Work Text:
Is it possible that dead things can still love us?
Two years ago. The Penteveral, Dol-Makjar.
Only candles lit the moonless night, and one could be forgiven for thinking Occtis Tachonis a creature of it. After all, it was only a creature of the night who would sit hunched and alone in the dark, the soft patter of drops of blood hitting the floor the only noise to cut the silence.
He had very little time to study it. Even in these few moments, it had cooled and begun to congeal across his palms and between his fingers—let alone nearer the incision.
A dead thing lay on the desk. A rabbit, its fur soaked and matted with red that still glistened in the firelight, alive recently enough to still bleed beneath a scalpel but dead long enough he hadn't had to kill it himself.
And this, of course, was the opposite of killing. Sort of.
He took a shaking breath, re-opened the wound with forcedly steady hands—could he call it a wound when he'd inflicted it after death?—and slipped his thumb and forefinger inside.
A rapidly cooling mass of entrails whose orientation did not concern him; two tiny kidneys; nerves that still made the animal twitch when he touched them. A short moment of exploration, of resisting letting his fingers wander throughout the rest of the carcass out of sheer curiosity. A rabbit was simple but new to him, a degree dissimilar to the birds and reptiles and humanoids he'd opened up to study in the past. But this was not a self-inflicted lesson in the anatomy of leporidae; it had a purpose.
His fingers closed around that purpose, gentle and meticulous. A quick detachment of a few vertebrae, a little push to shove the heart and lungs further away, and out came a tiny, delicate ribcage in one miraculous, pink-tinged piece.
He shifted the carcass further away and brought close the thing he'd been building piece by piece for months now: a menagerie of mismatched parts placed vaguely in the right shape, woven and strung together to force some semblance of a recognizable form. Occtis could possibly have convinced himself it was art, were it not so crucially, excruciatingly academic. Every little thing had its purpose, far too useful to think of only as a sculpture.
He slotted the little ribcage into place and fixed it there with a needle and thread, like a macabre and notably non-fabric sewing project. Then all that remained was to affix thin sheets of worked gold to the newly added bones, easily accomplished with a tiny pair of forceps and a flourish of effortless magic for heat, and it was done.
Occtis took a breath. Years now he'd been studying, convicted and certain that he must learn, he must master the Tachonis art even should he have to work ten times as hard by circumstance of an unlucky birth. Each step forward and each new spell was a step closer to that goal, and with it came the electric flood of nerves and uncertainty that all his training had not yet managed to quell.
He raised a hand and traced a sigil in the air, a glowing green thing of twisting lines and sharp edges—a messy first draft, but functional. A flash lit the room like lightning, instantaneous and short-lived, and when the room fell back into darkness, it left in its place a dull glow and a near-identical copy of the creature that lay bleeding on his desk, flawless but for the bits of ragged, torn pelt hanging loose from bone and the familiar smell of rot filling the air.
An undead rabbit, or perhaps a simulacrum of one, stood on little back legs to raise its nose up toward him. It twitched but otherwise stood frozen, as still as the gilded skeleton from which he'd pulled its essence.
"Uh… Good," he began. It would follow his instructions—or it should, if he'd done this any sort of right. "Um. Turn around."
The rabbit turned its back, exposing a gaping hole in its pelt under which green- and gray-tinged muscle sat exposed.
"Lie down."
It did.
"Okay, good, um… Jump onto the floor and back up."
With a spryness its tiny rotting body belied, the rabbit hopped to the floor beside his feet, eliciting a little jump and a noise of surprise from the familiar that lay curled at Occtis's feet before springing back up to the surface of the desk near to the original carcass.
It followed orders and did nothing else, just as it should. Occtis breathed a sigh of relief. The rabbit, and presumably whatever else he chose to summon within the parameters of the spell he'd been studying in theory for weeks but only in practice tonight, functioned exactly as it should. A lifeless tool—nothing more.
"Good," he said again. "Um… We're done now. You can relax? I guess."
Whether or not the rabbit could do so to any meaningful degree remained an unknown, but it sank into a less rigid posture nonetheless.
