, and a steely blue collar begins to form around Barret’s fine fingers, shapes swirling in waves under his touch.
They’re Poseidon’s colours, Zolf realises, disgust and horror coiling at the base of his throat. It’s a mockery of him, of his God. He wants to rise, to plunge his blade into the creature’s throat, as Barret smiles down at him in the dim light, a pale glow around his body like a halo, like aurora borealis. It shimmers as he moves slowly, surely towards Zolf, with every step as triumphant as the one before it.
He lowers the collar
And Zolf bows his head
And then-
The water rises.
And when Barret sees Zolf’s shaded eyes, he steps back, uncertainty clear in the lines of his expression
Zolf surges forwards
And his mind falls back
As a great and terrible presence that had been watching from the farthest recesses of his mind steps up to the forefront.
Part of Zolf melts into it, the water lapping around his psyche dissolving him into the salty expanse that floods though him and out of him, until his reality is just him Poseidon and the nothingness that chases his soul into his god’s embrace.
The gods do not like to be mocked. And Poseidon is a god of the anger of the world itself, the roiling seas, earthquakes that bury ports and raise up kingdoms to new heights. It is upon his whims that power is granted to the mortals that settle upon his coasts, upon any unstable lands. It is him that dashes ships upon the rocks one day and is dazzlingly clear the next, a beautiful jewel upon the earth.
It is his turn to smile now, as the earth itself shakes, and the first building detaches itself from its place far above, thrown violently from where it has lain for hundreds of years.
Zolf can feel Poseidon’s cold fury as if it were his own, caught in some strange no man's land between simmering and pure thrashing thirst for destruction.
THIS MAN IS HIS.
The thought burns across his mind, bright and alien.
And then the quaking slows, and his shining eyes glance back at Wilde for a moment.
Barret makes the mistake of moving, and Poseidon’s gaze snaps back to him.
His voice booms with the power of a thousand sea storms, but it is strangely quiet in the echoing chamber.
“You have lofty goals, mortal.” The words slip through Zolf’s lips as naturally as if they were his own. “You presume much about my power, and where it can reach.”
Poseidon’s smile is cruel upon his lips.
“Perhaps,” he says, reaching out, “I should show you.”
His hand shoots forwards, and the moment before it touches Barret’s skin, Barret reels back- but it is too late.
‘Do you hear tales of sirens, child, in the underworld of London?’ A voice speaks in his mind. ‘Do you fear their voices, and what they offer?’
‘Many people think that the siren is the province of Aphrodite alone,’ It whispers, ‘That their powers are hers only to command.’
Barret has started to shake, sweat beading on his brow. He looks around in a panicked sweep, but noone else seems to have heard the voice, and his men look at him strangely. It is certainly a vision- they have never seen him so rattled.
Poseidon tilts his head.
‘Sirens do not give their tribute to Aphrodite, though. They give their bloody tributes to the sea. They dash their awful sacrifices upon the jagged rocks and their deaths are worship, and their blood joins my own as they die.’
‘Do you understand?’
‘Do you understand, that I could make you do anything, to be anything at all. To destroy you with but a word, and you would follow me willingly?’
Barret nods, terror plain on his face, and Zolf’s smile widens.
“Good,” the words echo in Barret's mind. "Perhaps I shall be merciful."
‘START RUNNING.’
And through a thousand cracks in the earth, through a million tiny fissures- the river crashes in.
---
Wilde wakes in fits and starts, reality slowly trickling back in bit by bit, closer to consciousness each time his eyes flutter open.
There is a weight upon him, and as he groggily turns over he realises that for the first time in months, it is not upon his mind. Rather, for all the fog of sleep, he finds he can think far more clearly than in the weeks after Barret took his thoughts and made them his playthings.
Wilde shudders, cold and damp where he lies, strangely weightless. He’s reminded of that time he’d drunkenly stumbled into the Seine in his university days, only to be hauled out of the river shaken and smelling worse than a swamp. He hadn’t swallowed any water, but his one sober friend had insisted that he visit the temple before disappearing off home.
He was fine, but there is a warm glow to the memory.
He opens his mouth to breath, and water rushes in.
Eyes flying open, he tries to exhale the breath, keep it from his lungs but its already too late and he’s going to drown and-
He. Isn’t drowning.
Looking down at his hands, he can see the telltale shimmer of pale magic. A water breathing spell, he thinks, even as he tries to ignore the foreign feeling of water turning to air at the base of his throat.
He feels a firm but gentle hand on his shoulder, and when he looks up he sees Zolf and all at once he knows he is safe, as Zolf smiles down at him, pale beard almost blue in the light that streams down from the shifting surface.
His eyes shine with a dim light, that reflects off the eddying currents that brush gently through Wilde’s hair, a loving caress.
“Wilde.”
The expression is strange on Zolf.
It can’t be-
'Something is wrong.'
