You'll Come Running Back. [Dhruv Val'Esdraelon]

[Hekatos]

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1st of Searing, Year 123 of Steel
The Waterway, Kalzasi

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

Nobody could say what it felt like to be plucked out of time like an unruly schoolboy by his teacher by the scruff of his neck. Nobody but Dhruv.

Perhaps he blinked. Perhaps between one heartbeat and the next, the world shifted. Perhaps he dreamed in some timeless place. Nobody had told him yet if he was taken outside of time or if he just ceased to exist until the vagaries of Vicis and Velar chose to deposit him back into the land of the living, the land of the existing. Perhaps it was all just chaos. The Dragon Gods purported to support the order of Eikæn, but Naori and the Mistlords balanced that with entropy.

Perhaps he was a cosmic joke.

In any case, this time, Time devoured him and then shat him out into a sewer. At least, it was sewer adjacent. This water was brackish from standing, but was apparently not connected to the sewage of the overworld. One could smell it, though, and he was already nauseated. Being again, that threw him for a loop. Weak as a kitten, dazed and confused, this was not the mighty elven warrior, nor the clever insurrectionist. Who remembered the rebel Val'Esdraelon who stole a divine artefact from under the nose of the Clockwork Emperor?

His return had been presaged by a tingle in the air, a flash of light as the chaotic crackling of the aether discharged all around him. Perhaps someone had heard it, felt it. Perhaps it was only the rats and mist-warped monsters who would come looking for a morsel of flesh.

Out of place and out of time, he retched into the mire.

Welcome back, Dhruv.

[Dhruv]

Nothing that died in Dhruv’s life died easily. Not hope, nor hatred, and never memory. Instead, it skipped back like the lip of a wave, peeling itself open – peeling him open – until the bones beneath were bared. He had been, and in some part still was, rebuilding what was broken when he was spilled into brackish waters and they shattered, splashing around him in a kaleidoscope spray of aether and light. Lungs seized, eyes closed, as he plunged the handful of feet to the bottom. Pain called down his arm, up through his neck, as his shoulder caught the worst of the fall. Flesh, soul, neither were what found him so quickly on his feet, staggering once before he straightened slowly to gaze with stunned, golden eyes at his dismal surroundings.

Vertigo overwhelmed the Hytori within moments and he half slogged, half stumbled to the lip of the walkway before losing the contents of his stomach to the mire. Gold streaked otherwise dark hair and a typically youthful, healthy complexion paled in the dim even as he wiped flecks of vomit from his mouth with the back of his hand and spat into the already distasteful water. He stared in disbelief at his own hand and the tremor that had taken for moments, or maybe hours. He couldn’t be sure. It was not until he collapsed on the worn stone decking, his back to the mildew-covered bricks and his feet in the water, that he attempted a deep breath again.

This time he coughed instead of vomiting, but the cough came up out of the depths of him to sting his nose and stress his eyes and rattle whatever might have been left of his once fine brain in its skull until nausea consumed him once more. When it was done, he rolled back over, dug a heel against the edge, and slowly pushed himself upright, the forward slump of once strong shoulders pointing shoulderblades like wing stubs.

He cursed once and breathed.

Despair’s maw was carefully handled, a sword-calloused hand cradling the jawbone, snapping it shut on the tormented yearning for Wraeden. It was understandable that he’d wish for a merciful end, he who had been un-ending for centuries. But that wasn’t the sort of temptation Dhruv Val’Esdraelon tended to go for, and certainly not on the day of a coronation, even one he knew nothing about as of yet. Life had been strangled down to tatters when that infernal clock’s ticking caught up with him, reverberating through all of his nightmares, he quite foolishly imagined he'd stolen it all back. Just for a moment. Or two. Instead, he sat in a sewer, gutted and wholly reconfigured by Time and Fate.

Also, he was stark naked and soaking wet. The joke, like always, was on him.

He turned his head to spit again and proceeded to mumble curses that might have been older than the underground waterway itself while hauling all the mangled pieces of himself inevitably, inexorably, back to his feet. He always stood back up.

[Aurin]

The fox-faced charlatan often had his serpentine companion at his side when he had business in the Midden. There was still a cursed key in his possession that called him back down. Danger was coming from the depth; he knew this like a mad prophet. Instead of shouting it in the streets, however, he let the powers that be know, and then he bided his time. Aurin sensed something coming before Elwes did. The Rathari woman had keen senses, but wasn't a Sembler. His little magic tricks kept him alive. But she froze when he did, her own senses primed.