Pincushion hopped up onto the table, little button eyes trained unseeing on the new creature which, having been released from its duty, trembled and shrank to its smallest possible size. He gave it a sniff.
"Don't… do that," Occtis said, though which of the two undead things he spoke to, he was not certain.
The rabbit remained there, shaking, while Pin walked a circle around it.
Occtis had called it "personality" for a year or so, the way the fox would act of its own accord, even disobeying him in ways that would see any student fail their exam on familiars—and he had. No other wizard's familiar would act outside direct orders, but here was Pin, conjured from death and emptiness, who could choose and explore and frolic. He'd failed the exam, yes, but he'd found it charming and kept the construct anyway. Made a friend out of him. A bit sad, really, if he thought too hard about it.
"It… It isn't the same thing, you know. As you, or, well… It isn't life; I can't just give a thing life or a soul or really anything more than an echo, or—"
He paused and shook his head. "Personality" had always been optimistic and naive, and he knew it now as the failure his professor had said. Imperfect, messy, and a liability.
"I don't know why I'm always talking to you, you know." He sighed, knowing full well he was too deep in the habit to stop, whether the fox could truly understand him or not.
Pin gave an airless huff, then curled into a ball and fell into a mimicry of sleep so close to the real thing Occtis could almost convince himself he was not the only living creature in the room.
For a moment, some flicker of care that had yet to be crushed made him wonder again whether that was in fact true, but he shook the thought from his head. Pin was a dead thing made of other dead things, and that was that.
It was hubris to think a human—let alone him, not a few days past eighteen—could create life. Of all the things Occtis could possibly become, a Shaper would never be one of them. Perhaps he could not raise a thing to be truly living, but he could, given time and his family's example, create a suitable puppet.
Interlude: Date unknown. Location unknown.
Vaelus knew loss far more intimately than one among immortals ever should. Memory haunted her, followed her every step, and the most devastating thing of all of it was that the ghost of the god who was always with her was only metaphorical.
The vale rotted in Sylandri's absence, became a calcified, ruined place, gray and lifeless where once there was breath and revelry and feast; her magic, ruined and darkened. Only the tang of metal waited beneath the veil, a sour and bitter scent so unlike the flowers that once grew here. What was the purpose of eternal life, Vaelus wondered, when the font of that life and love was gone?
Death was simply death—an ending she could not so easily share. No amount of naive, desperate optimism could change that.
Present day. Somewhere east of the Dvalmar Pass.
Occtis could no longer count on two hands the things he had lost in the days since Thjazi Fang's death.
His life was on that list, and somehow so was death. Then, of course, the smaller things—sleep, breath, food, sensation—and their fallout, like dreams, or the little pieces of comfort he would find in a tray of sweets in the corner of his desk, placed in perfect reach beside a stack of books. Once, he had hoped his studies would be the most difficult thing he'd ever face, but that dream had been shattered so decisively it barely warranted a thought anymore.
He was yet unsure whether humanity counted among the things he'd lost, but the more nights dragged by, cold and quiet, breathless and numb, the more he leaned toward "yes."
He haunted the halls of every place he stayed a night, too corporeal to be a ghost and too dead to be a man, pacing from door to door with silent steps, devastating envy, and a little stitched-together fox on his shoulders while his companions by circumstance slept—all but one, whose door he could not stop himself from peering inside as he passed.
Vaelus sat cross-legged on the side of an unused bed, eyes closed and hands folded in her lap, nearly as still as he himself could now be. He lingered for a moment too long, just watching, before resolving to leave and taking a step backward.
"Wait," her voice rang softly from inside the room. How she'd even heard him, he did not know.
He froze.
"Come inside."
Slowly, tentatively, he stepped into the room and shut the door as quietly as he could behind him. Only a few nights had passed since they first spoke about their mutual lack of sleep, but even so, he would have been lying had he said he did not find it unreasonably comforting that, at least in this one single thing, someone else understood.
