kurofai | [Team Fantasy] (between the devil and the deep blue sea) Slash of the Titans (Reply)

Title: Slash of the Titans OR: How Kurogane Got His Groove Back
Prompt: Between the devil and the deep blue sea
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: comedic gore, eye-scream, amputation

May Yuuko have mercy on my soul...

The beginning of a story is a fickle thing, depending on how thorough one wishes to be in its telling. This story is no different; ascribing a singular point in time the title of “beginning” is a tricky business and more guesswork than science. Does it begin seven thousand years prior to the bulk of its events, with the birth of a god and his human twin brother, or is the story of their birth better left secondary to the larger tale? Perhaps it’s best to begin the narration with the introduction of the rest of the cast – a sort of “first meetings” scenario that drags the reader in and hooks them with its coyness and promises of things to come. Certainly neither of these are inconsequential to the story at large but, as is so often the case with case with tales of gods and immortals, the time gaps left between these and the bits that are actually interesting are staggering, and have a habit of irritating both reader and narrator.

Perhaps the best to begin this tale of two gods and the human son they have raised as their own is to simply set the scene at the beginning of the “interesting bits” and work from there.

Along the outskirts of Clow – greatest city of the eastern seaboard, home to the finest craftsmen and philosophers the world has known, and birthplace of the triple-dipped octopus popper – a sprawling, ancient vinyard can be found tucked into the sleepy inland hills (not so far inland as to start border disputes with the heathens in Infinity to the west, but far enough to make travel to the capital district of Outo a day-long endeavor). Its haggard appearance notwithstanding, the grapes grown and pressed here are the finest of the region and the wines aged from them in great demand amongst the upper classes, commoners, and priests alike. There are many who insist the soil here must be watered by runoff from Mount Edonis – home to the Gods who rule over humanity – or perhaps nourished by the blessing of the great Clow himself. Still others maintain that the strange and eccentric owner is a direct descendent of the wine god Faionysis: a man of divine quality gifted to the earth to produce wines fit for the gods. Some of these speculations are, naturally, more correct than others, but even within the walls of the vineyard, the quality of the owner remains a hotly debated subject.

The quality of the wine, however, has never been disputed. At the peak of harvest season, hundreds of field workers will flood the gates before dawn, anxious to be associated with the excellence of craft the vineyard is renowned for, and labor as late into the evening as the sun allows. The following months of fermentation and aging will fill the vast, labyrinthine cellars to the brim until spring, until the first casks are broken into to sample the vintage. This first sampling is sent out to temples far and wide for spring rituals; the rest will be stored in amphorae and distributed throughout the next years (assuming it lasts that long: the past three summers have seen the cellars run dry before the next harvest).

Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you happen to be one of the local day laborers currently out of work), the season of intense labor has passed, giving way to the long slumber of winter and finally the first, dripping announcements of spring’s thaw. For now, the days begin later and end earlier and, while they may hustle and scurry to complete the days tasks while the sun is up, a general torpor settles over the vineyard in the dark hours and allows for restful nights.

So, it is a strange sight, in the early hours of the morning – before the sun has even splintered overtop the sagging tree line on the horizon – to find a shadowy figure creeping down the back stairway of the main house, skipping every third step or so to cut back the number of creaks and groans slipping from the wooden planks. The skips are a valiant effort, but a fruitless one in the end – this particular set of stairs breezed through the prime of its life some twenty years prior and is lucky its struts have yet to buckle under their own weight. The shadow figure’s shoulders flinch at each mournful whine his steps drag out of the boards. Despite all appearances, this is not a burglar, nor even the repentant participant of a one-night-stand about to embark on one of the longer walks of shame their short life will ever see, but has, in fact, recently been named as one of the owners of this humble abode (at least on paper). He is, however, not aware of this, and as such is doomed to the fate of all teenage boys creeping around their parents’ house under the cover of night.

“Hold it right there, hot shot,” his father (by all measures that matter, if not by biology)’s voice rings (or possibly giggles) out from behind him, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Syaoran (former shadowy figure and current grotesquely illuminated figure caught in the glare of his father’s candle) ducks right and attempts – very casually – to blend in with the stacked barrels taking up space along the inner wall of the courtyard. When this inevitably fails, he opts for a more tactful approach and steps forward with his head bowed. “Good morning, Fai,” he says with a note of exasperation coloring his voice. That Fai is awake this early in the morning can only mean one thing-

“It’s morning?” Fai’s eyes widen –not from surprise at this news, Syaoran realizes a moment too late, but because he’s lost all sense of balance and finds himself suddenly unable to control both the lurch of his head and pitch of his trunk at the same time. Syaoran manages to steady him before he tumbles into the barrels – if only just – and settles him on the bottom stair before he can do any more damage to himself or the clutter in the courtyard.

“Were you out all night?” he asks, delicately leaving off the ‘again’ that is lingering in the back of his throat. “Getting an early start on the Spring Festival?”

The Spring Festival is the largest of its brethren celebrated by the people of Clow. For most, it’s nothing more than an occasion to cast away the scarcity of winter and spring by gorging on the early harvest and polishing off the remaining stores of last year’s wine, and has garnered a well-earned reputation over the years for the high incidence of drunken hedonism, debauchery, and outright obscenity that overflow yearly into the streets. For those who know better (or at least proclaim to), it is a celebration of the return of the Great Yuuko – guardian of the growing season – from the underworld and the descent of Clow to rule therein until the fall. It is also an important occasion to appease (and perhaps curry favor with) the erratic and often volatile gods that rule over them from Mount Edonis.

“Of course!” Fai snorts, “…not. Of course not! That doesn’t start till sundown.” He crosses one shin precariously up over the opposite knee and leans in to brace his elbows against it. His face – distorting and retorting through a startling array of configurations – he catches with the heels of his hands to hold in place as he sways from side to side. “We stayed in,” he says very seriously, “Discuss’d y’r future. We were debating whether it would be more loo…luck…more money to sell you to the royal household as a servant or try to marry you off into it-”

“That’s hilarious, Fai,” Syaoran sighs. He holds out his hand toward his father patiently, hoping he can at least get him up and moving toward his bed, but opts for a more direct approach as Fai takes the opportunity to stare blankly back at his fingertips, and grabs him around the wrist. “And here I thought I would hang around here for a while…keep you from drowning in the bottom of a barrel…” The last bit of this is muttered quietly to himself as he wrenches his shoulders back to pull Fai up and off the stair.

“You’re no fun, Syaoran,” Fai assures him, “You could at least insist that there is some precious little country girl here that you can’t bear to be away from. That your heart would break in two if you couldn’t see her radiant smile every morning as she tiptoes out to milk the goats and slips and you get a lovely view-”

“Come on, Fai,” Syaoran tightens his grip as Fai teeters backward, lost in his own building laughter. Fai is at least on his feet, but threating to topple back over any second; Syaoran hauls him forward until he’s practically slung across his shoulder.

“Course, you couldn’t feel that way, could you?”

“What are you talking about, Fai?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

Fai snores gently against his shoulder. Syaoran nudges him gently – at least until Fai snorts and he’s sure he’s awake. “Where’s Kurogane? You didn’t leave him at the tavern again, did you?”

“Naw, that old killjoy was in bed hours ago,” Fai grumbles against Syaoran’s shirt. He pushes himself up with one arm and ruffles the other violently through his hair, hissing through his teeth the entire while. “He’ll be awake any minute to remind me that I’ve forgotten to – oh shit! I’ve completely forgotten to load the cart for the two of you to take into Outo today!” His hair ruffling becomes yanking and tearing at the roots as he lurches forward to bang his forehead against the wall of the house. “I’m never going to hear the end of it!” he whines, “You’re going to have to get yourself some breakfast, Syaoran. I have to-”

“Fai-”

“Can’t believe I spent the entire night howling at the goats in the park again-”

“Fai!” Syaoran manages to catch his father’s attention just in time to register what he’s said, “It’s fine – I already- Wait, you just said you’d been home all night.”

“I lied, Syaoran,” Fai cries, laying a hand across his son’s shoulder and burying his face into the opposite palm, “I’m a terrible father.” He pulls back, eyes darting about wildly, and sinks his teeth into the flesh of his hand. “I’m a terrible businessman too. That’s the sacrificial wine – if it’s not delivered on time-”

“Fai!” Syaoran grabs him by both shoulders and shakes, “It’s fine. I took care of it last night before I went to bed.” He stares at Fai for a long moment with concern. “While you and Kurogane were arguing over whether or not ducks and crows are made of the same kind of meat-”

“They’re not, you know,” Fai says quickly, “Crows sink if you put them in water. Now, tits on the other hand-”

“Either way, I’m sure the gods aren’t going to punish you because the wine is a little late,” Syaoran sighs. The sun will be breaking over the horizon at any moment, destroying the last of the pleasant morning half-light, and along with it-

“You don’t know them like I do!” Fai interrupts the flow of his thoughts, “But that’s-” he cocks his head back to fix Syaoran with an approving, if slightly wobbly glance, “That’s very good of you. You’re a good son.”

