Eight;

[Tiphon]

BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING
OF MOVING ON

It doesn’t shock him to see Eight amid the chaos. He knows his grandfather, has heard his burly voice above the silence in the Valley. Their meeting had been brief, lackluster, but Tiphon’s curiosity is piqued in this moment as their world is reborn. The jagged peaks that outlined the Valley and Dale have merged and shifted. The Deserts have been flooded and likely destroyed, but what has been spared in this turmoil? Tiphon spares a sideways glance to the trees towering above them noting how they groan with the strong winter gusts. With the world eating itself the seasons have also shifted and he wonders how much life will be impacted.

”We’re normal,” he says it almost painfully when the distance between them closes. Eight, although still with wings perched from his shoulder blades, lacks his finesse and horn; Tiphon can only assume that he has also undergone the same transformations. What halo had once surrounded him has dulled and he can no longer phase into their world. All that remains are wings, but even those are foreign. Tiphon peers back at them, his eyes reduced to narrow slits. It’s as though he has been tossed into another body, stripped of everything he has ever known. It’s frightening; the uncertainty of it all grips and chokes him, but he does well to mask it. His face his stern, his eyes searching. ”Shit has officially hit the fan,” a drawn out breath expels from his lungs not in defeat, but in concern. Their homes, their friends, their families; where are they and what happened?

Their eyes meet for the first time in years, except now they are equals (but can a grandfather and grandson ever be equals?) and stand in front of each other with nothing to display, no powers to behold. For the first time in their lives, they are normal, they are just Eight and Tiphon.

TIPHON

STARLACE AND INFECTION

@[hanna]

[Eight]

no matter what they say, I am still the king

How strange it is that two souls from the same bloodline could be so very different. How an angel could have sprung forth from a demon – how the paths they chose were so very different. But isn’t that how it always goes? Infection and Elysha had been so very different – a golden girl and a darkened monster. Perhaps you, Tiphon, had inherited the very pure silk that rode through Moose (similar to Elysha) – perhaps the oozing black oil of death that Infection had obtained from Eight chose to spare you. Perhaps it would always be this way in the bloodline of Eight.
And yet- does this change things? The rift of the lands, the merging of light and dark and sister and brother – the cleansing of the magic in the land. Perhaps there would no longer be a “good” and “evil” – perhaps the monsters in our blood would finally stay boiled down to brittle bone. You are no longer an angel, and Eight is no longer a demon.
He sees you approach, braced against the harsh winter wind – it’s astonishing how real life feels when you are mortal. The magic has drained from you as well – the shimmering aura, the ability to walk into the land of the dead. Much like Eight, the atmosphere around you is different. There is no longer magic floating like light beams around you – you are simply Tiphon.
“Feels strange, does it not?” Also strange is how time can pass, years and thrones and raids and death – and yet grandfather and grandson remain the same. There were few ties the two of you had, few interactions (for life has deemed you both on a different path) – and yet there is no falsity in saying blood is thicker than water. There would never be a time to deny that no matter what, the connection between you two never frayed.
“That it has.” Eight’s eyes roamed the meadow about them – usually barren in the heart of winter, it is now thrumming with homeless equines. “Things seem to be starting to find a place, though.” He is, of course, talking about the recreation of the misted lands – the petitioning to rebuild a home, rebuild Beqanna.

∞

and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in

@[Tiphon]

[Tiphon]

BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING
OF MOVING ON

When Tiphon was young – before the immortality masked him in youth – he had sought out Eight wanting answers. He wanted to hear that his grandmother wasn’t a fling, he wanted to know that in his grandfather there was the ability to truly love. What he hungered for was the knowledge that Eight wasn’t as dark as Infection, as hostile and empty. The conversation was left hanging and Tiphon gained nothing more than a glimpse of his bloodlines.

