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 Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:54 pm
Takes place in May, sometime after So tired, but you can’t sleep. “What was it like watching your world die?”
Vyn accompanied Surtur to his homeworld once per Earth quarter. The first time had been unproductive, by Vyn’s standards. He’d taken scans. He’d collected samples. He’d investigated what he could visually. Ultimately, he’d discovered little of note. Each successive visit had produced more of the same. It was as Surtur had claimed: ravaged by Chaos, barely alive, unable to sustain additional life.
But it had its Senshi, and that was enough for hope.
During his previous visits, Vyn had refrained from asking such personal questions. He’d stuck to data and facts. He knew enough about Surtur by now that he didn’t fear for his safety in Surtur’s company, but Vyn hadn’t thought they were close enough friends to tread so near to painful subjects. Surtur was a proud man. In Vyn’s experience, proud men tended to keep their pain close to the chest.
He’d come with Surtur again now because it allowed him to avoid everyone else while still focusing on their mission—like the running, which he did while seeking out their lost King. Even so, Vyn hadn’t meant to speak more than he had to. The thought hadn’t even been on his mind, but slipped out before he could swallow the words.
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:55 pm
They stood on the edge of a ridge. He’d once explained to Vyn that it was called The Spine of the World -- a jagged mountain ridge shaped like the backbone of a great dragon. Up there, the wind was cold, but it was clean. A rarity on Surtur. Below them, the Mist ebbed and flowed like a tide, hiding in the valleys and shadows. All dead and decaying.
From their vantage point, they could see a few of what were once dragon roosts. The great structures looked like they were carved from the bones of the mountain itself. They, like everything else, were nothing but shadows of their former glory.
Above them, a crimson sky. Bright enough to see what they were doing, lit by the massive profile of Saturn, and dark enough to see countless stars and moons that fell into orbit with Surtur. It hadn’t been so long ago that he hadn’t been able to see beyond the sky at all. But now it was more like what his memories were from a thousand years prior.
The question hung in the air longer than Vyn likely intended.
What was it like watching your world die?
Surtur felt the words press heavy against his chest, deep inside his ribs. He’d buried them for so long that they’d become part of his bones.
But Vyn had asked. Not with sharpness or malice meant to cut or harm him, but with unintentional curiosity. Likely with the weight of his own world’s survival on his mind.
Slowly, he let out a breath.
“It was not as I expected,” he finally said, his voice low with memory. “I had always believed the end of a world would come in thunder. Fire. The heavens falling. But Surtur did not die like that. At first, I did not see it for what it was. It is difficult to name when decay becomes death. It was slow. The winds changed. The trees withered. Fewer dragons returned to the peaks.”
Fewer voices in the halls. Fewer cups at the table. Fewer names spoken.
He paused to glance at Vyn, but not for long. Looking at another person while recalling such loss felt too much like tearing down the walls he’d built up around his heart.
He reached out, fingers trailing along a jagged piece of stone. Once, it had been a nesting arch. Now it was just a ruin. Decayed and hollow.
“One by one, I buried them. Their bones turned to ash in my hands. Their songs faded from my memory. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I could only bear witness to the calamity. There was no one left to stand beside me in the end. Not even Chaos itself saw fit to finish me. And so, I remained.”
And remained, still.
Surtur closed his eyes, but only for a few moments. When he opened them again, they burned with something old and ancient. Not anger or sorrow, but the endurance that had carried him through his hundreds year vigil and eventually brought him to Earth. And a hope that maybe his world could be restored one day.
“It was like outliving a storm by standing in the eye. You are whole, but only because everything that could break has already been broken.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:57 pm
Vyn tried to imagine it and found he couldn’t. Or perhaps he didn’t want to. He had not experienced loss before Earth. Back home on Velencya, death had seemed peaceful. It came with old age and led to rebirth—a new beginning as much as it was an end. Only on the hilltop had he come to truly understand how violent death could be.
He struggled not to think of it now. Vyn had less success suppressing it here, with someone who was less familiar to him, than he did among the Vanguard. Perhaps his thoughts were safer where no one could be hurt by them.
