Chapter Text
Shallow breaths rattled in Pantalone’s lungs.
This liminal space, abandoned and rotting, would squeeze into a point of singularity soon, taking Pantalone into the throes of death along with it. Still, he would take a moment to admire this desolation. Black roots snaked along the parched ground, reaching into the cracks in the tree barks, creeping up the stone walls that caged the entire garden. The red sky above gleamed like thin plastic, drooping lower and lower, crushed under its own weight.
The air burned and charred his lungs, but he welcomed it. With every inhale, he swallowed glass, and now the blood coating his tongue was so thick he almost slurred his words. “You’re finally here. Asmoday.”
“You would dare?” The shadow of god stepped down on invisible stairs, the air itself solidifying beneath her feet. Each step shook the ground, and Pantalone narrowly avoided two of the trees she felled by the mere fact of her presence. “Names hold a lot of power in this world, Feofan. What makes you think I won’t kill you for uttering mine?”
Pantalone smiled, licking the blood that leaked past his lips. “I think you find me rather interesting,” he said. She hovered nearly thirty feet above him, the malice in her gaze so potent her eyes seemed to glimmer red. “I think you want to know how I am even here, in your home.”
The space shifted. Pantalone was on the ground, a hand made of Asmoday’s cubes around his neck, making precise slits in his skin. The bloody grass whipped around his face as Asmoday finally landed, her left foot on Pantalone’s chest, crushing his ribs.
“My curiosity does not satiate my hatred towards you, Feofan.”
Pantalone laughed, and the absurdity of the action made even the shade pause for a miniscule second. “You don’t understand, Asmoday. I win this game either way,” he said. “If you kill me, I return to him. And if not, then he returns to me.”
“You astound me,” she said. A ghost of a smile played on her lips. Ah. “What’s your bargain?”
Pantalone grinned, wide and ill-fitting a dying man. “I want to see the imaginary tree.”
IOIOIOIOI
The first thing Feofan noticed was the bodies hanging from the ceiling. Like pigs in a slaughterhouse, blood mystified like dew around them. The room’s scale suffocated Feofan’s lungs, and its metallic monotonicity needled his eyes. Precision configured the room, every table placed the same distance from the wall, every body exactly a foot apart, every scalpel, every plier and syringe placed facing north. The air choked on pure, untouched malice.
A single door, facing Feofan. The red, glass square in it blinked at him. Feofan ran to it, but something caught his angle, sending him hurtling to the ground. He fell in a heap, head smacking against the tiles. He groaned and tried to sit up, only to slip again. The floor was slippery with fresh blood. Finally, he sat on his knees, finding his ankle shackled to the table.
Feofan’s heart thumped in his chest. He scrubbed his face free of tears. His hands came back bloody.
Then, the door opened.
A man stood in the red light, his eyes covered in a crow mask. “What a mess,” he said. “Why they put you in the storage room, I do not know.”
He walked slowly, and each step he took fastened Feofan’s heartbeat. He folded himself inward, knowing a smaller target was harder to break. The masked man crouched to his level, taking care to not let his pristine clothes touch the filthy ground. He pulled out a handkerchief, and stretched his arm towards Feofan’s face. Feofan flinched backwards, and the man stilled.
“Interesting.”
Feofan grit his teeth. “Whatever you want to do, finish it quickly.”
The man tilted his head, then grabbed his chin, forcing Feofan to stay still while he dabbed the blood away from his face. “Why are you certain I will harm you?”
Feofan remained quiet, swallowing back whatever quip was on his tongue. Angering this man would only worsen his fate.
“Ah, the bodies must have frightened you,” the man said. “I see, I see.” He looked behind Feofan, then snapped his fingers. The shackle around Feofan’s ankle came loose. “Come, I’ll take you somewhere more befitting a conversation of reason.”
He pulled Feofan by his elbow, supporting most of his weight while he guided them out of the room. Feofan’s naked feet kept slipping on the floor, and every time he did the man hauled him up again. They walked many red hallways, turned many corners, until finally, the man stopped in front of a wooden door.