Much time has elapsed since then – decades, but it flies like centuries – and Tiphon no longer has that boyish curiosity. With immortality there is no sense to truly love because everyone always leaves either by death or by the tapestry being unwound. That’s at least what Tiphon had told himself as a child, but he has since loved and lost. His heart is far larger than what it once was, but it has trembled beneath his losses and has raced in worry for those he cares for. He looks at Eight as though he has the answers, as though he can instill in Tiphon’s mind how feeble and temporary love actually is. For this he has cursed his immortality and has wished for a normal life span, but now that it has been drained he wants it back.

”It’s weird,” he mutters, discontent, with eyes that stare curiously up at Eight, ”and wrong.” Greed had plagued them and yet Tiphon still deems himself innocent, but in this moment, he considers whether he has taken advantage of what he is, of what he can do. His jaws clench thoughtfully, agitated, and he listens to the gravelly voice of his grandfather. He speaks of promise, of recreation and acquisition, but when Tiphon looks down his palms are barren. ”My family,” would it be Eight’s as well? ”is gone. The Dale is gone.” Being a guardian has sunken its claws into his mind, twisting and molding Tiphon into a machine for only one kingdom, for only one purpose.

Without it he is nothing. He has no purpose.

He blinks and the sinew beneath his coat coils. ”How do you detach so easily and move on?” Moose, the Valley, countless other women and children. They all have connections to Eight, fawn over Eight, and yet the (former) magician lives at his own whim. Nothing pins him to the floor. Even without magic Eight is powerful.

TIPHON

STARLACE AND INFECTION

@[Eight]

[Eight]

HOLY NOVEL. Sorry, I have no idea what happened here.

no matter what they say, I am still the king

The things we ache for when we are young – such viscous and fickle things. What had Eight pined for? He could not remember. He had never known love as a child – his mother cast him off when his first inkling of magic strained into his veins. She had shirked him when she realized that he was dark and callous like his father. And then? I suppose he ached for acceptance. He wanted a place in life, and the Dewdrop Deserts was clearly not in. He wanted a mother like figure, one to nourish his spindly legs and watch his might and magic grow. Instead, he got Gallows and her army of misfit children. Instead, he got the Chamber. Instead, the years passed by and he spent his time getting fucked up and fleeing and living no real life. Instead, he forgot all that he wanted, all that he was.
And now? Well, now you know what it’s like, Tiphon – to live forever. You know what it feels like to watch wrinkles caress the face of your lover, to watch your children perish before you, to see your fellow kingdom dwellers and friends fall to the hands of death. Now you know that love is a meager hope when your days are unlimited – now you know that there comes a time when the heart can hold nothing more, when feelings simply drip like the trickle of rain from hanging leaf.
Was Eight as dark as his son? Who was to say, truly? Once upon a time, Eight reveled in the idea of evil - in being something feared and forsaken. Now, Eight was content as is – he had spent his time wreaking havoc, fucking pretty women, fleeing the world when he saw fit. Now, Eight simply lived, day in and day out – much like you.
It is peculiar how the grass always seems greener. How when we have a gift, it can feel like a curse. Isn’t it though, Tiphon? You beautiful angel, you halo maker – you were distraught with the decades of loss and lifetimes you have seen go by. You burned for the chance to feel real - to scar and wither and wrinkle and ache like all the others. And now it is gone. Now you are one of the others – perfectly, absolutely, normal. You could find a lover and make her swoon; grow old with her in the concaves of the land. You could see your children grow from doe eyed innocents into a blood line of all your own, and you will not outlive them. But now you can taste the clawing grasp of mortality, you want to back away (in fear? In distaste? In the fact of knowing that this isn’t where you should be?).
“Wrong does not necessarily stay forever.” And how true was that? How many times had Beqanna been bereft with turmoil, with war, with ages of silent living? She always kept turning, her years stretching and grasping for something new. This wrongness, this awkward feeling of not quite right - perhaps in time She would recant all this too, stretch another golden cloth before her children and welcome them back into her arms – their magic and angelic arcs would become theirs once again.
“Everything is gone.” He repeats your words, and they are stark and loud in the filmy silence of winter. But maybe this wasn’t quite completely true. What had Eight had that was even worth keeping? The Valley was his lover, but you cannot keep a lover around when they want to be gone. And so she had left him, snatched up and run away with the magic of Beqanna. Could Eight fault Her for that? Could he be so angered that the thing he had spent most time with (when he so often left so much behind) – had finally left him?
“And now you are lost. Now you are not so sure what – who – where you are.” Eight spoke the words solidly, because he knew. Eight had been there so long ago – a young magician, apt to live forever, drunk on his own power. He did not know who he was, because he could be – was – everything, anyone, anywhere.
How odd to be having such a (perhaps intimate?) conversation with you. For decades you and Eight were shadow and sun, always glancing off of one another but never truly touching. It seems it takes a reckoning to bring the bloodline back together. You finally have a chance to question the once magician king – you finally have the breath for answers you have wanted so badly. But does Eight have them? Can any man truly look deep enough inside himself for that form of truth?
The question catches Eight slightly off guard – he had never thought himself as one that could so easily detach, but it was starkly true. He never stayed in one place for long – although he guarded the Valley, he spent much of his time away from it, using only his magic to tie him to the Valley and call him back. He had laid with plenty of women, sired children, even created some form of friendships – but nothing stuck, he never stayed.
“I am not you, Tiphon.” As the words spilled from his mouth, the reality of how very different their blood ran. How interesting it was that their lineage held such a drastic measure of light versus dark. ”It seems you have inherited your grandmother’s blood more than my own. It is both a pity, a curse, and a gift.” Eight looks deeply into your eyes, for perhaps the first time in the decades you have been known to him, and indeed he sees the golden angel inside of you. “I do not detach, because I cannot attach to begin with. It is both a pity, a curse, and a gift.”

