Chapter Text
A crack in the concrete caught Ryou’s boot as he dodged. He stumbled, pulling Aangad’s reins down sharply. The war horse tried to rear and then twisted into a buck. Hooves rang against the road.
Where?! Where was his attacker?! Ryou made a grab at his horse’s strong neck to steady himself and protect his side. Could it be a border crosser? Normally those plunderers struck in groups- there!
A figure hovered just out of reach of Aangad’s kicking range, eyes darting from Ryou to the horse and back again. Someone small- a kid?
The boy took a step back, getting a little further from Aangad’s deadly hooves, and turned burning kohl-lined eyes on Ryou. He wore typical Atenite gear, Ryou had seen the likes in conquered Hellias: an acolyte’s white tunic, sandals, pectoral necklace made of beaten bronze with the sun disk picked out in semi-precious stones, head shaved other than a top knot- wait-
“It’s you.” Ryou put his hand on Aangad’s nose, trying to calm him. “You’re that kid - the boy who was with Menka-... uh, your master in the Void.” Ten-year old features had matured to twelve, but were still recognizable (it helped that Ryou still had the occasional nightmare about his trip out of reality, following that kid bouncing up a steep set of stone stairs that disappeared behind them leaving nothing but an abyss…)
Sooty dark eyes narrowed dangerously. He was holding a dagger the length of three fingers in the shape of a palm frond, the handle a bit too large for him. It didn’t look serious in a child’s grasp, though that was probably a dangerous misapprehension.
Ryou himself did not have a weapon other than his table knife and his abilities, and unlike the Romans, he and this adversary were on equal footing where those were concerned. Ryou was now facing an Ancient, albeit one that hadn’t yet conquered puberty.
The boy took two steps sideways as if looking for a trajectory that could get him to Ryou without going nearer the large horse than he had to. He’d grown in the past two years, but he was still a head shorter than Ryou; if he was standing next to the war steed, he’d not be able to see over the saddle.
Tension ran through the boy as he took two more steps to the side. His eyes were wide beneath the makeup, he looked beyond furious and also about to cry.
“Kid-” Ryou said warningly.
The word set him off. The boy leapt at Ryou, knife held out as he came in sideways.
Aangad whinnied harsh and loud, stamping once. The kid leapt away again. His lips pinched, his face white with fury as well as fear. Then his pose shifted, his shoulders went back, he planted his feet, stuck up his chin and lifted a fist.
Why do they always do that, wave their hands about, gestures are really unnecessary, was the thought at the very, very back of Ryou’s mind while most of his concentration leapt out to the thin fabric of reality that made up the borderlands.
He felt it instantly: a pucker of a higher dimensional intrusion forcing its way into their current plane, a thin mangled start of a Path the size and width of a sword forming right in front of him.
Ryou didn't know if the kid was attempting to conjure a monster or just aiming to rip Ryou in half, and he wasn’t going to find out. This was something Zabessa and Andrap had trained him for. His mind’s power engulfed the burgeoning effect and quashed it. If the kid had been metaphorically trying to bunch up the fabric of reality in order to thread through a needle or a knife, then Ryou had just given the entire bolt of cloth one massive shake and straightened it out.
The boy didn’t seem surprised, just really angry, the insensate fury of a child. “You!”
“Calm down.” Ryou spoke steadily, rationally, hoping that would do the trick.
The boy gave an inarticulate yell and gestured again. Ryou had never been all that good with children…
This time it wasn’t one long tear but dozens of little holes that were pinpricking reality. The kid was trying to set him on fire or something!
The effect was too widespread to easily banish, so Ryou ripped open a small Path right over the kid’s head and connected it to the other Path he’d created not fifteen minutes ago, more particularly to an area that contained that trickle of a river he’d recently crossed. About a bucket’s worth fell out of the sky and splashed over the brat. It was perfectly safe for the boy, and disrupted his concentration. The pricking effect, some of which had been riddling Ryou’s very body, immediately ceased before anything dire could come of it.
“Stop that right now!” Ryou barked, hopefully hitting the register Darius used on new army recruits.
The kid staggered back, wiping water from his eyes. The kohl smeared over half his face, strands of the top knot had come loose from its tie.
“I’m going to kill you!” he screamed.
