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Past life memory Helene dialogue presented in this pretty orange color was written by Song. He also approved Helene’s actions in the past life memory. ❤️
Cryptomelane didn’t keep much in his office for himself. Despite nearly a year of having this personal space within the Negaverse, he didn’t largely see the point. Most of his powered time, he spent out in Destiny City, getting actual work done, or in General Amazonite’s lab space, doing work of a different sort. Anything homey or cozy in the office—the assortment of pillows and blankets in one corner, the collection of crayons and paper, the different little boxes where Ympe liked to keep his collection of trinkets—were for the sake of Cryptomelane’s dear youma companion, not Cryptomelane himself.
Maybe Cryptomelane should have changed that about his office. He could’ve added some of his own books or gotten some cheap, easily constructed office furniture to add something in the way of “personal flair.” He could’ve tried to make his office feel more like “his” space. Or made it feel more “lived in,” whatever it meant to do that. But sitting behind his desk, watching Ympe ferret around in one of his containers of stolen shiny things, Cryptomelane didn’t see the need. Perhaps it could have put other people more at ease in his office, but aside from Ympe, the only people he expected to see in here were Industria, Brassite, and General Amazonite.
Offhand, Cryptomelane didn’t think any of them minded him taking a more ascetic approach to his space.
Perhaps he could have kept snacks or something for Brassite’s sake? She was young. Needed her nutrition so she wouldn’t get too exhausted while taking names and establishing herself as one of the Negaverse’s premiere “girl-bosses.” What, Cryptomelane wondered, were the most appropriate and helpful snacks for a sixteen-year-old “girlboss” who needed to maintain her strength and energy? He’d have to look into it.
Yet, all these thoughts currently served but one purpose: distracting Cryptomelane from the little vial sitting before him on his desk, alongside the black velvet pouch in which he’d found it.
Turning his attention back to the thing, Cryptomelane sighed. While it was hardly unheard of for someone to find little curiosities like this in Negaspace, it rarely happened to Cryptomelane himself. Most of the strange things he ever found wound up in Ympe’s collection. Cryptomelane had no use for odd toys, or dangly keychain trinkets, or necklaces with broken chains and no magical properties. Why not allow Ympe the delight that those silly things brought him? It cost him nothing to let Ympe enjoy something that most people would have just thrown away.
But the vial was different. With a soft huff, Cryptomelane picked up and held it toward the overhead light. The golden liquid caged within the glass shifted easily as he tilted the vial, but none of its motions gave him any insight into what it might have done. Neither, for that matter, did the way the golden liquid shone in the light (insofar as Cryptomelane could discern such through the shield of the glass, which he had to admit, wasn’t much).
“Melly~!” A series of frustrated little grunting noises followed as Ympe clambered up into the chair opposite his person. Peering over the desk, then resting his chin atop the edge, Ympe asked, “Whatcha gonna do with it?”
“I’m afraid I don’t think I can allow you to take it for your collection, my friend,” Cryptomelane said, looking away from Ympe to watch the golden liquid move in the vial some more. “It would help if I could identify what it is, but that might require going down to the labs, and I wouldn’t know where to start. Not really.……”
Ympe hummed in the way he usually did when he wanted to think very hard about something. “Can it open? Maybe it’ll smell like something?”
“That’s definitely an idea.……” Unfortunately, not one that panned out. Although Cryptomelane uncorked the vial easily enough—“It doesn’t smell like anything. Nothing I can identify, anyway.”
“Boo.” With all his customary grace and maturity, Ympe stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry. “‘s not bad for you, though. Prolly not. Melly and Ympe did find it in the library. Why’d the big bosses ever want t’keep something bad for you in the library?”
………Well, Ympe had a good point, there.
Baring his many odd little teeth, Ympe grinned. “Melly could drink it.… See what happens…?”
Cryptomelane wrinkled his nose. “Are you seriously suggesting that I drink a mystery liquid of unknown provenance that we found in the library?”
Ympe nodded, and quirked his little shoulders. “It won’t be bad for you. What’s the hurt in tryin’?”
