Welcome to Gaia! ::

The very air around him felt different; alive somehow, ever-shifting, and strangely crisp. Usually, Tukyere was dirty; dusty, smelly, filled with a great slew of people unattractive in both appearance and temperament. Hot. It was always hot. The sun was as good a permanent fixture as any building. With a perpetual undercurrent of frustration and misery lingering close at hand. But this night was surprisingly cold, bustling, glittering with fire lights and glow crystals, and the air smelled faintly of… roasted meat and caramelized sugar. It was not by any means as grossly unappealing as the norm.

The crowd, usually complaintive and irritable, was certainly in lighter spirits. They ambled beneath hung lanterns, danced to the music of street performers, ate, sang, drank, gambled, laughed. Eating and drinking seemed to be prime activities. In Naar’s mind, the whole idea of festivals was to gorge yourself to the point of becoming so fat and lethargic that you couldn’t even begin to complain or think about anything else.

Which was probably to the benefit of a very solid portion of Tukyere’s residents at this time of year. The stationed Orderites, as well as a good handful of Orderite hybrids would be feeling the adverse effects of the Blood Moon overhead; dragging greedily at their magic with some unstoppable and unexplainable cosmic force that leeched off of anything too close to the light.

Frankly, it didn’t look or feel all that different to Naar. The moon was slightly less luminous, with a dim, hazy, ominous glow to it. But it was night. And ‘ominous’ by very definition. Hardly worth having a party over.

Sytherina disagreed.

“Nnn, I want to go dancing!” The woman chirped, bouncing lightly on her heels and tapping the tips of her fingers together. “Oh, it’s the perfect night for it. The most charming kind of romantic. The lights- The sounds- Look, they’re having fun,” she cooed, gesturing to a pair of girls twirling each other about the street. She flounced nearer to them, delighted by their antics.

Naar crossed his arms, feeling weirdly restrained in the black lace of his long-sleeved top. “She’s almost gratingly chipper,” he complained with a scoff.

“She is a mage,” Hadelric informed him, twirling the remains of some type of… skewered meat stick between his fingers. “And since we’re usually working during festivals… Be a good sport and let her have it, hm? She’s being a sweet girl.”

The ‘sweet girl’ skipped back over to them, a scrap of parchment in hand. “Look at this!” Syth exclaimed in delight, shoving the paper into her companion’s faces. “There’s a scary maze.” She dragged each word out with the peculiar lilt of something spooky. “Oh, let’s go, let’s go! They don’t really think they could come up with something that would scare me, I bet.”

She turned a pleading gaze on Elric, wriggling and jiggling and leaning forward just enough to encourage him to fall victim to her… enthusiasm. He rose a brow at her. “You don’t have to convince me.”

“Not interested,” Naarhiji quipped quickly, raising a hand to hold to her face in dismissal.

Syth whined. “Nnnaaaarrr, baby, please,” she begged. “We can’t leave you amongst the crowd by yourself; that’s just asking for trouble! It’s too far to take you home and come back. And besides, it’s just a festival game. All for fun. Really nothing to be afraid of. It’s all a bunch of magic tricks any child could do, I promise, honey. I promise.”

Sytherina was a horrible liar. Or a really great one. She did get the things she wanted with hardly any effort, so it was certainly a win on her end.

He couldn’t tell her no.

Sytherina’s scary maze was was hardly out of range of the other festival activities. Naarhiji could still hear them, still smell them, if he glanced over his shoulder he could still see the lights. There were other people around them, either ahead on the path or backtracking in an attempt to escape. They screamed, they laughed, they ran, and yipped.

Naar stayed glued to Sytherina’s side.

“It’s just magic,” she told him with a scoff. “And it is all child’s play. I told you it would be.” She went on the explain everything to him. The ghastly floating heads were Peisio magic: condensed fog shaped to look like tortured souls. The crawling, shifting vines were Ysali magic. Prickles of heat, a feigned touch -whatever at Naar’s back that made him jump - Kiandri, probably. And the masked people that moaned and crawled on the ground or leapt at them, the magic’s controllers. “Hardly scary. They just want to startle you.”

