empty thrones (ch8; flowers blooming at the edge of the universe)

[lunecat16]

Title: empty thrones
Rating: Mature
Major Warnings: Body horror, graphic violence, familial abuse, other warnings included in fic. for this chapter specifically, suicidal ideation -- short, but worth the head's up anyway.
Genre: Canon Divergence

The weather was downcast and windy, with hints of rain on the distant horizon. It was the worst kind of weather for archery—where the wind was actively working against the arrow’s intended trajectory.

Still, this was the exact kind of weather one had to train for. The family was meant to conquer the elements, not bend to them—just like it was meant to conquer everything else in this world. Excuses wouldn’t be tolerated.

The girl was very aware of that fact as she pulled back on the bowstring, and let loose an arrow.

The Other watched the arrow fly against the wind, slamming into a distant target.

It was off-center. The bullseye was untouched.

“Damn,” the girl swore under her breath, with a touch of upset beneath her frustration.

This may have only been practice, but the stakes were high. They were always high, with the family. She couldn’t afford failure, not with how consistent her poor performance was.

She raised her bow to try again. The Other stepped forward, coming up from behind her and grabbing her shoulder.

She froze up at first, but when she realized who was approaching her, she let some of that tension go. It could sense her annoyance and her slight fear as it extended itself, wrapping abyss-tainted bandages around her arm and adjusting her form. It straightened her back further, and made sure her legs were spaced out the right distance, with feet properly planted on the ground.

It did not speak its criticisms. It had lost its voice long ago, like it had lost the rest of its body.

The girl, impatient, prepared to let loose another arrow the moment the Other stopped adjusting her. With a gentle tug, it bid her to pull back a little bit further.

This time, the arrow hit its mark.

There was no triumphant smile from the girl. She took a deep breath, and then readied another arrow, keeping her posture in line with the Other’s adjustments.

It watched her closely, to make sure she didn’t get sloppy.

She had been sent to this place as a last resort. She hadn’t excelled, she hadn’t shown promise. She’d dared to talk back, when she hadn’t earned the right to even think about the option. She’d been told to please a potential suitor. She hadn’t angered him, she hadn’t been disrespectful. He simply hadn’t wanted her, and that was unacceptable.

Now she was here. In two weeks’ time she would be sent out to duel a Fae baron. She would succeed and act as a proper ambassador of House Musser, or she would die—whether by losing the duel, or because the family caught word that she’d disrespected them through her actions.

The Other had been brought out of its bindings to watch over her. It did not wonder how long it had been since it last woke up, nor did it bask in its freedom or enjoy the outdoors. Curiosity and desire weren’t needed for its function, so they had been removed. It watched over her because that was its duty. It remembered that it had failed before. It had been like her, and that was why it was put to the task of disciplining wayward family members.

A constant reminder, to those like the girl, of what might happen if they continued to stray from the family’s expectations.

The Discarded Servant watched as she faltered yet again, and stepped in to correct her.

—

Reid woke up, his heart pounding as his eye darted around, taking stock of his surroundings. He was—

In a room.

He didn’t remember how he got here. He’d gotten up from his fall down the stairs, kept walking, because it wasn’t like there were any other options, and then…

That nightmare, or whatever it had been, came over him, without him even realizing. Now he was here.

He took a few deep breaths, to confirm that he was still breathing, and looked down at his hand. Still unbandaged. He flexed his fingers, feeling the movement in his joints and muscles, and then lifted his hand towards his face.

He could still feel his face underneath the bandages, he could still feel pain as his fingers pressed down on what remained of his cheek.

That feeling, of pain and visceral flesh, was too real to be another trick of the Abyss. He desperately hoped it was.

He stood up, his chest aching from the motion, and scanned his surroundings. The room looked less like a room and more like a collapsed crevice, with wet and slick stone floors that were thoroughly stained black. A couple of walls were caved in, including the entrance side, leaving the way out impeded by wooden beams he’d have to climb over.

First the fall in the ballroom, and now this. Now that he thought of it, he’d had a vision of sorts when he’d fallen into the Abyss, hadn’t he?

This wasn’t normal. This hadn’t happened in the Factory, it hadn’t been mentioned by the Abyss practitioners he’d spoken to in his travels.

Maybe his mind was finally starting to crumble, just like his body.

He limped towards the wooden beams, slowly navigating over them. They looked slick and eroded, but a splinter managed to get into one of his hands anyway in the process. As he reached the other side, he found himself in another hallway.

Though ‘hallway’ wasn’t the best word for it. He felt like he was standing in what should have been the outdoor walkway bordering a courtyard, walls on one side and an arcade on the other, but the series of arches looked as if they’d collided with multiple other buildings. Rubble or eroded walls blocked most of the ways through, with the arcade pillars collapsed or broken. The one way out Reid did see looked as if it led to a hall with multiple rows of pillars, with no signs of stopping.

This place made even less sense than the Abyss above it. Reid continued down the hall, rather than venture into an open, exposed area. The architecture here looked older, as if this place contained the remains of past eras that had sunken deeper over the course of centuries, but it wasn’t consistent. The hallway gave way to a jumble of rooms, still bordered on one side by the collapsed arcade, and in one Reid could see a shattered television set, the screen still flickering despite the machine being broken.

The light it cast barely pierced the thick darkness. The rubble, the ruined furniture, the broken walls—everything was stained by the Abyss more than the halls above, to the point where, at times, Reid couldn’t tell what certain objects had once been. Were the rags crumpled in a far corner cloth, or thick cobweb?