There was a flash of light and an accompanying sort of thunder down the way, but it was more than that.

"The fuck?" Aurin hissed. Elwes knew better than to prod him. He would answer when he had any answer to give her.

There was a ripple through the aether that he didn't recognize, even though it felt like déjà vu. They locked eyes. He shook his head, then motioned to her. They crept switfly and silently toward the source; they had been, at times, burglars. But he sensed more before they turned the corner and much of the tension went out of him. Elwes, of course, remained coiled like the serpent she was, even when walking on two feet.

Before he saw the elf, he knew that was what he was—weakened by magic but bearing no malice. The strange patterns of aether clung to him, but posed no immediate threat.

Elwes hissed when she saw him, imagining that he must have been wearing fine clothes indeed if thugs had even taken his smallclothes. But Aurin took the lead, stopping at a safe distance, holding up empty hands.

"That was... something," he said in a passing friendly tone. "Whatever it was, seems to have gotten the better of you. Ah, it isn't truly what anyone would call safe down here, though. I was just heading above ground if you, ah... need a guide." That said, he doffed his cloak, just gray-brown wool, simple but warm against the wintry chill that hadn't fled with the coming of summer. The Eclipse endured, at least partially, and while it was a bit warmer down here closer to the heart of the earth, he wouldn't want to be wet and naked.

Aurin held out his cloak but didn't move any closer.

[Dhruv]

A stillness took the time-tossed hytori when the strangers approach registered, swimming to him through the echoes of their footfalls. They spread like ripples in the murky water in an effort to thin to nothing. Slowly, one hand braced against the jagged brick wall, he turned the last distance to face them.

“Are you a musician?” It was an odd greeting and a curious question from a man who, surely must be stark, raving mad to be in this place, at this time. He would have agreed. Only the almost wry note in his voice, the subtly archaic accent that surfaced from it like an embattled sunrise suggested an incredible discipline in the face of truly stunning resignation.

The first pair of steps he took slid into a stagger and he caught himself again, this time with hands to his knees and then an almost comedically slow slide into a crouch, one knee brushing the damp floor. The fact of his nakedness didn’t seem to bother him overly much, and why should it? There were plenty of other problems cluttering up his focus. The cold was starting to do its work, though, and after he pinched the bridge of his nose and scraped long, clever fingers back through his hair, he sucked in another breath and unraveled to his feet. He gave a quick, hard shudder to the issue of the cold or to maybe actually everything about right now before closing the distance between them to take the offered cloak with a thoughtful look.

“You could carry a tune in here all the way to your grave, I’d think.” He cast the waters a disparaging look while wrapping the cloak over strong shoulders. Throat raw, his words rasped as if the strange handfuls of sand scattered across the bricks at the exact place he’d crawled out of the wet had started in his stomach. (They had.)

“Let’s not find out,” he eventually agreed with a nod, the hand that continued to tremor hidden in the fold of the cloak and clenched to a fist to still it. “Dhruv. I’d be grateful for the guide.”

He was fine made and his age near impossible to tell, and not just because his was such a long-lived race. Aether was slathered all over him, shattered and dissipating from every pore. It had thinned in the water, spreading out and almost gone, carried off through the nameless dark that still echoed with rioting signals and a confusion of hours. He was very real and full, living flesh that yet claimed a millennia of age. He was nobody. Anybody. Eternally a stranger, alone on a road that was well past any notions of glory. He was nothing. Nameless. And though he stood there terrifyingly vulnerable, wounded and sick, not a lick to call his own, he still gave a faint – if grim – smile while making as much of a study of them as he could manage.

Aurin could be sure to learn at least two things then – Dhruv possessed a mighty sense of humor and his aura made exactly zero sense.

[Aurin]

Aurin barked a short laugh.

"Nobody can deny my timing," he agreed. Any noise of sufficient volume tended to carry down here, although it was quickly warped by the walls and the water. Elwes knew it better than he did, but then she lived down here, or between the Midden and the Low-City. Ashoka was his man up in the heights, and Aurin was able to keep his finger in every pie in Kalzasi between them and the rest of his network.

Some things required his eyes, however.

"Dhruv. Aurin." He glanced at Elwes, but the serpent lady was as secretive as he was, and she didn't really trust anyone but him. Sometimes he wondered if she even fully trusted him; probably not, which was wise on her part.