At length, he agreed. “Right… Of course you are. Always.” So they kept moving, deeper, forward, never out of the festival’s reach until the ‘end,’ and a very polite, unassuming exit sign.

“See?” Sytherina pushed him forward. “I told you so.”

And then the ground was gone. Naar was aware of the whole process as only a single instant; a short, alarming wrench in his gut akin to falling, an instantaneous, piercing black that even his gaze couldn’t see through, and then abruptly, as if it had never been gone, solid ground directly beneath him, an inch from his nose. His mind jumped immediately to the logical, the most likely: tripped.

He looked up.

And it rapidly spiraled into chaos from there.

Most prominently, he was alone. No one. Not his friends, not the squealing children, not the people in masks. Empty. Gone. None to the back or front, no one laughing down countless coridors. Nothing.

Naar stilled against the turf, breath stalling in his throat. The scenery had changed; from dewy, trampled grass, thick bushes, and the warm lights from the festival to a haze-filled path, empty, devoid of light and life. No magic. Silent. Still. Slowly, he dragged himself to a hesitant stand.

“Sytherina…?” He asked softly, voice low. It resounded back to him, echoing, despite having a clear view of the sky above. So regardless of the narrowness of the path and the confines of the walls, echoing shouldn’t-

Shhhctic-

Naar’s head swiveled in the direction of the sound, lids blowing immediately wide and horrified. “Syth?” He ventured hopefully. But there came a low, dragging moan, a clanking of chains, and a far-too-loud sound of spewing liquid of some sort.

He didn’t need to see any piece of that in order to know it wasn’t Sytherina.

Naar fled.

He hated being alone, he hated being in the dark, he hated being clueless and blindly wandering - running, he was definitely running. But what Naar hated most of all was the suffocating silence, filled only by his footfalls, his breath, and the occasional shift of unidentifiable sound from everywhere. There weren’t any people around to make the sounds, in any which way. Surely if there were people, they’d be talking or screaming or running. He would’ve seen people by now. Undoubtedly, definitely.

Which meant he was alone with- with some animal probably. A long-toothed, sharp-nailed, low-snarling, predatory animal. Most likely hungry. If the dark smears of thick, oozing liquid and rotting, mangled portions of bodies along the way were any indication, it had a particular taste for entrails.

He could’ve cried.

He certainly wanted to. But Naar was quick to find that he didn’t have the oxygen reserves to facilitate wailing and running. Screaming would attract the beast. Fleeing would get him away from it, so long as he pivoted down a new path every time he heard even the faintest inkling of anything, happening anywhere, ever.

Naarhiji whipped around a corner, bracing an arm out to drag against the wall and keep him upright as he tossed a blind glance over his shoulder. Empty. And then ahead-

Whatever goddess was in charge of these proceedings mercifully gave him a split, half-second’s worth of a sharp, piercing scream, as he collided with something that had to be at least ten times larger than him, more solid than him, and physically stronger than him. He was cut off with little more warning than that, wrenched to the ground on his backside, the tip of a blade shoved to his neck, and Naar became certain he’d already died.

Because everything ceased to exist outside the paralytic, smothering, entrapping, still blackness of his mind. There were no locked muscles, no panicked panting, no incessant fear. Just silent, expectant black.

It was gone as quickly as it’d come, or like it’d never been there to start with. As his focus came back in, Naar was aware of little more outside of being on his back, shallow breathing, and - he spared a glance up - Malikai.

Everything became jelly.

Naarhiji lost the ability to support even the effort it took to look at the older man, and his lashes dropped to his cheeks. Trying to kill him. The stupid bird was actually trying to kill him. It didn’t register to him that Malikai hadn’t gone through with it, only that he nearly did. That he’d absolutely wanted to.

