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 Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:33 pm
Takes place directly after the Into the Night RP for Star Fest. With nowhere else for either of them to go, Tyr brought Eld to the Gallos’ carriage house.
He didn’t ask. By the time all was said and done, the hour seemed too late to bother either Chris or Paris with a knock on the door (Paris would stare that long, haunted stare of hers, and looking at Chris for too long was always a reminder that everyone Tyr had ever known was dead). They powered down a mile away from the property, the way Tyr had been told, making a slow trek on foot over the remaining distance.
They spoke sparingly, sharing their experiences in the dark world of shadows and tar. Eld had been there for days, it turned out, Tyr for only an hour or so. The rest they saved for more comfortable surroundings. After all, they had a thousand years of catching up to do.
When they arrived, Tyr showed Eld how to work the shower, then went to the little kitchen downstairs to heat up some leftovers. He didn’t know how to use many of the appliances and couldn’t cook for himself, but Chris had taught him how to use the microwave, and the Gallos always had more than enough food to share. Tyr put some on a plate and set the timer when he heard the water cut off. He wasn’t hungry, but he had a feeling Eld would appreciate the food.
Tyr waited, fidgeting anxiously. Eld’s presence should have been a shock. There were others like Tyr, he knew that much, but he’d spent the last month assuming most would be strangers to him, that most of those he’d known a thousand years ago were gone.
Sometimes, he was relieved by it — when he thought of Uncle and the Council and the people of Ymir.
Other times, he thought of friendlier faces and found the memories roused a pervasive loneliness.
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:42 pm
It was only when the water from the shower drowned out the sound of everything else did Eld let himself really feel for a few minutes. This was real. Earth was real. Tyr was real -- somehow. He thought he would have an opportunity to see more people he knew. He thought he would be able to travel to their worlds and see how they would be doing.
But as it turned out, there were so few of them left. And for whatever reason, a limited number were chosen or lucky enough to have survived.
Chaos took over his World. Eld’s heart felt cold and bitter when he thought about how his people must have suffered. How his planet was suffering. How the fog and mist still crept up and consumed everything.
He found a brush once he got out of the shower and dried off. He combed it through his hair and tied it up into a short ponytail to keep it off his shoulders. The clothes he borrowed fit relatively well, but they were some kind of loose fitting pants and a teeshirt in dark colors.
Food was a welcome sight. But not as much as Tyr.
“Once more… you’re not a figment of my imagination?”
He was sure he’d asked that a handful of times on their walk to the carriage house, but he still needed a reminder. Just in case.
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:42 pm
Tyr shrugged. For a moment, he was unable to meet Eld’s gaze.
“It’s all felt very real to me,” he said.
The glass coffin, the decrepit castle, the empty streets of the capital — those memories were fresh. The injuries he sustained upon waking had healed, but he found himself faced with daily reminders of his circumstances. Surrounded by unfamiliar faces that bore familiar names, Tyr had occasionally allowed himself to wonder the same — perhaps none of this was real, perhaps he was still in stasis, dreaming.
Oddly enough, it was Eld’s presence that made the reality of it all seem more apparent. If any of this had been a dream, surely his subconscious mind would have conjured someone else, someone Tyr would have longed to see.
“Here. You should eat. I can’t imagine you’ve had anything appetizing recently.”
Tyr set the warm plate on the table and dug some utensils out of a drawer. He remained standing by the counter after, twiddling his fingers. Eventually, he forced himself to look, to scrutinize all the ways Eld had changed since they last saw one another.
When had that been, exactly? To Tyr, the past felt both recent and very far away.
“You’ve gotten old,” he said, gaze dropping from Eld’s eyes to his beard, before rising to his dark hair. “Older. You’re not gray yet, at least.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:48 pm
Eld gratefully pulled the plate closer, and picked up a utensil with prongs to stab at the food. He’d gotten used to using whatever he could, so while he was curious how they had so much at their disposal, he was more than willing to push those thoughts aside so he could live in the moment.
His eyebrows raised curiously at Tyr, and then lifted a hand to his beard -- he saw Tyr’s gaze -- and then up to his hair.
“No, I suppose I haven’t turned gray yet. Still have a while to go, I think. I’m not sure. I don’t know how much time has passed. I saw everyone else getting older before they --”
Most of them had died from illness or hunger or pulled in by the mist before they were old enough to pass naturally. His heart ached, but he flashed Tyr a warm smile in reassurance.
