What about Ickhart? You might be wondering now. Answer: He is a lonely person. Sorry, people who want him paired.
This was originally called Deeper than the Sky, but rewritten. The storyline has solidified, in a sense, but don't expect to understand it fully yet. The new title is to signify the rewrite.
For those who don't play Maple, or haven't been to Erev before: www. maplewiki. net/images/d/d0/Order_of_Cygnus. png, without the spaces. Have fun matching characters with faces. And make sure you know how Kirium and Kiriru look.
circles of eternity
The angels are fast asleep—their moonstone hearts are enfolded in the starlight, their great white wings feathered over palace eaves. Deep beyond the moonlight mists blanketing the crystal rooftops, the sky is changing, again—shedding its old raven feathers to bloom in glorious wedding white.
With a sigh, the Master of Souls allows the morning to slip off his fingers. The open vaults of the sky are clearer than the bottom of a wine glass, a butterfly's powdery wings—and in a circle entrapping him, the trellis arches are pale as diamond, rich as obsidian.
Beneath the cornflower dawn, Mihail finds himself wandering. He wanders, without aim and without purpose—moving through the gardens like a careless breeze, drifting like a child lost in a new city. Around him the arches are silent, but evermore the vines are whispering—pixies swinging on the fences with glittering smiles.
The secrets they whisper, there are so many—secrets upon the rustles of vines, secrets of Erev that he will never learn, however long he stays.
But I will stay forever, and I suppose that means I'll learn to whisper like them, eventually.
How long has he walked the pathways of heaven? Perhaps a century, perhaps two—two hundred years without shield or shelter, or even an umbrella. But there are no storms in this world, no rain and no shadow to fear. Mihail is appreciative of this fact, as much as any other person who hates being caught in the drizzle. The rain will rust my sword.
Yet so occasionally, he has dreams—fever dreams, of running through rain and being drenched, drunken, in a shower of liquid cold. And spiralling like a gannet in the breezes, plunging with a silver-bell splash into waves he has never seen before. Eternally lost, in a glimmering of light.
Am I only dreaming?
He glances at masked Ickhart, a shadow on the branches. I wonder what you dream of, he muses. Do you even dream?
Then, he pauses—a whirl of spices greets his consciousness: gold and frankincense and myrrh—a wind almost heralding from desert Ariant, lilting and spiced like a snake charmer's melody. But it is not Ariant, he knows: it is only wild, windy Irina—and her lips, and her hair—as she emerges from the vines with diamonds in her eyes. Her hair is star anise, her irises are saffron; her footsteps are like cinnamon in the breeze.
"I heard that falling in love is like falling into an ocean," she whispers, an apparition on the stairway to the pagoda.
Irina's gaze is burning—burning, and oh so untamable. She is nothing like Oz, the little match-girl who sits forever by the altar, lighting the candle whenever it goes out. She is wildness—wildness like the vines in the balcony, wildness like the golden fire flashing in her eyes.
"Mihail, don't you sometimes wish we could escape?" she asks, taking a step down. "There's a world outside—and it's more wonderful than this place, I know."
"Outside? But we are bound, Irina," he calls back, sheathing his sword. "We made an oath upon the sky—to remain in Her Majesty's service, as long as we live."
"And how long, Mihail? We can live forever, without living at all!"
She sighs and leaps down the last stairs, to where he stands. Mihail only has a moment to glance up at her—she is beside him in a twinkling, taking his hand and pressing something into his palm.
A rose hip: wrinkled and dry, but so full of life.
"Take good care of it," she whispers into his ear, "and you can plant the seeds when we finally leave." There is laughter in her words. "They are fragile, and roses are hard to grow."
"Why not give me a rose then?"
But she leaves him no answer—only an echo, and a whiff of blossom perfume where she once leaned on the rails.
That's because a rose hip can grow and flourish, Mihail. A rose is dead, even before it is in your palms.
How did we wind up here? Oz wonders, gazing out into the panorama beyond the window frame. In her window, the feathers are dancing, white butterflies bound to the window. She smiles to see the way they struggle in their bonds.
A breath of wind slips, unnoticed, into the incense-clouded altar room. Mastered by the breeze, the candle flame fades.
There now, she murmurs, turning to light the wick again, setting the candle aglow once more. Shine just a little longer, just a little brighter—just a little more like the Queen who gave us life.