“Thanks-”

“Even if you are skulking around my house in the dark like some sort of miscreant.” His arm catches Syaoran around the waist and pulls him close to breath enough alcohol into his ear to intoxicate a horse, “What are you doing up at this hour, anyway? Sneaking out to your little girlfriend’s?”

“No,” Syaoran attempts to lean away, but only ends up getting pulled closer, “I thought maybe I’d get a head start on prepping the horses and then…” he trails off as he realizes that Fai isn’t listening to a damned word coming out of his mouth and is instead carrying on about girls and tits and Syaoran not appreciating his jokes.

“Still, you’re such a good son,” Fai repeats, “Let’s get you some breakfast. I’m sure Kurogane is going to want some too before you two take off for the city. And Clow Almighty knows he has to turn everything into such a production. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Well, I won’t be going anywhere for a while,” Syaoran mumbles.

“Don’t be silly,” Fai swings the door to the kitchen open and shoves Syaoran through the frame, “You’re a man already. You won’t want to live at home with your dads forever-”

“And why is that?” A gruff figure is waiting for them in the kitchen, leaning heavily over the center table with a crust of bread in his fist. Kurogane – his other father (again on paper, if not by biology) – fixes the two of them with a measured glare. Syaoran bites back a curse – this is exactly the scene he’s been hoping to avoid this morning. He braces himself for the inevitable fireworks as Fai drops his hold on him and storms across the kitchen to rifle around the hearth. “Is there something wrong with my house?”

“It’s natural that children should fly the nest,” Fai grumbles in Kurogane’s general direction. He fusses about with pile of logs for longer than should be necessary, but eventually manages to get a fire started. “What are you doing up already, Kuro-fancy? Wasn’t expecting to see you for another hour at least.”

“Tche,” Kurogane snorts over his bread, “Figured you’d forget to pack the cart for us. So I got up early.”

“Well,” Fai waves an overly large wooden paddle in front of his face, “I didn’t. Or, I did, but Syaoran already took care of it.” He nods sagely and sets about emptying the contents of a large ceramic jar into the cast iron cooking cauldron. “No harm done.”

“Every year it’s the same,” Kurogane grumbles, “Same festival, same order. What kind of idiot can’t manage to remember the one commitment he has to the state? Miss these deliveries and we’ll have to sell the kid into servitude.”

Fai grins wickedly back at him. “Sorry, Kuro-love, I’m afraid I missed that. Something about not being able to do the one thing you’re assigned?”

“Shut up.” Kurogane’s mug comes crashing down on the table. The table itself thuds against his thighs as he stands too quickly and nearly takes it over in his wake. “I’ll be in the stable. Syaoran, get your breakfast and get outside. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

Syaoran swallows heavily. His earlier attempts at impressing his fathers have been all but thwarted – this very well may be the one chance he has left-

“Actually,” he stammers, “Kurogane. Um.” He’s worked himself through this speech many times in the past twenty four hours. So many times, in fact, that he’s managed to echo the words into formlesslness and banish them from his memory completely. “I was thinking,” -yes, good, it was something along these lines- “Maybe I could…” -could he?- “Maybe I could take the wine into Clow. By myself. And you wouldn’t need to worry about it this year.”

Kurogane stares back at him. “Why?”

“Well,” Syaoran starts, “Because…” He hasn’t planned this far ahead. He didn’t actually believe that he would ever get the words out in the first place, so where was the point in justifying them? “Because I’m almost nineteen and-”

“Because he’s a grown man, Kuro-lust,” Fai interrupts loudly. He’s managed to saunter all the way across the room in the time it’s taken Syaoran to formulate his partial thought and is now engaged in the serious business of warding Kurogane back toward the table. “Grown men don’t need their fathers haunting their every footstep.” He’s gesticulating wildly with his cooking spoon, sending glops of smashed, molten fig mush spattering around himself, and Kurogane is forced back toward the table just to avoid a nasty, sticky burn.

Kurogane’s shins clatter against the table legs as his posterior crashes back onto the stool; his fist isn’t far behind in smashing down onto the table. “Have you lost your damned mind?” he roars. “Do you remember the little incident ten years ago when you promised that you’d take care of-”

“Of course I don’t remember ten years ago, Kuro-smooch,” Fai laughs and slams a cup of wine down on the table in front of him, “And neither should you. You’ll be old before your time.” He drops a small loaf of bread next to the cup and skips back toward the fire.

Kurogane tears a chunk off the bread and jabs it into his cup. “Do you remember last night then?”

“Vaguely.”

“Tche,” Kurogane snorts and sucks down the soaked bit of bread, “And what time did it occur to you to stop drinking and load up the damned cart?”

“Oh pssh,” Fai waves this away with practiced ease. One does not spend as mornings fending off an irritable business partner whilst on the verge of a hangover as he is prone to without learning to carefully ignore a good deal of what comes out of their mouths. He rounds back on Kurogane with a stern look, “All of your complaints are about me, so please just let him go. It’s been forever since you spent the Spring Festival in town here anyway. You can come give me a hand in the shop.” He does his very best to bat his eyelashes and squeak a pathetic whine out of the base of his throat. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Please, Kurogane,” Syaoran repeats, “Let me prove that I can take care of the business on my own.”

“Fine,” Kurogane grumbles and tears what remains of his bread in two, “But, you be home by sundown.” He levels one fistful of bread toward Syaoran, “Which means you’re back on the road right after the last delivery.”

“Yes, I will be!”

“No chariot racing. No wrestling. And if I find out you missed any-”

“You’ll sell him into servitude,” Fai finishes, “We know, Kuro-drum. Do you have any idea how often you repeat yourself?”

“Tche,” Kurogane scoffs and shoves the last of the bread into his mouth. He heaves himself up and away from the table – carefully avoiding Fai this time – and huffs out into the yard.

Fai skips across the room and presses a few coins into Syaoran’s hand. “Be home by midnight,” he hisses, “Any later and I can’t guarantee that I can keep him occupied.” Syaoran nods furtively and shoves the coins into his pocket. “And Syaoran,” Fai grabs his wrist as he heads toward the door, “Make sure you best on a fast chariot.”

“Of course!” Syaoran laughs and makes a mad dash for the stables before either of them changes their minds. He makes a quick sign of obeisance to the state of Yue, messenger of the gods outside the front door, then sets to work of hitching the horses to the cart and sets off down the road – not toward Outo itself, but toward the small row of shops in the town center.

Outside the Yamazaki blacksmith’s shop, he stops his team and jumps to the ground to gather a few choice bits of rock, which he hurls toward the second floor windows. A head peeks out from the shutters to grumble at him, eyes still sodden with sleep, but brightens as he registers that it’s Syaoran waking him at such a dismal hour and his terrifying father is nowhere to be seen. He hoots triumphantly, throws the shutters wide – exposing rather more of him than even the dawn needs to see – and hurls himself out the window.

He lands with a thud on the bench of the cart, grinning and – much to Syaoran’s chagrin – sprawled as wide as the great Omo Plains. “I can’t believe you managed it!” he laughs, though Syaoran is more invested in averting his eyes than listening at the moment. “Give me a hand with this thing, will you?”

“There’s no reason you couldn’t have done this ahead of time…” Syaoran grumbles as he fumbles with Yamazaki’s shoulder fastinings.

“Didn’t think you would be able to slip the scary one,” Yamazaki says very seriously, “I didn’t want to miss out on my beauty sleep.” He ties the waist of his tunic and prances in a little circle to make sure it’s swaying the way he likes. “Did the garlic and stafylinos work?”

“No,” Syaoran says huffily and plops himself onto the bench, “And I looked that up – it’s not a sleeping potion, it’s an aphrodisiac.”

“I didn’t say it would knock them out-”

Syaoran snaps the reigns and shouts the horses into a start before he can finish. He knows better by now than to trust anything that comes out of Yamazaki’s mouth, but it’s hard to stop him talking all the same. And sometimes he’s really convincing, so stopping him before he really gets going is key. The sudden jolt of the cart seems to do this nicely, however, so Syaoran relaxes their speed and doubles back to pick up the long, winding road into Outo.

Yuuko alone has not always been perceived as the guardian of spring, nor did she always rule separately from Clow. Many generations of worshippers, in fact, revered the two of them together as the joint heads of Mount Edonis and acknowledged the brother of Clow – Fei Wong – as the Lord of the Underworld.

That this has changed over the centuries evinces dire upheavals both in the human and unseen worlds.

It’s often been said that humans pay little attention to the goings on of the gods unless they are directly involved, and this is true for the most part. It’s not that they’re incurious; the problem is more that the gods are so utterly frivolous that rigid human brains have a difficult time parsing why immensely powerful beings devote so much of their time to acting like spoilt children. It’s no accident, then, that most major upheavals in their belief structures tend follow concurrently major upheavals in their social structures: there is no better way to involve a massive number of humans in the goings on of the gods than to start a war.

