Divinitas

Divinitas

061 - Housekeeping

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email: caleyndar@gmail.com
URL: http://cruelangel.net/divinitas

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It hurt, to wake. It took so much effort to drag his consciousness up from depths of nothing, that inky blackness that embraces so easily. But a soft insistent voice had began pushing against the emptiness, intruding, filling it. It asked him to wake, tugging and nagging at him until its presence became unbearable in the dark depths of his soul, and his consciousness rose to silence it.

Phoenix’s blood crimson eyes snapped open, glaring at the figure standing before him. There was such anger and distress written across the face of the girl standing in front of him, her bright aqua eyes veiled with something that might have been unshed tears.

“You’re awake,” Casimir whispered, her voice catching in her throat.

The God of Fire made to answer, only to find his mouth dry, unwilling to form audible words.

“No, don’t try to speak. Here, drink this,” the goddess ordered, fumbling with a bowl of liquid, lifting it to Phoenix’s lips.

He wanted to reach out and take the proffered bowl. It was just the automatic response, taking something with one’s hands when offered it. But he couldn’t, and the subconscious effort to move caused pain to leap down his arms like wildfire, surging like a tidal wave to crash through his chest, encircling his lungs until a dry scream was ripped from his throat, startling Casimir so much she dropped the bowl, shattering it on the dark reflective floor.

“I’m sorry!” the girl exclaimed, voice trembling with renewed anger even as Phoenix’s scream continued to echo around the chamber. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, dropping down to her knees to pick up the shattered pieces. “I should have told you not to move.”

The haze of pain slowly dissipated from Phoenix’s eyes, and with it returned a clarity of mind. Who he was, where he was, who Casimir was. He was Phoenix, God of Fire, once the Property of Heaven, now sold into the services of Aether, his God of Chikyuu. He had been with Aether, lying in white sheets stained liberally with his own blood, whispering half delirious words to the golden fiend. And now… now he was standing… no, hanging from a wall in a deep dark place with the Goddess of Chikyuu trembling with barely contained fury in front of him.

“Why am I here,” Phoenix questioned, forcing the words past his dry throat, struggling to return some moisture to his mouth and to slow his erratic heartbeat.

Casimir rose, shards of porcelain in the cusp of her hands. She wouldn’t meet Phoenix’s red gaze, opting instead to study the chaotic arrangement within her hands. “My Brother brought you here… to regrow the wings he tore off you.”

“Ah,” Phoenix murmured, letting his gaze slide off the girl before him to survey his surroundings. Darkness and stone, space that vanished into nothingness where the candle light could not reach. This place wasn’t carved by human hands… it seem naturally formed, the texture and patterns on the walls disturbingly organic. And the organic stone hand somehow entwined itself with his body, tendrils slipped beneath skin, taking root there, so that any movement caused heart ripping pains.

“Where is here…?” Phoenix asked finally, voice strangely calm and steady, only the slightest of tremors betraying the fear and pain.

“The Bottom Heart of Genesis… Where change can occur. Your friends were here too, before… growing their new wings.”

“Why? Why tear off our wings just to give us new wings. For me, I could understand, but why for the others?”

“Because wings of Chikyuu can not fly to Ten,” Casimir answered shortly.

A silence fell, uncomfortable and awkward. There was no need to say more. It was crystal clear to Phoenix the reasons behind Aether’s actions.

“Your name is Casimir, isn’t it? You never told me, but the seamstress mentioned you when I was with her.”

The girl nodded, turning her attention to a tray at her feet. She dropped the broken fragments onto it, the tinkling sounds resounding loudly in the hollow chamber. “I have the clothes she made for you here,” she said, indicating to the pile of clothing next to the tray. “You should be freed soon, now that you’re awake… put them on when you are, and come up. I’ll wait for you there.”

Phoenix eyed the pile of clothing sceptically, as if to ascertain they weren’t a certain evil white dress. “She certainly made them quickly…”

Another silence, worse than before.

“Phoenix… you’ve been down here for weeks.”