The general ‘rules’ of the region still applied, so he kept low and remained quiet, which seemed like the best way to avoid breaking rules he wasn’t aware of. The Estate had expectations. Inconsistent, nonsense expectations, but expectations all the same. It seemed to want its residents to conform, slotting into rooms or roles, like the dancers in the ballroom, or the Padrone’s servants. Breaking the rules—the etiquette—meant being punished. He’d narrowly avoided punishment in the ballroom thanks to the glamourladen bird.

It was all too familiar. A twisted, fucked up parody of the life he’d been living.

Was that it? Was that the point? That he’d gone through all this effort to escape his family, diving deep into the Abyss, but he could never truly get away?

Were the visions trying to tell him the same thing? That he’d just become hollow scraps in the end, still bound to serve his family?

If that was the case—

“No,” he whispered in protest.

That couldn’t be all of it. He’d come to the Abyss to look for answers, for aid, and this was its response?

But the idea wouldn’t leave his mind, no matter how much he quickened his pace through the halls. He had to leave this place, there had to be some point deep enough in the realm where the Estate gave way to something formless enough to take him somewhere, anywhere else.

But the halls just kept going. Entrances blocked off, windows only leading to more rooms. A dizzying spiral of fallen households, castles, and places of prestige.

His heart pounded in his chest. His head felt light, and his breathing sped up.

Even if he supposed the Abyss was a place that could actively answer him, and that the tales about it having a kind of intelligence he’d dismissed were correct all along, then why let him roam? Why let him win against the Padrone, if he was supposed to be beaten down and learn his place?

Something was missing.

It didn’t feel right. Nothing about any of this felt right.

He barely knew anything, he needed to get out of this place, and—

A curved, chitinous talon lunged out from the darkness, aiming for his shoulder. He reflexively reached for his belt, to grab the hammer or one of the throwing knives he no longer had, and that motion doomed him. The insectile leg pierced his shoulder, pinning him to the ground, followed by another he just barely managed to twist away from. The rest of the monster emerged soon after—an insect-like beast, like an emaciated, gigantic silverfish, with glossy but rough chitin and a skull-like head with a maw of sharp fangs. Its legs were elongated, sharp spikes, raising its body a good couple of feet above the ground.

The Other stood directly above him and let out an airy hiss, raising a tail tipped with multiple pincers. Reid’s free arm reached out, his hand grasping for anything that could help him. His fingers wrapped around a large splinter of wood in the rubble nearby, and he thrust it up towards a soft point in the Other’s belly, between two chitin plates.

The wood pierced the insect, black bile spilling out of the opening as he stabbed it multiple times, but the Other barely reacted. It seemed more annoyed at the gesture than anything, as its other front leg tried to skewer his free arm.

Its head could probably crush his skull, and the pincers on its tail were lowered at his legs, snapping with anticipation, but the Other hadn’t made a move yet.

It was playing with its food.

Maybe he should let the Other have him. What else did he have waiting for him, besides the assurance that he’d never escape?

All of this struggle, this refusal to give up to a stupid degree, wasn’t that just a lesson his family had instilled in him anyway? Why not give it up, since he wasn’t a Musser anymore?

But even so—

He’d continue. He had to.

He quickly looked around him while continuing to struggle, trying to keep the Other from skewering him. They were on a rotted wooden ledge that gave way on one side to a series of rafters, and a wall made of a pile of discarded junk on the other. He could see the narrow crevice in that wall where the Other probably hid before ambushing him.

The Other, growing annoyed, lunged forward with a snapping maw. Reid took advantage of the movement to twist his body all the way to the side, catching the Other in the motion and twisting it with him.

The insect seemed caught off-guard, and reacted by sinking the pincers into his already-injured leg. The actual struggle was short, the two of them tossing and turning, the insect thrashing and slicing through his skin with its legs, but he was able to wrestle it to the edge and kick it off of him. The insect dug its legs into the wall, attempting to climb back up, but he still had the wooden spike. He jabbed the spike into its skull-like eye socket. It froze, loosening its grip on the wall and falling down into the darkness below.

Reid didn’t trust that it wouldn’t race back up with a vengeance. He staggered to his feet, feeling blood ooze from every new cut and wound he’d gotten. His funeral suit was little more than tattered, bloodsoaked rags by now.

And that was just one Abyssal beast, not even a particularly powerful one—it didn’t have a large lair, or any special abilities from what he could tell. It was just one Abyssal beast and it nearly killed him.

Fuck. Fuck.

He half-limped, half-stumbled forward, one hand leaning on the wall of discarded junk for support. He reached the end of the chamber—a wall that looked like the exterior of a mansion colliding with the chasm on one side and the rubble on another. The wooden ledge abruptly ended at the wall, but he could see an open, arched window to the side, not too far from one of the rafters.

Balancing was difficult. He would have had a hard enough time with two eyes and a body that wasn’t falling apart, but now? He had to keep his steps glacial, even as the narrow wooden beam seemed to tremble with his weight on it.

He missed the child—having Danny as a guide helped, before.

The window opening was empty, lacking any glass shards around the entrance to cut into him, and as he expected, only led to more Estate. There seemed to be a pile of black stone bricks piled on the other side in a way that peeked up from the bottom of the window, giving him some more ground to stand on if he jumped over.

He didn’t have much choice. The wooden beam gave way a few feet ahead, so he couldn’t continue on and try to cross the vast chasm.

He lept, fell slightly short of the distance, and had to pull himself up by his hands. His body screamed at him as he pulled himself up, blood spurting out of his wounds rather than trickling now, every part of him feeling as if it was being stabbed anew as he crawled over to the other side.

