[fanfic] APH: "REVENANT" (chapter 1, part 1)
Title: REVENANT
Author: Eram_Quod_Es
Words: 5,043
Theme: Modern Fantasy
Pairing(s)/Characters: RussiaxAmerica
Summary: “So I will destroy the gods.” Everything changed when Ivan began his new life alone in an unfamiliar city. When the Fae strike and a contract is formed with the apparitional anomaly Alfred, he finds himself with the power to change the world and, just possibly, the chance to save it.
Chapter 1/ Chapter 2/ chapter 3
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Extended Summary: “So I will destroy the gods.” There’s something to be said about breaching the barrier between dreams and reality; something which Ivan seems to have done unwittingly once he steps foot into a new Sanctuary after being evacuated from his old one. Discovering the ability to wield magic within himself, he finds his world expanding beyond his wildest imagination as he joins the Sanctuary’s resistance division to fight the evil Fae, is forced into a binding contract with the apparitional Alfred, and battles to maintain his identity as a human being.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
I never imagined I would die.
I thought I could live forever, alone and unchained, free to take what I want, when I wanted it, and no one could stop me. Every day I would wake up to find the world once again open to me, the sun bright, with smiles that flowed as easily as water, and a chest without a heart because only children are heartless enough to be innocent.
I have dreams now, you know. I never used to have them, because my head was always so empty; but you came along and filled it up, and oh hey I guess there was a brain in there after all because somehow dreaming comes to me like breathing air and flying and all those other things everyone is too old to know. They blend together like secret things, with wings and tongues and fingers long and agile, and I hold hands with someone and I think-
Maybe…maybe it’s you.
But I’m scared.
I don’t want to die.
But you-you were the first one that ever-that I ever-
…I guess now…isn’t the time to say things that you’ll never know.
You made me remember things, too. How to walk, and talk, and smile without meaning it, because sometimes, things are too heavy to bear, but we have to do it anyways.
So I’m going to smile now.
Because more than anything, I can’t live in a world without you.
I want you to live, and know that I wouldn’t just do this for anyone.
You are the only one I would ever die for.
So live, and don’t forget me.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
First END: stranger
-o-o-
“It’s temporary,” they tell him, when the car rolls up to the curb, tires sinking through grimy slush and brushing just a bit too close to the concrete to not scuff the rubber. Ivan disembarks from the car with a little difficulty, head much too tall and body much too wide to fit into such a compact space comfortably.
They tell him that his vehicle will be shipped over in the coming weeks, because while he could attempt to take public transportation every day to his school over on the other side of the city, he wants to be stubborn, even if it means having them bring back his old clunker with the rusty trunk, cheap carpet, and a persistent squeak that might be considered either a charm-point or an internal ticking time bomb waiting to explode on a day when he turns a corner a little too sharply.
But he persists with it, because any little bit of familiarity is worth the hassle of others, the effort and time of this ‘greater good’ that had so thanklessly shut down his running household and shipped him off to a foreign land without so much as a thought as to whether or not he really wanted to leave at all.
Even if it would have meant death for him, to be all alone.
It’s a major event when a Sanctuary closes down. Suddenly there are a million people needing to be distributed across the globe into new homes, those new homes actually needing to be built, jobs found, lives situated, new cultures learned and niches needing to be found. It was of Ivan’s opinion that they needn’t have bothered with it; even if his city was freezing over, the people dying from a magic-borne plague, the creatures outside lurking closer and closer to the borders of the gateway, supplies running low, and the wardstones growing weaker with each successive monster attack, he thinks that they could have managed.
Well, maybe he was being optimistic, but still, he’s a bit resentful that the home his family had owned for over two hundred years was suddenly stripped from him, and his sisters, independent bodies from himself, sent to separate Sanctuaries in the mad hustle to get everyone to evacuate before the plague reached the east side of the city.
He could have stayed, of course; hidden himself away from the authorities until everyone had left. But that meant being alone, without his sisters. And really, what good was a house that had been in the family for hundreds of years when the only one left in it had no family to share it with? His older sister, Katyusha, had used this argument on him, though he supposes that what had really convinced him was her grabbing onto his scarf and bawling her eyes out afterwards.