~ * ~

The full meaning of the Casimir’s words hit Phoenix hard. Weeks. He had lost weeks of his life. Why. For what bloody, fucking reason? This was the game Aether wanted to play? The ‘I am your God, and I can play with your life as I please’ game? Even the simple notion of living from one day to the next, the one single thing he had clung to, to simply live had been taken away from him.

His bottom lip throbbed still from where he had bit into it, drawing blood as he had sought to keep from screaming as the living stone tendrils had withdrew with agonising keenness from his flesh. Even as the last stone tendrils had left his body, Phoenix could feel the changes they had wrought with his form. There was a tension at his upper back, between his shoulder blades, where his white wings had once sprung forth. Now elemental wings lurked beneath, a mere wish away from bursting forth in a shower of blood and fire.

Phoenix felt ill. From the sudden dizziness that had accompanied his freedom, from the stomach churning anger and hatred towards Aether… but also from the true nature of what he had become. He, who was once a human… now… some deity shaped by the whims of higher deities, a play thing that existed for… for what reason, exactly?

Adorning the clothes Casimir had bought for him, and trying not to think about the tightness or the skimpiness of the outfit, Phoenix made his way out of the Bottom Heart of Genesis, climbing the stairs Casimir had taken. The goddess was waiting for him at the top, the glowing child-like form of Genesis standing beside her looking worried and perplexed.

“Aether made me!” were the first words Genesis blurted out, clinging to Phoenix’s dark red leather clad legs. “I didn’t want to keep Phoenix there… I wanted to play with Phoenix! But Aether watched Phoenix every day and every night… I couldn’t do anything else!”

Phoenix was silent, lightly touching the dark golden hair on Genesis’ head. “He watched me? He was there with me? He didn’t just leave me down there alone?”

Before Genesis could make a reply, a great commotion crashed through an adjoining hallway. Literally. The stonework of the entrance shattered, and great clumps thudded to the marble floor as huge clouds of dust blew up, obscuring everything and sending everyone into a coughing fit.

“Would I not have watched you?” Aether’s severely strained voice demanded between bouts of coughing. “I still would be if I have not been conspired against!”

With much arm waving, the air eventually cleared enough for all present to see the state of things.

Aether stood, legs apart, hair and clothes in disarray, with Chimaera latched onto his waist and the God of Water holding firming onto a fisted arm. Both looked worse for wear, as if engaged in a struggle to contain a creature that would not be contained.

The two deities stared at one another through the settling dust, both with someone clinging to them. It might have been a laughable scene, were it not for the extremely pissed off expression Phoenix wore plastered to his face.

“You say that as if it a perfectly normal and obvious thing, Lord Aether,” Phoenix hissed through clenched teeth. “Should I be fucking happy you kept me company when I was hanging from a wall with stone piercing my flesh just so you could stare at me day and night?! You put me there! You placed me on the same level as a… a… thing! One of those stupid statues or paintings that were all over the place in Ten!”

“You’re infinitely-” Aether began.

“Infinitely what?!” Phoenix roared, shaking Genesis off his leg and closing the distance that divided them. “More valuable? Irreplaceable? Precious? Fuck you, Aether! I don’t want any of those words tacked to me! I just want to live! My selfish dream of living which has brought all of us here because I wouldn’t die when you told me to! And now. Now that you have me, you still screw around with my life. You stole weeks of my life from me, and confined me to a death-like state!”

Aether’s free hand came up, tenderly twining a lock of flame red hair around his finger. “Phoenix… you are my possession. Don’t I have the right to do as I please?”

Phoenix’s hand came up, faster than a snake’s strike to slap away Aether’s hand. “No, you don’t,” the God of Fire answered, even as each and every cell of his immortal body pounded out relentlessly, ‘mine, mine, mine’ in Aether’s voice.

More would have been said, were it not for the bitter finality in Phoenix’s words. Everyone present heard it, and the God of Water quickly snatched up the opening, letting go of Aether’s arm and slipping in between the two glaring deities.

“Phoenix. We have yet to have the chance to introduce ourselves. Though I know your name, you do not know mine. If it is convenient, please allow me to show you to your rooms here in the Castle of Genesis, and I will fill you in on the weeks you have been… absent,” the God of Water said in his soft melodious voice.