“If you keep making so many good points,” Cryptomelane said, his tone somewhere adjacent to fond teasing, “people may begin to confuse you for the Captain and me for your assistant.”
Delighted by that prospect, Ympe cackled and drummed his little fingers on the desk.
Better not to dally much longer, though, Cryptomelane figured. After a deep breath, he threw down the contents of the vial in one drink. Although he couldn’t identify the taste—aside from noting that it was somewhat sweet—he didn’t find it unpleasant. Yet, the vial grew hot in Cryptomelane’s hand. As it heated up, golden fractures spread through the glass. Looking up from the desk, he expected to see his office in all its comfortable austerity.
Instead of the office, he stared out at the interior of what seemed to be a grand cathedral, or maybe some kind of temple. Wherever he sat, the seat held him in comfort, soft both beneath and behind him as he lounged, one leg crossed over the other and one elbow leaned down on an armrest. A left hand’s long, thin fingers, curled loosely, pressed against his upper lip and a thumb cradled the underside of his chin. His right hand rested in his lap, clutching tightly at something firm, with a feel like leather beneath his skin.
Glancing up, he took in a vaulted ceiling with intricate, detailed frescoes that would have made the Sistine Chapel seethe in envy (—or so Cryptomelane assumed, based on photos he had seen of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment, never having personally visited Italy or Vatican City). He didn’t understand the art, not really. Some of the figures seemed, to him, to have the shapes and color schemes of Order senshi. Others struck him as monstrous foes. But whatever stories the artist had meant to depict, Cryptomelane lacked some necessary context.
Pews lined up before him in a forest of neatly ordered rows, so orderly in their arrangement that moving them at all would’ve felt sinful. Equally precise in their placements were the tall, silver candelabra that stood all over the room. In one far corner of the room, near double-doors carved from polished black wood, stood a massive, tiered rack, its steps covered end to end with a city of candles. Not all of them burned at present, but so much the better. Even given that the room around him seemed primarily made of stone—black in most places, carved and sculpted with skilled hands into dauntingly impressive architecture—it contained too many flammable things.
Whatever had happened—whatever he’d drunk from that vial—Cryptomelane both was and was not himself. Occupying this first-person perspective, a position that should have left him perfectly himself, he nevertheless drank in the sight of scenery he didn’t recognize. His body felt different: taller, but thinner, with a wild, hungry sort of strength pent up inside it. Along with that strength, a swell of pride at watching some garishly dressed lowlife shamble forward—flanked by a pair in modest, crimson robes that made them look like monks in the employ of Hell itself—and kneel before him. He wouldn’t have wanted to cross himself, whoever he was meant to be at present.
Moreover, something felt wrong in his perception. Something about the world seemed flatter than it should have. Shadows darkened the black marble floor ever so slightly where they fell, and indicated that he sat in an elevated position. Not so high up that the person prostrate before him seemed impossibly tiny, but high enough that the stairs between them seemed a genuine threat. Worse than the uncertainty of his physical position, everything off to his left side must have been there. Some tiny vial of golden liquid didn’t have the power to destroy half of the world like that, nor to rob Cryptomelane of his peripheral vision and leave him vulnerable like this. Yet, he only sensed darkness looming at the far-left corners of his sight.
Still, he felt a sense of power and authority as he looked down at the groveling wretch.
“Octavian, Octavian,” he said, in a smooth, pleasant voice that Cryptomelane didn’t recognize but felt as his own regardless, “whatever am I going to do with you?”
The wretch on the floor—Octavian, apparently—trembled and whined, but said nothing.
“How many times have we had this conversation, Octavian? I don’t tolerate fools who think to start trouble around my Wonder.”
—Wait, Wonder?
But only Knights had Wonders.
None of this could possibly be real, then, because Cryptomelane didn’t have the same luxury as Sonora—or the same lack of self-respect as every other Knight who was not Sonora—required to fulfill the demand that he throw his life away in service of some fundamentally unknowable Code that didn’t even give its servants health insurance.
With no regard for Cryptomelane’s mind reeling from that single word, the vision, hallucination, or whatever continued, undisturbed: the wretch called Octavian made a tense, keening sound. The sort of noise that came from someone desperately trying to keep himself from weeping openly, regardless of how closely he teetered on that precipice. As he waited for an answer to his charge, Cryptomelane-but-not released the leather handle. Whatever he’d held onto rested easily in his lap.