The house he is given is white and marbled with green mold creeping along the walls. They tell him that workers will be along within the next couple of days to fix up the place, because there really hadn’t been any time to do anything but assign him a place to live before moving on to the next poor and pitiful citizen of the Far North Sanctuary. It’s a two-story affair, vaguely neo-Victorian in style with imposing metal curlicue accents on the balcony and windows dotting here and there, some clear-glassed and others with artsy, stained motifs. Run-down as the house is, it could be beautiful with a bit of time and effort. He’s demanded this type of place to live, so he expects nothing less. He remembers trading classical paintings and old, doddery things he could bear to part with in order to get enough coupons to sequester a large, spacey home.
Enough space to live, with room for others; for his sisters and their future husbands, and their children when they had them, so that they could all be together, and never, ever alone. All he has to do is wait for them to acquire permits to move here, and then everything will fall into place.
He pulls his bag from the trunk of the tiny car, giving a grunt as the stocky luggage frees itself from the cramped confines. He’s had to live in wait-stations for weeks while waiting for his turn to get transferred along the series of portals connecting the gates together that lead to each Sanctuary. It isn’t safe to just walk through a singular portal into the main domain of the city. Complicated travel routes had been formed and cemented into place, with the last jump-points being heavily hidden and protected from all outsiders and insiders alike. The portals could be hacked, and any portal into a city was a portal to all humans, defenseless and weak, easy prey for the carnivorous fae that thirsted for the addictive human flesh, or those creatures interested in siphoning the vast quantities of ‘spirits’ produced by human souls living so closely together. (The term ‘spirits’ was spiteful wordplay to describe what could practically be considered metaphysical alcohol for the magically inclined; and like any alcohol, it too was addictive, and lead to a growing hunger which festered in the creatures and produced terrible transformations of the body and soul, and an eventual thirst for human souls in and of themselves.)
He tromps toward the front door of the house, peering cautiously at the stairs leading up the patio for any ice, and then pulling the keycard from the pocket of his heavy coat and swiping it through the outdated slider, its plastic shell cracked and dirty. The door pops open, dislodging a tiny rain of paint chips, and Ivan can’t be sure, but he think the slight crack in the frosted glass of the oval window on the door spreads an inch or two.
Inside, the house is dusty, cold, and dark.
They tell him, over time, that he’ll get used to living here, in this new city, that it will be just like his old one, only better. They say they’ll fix the house up as best they can, when they can. They say this is for the best.
Ivan realizes, as he walks up the creaky stairs and into a face-full of cobweb, that they tell him a lot of things.
He wonders how many are lies.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Ivan doesn’t do much, the first week he arrives at his new abode. He sleeps, unpacks a box of personal belongings out of the dozen or so that had arrived on his doorstep three hours after he had stepped out of that damnably tiny car, then reads a book. He tries venturing out to the local grocery store a couple times, investing in non-perishables and the like with the sparing care of a man bereft of coin (or credits, really, as physical money had long since been done away with, and bracelet credit cards were all the rage now), though he needn’t have worried with the fortune left behind to him and his sisters by his late parents. But Ivan is always careful with how much he spends, so it doesn’t really matter; if there was one thing his parents had managed to teach him before they died, it was the value of always being sure to only take what is needed.
His ventures in the kitchen are short, usually just grabbing something quickly from the fridge and standing in front of the sputtering device trying not to feel like a petty burglar in someone else’s home. Then he leaves and returns to his own room to sleep. He ventured so little from this routine that his tracks were obvious highways among the dust trails lining the floor.
He thinks to himself a couple times, looking through his bedroom window to the snow-covered streets below, at the people stumbling along like awkward, mechanized dolls, that he could live like this, alone, sulky, and a stranger in his own home and city.
But by the ninth day, bored and a little stir-crazy, he pulls on his heavy coat, wraps his scarf a bit more tightly, slips into his heavy boots, and walks outside for the intentional purpose of wandering about for the first time since he’s gotten here. He catches a bus and rides to the other side of town, staring impassively at the people outside, wrapped in super-insulated clothing that looked a lot sleeker than the bulky coat he himself adored wearing, even in summer. It was his father’s, and his father’s father’s, and even more beyond that. Incredibly durable, long-lasting, and most importantly warm, if not a bit faded and slightly ragged at the edges. He didn’t want to think about the thinning threads and patched-up holes.