Kurogane manages to avoid Fai’s attention for the next two hours and counts himself lucky for it. He’s not at all comfortable sending Syaoran into the city by himself, and he’s not at all comfortable with whatever Fai has up his sleeve for the day. It’s probably going to be terrible. It’s definitely going to be terrible, just like every “idea” he’s had for the past…however many years they’ve been doing this.

He’s too old for this shit.

In a way, this is a true statement. A 5,000 year old god (or somewhere thereabouts – he stopped counting after the fifth century) is too old to be lead around by the nose by his addlebrained, wine-soaked companion, even if that companion is a 7,000 year old god (or somewhere thereabouts – Fai had stopped counting after 25 years) himself. Then again, a god really ought to have a handle on his one and only job by his 5,000th year.

Then again again, love is a rotten thing to be a god of.

It’s been – by Kurogane’s count – ninety-five years since he stopped enjoying this immortality business. According to the history books (the reputable ones, at any rate, which are rarely as informed as they pretend), this puts the turning point somewhere during the tail end of the first Dragan War. This isn’t terribly surprising; Draogs had hosted a war for the ages, and had quite drastically altered the course of human (and immortal) history, in addition to spurring a number of epic retellings and capturing the imaginations of at least two generations of story-tellers.

(If humans love one thing, it is a sweeping tale of adventure and romance, preferably with a strong moral lesson so they feel comfortable telling it to their kids before ushering them off to bed. If they love a second, it’s to hear about misfortune befalling the preening moral scolds who actually took those childhood lessons seriously.)

(Humans are awful creatures, but they do tell good stories.)

The abridged history goes something like this:

The Togakushi Kingdom, west of the Cephirean Sea, is a small, but relatively powerful player in regional politics of the day. This threatens to change with the untimely death of King Kyougo and the ascension of his barely-16-year-old son to the throne, but the young King Fuuma manages to hold the kingdom together better than anyone expects. Trade continues unabated, the public coffers are kept full with taxes and tariffs, and his subjects carry on quite as if they aren’t ruled by a hormonal teenager who is subject to the whims of his testosterone levels.

It’s a stupid mistake, but then again, so are most of the driving forces of human history. It keeps things interesting, if not exactly stable.

It takes less than a year for the king’s equally young lover to discover that his burning passions are not directed toward the king after all, but toward the king’s sister. It takes less than a fortnight beyond that for the pair to abscond, leaving only a short note of apology in their wake (which has, as most notes do, the opposite of its intended effect). This sort of thing isn’t necessarily uncommon – especially amongst the upper classes who can afford a good scandal when it suits them – nor is it especially damaging to the political economy of any country not ruled by a spurned sixteen-year-old with a massive army at his disposal. As it was, Togakushi is 2 for 2 on that score – all they lack, in the moment, is a proper target for their aggressions.

This problem resolves itself much sooner than anyone expects. Across the Cephirean Sea, the city of Dragos lays at the mouth of the Fahren straight, which separates the Kingdom of Autozam in the north from Chizeta in the south and leaves the city nicely positioned as a sort of gatekeeper to the eastern trade routes. This is a role that Dragos takes very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it has declared itself a neutral party in all local politics, and doubly neutral in all regional politics. It shuns warfare of all kinds and has even become known for their legion of peace-keeping liaisons that attempt to keep their neighbors in line as well. This keeps the traffic flowing into their ports and provides a handy bartering chip whenever questions arise over how high their tariffs are creeping or whether or not it’s fair of them to demand that all passers through adhere to local ordinances regarding personal hygiene or the lack thereof. They’re good at their job, too; not a single interruption in trade traffic between east and west has occurred under their watch.

At least, not until a certain fugitive couple from Togakushi decides to put the limits of Dragos’s neutrality to the test.

It is, perhaps, lucky for them that Prince Subaru, current ruler of the city (in practice, though his grandmother still holds the official title of Queen), is more interested in the immediate comfort of his guests than in appeasement of a faceless foreign government. It’s also lucky that he isn’t paying any mind to the doom and gloom prophecies of his sister this week, as she’s been seeing the same bloody useless dream for three months and is creating some serious doubts about the 99.9% Accuracy in Foresight rating she boasts. It is much less lucky for them, however, that they are spotted within moments of landing on the docks, and downright unlucky that the patrons of Dragos’s port are in no way as scrupulous as the leaders of the city. (It’s also true that Prince Subaru spent more time playing with the palace penguins in his youth than learning the art of emergency negotiation, but that’s neither here nor there as they aren’t given much opportunity for negotiation in the end.)

Within a month, King Fuuma musters a fleet and lands it on the Dragan shore. For the first time in history, the port is incapacitated as forces lay siege to the city.

Dragos’s defenses hold up remarkably well for the first month or so. Its people may be fat and dull with prosperity, but they’re also acutely aware of their position in the world and, like all those at the top of the food chain, terrified of losing it. The walls and gates persevere through onslaught after onslaught, and slowly but surely, King Fuuma’s forces are pushed back, until it’s all looking very bleak for the young King’s love life.

Then one morning, the Dragans wake to find their beaches empty.

Perhaps it’s the slow whittling away of their forces that finally convinces the Togakushiites to admit defeat, or perhaps the Dragans’ continuous taunting from the battlements and slurs regarding the size of King Fuuma’s “forces” (Legend has it that at one point the King ordered six dozen or more scale models of his endowments fired over the walls to prove that he did, in fact, understand innuendo and was not amused. The “not amused” part became much clearer as the models spontaneously combusted after about fifteen minutes. If true, this is the one good, solid hit the Togakushiites managed to score against Dragos thus far.) has finally demoralized the troops beyond hope. Whatever the case, the Togakushiites have abandoned their camps and taken to the seas once again, leaving only an enormous wooden penguin in their wake.

This is, unsurprisingly, one of the more ridiculous things the people of Dragos have ever seen, but the gesture of good faith toward their penguin-obsessed Prince is unmistakable. And so, after a lengthy discussion about how long is too long to leave it rotting on the beach, the penguin is hauled in through the gate and proudly displayed in the city center.

The city center, as it turned out, is an ideal place launch an offensive, which is exactly what the 50 Togakushiite soldiers hiding inside the penguin do, just after the sun sets and everyone who isn’t a lying, cheating, coward is busy tucking their children into bed. The gates are flung wide and the invading Togakushiites swarm the city. Within hours, the Dragans are overwhelmed, Prince Subaru meets an untimely end in the midst of the confusion, and all of his sister’s doom and gloom predictions come to pass. Seeing this, the no-longer-quite-as-young fugitive lovers despaire and launch themselves from the highest tower of the citadel in one of the more shocking displays of codependency ever seen in this part of the world. The battle rages through the night and when the sun rises the next morning, Dragos is no more.

It’s pretty standard fare as far as war histories go, and isn’t – in Kurogane’s humble opinion – worth all the fuss made over it. Nor it is much improved by the addition of interfering gods and drunken mishaps to the narrative. No matter how many times it is rewritten into a festival drama or embellished with local traditions, it still ends the same, with the city destroyed and Kurogane wishing he had never heard of Dragos.

Of course, that wish has less to do with poor storytelling than the unavoidable truth that the unabridged history of Dragos, with all of its interfering gods and drunken mishaps, is directly responsible for Kurogane’s current situation. Had Dragos not fallen, he might still be an awesome, terrible God of War, lording it over his realm with practiced ease, instead of an impotent disgrace who can’t even manage to make the hearts of teenagers go pitter-patter in the springtime. He might return to Mount Edonis, where he belongs, instead of languishing on this ancient, run down vineyard.

Mostly though, he would not have to be dealing with a perpetually drunken Wine God who, despite being several thousand years older than Kurogane, remains completely incapable of taking care of himself or anything around him, and whose ideas on how to solve Kurogane’s can’t-be-a-midpoint-to-something-that-doesn’t-end life crisis have gotten steadily worse over the course of the centuries.

He can only guess what today’s exercise in inanity will be.

He doesn’t have very long to devote to guessing games, however. Fai has been actively tearing apart the house looking for him for the past half hour, and it’s really only a matter of time until it occurs to him to look in the room Kurogane has claimed for the past hundred years. He sighs and heads for the door – he might as well just spare himself the trouble and announce his presence before the fussing starts in earnest.

“Oi!” he barks, leaning over the balcony ledge to the courtyard below, “I’m up here. Let’s hurry up and get this over with.” He storms down the staircase just in time to catch Fai as he stumbles out the backdoor of the kitchen. “Did you leave any for dinner?” he grumbles as a cloud of wine surrounds him.

“There is always more for dinner, Kuro-yearning,” Fai peels himself off Kurogane’s arm and back to his full height, “But for right now I’m going to need you to focus on getting someone else drunk on passion, alright?”