That’s what he said, but he wasn’t coming nearer or flinging his hand about anymore, and Ryou instinctively felt that having him shouting about it reduced the chances of anything happening, taking the confrontation back from outright attack to mere threats.
“What did I ever do to you?”
“You killed my master!”
“What?! Of course I didn’t! Besides, your master attacked me, if anyone should be angry- not that I was the one who killed him anyway-”
“They killed him because of you! He died because of you!”
“That’s hardly my fault. Shh,” Ryou added for Aangad’s benefit. The horse was stamping and whickering, upset by the shouts and the rampant tension.
“You-... You-... I should have my name by now!” The boy jerked his knife around like he wished the air was Ryou’s punctured corpse. “I was his heir! I was in the shadow of Gods! But you killed him and now I’m nothing! I’m just a dirt-realm acolyte again! I have to start all over again! Because of YOU!”
“I repeat, that’s hardly my-”
“Why can't we kill you?! Why won’t you die?! We tried to kill you again and again! The Assyrians protect you, the Per Gathas protect you - it’s not FAIR!”
Good grief, it was like talking to a teenage Yuki all over again.
“You’re not even one of them!” The kid actually stamped his foot, which was something Ryou had never seen done outside of books and manga. He wondered if the boy was about to throw himself on the ground and have a tantrum. “Why do they protect you?! They don’t control you! You’re free! How do you get to be free?! How do you get everything?! You never earned it! I served four years under my master! You never earned anything! You were never forced to choose! It’s like- you don’t follow the rules and nobody cares! The laws don’t apply to you! You have cheat codes!”
“Look, boy, I-... what did you say?”
The boy up and hurled the knife at Ryou out of sheer frustration. It wasn’t a throwing knife, it tumbled through the air like a stick and thunked into the ground a couple of feet away from him. “I hate you! I’ll never get back to The Divine Realms because of you! I-”
Ryou dropped Aangad’s reins and crossed the distance between them in ten long strides.
The boy gasped and scurried back, but he couldn’t dodge Ryou’s longer reach. A hand fastened on his wrist.
“What did you say?!”
The kid boggled at Ryou, fear and anger warring over his expression. “Let me go!”
“What did you say?! About cheat codes?! How do you know- what did you mean by that?!”
Having an adult shout in his face cowed the boy a fraction, but not much. He kneed Ryou, but the kid was built like a magian, not a fighter, and Ryou had practiced against Darius for two years. He instinctively twisted to take the blow on his hip and minimize the damage, light as it was.
“Tell me!”
“What- what -”
“What did you mean by cheat codes?!”
Fear was slowly gaining the upper hand, the child’s lips trembled. “You cheat, it means you cheat.”
Ryou forced himself not to shake him. “But you said cheat codes. You know those words? What they mean?”
“Uh, yeah, you, er, cheat. At games. Let me go!” It was more a plea disguised as anger now. “Let me go, I have a- a new master now. Let me go or he’ll hunt you down and- and-”
“I cheat at games.” Ryou scrutinized the boy’s face and found nothing there but anxiety and blank incomprehension. “You… you heard that somewhere, didn’t you. You don’t know what it really means, but someone you know used that expression and gave you a rough explanation. Who?!”
Now the fear became acute, eyes widening in comprehension. “I- I- nobody! Let me go!”
“Who told you about-”
They both tensed and looked around, feeling it at the same time: a displacement nearby, starting somewhere else and ending a block away at the spot where Ryou’s Path had brought him.
Ryou blew out a breath in sheer relief. It could have been anyone or anything, from Romans and Ancients to monsters defying the imagination, but fortunately it was just Diya and a small handful of Per Gathas, those who were actually magian and not the escort or servants. They must have reached the sanctuary of stelae and followed him through. Diya had her ‘I’m going to be annoyed about something’ look on her face, Ryou could see it all the way from where he stood, and he never thought he’d be so glad to see that particular expression again.
The boy gave an inchoate cry of raw fear and jerked against Ryou’s hold.
It was a reaction of such sheer panic that Ryou took a second glance to make sure that yes, it was Diya coming over here with Andrap, Moennathin and two others in tow, not any horrible monster.
“Calm down, it’s just my friends, they-” Ryou got pulled back a step as the boy started fighting his hold like a hare in a noose.
“Let me go! Let me go!”
“Calm down! They won’t hurt you!”
“Let me GO!”