The bus runs past his school, so when the supposed building comes into view and the hulking, gasping beast rolls to a rest, he gets up and shoves past the other sodden, shivering passengers and onto the street. He won’t be starting school for another six months, what with them still verifying his records and instating him with citizenship to the city. He supposes that the Sanctuaries could almost be like separate nations, however old and convoluted those notions are nowadays when everything is screwed up and out to get them no matter where or who they are. Moving from one to another is like becoming an entirely new person, even if it didn’t matter in this age what specific part of the world your heritage came from. Everything is mixed together, one giant pot of fear and uneasiness, shuffling about as Sanctuaries crumble and new ones are built.
The school is large and sprawling, made of stone white as snow and what would otherwise seem like meaningless sculptures and fountains, if he didn’t know that inside these are wardstones, pulsing steadily. If there is ever a place where they do not want the fae entering, it is the school.
Ivan has long since finished high school, but this Sanctuary has different rules from his old one, where he had been trained as a farmer and had managed the lands his parents had put so much sweat and blood into, and who had become wealthy off of their large harvest every year. Working and working and always saving for the future. But now they have no future and it is Ivan, the son, who must see the future for them.
But now he has no land beyond the barren dirt of the house’s backyard, muddy and dark with snow. This Sanctuary did not need more farmers, so here he is, attending a combined school with everyone who needs a place to learn. Children and teenagers and adults alike, breathing the same air and wondering what the point is to all this when they might not live to see the next few years if the fae find a way in.
Because they always do, no matter how many wardstones are placed around the city. Quite simply, the wardstones are getting weaker, and with them, the fae are becoming stronger.
Each humdrum pedestrian passing by him now, into the gates of the school, could die any day; no sadness, no anger.
Ivan is beyond the thought of ‘it could be me next, I don’t want to die I don’t want to die please don’t kill me,’ and inebriated in a state of apathy towards the very idea of death.
Death? Ha ha. Try living; it’s much more difficult.
………
He stands in place, watching people come and go for a few hours, looking but not really seeing everything that’s around him. He floats up, above and beyond the seething masses, vacant mind spiraling out into the distance. He’s looking for something, anything, to fill the emptiness. The void inside him aches and twitches, pulling in and blowing out, a heart in and of itself. He feels nothing nothing nothing oh gods am I dying-
Ivan is swallowed, at least it feels as such; but somehow, the sensation brings him back to himself, and he finds a stranger before him, shrouded in a hooded cloak and leaning close, hands clasped lightly around his cheeks. He is Ivan, still in front of the school, still cold and grounded; not empty and hungry and dying.
“Ah, you came back,” the stranger says, hands shifting to rest on Ivan’s shoulders, tugging down. Ivan bends, to his surprise, and falls to the other’s level, shivering when he finds himself incapable of moving and the stranger’s mouth whispering into his ear, “It’s not good to allow yourself to wander so far away and not leave your spirit a way back.”
Ivan wants to ask ‘what’ and ‘why,’ or maybe just shove the stranger away, but the moment he tries, he feels something tighten within, like a rope or bindings; it squeezes him to stillness, with an ease that terrifies Ivan and yet infuriates him.
“You could have died, you know; you left yourself open. Anyone could have reached inside you,” the stranger places a cold, ungloved hand to his chest, “and stolen that which is most precious to you.” And here, Ivan strains to scream as he feels the fingers dig against the fabric of his coat for a second before falling through, dipping into the cavity of his chest, though it doesn’t feel like his chest but someplace different.
The stranger practically moans as the fingers slip further further further. Ivan trembles on the inside, shuddering and screaming in his mind; it does not hurt, but it is wrong and he wants to kill the man, tear him to pieces and-“It’s so good,” the man sighs, “So strong and brilliant. I’m almost tempted…” His hand touches something, small and ephemeral, yet Ivan can feel it like his own beating heart. The digits twitch, pull away, but almost immediately return, fisting into the feeling, pulling, “I’m so sorry, sir, but really you won’t need it, they’ll be coming in soon, and I’ve foreseen your death, so it won’t matter-!”