“I’m sorry,” Vyn said. His voice had little depth, his expression didn’t shift away from bland neutrality, yet he felt the need to express what sorrow he could muster. “I don’t like to think of Velencya’s end, but the longer we spend on Earth with so little success the more I fear I will have no choice but to face it. I wonder if it will seem sudden even if we have the opportunity to prepare ourselves for it, or if it will feel like that. Decay.”
Vyn looked into the crimson sky. In four years, he had grown used to seeing the stars from Earth. It was a novelty, now, to observe them from a different vantage point.
“Velenia ended in conquest long before I was born,” he continued. “It has been lost to us longer than those who still remember it once lived there. We lost one world to violence and now we may lose another to time. I wonder, between my people and yours, who is more unlucky.”
Guilt put a sour pit in his stomach. Fear put a heavy pressure on his chest. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, but Vyn blinked twice and banished them.
“I suppose it doesn't matter. Your people suffered. My people have suffered. Somewhere there is always suffering.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:58 pm
Surtur did not move as Vyn spoke, listening quietly instead. Vyn’s voice might have been controlled, and his face unreadable, but Surtur had seen enough people grieve to know when sorrow gripped their words like shadows. He did not interrupt. He wouldn’t offer empty comforts, as there were none worth giving.
Not when Vyn spoke of fear, but did not name it. Not when he spoke of sorrow, without giving it life.
Surtur understood that, too. Because once, long ago, he’d done the same. When his world first started to fall. When the Mist started consuming everything it touched. He stood tall in the halls of those who trusted him, who believed in him and the prophecy that had given him purpose. When he told his family and his friends that they would endure.
And they had endured. Until they didn’t.
Vyn’s words settled heavily on him, and he glanced over at him. Not with any sharpness, but with enough recognition that such a question was… dangerous. Not because it was offensive, but because it festered and invited sorrow and despair. A poison that rarely had an antidote.
“There is no merit in measuring the misfortune of dying stars,” he said softly, his eyes lifting once again to the sky above. “They will burn until they cannot. That is all.”
He let the silence settle around them again. The wind whispered around them. But there was something that rested uneasily in his chest. Not pity. It wasn’t even grief. Something older -- heavier. Because he knew Vyn deserved more than just silence. He deserved more than the bitter truth.
“You know,” he said at last. “Once, long ago, I climbed this ridge and flew. My brother and I, though not by birth. We were made small compared to the dragons of ancients, and some allowed us on their backs. We were fast -- reckless.”
I do not remember the last thing he said to me.
Surtur felt his jaw tense, but then he relaxed, offering a quiet smile into the wind.
“Sometimes, I think I have forgotten all of their faces. I come here so I can remember. I hear the echo of his laughter off the stones.”
He turned to Vyn then, looking at him fully this time. “Your world may yet be saved. Do not mourn it before it has fallen. But if it does… know that you will still breathe. That you will still rise. That no matter how bitter that breath may be, it is proof that your people endured. They did once, after Velenia fell. They will do so again.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:58 pm
“I don’t know that I find enduring satisfactory.”
Again, the words slipped out before Vyn could stop them. He didn’t know why they should come now, after he’d taken such pains to stifle them, except that it was easier to give voice to his thoughts when the one who heard them wouldn’t be harmed by them.
Even here, safely away from his own people, Vyn felt shame for it. He kept his gaze averted, first to the stars, then out over the ridge, down into the Mist he had been advised against wading into. The survival of his people should have been a source of pride. They had lost their homeworld and suffered innumerable hardships, yet they’d lived on. They’d made a new life for themselves. They’d advanced. They worked now toward reclaiming what had once been theirs.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to diminish your experience, or belittle your reassurances,” Vyn said. “You’ve been kind to me, and I’ve offered so little in return. After the Hollow, I—”
He paused, uncertain what he meant to say. Objectively, their battle against the Calamitous Hollow had been a resounding success. To Vyn’s knowledge, there had been no loss of life on either side. The Vanguard had made it through with only minor injuries. They now had a source of energy that might benefit Velencya. Whether or not it was right to do so weighed on him far less than the thought that such considerations might one day hinder their pursuit, which weighed on him only slightly more than the question of what his growing lack of care for such things as ethics said about him.