Ryou held on tight. For the love of- it was just Diya, who might have a temper but also a motherly streak a mile wide. She’d noticed he wasn’t alone. Her steps slowed - Ryou could barely see from the way the kid was kicking and jerking at his arm - and there was an expression on her face… more concern than surprise… Andrap and Moennathin, on the other hand, accelerated right on by her, eyes intent on the boy.
“Let me go! Please! I-” The teen burst into large hysterical sobs, sudden and shocking. “I don’t want to die!”
“They’re not… they’re not going to hurt you.”
The kid jerked, more feebly now, too panicked to try anything other than pulling helplessly against Ryou’s hold, eyes fixed on the advancing Per Gathas.
The words ‘cheat codes’ still marched around Ryou’s thoughts, scaring a bunch of conclusions ahead of them. This child knew something, Ryou could feel it, he could almost feel the shape of it, but he needed the boy to calm down, trust him, answer his questions. If the boy would only calm down and explain where he’d heard those words, Ryou was sure he would get an answer that would sort out a lot of what was going on in the Outlands since his arrival. Now that would be a prize worth bringing back to the Per Gathas. Get him instantly out of their bad books. More than that: not five minutes after seeing his brother for possibly the last time, here was the bargaining chip that might give Ryou the leverage to allow him to contact Yuki on a yearly basis. It could also land a fatal blow on the enemy that’d been hounding him from the shadows all these years and who’d injured Darius.
But…
But Ryou was holding on to a sobbing twelve year old who’d half collapsed in the dirt, kohl running down his cheeks as he stared helplessly at the implacable approach of Andrap and Moennathin. Diya still trailed them. She looked troubled and sad.
Instincts stirred, doubt ate his resolve. Yuki had said Ryou had changed, and he had, but he had not and would never change that much...
Ryou let the child’s wrist slip from his fingers with a quick, “Run.”
The boy fell on broken concrete with a gasping sob, sat there stock still for a second, then scrambled to his feet and dashed off. Ryou turned. Moennathin slowed his steps, but Andrap broke into a sprint, hand lifting. Ryou didn’t exactly interpose himself between the boy and the approaching magian, but neither did he move out of the way.
Then a feeling of displacement made Ryou spin around to find that the boy had vanished. Without the aid of a Path or- how had he done that? Ryou felt suddenly sick to his stomach. Shit, maybe he shouldn’t have let him run off. He’d let the boy’s fear erode his reasoning, but he hadn’t realized the kid would do that, risk a jump from here to- to who knew where. He could be - he could be lost in the Broken Lands, or beyond the Chasm, or- Ryou should have held on and protected him. What had the boy been so afraid of anyway?
Andrap ran past Ryou while the latter was still staring, aghast, at the blank bit of space where the boy had vanished.
“Leave off, he’s not worth it,” Diya said loudly behind them.
Andrap took two more steps and then stopped, scowling. The look on his face attenuated Ryou’s remorse somewhat. That did not look like a man who’d been planning to give a child a stern lecture and then leave it at that.
“What were you going to do if you caught him?” he had to ask, trying not to bristle before he had all the facts.
Andrap’s only answer was a shrug.
Ryou turned a growing frown on the rest of the approaching magian. “Diya? What were you planning on doing to him? He was just a kid. He can’t have been more than twelve.”
“I know,” Diya said simply. “I suppose it’s no big deal that he got away then.”
Andrap and a couple of the Per Gathas behind her looked like they disagreed, but didn’t dare do so out loud.
“But what-”
“The Mark of Amun. You’ve heard of it? The thing Ancients do to their disciples?”
Ryou was left racking his memories of a long-ago abduction. “...I’ve heard the term, but I don’t know what it does.”
“It’s a connection between master and disciples.” Diya scowled, arms crossed over her round belly and eyes on the space where the boy had vanished. “Well, let’s not put a fine point on it, it’s a leash. The masters who ascend to their bloody castles in the sky would be helpless if they didn’t have a bevy of gofers to do their bidding here on earth, and bring them food, books, news, all that. So they impose this Mark on them, a condition of their apprenticeship. They spin it to sound like a blessing, a sign of their protection from the monsters and gods they think inhabit the realms, and it does allow their disciples to find the pocket dimensions of their masters and move there easily - like a guideline if you will.”
