Title: Pyros Manteia
Author: Myranda Kalis/NagainaRyuuoh
Rating/Warnings: Rish for not-completely-explicit smut and the potential resonant mental damage of the pairing.
Author's Notes: So Pre-CoM it's not even funny. Actually, it's pre-Roxas-joining-Organization-XIII. Also: because we've all gotten the 'Luna' part, but I've yet to read anyone tackling the 'Diviner' part.
Saix came back to himself slowly.
Outside the windows of his chamber, the world-heart waned, devoured from within by its own darkness, the barest sickle-sliver of golden radiance remaining. Within him, the madness receded, finally crushed beneath the strength of his intellect, bitter and howling to the last. For a long time after his thoughts cleared, he simply lay where he was, staring up at the carven, palely illuminated ceiling. The faintest remnant of visions clung to his eyes, a thin film of knowledge wrenched from a universe that despised his existence, interfering with his ability to focus and perceive the creation of his Lord alone. Gradually, the white-fire-lapis-heaven flickers died away and he dared movement, pushing himself into a sitting position. One palm slid slightly beneath his weight, leaving a rusty streak on the immaculately white floor. His arms were gloved in half-dried blood to the elbow.
Saix rose, licking the offending hand clean, and turned to examine the source. Young. Very young, breasts barely budded, and from the way the blood had flowed and pooled, freshly defiled. His lip curled slightly. Extispicy was just the form his madness would choose to pursue this late in the cycle, if only for the mess it would leave him to deal with. A silent, annoyed flick of will summoned a brace of Dusks to dispose of the refuse and restore the floor to gleaming perfection. A quick glance around showed his current working almanac sitting still open nearby and, absently cleaning his off-hand, he knelt to peruse the results of the augury.
Which were, he was forced to admit, largely inconclusive and, adding insult to injury, written in an increasingly illegible rust-colored scrawl. VIII's current mission would not succeed. That alone was glaringly clear. Something was coming, coming closer, drawing steadily nearer, something of immense importance to all they were and all they would be. But not where. Not when. Saix already knew what – had known for a very long time – but not who. Why those two disparate things occurred in such close proximity – VIII's failure and the Final One's coming – he could not fathom from the pattern laid out. Subsequent pages offered no further insight, only increasingly irrational fragments of analysis until, on the final page, scrawled alone and still slightly damp in the tongue of a World whose heart was long ago made nothing, three words:
Dances the fire.
Saix worried the last flecks of blood from beneath his claws and rose, enrobing himself in darkness, to seek his Lord.
In the highest spire of the Castle That Never Was there lay a room whose windows allowed a viewer to gaze out upon the whole of the World. In that room there sat a dais and on that dais there sat a throne and on that throne sat a great soul that would be greater still. As always, the Superior accepted his obeisance graciously, gesturing for him to rise from his position of abasement, to lift his scarred face from the floor.
"Luna Diviner. What truths have your labors brought to light?" It was a ritual between them of questions and answers, and had been since the moment of their first meeting.
"I bear few good tidings." And it was Saix' custom to always give the least welcome news first. "The Flurry of Dancing Flames has failed in his mission." He nobly refrained from adding 'again.' The vexation that VIII pursued was a cunning enemy of old and had not survived by mere fortune alone. "He returns by a circuitous route to evade pursuit but will arrive before the Heart has reached full dark."
"Disappointing, but not unexpected." The First One's voice held no trace of the feeling he professed. "And that is still one less bolt-hole in which he might hide. Continue."
"The second product of the augur also concerns VIII, though I am not yet certain why." A grudging admission, that, and Saix felt the Superior's attention sharpen. "It relates to the search for the Final One and suggests he may be the source of useful knowledge in that regard."
"The source?" Red-amber eyes narrowed the most dangerous of fractions. "Do you suggest that he possesses information and has deliberately withheld it?"
"Superior, I do not think him that great a fool. No, in this instance, it seems he may be of aid in the search itself."
