Twinned Destinies: A Cultivation Progression Fantasy

Silence held the battlefield. Marcus took in the men with somber eyes: the ragged lines of black and red, the bleeding clumps of Frigus, and sighed.

"That is enough," he said.

"Marcus!" screamed Octavius. He said it like a curse. His face was flushed, eyes bloodshot, and each word left a shower of spittle. "You would deny me this? Stab me in the back, and in the front too, eh? That woman broke a sacred oath."

Marcus gestured. “That woman?”

Drusila had been shattered. Her body was split five ways. Her head was charred beyond recognition.

"She has paid for it enough, I think. Don't you?" There was a hardness to the calm of his voice. The Demon Kings behind him said nothing, but their auras spoke for them. There were just eight of them, but they held up strong against the boiling masses on the other side.

Marcus continued, "She has broken an oath, true. But you have too. You took life on the Olympus Range, on sacred land. All of you. I am well within my rights to invoke the scepter, the ancient laws. There will be no safe haven for you in all the Demon Lands.”

He swept Octavius's army with cold eyes, then Lucius. "But I am willing to absolve you of this fate if you leave now and set down this awful grudge. It has killed enough."

Octavius looked ready to burst. He opened his mouth as though to scream, then let out a rattling hack. Blood gushed out. He was rattled, bloodied, tired, worn, and his army looked worse. Marcus stood there, face blank as a mask, and his aura unleashed. It was just as breathtaking as Ruyi remembered it down in that gorge, the feeling of being put suddenly, deeply underwater. Octavius sneered as though disdaining it, but she could tell he felt it too.

"Tch!" He said. "We have taken what we came for. She is dead, her tribe is shattered. From this day forth, there will be no Frigus tribe!"

Marcus said nothing.

Then Octavius turned and put up his fist. His army receded like a low tide, leaving bared, cratered ground in its awful wake.

As soon as he was gone Marcus seemed to deflate. His proud bearing caved in. His aura was sucked away; he hunched over and drew a long, ragged breath.

Nearby, someone wheezed. She jerked up; it was Darius. She saw him and started to tremble. He caught her eye and grinned as best he could, but she could tell he was in excruciating pain. His jaw was clenched tight as though to keep from screaming, his chest was blown open. In in just a few breaths the rot had gotten up to his neck. She tried crawling over to him, but she just couldn't move. She couldn't seem to do anything right.

"Yeah," he sighed. He shrugged. "Nothing for it, is there? Oh no, don't cry, stop that. This is embarrassing for—for little old me?" She could tell his heart wasn't in his jokes anymore.

“Come now—it’s not so bad. It was good while it lasted, wasn't it?" He croaked.

She knew he was saying this for her sake. He was always saying this kind of thing for her sake.

"If you think about it—"

"Stop it," she sniffled. "Just stop it."

“…Okay.” Darius closed his eyes and just tried to breathe, the blackness almost at his chin now.

Footsteps thudded up to them. It was Marcus, holding a vial in his hands. He knelt beside Darius's body.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

"Trying to help," said Marcus. "I knew Lucius would be here. I feared the worst…I brought an antidote to Evernight Basilisk's venom."

She saw the liquid dip in, and instantly where it touched, the blackness started to clear. Heartbeats passed and Darius shuddered, his eyes fluttered back open, and he started to breathe.

She hadn't realized how much sheer desperation was propping her up until just then. She felt such a flood of relief she blacked out.

***

When she woke, nothing hurt.

Blinking, yawning, she sat upright. It felt like her bed back home, back over the mountains. It looked like it too, all plush, and she was under covers—where was she? Was she at home? Had that… had all that been an awful nightmare?

"Morning," she jerked. There was Darius, sitting on the bed just beside her, grinning crookedly at her.

She lurched over and buried him in a hug. "Hell," he wheezed, "take it easy! My poor ribs—"

"I hate you," she said, voice muffled in his chest. She was tearing up again. "How dare you!"

“Uh,” said Darius.

“You tried to leave me. How could you!"

"I mean, granted, I couldn't really help it, could I?"

She looked up at him, straight into his eyes. "You have to promise you'll never leave me," she said. "You have to say it, say 'I promise.'"

"I promise," whispered Darius.

She nestled back into him and wept.

When she was done, and he wiped her tears off his chest, Ruyi asked where she was.

"Somewhere on Mount Olympus, at Marcus's place. I believe he calls this his sick wing. It's neat, isn't it?"

It was. The room was a blend of the brutal simplicity of Demon style, but dashed lightly with a human flair: these spiraling sills lining the windows, the embroidery on the pillows, the silvery carpet running the length of the room. The floors and walls were marble.

"Where's everyone else?" she said.

"Rufus is in the ward across from us. Alias down the hall," he replied.