Ryou glanced back at the empty space in relief. So that’s what had happened. Well, the previous master of the boy was dead, but he’d mentioned a new one, albeit one who didn’t consider him as highly as the first Ancient he’d served. So the kid was fine then...
“The link is used to see through their servants’ eyes at all times, spy on them. Ancients form cabals, you see, they’d love nothing more than to subvert each other’s servants otherwise. And because we could use this link to lead us to their lairs in the upper dimensions if we ever got our hands on the servants, the masters use the Mark to kill their gofers instantly if we ever capture them.”
Ryou’s jaw dropped.
Behind her grumpy expression, Diya looked uncomfortable, but she was the only one. Andrap, the two other Per Gathas, even Moennathin, they did not hesitate to meet Ryou’s gaze with every signs of a clear conscience or even a faint irritation that Ryou had let the enemy escape. They were all Outlanders, and most of them were from older societies such as the Pariya. Beyond the age of eight, children were not considered children anymore. ‘Teenager’ was quite a modern concept. For thousands of years and in most countries throughout history, a boy of twelve was just a man who was too young to know better, needed a mentor or a trade or a drill sergeant to keep him in line, but no more to be pitied than any other man under the sun, from raw beginner to veteran. Andrap visibly would have liked to remove one more soldier from the ranks of their ancient enemies before he could mature into a greater threat.
“I take it your brother made it back safely?” Diya asked in the unpleasant silence (unpleasant mainly for Ryou.)
“Yes,” Ryou answered shortly.
“Good. Come on, then, let’s start our journey back.”
“...Is there really no way to break that link?” Ryou asked as they turned and walked back up the block of ruined Tokyo. He kept his voice low and for Diya’s ears only, feeling acutely the difference between being an Inlander and an Outlander right now. He didn’t need Andrap to sneer at him for his mercy.
“Not that we’ve found, no. It’s not easy to capture a magian in the first place, of course.” Diya pitched her voice low too, and Ryou thought she understood him, probably felt much the same way. “If we could catch one and not have the Mark trigger immediately, we might find a way of removing it.”
“You were fighting other Ancients by the sound of it.” Ryou’s voice sounded stiff and cold to his ears. “I take it you didn’t take them alive.”
Diya’s eyes didn't leave the street ahead. “Well, no.”
“I imagine that this Mark business makes it pointless to even try. So you don’t.”
“They fight like tigers,” Andrap said in sharp reproof from behind them.
“Of course they do, with their backs to the wall,” Ryou shot back.
“That was their choice in the first place, to accept this- this travesty of a scheme for power they do not deserve, serving masters who care little for them and even less for the Great Design.”
There wasn’t much to say to that, though Ryou remembered the kid throwing in his face ‘you were never forced to choose’. There was choice, and there was choice… If the choice was, climb the ranks of the Ancients or end up disposed of like refuse, then to most people it was no choice at all.
They marched on in silence for a while. It seemed to get heavier and heavier until Diya said in a low voice, too low for the others to hear: “At any rate, I’m glad you let that kid scamper off.”
Ryou felt a little relieved and vindicated.
“Though I would have loved to be able to ask him and the others some questions,” Diya added with a sigh. “This whole plan, bringing in the Romans like this…”
“Mixing melee and magic,” Ryou offered as she trailed off.
“Right. That goes against our, well, our unspoken conventions of this war we fight, it just-... I’d love to know who the hell thought of it and put it into motion so quickly.”
“I might have an idea about that.”
Diya looked at him sharply, weighed him in silence. Ryou didn’t elaborate, he was still angry at the others in the troop, and he needed to think about the implications of those two little words he’d heard, and all of this might be a conversation best held between two Inlanders only. Diya seemed to read his conclusions off his face, her expression became neutral and all she said was: “You may have found a way to pay us back for our help and leniency sooner rather than later. But let’s get you back home first.”
Home. Ryou looked back once at the empty space where his brother had taken his leave, but then he marched on quickly, so quickly that Diya gave an amused snort. Who was she to tease him on the subject? She’d spent the last two days muttering about how ‘Casper better be drinking those tonics like I told him’, and ‘I better not find out he ate too much red meat’ and ‘I hope those bastards on the council aren’t giving him a hard time while I’m away’. Ryou also had a strong person waiting for him at home, and home was where he needed to be as soon as possible. Questions and problems, enemies and Ancients, they could all wait for another day.