Ivan can no longer take it, this strange man, digging around inside and touching what isn’t his, touching what has always been Ivan’s, even if he didn’t know he had it; something snaps inside, breaking with a twang and rolling out like a bolt of fabric. He wants to kill him, tear him apart, drink him in and crush him with a force beyond human comprehension, and these feelings, these urges, concentrate and hold together, a finished puzzle, rigid, defined lines blurring to create a perfect picture, clarity oh clarity thy name is-!
Ivan blinks his eyes open to find his back pressed into a cold, stone wall. He shoves off, spine aching, turning to find cracked lines spidering out from the zone of impact. He coughs and wipes his nose, a smear of blood seeping into the spongy material of his gloves as he pulls his hand away.
A grunt catches his attention, and his eyes trail to the side, squinting at the sight of the few pedestrians wandering the streets in the twilight hours scrambling and screaming away into the distance. A part of him wonders how it’s gotten so late without his noticing, and another notices a long portion of trenched concrete, splintering the sidewalk and falling out into the road. There’s a car laying askew on its top, and another whose front end is embedded into a lamppost on the opposite side of the street. And among this wreckage he catches a glimpse of red, before the red pulls itself up from its place wedged into a metal-mesh bench beside the lamppost collision.
Ivan sucks in a breath and staggers to the edge of the sidewalk, mind slipping and hazing into a multitude of tiny pinpricks, not an impending case of unconsciousness so much as points of clarity, overwhelming and intense. They take notice of everything, details and information coagulating in his mind, a fire burning wildly.
Despite this apparent ability to think, he can’t find himself with the ability to do anything, actions and words stuttering to a stop, before he catches sight of the stranger from before, cloak torn to shreds around his small frame robed in vibrant, foreign garb; a red jacket and white pants with brown slippers. The other’s dark hair flies out behind him in a ponytail, as he dashes with an inhuman speed and grasps Ivan around the throat, sending him slamming into the ground. Just as Ivan is sure the other will attempt to choke him to death, the man pulls back, breathing heavily before standing and offering a hand to his downed victim.
Ivan ignores the hand and raises himself on his own, stepping quickly away from the stranger and his poised hand. Ivan has never felt much fear beyond the attention and ministrations his younger sister, Natalia, has attempted to dote on him, but suddenly the mere idea of this monster touching him, reaching inside him once more, sickens him.
The other smirks briefly and coughs out a laugh before taking back his hand and placing it over his gut. Ivan sees a stain forming where the hand covers the cloth, “Impressive. A bit unrefined, but such raw talent…do you know what you are, Ivan? I suppose not, considering you’re still out here and not in there…”
“What do you want?” Ivan states, steeling his voice to stamp out the evident exhaustion and startlment, confusion and anger.
“Nothing,” the stranger smiles, “But I’d recommend making a run for it. I might have stopped at the warning shot, but other despicable creatures won’t catch the hint.”
“What do you mean?!” Ivan shouts, attempting to catch the stranger at his short, stiff-collared lapels, but grasps only a handful of cold, disappointing snow. He whirls around in rage when he feels a quiet tap on his shoulder, stopping as his adversary tugs his scarf down and pulls (and once again with such strange, unnerving ease!) Ivan’s ear close once more.
“Everything is more than it seems. I am more than you can see, and so are you. There is a war taking place, far beyond the imaginations of humans, which will consume us all should we lose. Maybe you’ll finally be the one…”
“The one what,” Ivan hisses as the stranger releases his scarf. He’s ignored, the stranger turning and walking away, past the carnage of an event not remembered. “The one what?!”
For the last time, the stranger turns, brown eyes that all at once are average and yet agitatingly peculiar holding his own, “The one to destroy the gods.”
And he is gone.
Ivan quivers on the inside; he feels full of worms and other crawly things. He wants to scream, wants to scream, wants to-!
o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o
To destroy the gods.
I want to laugh, because that’s impossible. I’m nothing if not a realist. The peculiar and strange, necessary features for one who is to kill a ‘god’…I’m none of these things.
And yet…
Some part of me is screaming; loudly, agonizingly-
Yes.
But I’m nothing if not a realist.
o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o
Damn character limits...Chapter 1, part 2 continued [ here]!