The room was a study. High windows, entire walls covered in bookshelves, an ordinary pair of desks. And a divan. The man helped him sit on that divan, apparently unconcerned that it would be dirtied.
“Now,” the man said. “What’s your name?”
“What does it matter?”
The man smiled. “My name is Il Dottore. Now, what’s yours?”
“You must already know it. You paid a hefty sum for me, after all.”
“I do not bother to learn the names of my specimens,” Dottore said. “You are no longer my specimen.”
Feofan clenched his fist. He had a better use for him then. Feofan closed his legs and curled away.
Dottore tilted his head again. “I will not harm you,” he said, his voice now soft. “Not in any way.”
“Why?” Feofan asked. He wrapped his arms around himself, clutching the ruined fabric of his shirt. “Why?”
Dottore laughed. “I truly do not know.”
Feofan had survived many terrible men. Their violence, their ‘love’. This man, who was so unashamed of his monstrosity, had no such love to give. Even though Feofan could sense his honesty, he knew that was not Dottore’s intention. He simply refused to hide himself. This knowledge disarmed Feofan, and he slumped forward.
Dottore caught him mid-fall, blood now smeared all over his clothes. “Don’t die on me now.”
Feofan blinked up hazily at him. “Feofan.”
Dottore blinked. “What?”
“My name. Feofan,” he said, trying not to slur his words.
Feofan closed his eyes. Dottore picked him up, so gentle that Feofan felt like he was in a cradle. “Let’s fix you up then, Feofan.”
IOIOIOIOI
“You’re unbelievable,” Zandik said. “Sometimes I think you do this just to spite me.”
Feofan smiled. “You make yourself an easy target, doctor.”
Zandik continued applying ointment on the sutures, a little more forceful in his movements now. “You’re a bank clerk. Unless there was a robbery, I don’t see how you managed to get yourself shot.”
“There was a robbery,” Feofan lied, smiling.
Zandik kicked him in the shin. Feofan hissed. “Next time, I’ll let you bleed out.” Feofan only smiled in response. “And you’ve gotten even thinner. A clerk’s salary isn’t so meager that you cannot afford food,” Zandik said, finally closing the lid on the ointment container. “Do you really need me to feed you as well?”
“I’ve been busy,” said Feofan. “It’s a demanding job.”
“You stamp cheques all day.”
“Exactly.” Feofan grabbed Zandik’s hands, placing them on his hips. “This new job offer is much more exciting,” he said, pulling Zandik closer to stand between his legs.
Zandik furrowed his brows. “What new job offer?”
Feofan leaned down and ghosted his lips over Zandik’s. “Kiss me.”
Zandik pulled away a little. “I just sutured an open wound in your arm. Have some restraint.”
“How can I, when you look like this?” Feofan closed the distance between them, licking inside Zandik’s mouth, while he rubbed gentle circles on Feofan’s waist, digging his thumb into Feofan’s hip bone.
“Feofan,” Zandik breathed between kisses. “What’s this new job?”
“Fuck me first,” Feofan said, taking Zandik’s lower lip between his teeth.
“You’d reopen your stitches,” Zandik said. Feofan unbuttoned his pants, pulling out his soft dick. Zandik hissed into his mouth as he stroked him into hardness.
Even with the anaesthetic, his left arm throbbed in pain. But this only intensified his desire. “Then be gentle,” he said.
“You know I can’t,” Zandik said, groaning as Feofan thumbed his slit.
Feofan nibbled at his earlobe. “You can stitch me up then, when I’m lying on your desk, spent and boneless, while your cum spills out of me. Do you think I’d feel the needle going in?”
Zandik pressed his palm against his chest, pushing him down onto the desk. He kissed Feofan’s belly, hand travelling down to the hem of his bloodied trousers.
Zandik smiled against his skin. “How completely you have ruined me, Feofan.”