“Maybe it isn’t worth discussing,” Vyn said. He tore his eyes away from the Mist and consulted his ComTech, which displayed recent atmospheric scans against those taken during his last visit. “I’m sorry to report there hasn’t been much positive change. Minor improvements to atmospheric conditions. What we can sample of the soil remains of poor quality. I’ve seen nothing that would indicate other signs of life, but the Mist may be interfering with our readings. It’s a shame.”
Vyn carried so much anguish he could barely hold himself together. He could not even fathom how much worse it must be for Surtur.
“I would’ve liked to see your dragons,” he said, and hoped it was not too impolite. “I would’ve liked to fly.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:59 pm
Surtur watched him. Not too closely. He didn’t want to stare and potentially make the younger Velencian retreat, but it was a steady gaze. Maybe like how someone would watch smoke rise from a fire that was not quite out, waiting for it to rekindle.
Or suffocate.
I don’t know that I find enduring satisfactory.
The words might have been spoken with softness, but there was an edge of bitterness to them. Beneath he could hear the disappointment, the guilt, the weariness. The burden Vyn carried not just for himself, but for countless others.
He didn’t answer right away. There was value in silence, especially when grief was involved. Besides, it was not the words Vyn offered that Surtur heard. It was the emotion hidden beneath them. Vyn seemed as though he was fraying at the edges. Like someone pulling on a string at the edge of a piece of silk. And Vyn was desperately trying to keep himself together. Even his apology, although sincere and carefully spoken, weighed down with shame. Perhaps not for what he said, but that he said it out loud at all.
As though he feared honesty more than the truth that could be revealed.
When Vyn’s attention turned to his ComTech, Surtur felt the quiet shift in his behavior. How he quickly retreated to something he knew -- data. Information. Something measurable and predictable. Safe.
Surtur had done the same when the prophecy still meant something to him.
Vyn talking about his dragons, saying how he would have liked to fly… that, more than anything else, caught something in Surtur’s chest. He knew his grief was old. He’d learned to compartmentalize, to set certain things aside, to keep moving forward. To endure. He did not weep for his dragons any more. He did not rage or demand justice from the heavens. But this...?
This was the sorrow of what could never be reclaimed. Someone who would never sit behind the horns of a winged elder. Never feel the updraft of ash heated air as the sky opened up beneath him. Surtur hadn’t expected that ache in his heart.
“They would have liked you,” he said quietly. There was only sincerity in his voice. He wasn’t just trying to placate Vyn, or try to make him feel better. His voice was only that of truth.
He turned from the ridge and stepped towards a nearby perch. It was just a stone ring that had partially collapsed, and etched with deep scratches where claws once held on when taking off or landing.
“I was ten when I first rode,” Surtur shared, letting his fingers brush over the ancient grooves. “The dragon was called Maldrax. He was old, even then. But he was patient. Stern. He took me higher than I thought possible.”
He paused, letting his eyes scan over the spine of mountains around them, feeling older than he had in a long time.
“There is a silence up there, in the clouds. It’s as though the world, and all of its troubles, falls away. It is not a silence like that of loss. It is… peace. The kind you would not recognize until you no longer had it.”
Once more, he let the words hang between them, but he glanced towards Vyn, whose attention was on the ComTech’s readings. Surtur couldn’t help but wonder if Vyn was trying to turn his pain into usefulness. If he focused hard enough, maybe numbers would matter more than heartache. But neither would give him closure.
“You do not need to apologize for being tired. Or afraid. Or bitter,” he said gently, his own sorrow etched into his words. Sorrow of a man who once believed that endurance would be enough.
“Endurance is not… glory. It is not triumphant. It is not kind. But it is the one thing we can hold onto. The one thing that Chaos has never learned to extinguish. And that is enough.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:59 pm
Vyn wanted to deny that he was any of those things—tired, afraid, bitter—and realized he couldn’t. Then he wanted to insist they were all of his own doing, that he was selfish and thoughtless and ungrateful for all the good he’d had in life. He hadn’t known hardship until Earth, and that hardship wasn’t solely his to bear. The burden was shared among the Vanguard, whether or not they could ever agree how to overcome it. Surtur, on the other hand, carried his burdens alone. He was all that remained of this world. He was its one hope, and its memory.