Occtis spent most of his life as the other—the odd Tachonis out, too powerless to be one of them but carrying a name too powerful to just be any other student at the Penteveral, befriending fey and little dead things and watching his chance to experience youth pass him by for things he once thought were more important.
But here he was, all broken and lost, and somehow the least alone he had felt in a very long time.
"I-I'm sorry to disturb you," he said. "I would say I'll leave you to your rest, but—"
"There is nothing to apologize for," Vaelus cut in, her voice as impassive and unfazed as ever. "Please, sit."
Occtis shrugged. It would not be the first night spent alone in her company, nor would it likely be the last. He stepped silently over to the edge of the bed and joined her. Pin hopped down beside him and curled into a tight little ball at his hip.
"You seem listless," she said, eyes still shut. "I can listen, should you need."
He shook his head, but too many thoughts swirled within him to stay silent.
"Do you ever feel like, when you can't sleep and everyone around you can, like you're not quite real?" he said.
Vaelus took a deep breath. He watched her shoulders rise with it, then fall again as she exhaled. Simple things no one should ever have to grieve.
"I was one among many, once," she said, finally opening her eyes and turning to face him. "None of us slept. That was the way of things. I am as real as my siblings are, though things have changed and I may not be with them now. I am here instead—with you—but yes, I am real."
"No, um… I know. Sorry. I didn't mean to intrude, or—or to make you try to comfort me or anything."
"I will not leave you to navigate this alone," she said firmly.
Occtis frowned. Vaelus had practically attached herself to him even before he'd been summoned to the Palazzo Davinos, and for all he searched for logic and answers, he simply could not reconcile it.
"Why, exactly?" he asked.
"It has always been my path to protect things that are sacred." The corners of her eyes crinkled, betraying a veiled smile. "I do not believe I am stepping out of line by counting you among them."
"Sacred" meant very different things in his old world, but he hadn't the heart to tell her how wrong she was—and the irony of that was not lost on him.
Occtis tried to sigh, but empty lungs betrayed him. He did not speak for a long while again, nor did she press him. The silence was a comfortable one, filled only with the gentle whisper of a breeze blowing by outside.
"Give me your hand," she eventually said, snapping him from a nervous reverie. "I want to try something."
Tentatively, but trusting, he raised a hand toward her.
Strong fingers gripped his, her skin visibly callused at the first knuckle where a chain would slide through her grip—abrasion scars, perhaps, healed and hardened long ago. But the touch, while firm, was gentle, and if he screwed his eyes shut and directed all his attention into his own hand, he could almost, almost feel warmth.
She was, in some ways, the most living thing he had ever touched.
With a single finger on her other hand, she began to trace a loose pattern of veins across his palm where blood would flow in anyone else, and the lines more superstitious folk might think had some sort of cosmic meaning but he knew only as a quirk of human anatomy, meaningless if one were to remove the skin. They'd changed, he realized, as had most things. Little lines instead felt like crevices, dry and desiccated, deep enough for the edge of her fingernail to fit far more comfortably than it should.
"Can you feel it?" she asked, her voice so smooth beside the slow drag of her nail against skin it almost made him shiver. (Could he do that anymore, he wondered? If the cold could not touch him, could this? Or was the physical response simply gone? Questions upon questions fluttered through his mind like little paper kites, so endlessly tempting to reach up and pluck from the air, but now was not the time.)
He swallowed, dry and scratchy and entirely habitual. "I… I can, a little, if I focus very hard."
"Good," she said. "Then stay focused."
On pure reflex, he sucked in a nervous breath and held it. Strange, being able to hold in air indefinitely without pain or urgency or lightheadedness, but as she ran her nail gently up his arm to the soft crook of his elbow, then to his shoulder, his unquiet mind simulated the lightheadedness well enough anyway. He could only feel the lightest scratch, but it was enough to set his thoughts afire in a way he imagined his veins would once have done.
Perhaps in some ways this curse could be a gift. He could not blush nor tremble nor become breathless, but deep in his brain—the only part of him that seemed any sort of alive anymore—he knew he would be doing all those things and more, were he capable. Instead, he remained unmoving as the touch of nails became fingertips on his neck and then a palm laid gently across his cheek. Through focus and intent, he could feel how much clearer the warmth of her hand was now, a stark and aching contrast from his own perpetual cold.