“Would you think I was handsome with gray hair?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:49 pm
Tyr scoffed. He would not allow himself to be amused.
None of what had happened since the day his world lost contact could be classified as amusing. He didn’t even know how Eld could smile, after everything.
Tyr lowered his gaze again, staring at the wooden floor.
“Maybe you haven’t changed as much as I thought.”
Except Eld looked worn — not by age, but by circumstance. Tired. Underfed. Weathered, like he’d been living rough. Maybe a little like Paris, even — haunted by the past, by all he’d seen on Surtur. Tyr wouldn’t look changed, by comparison. Stasis kept him young, kept him healthy enough, though he’d always been thin and pale.
Tyr picked at his nails restlessly.
“I’m told it’s been a thousand years,” he said. “The Moon Kingdom fell. Our worlds fell with it. Many of the people we knew have been reborn here, on Earth. There’s Chaos here, but… it’s not like anything I’ve encountered before. When Ymir was cut off, Chaos spread. Our crops withered and died. My people fought one another for resources. If the famine didn’t kill them, they died from war or plague. Many of them blamed me.”
He remembered the stares, and the whispered accusations around the castle. He remembered the people who swarmed the gates, shouting abuse, wishing for his death.
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:51 pm
Eld wasn’t so sure about not having changed. The things he’d seen changed him. He felt an anger he couldn’t always keep suppressed. Despair and regret and rage.
But seeing Tyr. Tyr of all people. It seemed to temper the fires inside him to a bearable heat.
Walking around the streets of Earth and learning a little while he could was just a distraction. Now he was able to sit and breathe for a moment.
“The Moon Kingdom was weak to begin with,” Eld shrugged, although the bitterness seeped into his voice. The Moon Kingdom failed him and Surtur when it had a chance to help. Instead, he was able to rebuild Surtur on his own.
But knowing everything Tyr went through had him keeping his mouth shut. Or at least he didn’t say anything while he ate a few bites of… whatever Tyr had given him.
“They were wrong to blame you. Nothing could have stopped the Chaos from spreading. I’m sorry your world’s people failed you, Tyr. Without you, Ymir is nothing.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:02 pm
“Ymir is nothing with me,” Tyr argued, but his voice lacked passion.
He didn’t care, really — what happened to Ymir. The government was corrupt, the people unappreciative. Maybe there'd been good among them somewhere, but it’d always seemed few and far between. His world hadn’t been worth saving. He hadn’t been worth saving, and yet here he stood, alone out of everyone.
Briefly, Tyr glanced toward Eld, then looked away just as quickly.
It was so strange to see him there, aged, but in many ways unchanged.
“I thought it would end with my execution,” Tyr admitted. “There was talk of it. The Council… what was left of them… I thought they meant to sign the death warrant, but I suppose they had other ideas. They chose stasis. Maybe they hoped it might buy them some time to understand the spread of Chaos, to find the source of it, without risking a worse outcome with the loss of their Senshi. My uncle came for me. I tried to fight, but…”
He shouldn’t have bothered. Fighting never did him much good anyway.
“When I awoke, everything was gone. My people. The King. My uncle, and the rest of the Council. Somehow I… When I left the castle, something called me here. It was like… Ymir itself wanted me to be here, on Earth. I’ve yet to determine why.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:04 pm
Eld watched Tyr from where he sat. He could have eaten more, but he waited instead. He wanted to listen to him and try to understand everything that was going on. He felt anger again. Anger for how Tyr was treated. Anger for what happened to Ymir. Tyr might not think highly of the people from his world, but the world itself was his. Without it, he had no power. Maybe he wouldn’t be there.
“Something called to me, too,” he admitted, and for a moment he looked away from Tyr as if doing so would recall the sensation he felt.
“If it truly has been a thousand years, then it is more than just a coincidence that you and I are both here now. Talking to each other. Earth is broken and needs guidance. I intend on seeking out Sailor Earth, and if they do not exist, then I will have Earth’s name changed to Surtur,” he said simply.
It made perfect sense to him. Earth needed a Senshi, needed someone to lead everyone, so he was clearly going to have to step up and do something about it.