“I don’t even know if it’s peace I want,” Vyn said of flight, “so much as the thrill of it. That feeling you get from excitement. When it builds, and the rush hits you, and you understand what it means to be alive.”
He looked away from the readings when they offered nothing more of interest, turning his attention to Surtur, and the perch, and the scratches etched deep into the stone. Vyn stepped closer and let his fingers follow Surtur’s.
People on Earth were often fascinated by dragons, though none existed in their historical records. They were creatures of myth and legend. Vyn didn’t care much for the stories, but he wondered now if they had any similarities to the dragons that once existed here. They must have been beautiful, long ago when this world had been more than an empty husk. He wished he could offer more reassurance, that he could promise Surtur success in the endeavor to rebuild.
“I think I was an odd child,” Vyn said. Surtur had already shared of himself. Vyn thought it only fair to do the same. “I didn’t feel that way at the time, but I look back and think I didn’t quite fit in. Maybe that’s a common experience. I don’t know. I haven’t felt the need to discuss it much with anyone. It seems pointless to do so when I was fortunate to be loved and cared for, to live in peace when so many before me knew so much fear and pain.
“Now I see how the people of Earth live,” he continued. “I come here and listen to you speak of dragons, and I yearn for the things I was never able to experience—and shouldn’t now, when our survival is more imperative than fulfilling some childish need for adventure.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 5:00 pm
He let Vyn’s words settle into the stone, as though he was letting the ghosts of his world listen. It wasn’t difficult to notice that Vyn didn’t offer vulnerability easily. Not the way some others did. Instead, he gave it with care and precision. It was almost like offering someone a sharp blade, unsure if it would be taken gently or used against him.
And that… Surtur believed he understood more than most others.
Vyn didn’t ask for comfort -- he asked if wanting was allowed. If he was allowed to crave something more than duty, more than survival. If he was allowed to want wonder. Peace. Adventure.
Surtur watched as Vyn touched his fingers to the claw marks, and something about it ached inside of him that he hadn’t felt in years. Not since he was small. Not since his hands had been shackled and calloused and the only thing he dared to dream was of wind and freedom.
He hadn’t been born to lead. Not born to save. He’d been chosen because the world needed fire. Because they believed he would be able to burn a path where no one else could walk. Where no one else was allowed to walk.
But Surtur had never wanted their thrones or their power. He only wanted the sky. But he played the part. He bore the mantle. A slave boy who became the chosen of their people. The Conqueror. A unifier. A threat. A myth.
“I do not think you are strange, Vyn,” he said with quiet confidence. “Not for longing, or feeling as though you never quite fit.”
There was no pity in his words. No judgment. Only understanding, deep and heavy as stone.
“The world has always needed people who do not fit. Those who see differently. Who dream strangely. That is how we change. How we grow. There is no shame in wanting more than survival. Not now. Not ever. A child who dreams of flying may one day be the one who teaches others how to rise.”
He let his hand curl slightly against the stone, his fingers brushing the claw marks like they were sacred. They were.
“Like you, I have lived for many years. Lost more than I can name. But I do not believe that wonder, or even peace, should belong only to the dead,” he said quietly, reverently, before turning to Vyn with the same low voice.
“You were loved. You were safe. That is not a fault. That is not something to apologize for. You are not worth less for living in peace. You are more, because you still remember what that peace is worth.”
A pause, his lip twitched almost into a smile.
“And I think you would have made a fine rider.”
Then slowly, he reached up to his ear. He wore many earrings. Most were black, adorned with green gems. Some were etched, some were plain. But none were chosen for accessory alone. They were all keepsakes. Promises. Memories. Names.
He unhooked a small one from his upper ear. The metal was black and set with a dark green gem.
“I forged this for a rider who never returned,” he said, his voice quiet but steady. “He was bold. Reckless. He told me that if he died, he wanted to become a storm, not a ghost. Not a legend. Just weather. I never had a chance to give it to him.”