Author: Eram_Quod_Es
Words: 5,043
Theme: Modern Fantasy
Pairing(s)/Characters: RussiaxAmerica
Summary: “So I will destroy the gods.” Everything changed when Ivan began his new life alone in an unfamiliar city. When the Fae strike and a contract is formed with the apparitional anomaly Alfred, he finds himself with the power to change the world and, just possibly, the chance to save it.
Chapter 1/ Chapter 2/ chapter 3
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Extended Summary: “So I will destroy the gods.” There’s something to be said about breaching the barrier between dreams and reality; something which Ivan seems to have done unwittingly once he steps foot into a new Sanctuary after being evacuated from his old one. Discovering the ability to wield magic within himself, he finds his world expanding beyond his wildest imagination as he joins the Sanctuary’s resistance division to fight the evil Fae, is forced into a binding contract with the apparitional Alfred, and battles to maintain his identity as a human being.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
I never imagined I would die.
I thought I could live forever, alone and unchained, free to take what I want, when I wanted it, and no one could stop me. Every day I would wake up to find the world once again open to me, the sun bright, with smiles that flowed as easily as water, and a chest without a heart because only children are heartless enough to be innocent.
I have dreams now, you know. I never used to have them, because my head was always so empty; but you came along and filled it up, and oh hey I guess there was a brain in there after all because somehow dreaming comes to me like breathing air and flying and all those other things everyone is too old to know. They blend together like secret things, with wings and tongues and fingers long and agile, and I hold hands with someone and I think-
Maybe…maybe it’s you.
But I’m scared.
I don’t want to die.
But you-you were the first one that ever-that I ever-
…I guess now…isn’t the time to say things that you’ll never know.
You made me remember things, too. How to walk, and talk, and smile without meaning it, because sometimes, things are too heavy to bear, but we have to do it anyways.
So I’m going to smile now.
Because more than anything, I can’t live in a world without you.
I want you to live, and know that I wouldn’t just do this for anyone.
You are the only one I would ever die for.
So live, and don’t forget me.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
First END: stranger
-o-o-
“It’s temporary,” they tell him, when the car rolls up to the curb, tires sinking through grimy slush and brushing just a bit too close to the concrete to not scuff the rubber. Ivan disembarks from the car with a little difficulty, head much too tall and body much too wide to fit into such a compact space comfortably.
They tell him that his vehicle will be shipped over in the coming weeks, because while he could attempt to take public transportation every day to his school over on the other side of the city, he wants to be stubborn, even if it means having them bring back his old clunker with the rusty trunk, cheap carpet, and a persistent squeak that might be considered either a charm-point or an internal ticking time bomb waiting to explode on a day when he turns a corner a little too sharply.
But he persists with it, because any little bit of familiarity is worth the hassle of others, the effort and time of this ‘greater good’ that had so thanklessly shut down his running household and shipped him off to a foreign land without so much as a thought as to whether or not he really wanted to leave at all.
Even if it would have meant death for him, to be all alone.
It’s a major event when a Sanctuary closes down. Suddenly there are a million people needing to be distributed across the globe into new homes, those new homes actually needing to be built, jobs found, lives situated, new cultures learned and niches needing to be found. It was of Ivan’s opinion that they needn’t have bothered with it; even if his city was freezing over, the people dying from a magic-borne plague, the creatures outside lurking closer and closer to the borders of the gateway, supplies running low, and the wardstones growing weaker with each successive monster attack, he thinks that they could have managed.
Well, maybe he was being optimistic, but still, he’s a bit resentful that the home his family had owned for over two hundred years was suddenly stripped from him, and his sisters, independent bodies from himself, sent to separate Sanctuaries in the mad hustle to get everyone to evacuate before the plague reached the east side of the city.
He could have stayed, of course; hidden himself away from the authorities until everyone had left. But that meant being alone, without his sisters. And really, what good was a house that had been in the family for hundreds of years when the only one left in it had no family to share it with? His older sister, Katyusha, had used this argument on him, though he supposes that what had really convinced him was her grabbing onto his scarf and bawling her eyes out afterwards.