∞

and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in

[Tiphon]

BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING
OF MOVING ON

Tiphon wanted – needed – the truth and yet he flinches as the words scald him. His eyes shut and his head turns down as though ashamed, but he knew; he has always known how different he is from his grandfather. Although bound eternally by blood their minds couldn’t be more contrasting and so polar. Eight is the darkness to Tiphon’s light, the yin to his yang. And yet somehow there is a magnetic pull and they so often find themselves meeting, if only briefly. Their fates are so deeply intertwined despite hardly being present in one another’s lives.

And yet being so different Tiphon can’t help but wonder if he will one day mold into the image of his grandfather where love is such a feeble thing, a fleeting feeling lost by time. This immortality that they’ve both grasped so tightly has left their bodies and has made it possible to savor the touches of a woman and the smile of a child, but it’s in this moment they realize how debilitating it is. With the blessing is a curse; with the rose there is always a thorn. For decades Tiphon fought the urge to love, to care, because he was above them all, but his heart quivered and he tumbled blindly into it. He doesn’t regret it – he never could – but he regrets how he has treated this deep-hearted love. Immortality has turned years into a mere blink of an eye. When he melts away from their embrace he thinks it has only been one season, maybe two, but then he sees his children grown and new generations beginning.

He wishes he couldn’t attach, like Eight, but he is too far gone.

When Tiphon’s eyes are closed he sees the Dale and he sees Talulah and Elysteria. They’re smiling at him and although his heart craves them he only thinks of the thousands of ways he has disappointed them because immortality has destroyed the importance and delicacy of time. Without immortality he would have held them longer, loved them more, left them less.

It is a pity, a curse, and a gift.

The words are deafening. Tiphon grimaces upon hearing them, but he agrees with a silent nod. ”I need to be like you,” he lowly mumbles as though ashamed to admit this, ”but I feel like it’s too late.” His gilded eyes lift with his head until he is level with his grandfather, searching his gaze and wanting to delve deep into his mind, to understand the mechanic workings of it and so see the churning wheels. ”But I wonder how dark the world is when you’re unable to love.”

TIPHON

STARLACE AND INFECTION

@[Eight]