IOIOIOIOI
Pantalone took off his coat, hanging it on the wall hook. “Zandik?” he called.
No reply. Frowning now, Pantalone ventured deeper into the laboratory. The smells were so pungent a less frequent visitor would have had to cover their nose. Pantalone wandered further in, and many crooked turns later, arrived at Zandik’s study. He opened the large, ornate doors.
“Zandik,” he said, only to realise that the study, too, was empty. Eerily so. Abandoned pages fluttered up then cascaded down, the wind whispering in the dark corners. In the middle of the neat arrangement of tables, was a cane, infuriatingly plain still. The gems he put on it never held on. Something cold stirred in Pantalone’s gut.
He ran.
The corridors seemed to stretch infinitely now, but Pantalone scaled the maze of them with incredible speed. He slammed open every door, expecting to see Zandik in one of them, perhaps resting, or researching the elixir again, maybe he was looking for his cane, grumbling about it in that raspy voice he had come to despise. Please, please, Pantalone begged, running even as his lungs burned.
Finally, he reached the very last room. The operating room, where he had bared himself to him, body and soul, so many times over the decades. Where—he found now the corpse of his lover cut open, dissected like a cockroach.
Clean slits ran all over Zandiks’ body. Tendons peeked through the incisions in his arms. A bone, thin and porous, was halfway out of his right leg. The flesh on his chest had been rolled back like foil, his ribs broken with pliers. His intestines, half wrapped around a gloved hand, were being slowly pulled out while his liver and stomach slipped on the shiny floor of his muscles. His head had been shaved, split precisely in half. Omicron held his brain in one hand, his heart in another, ready to preserve them in ethanol.
“No one told him?” Omega yelled. He seemed to be walking towards Pantalone, but he couldn’t—really see. His vision was all blurry, even with the glasses. And why was breathing so hard?
“Hey,” Omega said, cupping his face with his bloody hands, forcing him to look away from Zandik’s corpse. “Come with me.”
A few dizzying seconds—or minutes perhaps, everything was so confusing, so distant and foggy—passed and Pantalone found himself sitting in a metal chair, with Omega kneeling at his feet. The smell of copper was dizzying, and Pantalone swayed forward, only for Omega to catch him. He nicked away the crusty, dried bloody from his face.
“Feofan,” Omega said.
“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t you ever dare. You’re just a hollow mimicry of him, a still image. You have no right.”
Omega paused. His mask concealed his eyes, but Pantalone could sense the weight of his anguish. “Pantalone,” the segment tried again. “He died peacefully.”
Pantalone laughed. “I doubt you let him.”
“Believe what you will,” Omega said. “I can only present you with the facts.”
“Will you stitch him back together?” Pantalone asked.
Omega looked down, hand crawling up Pantalone’s thigh. “If you wish.”
Pantalone grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked. The segment made no sound of protest, not even a hitch in his breath. Pantalone pulled his head back, baring Omega’s neck to him, and pulled out his dagger. Its blade shone against Omega’s pale neck, the richest silver over melting snow.
“You will never touch me, do you understand? Not you, not any of them.”
“We bear his soul, you know. One-sevenths of it, in each of us,” Omega said, grinning now as the blade drew blood. “We are him, he is us. No matter how much you deny it, this remains true.”
“Shut up.”
“Kill me then,” Omega said, drawing closer. “It would be easy, I’d bleed dry just like a human. Just like him.”
Pantalone gripped the hilt of his blade, hard enough to imprint its carvings onto his palm.
Omega grinned. “You can’t,” he said, voice low and silky. “Of course, you can’t. How pathetic of a man you are, Feofan.”
Pantalone punched him with brutal force. Omega fell hard, head slamming onto the marble floor. He groaned, and satisfaction bloomed in Feofan’s chest. “Leave,” he said. “Give me his body, embalmed, tomorrow morning.”
Omega looked at him from the floor, blood dripping out of his nose. He smiled. “As you wish, dearest Pantalone.”