“I knew this was what you were up to-”

“Well I would hope so! You still owe me after all,” Fai smiles sloppily and grips his wrist to drag him along out of the house. “Kakei hired some new help for the store, and could use a hand with them. Practically have to restrain them to keep them off each other he says-”

“That’s got nothing to do with-” Kurogane starts to say, but shuts his mouth as the door bangs shut behind them. Fai shoots a look at him that insists that it’s got everything to do with him and he’d better not try to argue or there will be Consequences. Not that there is any point in arguing anyway, since Fai is already dragging him down the street and it’s either this or an afternoon spent ducking drunken cat-calls and picking up dishes he’s dropped.

They stop outside a small shop just on the edge of the town center. The signage out front reads “Kakei Fine Wines and Apothecary” but in reality, this is Fai’s business as well. He’d stumbled across Kakei – a minor deity specializing in curatives – seventy-some-odd years back and after a lot of intentional drinking and some accidental experimentation, they’d discovered a fairly potent cure-all made of wine, valerian, and soft-shelled turtle (which only worked if the grapes had been pressed beneath the feet of a god and the wine force-fed to the turtle before it was…ripe for harvesting…truly an accidental discovery, mind you). Since then, Fai has refused to entrust sales of his wine to anyone else, which is just as well because Kakei has refused to move out of the attic of the shop.

Kurogane isn’t sure when, exactly, Saiga joined Kakei, but he is sure that the addition of the messenger god to the store has only increased the number of headaches he’s blessed with on a regular basis.

He’s keenly aware of everyone and everything’s position as he enters the shop. There is no way he’s going home with a tunic full of slippery olives again today. Not even if Saiga has hidden himself-

“Gah! You’re mixing up the straw wine with the spiced stuff!”

“No, it’s the sa-”

“You are, you idiot! You’re going to get our pay docked again!”

“It’s the same thing. Look at the jars!”

“WHY ARE YOUR HANDS ON MY THIGHS?”

“Those aren’t my hands-”

“THEY HAD BETTER NOT BE ANYTHING ELSE OF YOURS EITHER!”

Kurogane blinks at the two youths Kakei has brought in to work for him as they bicker from one end of the store to the other. It’s true that they’re having difficulty in keeping their hands off one another, but hardly in the manner Fai had implied. Or in a manner that will be at all useful.

He grabs the fanciest amphora he can find and stalks to the backroom. It’s going to be a long afternoon, and he the little bit of wine he tucked down with breakfast just isn’t going to cut it.

Whether or not Fei Wong had a very, very, very good reason, merely a good reason, or was just an unscrupulous bastard for his role in fanning the flames of the First Dragan War is still one of the most hotly contested topics amongst the elite on mount Edonis. This is not without good reason, either: Fei Wong’s abdication of duty may have resulted in a massive restructuring of the pantheon (and a massive headache for everyone), but most immortals have a great deal of trouble constructing a coherent argument that they would have done differently in his circumstances. In fact, most immortals make it a point to avoid the underworld entirely, and those that have set foot in its halls generally delegate a good deal of energy toward the cause of never having to go back. If the darkness is not enough to make you crave the touch of the sun at any cost, the wailing of the residents is enough to drive even the stoutest of hearts stark raving mad. As ruler of the Underworld, Fei Wong had rarely stepped out of his realm – was rarely allowed to step out. Still, this had been a job Fei Wong had accepted eagerly: if his brother Clow would rule the heavens, then so would he rule the underworld. He had ruled for many centuries thereafter with great aplomb, so while the sudden shift to shady backroom deals and warmongering might have been unsurprising in another god, most had expected it would take another millennia or two before Fei Wong resorted to such drastic measures to secure himself a holiday.

It’s just past noon when Syaoran drives the cart up to the gates of Outo, and the sun is beating down bright enough and hot enough to make the “Spring” part of the festival seem unseasonable. Beyond the walls, the streets are already busy with the bustle of festival traffic: ringing bells and braying animals, shouting vendors and screaming children running wild. But he’s not going to be joining them any time soon, unless he can find the entry pass he knows is stashed somewhere in the carriage box before Yamazaki manages to make an enemy of each and every guard standing watch.

“Did you know that in Chizeta, the men are ranked by how far they can spit olive pits?” Yamazaki is saying. Syaoran rifles through the stack of parchment scrolls more forcefully. “It’s true! Every year they pick the least likeable person in town as a target, and then line everyone else up against the city walls and whoever spits the farthest gets to be the king for a year!”

“If it’s a distance competition, then what do they need a target for, kid?”

“Probably shame, I guess. Usually the least likeable person in town is a used chariot salesman, so this helps keep them honest-”

“Got it!” Syaoran yelps triumphantly and thrusts the scroll toward the guard next to him with his head bowed.

The guard gives it a stern thrice-over and reluctantly lowers his spear. “Alright, you’re cleared.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Just keep that kid away from the doom prophets – they don’t need any encouragement.”

“Will do, sir.”

The guard grumbles an unintelligible reply that Syaoran doesn’t stick around to hear. He snaps the reigns and drives the horses through the gate. The narrow gap for entry between the stone walls makes this entire process painfully slow – which is probably the point – and Syaoran is painfully aware of the looks being cast in their direction as he maneuvers onto the main roadway.

The city seems familiar than it has in past years. Even though he’s passed through these crowded, dusty streets numerous times, each cramped, crooked doorway and peeling façade looks new. Or maybe he just never took the opportunity to really look before. Now, charged with not only delivering the festival’s wine, but keepin his horses from running amok while doing it, everything about the maze of streets seemed ten times more complicated, ten times less familiar, and ten times more beautiful. It’s difficult to peel his eyes away from the brightly colored window dressings and garish displays set out on the walkways to catch the eye and trip the feet. Each is more jarring than the last (he’s never seen a dog in a loin cloth before, nor has he ever wanted to), and they haven’t passed more than a quarter of the way into the city center yet-

“Syaoran!”

Yamazaki has practically climbed into his lap to get at the reigns before Syaoran realizes what is going on. He manages to stop the horses and the cart just before they collide rather spectacularly with the cross-traffic, but not before the more skittish of his horses rears up and sends the both of them tottling into the back end of the cart. The sound of cracking clay grates across his ear drums and smell of wine seeps up through his nostrils. His blood runs cold.

“Oh, good gracious!” Traffic skids to a halt with much shouting and disgruntlement, but there seems to be a special urgency to the patter of one set of footsteps approaching their cart. Before he dares to even open his eyes and survey the damage, one small, gentle hand comes to rest against his shoulder and a second cups against his cheek. “Are you alright?”

He opens his eyes to find a girl, probably about his same age, staring back at him with a horrified expression. She’s dressed in clothes that are far more intricate and ornate than anything he’s used to seeing and has enough jewelry in her hair and around her neck to finance a small business for half a year. Not royalty – Clow is fiercely proud of its democratic governance – but about as close as one could get in this part of the world.

Certainly not someone Syaoran wants to find himself on the wrong side of.

He flinches back from her and bows his head. “I’m so sorry,” he says quickly, “I should have been paying more attention and-”

“Oh no, no!” She grips his hand tightly between her own, “It’s really my fault. I blew right through that intersection without looking and well…” She bites her lip and surveys his cart, which is enough to make his heart jump the entirety of the way into his throat. Kurogane is going to kill him-

A quick glance around the cart tells him that it’s not as bad as her expression is making it out to be – and praise whatever deities are handy for that! – but it’s not all that good either. He’s lost probably five jars and cracked at least two more – not enough to disrupt his delivery (he was in the habit of packing extra to accommodate his fathers’ drinking habits), but certainly enough to make a mess of the cart. And now he had the added bonus of lookingd like a slasher victim and smelling like a brothel…

“You’re hurt,” she says and lifts his hand to her face. He’s managed to gouge the backside of his palm, but it doesn’t look too serious. “Let me wrap it for you.”

“No, it’s-” he starts to say, but she is already tearing a strip from the hem of her tunic.

“Just let me, I feel terrible,” she says and sets about tying it securely around the wound, “That should keep the dirt out at any rate.”

“Thank you,” he says, appraising her handiwork. He’s truly grateful to her and yet-

Something feels wrong. A blank hole in his chest where-

“No, no! It’s really very lucky this way!” Syaoran shoots a quick look over his shoulder at Yamazaki, who has already managed to right himself and is in the process of explaining why it’s good luck to bleed into your right eye – oh dear gods above, he really is bleeding into it – to a decidedly unimpressed looking girl with silvery ribbons plaited into her pigtails.

Some of that “luck” could have graced them a few seconds earlier.

“Um,” the girl says, “My family lives just down the way. Why don’t the two of you come by and clean up a bit? It’s really the least I can do.”