“Please,” he groveled, “I didn’t mean—nothing that I said—you can hardly blame me for—”
Fingers that both were and were not Cryptomelane’s drummed pointedly on the handle he had only just released.
Instantly paling, Octavian shouted, “My lord Asshai—!”
“I’m not a lord, Octavian. I am a Knight of Saturn. You would do well to remember the distinction.” Taking up the handle again, he stood. For all he couldn’t quite appreciate the effect himself, he cut an intimidating enough figure that Octavian gave up on holding back his tears. “Noble lords are noble lords because they were born into that life, you know. However, I, myself, was not so fortunate. Once, I was the same humble, belly-to-the-ground sort of filth as you. Born to a pair of drunken nobodies on Lete. Abandoned, very young, to both my own devices and the whims of fate. But an old friend saw potential in me, the very same potential that inspired him to sponsor my admission to the Knight Academy. Only the blade of a knife separates your position in life from mine, when you really think about—”
“Ser!”
Cryptomelane—or Asshai, anyway—seethed. Getting interrupted in the middle of his big speech struck him as a deep disrespect. It sounded like words he’d practiced, words that he’d probably spoken hundreds of times, trying to get them exactly right. Trying to ensure that his monologue would be as close to perfect as he could get it. Crafting the exact correct impression that he wanted to leave with the people he intimidated.
Only the oddity of the situation stayed his hand: footfalls echoed throughout the cathedral as a third figure in crimson, monk-looking robes ran toward the altar where Asshai kept his throne. His assistants didn’t run like this, nor did they ever allow themselves to appear so deeply ruffled. At all times, they presented themselves as distant and graceful, unflappable and elegant, the cool heads who maintained all their dignity in the face of whatever had caused their Knight to laugh, this time.
“Forgive the interruption, my Knight,” the currently extremely flappable assistant spluttered, trying to regain their composure. “You know that I would not intrude if it were not—”
“You’re forgiven, Valerian,” Asshai drawled, “as long as you explain yourself without any further tedious apologies.”
Swallowing thickly, Valerian nodded. Their big, brown eyes fixed on Asshai in awe as they said, “Knight Kaifeng wishes an audience with you, my Knight.…… He would, if it please you, prefer to meet you outside?”
“I suppose I can’t blame him for that. He knows better than most that I do my best work in the cathedral.” With a dry chuckle, Asshai cracked the whip attached to the leather handle. He moved for the floor slowly, making sure that his feet fully touched each step, lest he throw off his own balance and allow any of the fools around him to see him vulnerable (a thought that tracked for Cryptomelane, logically, but that he didn’t understand). “Gregor, Malaise, please escort Octavian to one of our holding cells until I can deal with him properly. For now, I must attend to our distinguished guest.”
As soon as his boots touched down on the marble, Asshai could have picked up his pace. Even so, he didn’t. Tucking his whip into a holster on his right hip, he sauntered down the aisle between the two sections of pews at a truly unbothered pace. The heavy, black double-doors opened into a foyer, distinctly more understated than the cathedral. From there, a door sat open to the outside world. Sounds of revelry filtered in, now that Asshai stood closer to that door, and that cacophony of other voices served to remind him that a fellow Knight waited out there.
Still, before erring too close to the door, Asshai stopped by an ornate mirror, hanging on an otherwise largely nondescript wall. As the Knight checked his wild hair and smoothed out his high-collared, violet coat, Cryptomelane finally understood why their shared perceptions seemed so strange: Asshai’s left eye was missing, probably taken from him by whatever had given him the nasty scar running from the forehead down that side of his face. In the original eye’s place, nestled right in the socket, Asshai wore a sizable hunk of amethyst.
Judging by how well the scar over that eye had healed, the injury must not have been recent. If any pain still lingered, it clearly didn’t bother Asshai enough to stop him from smiling as he made his way outside.