A choked sob erupted involuntarily from his throat, and Naar raised a hand to drag shaky fingers across his face. Breathily heavily, and unable to force his voice to work above a whisper, he muttered, “Why are you doing this to me…?”

The smallest of graces occurred to Naar while he lay on his back, scrubbing a hand over his eyes, and coercing himself - with limited success - not to cry. First, he wasn’t dead, or if he was, eternal emptiness wasn’t as bleak as he’d expected. Second, Malikai was here, which, attempted gutting aside, was still piles better than being alone. Thirdly, Malikai was here. And his company had to be worth more than anyone else’s, save Sytherina.

Naarhiji inhaled, released a slow, shuddering breath, and pulled himself into a slouched sit. He shot the Orderite a withering glower. “‘Not doing anything to me?’ You threw me to the ground! You nearly impaled me with your unnecessarily large weapon!” He swatted at Malik’s leg, the first piece of him that was within immediate sight and reach. “How- Explain to me how that wasn’t you trying to hurt me. Idiot.” Another limp swat. “Stupid, rude, violent, careless-” Swat.

And then he was reaching blindly for Malik’s arm, grappling with him to find a hand that he could use to haul himself up with. Even once he was on his feet, Naar found it ridiculously impossible to detach from his current company. Malikai was warm, solid, and goddess freaking alive, and Naar’s forehead dropped to the other man’s chest with much less hesitance than it should’ve.

It was a hardfought battle not to sink back to the ground and thread himself around Malikai’s leg.

“I came with Syth,” he muttered instead, peeling back and away from him with blindingly apparent reluctance. “And we were in the maze. We were in the end of the maze, and then all of a sudden not, and I was alone, and something else is definitely-” The corners of his eyes prickled with threatening heat, but he choked it down and distracted himself by dusting his hands down his arms and backside.

It likely only served to smear the dirt and moisture about, and cold sank through the flimsy lace of his top like it was made of air. There really was only so much unfortunance that he could ignore with a straight face. Naar grimaced and crossed his arms over his chest. “And I wasn’t laying and whimpering. I was running until you came along. I was only laying because you put me there. Don’t blame me for things you did.” He huffed. “Wouldn’t matter if I did carry a weapon… I wouldn’t know how to use it.”

“No,” Naarhiji quipped in a bitter, unhappy tone. “They wouldn’t have told you about it, of course. Lest the fun be ruined.” He wondered if Syth knew. As his mind dipped into that pond of thought, he immediately found that he suspected she had. She’d been too chipper. Throughout the whole night she’d been ‘too chipper.’ Sytherina, of course, had passed it off as if the the whole idea had come to her spontaneously, and by way of peppy street strangers.

Mm… He didn’t buy it.

She had to have known what she was doing, and was clearly perfectly remorseless about it. Giddy, even, to be leaving him in a vast maze of corridors with bodies and monsters and Orderites.

Maybe that last one wasn’t so bad. In any case, he could only be- and the word did sting him a bit- grateful that he wasn’t still forced to wander alone. The likelihood of being dumped with someone worse than Malikai was probably higher than not, so really…?

Naar sighed softly, shifting in at his companion’s tug and pressing to Malik’s side. Slender green fingers tangled into his shirt, surely unnoticably, and held there. He leaned his head to rest against Malik’s shoulder, and if he closed his eyes, it wasn’t so bad. Almost reasonably normal-ish, save for the cold wet and looming dread and the rustling feathers of Malikai’s wings at his back.

Tugging at the the older man’s captured shirt, Naar took a half-step forward. He still wanted to leave. Surely out was still an option if it was just a continuation of the game. And out seemed the best course of action, by far. “I can’t help but feel like… if I had one- a weapon- it’d be more likely to be used against me than anything else. I’m not really interested in supplying someone dangerous with something else they can use to kill me, but your advice is noted.”

He staggered a step as he leaned forward to peek around Malikai’s body to his other hip. “I’m sure if I carried around something like that,” Naar nodded pointedly to the soldier’s blade. “Then everyone except the worst of them would think twice before engaging me.” He leaned back, rubbing his cheek to the older man’s shoulder. “However, I’m content enough to be a beautiful, harmless little skank. Seems to suit everyone else just fine.”