He didn't want to rush over like a mother hen. No telling if the elf would take unasked for aid amiss. But the man was a mystery, both mundane and magically speaking. Aurin liked unraveling mysteries and keeping secrets, so he was going to be kind and generous. If nothing else, the elf would owe him. It was unlikely Dhruv could even sense his sembling, so advanced was his trick now. But he could sense the runes on the elf, and a strange, magical Hytori could prove useful. Sol'Valen had treated him like it treated anyone else whose gold wasn't pure gold - like an inferior. He still needed an inside person in the Bounded Empire.

"Don't mind her. She doesn't like anyone. Not even me." He offered Dhruv a hand, either to his feet or to help him walk - whatever he required. "Tell me your story while I get you to the surface and get you a place to stay."

[Dhruv]

A study was made of the rathari woman whose presence itself was an implied threat. It was shockingly without censure despite Dhruv’s undeniable hytori heritage – what other race could remain noble in this darkness and filth? He inclined his head to her and failed to ask after her name when it was not offered. The irony of being disliked now maintained the sharp, faint smile he wore when he concentrated through the churn of time sickness enough to accept Aurin’s hand and rise the rest of the way to his (quite freezing) feet.

“Thank you.”

He winced, toes curling, and released his rescuer with a grateful squeeze to fall in half a step behind and a nod to his left. This was position assumed automatically, the perfect place from which to guard Aurin’s weak side. It should have lowered Dhruv somehow, suggested a debt of service that was at once in line with all of his apparent circumstances and yet still at odds with what was, ultimately, the rest of him. It was also laughable considering he was weak as a shadowcat cub, displaced and disoriented.

“A place to stay?” Dhruv hesitated, little claps of alarms bursting in the back of his mind; but he had nothing to do with them. Not in the present, not so stripped. “Where, ah, what is this place? It’s fucking awful. And freezing.”

Ghost laughter brushed over them with his breath, but he was right. Wasn’t he? The dragons of time and fate had literally buried him this jump, and he knew that once his shock faded away that the distant screaming rattling through his ribcage was going to have to be dealt with. It was a matter of survival, except his previously exceptional will to live seemed to be suffering from a disease of well deserved despair.

How long has it been?

He blinked hard. Vision blurred before sharpening and he wrapped the folds of Aurin’s borrowed cloak more tightly around himself. And he focused this time on following, one foot before the other. A single, centuries-long step at a time.

“I’ve got loads of stories,” he went on to confess, voice low and rasping with all of the sand stuck in it. “The one you’re looking for is short. Some seriously strange magic blew up my life and pushed me here, from the past. And I feel dumb as these bricks because I have no idea how long I’ve been down here. But I don’t… I don’t belong.”

[Aurin]

"Well, shit," Aurin said, a poet. He glanced over his shoulder now that they were walking. Time. That explained what he was sensing. The pattern seemed to be knitting itself back together, but that time magic was clinging to Dhruv still, fading, but not gone. It was in his aether, in his bones. The affliction trick wasn't common; for obvious reasons, nobody trusted someone whose curses really worked. But Aurin had to wonder if that was what this was. Powerful fucking curse, though.

He glanced sidelong at the ageless Hytori who walked like an old man. The thought crossed his mind that he might have to carry him for part of this journey. Elwes would likely trail them all the way up into the Low City, but once she was certain the man was no threat, she would leave. She never slithered higher than the Low City. For all the cosmopolitan flair of Kalzasi, people still gave her side eye, made gestures against the evil eye, as if she was cursed because her animal nature wasn't that of a fucking cocker spaniel or something cute.

"This," he said, with an expansive gesture that was entirely unsuited to the cleaner part of a sewer, "is the Midden. We are below the city-state of Kalzasi. Ah... Karnor? Same continent as Sol'Valen, though we aren't exactly close. Some of your folk live here, but the Avialae run things. Ah... Sol'Valen isn't the Boundless Empire anymore. I mean, I don't know how much, ah, time you have skipped." He squinted in the dim light. When he woke up today, he didn't anticipating explaining the fall of the Hytori hegemony to a time-traveler, but ... well ... interesting times. "I'm going to take you up to the Low City, which is... at least... above ground. It's still cold. We've a bit of an... eclipse? Magical in nature. It's Searing, but certainly not searing. There's an inn there. Keeper owes me a favor. Keeps a room for me. You can sleep there. Eat there, too."

Elwes hissed behind them, but she didn't say anything. Aurin always claimed to be a bad man, but he did help people. Of course, he often benefited from helping the right people. One orphan with nowhere to run had gone on to become the crown prince of Solunarium. Another orphan was now a runeforger to rival a certain demigod. Vhexur's own luck, really. When Aurin gambled, Elwes expected he would turn out on top.