Although dozens of people bustled around the streets surrounding the cathedral, Asshai easily found his distinguished guest……and, it seemed, a particularly senshi-looking plus-one. Both stood out from the crowd, and the others seemed to give them a wide berth. Probably not an unreasonable reaction, given that these two had power such as the normal people avoiding them could scarcely imagine.
On one hand, the Knight called Kaifeng carried a black staff, taller than himself, segmented like bamboo, and topped with some kind of folding fan. His crimson dress split open in the front, revealing both a pair of breeches and the latticework of hoops that shaped the skirt. Pointed ears and a sharp jawline gave him an elfin appearance. Hanging nearly to his thighs, Kaifeng’s thick braid started off black near the crown of his head, then ebbed through an ombre of purple tones before ending in a bright, soft pink shade, down at the tips. As Asshai strolled toward them, Kaifeng’s grip on his staff tightened, but he tried to keep his facial expression somewhere in the vicinity of neutral.
On the other hand, the senshi beside him might as well have been a stormcloud amidst the otherwise peaceful twilight that surrounded them. Bright colors decorated his entire figure, from the orange and violet of his fuku to the lemon-lime ombre of his hair, yet he radiated disapproval and disgust that terribly clashed with his color palette. Tension quivered through his tight mouth, his braided forelocks, his posture—which was absolutely stupid on the face of it. What need did anyone in his position have for the self-restraint that said strain suggested? Perhaps it fit with the knotted ropework designs around his sleeves, his waist, and his neck. But that didn’t make it any less ridiculous.
“Xingyi, Xingyi,” Asshai called to him with a pleasant, welcoming laugh. Or at least a laugh that wanted to come off as pleasant and welcoming. Greeted Kaifeng, when close enough, with a firm hand on the shoulder—as a brother. “To what does your humble Asshai of Saturn owe the honor of this surprise visit, my dear friend? Never mind the lofty presence of such a guest as the one accompanying you.”
Although Asshai smiled as he glanced toward the senshi, something about it felt more like a wolf baring its fangs.
“I wish you would have told me that Helene was coming, Xingyi,” he went on “All the best hospitality of Asshai should be on offer to such a noble warrior of love and justice. I could much better provide that if I’d had time to prepare.”
The senshi said nothing in return, but the cold disdain in his gaze spoke volumes.
“Hopefully, we won’t be imposing on you for very long, Kestrel.” The Knight called Kaifeng heaved a sigh, with an air about him that suggested he had needed a great deal of preparation for this moment. “I only wanted…… We need to talk. About the spring?”
“Ugh, again about the spring……” Despite the played-up exasperation and the need to defend himself from charges that Kaifeng had not yet fully made, Asshai paused and sniffed at the air. Several scents jumped out, likely rendered more powerful as Asshai’s other senses compensated for his impaired sight: spiced meat skewers being prepared at a nearby stall, sweat and body odor reeking off several of the people bustling by or huddled with each other over either cards or dice, stale urine and fresh vomit. One stench, however, stood out by its absence. “Are you sober, Xingyi? You aren’t giving off your usual bouquet at all.”
Kaifeng blenched, swallowing thickly. “I am, but that’s not…… That—that isn’t the point, Kestrel,” he rushed to say, reeking desperation and shifting his position ever so slightly. While he did not fully step between Helene and Asshai, Kaifeng moved just enough that Helene would’ve needed to push him aside or duck around him in order to reach Asshai physically. “You can’t keep dumping corpses by the spring the way you do. I don’t care that you and Industria killed them,” he said like someone who actually cared very much about that exact situation, “but allowing them to decompose by the water supply is…… The spring serves both of our Wonders, Kestrel, and the settlements that have grown up around them. You cannot—”
“You still favor that Murikabushian rice wine, yes?”
“Kestrel, stop it, I—you really don’t need—I couldn’t accept such hospitality—”
Reaching for Kaifeng’s elbow, Asshai first moved too quickly and swiped at thin air. He laughed it off and tried again, though. The second time, his hand managed to find its target. Although Kaifeng attempted to dig in his heels, Asshai tugged him along, away from the cathedral and Kaifeng’s senshi (though the latter of those seemed likely to follow them, and he quickly did).