That’s all Wilde has time to think before Zolf leans down, kissing him on the forehead, and all he can do is lie down and sleep.
---
Zolf wakes slowly, drawn into consciousness amongst the rolling waves as they lap lazily up a pebbled beach. The pebbles shift underneath his weight as he sits, staring out over the sea. The wave tops are gilded in the disappearing sunlight, delicate patterns rippling across the green waters.
Wilde stirs by his side. He feels the gentle sigh of it, knows the quiet rise and fall of his chest as if it were his own, the warmth of his soft body against Zolf’s side, sharing its heat with him as the evening wind shivers past.
He stares out at the blazing horizon, the gently cresting waves that seem to crash in time with his slow breathing, in and out again. Perhaps they do- it would make a strange sort of sense. Both the sea and himself belong to his god now. Perhaps they always had- there is a feeling of coming home that rises in him with the ebb and flow of the divine currents.
For now at least, there is a stillness in his mind. Poseidon has left him, removed himself from his vessel, even as Zolf lies ready and waiting for his next task. He knows he will come when called- it’s the least he can do, for the power that was bestowed upon him. For what his god saved.
He looks down at Wilde, and he can’t find it in him to regret it.
Wilde stirs again then, turning over in his sleep. He gets a face full of salty water. Zolf smirks.
Coughing and spluttering furiously, Wilde scrambles to his feet, looking rather like a cat that’s just fallen afoul of an icy bucket, and just about drenched enough to pull off the look.
He’s not wearing the same clothes, Zolf realises, looking up. Whatever awful thing Barret had dressed him in- it’s not there any more. Instead, Wilde stands there in richly embroidered silks of a deep purplish blue, with swirling patterns embroidered across the sleeves. Miraculously, they seem undamaged for all their time lying in the sea. Further still, they seem to dry even as Zolf watches.
A gift from Poseidon, if he had to guess.
Wilde looks down at him, sat there in the gentle waters.
“Zolf? I-”
“It isn’t a dream, Wilde.”
Wilde seems to wilt a little as he stumbles up the shallow slope, sitting himself down just above the tide line, barely taking his eyes off Zolf in the meantime. He follows, and with a little wave of his hand is properly dry again.
“I found you. You’re safe.”
Wilde stares at nothing for a moment, then pulls closer to Zolf. If it were anyone else, he would be clinging on, terrified to let go- but they have always found their comfort in soft, distant proximity. Just being nearby.
“I was alone for so long.”
Zolf says nothing.
“Why didn’t you come?”
Zolf swallows.
“I came as quickly as I could. I had to- had to get help.”
“You-” Recognition dawns in his eyes. “Poseidon.”
“Yes.”
“Is he still…” Wilde is struggling, Zolf can see. He leans in closer, sharing his warmth.
“No, Wilde. It’s just us.”
A little of the tension bleeds out of his frail form.
“I was alone for so long, Zolf.”
“I know.”
They sit there for a while, until the sun has almost disappeared over the horizon. The dim purple of the twilight washes over the landscape, and even still, neither wants to break the silence, as comfort slowly bleeds back in.
Eventually, the wind picks up enough that Wilde is left shivering, and the two stand, leaning on each other for support. There is a little track behind them, and just beyond it- a light.
The golden glow is warm against the cool darkness, and the pair make their way warily onwards, up the damp pebble track. The stones slip under their boots, uneven under each step, but they hold each other up as they walk towards that light.
A cottage resides on the cliffside, a single candle lit by the window, giving off a soft flickering glow. Its walls are a stony grey, almost foreboding if it were not for the bright flowers that grow from the window boxes, all oranges and shining yellows stained a dusky pink in the dimming sun.
No, not flowers, Zolf realises as they stumble closer. Coral. Anemones. Sponges that grow up in little chimneys from the faded wood.
The house is a piece of paradise to Zolf, as the two stop and stare. The door is made of a hundred shattered and wave-rounded pieces of sea glass, all melded together with shining precious metals, catching the flickering light in their sweet cloudy translucency. They are held together by a few simple polished planks of driftwood, the colour washed out of them by the sea.
It’s beautiful, Zolf realises. It’s home.
At the back of his head somewhere he feels a warm glow of approval, of pride at a job well done.
Of course. It’s a gift, he thinks, looking over at how Wilde stares up at the small building in wonderment. The beautiful simplicity of it must seem a dream after the lavish horrors of the last few months.
It’s a good gift, he thinks, mumbling his thanks to the sea, and the warm glow intensifies. For both him and Wilde. Somewhere to be safe. Somewhere to heal. He can see it in Wilde’s eyes, the smile playing upon his lips, so used to that smile of his- it may take time, but Zolf is sure it will return.
He closes his eyes for a quiet moment, feeling the salty air ruffle his white hair. The two of them match now, he thinks with a rare wistful smile.
And then, holding his hand out for Wilde at the door, he walks inside.
Safety and warmth at last.