I scoured every source about the Abyss, Skirk, and Childe before I wrote this. I hate that I love this ginger-haired anger muffin.

When Ajax is fourteen he leaves home during a tantrum like the petulant child he is.

Packs a bag full of bread and steals a shortsword from one of his older brothers, then he treks out into the forest because anything's better than the monotonous bore that his life has become.

The forest is known to him, as is the familiar crunch of the snow underneath his boots. Until it isn't. What was once familiar seems entirely foreign now; trees rising high against a gray and snow-tilted sky; the soft, icy drift that slides about under his feet; the lack of the well-worn trail that he's walked so many times that he thought he could do it with his eyes closed.

Turns out that he can't.

Ajax curses lowly, the kind of words that would make his mother gasp. He pulls his cloak tighter around him, to block out the bitter chill. At least he'd worn proper boots, lined with boar fur and snug against his woolen socks.

He keeps going against his better judgment, abysmally stubborn until the bitter end. He'd walked out in a huff, harsh words slung around like he was in a minor bar fight. Not that he knows what a bar fight is; he's too young for that, far too green, as his brother says.

The same brother that sneaks him sips of vodka when their parents aren't looking.

And really, maybe Ajax overreacted, maybe there is something nice to be found in a keen, quiet life but-

Well, he isn't feeling it. So he'd yelled that at his mother, screamed it at his father, dressed in a hurry and packed far too little, and was out the front door before anyone could stop him.

Tonia tried the hardest, running after him, yelling for him to see reason. But she was younger than him and a little more stupid, and one day she'd realize what it is that Ajax wants.

Freedom seems like such a nice thing until there's too much of it. As Ajax walks through snowbanks as tall as he, he thinks that maybe it's been just a little too much adventuring. It's too late to go back now, though, he's already tried. Turned on his heel to follow his footprints back, only to find them gone, covered up by freshly fallen snow.

So, he pulls the neck of his sweater to his nose and carries on. Eventually, he's bound to find someone, anyone.

He finds no one. The forest gets thicker and he can barely see the sky. The snow turns to sleet, heavy and wet and soaking him to the bone. Ajax shivers so much that he can feel his teeth clacking throughout his skull.

And then he hears the howls. One, two, three, dying cries of hungry wolves, and then there's Ajax, a young thing that's prime for snacking. Archons above, he's made a mistake. He turns back, uncaring that his trail is gone, uncaring that the sun is setting and thicket is dark, uncaring that he's entirely lost and wholly alone.

Another howl pierces through the air, far closer than before. Fear grips his heart tightly, wrapping around it like a tight glove. But Ajax tries, he forces his feet to move, his legs to run.

He trips. Loses his footing and he tumbles down, and down, and down.

Ajax doesn't hit the solid surface of the ground, he falls into an earthen crack instead. His body sways and churns, and he screams, his voice bouncing off the icy rocks around him.

And it echoes, and echoes, and echoes until the chasm swallows him up, and the sound is cut off suddenly. Devoured by the void, its edges like a gaping maw, Ajax falls and falls, tumbling through the dark and damp air.

Wolves enter the copse, sniffing around as they catch his scent. But there isn't a child, only crisp, fresh snow, and the icicles on the trees. Everything, pristine and untouched.

It's as if Ajax was never there.

#

It smells rotten, like days-old, festering meat. Or the sulfur pits that line the edges of the cliffs north of Morepesok.

When Ajax opens his eyes, they water and burn. He chokes, his throat tightening, his lungs on fire. Everything is wrong, so very wrong; like upwards is down and he's been stretched wide and thin.

Something shakes him and he lets out a pitiful moan, bile rising up in his throat before he turns over just in time to vomit all over the ground. The hand on his shoulder lets go, moving to soothe down his back instead, an anchoring touch as he heaves and heaves.

"Boy," says a woman, her voice dusty from disuse. "Shh, shh, let it all out."

Ajax is positive he's dead. Or near it. Certainly feels like it, and he's clearly in the pits of hell. He tries to open his eyes again, hissing at the violent stinging in response.

"No, no, keep them open," says the woman, "You'll get used to it."

Ajax doesn't want to get used to it, he wants to get out of here and he wants to go home. Wants to take a heated bath and slip into dry clothes, and cuddle in his bed with the warming pan near his feet. Maybe Tonia tucked into his side for a late-night read if she isn't too cross with him.

His eyes slip closed, feeling suddenly groggy, and the woman with a tight grasp on his shoulders shakes him violently.

"Don't, you fool of a child," she snaps, her voice stronger now and angry.

Ajax can't find words, a stream of nonsense slipping from his lips instead. He's so sleepy; it would be better to just curl up and lose himself to the dark.