“Oh, nonsense, Xingyi. In fact, I insist!” Asshai laughed again, but it was neither a warm nor a comforting sound. (Not that Cryptomelane had much cause for laughter in his life, but Asshai’s laugh did sound……rather similar to his own.) “We might need to check around a bit for your drink of choice, but it’s no trouble whatsoever—”
“My drink of choice right now is water,” Kaifeng protested. “Which is one of several reasons why I’m here to talk about the spring—”
“You don’t need to put on pretenses like this for me, Xingyi. Do I look like the Helenian ruling council to you? I should certainly hope that I don’t.”
“It’s not a pretense! I—please? Just stop. I—I’m not drinking anymore. I mean it this time—”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like the Xingyi Kurogane I know.” Another laugh, and although it seemed mostly fond, it had a distinct edge to it. “Or I suppose it does, but we both know how this always ends, so why bother fighting it?”
“Because I—!” Successfully planting his boots on the cobblestones, Kaifeng managed to snag their progress. Trembling with tension and leaning on his staff, he fought to keep them rooted to the spot. “Does the ‘why’ really matter that much? I don’t want to drink like that anymore—”
“Oh, Xingyi, I know you too well to believe that.” Brows arched, Asshai looked back at Kaifeng with a pout. “We can’t talk about the spring unless you have a drink with me, alright? You’re utterly insufferable when you get like this.”
“He said that he is not drinking.” Although Helene had been pointedly silent until now, he spoke up easily. Voice firm, even stern. Tone, no suggestion that he was open to compromise about this or any other matter. “You will respect Xingyi’s decision.”
“And what will you do if I don’t, Helene?” Asshai smirked as he looked back at the senshi. “Will you unleash upon me such a terrible wrath that it defies both imagination and description? It doesn’t sound very Helenian of you, but considering you and Xingyi are such. devoted. friends.…”
“You are ignoring the issue,” Helene said, once more refusing to rise to the bait. Eugh, probably one of those infuriatingly upstanding Order senshi who always wanted to claim a moral high ground, then. “Corpses, fouling the spring that serves both your Wonders. Cease.”
“This is important, Kestrel,” Kaifeng insisted, raising his voice so his words would not get buried by Asshai’s intransigent, petulant groan. “I can’t keep protecting you all the time, the way I do. Or cleaning up after you like this!”
If there was more to see, Cryptomelane didn’t get any further visions.
Instead, something jerked him back into himself, to the sound of skin hitting skin and the gentle feeling of Ympe’s fingers thwapping into his cheek.
“Melly! Melly!”
“Yes, Ympe? Or is hitting me making you feel better?” At least that made the slaps stop. Yet, as Ympe backed away—now standing atop the desk, and peering down at Cryptomelane with a wide-eyed expression that very clearly read as concern—Cryptomelane……regretted his sharp tone. “……I did not intend for that to sound so harsh. I apologize.”
“It’s ‘kay. Just so long as Melly’s alright.” As if this emphasized his point, Ympe reached over and mussed one of his little hands over Cryptomelane’s hair. “What’d that stuff even do?”
“I don’t entirely know,” Cryptomelane admitted with a sigh. “I believe I just experienced some kind of……intensely vivid hallucination.”
An intensely vivid hallucination about being a Knight of Saturn, and trying to get some other Saturn Knight to drink with him, against the objections of some pastel lilac-skinned senshi with delicate little antlers and a bad attitude on par with Cryptomelane’s own. Surely that didn’t mean anything, though. Obviously, it couldn’t mean anything. Alien senshi like that one certainly existed, but Cryptomelane had only ever served the Negaverse. He only ever wanted to serve the Negaverse. Never would he ever settle for being some pathetic Knight, especially not when only one Knight (Sonora) in all creation deserved anything better than moderate pity.
One truth about all of this stood out clearly in his mind: sitting around here all night and thinking about this would drive him mad.
“What do you think about doing a quick patrol, Ympe,” Cryptomelane asked. “We’ll drain some energy, stay out of trouble, maybe find ourselves some fresh starseeds.…”
Ympe didn’t need to answer that suggestion with words. His bright, broad grin and the eager way he tapped his fingers together said everything.