Her eyes trail across the treasures on her altar again—dusty peacock feathers, glinting odds and ends pilfered from Kirium's store, a statue of Queen Cygnus.
(Or is it a statue of the Goddess? I don't know; their eyes are the same.)
But there is something she treasures more than these. Something that cannot be placed on her mantel—something as vast as the shore-gilded sea…
The girl hears a ringing knock on the windowsill, and a bright smile illuminates her soft-featured face. From the window Hawkeye smiles back, the lost pirate's eyes as blue as the roaring ocean below.
"Why are you here?" she questions, standing. He grins widely as she approaches.
"Why are we here?" he replies with silent sorrow, leaning over the sill into the candlelit room. "We must leave one day."
"But who will lead us? We're bound here until we die, remember…?"
Hawkeye says nothing. Then, gazing up at her eyes again, his smile returns. "Don't you sometimes dream of it, though?"
She wants to say yes, but the Goddess is watching.
He turns to the sky over his shoulder, sighing. Then, returning his gaze to her, his eyes grow sad. "Ah—when we escape Erev, I know just where I'll return. But where will you go, Oz?"
The Witch of Flames smiles. "Into the flames," she murmurs. "Inside a volcano and away from the sky…"
"But close to the sea?" he replies earnestly. "I'd be glad, Oz. Will you change your road, and come with me?"
She blinks her green eyes, wishing he wouldn't gaze at her so. It's like falling into an ocean, she thinks, turning away. It's ever so thrilling, ever so beautiful. This is—falling in love.
He carefully takes her wrist, the rage of all the waves behind his smile—waves in all their glory, the tang of salt sharp—rushing, crashing on thousand-mile granite cliffs, like white horses with manes of sea spray. She smiles back, leaning close so he may kiss her.
Behind her, Oz feels the Goddess' gaze, piercing gimlet from the dusty altar. You swore, She whispers severely. You made an oath. Of chastity, and poverty, and eternal binding with the land.
But they had been mere children then, engendered and blinded in the sepulchre of the sun.
"Will you come with me?" Hawkeye asks again, forgetting his sorrow, his smile like a breeze on a distant beach.
She laughs back. "Yes," she says. "Because I know you'll take me along." But somehow, when she thinks of escape, she can only think of the pain and shadows beyond the terraces of Erev.
To stay trapped is to stay safe forever. Is that not true?
Still the wind whirls, a dragon spiralling through her flaming hair, through his. For a moment, she rides the overwhelming, everlasting flow, forgetting all her obligations—kissing his cheek as he runs his fingers through her hair.
On the empty altar beside the Queen, the candle has gone out, yet again.
Falling in love is like falling into an ocean. It is a thrill, but it always ends in a dark, crushing coldness.
At the balcony, Mihail and Irina are lost in an embrace that will end, far too soon.
"Isn't it against our code?" asks the man, burying his face deeper in her hair. "Loving each other, and longing to escape?" She sighs and leans against her shoulder, warmth flooding to the tips of her fingers.
"Mihail, Mihail," she murmurs with a smile. "You don't understand, do you? Once we leave, we start our lives anew. No more oath to bind us down. We'll forget everything here; forget we even lived in Erev! Don't you see?"
"Must I forget you?" he answers.
"Yes, but aren't you willing to pay that price, just to be unshackled? There are better things than me out there! Forget me, and forget everything here. It's the best way to go…"
But I don't want "better things". I want to be with you, forever and ever…
"Forever always ends," she whispers into his shoulder, almost as if she can hear his thoughts. "Eternity is a circle; all we have to do is escape."
He lets go, and she draws back. "We're risking too much," he murmurs, suddenly. "If there is a better world waiting, then we have to leave everything behind, and go."
Irina smiles back, the wind whirling through her hair. "I love you, and you know I always will, even after death," she sighs. "Longer than forever, Mihail."
"Longer…than forever," he replies, touching her fingers.
He is a ragged doll in the shelter of the leaves—a shadow hidden from the sun in the colourlessness of hate and hurt.
From there he watches everything, watches as bonds are formed, bonds are broken—watches as the vines grow across the generations, tangling themselves with the balcony bars.
Love will destroy them sooner than it will bring them any good, he muses. Just like the vines, constricting the bars, choking everything else out.