“I am glad you are here and they didn’t execute you. I wasn’t sure where I would be at this moment without your assistance. And,” he added after a pause, although he was cautious because Tyr didn’t seem to be in any great mood, “I am truly glad you are alive.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:10 pm
Tyr almost laughed — hollowly, with all the dark, consuming emptiness inside. Of course Eld already had a plan. Of course he meant to take Earth as his own, if circumstances allowed. In that respect, he was no different than he’d been a thousand years ago.
Instead, Tyr picked at his own clothing, fiddling with the hem of his loose shirt. Earth was strange. Its technology was strange. Its clothing was strange. Everything about his life since waking was strange.
“I blamed you before, for my mother’s death,” he said. The confession seemed to come from nowhere, but Tyr thought it pertinent. “It came from Surtur, the poison that killed her. I thought, if Surtur was responsible, it never would have been done without your approval.”
Tyr remembered the hatred he felt the first time they met after, and the belly full of wine that suppressed it, that kept him docile when he wanted to seethe and rage. Back then, he’d made himself look Eld in the eye; he’d searched Eld’s face for signs of deception — for a spark of gratification that might serve as proof.
He never found it.
“Once Ymir was cut off, I had a few years to consider things before they forced me into stasis,” he continued. Slowly, Tyr looked up. He let his eyes meet Eld’s again. “I came to the conclusion that there were others who benefited from her death more than you did, that it must have been set up to throw off suspicion.”
A lump lodged itself into Tyr’s throat. He forced it down, fingers curling into his palms as a wave of regret rose suddenly, then receded.
“I thought I was alone when I came here. When Valhalla told me how much time had passed, I thought it wasn’t possible anyone else could have survived.” The technology to achieve stasis wasn’t exactly rare, but in a thousand years, so much could go wrong. “How are you alive?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:22 pm
Surprise and concern flashed in Eld’s eyes. He hadn’t known about Tyr’s mother. He knew she’d died, but nothing of the poison from Surtur.
He felt like he’d plunged into a pool of ice water. The chill from Tyr’s words likely to haunt him.
He didn’t know. And now that he knew, he wondered how he couldn’t have thought there was something more to Tyr’s demeanor, to the way he spoke to him, or interacted with him.
Eld knew he’d been a fool. Naive. Younger than he was now. Less weathered. Maybe if he was wiser back then he would have realized that there was something wrong, rather than getting lost in the excitement of a new ally. He’d been so focused on his duty as Surtur that he hadn’t stopped to realize that there was more to… everything.
Well, until his world was crippled by Chaos. Then there was more to focus on.
Eld frowned when asked how he was alive. “I don’t know,” he admitted. It wasn’t a good answer. He rested his arms against the table so he could lean forward more comfortably. The food was half eaten, but there were more important things on his mind than filling his stomach.
“Others around me aged, but I seemed frozen in time.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:28 pm
Tyr could only hold Eld’s gaze for so long before he had to look elsewhere.
There had always been something so intense about Eld, especially in moments like these, when he dropped all the cheerful exuberance he liked to greet people with and spoke from a place beneath the facade. Tyr knew some of Eld’s history. He knew what Eld had accomplished on Surtur, how he expanded to territory beyond. That he should want Earth, that he meant to put himself into a position of leadership if circumstances allowed, was in no way out of character.
To hear him speak of his experiences dredged up conflicting emotions. Tyr did not care what became of his own people, so he could not empathize with Eld’s loss, but he wasn’t without sympathy for someone who, once, had been his ally — or should have been, if Tyr could have understood the truth about his mother’s death sooner. Looking back, Eld had always treated him with kindness, even respect.
“And you’ve been on Surtur all this time?” he asked.
There was something horrifying about that thought. A thousand years was a significant amount of time, even for people like theirs, who aged slower than those of Earth. Eld must have been witness to so much death. His friends, his allies, everyone he’d ever known or loved.
Surely that was worse than stasis. While Tyr slept, Eld faced an unimaginable tragedy.
“I assume you’ve been alone,” Tyr said, quiet, unsure how Eld might respond to the reality of it. “When I awoke, there was nothing left. No people. Minimal plant life. The horses were gone. I couldn’t hear anything. No voices. No sign of movement. Everything was still. If it wasn’t for the wind and the rain, it would’ve been silent.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:29 pm
Eld pursed his lips together thoughtfully, and then lowered his eyes to the food that was in front of him. He was hungry -- he was always hungry, it seemed -- but his appetite wasn’t happy with him at the moment. He would eat it, of course. He wouldn’t want it to go to waste, but he needed a few minutes.