He offered it to Vyn with his palm up and open. There was no ceremony or pressure. Just an offering.
“My sphere is Desolation. Many believe it is a curse. Ruin. The empty hollow after the fire burns out. But that is not what it is. Desolation is what remains. It is the silence after the screaming. The ashes that still smolder. The wind that keeps moving even when the world has stopped. Proof that something survived the end,” he explained as he looked at Vyn, his gaze direct but not forceful.
“You carry that, even if you do not see it. This is yours now. You do not need to wear it, only keep it. For as long as you choose to keep going.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 5:00 pm
Vyn listened.
He didn’t always have the words to express his thoughts, much less his emotions. Recently he thought most of them were better left unspoken anyway. He didn’t wish to cause harm even in disagreement. His impatience and his dissatisfaction weren’t for others to shoulder. Maybe his disappointment was unfair. Perhaps he expected too much too soon from those who might be struggling at least as much as he was. Yet Vyn couldn’t shed the feeling of strangeness and solitude, the sense that his fears and his frustrations were an inconvenience at best and unwelcome at worst, that he would always be disconnected from those he should rely on simply because he was willing to do what many of them were not.
Vyn didn’t know how to offer comfort to a man who had been through a loss of this magnitude. He didn’t know how to express gratitude to the extent that Surtur deserved—for being kind, for withholding judgement, for offering what encouragement he could, though the act of being there and sharing of his past must be difficult. Vyn had nothing to offer but data which contained so few positives, and companionship that, in his inexperience, must surely be lacking.
So he listened. He took it all to heart, even if his anguish left little room for comfort. One day it might soothe him. One day he might remember, and understand, and find some part he could agree with. Maybe it would take weeks or years. Maybe it would take decades or centuries.
Maybe he would appreciate the sentiment more once he found himself again.
Vyn looked upon the earring. Even in the gloom of a dead world, the stone glimmered from the palm of Surtur’s outstretched hand.
“I would like to wear it,” Vyn decided, more on a whim than logic.
He liked the look of it. It didn’t matter that it was unnecessary. It didn’t matter that the simple act of wearing something because it was beautiful might be a vanity. He thought of the earring like the flowers he often wore in his hair—of no benefit to anyone, but something all his own. That it meant something to Surtur gave it additional significance. It was a thoughtful gift. Vyn thought it would be rude to keep it hidden away when there was little to stop him from adorning himself with it.
“But my ears aren’t ready for it,” he added, lifting a self-conscious hand to an unmarred lobe. Green eyes lifted and met a deeper hue. “Would you help me?”
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 5:00 pm
Surtur’s gaze lingered on Vyn’s face a bit longer than was really necessary. He didn’t smile, not really. But there was something in his expression that eased. Because he knew that Vyn did not take the offer lightly. He could have rejected the earring, or taken it and treasured it in silence. That would have been enough for him. But Vyn wished to wear it. To carry it not as a burden to bear, but a choice made.
“Of course,” he said, nodding slowly. There was no hesitation or surprise in his voice, but he felt graced by Vyn’s request. He looked down at the earring in his hand, turning it gently between his fingers, as though recalling a distant memory. When he looked back up at Vyn, his expression was calm. Steady.
“Dragons used to say that a mark worn willingly was the same as a vow. Not to the giver, but to oneself.”
He glanced up to where Vyn gestured to his untouched skin and nodded once more. He took a step closer, although not enough to intrude.
“We do not offer it lightly, nor should you receive it as such. But I believe you already understand that. I will prepare a place. A fire. The equipment needed. Nothing ceremonial, unless you wish it to be,” he explained, and reached into his subspace to pull out a small leather pouch and soft cloth. He folded the earring inside, handling it with reverence, before placing it in Vyn’s hand.
“When you are ready. And I will help you remember that desolation is not the end. Only what is left when all else is burned away.”
And for a moment, as a gust of wind brushed at his dark hair along his shoulders, and the loose sash at his waist, Surtur allowed himself to imagine it: the old dragon roosts rebuilt and perch restored. Wind rising up with new wings. And someone who was not him rising above the peaks to feel, for the first time, what it meant to fly.
Fin!
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