In this land of love and lies, he is the only singular: he is not plural like everyone else, and can never be. The Queen forbade him, just so.
Ickhart, nobody else. Cursed forever.
"Don't you wonder?" Nineheart murmurs from beneath, adjusting his monocle as he glances up from his book. "Everyone dreams of living where we do. But I know you long to run; you and the others. Do you not?"
He is silent, unsure of whether his answer is yes or no. Again he glances out at the gardens, as Nineheart stirs a sugar cube into his teacup, and sips from it.
"Too cold," the strategist murmurs.
Ickhart returns his gaze to the gardens, sighing. His fellows dream far too much. They will always be trapped, however far they run. And they will run forever; he knows they will—so they will escape, eventually.
And how many tears of blood would they have shed by then?
It is none of his concern—none of his business as a singular. Past tense, present tense, future tense—they have no effect on his plurality.
"Why do you serve her still, then? Among all of us, you have the most unbounded soul. You are darkness, though we are an order of light. You could escape now, and have the least trouble doing so."
"But duty is the only thing I live for. If I don't do what I was born to do, then my life is ultimately a waste. And she wouldn't be so quick to forgive me, would she? I am darkness, and thus I will take the greatest punishment."
The weary strategist sighs and stirs his tea, uselessly. Nineheart tries, he does. It simply isn't enough; he may be a tactical master, but he can never strategise his way out of the eyes of the Queen.
Lonely, loveless Walker of the Night. He shields himself from the Goddess' gaze with a mask of steel. Black on one half, white on the other; a void of colour. Am I either one or the other? Am I without allegiance? Either way, he conceals himself forever, waiting for nightfall, to show his face.
I love the way you smile; it's a pity no one ever sees it.
"How could you?" she screams in diamond tears, throwing herself at the barriers of heaven. "You're nothing—just a traitor! A traitor!"
"No, I—"
"You wasted them! You let them go, just like that—" She gasps again, kicking and hammering at the railings as if they will relinquish some form of salvation.
"But I planted them, like you told me—" He doesn't know that the rose hip was the very last in the world.
"We wanted to flee—but now they'll never escape," she gasps. Now, no matter where we go, they will always be trapped here, here—in Erev!"
They will die, torn and bloodstained. No matter where we go, a part of us will always be trapped here. Forever.
She sobs and screeches, clawing her way through the mires of the light.
"Don't let yourself go like this, Irina!" he calls, snatching for her hand desperately. "I love you, Irina! I love you more than escape or freedom—"
"Freedom is all I ever wanted," she answers coldly in tears. "But you lost that for me. You imprisoned my rose, and our love with it."
She is only slipping further every moment. Further, further, a snake untangled from the charmer's melody. Again she screams, throwing him out of the way—kicking him when he reaches out save her. With such grace she leaps onto the railing and thrusts her head into the sky, where the wind rushes by a-thousand-miles-per-hour.
For moments, she is a goddess—hair unravelling, a banner in the sky.
Then she leaps, descending through the cloudy echelons—and the castle comes crumbling down upon his shoulders.
As she descends, she grasps the blood-red blossoms in a fragmented imagination, burning in pools of rain and fading through a melted sky. Just like the Queen of Hearts who holds the rose between her fingers, two-faced and enigmatic—facing heaven, facing hell.
Though she is queen, she has no heart. Even the ace has one, and the joker juggles his in his hands.
His tearless eyes gleam like onyx gates, watching as Irina falls like a star, Mihail crying after, his calls so broken. The altar flame withers in a trail of smoke. Oz is crying for she is weary—the feathers have been dancing on her curtain too long. And Hawkeye is on the bell tower, breathing in rhythm with the gales—knowing, too well, that these winds will never carry him where he longs to go.
They are lost, lost in a labyrinthine opal spiral that takes them in a different direction every time. Like the ocean, trapped within a seashell.
Ickhart shakes his head slowly. "Far too much colour. In monochrome is the deepest security…"
Beneath the tree, the tactician sighs hollowly. "They fight the wrong war," Nineheart whispers into his fingers. Nineheart, nine hearts. He can feel for all, yet feel for none. "But why be so frank about it, Ickhart?"
"You understand that yourself, white-haired friend," he replies nonchalantly, closing his black eyes. "You, who play the game so well."