IOIOIOIOI
“You coddle him,” Omega said. He flipped the dagger in his hand, throwing it, catching it over and over in a dangerous dance. The elixir in his earring splashed gently as he cocked his head to the side, smiling coyly at Pantalone. “Why do you never hold me so gently?”
The blizzard outside had raged on for days now, and the days had darkened with gloom. Tau had become restless, and though his artificial pride would never let him admit it, he craved this affection from Pantalone. Now, tucked securely against his chest, he slept. A rare burst of sunlight struck the jewels embellishing Pantalone’s coat, refracting onto Tau’s face. A glare must have formed on his eyelids for he grimaced in his sleep. Quickly, Pantalone shielded him with his hand.
“Draw the curtains, will you?” he said.
“Let him bask in the sun,” Omega replied. “Cover your hideous stones instead.”
Pantalone sighed. He grabbed his hooded jacket, draping it over his shoulder. He then placed its dark sleeve over Tau’s eyes. His frown eased. Pantalone smiled, pulling away the elixir necklace that was digging into Tau’s neck. Warmth flooded his chest, and he had to squash the overwhelming urge to kiss Tau’s cheeks. He would not risk waking him from such restful sleep.
“A rare smile,” Omega said. He placed the knife on the armrest. “Pantalone, don’t make me envy ‘myself’.”
“You still delude yourself. You’re far too full of guile and conceit to be Tau,” he said.
Omega’s laugh boomed across the walls. It startled Tau awake. “I never knew he was such an illusionist, or you so naive.” Tau sat up on Pantalone’s lap, glaring daggers at Omega. This seemed to elate Omega even more. He barked out another laugh. “Look at his face!” he exclaimed. “If he could stare me to death, he would!”
“Tau, leave us,” Pantalone said.
Tau slid off Pantalone’s lap. Still weary from sleep, he dragged his feet towards the door, Pantalone’s coat sitting heavily on his shoulders. Its hem slid along the floor. When Tau closed the door behind him, Pantalone looked up at Omega, who was now staring at the sun and its dimming glow.
“What’s wrong with you today?” he asked.
Omega did not turn his gaze. The sunlight spilled across his features like a polish of gold, and Pantalone found himself yearning to see his eyes. How lovely their shine would be, the coldest crimson thawing away under the sun.
“You know what I want,” Omega said. “And yet you cruelly deprive me of it every day, even as you indulge Tau and Epsilon. Even Iota.”
“It’s hard to deny them,” Pantalone said. “The shine in their eyes . . . weakens me.”
Omega huffed out a short, bitter laugh. He stood up, stalking towards Pantalone. He leaned down, bringing his face inches away from Pantalone’s, who could almost feel the ghost of Omega’s lips on his.
“Well, then, let’s conduct a small experiment. Here and now.” He took Pantalone’s hand, hooking his fingers under his mask. “I’m willing to lay myself bare to you, dear banker. Behold me.”
Pantalone tugged the mask loose and let it fall. His breath stalled to a stop. Of course, he had the same eyes. The same blasphemous shade of fresh blood. The same manic look warmed by adoration. The very same.
Omega licked the corner of Pantalone’s mouth, dragging his tongue along his lower lip. “Well? Will you deny me?”
Pantalone could only kiss him in response.
It was a kiss of violence. Pantalone poured the resentment that had fermented in him for a decade into it, the grief, the gnawing guilt. He gave it all to Omega, pulling him onto his lap, caging him in his arms. Their teeth clashed, they bit each other’s tongues, and licked the blood off with vampiric hunger. Omega yanked his hair back and he choked him in return, drinking in the moans that followed.
“You masochist,” Pantalone hissed. “You miserable, wretched man.”
“Yes,” Omega replied. “Yes, give it all to me. Your anger, your sorrow. I will leech it off you.” He trailed bruising kisses down Pantalone’s jaw, burying himself into his neck, insatiable. “Don’t hold back.”
Pantalone moaned as Omega palmed his clothed dick, mouthing at his neck as he did.