“It’s been at least a couple hundred years since I’ve seen anyone else,” he admitted. Sometimes he liked to pretend that he didn’t know how much time had actually passed. Other times he counted the days, marked them in the calendars, made sure the time pieces kept working, had backups, took note of how long it had been.
Keeping track of the time was just one more thing to encourage him to keep to his routine, to keep him moving and ready to retreat if the mist got too close.
“Maybe… maybe somewhere a village or two managed to survive. In a pocket where Chaos couldn’t reach,” he suggested. He knew it was unlikely. He knew Tyr would know it was unlikely.
He kept his eyes down, just as Tyr did.
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:35 pm
If it might be true for Surtur, that there were pockets of people still alive somewhere, then it might also be true for Ymir.
Tyr didn’t think so. Perhaps it was his imagination after so long in stasis, but the magic of his world seemed to indicate that no one had survived. His connection to Ymir was weak, yet he knew it in ways only another Senshi could know their world. Instinct told him that he was all that remained.
Eld must know it, too, even when he clung to hope.
As much as Tyr didn’t care for his own people, he couldn’t begrudge Eld that last shred of belief.
“Maybe…” he allowed.
Tyr shifted from one foot to the next, uneasy. Their experiences on their worlds were vastly different, thus their feelings about those worlds would never be the same, but Eld was all Tyr knew here on Earth. Valhalla was a different man, kind and helpful, but he would never know Tyr the way Serge Martel once had, the way Eld still did.
When he could not stop his fidgeting, Tyr came closer. He paused at an adjacent chair and gripped the back of it, stilling his hands.
“Earth isn’t any less dangerous,” he warned Eld. “I don’t know how it’s survived for so long. Chaos is rampant here. I’m told this city is the only place any of us are safe, and even then safety might be wishful thinking. Revealing who and what we are could get us killed. The Negaverse has been hunting Senshi and Knights for… decades, it seems. I arrived here a month ago and immediately encountered one of their monsters. A youma, Valhalla called it. And the Negaverse isn’t the only danger.”
Tyr looked down at his hands, fingers going white from his tight grip on the chair.
“I don’t know why you or I were brought here when everything seems so hopeless.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:39 pm
Eld didn’t miss the kindness Tyr offered. He knew how hopeless it was to believe that anyone was still alive, but Tyr didn’t shove it in his face. For that he was grateful.
He glanced up when Tyr stood by the chair next to him. Watched as he gripped onto the back.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said after a few moments of thoughtful silence. He knew there was very little of Earth he understood. But he was determined. He’d done it before and he would do it again, although without support he didn’t know how far he would get.
“I would appreciate your help. In figuring things out, I mean. If I can’t take on the mantle of Earth, or have the planet renamed to Surtur, well… I’ll need allies. Can I still count on you? I’ll have your back even if you don’t want to have mine,” he said, and he meant it. Even if Tyr didn’t want anything to do with him, he would still protect him however he could.
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:45 pm
Tyr didn’t know how much help he could offer. He didn’t care for Earth; he didn’t even care for his own world. These people meant nothing to him. Neither he nor Eld had managed to save Ymir or Surtur, even when they were at the height of their power. Now they were weak. Now they had no one but themselves.
If none of the countless Senshi and Knights born to Earth fared any better, what good could either of them do?
But Eld was all he had. Eld was the only thing that made him feel slightly less alone.
Strange that it should be him, that Tyr should feel so much relief in Eld’s survival. Before tonight, Eld was not who Tyr would have wished for. After tonight, perhaps he still wouldn’t be. But Eld was better than solitude. Perhaps, with time, they would begin to understand the whys and the hows of their being here.
“Alright,” Tyr said.
He gripped the chair again, then released it. He shuffled one step closer, then another, until he could feel Eld’s body heat. Tyr made himself look again; he caught Eld’s gaze, stared into Eld’s eyes until the intensity grew to be too much. He brought a hand to Eld’s face, touching the tips of his fingers to Eld’s beard.
“I never gave you a proper chance before,” he said of their alliance. The Council wanted it, to stave off Eld’s attempts to extend his reach to Ymir. Tyr did what he had to, whether or not he agreed. “Perhaps this time will be different.”
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