She swallowed, "is everyone else…" She couldn't make herself finish.

"No, no, Sabina's here too," he said.

"Where?"

Darius tongued his cheek. “What you must know about Sabina is her role is her life. You cannot take being leader of the praetorianus out of her; they are the same. It would kill her. Whenever she lost one of us, she would be… erratic… for weeks. And she lost Drusilla. She thinks she failed to do the thing she was put on this realm to do. She is not taking it well."

"Where is she?" said Ruyi again.

"In the dungeons, under guard's watch."

"Why?! Did she—did she go at Marcus, or—“

"No, nothing like that." He paused. "Sometimes when Sabina smiles, it's a distraction. For herself as much as anyone else."

"I know," said Ruyi, "it's like you with jokes."

“…” He pinched her cheek, smiling half-heartedly. "Get out of my head, you. In any case. She is there for her own protection. She seems fine at first, but… let us say she has a history. She will recover.”

He anticipated her next question. "I suspect it would be best if you did not see her right now," he said gently. "Sabina likes to think of herself as someone invincible, always strong, always happy. She pretends she has no cracks. I… do not think it would help her healing if you came to her, and saw her like this.”

Ruyi was silent. "Oh," she said, “Um. Well. What about you? Are you... okay?”

At his pained smile, "Don't you dare make this a joke."

"…Mostly," he said. He looked away from her. "The antidote saved my life. But some things it could not heal. My channels are rather cooked, I'm afraid. I’ll probably never be able to fight again. I'm not too upset about it. Sabina was always nagging me about not taking the job seriously enough. She said I was not willing to sacrifice like everyone else. Well. Look at me now, eh? I suppose I get the last laugh." He winced. "Sorry. Force of habit."

From the hall, she heard quiet sobbing.

“Is that..."

"Aelia," Darius said. "You shouldn't see her either. Not right now. She…" Darius sighed, “She will not be returning to the praetorianus either, I fear. A Demon-King gryphon got its claws on her face… she lost her eyes.”

Ruyi was quiet.

Even now she could see Aelia, with a stack of wood blocks under her arm, running off to capture the sunset. Her eyes were what made her so good; her form was a Falcon; she could see farther than the rest of them together. She thought about all the little moments Aelia had loved capturing on her pretty blocks, so carefully and lovingly made, and she would never see them again.

And Ruyi thought about everyone who hadn’t made it, and she was welling up with so much feeling she felt a little numb.

There was so much Ruyi didn’t understand about this world, but first among them was why it had to be so cruel….

She shook her head. …but that wasn’t right, was it? That was a child’s way of thinking; she remembered thinking the same thing when she was just six, that first night Father sent her to the servants’ quarters. She wasn’t that little girl anymore.

She was the one who broke the line first, wasn’t she? And if Lucius hadn’t caught her, Darius would never have taken those fangs for her, would he?

The problem was her. It was always her. She’d always known it in her heart, even if her head took a while to catch up. She was just too small to stop these things from happening to her. Maybe if she'd just been better none of this would have happened. It felt like the story of her life.

For the next few hours Darius tried talking to her, tried cheering her, but she didn’t have the heart to respond. She just lay on her side and stared quietly at the floor.

***

That evening, a member of Marcus's sacred guard dropped by, a gruff tall demon named Pompey. He said Marcus would like to see her, if she was willing and able. He'd saved Darius, so Ruyi stood and went. They walked through halls lined with intricately carved columns of marble. The floors were stone, splattered with natural patterns that made it look like little whirlpools were trapped in them.

Every few steps, she saw a painting hung on the wall she imagined was priceless. The halls fed one into another, each as tasteful as the last. It was filled with beautiful things, but it did not make a show of itself. It was austere and lovely. There were no gaudy red velvet sashes, no frills of useless satin, like the ones she saw in the Emperor's palace. The tables were perfectly square on the rugs; she crossed the foyer with statues spaced evenly down its length. Everything was neatly put in its proper place, carefully thought out.

They met in Marcus's study, which Ruyi found herself begrudgingly loving. It was shaped like a tall hexagon. One side was a wall of pure windows letting in the fading afternoon light; it bathed the other five walls, which ran top to bottom with books.

There was a desk by the window, a couch in the middle, and another couch opposite it. Marcus sat on one. He smiled genially as she came in.

He was dressed in simple linen, no crown or anything. He could have been someone's grandpa pulled off the street.

"Welcome, Ruyi," he said. He gestured to the couch, and she sat gingerly. The guard left. Then it was just the two of them—just like it had been at the Dragonspyre Mountains a lifetime ago.

The Lord of Demons gestured at the table between them, where a teapot sat gently steaming. "Would you like some?"

For a breath, she was silent. "The secret ingredient," she said softly. "It's blood, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said sadly. "It is."