He never wanted to stop feeling it.
With every ounce of will drilled into him by a lifetime of quiet and invisibility in the presence of family, he resisted the urge to lean into her touch, but willpower could only go so far when faced with striking teal eyes that had seen eternity and somehow still chose to look at him.
For a long moment, unable to tear his own eyes away, Occtis sat frozen and quiet. What came next, he had every idea and none.
It was Vaelus who eventually broke the silence. "Are you alright?"
"Uh—" He shook his head and pulled away from her touch, turning his face toward Pin instead, who gazed up at him with a curiosity Occtis should not have been able to see in two little buttons. "Fine. Well. No, but, this is fine."
Vaelus let her hand linger for a beat too long before she let it fall, the ghost of a touch from her fingertips grazing his arm before she folded her hands in her lap and sat back.
"Do not let me overstep," she said. "But grounding yourself in feeling what you can may help."
"Why do you—" he paused and took too deep a breath compared to what little air he needed to force across vocal cords. "Why do you keep helping?"
Vaelus, rather than answering, looked away, breaking her unflinching gaze for the first time tonight. Occtis cursed himself for how he wished so dearly she would look back. Here was a woman who did not see him as a mistake, a failure, or a creature more viscera than soul, and while he could find the same from Thaisha should he need it, from Vaelus he truly, unquestioningly believed it.
She pushed a lock of long white hair behind her ear, scarred and discolored, and after a beat, said, "I see my god in you." The words seemed far too easy and far too comfortable.
The bubbling urge to touch the notched flesh of her ear faded in an instant. He stared with narrowed eyes instead.
"You… you know how ridiculous that sounds, right?"
"I do," she said, "but I mean it. You are living proof that there is life to be had in places we had not yet looked. That even in new ways, life can still flourish."
"You call this flourishing?" He gave a nervous laugh and gestured to his midsection. "I can't be living proof of anything."
She tilted her head at him, eyes smiling once again. "Life… is complex," she said. "Maybe it is wishful thinking, but I choose to believe it is not. You died, but you are here, speaking and moving and feeling. Some things have always been unknowable, but I think you may be the first step toward knowing."
"Please," Occtis said. "That's… a little too poetic for me. Grand mystical things are for—for visions, or dreams. Not this."
"You think it so mundane?"
"I—maybe," he said haltingly. Clearly whatever happened to raise him was not mundane, be it because he owed his new unlife to an esoteric relic or because only a great act of magic could alter the cycle between life and death to begin with, but he, here, physically, felt as mundane as a stone at the bottom of a river, unable to move of his own volition and doomed to eventually erode away as the world flowed on around him.
Pin stood up beside him, shook off the dregs of sleep, and hopped toward Vaelus. The elf scooped him up into her arms without a thought. Her eyes softened when she looked down at him.
"Is he mundane?"
She held the fox out between them, mismatched little limbs dangling in the air and a dry but still pinkish tongue lolling from his mouth.
"Well, no," Occtis said. "I know what you mean, but, he's not really alive, you know? Necromancy is… it's animation, it's not life."
"Is it not?" Vaelus did not look at him as he spoke, her gaze entirely on the familiar as she stroked the once-matted fur across his back, the touch extra gentle where Occtis knew she could feel the seams and stitching he'd left there in Pin's construction. "So far as I am aware, you did not tell him to come to me now, did you?"
He scowled. "I—no," he said. "I guess not. He sort of just… does things, sometimes."
"Once, my own life was found in the freedom to do as I pleased. To dance, to play, to love my sisters as I saw fit beneath the gaze of my god. And though she is gone, and I have spent many years bound by duty, I remain here, with you, by choice."
Occtis bit down on his lip. He wished he could feel the sting of it more easily.
"Think on it, for your sake," Vaelus said. "Because you can still think, and that on its own means something. This is all I ask."