stranger in a strange land
Jan. 12th, 2026 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khrysos posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sindicate[ Being real is hard. It should be easy, Phainon (and still, the name sits uneasily, but Khaslana is no better) tells himself over and over again. No black tide lurking at the edges. No Flame Chase looming overhead. No deaths that he can't prevent because his destiny (destiny, ha, as though he wasn't some pawn being led by the nose) demands he keep moving even as all he loves falls at his heels.
No more cycles. No more endlessly spilling the blood of his friends until it drips from his hands, pools higher and higher, fills Marmoreal Palace's baths until it laps at his chin and he's breathing it in, gasping it down with every breath, his lips are stained gold and all he can taste and smell is rust—
He deserves the dreams, he thinks. A small price to pay when he's the only one here to be having them.
Being real should be easy when he has no obligations and no duty — but the absence of weight on his shoulders is crushing.
He is the only one who is real, the only trace left of Amphoreus, and temporary that may be, but all he could think to do when they showed him the book and the glittering traces of memoria was flee. Coward it may make him, but what else could he do when he is his own world's worst enemy? Lord Ravager he is named, and he can feel the truth of it in the fire banked and sleeping in his golden blood.
What else could he do when his mere presence would draw the worst of the galaxy to his home, nascent and sleeping on the Eternal Page?
At least the vastness of the world beyond the sky has presented nothing but distractions.
This latest, a planet of metal and light so dazzling that even he is little more than a glint on the streets, has been labyrinthine enough to lose himself for a time. Aidonia-7, chosen on a whim for the familiarity of its name, has played unknowing host to him for three days. Three days of wandering the bridges between skyscrapers, tasting foods from across the galaxy, admiring trinkets in the open-air shops and dropping them back to their shelves when he remembers he has no one to gift them to. The balmy weather is unchanging, gentle breezes and mild warmth thanks to the ancient machine that controls the climate of the entire planet.
Just one more marvel of the universe he'd never thought to dream of, and now he's seen it, touched it with his own hands.
Although perhaps he shouldn't have touched this particular part of the machine — he'd done nothing else, nothing different than the other milling people, here to see the marvel, and none of them have had metal crack beneath their fingers, steam shrieking out to blister their skin, an entire section of circuitry flickering and going dark in a spidering web.
Phainon winces and takes a hasty step back, but the damage is already done. His red, bleeding hand is mark enough of his guilt, and the guards rapidly approaching don't look inclined to listen to reason. He tries, of course, but that doesn't stop guns from being pointed, orders being snapped, until Phainon is encircled, trapped. On his way to the local jail in minutes, if the fury on the guards' faces is anything to go by, and the last thing he wants to do is fight his way out of this.
He may have no choice — unless a miracles happens. ]
No more cycles. No more endlessly spilling the blood of his friends until it drips from his hands, pools higher and higher, fills Marmoreal Palace's baths until it laps at his chin and he's breathing it in, gasping it down with every breath, his lips are stained gold and all he can taste and smell is rust—
He deserves the dreams, he thinks. A small price to pay when he's the only one here to be having them.
Being real should be easy when he has no obligations and no duty — but the absence of weight on his shoulders is crushing.
He is the only one who is real, the only trace left of Amphoreus, and temporary that may be, but all he could think to do when they showed him the book and the glittering traces of memoria was flee. Coward it may make him, but what else could he do when he is his own world's worst enemy? Lord Ravager he is named, and he can feel the truth of it in the fire banked and sleeping in his golden blood.
What else could he do when his mere presence would draw the worst of the galaxy to his home, nascent and sleeping on the Eternal Page?
At least the vastness of the world beyond the sky has presented nothing but distractions.
This latest, a planet of metal and light so dazzling that even he is little more than a glint on the streets, has been labyrinthine enough to lose himself for a time. Aidonia-7, chosen on a whim for the familiarity of its name, has played unknowing host to him for three days. Three days of wandering the bridges between skyscrapers, tasting foods from across the galaxy, admiring trinkets in the open-air shops and dropping them back to their shelves when he remembers he has no one to gift them to. The balmy weather is unchanging, gentle breezes and mild warmth thanks to the ancient machine that controls the climate of the entire planet.
Just one more marvel of the universe he'd never thought to dream of, and now he's seen it, touched it with his own hands.
Although perhaps he shouldn't have touched this particular part of the machine — he'd done nothing else, nothing different than the other milling people, here to see the marvel, and none of them have had metal crack beneath their fingers, steam shrieking out to blister their skin, an entire section of circuitry flickering and going dark in a spidering web.
Phainon winces and takes a hasty step back, but the damage is already done. His red, bleeding hand is mark enough of his guilt, and the guards rapidly approaching don't look inclined to listen to reason. He tries, of course, but that doesn't stop guns from being pointed, orders being snapped, until Phainon is encircled, trapped. On his way to the local jail in minutes, if the fury on the guards' faces is anything to go by, and the last thing he wants to do is fight his way out of this.
He may have no choice — unless a miracles happens. ]
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