Tense moments passed. “Fine. I’d be grateful,” Phoenix growled out, turning his back on Aether and storming down a random corridor. Anywhere was fine. Just away from that possessive, twisted, insane bastard, away from the source that own, controlled, ruled his body.

With a nod of acknowledgement towards Casimir, Draco quickly hurried after Phoenix. Chimaera, having no desired to be left clinging to a Phoenix-deprived Aether, scampered after the two.

“You deserved that,” Casimir said quietly in their wake, aqua eyes flashing angrily at her brother. “That, and a lot more. If I had been Phoenix, I would have chewed you to a pulp and spat you out.”

Aether didn’t reply, only seethed in silence at having Phoenix turn his back on him.

Don’t you know? I would have preferred that than silence.

~ * ~

“My name is Draco. I somehow wound up with the responsibility of overseeing the running of Genesis whilst our Lord Aether has been otherwise occupied,” Draco said as the three walked through the stone corridors of the ancient castle. “He said you wouldn’t require your own suite of rooms, but I took the liberty to prepare them for you regardless.”

With these words, Draco opened a set of doors and showed Phoenix into a set of adjoining rooms. One might have described them as spacious… but a more correct term would have been bare. For all the space, there was little more than the essentials, though what was there had been decorated in a theme of red and gold which lent an otherwise cold and unwelcoming place an illusion of warmth.

“You can outfit the rooms as you see fit. We didn’t know what you liked, so that’s why there’s not much here. I had the seamstress put your clothing in the wardrobes, so clothing wise you should be fine,” Draco told Phoenix as his walked tentatively into his rooms.

Phoenix gave Draco a flat look. “You call my current clothing ‘fine’? I think I’d rather my rags and blankets. At least they cover more. Though you and Chimaera seem to have it better off than I do…”

Draco coughed, opting not to comment further on a potentially touchy issue.

Letting the subject drop, the God of Fire ran his fingertips along the surface of the bedspread, half-heartedly admiring the elaborate phoenix design embroidered onto it. If he hadn’t been imprisoned in the depths of Genesis for weeks, this probably would never have been made.

“Do you know why?” Phoenix asked quietly, letting himself drop back on to his bed, staring up into the dark red canopy.

“Why is a very board and ambiguous question,” Draco commented softly in return.

“Why I was locked down there. Why we are here even.”

The God of Water was silent, considering. Finally he walked over to Phoenix and sat down beside him, leaving Chimaera to poke around the near-empty rooms. “I know, because Cyaneus was my Keeper in Ten, and thus I was privy to information shared between him, Deus, and your Keeper, Ashura,” Draco answered, voice calm and collected. “Deus wanted Aether. Aether wanted you. Trades were made for each party to acquire what they desired. You were the goods, and we were the extras.

“As for why you were locked within the Bottom Heart of Genesis… I do not know for certain Lord Aether’s reasoning behind that. Perhaps you should speak to him yourself,” Draco concluded, looking quietly out of the corner of his sapphire eye at Phoenix.

“Do you hate me?” Sudden question, but not unexpected.

“If by ‘you,’ you refer to myself alone, then the answer is no,” Draco answered slowly, thinking it over. “Chimaera does not. As for the God of Air, either Light or Dark, I can not say. ‘Why’ I do not hate you… is because I have no preference for living. How I live, where I live, what I am doing as I live. I do things because they fall into my lap… when an opportunity presents itself. It was how it was with Cyaneus. He was a high ranking Tenshi, I was a mortal youth. I wondered if I could seduce him. I wondered what it would be like to sleep with him. So I did these things. For the experience. Nothing more.

“When you brought about our ‘Fall from Heaven,’ if you wish to be poetic and call it that, I saw it only as another experience within my life. So no, I do not hate you,” Draco finished, tucking a long straight strand of ebony hair behind his ear.

After a moment of awkward silence, Phoenix gave a low laugh. “So I wasn’t the only one to sleep with their Keeper?”

Draco gave an knowing smile. “From what I heard, it wasn’t uncommon… Beauty seduces humans easily… and Tenshi are… shall we say… curious beings?”

