TW: Alternate Universe, Magic and demons

  Rythian scowled at the door.
Why had they tried to cage him again? It hadn't worked the first time.
Rythian raised one hand, open palm turned towards the door. He summoned his magic, feeling the static power run through his veins, down to his fingertips, and -
And dissipate in the air like morning fog.
Rythian tried again, feeling the rush as it raced through him, flooding through his veins down to his outstretched hand. He held it there for a moment, gathering static until his palm flickered like a glitching screen, and released it.
What should have been a crackle of purple light came out instead as a puff of foul-smelling smoke, fading away before he could recover.
"It's not going to work."
He spun around, magic crackling through his hands on instinct. The speaker was standing in the doorway to what appeared to be a kitchen.
She looked tired, as though this had happened too many times now. Her short, uneven red hair was wet, a small towel around her shoulders to catch the dripping water.
"You're not the first to try," she told him.
"Who are you?" He asked her cautiously, the static dissipating from his palms.
"Oh!" She seemed to brighten at this. "I'm Zoey! I'm a super-duper cool mage like you, too. I have the most awesome kind of magic."
Rythian narrowed his eyes warily. "That would be...?"
Zoey laughed a little, but her voice was humorless. "I cancel all magic out. All of it, no exceptions."
"You shouldn't be able to cancel mine," he growled, trying to summon up the faintest hint of comforting purple light. "I am Rythian, the endermage - I pull power from another world. My magic never runs out."
"It has to cross over to this world to have any effect, right?" Zoey said cheerily. "So the instant it does that, it poofs. Kaput. Dead as a dead thing."
"How?" Rythian growled, turning on her in an instant. "Just stop using magic, then!"
"Oh - ah, sorry," she said quickly, ducking past him and plopping into an armchair. "I can't. It's one of those neutral magics, right? The ones that kinda happen whether or not you want them to?"
"Of course it is," he snapped, running hands through his hair, feet following habits and pacing over the rug and the creaky wooden floor.
"Are you - alright?" Zoey asked him after a few minutes. She'd been watching him curiously, as if waiting for him to break.
"No!" He snarled at her, all fury and red-hot anger and too-wide jaw for a second too long. Then, remembering himself, he seemed to draw back, growing shorter, lighter, more human.
She flinched in surprise. Of course, she was used to this, the fluctuations of mages' power, but his was different, more feral.
"Sorry," Rythian said, the word heavy and unused in his mouth. "It's just... I can't stay here. I have to keep moving."
"Well, unless you can bend metal with your bare hands - which would be super cool by the way - then you can't get out." She smiled at him, her tone cheery despite the words. "I've tried."
"Why would you want to escape?" He asked, his pacing slowing to a halt as he stared at her.
"I'm the same boat as you," Zoey told him. "Captured. Jailed. Y'know, I've kinda been wanting to start a band, but they only let one person in here at a time. Can you play?" She turned bright eyes on him, ridiculously hopeful eyes.
"I've never had the time," Rythian growled. "If I don't keep moving, they'll catch up."
"Well, whoever they are," Zoey said hopefully, "I'm sure we can scare them off if we play loudly enough."
"I don't play," he said flatly, his anger draining away and leaving only a hollow gap in its wake.
"Oh." The redhead seemed momentarily crushed by this, but after a moment she brightened again. "Well, do you have any stories? I've memorized all the books I have, and the hunters won't give me more."
Hunters? Rythian glanced up at her in surprise. That slang for the kingdom's under-the-radar workers was old and stale. How long had Zoey been here?
"Sorry, is there a new thing I'm missing?" She seemed to take his stunned silence as hostility, apologizing immediately. "It's been a long time since they last dumped a mage in here. I was starting to wonder if I was the last."
Rythian shook his head. "It's fine," he said quickly, "and as for the mages, we're almost the last. I'm sure there are more out there, but I haven't found any in several years."
"What are they like?" Zoey asked eagerly, sitting forward to look at him properly. "I've only met ones once they're in here, and they're either terrified, angry, or immediately try and kill me." She shrugged, as if she'd already accepted this as common mage behavior.
"The last time I saw one, it was a meeting that had taken a year of prearranging. He was terrified," Rythian admitted, and sighed. "His name was Xephos. His only power was the ability to open tiny rips in the world through which light could come through. He'd been pursued for years simply because he could light up the world."
"That's awful," Zoey said, voice hushed in horror, "but I'm sure that's not what it's like for everyone, right?"
"It was for me," he told her wearily. He sank onto the chair behind him, staring at the ceiling. "I tore open an escape route in the fabric of the world whenever they got close to me. It hurts, you know " he added lightly, "to enter a world you don't belong in. Especially if you're closer to that world than you should be."
"And you are?" She asked quietly, as if he'd suddenly become an animal that might bite her.
"Far too close," he muttered. "But that's a story for - not for now."
"For when?" Zoey pressed.
"For never, if I'm lucky," Rythian told her bitterly. "I've spent my life running. I can't stop now, not to tell a story as long as that one."
"If we get out," Zoey began, and Rythian noticed the way she said we, not I or you, "I'll come with you. You can tell me the story while we run."
Rythian sighed. "If you can get us out before the monsters of that story come to kill me, I'll tell you everything, starting with them."
"Well." She grinned then, her smile mischievously wide. "I'll just have to try my hardest, won't I?"
Rythian thought to himself that her smile looked so much better on her than her frown.

~~~~~~~~~~~

  "I'm going to miss you." Zoey's voice was so quiet, her eyes focused on the pages of her book as she spoke.
Rythian looked up from his drawing. "Miss me?" He asked.
"Yeah." She refused to meet his gaze, staring at the page even though it's clear she's not reading. "When you go."
"When I go where?" He frowned at her. "When we escape?"
"You'll give in, I know it," she told him. "They take everybody in the end."
"The mages?" Rythian didn't understand what she was talking about at all, but he was willing to let her keep going.
"The last one was called Parvis," she told him quietly. "He could twist blood to his will." She shuddered, and Rythian almost growled at the thought of someone hurting her.
"When did he go?" He asked her.
"They wait for you to snap. If a mage is shown to be in control of their magic, they still have human rights," she said sadly, letting him fill in the rest.
Rythian knew that already. He'd lost those rights a long time ago.
"Most of the mages they put here go feral after being caged, after being forced into a normal routine. They lash out at me - and when they do, they automatically forfeit their rights."
Rythian understood. When the rule had been put in place it had seemed like a good idea, to prevent those with power hurting those who had none. As soon as a mage used their magic to harm another, they were regarded as an animal by the law. They could be caged, tested, put down if the law thought it necessary.
"It doesn't make sense for me to be here, then," he said to Zoey. "My magic has hurt so many people already."
She shrugged. "They like to watch the mages, sometimes, leave them in here so they can study their habits without magic. I'm like a pet to them, kept in a cage and given friends every now and then.
"Some mages are too powerful for them to contain, too. I had someone called Lying in here a long time ago -" she shivered as she said the name, clearly not wanting to remember, "and they came in here to test them. The poor thing couldn't fight without their magic."
Rythian looked at her curiously. "So they leave me here because if they let me out, they have no guarantee that I wouldn't just run away."
"They'll get you in the end," Zoey told him, defeated. "I don't know who they are, and I never have, but they always take everyone away."
Rythian didn't miss the way she curled up at her own words. It hurt him to see her so afraid, especially when he had no idea if he could promise anything.
Hell, he wouldn't let them hurt her again.
"I won't let them take me away," he told her gently.  