He’d said it himself, that he was beautiful, not a handful of seconds prior. Countless other people had told him so. Naar never even fleetingly doubted that it was true, and he made a great display about it as often as he could, flaunting himself through the streets and at work and any other chance he got. Despite this, it sounded different when Malikai said it. Felt different. Malik said it to his face, as opposed to the back of his head or his arse. Better, Malik didn’t seem to need the promise of intimate relations to say it to his face. It shouldn’t have been a particularly important detail. But it was, and as heat spread up his face and out to the tips of his ears, Naar pressed closer to the Orderite’s side, tucking away a smile.

Only to very belated recall how he’d meant to ignore Malikai forever when the man mentioned that night. Sytherina had suggested that they all pretend as though nothing went astray, and for all Naar had seen, Malik hadn’t refused the advice. If he disregarded the stab of rejection it brought on, it had seemed easier to pretend. It wasn’t as though the younger male wanted to be apart of some bird’s sexual… issues, anyway.

Begrudgingly, he’d accepted that. It was fine. Disheartening, perhaps. But fine, otherwise.

Except Malikai couldn’t let things lie. Naarhiji groaned softly, twisting to plant his nose in his companion’s side and hide away from him as much as possible without relinquishing any contact at all. “Yes.” The one word managed to sound like a complaint. “You did… You told me I was pretty then, too,” he grumbled into the fabric of Malikai’s shirt.

This surely served as all the explanation that was needed for why Naar had felt the need to push him, but in case it wasn’t, “You told me you’d never kissed a guy before.” If he could sink deeper into Malik’s side, he managed it. “I just wanted to tease you a little. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Grudgingly, Naar had to admit that he supposed ‘surprised’ was not a completely unreasonable reaction. And though he’d never been afflicted by a hangover personally, he’d heard tales of the dreadful mornings and unfathomable nights. He’d suspected that was more for younger people, like teenaged Syth and Elric, but it didn’t seem like much Naarhiji’s business to care how drunk the man wanted to be in any given night.

So he was prepared, still begrudgingly, to apologize. Not for being fussy the morning after, but for being thoughtless enough to push an unreasonably inebriated man into ******** him. That part still seemed like primarily his doing. “It was- I can’t let you just blame yourself. I got excited, and I didn’t consider that it would shock you so much, and I’m sor-”

He cut off, mind plucking at and wrapping around the most insignificant of words. With a stiff jerk, Naar’s head whipped up to pin a narrow-eyed stare on the man. ’So far as I was concerned then.’ Then.

What was that supposed to mean?

Nothing, probably. That probably would’ve been the sane thing to think. Instead Naar found himself wondering if there had been further considerations in the past two days. Again, none of his business. But since they were together, with little to do besides walk and talk, he was really powerless not to ask. “You’ve thought about it more since?”

He didn’t care. Not either way. And at the shift of feathers over his shoulder, Naar diverted his attention away from Malik’s face and over to them. Naar emitted what he hoped was a warning sound of protest as he glowered at the flick of a wingtip just within his vision. “If you could not-” he griped, extending an arm to nudge lightly at the wing. “-I’d be grateful.”

There wasn’t much time for complaint after that, because Naarhiji’s attention was drawn again, with surprising immediacy, back to Malik’s face. “What- Did you what? You didn’t just say-” It was as much as he could say while holding even a moderately straight face. He shook and drew a hand to his face to cover a choke of garbled sound. “You just- I can’t even believe-”

And then he was laughing. The type of bubbling, rolling laughter that he really couldn’t do anything about. The kind that stilled him in his steps and threatened to put him to the ground. He fisted a hand in Malik’s sleeve for support.

“We- hee hee ufff- we did- sex- tchk- if that’s what you’re asking.”