"In what way?"
"Pyros manteia. The portent of the flames. It is not a form that I have regularly practiced – but truth is often written in fire. And he is the Flurry of Dancing Flames." Saix bowed his head. "I humbly crave your permission to involve him in this matter."
"You have it, Luna Diviner." Softly, "Do not break him, Saix. It would be…troublesome…to find another that suits the station as well as he, this late in the game."
Saix smiled, a razor-crescent smile, and inclined his head in acknowledgement.
The Heart waned a fraction further before VIII's pack of Assassins arrived to herald his return, slithering through the empty streets and halls of the World as though scouting his path. They might even be, Saix mused, as he idly crushed the existence out of the one that dared hiss at him, for being where he ought not to be. VIII's Proof was the one place he returned to predictably – he made a point, upon returning from outside, to never open a Door in the same place twice, a lesson he had learned in whatever life he lead before.
Destroying his servant had one unfortunate side-effect: it warned VIII of his presence and so VIII was in no hurry to leave Naught behind once he completed his report to the Superior. Under other circumstances, Saix would have found this to be maddeningly insolent, with emphasis on madness, and at the very least VIII would have come home to a substantial amount of wreckage. As it was, he could overlook the annoyance for the extra time it lent to his own preparations. Plenty of chance to correct VIII's behavior…later.
The door slid open as Saix completed the last of his labors and VIII slipped inside, expressive face carefully neutral, green eyes cool hardening to cold as they took him and what he had done in. "VII. To what do I owe the…honor?"
The tension in his shoulders, along the length of his spine, was unmistakable: he was prepared to run, if he had to. The way his arms lay to his sides, the position of his hands, was also clear: he was prepared to attack, as well. Saix rose from where he knelt and approached, moving carefully to avoid brushing the laboriously inscribed lines of the mandala currently occupying most of the floor with the trailing hems of his robe, smiling tightly to hide his teeth. To his credit, VIII held his ground as Saix circled him, though it was a near thing: fire flickered in his open palms, quenched by the sudden clenching of his fingers.
"Failure does not suit you." Saix informed him and continued his slow pace around the perimeter of the room, forcing those ice-green eyes to follow him, to examine the image of interlocking circles drawn on his floor in dust of silver and crimson. "It has never and will never. Oddly, redemption serves you better."
VIII's gaze flicked up from the floor and to his face. "Seeing things again, Saix?"
"Always." He let his smile widen a fraction. "You, for one. The Final One, for another. A tie between you, it seems. I seek…clarity on the issue."
VIII made a sound in the back of his throat that was neither derision nor outright dismissal and moved rather than let him pass his unguarded back again, circling in the opposite direction. "Why me? Why now?"
"Excellent questions all." Saix let his teeth show, eyes narrowed to gleaming amber slits. "So glad you thought to ask them yourself."
VIII seemed to realize he was half in retreat within the confines of his own sanctum and came to a halt, one of the mandala's eight points almost precisely between his feet. He looked down, bright eyes intent, tracing the pattern, fingers working into his palms, half-formed expressions flickering across his face, and for a moment, Saix was concerned that he might do something foolish. The unconscious motion of his body suggested it – but then he went still and straight and asked one last question.
"What do you want from me?"
Saix nearly laughed aloud. Extended one taloned hand in a gesture of invitation. "Dance for me, spirit of Fire."
Pyros manteia – the way of fire gazing – encompassed a number of individual practices and forms, depending upon the results one was trying to achieve and one's degree of skill in reading those results. Saix rather doubted that VIII would willingly donate any scapulae to the endeavor. He himself would prefer not to addle his senses with fumes, vapors, or herbal additives of chancy origin that might be more productive of hallucinations than actual insight. Which left, of the indisputably legitimate approaches, the dance. The mandala was drawn in salt appropriately tinted and fine silver-gray ash. As he walked its edges, VIII was gratifyingly careful not to mar its perfection, circling it once, twice, as he considered where to start. Eight points, four major and four minor, along the outside edge. Four interior circles, overlapping to form a diamondlike heart, a perfectly symmetrical point of visionary focus. No matter where upon the circle he chose to begin, in the end, VIII should find himself there, a conclusion he came to without so much as a question. He selected his point, his back to the darkening moon, and laid back his head, almost as though he were listening to something impossibly far away.