“No, no,” Syaoran says, “We’re fine.” There’s really no time, and besides which, he has no desire to be a guest in someone’s home when there is a wide open city to explore. “Thank you though. That’s very kind of you.” He stuffs the leaking jars deeper into the straw that buffers the cart and hopes that will at least absorb what seeps through the cracks. It will have to do for now. “Yamazaki, you alright?”

“Good, good,” he laughs. The girl with the pigtails is staring at him like he’s grown a second head and backing away slowly. “I was just saying how it’s an old custom in Autozam to offer a litter of kittens and one year of servitude to a stranger that you’ve injured.”

“I’ve never heard that-”

“It’s true, though!” Yamazaki jumps back up onto the bench, paying no mind to the way the girls are now huddling together and whispering worriedly to one another, “The kittens are a peace offering – because nothing is more peaceful than snuggly kittens.”

“What about the servitude, though?” Syaoran asks. He waves over his shoulder at the girls and turns his attention back to the road. “That just seems…excessive.”

“Well, you know,” Yamazaki continues, “Kittens are cute but they grow up into cats, and cats are made of pure malevolence.” He pauses to scratch his chin. “Well, malevolence and fleas. Anyway, once they’re full grown, you can make a meal of them.”

Syaoran balks. “And the servitude?”

“Well, you don’t want to skin your own cats, do you? Have you ever tried that? You’d be bleeding harder than whatever the person did to you originally. Anyway, this is why the crime rate in Autozam is so low. Hey – where are we heading first? We should really stop by the hippodrome and put our bets in before the races start. And wrestling matches on the green start at 3 o’clock, I read. Kusanagi the Krusher is up against Ryuu-ou the Retched. There’s probably going to be a crowd, so we should get there early. I wonder if they’ll do the masks again this year – last year they ruled that they went against the ‘fully naked’ rule, but there’s been a lot of public support-”

Syaoran grins to himself as Yamazaki continues to ramble on. Finally, in his nineteenth year, he’ll be able to experience everything that the Outo festival has to offer – from wrestling to public debauchery and everything in between (which is actually very little, but he’s feeling exceptionally optimistic) – without being held back by his over-protective parents. He pats the pocketful of coins Fai foisted on him earlier this morning and wonders if he might be able to triple it in the chariot races...

It is, of course, not unusual for Gods to unhappy with their lot in immortality. Traditionally, the position of “Least Satisfied Deity” has been held by the God(dess) of Love. Whether because their good intentions are inevitably foiled by humanity’s jealousy and complicated desires, or because preying on humanity’s emotions has a tendency to backfire badly upon those who would dare, the world has seen the passing of no fewer than twelve God(desse)s of Love since the dawn of time, all with their own unique take on the craft.

It is little surprise, then, that the reigning God of Love during the years of the Dragan War was a bit of a dick and had very few qualms about joining forces with Fei Wong to sow the seeds of discord within the Togakushi Kingdom. (In fact, judging by the sudden uptick in erotic art from this era, his work spread far beyond simply making the King’s lover fall for his sister.)

It is also little surprise that this particular God of Love did not last through the end of the war.

The curtains of the backroom have been drawn tightly and all workers shuffled to the front of the store where they won’t be privy to the sacred rituals about to be performed. Seated cross-legged on the floor, Kurogane exhales deeply and strikes a flint against his knuckles to light the ritual candles. He places these to either side of him and closes his eyes, allowing the flickering light to soak in through his eyelids and calm his senses.

“Ooh, nice. What is that, sage?”

Kurogane cracks one eye open irritably. Fai is leaning over him, hands planted against his knees so he doesn’t topple forward, and attempting to focus his eyes with a bizarre series of winks and flutters and mawing of his jaw. Kurogane fights back the urge to kick his ankles out from under him and instead simply grumbles, “And lavender. Now sit down and shut up.”

“Yes, O Passionate One.”

“Light the damned incense if you need something to do.”

“Yes, O God of Lust.”

“Is this all part of the…er…ritual?”

Kurogane sighs and opens his eyes to find Kakei leaning in through the curtained off doorway. He looks confused – which could either be genuine or just a side effect of “the newest batch” he’d insisted Fai dip into with him on their arrival. “Yes,” he insists.

“Oh, well then, don’t let me bother you – I was just looking for Saiga. Usually he takes his afternoon nap in here-”

“He’s under one of the tables up front,” Fai says, plopping down on the floor and waving his arm in an approximately “frontward” direction. “If you squat down by the straw wines you should be able to follow the snoring.”

“I might have known,” Kakei sighs, “It’s his other favorite pl-”

“Do you two want this done or not?” Kurogane snaps.

“There’s no need to get upset, Kuro-struck-”

“I can’t help him if you don’t shut up-”

“I need help?” Kakei looks surprised by this, and Kurogane can feel his temper boiling.

“Yes,” Fai hisses – loudly and completely conspicuously – at him.

“Oh, yes,” Kakei quickly corrects himself, “I don’t know how I’ll manage them otherwise.”

“Oh for…” Kurogane claps his hands against his face and drags them downward. His eyelids have moved so far down his cheeks that they might as well be nostrils by the time he manages to set his jaw and bark out orders for anyone not involved in this ritual to get the hell out of the backroom before he fires one of his arrows of armour directly into their ass.

Kakei disappears just as quickly as he’d come. Fai, on the other hand…

“Do you really have those?”

“Have what?”

“Arrows of Armour.”

“Of course I don’t,” Kurogane spits. He’s not allowed any weapons – at all, ever – and Fai is more than averagely aware of this.

“That’s too bad,” Fai frowns, “I can see them being useful…”

“Is there a reason you’re still here?”

“I’m here to help, Kuro-charming,” Fai assures him. He settles down on the floor directly across from Kurogane and pats him on the knee, “So let’s give it the old symposium try, shall we?”

“Tche,” Kurogane scoffs, but gathers himself back together anyway. “Incense,” he grumbles again, and to his everlasting joy, Fai actually obliges him and sets the pot smoking.

With the mood set somewhat more appropriately, Kurogane breathes deeply and drags his fingers across the earthen floor to center himself. He allows the pebbles to play through his fingers for a few moments until he is completely calm and then, with great reverence, speaks the words of an ancient and powerful love spell.

“Sparkle fairy, teddy bear,
I’m pretty sure love’s in the air.
Now heed the yearning in your gut,
And go and make some lovely smut.”

The candles flicker as his words echo about the chamber, latching on to the barest of breezes and hopefully flowing out toward their intended recipients. He rakes his fingers across the floor again, scattering pebbles and eventually collecting enough to douse the candles. He opens his eyes slowly in the darkened room and leans back.

“That’s it?” Fai is choking back laughter before he’s even had a moment to run through his mental checklist and make sure he’s completed everything properly.

“What do you mean ‘That’s it?’” Kurogane growls, “Do you have any idea how long that took to learn?”

“Of course, of course!” Fai stifles a snort behind his palm, “It’s hard to rhyme a word like smut.” He scrambles to his knees and kind of half-crawls, half-scoots across the room to the curtained off door. “Let’s see if it worked,” he says giddily and peeks his face through the part in the fabric.

He pulls it back just as quickly and slaps the curtain halves back together.

“What?” Kurogane demands. He’s quick to his feet, but Fai is quicker to block his path. “Get out of my way.”

“Well, they’re definitely going to be harder to pry apart now-”

“What the hell happened this time?” Kurogane storms past him and throws the curtain wide.

The shop boys roll past him in an enraged flurry or fists and feet and hair-pulling.

“Shit.”

“They’re kind of cute this way.”

“Tche.” Kurogane grimaces – bearing his teeth in a completely non-maniacal way – and stomps out the door.

Fai slinks to the doorway after him and peeks his face through just in time to see Kurogane land a blow on each of the shop boy’s heads. He bites back more laughter – his lip is going to be a bloody mess if this keeps up – as the boys cease their brawling mid-swing and slide completely indelicately into a slightly less violent but no less unseemly activity. One that requires fewer blows to the face and more blows to the –

“If they take down the front displays, I’m not going to be held responsible,” Kakei says, shuffling around a rattling table of amphorae. He frowns and pulls one of the jars from the table, sips delicately from the mouth, and then douses the writhing duo with the contents. “You’ll thank me for that later, trust me,” he singsongs as he winds his way to where Fai is peeking through the curtains. He pulls these to the side and offers the amphora, which Fai gratefully accepts. “He’s got that part down to a science, at least.”

“He’s managed to keep the population steady for the past hundred years,” Fai nods. It’s increasingly hard to drink without spilling, as the shop boys contort themselves into increasingly ludicrous positions, and his own laughter is threatening to choke him, but he is the god of wine and that would be a sacrilege. Still, when Saiga crawls out from under one of the tittering displays, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and looking a bit pale, it’s all he can do not to drop the flask.

“Festival isn’t supposed to start until sundown,” Saiga grumbles and pushes past Fai to take up residence on s tool into the far corner of the room. He nestles into the juncture of the walls and propping his feet on the windowsill, yawning, “Unless we’re doing peep shows now too.”