The house he is given is white and marbled with green mold creeping along the walls. They tell him that workers will be along within the next couple of days to fix up the place, because there really hadn’t been any time to do anything but assign him a place to live before moving on to the next poor and pitiful citizen of the Far North Sanctuary. It’s a two-story affair, vaguely neo-Victorian in style with imposing metal curlicue accents on the balcony and windows dotting here and there, some clear-glassed and others with artsy, stained motifs. Run-down as the house is, it could be beautiful with a bit of time and effort. He’s demanded this type of place to live, so he expects nothing less. He remembers trading classical paintings and old, doddery things he could bear to part with in order to get enough coupons to sequester a large, spacey home.
Enough space to live, with room for others; for his sisters and their future husbands, and their children when they had them, so that they could all be together, and never, ever alone. All he has to do is wait for them to acquire permits to move here, and then everything will fall into place.
He pulls his bag from the trunk of the tiny car, giving a grunt as the stocky luggage frees itself from the cramped confines. He’s had to live in wait-stations for weeks while waiting for his turn to get transferred along the series of portals connecting the gates together that lead to each Sanctuary. It isn’t safe to just walk through a singular portal into the main domain of the city. Complicated travel routes had been formed and cemented into place, with the last jump-points being heavily hidden and protected from all outsiders and insiders alike. The portals could be hacked, and any portal into a city was a portal to all humans, defenseless and weak, easy prey for the carnivorous fae that thirsted for the addictive human flesh, or those creatures interested in siphoning the vast quantities of ‘spirits’ produced by human souls living so closely together. (The term ‘spirits’ was spiteful wordplay to describe what could practically be considered metaphysical alcohol for the magically inclined; and like any alcohol, it too was addictive, and lead to a growing hunger which festered in the creatures and produced terrible transformations of the body and soul, and an eventual thirst for human souls in and of themselves.)
He tromps toward the front door of the house, peering cautiously at the stairs leading up the patio for any ice, and then pulling the keycard from the pocket of his heavy coat and swiping it through the outdated slider, its plastic shell cracked and dirty. The door pops open, dislodging a tiny rain of paint chips, and Ivan can’t be sure, but he think the slight crack in the frosted glass of the oval window on the door spreads an inch or two.
Inside, the house is dusty, cold, and dark.
They tell him, over time, that he’ll get used to living here, in this new city, that it will be just like his old one, only better. They say they’ll fix the house up as best they can, when they can. They say this is for the best.
Ivan realizes, as he walks up the creaky stairs and into a face-full of cobweb, that they tell him a lot of things.
He wonders how many are lies.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Ivan doesn’t do much, the first week he arrives at his new abode. He sleeps, unpacks a box of personal belongings out of the dozen or so that had arrived on his doorstep three hours after he had stepped out of that damnably tiny car, then reads a book. He tries venturing out to the local grocery store a couple times, investing in non-perishables and the like with the sparing care of a man bereft of coin (or credits, really, as physical money had long since been done away with, and bracelet credit cards were all the rage now), though he needn’t have worried with the fortune left behind to him and his sisters by his late parents. But Ivan is always careful with how much he spends, so it doesn’t really matter; if there was one thing his parents had managed to teach him before they died, it was the value of always being sure to only take what is needed.
His ventures in the kitchen are short, usually just grabbing something quickly from the fridge and standing in front of the sputtering device trying not to feel like a petty burglar in someone else’s home. Then he leaves and returns to his own room to sleep. He ventured so little from this routine that his tracks were obvious highways among the dust trails lining the floor.
He thinks to himself a couple times, looking through his bedroom window to the snow-covered streets below, at the people stumbling along like awkward, mechanized dolls, that he could live like this, alone, sulky, and a stranger in his own home and city.
But by the ninth day, bored and a little stir-crazy, he pulls on his heavy coat, wraps his scarf a bit more tightly, slips into his heavy boots, and walks outside for the intentional purpose of wandering about for the first time since he’s gotten here. He catches a bus and rides to the other side of town, staring impassively at the people outside, wrapped in super-insulated clothing that looked a lot sleeker than the bulky coat he himself adored wearing, even in summer. It was his father’s, and his father’s father’s, and even more beyond that. Incredibly durable, long-lasting, and most importantly warm, if not a bit faded and slightly ragged at the edges. He didn’t want to think about the thinning threads and patched-up holes.