Saix idly suspected that VIII had done this, or something very like it, before.
The darkness the Flurry of Dancing Flames robed himself in dissolved away in tatters, leaving traces of itself behind on his fine, pale skin. Flames, dark and abstract, starting impossibly small at the tips of his fingers, wending their way up his arms to bracelet his wrists, his biceps, across his shoulders and down his chest and spine. His legs adorned themselves similarly, the pattern winding as high as his thighs. It gave the illusion of motion though he was, for the first time since Saix met him, perfectly still, listening, his face empty of even his customary semblance of feeling. His hands, devoid of weapons, fell naturally into a posture that tickled at the edges of Saix' memory, calling to mind statues of dancing, many-armed gods. His breathing deepened, and around them the room grew dark, the walls dimming until the only light was the pale golden radiance of the waning Heart.
The Flurry of Dancing Flames moved and the mandala lit itself in a single instant, a ripple of pale blue flames washing point to point on the outer circle as he took his first steps. Saix' eyes stung and watered, dazzled after the darkness by even so faint a light, but even so he did not blink. The instrument of vision was in motion and the divining begun and to look away was to deny the truth even now being written in the gracefully flowing pattern of shadow and light, rising flame and the body it embraced.
And he was graceful, dancing there to a song that sounded only within himself, one movement flowing flawlessly into the next without hesitation as the conflagration rose around him, caressed his slender body with copper-golden tongues that refused to mar his flesh. Saix watched, half-mesmerized, and let his eyes fall half-lidded as the heat and light washed over him, let his focus change as the Dancer's precisely positioned hands drew images on and through the curtains of flame separating them. A face. A face and a form. A child? Small enough to be a child but…perhaps not. It flickered among the major points as the Dancer finished the first circuit of the mandala, almost as though the vision were dancing with him, small and swift and deadly. A weapon in hand – no, two. Pale hair and fierce bright eyes and a mouth that had forgotten how to smile, the impression cold and vivid as winter sunrise. Saix felt it chilling him despite the heat he was bathed in and smiled at the ruthless strength it promised.
The blaze rose higher as the Flurry of Dancing Flames began the second outer circuit, moving among the minor points, white fire replacing copper-golden-blue. His face was no longer empty, but a mask of something Saix was tempted to call divine ecstasy, lost in the embrace of his own element, eyes wide and unseeing. The Luna Diviner caught a flicker of something mirrored in them as the Flurry of Dancing Flames came to a halt before him, in place but in motion nonetheless, fire rising around him in a dance all its own as he flung out a hand in offering.
Without hesitation, Saix rose and took it and allowed himself to be drawn through the fire and into the dance, into the visions it held.
It had always been a possibility, and a risk that he was willing to take – involving another meant a loss in precise degrees of control in how the vision was shaped, how the knowledge would take form, limited his ability to guide that process lest he disrupt it. Now, though, now – now his instrument had reached out for his hand, reached out to be guided, and so now the shaping was in his hands, where it belonged. The darkness melted from his body, revealing scar-encrusted skin, the long pale scar across his chest, matching the Dancer's, where their hearts had been torn away, and the deeper brands and marks and ridges of his discipline, the seer's craft. Hands molten-hot ghosted over his arms, over his chest and shoulders, then spun away, just outside of easy reach, leading him into the inner mandala and the deeper dance of visions.
Darkness. Darkness. Dark water on dark sand, dark stone, a cold blue moon low on the horizon. Pale skin and pale hair plastered to an angular face, exhaustion and confusion writ in every line of his slender, muscular body.