“That might not be a bad idea,” Fai says thoughtfully, “Hey Kuro-smut-”

“Oh, shut up,” Kurogane growls. He smashes a fist against one of the display shelves and sends the contents shattering across the floor. Perfect, he thinks, and storms out the front door to the street.

One of the lesser known casualties of the Dragan War was, oddly enough, the God of War himself. Humans don’t like to acknowledge the God of War (even though he is the god that most closely resembles them in many ways), and so the void has mostly gone unnoticed in many parts of the world. Peace is taken for granted, and will likely continue to be until a new god rises to fill the position.

The previous God of War had been what many would describe as “A Nasty Piece of Work.” Born from the sweat of Clow’s brow, he had originally been designed a minor God of Agriculture, and sent to live amongst the good folk in the northern fields to learn his trade. He had been happy in this role and toiled relentlessly in the fields with the human guardians who raised him until, as so often happened in those days, their land was seized and destroyed by men of other gods and all the people lost to the conflict.

Perhaps it was inevitable that he – the sole survivor of the carnage – would rise again as a God of War and destroyer of peace.

He had fought under banner of Dragos – not because they honored him in any way, or even particularly wanted him there (and certainly not because he maintained a delicately crafted sense of irony), but because those above had made it clear that he could either prove he was more than a mindless brute and a burden to all living things, or he could turn in his immortality at the front desk and try not to let the pillars hit him in the ass as he bounced back down Mount Edonis. And so he had decided to take up the banner of peace, neutrality, and kindness to those in need in order to smash the ever-loving hell out of the Togakushiite armies.

In the end, it wasn’t his lust for blood that became his undoing, but his lust for wine.

Syaoran sets the last amphora of wine on the docks and wipes the sweat from his brow. Even with Yamazaki’s help – which has been noticeably lacking for the past half hour or so – it’s taken him much long than usual to unload the cart. He’d like to blame this on the heat, but it probably has more to do with the fact that Kurogane is not here to lift the majority of them and shout at Syaoran to move faster with the rest of it…

“Thanks, kid,” the city councilman in charge of the annual sacrifice says, eyeing up the stash he’s left on the dock. He’s dressed in the same kind of bold colors and bright jewelry as the rest of the higher-ups carting their self-importance around the festival, but seems far too young for this role. Syaoran bites his lip to keep from sneering as he leans in to inspect the offering. It’s fairly obvious that he has no idea what he’s looking for, but smiles as if this is the finest delivery of wine he’s ever seen (in fairness, it probably is, and Syaoran is well aware of this). “Send our thanks to your father.”

“Of course,” Syaoran bows politely. He turns back to the cart, now nearly empty, and wonders where in the world Yamazaki has gotten off to. They have three delivers yet to make before they can really partake of the festival, and he’s anxious to get them squared away-

“It’s true though! If you break an egg open on a donkey’s head and leave it in the sun for three hours, you’ll not only get a perfectly cooked breakfast, but you’ll delouse the donkey!”

Syaoran catches sight of Yamazak just as the councilman corners him. He’s talking the ear off of a trio of girls – two of which, if Syaoran is not mistaken, are the same two they nearly killed this morning. Fantastic. They’re never going to get to the wrestling match at this rate…

“Is this kid bothering you?” the councilman asks. Syaoran secures the last of the jars to the cart and heads toward the group.

“Not at all!” Yamazaki insists, “I’m just sharing some down-home cooking tips! Everyone can use them – even if they have to borrow a donkey!”

“Brother, it’s fine,” the overly-helpful girl says (great, he’s her brother), “He’s just teasing.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“Hey, that’s not very fair-”

“Yamazaki,” Syaoran says, finally catching up to them. He steps inbetween Yamazaki and the councilman, grinning like an idiot in hopes of diffusing the tension and praying loudly in his mind to the god of mistaken identities that he is not recognized. “No one here needs down-home cooking tips. They all have servants.”

“Oh, Syaoran don’t be silly-”

“Oh, it’s you!”

Syaoran winces and resolves to stop praying altogether. He drags Yamazaki away from the girls and waves hurriedly over his shoulder. “So sorry again!”

“But- Wait!”

The actual ending of the Dragan War has been all but stripped from the collective memory of humanity. The events are too fantastic, too unexplainable to fit neatly into any history books, and so they are quietly ignored.

As the Togakushiites sacked Dragos, the death toll grew ever larger.

This was just as Fei Wong had planned.

In the moments after the death of Prince Subaru and the sucides of the Togakushi princess and her lover, the ground trembled as though it would split wide, spilling out the contents of the earth itself. The buildings shook with its rage, swaying and tumbling with no regard to the stoutness of their foundations or the strength of their walls. The sky grew black and the ground below the citadel’s tower, where the two young lovers had fallen burst open. Instead of the contents of the earth, however, what spilled forth was viscous and black, half-formed and screaming. The souls of the dead.

Riding at their head was Fei Wong, Ruler of the Underworld, God of the Dead, and Free God. With only the barest interference on his part, the death toll from the ten year’s war had outpaced the availability of space in the underworld, and with the addition of these final two deaths, the walls had shattered, thrusting the millions of souls resting therein back to the light some hadn’t seen for thousands of years.

It would take years and the construction of a new underworld to repair the damage.

Fei Wong was, naturally – or we wouldn’t be here to tell you about it – subdued and punished. While it is impossible to kill a god, and therefore impossible to ever truly be rid of them, it is possible to cripple them quite severely. In the case of Fei Wong, his head was separated from his body and cursed that it might turn whoever looked upon it to stone, so that he might never again be able to conspire to disrupt the balance of things.

His body was returned to the underworld. The location of his head remains unknown.

Kurogane attempts to blend into the crowd that’s starting to form on the street, but it’s a difficult feat to accomplish when one towers a good 20 centimeters over even the tallest workmen. He tries to counter this by slinking in and around the shopping stalls and food carts that are just pulling their windows open, but Fai still manages to corner him before he’s made it even three blocks from the shop.

“Kuro-lust-”

“Get the hell out of my way,” Kurogane grunts and attempts to sidestep him. He’s not sure why he even bothers with this anymore, since Fai is irritating enough to keep pace with him and slippery enough to already be two steps ahead. “What do you want?”

“I want you to come back to the shop,” Fai pleads. He slips an arm around Kurogane’s waist and tugs, putting on his best pout as he uses this as a sling to wind around until they’re face to face. “It’s hardly the end of the world, you know. And besides, I’m going to need help cleaning up-” He falls flat on his ass in the road as Kurogane plucks his arm away and tosses it to the side. “Kuro-beau-”

“It’s not a joke,” Kurogane growls, “I need to go train.”

Fai wraps himself around one of Kurogane’s legs and squeezes tightly. “Don’t go train today, Kuro-charming,” he begs, “It’s the spring festival. Come drink with us and forget about it. You’ve got the important part of the job down anyway – what does it really matter if they can’t love?”

“It just-” Kurogane huffs out a long sigh. Fai has decided his belt and tunic as some sort of climbing apparatus, and it’s more distracting that one might expect to have a sinewy god slither up his torso while he’s trying his best to be very angry. “It matters,” he says finally, decisively.

“If this is a pride thing-”

“Of course it’s a pride thing,” Kurogane snaps, “Why should it not be?”

“It’s not that it shouldn’t be,” Fai says. He takes a moment to straighten out Kurogane’s tunic where he’s pulled and mussed and made a mess. “But if that’s the case, then you really ought to start by examining your strengths.”

“Hah?”

“Your strengths, Kuro-beau,” Fai says again, “Like, for instance-”

“I know, I know,” Kurogane pushes him away before he brings up the shop boys again.

“Yes, but there’s also the family thing too.”

“Family?”

“Yes!” Fai insists, “Just a few years back, they were still awful – leaving their infants out to die if they showed even the smallest bit of weakness.”

“They’re not still doing that?”

“No, they stopped about twenty years back-”

“Idiots.”

“Kuro-brutal,” Fai whines, “The point is, they stopped that right about the time we took Syaoran in.”

Kurogane stares blankly back at him. “And you’re saying it’s because I … what?”

Fai rolls his eyes and clasps his hands around Kurogane’s. “You are the worst god of love to have ever lamented the title, have I told you that?”

Kurogane ignores him. “If that’s true, then maybe what I need to do is-”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Fai agrees and pulls him back toward the shop, “Write it down. But right now if you don’t come back and get horribly shit faced with me, I am going to be very upset.”

“Hold on,” Kurogane stops dead in his tracks, leaving Fai pulling ineffectually at his arm and treading in place on the dusty road. “If what I feel affects what I can do then-”

“Kuro-passionate,” Fai whines. He’s really leaning into his grip on Kurogane’s arm now, and still not gaining any traction, “Just don’t worry about it anymore today, alright?”