The bus runs past his school, so when the supposed building comes into view and the hulking, gasping beast rolls to a rest, he gets up and shoves past the other sodden, shivering passengers and onto the street. He won’t be starting school for another six months, what with them still verifying his records and instating him with citizenship to the city. He supposes that the Sanctuaries could almost be like separate nations, however old and convoluted those notions are nowadays when everything is screwed up and out to get them no matter where or who they are. Moving from one to another is like becoming an entirely new person, even if it didn’t matter in this age what specific part of the world your heritage came from. Everything is mixed together, one giant pot of fear and uneasiness, shuffling about as Sanctuaries crumble and new ones are built.
The school is large and sprawling, made of stone white as snow and what would otherwise seem like meaningless sculptures and fountains, if he didn’t know that inside these are wardstones, pulsing steadily. If there is ever a place where they do not want the fae entering, it is the school.
Ivan has long since finished high school, but this Sanctuary has different rules from his old one, where he had been trained as a farmer and had managed the lands his parents had put so much sweat and blood into, and who had become wealthy off of their large harvest every year. Working and working and always saving for the future. But now they have no future and it is Ivan, the son, who must see the future for them.
But now he has no land beyond the barren dirt of the house’s backyard, muddy and dark with snow. This Sanctuary did not need more farmers, so here he is, attending a combined school with everyone who needs a place to learn. Children and teenagers and adults alike, breathing the same air and wondering what the point is to all this when they might not live to see the next few years if the fae find a way in.
Because they always do, no matter how many wardstones are placed around the city. Quite simply, the wardstones are getting weaker, and with them, the fae are becoming stronger.
Each humdrum pedestrian passing by him now, into the gates of the school, could die any day; no sadness, no anger.
Ivan is beyond the thought of ‘it could be me next, I don’t want to die I don’t want to die please don’t kill me,’ and inebriated in a state of apathy towards the very idea of death.
Death? Ha ha. Try living; it’s much more difficult.
………
He stands in place, watching people come and go for a few hours, looking but not really seeing everything that’s around him. He floats up, above and beyond the seething masses, vacant mind spiraling out into the distance. He’s looking for something, anything, to fill the emptiness. The void inside him aches and twitches, pulling in and blowing out, a heart in and of itself. He feels nothing nothing nothing oh gods am I dying-
Ivan is swallowed, at least it feels as such; but somehow, the sensation brings him back to himself, and he finds a stranger before him, shrouded in a hooded cloak and leaning close, hands clasped lightly around his cheeks. He is Ivan, still in front of the school, still cold and grounded; not empty and hungry and dying.
“Ah, you came back,” the stranger says, hands shifting to rest on Ivan’s shoulders, tugging down. Ivan bends, to his surprise, and falls to the other’s level, shivering when he finds himself incapable of moving and the stranger’s mouth whispering into his ear, “It’s not good to allow yourself to wander so far away and not leave your spirit a way back.”
Ivan wants to ask ‘what’ and ‘why,’ or maybe just shove the stranger away, but the moment he tries, he feels something tighten within, like a rope or bindings; it squeezes him to stillness, with an ease that terrifies Ivan and yet infuriates him.
“You could have died, you know; you left yourself open. Anyone could have reached inside you,” the stranger places a cold, ungloved hand to his chest, “and stolen that which is most precious to you.” And here, Ivan strains to scream as he feels the fingers dig against the fabric of his coat for a second before falling through, dipping into the cavity of his chest, though it doesn’t feel like his chest but someplace different.
The stranger practically moans as the fingers slip further further further. Ivan trembles on the inside, shuddering and screaming in his mind; it does not hurt, but it is wrong and he wants to kill the man, tear him to pieces and-“It’s so good,” the man sighs, “So strong and brilliant. I’m almost tempted…” His hand touches something, small and ephemeral, yet Ivan can feel it like his own beating heart. The digits twitch, pull away, but almost immediately return, fisting into the feeling, pulling, “I’m so sorry, sir, but really you won’t need it, they’ll be coming in soon, and I’ve foreseen your death, so it won’t matter-!”