What followed, whilst Phoenix was still half sprawled on his bed with Draco sitting straight backed beside his hips, was an overview of what had transpired during the weeks Phoenix had been unconscious. Despite the passage of time, the truth was, with Aether mooning over Phoenix the majority of the time, little more than settling the new Gods into the castle had been accomplished. There was also the fact that little happened within the Castle of Genesis to begin with, as often Aether would ignore his duties as the God of Chikyuu anyway.

When all was said and done… the Elemental Gods were now the guardians of an unwilling and generally inept deity whose existence was slowly being forgotten by the outside world.

“He would listen to you… if you asked him to consider taking on his full duties as a God again,” Draco said quietly at the end.

Phoenix let a bitter smile tug at his lips, an arm over his eyes to hide his full expression. “Genesis said something like that too… Maybe you forget, but I’ve been wall decoration for the past weeks. Wall decoration doesn’t have much say.”

“Would you like to hear my hypothesis on why Aether kept you there?” the God of Water inquired.

Phoenix’s odd smile widened. “No,” he answered shortly. “I know, on some level. Let me ask you a question instead. Why is it even important to make our Lord Aether do his ‘duties’? Hasn’t the world been running fine so far, screwed up as it is? Who knows. Maybe it’s better to leave Aether’s perverted attentions focused on me.”

“Phoenix… don’t you think our existence is proof of Chikyuu’s downfall? Elemental Children should never have existed. We were a mistake brought about by Aether’s inability to support the Divine Beasts.”

The words ‘mistake’ hurt. Even though he had been fed it one way or another his entire life, it still cut to the bone. It made a part of him want to run to Aether and cling to him, merely to reaffirm that he was needed, no matter how perverse and twisted that need was.

But Phoenix didn’t let the turmoil of emotions show. His expression didn’t even twitch. “Maybe. So? What would you have me do?”

“Because Aether refuses to do his duties as the God of Chikyuu, we will take over for him. I’ve already begun organising a procession which will take us to the ruling cities across the realm. As a reminder the people that their God does exist, and to introduce ourselves as the Elemental Gods who will back and protect him. You need not ask Aether to come. Simply tell him you are going… You will come, won’t you?”

“Is it so easy to play god…?” Phoenix asked quietly, pulling his arm away from his eyes and turning his crimson gaze to the water deity sitting on his bed. “That you can just leap into this without thinking twice, without… fear?”

“I am noble born. I was raised to lead, as I was heir to my Father who is lord over a small province. This is similar… just on a much grander scale,” Draco replied, no evidence of superiority in his voice, just an apathetic exchange of information.

“… Won’t they miss you? Your Father and family, I mean.”

“My younger brother can inherit in my place. When we make the procession, I can take a short detour to inform them of my current status. It is of no concern.”

“Heh… you’re cold, Draco.”

The God of Water gave a small smile. “I’ve been told that often,” Draco answered, a hint of amusement in his voice. “On the subject of nobility… and I ask this without any intent of offending… but you are not, are you? Of noble birth, I mean.”

Phoenix shook his head, giving a questioning look.

“Neither is Chimaera. The Griffin of Light is not either, however knows at least how to read and write. The priests who took him in at a young age gave him a basic education.

“I would like to insist that both you and Chimaera learn how to read and write, and you to continue the physical training we were given in Ten. Being literate is a necessary skill, considering that you are now a deity. And being a master at the physical offensive and defensive arts is vital also, because we must protect and defend our God of Soul.

“I will have these matters organised in a few days, and suitable tutors and masters recruited for your needs. Until then… well, I’m sure you’ll find a pastime to occupy yourself with.” The way Draco had said the last sentence made Phoenix’s stomach flutter and a sense of forbidding settle like a wet cloak around him.

Draco had left Phoenix to himself after that, dragging an unwilling Chimaera away. The youth had clung to the door frame, kicking and screaming until Phoenix had promised to spend time tomorrow with him.

The last parting words Draco had given to Phoenix were the location of his Weapon of Fire, should he want it, and that if he felt the need to stretch his wings, then going outside where blood splatter did not wreck such havoc would be best. Otherwise, dinner would be served soon, and he hoped Phoenix’s growling stomach could hold out until then.