“Let’s go,” Kurogane says, and suddenly Fai is the one being dragged through the street. He tightens his grip on Kurogane’s arm and kicks his legs against the gravel to keep up.

“But you’ve never been in love-”

Kurogane isn’t paying attention. It’s a talent he has worked hard to cultivate over the past one hundred years, and while he is not always successful, it helps to be lost in his own thoughts. “It always starts with that stupid stomach flutter.”

“What?”

“And then the idiot doe-eyes.”

“Are you getting this from bad romance scrolls?”

“Shut up and help me make a list,” Kurogane insists. They’ve reached the shop again, where they now have to push their way through the small crowd that’s gathered outside the windows. Fai shouts something about getting a better view for only six pieces of silver, but Kurogane is having none of it and drags him away before he manages to collect a single coin. There’s far more important work to be done here today.

“You’re the boy from this morning, aren’t you?”

“Um, yes,” Syaoran says, feeling an icy chill crawl up his spine. There is something decidedly different about this girl from when they met this morning, and he can’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe it’s the way her hair has settled around its fastenings, so that it catches the sun’s light as it blows just that little bit more in the breeze. Or maybe she’s added some shimmering make up around her eyes – they really do seem to be much more dazzling from this vantage at any rate. Or maybe it’s just that she’s smiling now instead of frowning. He kind of hopes she keeps smiling like that forever.

His stomach dances a little jig inside his abdomen.

Which is odd, because he really shouldn’t be hungry yet.

“I’m Sakura,” the girl says, “I am, ummm…”

“Are you ok?” Syaoran asks worriedly. Sakura’s face has managed to progress from a relatively normal shade to bright red within a matter of seconds, which is usually a sign of heatstroke. “Can I get you some wine? I’ve got a whole cart.”
.
“I, um, sure-”

“Here, come on!” He clumsily grabs her hand and races toward the cart, pointedly ignoring her councilman brother’s complaints.

“Alright,” Kurogane rips a page from Kakei’s ledger amid much protestation from its owner and much eye rolling from Fai, who is still pouting over Kurogane’s outright refusal to have a drink until he’s finished. “So far I’ve got the stomach flutters, the doe eyes, the blushing and gaping – what comes next?”

“Don’t look at me,” Kakei holds his hands up innocently, “It’s been over a hundred years – I can’t remember that far back.”

“That’s the wine,” Saiga grins and drops an arm around Kakei’s shoulder, “Next comes jabbering on like an idiot.”

“It could be the wine,” Kakei says, fanning himself, “I am awful warm. Are you getting warm? Just me? Maybe I should go start collecting a fee from those gawkers up front – they’ve been getting a free show for almost half an hour now.”

Saiga waggles his eyebrows at Kurogane. “But really that’s just to mask the urge to touch each other.”

“Oh yes…” Kakei says slowly and runs a finger up along the fold of Saiga’s tunic, “I remember this…”

“Wait,” Kurogane stops his quill scratching across the parchment to balk back at the two of them, who are staring at one another like they’ve each just met the most fascinating creature in the whole of existence and fidgeting playfully with bits of the other’s clothing and anatomy that are usually reserved for late night trysts in the fields. “You two?”

“Mmm,” Kakei affirms, “It’s been quite a while, though.”

“Kuro-breathless,” Fai says hurriedly, “Don’t you think this is probably all a little bit too sudden? They’re not going to have any idea how to deal-”

“It’s fine,” Kurogane says, “It’s working, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t look that much different from lust, really…” Fai trails off.

“But it feels…” Kakei trails off, “Different, somehow.”

“Alright,” Kurogane dips his quill in the most un-euphemistic way possible and sets back about his parchment, “What’s next?

“Inability to think about anything else.”

“Irrational thought patterns.”

“Acting like a complete idiot with no regard for yourself or others.”

Kurogane snorts at the last addition, “That’s just the wine talking.”

“Here, try this one – it’s diluted three to one with water, so it shouldn’t make you any sicker.” Syaoran makes sure to grab the most ornate amphora he can find with this dilution to pass off to Sakura. Truth be told, he isn’t feeling so hot himself – his face feel hot and swollen, as if most of his blood supply has rerouted itself to fill up his cheeks, and his stomach seems unable to decide whether it is full or empty or hot or cold. Worse, even though he feels feverish, his palms are sweating and so is his back, so it’s even less clear what might be going on. He grabs one of the more potent jars and takes a swig.

“Thank you,” Sakura says. She pours herself a small cupful (Syaoran kicks himself for not thinking to do this – he must look like an uncouth farmboy idiot idiot IDIOT) and takes a sip. “It’s good,” she says quietly. The flush isn’t leaving her cheeks, though, and Syaoran isn’t sure what to make of it.

“You’re still bright red,” he says, and before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s pressed the flat of his palm against her cheek and is running the pad of his thumb up over her brow ridge to check for…

That thing…

With the…

And the…

Fever.

Yes. Fever.

“You’re warm,” he mumbles. Suddenly his tongue is fat, too. Every part of his body seems intent on betraying him.

“So are you,” she says, and turns her face further into the palm of his hand. For a moment she looks like she might run away, but then, slowly, she reaches out to mirror his touch. Her fingers feel like fire against his cheek (which is amazing because his cheeks themselves feel hot enough to burst into flame at any moment). He swallows thickly and takes a step forward-

“Clow above, this is painful to watch.” Fai sighs and stomps irritably to the front of the store to drop a blanket over the two shop boys, who are now both snoring heavily under one of the display tables. He stomps back just as snippily and gracelessly forces himself in between Kakei and Saiga, who have progressed to whispering sweet nothings and rubbing noses in a way that seems to imply something far filthier than simply bumping faces. He fills a glass for each of them and presses it into their hands. “Everyone just needs to have a nice drink and calm down.”

“What is wrong with you?” Kurogane demands. He pauses his scribbling to stare at Fai in confusion. “I thought this was what you wanted? You hauled me all the way over here to get those shop boys going and now that I finally figured out what I need to do, you’re getting all stupid?”

“I’m not getting stupid!” Fai insists, “I just…” his eyes dart from side to side and a sneer pulls at his lip. “I can’t do this,” he finally says. “I’m going home.”

“What the hell?” Kurogane barks. He’s angry, and irrationally so – this sort of flippancy and fickleness is par for the course with Fai, and he knows this full well. They’ve been business partners for the past hundred years and raised a son together – he knows all the ins and out of Fai’s flightiness, and they’ve bickered more than enough over the years for none of this to be surprising. Still, he feels like he’s just been kicked in the chest. One hundred years of trying and failing at being the God of Love and the bastard can’t even act a little impressed when he finally manages to make some headway? Were all those attempts across the years to “help him out” really just set ups to mock him, like earlier today? That cuts deeper than he wants to admit. And he won’t admit it. “Fine, whatever,” he growls instead.

“I’ll see you at home.”

“I thought you wanted to celebrate in town?”

“I’ll see you at home.”

Fai clutches at his chest and hurries out of the store without another word. Kurogane slams his fist down onto the desk. He’s suddenly got a massive headache in addition to feeling like he’s been kicked in the chest. This list of…whatever the hell it was he thought he was doing is only half finished, though, and the longing looks plastered across the faces of the couple still here staring uncomfortably at him are enough to make him acutely aware that he’s started something huge that needs to be followed through on.

But what the hell is he supposed to do now? His head is a swimming with anger and confusion and a million other things that he hasn’t felt in who knows how long. He slams the reed pen back on the desk, then thinks better of this and snaps the damned thing in half.

This would all be so much easier if he could just shoot arrows at people.

“Sakura, I-” He inches closer, hand trembling against her face with each movement.

“Syaoran…” She bites down on her lip in a way that does absolutely nothing to dissuade him from moving closer still.

“Oi!”

They both ignore the angry shouting. Syaoran can’t even tell where it’s coming from at this point – the entirety of the docks seems to be nothing more than a blur around them. It doesn’t matter anyway. There are only the two of them here, in this moment. They are the only two people in the world-

“Get the hell off my sister, you little creep!”

This illusion is broken suddenly and violently by the reappearance of Sakura’s brother and his fists, which do an excellent job of shattering both Syaoran’s confidence and his nose. Syaoran regains his bearings quickly – or at least quickly enough to avoid tumbling into the water – and wipes the back of his hand across his lip. It comes away covered in blood.

“Touya!” Sakura shouts, “It was my fault – don’t hurt him!”

Syaoran isn’t about to get hurt, though (well, he’s not about to get hurt more than he already is), and pulls himself into combat stance. He may not have had much experience with outright brawling, but he’s learned a thing or two about fighting from Kurogane over the years and he can pull it all together if he needs to-

“Syaoran, no!”