“Stop it,” Pantalone said.
Omega rolled his hips, rubbing up against Pantalone’s hard cock. Even through layers of fabric, he could feel the leaking wetness between Omega’s legs.
“Do you want me like this? Or do you want me to ruin you?” he whispered, licking Pantalone’s ear. “Take your pick, Regrator.”
Pantalone groaned. Desire, raw, carnal desire towered over every bit of reason, every shred of pride. He would not deny himself this. He gripped Omega’s waist, sneaking his hand into his trousers, pushing aside his underwear with deft fingers. Omega moaned and seized up as Pantalone rubbed his clit, so slick his fingers kept slipping.
“You’re mine now,” he whispered. “At my mercy.”
“Yes, yes,” Omega said, biting his lip to hide his pathetic sounds. “Show me, then, how merciless you can be.”
Later, as they lay among the sodden sheets, Pantalone allowed himself to look. Omega was asleep, so unbearably gentle in the moon’s silver sheen, disarmed. The sight of him was excruciating in its familiarity and divine in its rare beauty. A dead moth’s wings preserved in glass; the fizz of freshly brewed elixir; the nightly undress of Sumeru’s water lilies; the glitter sprinkled from a fae’s wings; a clean tear in the sky’s fabric; the first bite of a fig.
Longing stirred in his chest, the barest form of it. Slowly, it oozed out of his heart. He tried to catch its wisps, but it slipped through like the desert sand. It grew limbs, then a torso, finally a head. Until its shadow clung to his back, arms shackling his chest. Pantalone slouched under its weight, fumbling for a cigarette on his night stand.
Every pack was empty.
The shadow squeezed his chest, drawing a small whine from him. No, he thought, resolute. No. He turned to leave the bed, this spacetime that was dragging his mind towards a towering cliff. But then—a hand closed around his wrist. Firm.
“Feofan,” Omega whispered. “Don’t fight it.”
“You’re not him,” he replied, trembling as the shadow squeezed and squeezed. “You will never be.”
“I am your memory of him,” Omega said. “Isn’t that enough?”
Pantalone turned around. Omega laid on the bed in his most vulnerable form, naked and unmasked. His ruby eyes stared at him through a curtain of candy blue. And Pantalone finally, finally crumbled. He leaned down, pressing his lips to Omega’s collarbone. “Zandik,” he whispered in prayer. “Zandik, don’t go.”
The clouds parted in blessing. The moon’s glow fell over them like glitter. The shadow clinging to Feofan vanished into nothing. Something much warmer, much sweeter crawled its way out of his heart. Agonising, burning devotion. Yes, he thought, consume me.
Zandik brushed his hair, combing his fingers through his lovelock. “If it demands our parting, I will burn fate itself,” he said.
Oh, how his heart rejoiced! How the words ignited the long dead flame in his chest. Feofan breathed a laugh against Zandik’s skin. “Arrogant as ever, doctor.”
“It’s not unfounded, I would say,” Zandik replied. “I won you over, did I not?”
“You seduced me,” Feofan said, trailing kisses down his chest, licking his soft nipple. “Hardly the same thing.”
“A meaningless distinction,”said Zandik. Feofan bit his nipple, tugging it up with his teeth. “Ah,” Zandik whined, then glared at him. Pantalone stared back at him with hooded eyes. “You animal.”
“Fuck me,” Feofan said, mouthing at the trickle of blood he had produced. “Make a mess of me.”
“You’re insatiable,” said Zandik, then grinned, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
IOIOIOIOI
Epsilon’s body went taut in Pantalone’s lap, eyes open in chasmic horror. “Wait—please wait—” he screamed.
Pantalone cupped his face, running his thumb over his eyebrows. “Epsilon, what’s wrong?”