It was obscenely difficult to calm himself, and outside of an aching ribcage, Naar wasn’t sure he wanted to. This, laughing, was at least better than panicking over a foggy maze or dreading the touch of an Orderite’s wings. But he did, with some difficulty, manage to add in calmer, breathier tones, “I don’t dislike you, you know. You told Syth you didn’t think I like you. But you’re not so bad. I like you more than plenty of other people.”

Malikai really, genuinely seemed like he didn’t remember a thing. Not one tiny little spit of occurrence that had happened from the time he walked in that night until the morning after. It struck Naar as implausible that anyone could actually lose an entire night’s worth of memory within just a few short hours of it happening, regardless of outside forces. But nothing? Absolutely nothing, if he was truly surprised to hear that Naar had been ‘excited.’ Which sounded like a remarkably polite term that described the action of riding him like a race hastar.

But there was no harm in leaving that omitted.

Instead, Naarhiji took a quick pace forward, drawing himself out of Malik’s hold and ahead of him. He spun sharply on his heel, reaching out and layering his palms across the Orderite’s chest to encourage him to a halt. His gaze flicked upward, mischievous, smiling, and he gave a twitch of his hip that was nothing if not lacking in subtility.

“You could ask me,” he suggested lightly, brushing imaginary lint from Malik’s shoulder. “To show you what I did to you- what happened, what it felt-”

As abruptly as he’d started, Naar cut off, gaze nailed to some point just beyond the immediate focus of Malikai’s neck. Movement, something was definitely moving. In an uncomfortable looking lurch-stagger that made the younger man bristle immediately. “Malik-” His fingers bunched in the fabric of his companion’s shirt, dragging at him and sticking and clinging and holding with renewed vigor.

Everything prior may just as well have never existed.

Because the thing- and it was a thing, with two legs and two almost-arms and sets of overlong spindly talons erupting from each endpoint- noticed them. Or Naar assumed the jerk-twitch of attention in their direction was what passed for notice. He whimpered as the creature stilled, and Naar pressed close to the older man’s chest while still keeping a wary eye-

It ran. Like a dilapidated, two-legged, swaying gallop that spanned several yards in a handful of seconds.

Naar screamed.

Naar cut off with a shrill squeak of fear-shock as Malik moved. He dipped, ducking behind the older man and, while refraining from plastering himself to his companion’s back, did half-extend his arms to just barely dust fingers between his shoulder blades. Not clinging, he told himself, just appreciatively touching and making sure Malik didn’t move out of arm’s length in his apparent excitement to slice through anything that moved. Because he did seem awfully eager to do that. It was easier to forgive it towards this thing, rather than himself,though.

He waited until Malikai relaxed, some several seconds after the crumbling, splatting sound of dirt and rock meeting the ground, after his blade had been put away. Naarhiji perched his weight forward, leaning against his companion’s back as he peered over his shoulder at the ‘remains.’ “It’s- It’s… Not real?” He muttered against Malik’s neck. Of course it wasn’t, the whole thing being just an amusing game. But it had looked- And it had acted- And could it really have done anything to them if Malikai hadn’t jabbed into it. Naarhiji gave an uneasy hum, tucking his face into his companion’s shoulder.

He did want out. Anxiety was tiresome, and he’d really had enough wandering about aimlessly in the dark to last at least until the next blood moon. But he glanced up, throwing a sharp, narrowed-eyed glare at the man. “I don’t want you to leave me,” he complained in response to his suggestion of ‘flying up’ and having a look at anything. His arms snaked out, wrapping around Malikai’s chest possessively.

Even a second would’ve been too much. And he might really leave, even if Malik didn’t precisely seem the type to ditch him out here by himself. He shifted uncomfortably, letting his attention flutter skyward.

Flying didn’t sound that great an option either, but at this point, no matter what he chose, he’d still be stuck doing something he didn’t like. At least a ‘handful of minutes’ was promising. Warily, he focused back on Malikai. “If… I let you fly me, you have to promise not to drop me. You… You can’t let go of me at all. I won’t forgive you if you do!”