The bricks, dust, and other rubble formed a steep slope, leading down to a broken crack in the wall of another, almost chateau-like edifice. He looked up, but despite the landscape looking as if he were between two buildings, there was still a roof above him.

He still hadn’t escaped.

He made his way down the slope—slowly at first, but a jagged stone around halfway down gave when he stepped on it, sending him half-sliding, half-stumbling down the rest of the way.

He caught himself by grabbing onto the edge of the broken wall at the bottom of the slope, just managing to keep himself from falling over.

There was a small room through that crack in the wall. Maybe it had been a courtyard, or an indoor greenhouse once. At its center was an aged structure that looked like a water fountain, but it was dry, with no sign of water in or around it. The floor was made of tiled stone, broken and missing in many places, revealing black dirt beneath, but no plant life grew—not even signs of withered, dead plants.

But there was something else in that room.

A figure sat at the edge of the dead fountain, one leg outstretched, the other’s knee drawn up towards its chest. It looked humanoid, but its body was covered in warped metal plates, cloth rags, and anything it looked like this Other could find. One armored hand clutched the long, rusted metal pole of a candlestick holder, missing the candle. Wooden and metal spines seemed to jut out of its back, but as Reid looked closer, they looked like weapons that had been lodged into the Other that hadn’t been removed.

This was a Deep Abyssal. There was little else it could be.

He supposed he’d had a good run of it, hadn’t he? He’d lasted quite a while before his first death.

Yet as he braced himself, preparing for the Other to rise up and finish him off, that moment didn’t come. It was unresponsive, deathly still, with head was lowered over its knee and arm draped across it, as if it was resting.

Reid waited at the edge of the room, watching the Other for another minute. He glanced down either side of the wall—he couldn’t see much in the way of paths to follow on the outside of the building, but there wasn’t anything stopping him from taking the long way around either. He could try to avoid his inevitable death for a little while longer.

As he started to turn his body away from the Other, he heard the noise of metal plates shifting.

“...Geißel…”

A deep rasping, echoing voice emerged from the Abyssal armor.

Scourge.

Reid turned around to face the Other. It didn’t look like it had moved, despite the noise he’d heard earlier.

“You—”

“...It’s been so long…since your kind visited these halls...”

The Other was speaking English now, and while there was an accent, it sounded clear enough.

Reid took a moment to process the Other’s words, and shook his head. “I’m not a Scourge. That’s…”

Not who I am. He wanted to finish his sentence, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know who he was.

The Other didn’t respond. Reid took a step forward into the room, and the Abyssal still didn’t stir.

“You know practitioners?” He asked, his words tinged with an undercurrent of starved desperation he was trying and failing to hold back. This Other wasn’t hostile. It sounded old. That usually meant it knew things, like how to navigate this place, where the borders to its territory might be—where the borders to the Estate might be, even.

“...It’s an old ritual…A knight is sent out, into the dangerous wilds…he is tested…he faces the darkness in his heart…he triumphs, or he falls…”

“That—How is any of that relevant?” He asked, his voice rising in indignance. “I need—You seem strong, like you’ve been here a long time. Surely you know how to leave this place.”

“...Leave…the Abyss…?”

Maybe Reid was imagining it, but the Other almost sounded confused at the concept.

Reid shook his head. “I wouldn’t presume that much. I just—I need to get out of this wretched Estate.”

Another long pause, enough to make Reid wonder if it had fallen back asleep.

“...We are all trapped here by our misfortune…the victims of grandeur’s true face…the shadows cast by nobility’s radiance…What makes you any different?”

He didn’t have a response.

“...If you believe in a world outside this place…Why…are you here…”

He didn’t like the way the Other’s words echoed—how they seemed to carry a greater weight to them, asking more than those words normally would.

“I had to escape my family,” he replied.

“No.”

The response was quick and firm.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Reid began to limp forward, towards the Other. “That is why I opened a gate to the Abyss, it’s why—”

“...Not all of your reason…”

Reid stopped, standing within the room now, halfway towards the Other. It was dark—always dark in the Abyss – but the gradations of shadow differed enough to make it look like a ray of dim light was being cast into the room from the crack in the wall, and the shadow his body cast lay over the knight.

“...The gate to Limbo is opened with purpose…to cast down…to dredge up darkness…to ask…to seek…”

“...Then I’m seeking,” he told the unmoving suit of armor. “I’m seeking answers.”

“...To what question?”

Reid paused. “Does it matter, if the Abyss is going to break me at every turn?”

But the knight ignored him.

“...The one you have been asking all this time…The one the Abyss asks all its knights…”

“Then tell me!” He shouted, drawing closer to the Abyssal. “At least tell me how to get out of here!”

But the armor didn’t say a word.

Reid dropped down, grabbing the Other’s shoulders and shaking the mass of metal as best he could. “Just give me a damn answer! Lift up your head, would you? Do something—”

But as he shook the knight, his words nearing desperate hysterics as his eyes watered, the head moved with his motions. The helmet slowly slid off the Other’s body, clattering to the ground, revealing nothing beneath.

Just a hollow suit of warped, Abyssal metal, without any sign it ever had a wearer.

Reid froze, staring at the empty helmet, then at the empty, hollow breastplate. He felt the urge to cry come up on him, but suppressed it. He’d—He’d find a place to do that later.