There’s something about the way her hands fly to her face in worry as she shouts this that not only tugs at Syaoran’s heart strings, but ties them into several thousand knots. His fists might as well be bolted to his sides. He can’t hurt her brother, much as he might want to, which leaves him in a bit of a bind. Despite his sister’s pleas, it’s clear to everyone on the dock (and quite a few people watching from the shore) that Touya has no intention of allowing Syaoran to walk away unscathed. And so he does the manliest thing he can think of under the circumstances: he runs.

He runs far and runs fast, and doesn’t stop when he reaches the end of the dock. From one boat to the next, it’s only a short jump, and he flies over the gaps with ease. Yamazaki shouts his support from the pier and tosses a few choice gestures in Touya’s direction, which are returned to him with gusto. Touya is hot on Syaoran’s trail, but not gaining – his bigger frame prevents him from launching himself from boat to boat, but his climbing and scrambling skills are proving second to none. At this rate, Syaoran might be able to escape unscathed, but he’s as good as forfeiting the cart and the rest of the deliveries if he does, in which case Kurogane will kill him anyway.

He’s far less afraid of Touya than he is of Kurogane. He doubles back toward where Sakura is still watching the two of them with a horrified look on her face. This gives Touya an advantage, but it’s a chance he’s going to have to take. He’s only meters away now from the cart – the only obstacle left between him and freedom is the barge piled high with food and wine to be floated out and sank as the annual sacrifice to the gods. Touya reaches it first and scrambles to the top of the pile triumphantly. Syaoran slinks to the outer edge of the barge, tiptoeing his way slowly but surefootedly toward the docks.

He’s nearly reached his goal when Touya throws caution to the wind and leaps down from the mountain of sacrificial goods. He dodges left to avoid him, but loses his footing and crashes down onto the deck of the barge and sends a small alter that’s been set up to welcome citizens’ offerings – complete with lighted candles – flying.

For the second time today, Syaoran resolves to stop praying as no one answers his pleas for the candles to miss the barge entirely and land in the water. Instead, they fly directly into the pile of dried herbs and grain at the base of the pile, where they quickly ignite everything around it.

Escaping Touya is no longer the prime directive. Syaoran runs – stupidly, but it’s been a day of not thinking clearly – straight for the flames and spends several long moments attempting to stamp them out, to little avail. To his great and everlasting shock, Touya appears to put their quarrel aside for the moment and joins him in his frenzy of stomping and shouting, also to little avail. The fire spreads to the greater pile in no time.

“The wine on the docks!” Touya shouts and grabs Syaoran by the tunic.

“What?”

“Throw it on the fire!”

Touya is practically dragging him toward the docks. Syaoran clambers to get his feet righted beneath him before he falls headlong off the barge. Touya is right – most of the wine has been diluted to a pleasing drink strength, so if they can reach it in time-

An explosion rocks the barge behind them as a barrel of oil cured olives catches fire. Touya redoubles his grip on Syaoran’s tunic, lifts him bodily from the barge, and tosses him on to the dock.

“Touya!” Sakura shrieks. She’s managed to lift one of the bigger amphorae from the dock and hefts it toward the barge with all of her might, hoping to buy her brother a little time to get himself back to the pier. It smashes around his feet and douses the flames, giving him just the time he needs to leap to safety.

He lands on top of Syaoran and sends them both barreling into the stash of wine.

The shattering of ceramic jars is deafening, the smell of wine over-powering. Dark red seeps into his clothes and drips from his hair, but Syaoran is too thankful that it’s wine and not blood to care. The barge is completely engulfed in flame and all they can do now is stare in horror.

And laugh, apparently, because there is nothing like a near death experience to make everything else in life suddenly seem hilarious. Touya is seemingly of the same mind, and together the two of them howl at the flames like they’ve just been told an exceptionally funny joke.

“What is wrong with you two?” Sakura cries, holding her face in her hands. She’s shaking with fear and anger and barely contained contempt for the masses of people who fled from the docks at the sight of the fire. “How are we going to put this out?” There’s only the three of them left now, and maybe four jars of wine left unbroken that they might toss on the flames.

“It’s on the water,” Touya says, swallowing his laughter down, “It’ll put itself out.”

“But it’s the sacrifice!” she shouts, balling her hands into fists, “What will happen to us?”

“Sakura,” Touya starts, “That’s just a-” His eyes go wide as his voice dies in his throat.

“Just a what?” she demands. Her head snaps around to follow his gaze when she receives no answer. Syaoran follows suit as well.

Dark clouds are gathering rapidly just beyond the shore.

Kurogane stares at his pathetic little outline of love’s progression and snarls. It has always been this way, for him at least. The first few steps are easy, but once the feeling is established…what then? He’d resolved to become strong, so that he wouldn’t be crushed under the feeling himself, but-

Clearly that was proving to be as much of a hindrance as a help, even after one hundred years.

He’ll figure it out in the morning, he decides. For now, he can see visible evidence of his success in Kakei and Saiga and several couples in the street (though that might be the wine…that is always the problem with love). That will have to be good enough. He grunts his goodbyes to the shop keepers and heads for the street, where he is stopped dead in his tracks.

Far off in the distance, a storm is brewing, the likes of which he has not seen for almost a century.

A funny thing about Gods and Sacrifices that most humans refuse to acknowledge is that it’s never really clear where all that stuff goes. Sure, it’s sunk to the bottom of the ocean or burnt to the heavens, but what good is it doing there? And how can one be sure it’s going to whom it’s intended?

The being that emerges from the storm clouds is nothing at all like Syaoran is expecting. Where he is prepared for huge and dark and malevolent, the figure that appears before him is slender and light and strikingly beautiful. His malevolence is still immediately apparent to everyone within hearing distance the instant he opens his mouth.

“I am Yue, messenger of Mount Edonis. Which among you dares to mock the gods?” he demands.

The festival crowd gathered on the shore attempts to flee, rather than answer, tripping over itself and moving in great, surging waves of bodies. Screams ricochet from the surrounding buildings and out over the open water.

The god is unimpressed, and poses his question again. When he still receives no answer, he draws a great wave of wall from the ocean and sends it slamming onto the shore, scattering the people that remain and dragging the unlucky out to sea. Syaoran manages to maintain a hold on the dock, but Sakura’s fingers slip from his grip as the water moves over them.

“Sakura!” he tries to shout, but his screams are drown out by the waves. Yue narrows his eyes and opens his mouth to speak a third time.

“Stop!”

Syaoran’s heart leaps into his throat at the sound of Sakura’s voice. She’s meters away from him, cast out into the open water and barely managing to keep her head afloat. Still, she screams loudly again to catch this Yue’s attention.

“Stop this! It was an accident!”

Yue rounds on her, snapping his wings to their full span. “Accident or not, child, the Largos lurking just beyond your shores must be appeased.”

“Largos?” Sakura asks, then shakes her head heartily, “If you have to blame someone, then blame me! It’s my fault they were fighting, and therefore my fault that the sacrifice was destroyed!”

“Sakura, no!” Syaoran shouts. He can’t believe what he’s hearing – why would she take the blame for-

“Are you saying that these men hold you in higher regard than their duty to the gods?”

“I am saying that I will take responsibility,” she says again.

“If it is true, then I will deem you a suitable substitute,” he says.

“Substitute?” Syaoran and Touya shout in unison.

“Yes,” Yue continues, “Because you have not provided him with sustenance, the Largos will appear on your shores in three days’ time. When he appears, your pitiful city will be ravaged until he is provided with a sacrifice befitting his majesty. Since you are apparently more dear to these mortals than anything else, I shall deem you a worthy substitute.”

“No!” Syaoran shouts, just as Sakura nods in agreement.

“Are you upset by this, little man?” Yue demands, turning his full attention back on Syaoran.

“Yes, of course,” Syaoran stammers, “I mean – surely there must be another way! Something else we could offer!”

“Child, you could offer up the head of Fei Wong himself and it would not appease the Largos unless I deem it worthy.”

“I’ll do it!” he shouts before he realizes what he’s saying.

“Do what?”

“Offer up the head of Fei Wong!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Fei Wong’s head was hidden so that it can never be found.” Yue turns his attention back to Sakura, “Prepare yourself, child. You have three days-”

“I will find it!” Syaoran shouts again, “I’ll find it and bring it back here and I will turn the Largos to stone with it if it will not be appeased!”

Yue turns a suspicious eye back on him. “I don’t have all day to argue with you. Fine. If you can find Fei Wong’s head and if you can manage to bring it back here without turning yourself into a garden fountain I will consider it an acceptable sacrifice. If you should fail, however, the Largos will have the girl, and you will find yourself roasting on the hottest fire in the underworld. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful,” Yue drolls, “I’ll prepare the kindling.” His wings snap wide again as he ascends back to the storm clouds. “Seven days!” he shouts, as if any of them needed a reminder.

Syaoran stares him in the eyes as he disappears once again.

He will find that head, or lose his own trying.

End Book I

( Book II )

[Team Fantasy] (between the devil and the deep blue sea) Slash of the Titans

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