"But you cannot escape colour. Black and white are colours too, aren't they? That's why it is called 'monochrome'."
"No—white is an infinity of colours, and black is its absence. Infinity times zero, it tends towards one. Monochrome."
He has always been a cynic. It is merely his role in this world, a raven with a thorn in its throat: He alone sees the sobering truth and watches every mistake, while everyone else is lost in lies. Black, and white—and crimson as well. The colours of the royal game.
"So, are you black or white, sir?"
"Both, and none. I take no sides."
And like a raven bleeding from the ruptured jugular, he knows that he will end sooner than everyone else.
Do you dream, Ickhart?
Only of tossing this mask away, but I know that it will never happen.
Mihail kneels broken at Kiriru's feet, the morning sun dancing in his golden hair. Tears descend continuously from his eyes, just like the rain that Erev will never see. But he refuses to admit he is crying, refuses to concede that he needs another more than himself.
Far above him, Kiriru gazes upon his voyage above. "Love, they say, is like falling into the ocean," he murmurs absently. "Once you begin, there is no turning back. Always so difficult to fathom." He ties the sails swiftly to the mast, halfway into the sky. "But she has finally escaped this world, hasn't she? She is no longer here."
And her heart will always be trapped, by the roses and thorns that will never be.
"And you will escape too, won't you?" the Erevian sailor adds. "You'll flee, and find your way to Ariant."
Ariant. Ariant, where the bowls are cracked by the sun. Where the people are broken, where bones litter the streets.
Ariant—where my every dream was destined, right from the start.
He always knew he would end there, and he remembers it only clearer when he thinks of Irina and her golden eyes.
"Has she forgiven me?"
The sailor pauses.
"Have you forgiven her?"
The winds are turning, though the angels are still asleep, and ever will be. There is something in the wind that sings tonight—something vaster than love, and life, and eternity's transience—a song they will remember forever.
Tonight, the train rails are shivering. The break is about to come.
"Are we running away? Away from the Queen, away from the Goddess?" Hawkeye asks Mihail. The Soul Master turns away—and nods. He glances over the edge of the balcony, to where Irina ran away.
Though she was one of us, she was always chainless.
"We leave today," Mihail answers in affirmation. "Because tomorrow is today, and today is forever. Irina said it herself: eternity is a circle; all we have to do is escape."
The shadows are clawing, but the gate lies verily open. Between the jaws of the vice they soar, daring darkness, skirting the border—till at last, they are bruised and scratched and gazing down in horror at their every fantasy.
A thousand miles down, at the foot of the stairs and beneath the sea spray.
This is the last day they will spend in the arms of looping eternity. After this, no matter where they are scattered, they will never see Erev again.
The Goddess is everywhere around them, watching with stony eyes. She can do everything, but it will not be enough. Today, they will depart and forget, and gain the world for which Irina paid the price.
Follow the wind, let it carry us away. We cannot live without love forever.
Under the crystalline shelter of Queen Cygnus' pagoda, the Divine Bird is straining in her bonds—just like her lost feathers, dancing wildly in the window. The swan goddess lies still asleep, resting in the feathers of a bird that will never fly.
There are tears in four pairs of eyes, four pairs that are actually one, and one that is actually infinity.
Follow the wind, and break the circle of time.
At the border, everything is at end; everything is only beginning. They say goodbye, though they will never be apart. They wish each other luck, though they will never see each other again.
And they cross the threshold of heaven, placing trust in everything outside the Goddess' circle—for those are the only things they can believe now.
Four broken butterflies, falling through the eye of a hurricane.
Kirium blinks the hazes of sleep away, stretching hard and searching his vicinity for his glasses. He pats the twisted grass around where he lies, then the top of his treasure chest, then the grass again—
Oh, dang it. Those kids stole my glasses again.
Kirium's glasses are special—he made them himself. And thus he makes it a point to keep them spick and span—even if it means taking them off when he bends to read his scrolls. Not a speck of dirt on them—nope, not even the minutest hint.
Sighing deeply, he rises and remembers the job he has to do—he has an important note to deliver to Queen Cygnus. Something about setting the Divine Bird free…
Oh, wait—no glasses. I can't see the road.