The Final One would come to them. Soon, he felt. Soon. It pulsed in his blood as the waves of heat rolling against his body.
A flash of light and a flicker of darkness. A weapon in each hand, one bright and one dark, the Keys they had so desperately sought and for so long. The true Key of Destiny, come at last.
A bright filament of flame bound him to his instrument and he caught at it, despite the rebuke it gave his flesh, and used that tie to pull them together. The Flurry of Dancing Flames spun to meet him.
Blue. His eyes were blue, a purer, brighter blue than the sky in any real World could hope to be. Something shone in them, something fierce, and his lips were forming words drowned out by the roar of the fire around them.
They danced together in the center of the mandala, never more than a handspan apart. The body beneath his hands was striped in shadow-flames and sweat and the blood drawn by his claws, chest heaving with exertion, the mirror of his eyes flickering with the sheen of fire and vision. Saix gazed deeply into them, into him, and found himself being bourn down, the floor hot beneath his back. The Dancer's body flowed against his own as though it were molten, held in human shape only by the surface tension of his copper-golden-fire-white skin, writhing helplessly in the grip of the vision taking form through him. Sweat-slick hands clutched at him, wildly trembling fingertips tracing new patterns among the brands already marking him, setting off a kaleidoscope of images behind his eyes. A hot mouth captured his own. Slender hips ground desperately against him, and for the first time, Saix realized how aroused he was, how he ached for this, how fierce and hot and undeniable this need truly was –
The Flurry of Dancing Flames impaled himself in a single motion and the heat that engulfed his loins washed through the whole of his being, obliterating all but this single perfect moment, and the vision contained within it, written in the fire mirrored in the Dancer's eyes, in his exquisite body. In the instant, Saix knew – knew in a blazing white-hot flash of perfect understanding as he grasped those slender hips and thrust furiously, possessed by lust and euphoric vision –
He knew. He knew the Key of Destiny's face.
He knew. He knew the hour of the Key's coming.
He knew, as the Dancer arched above him, knew as the cry was wrung from his lips by the culmination of their union, the climax of flesh and vision. He knew and he laughed, wildly, madly, even as the vision fractured, the moment peaked, and the ecstasy and the darkness it brought with it welled up and swallowed him whole.
Saix came back to himself slowly.
Outside the windows of the chamber in which he lay, the world-heart was wholly dark, a soothing and perfect darkness after the light and heat of the vision he had conjured. He and his instrument lay entwined still, legs entangled, crimson hair spread across his chest, still sheathed in the melting heat of the perfect body that had accommodated him so well, so completely. Tiny shudders still rippled through the Flurry of Dancing Flames, tremors of visionary after-reaction and pure animal pleasure. Slowly, and not without a sensation resembling regret, he withdrew, rolling the Dancer off him and to the floor – the rather scorched and blackened and, in several places, heat-cracked floor, the pattern of the mandala crystallized into it by melted salt and ash. An interesting development, and one he had not anticipated, which might prove useful should the need for such a divination arise again.
For now, though…
Saix called the darkness, and wound it about himself, and rose from where he lay. The door opened for him and there he paused for a moment, to glance over his shoulder at the still form lying behind him. He whispered the words, to shed himself of that piece of knowledge, a feeling that could be called mercy moving him. "You will burn for him. I almost…envy him you."
Then, he strode out, a tight smile creasing his lips, knowledge dancing behind his amber eyes like a flame. In the highest tower of the Castle That Never Was, his Lord waited and, as he entered that chamber, unheralded, the First One rose to greet him.
"Luna Diviner. What truths have your labors brought to light?"
He almost laughed again, the triumph welling up within him, and with some effort, he held it in. "First One, I know now his face. I know now the hour of his coming. I know now his name."
Amber-red eyes widened. A small smile touched the corners of a mouth that forgotten how to form that expression. "Well done."