The metal on the inside of the helmet looked jagged, and on closer inspection, seemed to have almost organic thorny growths that jutted inwards in a way that would make putting it on impossible. It was the same case for the breastplate. Maybe he could pry the spikes off, but he couldn’t dismiss the chance of them regrowing, stabbing into him or melding into his flesh.

The candlestick holder, on the other hand, didn’t seem to carry the same risk. When he used his Sight, he could barely detect any latent power in the object beyond the Abyssal black rust encrusting it. If it had extra abilities, he suspected it would simply be unnaturally durable. He tugged at the metal pole until it came free of the armored glove. It was heavy, but he could wield it with some effort.

There were two ways out of the room. One was blocked by a closed door, but the other seemed to lead into a room with a shredded plush chair lying on the floor, which led to more rooms beyond.

He continued on, through the open entrance.

Through the realm that existed as a shadow to the mansions above. Through the atrocities committed behind closed doors, and the people and places left behind to rot.

There was a sense of traveling back in time, almost, as Reid moved through the deep Estate. The Abyss was supposed to break down everything it swallowed eventually, but the leftover crumbs seemed to have remained, and sunk down to become…

This. The twisted landscape he was navigating now. He made his way over a ground made entirely of collapsed ceilings, the glass of mosaics and broken slabs of frescoes overlapping with each other to make disjointed images on the ground. Faded, stained, but still colorful enough to create disturbing, chimeric beings.

A quarter of a grime-stained glass sun overlapping a painted lion’s head, one leg replaced with another fresco’s human arm, shifted beneath him. The chimera’s jaw opened wide, and Reid brought the candlestick holder down on the fresco to counter the beast. His thrust was weak—the pitiful attempt of a broken man bleeding out on multiple fronts. He pushed harder, past his body’s limits, agitating open wounds as he pierced stone and fractured the image. It broke apart, pieces falling down cracks and down towards other frescoes.

The question the Abyss asked…He had a sense, in his Self, Abyssal and untainted both, that the hollow knight’s words weren’t cryptic gibberish or hallucinations of his weary mind.

Maybe he needed a different framing for his answers.

Reid finished traversing the length of the rubble and came to a narrow stone brick hallway. At parts of the walls, stone was stained near-black, warped so that the bricks flowed into each other, as if something liquid had filled in cracks in the existing wall.

Suppose the Abyss hadn’t been showing him anything, so much as asking something of him. What would that mean?

The Other had mistaken him for a Scourge. It spoke of ‘knights’ venturing into dangerous places and facing darkness.

A ritual.

Had he tapped into the same sort of groove that had been worn into the world over centuries? A young practitioner’s first major ritual, a delve into the Abyss to cement their identity as a Scourge—and he, bereft of all other options, turned to the Abyss for succor in an echo of those motions.

There was an open crack in the hallway, and which seemed to lead into some sort of study. The ground wasn’t stone or wood, but rather a jumble of countless skeletons melded together by Abyss-stuff into a lumpy, morbid surface. The desk and other furniture looked glued to the floor, as if being slowly overtaken. The far wall was missing completely, giving way to a cavernous void.

He poked at the ground with the candlestick holder. It was hard, and didn’t react under his prodding. He cautiously stepped into the room, and much to his relief, the floor didn’t suddenly come to life to drag him under. The chasm at the far end, unfortunately, still led to more Estate—he could see signs of a few more hanging rooms in the distance above him, and the hint of overturned long tables far below.

The walls were lined with destroyed bookshelves and paintings, along with a couple of taxidermied beasts with no resemblance to Earthly animals. Even with the destruction, however, the room looked familiar. Well-put together, like something he might see in the home of a family ally. He used his Sight, and the room lit up with a faint, red glow. Latent power.

A former demesne? Was this an unlikely coincidence, or was it a reward for coming to the right conclusion—the conclusion that the Abyss wanted?

The thought made him sick.

“I’m not your loyal soldier, or a ‘knight’, or any of those things,” he spoke up, looking out towards the darkness.

“I’m—”

He stopped, the rest of the sentence coming to his mind before he finished speaking, before he had that realization.

I don’t know who I am.

Ever since he’d woken up after the contest, the thought had lurked in the back of his mind. Uncertainty clinging to every action, chipping away at every assumption and decision he came to. There were so many things he wasn’t, anymore. He wasn’t a Musser, he wasn’t powerful, he wasn’t well.

His face had been destroyed, shredded away by Drowne and ground down some more in the Abyss. He could hardly say what face he wore now.

He could hardly say who he was now.

He looked over the room again. His room at the Blue Heron Institute didn’t suit him, his room at the family manor didn’t suit him. Even this deranged reflection of what a successful Scourge’s study might be didn’t suit him.

He didn’t know what suited him anymore, but he could at least reject this. He turned around, and limped back into the hallway.

It just kept going into the darkness. He found himself leaning on the candlestick holder, using it for support rather than a weapon.

Who am I?

The Abyss was asking the same question. It had been asking all this time.

Whether he was someone who travelled, seeking out answers rather than staying in place.

Whether he kept his cool in the most dire of circumstances.

Whether he could help others, or only help himself.

How much of everything he’d been through, every place he’d visited, had been the subtle pull of the Abyss, guiding his aimless self through these tests? He didn’t know, he couldn’t ever know, but if this was some sick, dark ritual of self-discovery, then why—

“Why did you take it all away?!” He shouted.

The hallway had turned a corner, but he stood facing the stone brick wall, slamming the tip of the candlestick holder into its impenetrable surface with more force than his body should have allowed.

“When I chose to travel, you ravaged my leg.”

Thunk.

“When I chose to think, you spat on my knowledge.”

With each shout, another slam.