But as he stretches again and raises his face to the sky, he notices something very queer indeed. The sky is grey today—grey with the storm, and grey with shadow. Grey, like it has never, ever been before.
Grey. Neither black, nor white. Neither fully bright, nor in complete shadow.
Diamond flowers are blooming, opening and unfolding upon every finger of the blessed sky. The curtains are open, the reeds rustling in a river somewhere. At last, the petals are raining and ringing from the cloaks of the sky, like a thousand crystals on the bottom of a wine glass, like a symphony that knows no end.
Even Ariant's rivers are occasionally swelled by the monsoon—but Erev has never tasted rain, not once since the moment of its creation. For the first time in the millennia it has existed, the sun is finally hidden, behind wondrous curtains of fey and grey, and an euphony that no one can hear.
The tears of the sky shower down in curtains to drench Kirium's fur, dripping from his chin and into his clothes, spoiling the scrolls and the important note in his treasure chest. He wonders suddenly at how the raindrops can only enter his eyes because he has lost his glasses—but for strange reasons, he is not bothered in the least. Not bothered, that his priceless scrolls are now running, sodden and pathetic, in the green grass below.
I'm crying, he suddenly realises, feeling the warmth flow from his eyes, before rapidly being cooled by the raindrops. But I've never cried before—
What is right or wrong anymore? Is our world white, or is it pure black like the scythe of the darkness?
Grey, grey…I never thought it could exist.
The rain seems to whisper, all around. It whispers a multitude of questions and answers: soft songs such as those one might hear if he places his ear at the mouth of a seashell. Swish, swish, like the fairytale tides far beneath the island of heaven. Like a trapped ocean—yearning, forever, to be freed of its beautiful spiral prison.
Swish, swish, a whisper that tells the only true secret: "There are no secrets to be kept, here in Erev."
Sometimes, you find the answers in the very things that created the questions.
The centuries turn, like the grinding stone of an eternal mill. But each round is only identical with the one before—second to second, year to year. The night dies, and the day blooms in its place. The second-hand ticks, only to move forward one division while the cogs click and the spring winds up again.
Here in heaven, a thousand years soar by—a thousand years of voyaging west of heaven, a thousand years of being drunken in rain. We end up right where we began; it's always the same. The world is constructed of moments of sorrow, love and regret—each one only as important as the other.
Somewhere on the tides of the blue ocean, a lonely raft drifts onwards, barnacle-crusted and seaweed-green beneath the waterline.
The owner is an optimistic pirate who never really found his way, and never sailed another ship again. But that never stopped him from dreaming—of making voyages the way his good friend Kiriru once did.
He built himself a raft, in the hope of finding his way to a legendary volcanic island somewhere out in the ocean—somewhere east of the world, where no one has been before. Somewhere he knows he will find that one thing he treasures most.
Something that will never fit on my mantel.
It isn't much, and it certainly isn't a pirate ship. But in his eyes, it is beautiful—for someday, it will take him where he longs to go.
The markets of Ariant are as barren as ever. Amidst the coiling melodies of the musicians' flutes and the dancers' bells, there sits a lost little child, a wizened old man—encircled, but not trapped. His hair is golden like the sun, the sand—and to everyone else he is an outsider.
But he is no outsider to the odors of dyes and herbs and sun-baked spices, mingled with the tang of sweat and camel manure that he has grown to love so dearly—they welcome him just like another of their own, embracing him when he walks the streets in the morning—wandering with him, drifting through the streets without aim and without purpose.
For her hair smells of star anise and her eyes are saffron. And the way she smiles—it is the fiercest desert sandstorm, the most scorching sunshine in the world. Was.
His longing hasn't faded, but his regret departed long ago. Here in Ariant, where he is as close to lost Irina as he will ever be, it is hard to wish for anything else.
He glances into his broken beggar's bowl, resting on the blade of his tarnished sword. It is half full, just like the world around him.
But "half full" means that there is always something there, however much he knows he has already lost. Though he is an outcast with no friends to spare him coins, there are some things that can never be stolen from a hopeful soul.
"Longer than forever, Irina. Longer than forever."
But from black and white spring all the colours of the universe, Ickhart.
He had never expected to arrive at the other end, for shadows are scattered by light—and he was as much a shadow as he was a being with a soul.
But he knew so, and he took the end with all the grace a shadow could muster.