There's a crack through the air and his cheek sears with a bruising sting. Ajax's eyes fly open and he shoots upright like a wildcat, hackles raised. Teeth bared, prepared to fight back, entirely instinctual as his gut takes over his brain.

The woman who peers back at him isn't very old. Looks tall and slim, with wide, broad shoulders. Dirt is smudged across her cheek and her eyes practically glow green in the dark. Ajax doesn't know whether to fear her or grovel at her feet.

"What are you doing here, boy?"

"Here?" asks Ajax rather dumbly.

"In the Abyss."

Ajax's gut sinks deep into a pit, and he feels the urge to lose everything in it once again. He does, tipping over to the side, his fingers digging into the dirt as he tries to swallow around the acrid taste. He fails and fails until there's nothing left but a smarting hollow. He wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.

The woman leans forward to smooth circles between his shoulders once more, but all Ajax can think of is how he wants his mother instead. What a fool he is to have run away from home.

The stranger is patient and kind in her own way. She doesn't say much, just watches as he gathers his bearings, and once he seems right, she asks the question again. "What are you doing here, boy?"

"I fell," he says.

She waits for him to continue, but all Ajax does is stare right back. Then she sighs, dragging a hand down her face, smearing more dirt down her cheek and chin. So that's how it got there. "You're going to die down here," she murmurs, low and deep enough that he barely hears it.

"I would've died up there too," says Ajax. If the wolves hadn't gotten him first, the icy cold would've been next. He really is the dumbest person that he knows.

The woman looks tired, her eyes ancient despite being set into an ageless face. She considers him for a moment that's a little too long, and then she says, "All right then, up." She stands and Ajax hesitates. She looks down at him and frowns. "Do you want to die? I said up."

"Or what, you'll kill me?" His words surprise him; Ajax isn't this cheeky a boy, he's pitifully shy and defers always to others. He has no idea where this spark of spunk has come from.

The woman's frown turns into an annoyed scowl. "No, not me, though I'm reconsidering."

Ajax stands on wobbly legs. Takes a step before he nearly careens right over. The woman catches him with a vexed huff. "I- the air is weird here, everything feels wrong," says Ajax.

"Of course it feels wrong," she says as she puts his arm over her shoulder and hoists him up, "This the most cursed of places. Did you expect a stream and daisies?"

"I didn't expect anything, I didn't mean to fall into here," says Ajax, his tone incredibly tart.

The woman pauses, looking at him amusedly. "A month," she says.

Ajax blinks as he settles his arm around her neck in a better position. "Until what?"

"That's how long I'm giving myself to train you. After that, you're on your own."

#

Whatever kindness the woman had for him when they met evaporates the next day the moment Ajax wakes up.

She makes him sleep on the floor, makes him mop and clean, makes him run laps around the dark and blank space she inhabits. The air burns his lungs and stings his eyes, but she'd been right, it gets easier the longer he's exposed.

Doesn't explain the wrongness that he feels within the Abyss, though, the twisted curse of it that settles deep into his bones; the energy that crackles up his limbs and down his spine before eating into his core.

The woman's a shit cook, so Ajax does that too, scrounging up pathetic dishes from the weird rooted vegetables they manage to forage.

At the end of the first week, she throws him into a pit with nothing but his clothing and boots, and two wooden stakes, and tells him to find his way out.

"Skirk!" yells Ajax, kicking at the soft mud of the ground. All his boot does is sink in deep and get stuck. He yells in annoyance, trying to yank it out.

Finally, she peers over the edge, watching him struggle. "You'll wrench your ankle if you keep that up, and I'm not coming down to get you."

Ajax looks up, scowls, and shoots her the most obscene gesture he learned from his oldest brother. And Skirk, Archons curse her wretched soul, smiles a wide and feral grin before returning the gesture haughtily.

She sits at the edge of the pit, her legs dangling over and just out of reach. Were Ajax taller he could latch on and pull himself up, and maybe toss her down in return. But, he has a feeling that it wouldn't do much, and he has no idea how long Skirk's called the Abyss her home.

Still, she watches in silence as he pulls his foot free, and she keeps on observing as he tries time after time to crawl up from this pit in hell.

Ajax is tired, he's dripping in sweat, and his chest heaves. His fingers ache and his back is sore, and he's pretty sure that his boots are more mud than leather now. And Skirk just watches, shoving questionable jerky into her mouth.

"I- I can't," says Ajax finally in a pathetic sounding keen. He pounds a fist against the slick, wet wall of the pit.

Skirk laughs and it isn't kind, and she says, "Don't be dumb, boy. Use that head of yours."