“When I chose compassion, you made him suffer for helping me!”

With the third shout and third thrust, he could see small cracks forming in the black grout between bricks.

“What now?! I choose to escape, I choose to believe in a world beyond the Estate. That’s how this works, right? Or are you just going to reject that choice too?!”

He continued his assault. He wasn’t like the servant. He wasn’t like the knight. He wasn’t like his family gathered at the funeral. He’d spoken to Lauren. He’d learned there was something to live for outside his family. Even if most of those experiences were out of his reach, they were still there.

Just as he felt like he might be exhausting his last reserves of energy, thrusting the pole into the wall over and over again in a fevered flurry, he found his final thrust sending him not into the wall, but through it, as the stones crumbled. The candlestick holder let out a loud snap, as the top end followed him, and the other half stayed buried in the middle of a cluster of stone.

He lost his balance, falling and tumbling down soft, muddy ground on a smooth slope. He didn’t have the energy left to stop his fall. When he came to the foot of the slope, he was finally able to get his bearings.

The ground below and around him was black, soil and loose stones soaked wet with black water, which formed shallow pools where there was more water than earth. He felt harsh winds chill his irritated flesh. He rose to his feet and looked at his surroundings, half-expecting to be in some new, sunken room of the Estate.

He wasn’t.

Behind him was a castle on a hill, half-sunken into the ground. Other ruins were beside it, stretching out into the distance—a pile of fallen estates lying broken on black hills and mountainside, or perhaps they were those distant hills and mountains. He could look further upward, until he saw a sky, but that sky was pitch black and roiling with the formless suggestions of clouds, pressing in on him just as the Estate’s ceilings had. In the other direction, opposite the ruins, he saw—

The end of everything.

The patch of flat ground he found himself on was a plateau that narrowed into a peninsula, with a sheer drop-off at the edges to impossible distances below. As he took an unsteady couple of steps forward, he could see beyond the edge. He could see the vast plain of roiling, primordial water and earth far below, and how that plain stretched on infinitely far. Vague suggestions of shapes shifted around in the muck, and at the horizon the black sky mixed with the black earth below.

At some points, he thought he could see something like lava—obsidian patches oozing over and within the morass. Black comets fell from the sky in the far distance, creating great impacts that were quickly lost to the vast landscape.

As chaotic as the scene appeared, with how far away it was, with how much he was seeing of it, the churning dark was eerily quiet, just as it was constantly in motion. Chaos without life.

Not the end of everything, not exactly.

There was a time in Earth’s history when the planet was newly formed. Smoke and fire billowed from open wounds and pores in the earth. Molten earth moved like water and then hardened to rock, meeting with liquid water that boiled into nothingness.

Constant destruction, hostile to all life. Life couldn’t have existed back then, not in those conditions, but there were some patterns and events said to be so old, so significant or long-lasting, that they’d etched themselves into the world regardless. Durocher had been fond of some of those theories.

Hadean chaos. The edge of the universe. Below the surface, he’d find the dark, churning heart of the Abyss.

He started to take another step forward, hesitated, and in that hesitation, stumbled on a loose stone hidden in the mud and fell back onto the ground. He was very aware of how small he was in comparison to these vast depths. How weak he was. How his tattered suit draped over him, strips of cloth drawn by gravity to hang off him and sway with the wind. How his body was wet with blood. His stained bandages had come loose at some point and were starting to unravel.

He lifted his body up from the mud with two shaking arms. There was a shallow pool of oily black water he’d just barely missed falling into, and his bloody reflection stared back at him.

He wasn’t sure if the wind had picked up or if gravity was simply doing its work, but the bandages continued to unravel, sliding off his face to reveal the scarred face beneath.

Instead of open wounds and flesh, however, he saw nothing.

No face looked back at him. No one was behind those bandages. He lifted a finger up to touch his face, and felt flesh and pain where they were supposed to be. This time, however, he wasn’t certain if his face was actually still there.

Reid gritted his teeth.

“Is this your point?” He whispered. “Strip away everything else, everything non-essential, and I’m nothing? Nothing except—”

Nothing except for blood and bandages.

He was hurt, he was wounded beyond all measure, and that was all he had left. It was all he could be, when he’d lost everything else. From the moment Drowne had smashed his face against the window, to everything in the Carmine Contest—that trauma defined him, more than anything else once had.

It was the only thing that was truly his. Not a teaching from his family, or a lesson from a book.

He could feel his eyes watering as he tried to put his bandages back on with shaking hands. What was he supposed to do with this conclusion? Faced with the cruel answer to his question, faced with a mere glimpse of the heart of the Abyss, the most tempting answer was to give up.

To fall off the edge, and let the Abyss take him. Let it redistribute his wounds to another sorry soul, who might have more to their Self to let them bear it.

He dragged himself towards the tip of the cliff, but his hand fell on a solid, lump-like texture just before it. His eye was losing focus, but it looked like a small cluster of Abyss-stuff and stones, and as his hand felt around the object, it felt something solid, but tiny. Slightly flexible, like a string, and excessively dry.

He felt small leaves at the side and the top, and as his eye finally focused on where his hand was, he knew what it was.

A flower. A wilted, sickly cluster of three or four flowers, miniscule roots reaching into the earth and barely piercing it. The only life in a lifeless world, and it looked as if it was on its way out too.

And yet, they were in full bloom. No insect or animal would spread their seeds or pollen, but the mix of dark and bright red petals bloomed for the uncaring, empty world to see.

They were clinging to life, against all expectations.