Aurin wasn't setting a terrible pace. Let Dhruv keep up without shaming him for his weakness. The magic had taken a lot out of him; didn't need to semble to know that. When they reached the Cistern, a central locus of the waterways, he pointed to one opening marked with a 16. "That leads to Hahseu... relatively safe as far as the Midden goes, but we're going up." He pointed. The climb was not insignificant. "Need to rest before we start?"

"Jussst blink him there," Elwes hissed. With a sinuous shrug of her shoulder, she turned toward the tunnel that led to Hahseu. The serpent was more comfortable down here, it seemed.

Aurin sighed. He liked to keep his cards close to his chest, and those included his tricks. Ah, well.

"And a good night to you too, El," he said to her back. "Your lucky day, Dhruv, my man. Ah... my elf?" The tunnel behind them disappeared behind a screen of light that resolved into a dark alley, but one lit by moonlight. "Oh, ah... the eclipse is... a metaphor, I suppose. We got the night back last season. I think we're getting the sun back soon, but that's some world-threatening shit far above my paygrade." Of course, he had eyes and ears in high places, but even they didn't seem entirely sure what was going on. He knew from Torin that Kala and her lot had gone to the southern tower and solved it somehow, along with Venetia the Witch. Interesting fucking times.

"Anyway, shall we?" he started back from whence they had come, though it now led to the surface without any climbing.

[Dhruv]

“The heresy of Ilixidor was one taught to ungovernable young hytori when I was still young. Fuck me if I’d born breath in the Boundless Empire –” He almost laughed. Came near to it. For all the horror of his present circumstances, he nonetheless flashed the quick wings of a smile. “On top of ungovernable,” he added in the tone of someone who understood very well that he had not grown out of that particular characteristic and did not actually expect anyone to believe he had either.

Dhruv sopped the information up, attempting to absorb enough facts of when and what and where that they might secure the rest of him through their veracity. Facts, dates, star charts – these were the minute lines of a clockface, of the very broken clock of him, etched in the rebellious shadow of a ravenous empire.

“An eclipse? How long?” Eyebrows were drawn together. He’d yet to start shivering. That wasn’t a good sign. He was still too cold to shiver, lips bruised colored as they tightened against the lurch of something deep inside of him. Or perhaps the pop of rising bubbles of aethera, long since sunk into his very skeleton. There had been runes and ink on him, difficult to fully make out in the dank and dim of the sewer and now covered by the enveloping folds of Aurin’s cloak.

“Time can’t walk without the turning,” he muttered, though it was more to himself than his companions. He sounded mad. He was mad. He was also, unfortunately, relentlessly sane. He tilted his head back and squinted one eye as they paused near the incline, watching as his timely rescuer bid farewell to Elwes, the echo of her sibilant words looping in his mind. They felt important and yet he was unable to say why, the memory a bare moment out of a century’s reach, and he was still pondering that when he turned to follow Aurin back the way they came.

It wasn’t until the echo of time sickness rippled over him that he realized it was not, in fact, the same. Black stars winked in his vision and the unearthly roar that had hounded his steps since he had snapped a battered, unremarkable-looking pocket watch out of the most dangerous hands drifted through his ears. Not for the first time, it felt like a warning.

“Aurin.” A surprisingly strong hand grasped the information broker’s elbow, keeping Dhruv’s balance but also almost protective. As if the elf looked capable of protecting literally anything at the moment. His voice low music, rustled up out of the depths of him and still sand-scratched. “Have a care.”

But he picked up the pace, reaching so far beyond the stretch of his own soul for the strength of it, he managed to straighten somewhat and shrug off the painfully slow stride. He wanted out of this place, and away from the distant murmur he heard in nightmares. A collision of magics, perhaps, that had not met since the last gasps of the Dreaming City.

It took but a few steps for him to cough out a chuckle again. “Yeah. You should for sure keep your head down about world-threatening shit.” He would know, wouldn’t he? Not that he’d ever managed to take his own advice. “And don’t look back. I don’t want to be stuck here.”

[Aurin]

Time can't walk without the turning, he thought to himself. Dhruv was a fucking poet.

When they walked through his portal, they left the stench of the Midden behind. The Low City wasn't fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but it was cleaner. People still sometimes tossed their night soil out the window, but at least here, it could be dodged. It was only a short walk then to the inn in question, and in that time, he tried to explain the Eclipse, giving dates for its appearance, the towers and trees in the cardinal directions, the shadow creatures, and the slow climb back toward normalcy—whatever that was. He did a lot of talking, actually, the information broker sharing information that wasn't exactly secret, but was new to the strange elf.