The cool of the churning tides engulfed him and gushed in upon his face, crushing the air from his entire being. In that moment, his dark mask was ripped away—and it sank, down, down away from his pallid face, like a leaf through the smoke.
For moments, he saw the world as it should be seen.
So colourful…it's so colourful. Amazing.
And he realised, suddenly, that he had never known such ecstasy before, even though he was slowly and surely fading in the tides. No, not joy for a specific pleasure or a found answer—just joy, joy for the notion that he had defied all the rules he had been made to follow.
So, ultimately, I fail to meet the desired goals of my existence…
Yet somehow…I feel so fulfilled. I've broken all the rules. What more can I break? What more can be broken?
He was always a cynic, a delinquent, a social defunct. But beneath these layers of obligation, he was—at the heart—a rebel.
He vanished in a path of bubbles, falling from the light—dying as he always knew he would, in shadows that would never again be pierced by the sun.
But there was no regret in this end, for finally, he was no longer a servant to expectation, to duty.
He could be who he was—if only for the last heartbeat of his life.
Where has everyone gone, Nineheart?
Somewhere else, my queen—and even you with your eight-rayed step will never wrest the answer from me.
The millennium spirals by in circles across the lake, a mayfly that has lost its wings. With it vanish the souls of five brave nobodies, five hearts that gave everything for ephemeral dreams. Then again, even heaven will be extinguished eventually; the wild-vines have engulfed the pagodas of old Erev, and someday they will fall together through the sky.
But before that happens, these silly little existences continue to wage war against entropy. They leave their marks defiantly, signing their names where the words will stay the longest.
"Quality goods, reasonable prices!" calls Kiriyu the clothes merchant to the Erevian natives on the road. Kidan the warrior trainer leads his rowdy students by, taking them from pagoda to forest. Beneath a tree among the frolicking dapples of light, bespectacled Kinu revises fervently for his final-year examination. Kirium has found his glasses; they were on the altar inside an old abandoned house.
Far overhead, Kiriru and his steering-man Kiru are departing westward from the port of Erev, once again. This is, by rough estimate, their two hundred thousandth journey across the sky.
Those crazy sailors, the passers-by murmur in silent wonder, as the ship's vast shadow passes over the streets. Obsessing over something that won't bring them any fame or fortune.
Then we will lose the battle, Nineheart, for we have lost all our knights. But somehow, it no longer matters—not to me. Victory is but temporary. You win, you lose. Someone rises to take your place. It's poker, not chess.
And that's why it's so fun to play, my queen.
After a thousand years in the wind, the threads have finally frayed and broken. The feathers scatter from the window, laughing and crying and taking the journey they were forbidden all their lives. In the distance, the pagoda roof has shattered. The rain pours through to soak the marble tiles and the silken carpets—and every evening, the Divine Bird raises its wings to the jagged circle of sky, ascending on the winds with her mistress queen asleep on her saddle.
And far beneath the tangle of vines that used to be a garden, there lives little a rose bush. Such a queer occurrence, to find such a fragile, tender plant growing in the wild. No one has ever seen it, and no one will ever know it lives. But live it does—and after the centuries of drinking the rain, it has matured into a beautiful little shrub.
It is but impermanent—a temporal soul that will rise, blossom, and wither again, in a circle that can never be escaped.
But its impermanence is the nectar of its existence. Because of its transience, it blossoms infinitely more beautifully than the oldest tree in the world. Because it knows it has only this chance, it makes the most of its waning years—flowering in tongues of flame, flowering passionately into colour like the most glorious break of dawn.
And when it ends, just as heaven ends—just as the candle fades in the gentlest breeze—it scatters into the winds, a fine dust that will become a part of something else, one day.
The angels rise sleepily from the gilded rooftops, gazing on at their old heaven, vine-tangled and so hollow. Something seems missing, yet something new has come to take its place.
What is it? They will never know.
In the wind, the roses are swaying, the breeze leading the petals and feathers in a wild waltz across the ocean.
A/N: I know there's no such word as "minutest"; it's just to make Kirium sound less serious. And "Infinity times zero, it tends towards one." Mathematical fallacy; poetic license. Hope no one minds that.
The basic plot of this story, summarised: The Knights of Cygnus ran away from Erev, and fulfilled their dreams though they all got separated from each other.