The Abyss existed to break down whatever fell into its depths, but it didn’t govern everything. It could show him ugly truths, but it couldn’t control how he used those truths.

“...I’m barely anything now, you’re right. But that doesn’t mean that’s all I’ll ever be.”

He slowly lifted himself up, so that he was kneeling instead of lying on the ground.

“I—I can escape. I can find something that’s mine, instead of lamenting my losses. I can become someone. I can grow.”

He could grow, but that’s what he’d been doing his whole life, hadn’t he? Even as a vessel for his family’s will, he’d excelled, but he’d taken from others to do so.

He had to be better than that.

“And I’ll help others grow with me.”

He carefully prodded at one of the flowers, the most disconnected from the cluster. The roots came off easily, almost too easily, and he lifted the flower up, holding it close to his chest.

It was selfish, to want to take something so starved for himself. But these flowers bloomed at the edge of the universe. If they could survive elsewhere—if he could help this one thrive, instead of barely hanging on—

“I can learn. You can prod, you can test, you can break—but I can use that. I still kept moving, even after my leg was hurt. That boy was in danger, but I still—I still saved him. That means something.”

Maybe he wasn’t truly saved, since he was still in the Abyss. But if, for just one moment, Reid was able to strike back at the Man of the House successfully? A being that may as well have been an extension of the Estate’s will?

That also meant something.

Danny was his own person. But when Reid saw him, he was reminded of family.

He’d escaped, he’d helped Raquel escape, but the others hadn’t. Warner and Sullivan and Adelle and everyone—they were bound to the Musser family, bound to be beaten down into soldiers and tools regardless of how skilled or suited they were.

Like his father, or his uncles. Like he’d once been.

He didn’t want that for them. He didn’t want them to suffer fates barely distinguishable from the Estate’s victims.

He had to save them.

The Abyss was a reflection of human misery. He couldn’t eliminate the Estate’s oppressive rules and monsters no more than he could have destroyed the moon in reality. But Earth didn’t have cruelty baked into its core. And, unlike those claimed by the Abyss, he’d come here through ritual. His fate wasn’t sealed.

His family’s fate didn’t have to be sealed either.

He stood up on unsteady legs, and spoke with a weak, but much steadier voice. “I can use you, but I won’t serve you. I can listen, but I won’t obey.”

He gazed out onto the infinite plain of Abyssal chaos.

“I, Reid Musser, soaked through with blood, may be broken, but I refuse to fall. Not to you, not to my family.”

With those words, he turned away from the heart of the Abyss, and trudged back towards the clustered ruins of the Estate’s exterior, Abyssal flower clutched close to his chest.

He stopped and looked down at the thing, and, after giving it some thought, scooped up some Abyssal mud with one hand and placed the flower on top, covering the roots with wet earth the best he could.

It was a start.

Maybe he was bound to the Estate after all, if he kept coming back to it, on Earth or within the Abyss, but this time, it wasn’t to try and ensure his and Raquel’s fates in a foolish, futile effort.

He understood what he had to do now.

✾

Reid woke up from a light, fitful sleep. The Abyss hadn’t plagued his dreams or sent any distressing visions this time around.

He looked around him. He was in the ruins of a statue garden, toppled figures strewn about a courtyard with walkways half-covered by dirt. Only half of the expansive room was covered by a roof, and in that covered portion, he’d found a well-hidden cranny to sleep in, which seemed to have kept him out of sight from any potential threats.

He stared up at the black sky he could see through the open portion of the roof. It didn’t seem like any flying Others were out there, at least for now.

He’d decided that rather than outright enter the Estate again, it might be quicker to go ‘up’ if he attempted to scale the outside of it, heading up that mountain of ruins as far as he could before poor circumstance or terrain forced him to take an interior route.

He hadn’t gotten far until he saw figures with broad wingspans, nearly indistinguishable from the black sky, circling the air above, forcing him to take cover.

That was when he’d also noticed the taste of blood in his mouth.

He’d been forced to rest, and while he was resting, he’d assessed his injuries and tried to tend to them the best he could.

It was still hard to believe that he hadn’t died yet, but he was Abyss-hardened. Non-lethal slices and stabs, without any real significance to them, were easier for him to push past—easier to convince the spirits and other forces that he could endure them as well.

It was supposed to be a form of practice, a kind of ritual some scourges and other practitioners performed by taking the Abyss into themselves for the duration of a fight. Instead, this was just…him, now. His father’s training had made sure of it.

But he’d try to hold onto the rest of his humanity, as fragile and useless as it was down here. He tested his breathing, and then listened to his heartbeat. Both were still present and automatic.

He looked down at the flower sitting in the soil cradled in his hand. It still looked horrible, but it didn’t seem worse-off than it had been before. With his free hand, he swiped a finger over one of his cuts to get blood, resisting the faint urge to wince, and began to draw a rune on a nearby stone.

Air, this time. As he completed the rune, he felt the familiar exertion of his weak Self bidding air spirits to congregate, and felt wind blow through the small alcove.

He let out an exhalation of relief. He could still practice. He’d need to continue switching up runes, to make sure the forces down here still remembered he was a practitioner—a human who could change patterns, rather than an Other stuck in a groove.

He moved to stand up, going slowly so he wouldn’t agitate his injured leg, and made his way towards the center of the ruined garden, to get a better look at his options when traveling forward. He’d need to try and pick up a weapon along the way, and maybe figure out a method to trap those birds he’d seen—he needed to get food somehow.