Ivan can no longer take it, this strange man, digging around inside and touching what isn’t his, touching what has always been Ivan’s, even if he didn’t know he had it; something snaps inside, breaking with a twang and rolling out like a bolt of fabric. He wants to kill him, tear him apart, drink him in and crush him with a force beyond human comprehension, and these feelings, these urges, concentrate and hold together, a finished puzzle, rigid, defined lines blurring to create a perfect picture, clarity oh clarity thy name is-!
Ivan blinks his eyes open to find his back pressed into a cold, stone wall. He shoves off, spine aching, turning to find cracked lines spidering out from the zone of impact. He coughs and wipes his nose, a smear of blood seeping into the spongy material of his gloves as he pulls his hand away.
A grunt catches his attention, and his eyes trail to the side, squinting at the sight of the few pedestrians wandering the streets in the twilight hours scrambling and screaming away into the distance. A part of him wonders how it’s gotten so late without his noticing, and another notices a long portion of trenched concrete, splintering the sidewalk and falling out into the road. There’s a car laying askew on its top, and another whose front end is embedded into a lamppost on the opposite side of the street. And among this wreckage he catches a glimpse of red, before the red pulls itself up from its place wedged into a metal-mesh bench beside the lamppost collision.
Ivan sucks in a breath and staggers to the edge of the sidewalk, mind slipping and hazing into a multitude of tiny pinpricks, not an impending case of unconsciousness so much as points of clarity, overwhelming and intense. They take notice of everything, details and information coagulating in his mind, a fire burning wildly.
Despite this apparent ability to think, he can’t find himself with the ability to do anything, actions and words stuttering to a stop, before he catches sight of the stranger from before, cloak torn to shreds around his small frame robed in vibrant, foreign garb; a red jacket and white pants with brown slippers. The other’s dark hair flies out behind him in a ponytail, as he dashes with an inhuman speed and grasps Ivan around the throat, sending him slamming into the ground. Just as Ivan is sure the other will attempt to choke him to death, the man pulls back, breathing heavily before standing and offering a hand to his downed victim.
Ivan ignores the hand and raises himself on his own, stepping quickly away from the stranger and his poised hand. Ivan has never felt much fear beyond the attention and ministrations his younger sister, Natalia, has attempted to dote on him, but suddenly the mere idea of this monster touching him, reaching inside him once more, sickens him.
The other smirks briefly and coughs out a laugh before taking back his hand and placing it over his gut. Ivan sees a stain forming where the hand covers the cloth, “Impressive. A bit unrefined, but such raw talent…do you know what you are, Ivan? I suppose not, considering you’re still out here and not in there…”
“What do you want?” Ivan states, steeling his voice to stamp out the evident exhaustion and startlment, confusion and anger.
“Nothing,” the stranger smiles, “But I’d recommend making a run for it. I might have stopped at the warning shot, but other despicable creatures won’t catch the hint.”
“What do you mean?!” Ivan shouts, attempting to catch the stranger at his short, stiff-collared lapels, but grasps only a handful of cold, disappointing snow. He whirls around in rage when he feels a quiet tap on his shoulder, stopping as his adversary tugs his scarf down and pulls (and once again with such strange, unnerving ease!) Ivan’s ear close once more.
“Everything is more than it seems. I am more than you can see, and so are you. There is a war taking place, far beyond the imaginations of humans, which will consume us all should we lose. Maybe you’ll finally be the one…”
“The one what,” Ivan hisses as the stranger releases his scarf. He’s ignored, the stranger turning and walking away, past the carnage of an event not remembered. “The one what?!”
For the last time, the stranger turns, brown eyes that all at once are average and yet agitatingly peculiar holding his own, “The one to destroy the gods.”
And he is gone.
Ivan quivers on the inside; he feels full of worms and other crawly things. He wants to scream, wants to scream, wants to-!
o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o
To destroy the gods.
I want to laugh, because that’s impossible. I’m nothing if not a realist. The peculiar and strange, necessary features for one who is to kill a ‘god’…I’m none of these things.
And yet…
Some part of me is screaming; loudly, agonizingly-
Yes.
But I’m nothing if not a realist.
o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o
Damn character limits...Chapter 1, part 2 continued [ here]!