A couple of times, he caught Dhruv when his knees knocked or he caught the vapors or whatever was going on with the aftereffects of his time-curse.

But soon enough, they walked into the inn. It was uninteresting, boring, and normal. He waved to the bartender, who happened to be the proprietor as well. With a point to Dhruv and a particular look, the woman nodded acceptance, and Aurin helped him upstairs. He produced a key as if by magic—technically, it was magic, but he played his cards close to his chest. Unlocking the door, he led Dhruv into the room. Nothing fancy: a bed, a table, a chair, an armoir that proved to have a few suits of clothes that were made to fit Aurin, but would suit the elf just as well. Aurin waited outside the room for Dhruv to change, then handed him the key when he emerged and led him back down to the taproom again.

Soon enough, they were seated at the bar, pints and bowls of simple, hearty stew in front of them.

"So, I'm guessing you'll need some sleep. You're tapped out. But I'll stay long enough to answer some questions for you. Nora will keep you fed and watered, help you with creature comforts you might require. Don't go crazy, though. I have to pay the tab eventually. I'll come by tomorrow, see how you're settling in." That said, he tucked into his stew. Once the Midden scents were out of his nostrils, his appetite tended to flare up.

[Dhruv]

Warm water splashed into the pale moon curve of the washbasin as Dhruv completed his ablutions. Behind closed doors, the wild humor that had him laughing in a sewer was fled. There was something sacred in the manner he had used a disc of soap and the soft cloth intended for this purpose to rub down every inch of himself he could reach. Aurin’s robe had dropped to the floor the moment the door was closed and he stood in the hearthlight scrubbing the feeling back into his limbs. If his hands still shook at unexpected intervals, there was no one to see, and at last some of the color had crept back.

He had truly arrived with nothing. There wasn’t so much as a holster or hair tie, let alone an ancient, weathered ring inscribed with the lost wisdom that could pull the flying, disparate pieces of him back together. He groped at its ghost, grabbing at his own, long and calloused fingers for longer than could be considered sane. And when that yielded nothing, he let haunted eyes close and sank into the pathways of magic emblazoned on him an eternal communion.

To see the cardinal runes that dominated his back was to assume immense power. Incredible mastery was conveyed in the molten gold of a tarnished, busted clock, the dark of noon hour stabbing all the way down his spine to depict an ancient longsword with a crossguard etched with phoenix wings. A matched pair of long barreled pistols crossed near the base of his spine, aiming ever upwards, and behind and surrounding it all was the outline of a rising sun. It was not a single cardinal rune, but multiple woven together, laid over and over again, until they created a singular symmetry. A phoenix tail fluttered around his lower ribs. A sun ray gleamed off the blade of the sword.

And the sparks of aethera he could summon from these marks of a legendary master were utterly pathetic.

Frustration grit his teeth. History was a swamp and he struggled to keep his feet to the rising. Vertigo collapsed him slowly into a crouch and there he remained for minutes or for hours, hands over his face as thunder rumbled somewhere a lifetime ago. It hollowed him. Grief threatened to release that desperate, broken scream still scrabbling in his chest.

“Get up,” he muttered. “Get. Up.”

With a thick inhale, Dhruv opened his eyes to push back to his feet and get dressed in a stranger’s borrowed clothes.

Naturally, he drifted toward the darker items, black pants tucked into half unlaced boots. An undershirt, a black overshirt. The gold was starting to glitter out of the dark of his hair as it dried, messy in a way that made it obvious it was probably always messy and not just the result of his circumstances. He didn’t bother shaving, so a dark golden haze lined his jaw and he scratched at the wildflower bruises there while emerging to follow his fox-faced rescuer down stairs.

Maybe he looked more like himself, though it was still a far cry from who he had been. At least he was clothed. Scars and bruises and ancient magic runes vanished. He ate slow, careful of his stomach – fucking sewer – and looked at everything, and everyone. Especially Aurin.

“Thank you.” He bobbed his head in a nod, ready now to take in the man who had led him out of the first dark. “I’m in your debt, Aurin,” he said finally. It did not seem to weigh on him overly, though he was being very genuine. “And grateful to have been stumbled across by someone with decency.” The corners of his mouth twitched, eyes still on his face. He didn’t ask why Aurin was helping him. Maybe he already knew. “Where can I find you? If not here.”