As he glanced around the statue garden, however, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He froze, turning his head towards the direction of the movement, and only saw broken statues. The half-buried torso of a man hadn’t budged, and neither had the fallen figure of a screaming, hideous old woman. The statue depicting a mockery of Prometheus, a wretched man having all of his entrails eaten by monstrous, deformed birds, hadn’t moved either.

But one bird, carved to be letting out some sort of cry, almost seemed to be staring directly at him.

After a moment of consideration, Reid used the Sight. A faint red haze had gathered around the bird’s eyes.

He stopped using the Sight. The bird’s stone eyes glowed with a blue light.

“Holy shit,” a familiar voice said, emerging from the bird’s open mouth. “I think—wait.”

Reid knew that voice.

“Confirm with your Word that you are Reid Musser in body, mind, and soul, and that you have always been Reid Musser. Confirm that you are the only Reid Musser, as far as you are aware, and that you were born in, and are of, Earth.”

Reid’s eye widened. His spirits rose in his chest, and he did his best not to sound too eager to reply. “I—I am Reid Musser, always have been, in body, mind, and soul. I was born on Earth in Ontario, Canada, eighteen years ago, and apart from the Abyss in my veins, I remain human. A practitioner of…I’m not certain it will be of Earth anymore, but it used to be.”

“Mmm…”

The glowing blue eyes flashed, the glimmer of other colors appearing inside, before fading away, as if satisfied.

“Close enough, fuck it!” Chase Whitt’s voice exclaimed, letting out a relieved laugh. “Haha, fucking finally. Guys! I found him! He’s—”

Reid couldn’t hear anyone else except for Chase, but from the boy’s clipped responses, it sounded like multiple people were in the room with him.

“Yes, of course I confirmed it. I’ve dealt with faerie, I know—He looks fucked up, Wye—Yeah, go check the book, make sure—”

Wye was there. That single revelation made Reid want to dive at the bird, and beg for more information from Chase, but there was a good chance that would disrupt the augury at work.

After more incoherent discussion, there was a short pause and a sigh. “Christ, do you know how long it took to find you?”

“How long has it been?” Reid asked, with some hesitation, half-expecting a whole year to have passed outside.

“I’ve been Seeing for like, two days straight by now. Wye heard you vanished, dropped everything and just, I don’t fucking know—What does the book say?”

Wye had dropped everything? He wasn’t supposed to, he thought that they agreed it was best to leave him to his fate. He shouldn’t have felt happy, but he did.

There was silence on the other end for a few moments.

“Okay, we need…Geez. Uh, Reid. It’s expensive to get you out of there. Like, ‘every firstborn for three generations’ expensive for an argumentative diagram that pulls a specific human out from the depths of the Abyss, revoking the Abyss’s claim. There are cheaper ones, but those are temporary trips, and you fall back right after. It would probably give the Abyss even more claim on you, in the long run.”

“I wasn’t sent to the Abyss. I used a sacrificial gate to enter, I didn’t offer my soul to it.”

“Okay, sure, but you’re still deep enough that the realm won’t let go of you that easily.”

Reid frowned. “Can’t you tell me what to draw from here? Scourges have the gates for this, they—”

“Do you want to try and draw an Abyssal exit gate just based on what Tanner’s relaying that I’m relaying to you? In this shithole? What do you even have to write with?”

“Blood,” Reid admitted with some hesitation.

“Yeah, no. Scourges have it easier because…The realm favors them? Pre-existing agreement? Whatever. But it’d still cost you, right?”

“It would, from what I remember.”

“So we’re stuck with a bunch of non-Abyss practitioners pulling you up from the deep Abyss.”

Chase trailed off on the other end, as if unsure of what to say, or waiting for some cue.

Reid didn’t need to deliberate for long, however. “Is my special project still intact? The implement study?”

“Boxed up, but everything’s still in there.”

“You can use that.”

“‘That’? Like, any of those items?”

“All of them, if you need to. That should give you enough room to draw the gate as well, right?”

“Well, yes, but—You want to make that confirmation of identity again, Reid?”

“Chase.”

“Okay, okay. Guys, Reid’s saying to use his workshop space, just—Yeah, scrap the project, use it for the gate.”

Another pause.

“God, thank fuck, crisis averted. They were about to argue about using the school’s deep storage. Hey, Reid?”

“Yes?” Reid asked, raising an eyebrow, which Chase almost certainly couldn’t see.

“Fuck you for doing this. I feel like I’m going to be scarred for life with some of the shit I saw down there—What?”

It sounded as if someone on the other end had gotten upset at Chase, and for a moment, Reid had been irritated by the boy’s lack of tact, but the sudden interruption melted that irritation as he let out a small laugh.

Chase returned his attention to Reid with a groan. “Ugh. That didn’t ‘offend’ you, did it?”

“No. It wouldn’t be fair to expect you to have the same mental fortitude that I have,” Reid said, the smallest of smiles gracing what was left of his lips.

He felt like he should have been angrier, with a darker, possibly Abyss-touched part of him urging him towards disapproving silence just to make Chase uncomfortable, but he didn’t have it in him. Catharsis, and much better sides of him, were winning out.

Chase gave an unamused grumble, and quickly changed the subject. “It’s going to be a bit while they draw it up. You fine waiting here?”

“I should be. Is Wye there?”

“Yeah, but he’s—Wye, don’t give Nico advice for competing with us—”

Had Wye asked Nicolette to help? There was a small back-and-forth he only heard one side of, apparently something about prices, before Chase turned his attention back to him.

“Anyway, he’s here, but he can only watch, maybe listen in with practice. I’m the one with the connection to you.”