And Ajax does; he sits and he thinks, and eventually, he figures it out. He takes the wooden stakes, one in each hand, and he digs the first into the mud, followed shortly by the second. And he hauls himself up.

He repeats it in a slow and awful climb. But he makes it. He tips over the edge and falls to the ground, heedless of the mess he is. Skirk leans over and ruffles his hair, the first touch of affection since she started him running drills.

Then she says, "There's a cot in that rotten old cupboard. It's yours now."

#

Skirk's training becomes torture, and Ajax is a pitiful thing that barely makes it through the first few hours of each day.

But it gets easier, and despite Skirk's harsh words and methods, she's patient enough. Doesn't complain much when he needs to catch his breath, and when he struggles time after time, she only rolls her eyes.

It's only when he says that he can't do it, when he entirely gives up that she smacks him across the back of the head, a harsh-handed touch meant to teach a lesson. Ajax is pretty sure that he has a permanent goose egg, and he spends the better part of his nights nursing it quietly while laying in his little cot.

Days bleed into weeks, and weeks bleed into months. She doesn't kick Ajax out despite her promise that she'd give him only a month. Ajax likes to think it's because she's begrudgingly fond of him.

He learns polearms first and then swords, and excels at both. Ajax learns boastful pride and the feeling of success as it settles deep in his chest. But more than anything, he gains the will to fight, the itch to conquer. His blood starts to boil at the promise of battle.

The first time he tells her, Skirk pauses, suddenly wary. But Ajax doesn't notice, far too distracted by the prospect of hunting denizens of the Abyss for their day's training.

That day, she gives him a bow and tells him to strike true. And he does, arrow after arrow, even though it's his weakest weapon.

Eventually, she spars with him, one hand tied behind her back. Ajax scoffs rudely before she rends his ass into the ground. Then, he becomes determined. He never beats her, never comes close, but it's perhaps his most important lesson to learn- how to take a fall and that there's always someone better than you.

One day, Skirk brings him to the edge of the Abyss and dumps him into the darkness.

"They say that the Abyss attracts those with great ambition," she says from aways, "It's time for you to learn your most foulest of legacies." And this time he's eager, so unlike the time before in the pit, blood practically roaring at the promise of a good fight.

But Skirk doesn't follow, nor does she sit and watch. She all but disappears and dooms him to his fate.

The pressure here is different, the cursed evil, oppressive. Ajax swallows thickly but doesn't lose his resolve- he's in for a mora, in for a pound. Might as well learn whatever lesson's on the docket for the day.

Skirk didn't leave him with much of a clue.

He feels as everything presses against him and weighs him down. The way that his veins set on fire, itching to spill blood all over the craggy ground. There isn't anything here though, his only enemy is himself.

Ajax laughs, a cruel and sardonic thing, lost in the dramatic irony of it all. She does often say that he's only his worst enemy, it's just never been in such a literal context. Ajax murmurs to himself, his fingers twitching as they pull at his skin.

And then he notices it, a crack in the ceiling above, bright sunlight dripping in with staggered beams. He has no weapons, but he has himself, and he feels the swirl of the Abyss as it crackles around him. In his time here, he's almost become one with the place, a part of it as much as it's a part of himself.

Ajax harnesses that feeling, the dark boiling in his blood, and he calls it forth in a way that he's never thought of before.

Everything stretches wide and tall. His muscles burst and ache as they expand, but he doesn't care, he doesn't notice, all he feels is the exhilaration of how he's finally conquered the Abyss.

And all it takes is a jump towards freedom.

#

The bright light of day burns and the air tastes too clean.

Ajax feels the Foul Legacy melt away, leaving nothing behind but a wasted sack of bones. He can barely move, barely roll over to vomit all over the snow.

But he's alive, Ajax is alive, drunk on his newfound power and everything he's just learned. It feels twice-fold here, entirely encompassing without the heavy pressure of the Abyss to weigh him down.

He's overthrown that which lays below, stumbled in and out again, and has lived to tell the tale. Ajax struggles to his feet, nearly tipping over like a newborn foal learning to walk. He runs a hand through his hair, trilling at the power he feels rippling under his skin.

Ajax has devoured the deep, the darkest place that anyone can possibly imagine. It's a giddy thought, the praise that he feels.

But it's second to the unerring drive for the bloodlust that he wishes for and the itch for a fight. What a dichotomy it is, he thinks as he looks at his hands, how much he's changed. He fell in as a boy and clawed free as a man. His skin is scarred and battered and beaten, but he's here and back again, and ready to be home.

He never once considers that the Abyss doesn't let its victims go. Never thought for once that perhaps it's the deep that's devoured him instead.