“Feofan,” Epsilon whispered, gaze finally focusing on Pantalone’s face. Milky tears leaked out of his eyes. “He did this—all of us—”
“What are you talking about?” Pantalone whispered. A nightmare, perhaps. “Epsilon, don’t be scared—”
“Tau—don’t let him die alone, Feofan.” Pantalone’s blood ran cold. But Epsilon pulled one trembling hand up, placing it on Pantalone’s face. Pantalone held that hand, leaning into it. “I love you.”
Epsilon’s hand fell into Pantalone’s. His eyes slipped closed. Blood trickled out of his mouth, staining the silk red.
The night was so suddenly quiet. Not an echo of sound. Pantalone pulled Epsilon into his arms, and pressed his ear against his chest. Even in such profound silence, Pantalone could not hear the steady thrum of his heartbeat. Whatever blood it had left inside was now slowly coming up Epsilon’s throat, splitting into crimson threads, falling in rivulets onto Pantalone’s chest.
“Epsilon?” Pantalone said. Some naive corner of his mind clinged to falsity. He let it. “Zandik,” he whispered, brushing the unruly hair out of his eyes. “Please.”
Grief seeped through after all. Pantalone suffocated under it. Its serrated edge caught Pantalone over and over, in waves. A full breath, and then a flood of cold dread. A moment of fresh denial, and then razors in his heart, laced with brine. His mind played the moment like a stuttering film. Epsilon, warm and safe, laughing in his arms. Epsilon, bleeding relentlessly out of his mouth.
His brain tripped over memories, trying to glue a reality together to replace this one. Epsilon, sneaking into his office with a qingxin in his hand; Epsilon, apologising to Tau at Pantalone’s reprimand; Epsilon, asking him for their very first kiss.
But Epsilon was here now, a blood spider around his slack mouth. What had he said? What had been his last words to Pantalone?
He did this. All of us. Don’t let him die alone. I love you.
No, no, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t!
Gently, Pantalone laid Epsilon on the bed. He ran. His lungs burned, copper still lingered on his tongue. But he ran. Tau would be in his room. He would be safe, sleeping soundly. There would be no blood spider this time, no halt in the mechanical beat of his tiny heart.
Pantalone swung open the doors. Tau was on the floor, his back to Pantalone, small body curled up. Fear crippled Pantalone, forced him to his knees. On trembling limbs, he crawled to Tau, turning him onto his back.
The same blood spider had formed on his mouth, its limbs stretching to his ears.
Pantalone wailed. He scooped Tau’s small body up, forming a cradle with his arms. He rocked the child back and forth, shushing him as he would after one of those persistent nightmares, as he would when Epsilon teased him.
Tau’s hand fell off his stomach, his fingers landing with a soft thud on a notebook. Pantalone picked it up. On its yellowing page, ink flowed and curved to form beautiful lettering, the final stroke devolving into a jagged streak as if the writer’s hand had slipped. In perfect Snezhnayan, it read: I love you, Fanya.
Whatever resolve Pantalone had, whatever grip on sanity he had maintained, crumbled.
He screamed himself raw, cradling Tau’s still body in his arms. The night waned, and the Ninth Harbinger, stripped of his soul, wept.
IOIOIOIOI
The last of Zandik’s soul melted into a crucible of his own making. Feofan knelt in the grass, letting embers of a primordial prison burn little stars on his skin. The grand experiment had come to a close, the stage had been cleared, the curtains drawn. And in its wake, Feofan mourned a memory and a future.
The price, of their ambition.
IOIOIOIOI
“You will die the very moment you make contact with the tree,” Asmoday said. She pondered for a moment. “Perhaps ‘die’ is the wrong word here. You will be deleted, your very existence shall vanish from the universe.”
“And this is a certain outcome?” Pantalone asked, staring ahead as Asmoday cleaved the air open. Gold glimmered on the other side.
“Your will, Harbinger, cannot pierce the tree.”
Pantalone walked ahead. “And if it can?”
“Then you will get your wish. The tree will return him to you.”
Pantalone grinned, pushing his hand through the portal. “I’ll take that wager.”
“May we never meet again, Feofan.”
“I’m counting on it,” Pantalone replied, and stepped through.