Reid nodded. “Can he stay here while we’re waiting? Can I speak with him?”

“...Yeah. He said he’d rather wait until you’re out of there before talking, but he can stay.”

“That’s fine. I’m fine with that.”

Reid sat down in front of the statue, careful to remain within the bird’s line of sight. He glanced up at the sky, checking for threats from above, and looked around him for any nearby dangers that might have noticed the commotion.

None yet, but he’d have to stay vigilant.

“What’s up with your hand, by the way?”

“My hand’s intact, if that’s what you’re asking. I picked up something and I’m holding onto it.”

“Mkay. Wye says he’s glad you’re alright, relatively.”

“...Me too. I’m—I’m glad you looked for me.”

The conversation drifted off into silence. Occasionally, Chase would speak up, asking someone else something, or requesting a glass of water. Even if it was just Chase’s voice, hearing the people he never thought he’d speak to again, was—

It made him feel warm, even as the harsh winds in the Abyss began to pick up.

✾

The gate, a hole broken into reality, edges swirling with broken stone and wood, disappeared behind him. Reid stumbled into the workshop, barely taking a step before Wye reached out to steady him.

“Hold on, just—There we go.” He heard Wye mutter.

He looked around the workshop. It was barren, the heraldic diagrams gone, the items sent to the Abyss. But it wasn’t empty. Chase wasn’t there, presumably resting his eyes from the Seeing he’d been doing, but Tanner was present, watching at a distance. Amine was by the door, already preparing to leave and get back to his studies, and Nicolette was standing beside him, looking relieved.

It wasn’t a crowd, but considering how he’d been expecting no one to search for him, or care about his departure, it was more than he could have ever hoped for.

“Good, it didn’t implode,” Nicolette said.

“Of course it didn’t. I helped with it,” Amine added, with a faintly hurt pride.

“Right, of course,” Nicolette said, sounding faintly apologetic, but mostly exhausted. “My work is done here, but—”

“Your work was done an hour ago, Nico,” Wye replied. “Go sleep. Unless…you want to help us?”

Nicolette’s face scrunched up in disgust. “Ew. No. Goodnight, Wye. Glad you’re out of the Abyss, Reid.”

“Welcome back, Reid. Wye, reading tomorrow?” Amine asked.

Reid could feel Wye’s neck move to nod in response, and the two made a swift exit, leaving only Wye and Tanner.

“Could you clean up what’s left of the gate?” Wye asked. “I think I can help him back on my own.”

Tanner nodded, staring at Reid for a couple of long seconds before finally breaking off to walk past them. Unlike the others, he didn’t look relieved, but more worried, as if something else was on his mind.

Reid wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“How are you on walking?” Wye asked.

“Leg’s hurt, but I can manage,” Reid said.

Wye nodded, and carefully stepped forward, holding onto Reid and letting him lean into him for support.

Reid should have broken away or only accepted the bare minimum aid. But Wye had already offered, and his broken body was enough pretense to accept the help. The closeness, the touch—that was more aid than the physical support was, in truth.

Wye was warm. His body, his presence, his voice—it made that distant warmth he’d glimpsed on the day of the dinner party feel just a little less distant, like it was something he could have one day.

“Reid?”

“Mm?”

“I asked you not to walk into another death contest,” Wye said, sounding exhausted.

“I didn’t have many other options,” Reid muttered.

“I know, just—this is the second time I’ve seen you shamble back from the Abyss. Don’t make me see a third.”

“I may go back,” Reid said, and he could feel Wye’s body tense up. “But if I did, I’d bring protections.”

“And tell me? Or someone?” Wye asked, voice arched.

“...I will…to the best of my ability, unless circumstances render me—”

“Good enough, for now.”

Wye opened the door, and they stepped out onto the Blue Heron campus. It was nighttime, but it was a normal night, tranquil rather than oppressive.

Once the door closed behind them, they were alone.

“Wye, how are my bandages?”

“Loose, but still on. You didn’t expose yourself to the others, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Can you see under them?”

“Glimpses of parts, but I’ve been looking away politely.”

“There’s still flesh, or what you’d expect?”

“There is. Why, worried the Abyss cursed you?”

“...Something like that.”

So what he’d seen in the Abyss had been an illusion, and not another mark left on him. That was good to know.

Reid looked up, and he could see the stars in a clear night sky. He gripped the Abyssal flower closer to him.

We’re out. Do you feel it? Can you feel it?

“Is my room still there?”

“Yes. Braxton was going to take your place, but I’m sure we can work something out.

“If he really wants the room, I can take one of the workshops.”

Wye paused. “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. What are you holding, by the way? Abyssal clay, or—”

He could feel Wye’s body twist slightly, as he tried to look down at it.

“It’s…I’m not sure if it’s mine, but it’s something I want to help.”

“Alright, I won’t pry.”

They continued walking along, under the starlit sky. Reid looked behind them, and saw how his steps left faint trails of blood dotting the wet grass.

“Wye?”

“Mm?”

His mind rifled through all the things he wanted to say. He wanted to apologize, for once in his life, to show gratitude, to do anything to repay him. He wanted to tell him what he’d seen down in the Abyss, the visions, the Others that were terrifying when he was there, but might have interested his friend. He wanted to tell him what he’d decided on—the future he’d try to commit to, and the duty he’d had to see out. But—

“...Nevermind.”

It was too much. Too much to say, too much to consider. Besides, more than any of those other things, there was something he wanted to ask Wye.

When he returned to his family, to topple them, to save them—

He knew he couldn’t do it alone.