~~~~~~~~~~~  

  "Have you ever picked a lock before?" Rythian viewed her critically from his place upside down on the chair, legs slung over the back and book by his side.
"I'll get it eventually," Zoey said, ever optimistic. She pulled a second hair pin from behind her ear, sliding it into place beside the first one and adjusting it in tiny increments. She moved until her ear was pressed against the wooden door, listening intently.
She was so concentrated that Rythian couldn't help but smile. He'd been here nearly two weeks, and though he could feel boredom fast approaching, he came to like Zoey more and more.
With her distracted, he could search freely. Her magic weakened by a fraction when she was busy with something else.
Rythian reached out, searching with the tiniest thread of magic for anything out of place. He couldn't feel the shadows yet; with luck, they'd hold off for a while this time.
Zoey hissed in frustration as the makeshift lock pick snapped. It was at least her sixth attempt of the day, because she'd try once, get mad and do something else, then come back.
With her attention no longer held by something else, Rythian could feel her magic settle back over him like a blanket, suffocating the tiny strand of magic he'd managed to summon.
"Sorry, were you doing something?" Zoey turned curious blue eyes on him. Despite not being able to control her magic, she was more aware of it than most; when she blocked someone else's magic, she could tell, even if she couldn't stop it.
"Can you help it?" Rythian rolled onto his stomach and studied her intently.
"Help what?" Rythian had been thinking aloud when he'd said it, but maybe she actually could.
"Your magic," he answered. "In the days before we were endangered, a few mages with neutral power - like you - managed to gain some control over it."
"You mean I can stop it?" The hair pins were abandoned on the floor as Zoey scooted on her butt to sit in front of him. "How?"
"I don't know," Rythian said, "and not completely. It's different for you and me. I never had to practice stopping my magic, it just stays where it is until I call it. For you, it's backwards."
"So it stays here until I can send it away?" Apparently the concept of suppressing her power was new to Zoey, judging by the hope in her wide, shining eyes.
"Probably," was Rythian's reply. "Can you feel it?"
She scrunched up her nose in concentration. "Kind of," she said after a moment. "It's like something that kinda attached itself to me, a long time ago. I don't know, it's just weird," she added, and shrugged.
"Push it away." Rythian watched for her response, wishing silently he'd payed more attention to those neutral mages he'd seen so many of when he was little.
Her face furrowed in concentration - Adorable, Rythian thought faintly - and suddenly, the dense blanket was lifted up and away.
Rythian was so startled by the movement of the heavy magic that he forgot to try using his. Neutral magics were supposed to be the most difficult, most draining of powers to control, and here was a single girl, shifting her magic on the first go.
Zoey would have been immensely powerful, had she been born with innate magic rather than this magic-proof sheet over her head. It scared Rythian to think of what she could've done with that power.
Zoey dropped the magic clumsily, heavily, like something that suddenly weighed much more than she expected. She stumbled forwards, reaching for him, head dipping forwards and eyes unfocused.
Rythian caught her instinctively, leaping up to grab her arms and pull her against him. She was mumbling under her breath, babbling words without meaning.
When he leaned down to listen, all Rythian could make out was a rush of heavy missing gone heavy hurt. He shushed Zoey gently, pressing her against him and holding her there, whispering into her hair until his voice and his warmth overpowered hers and lulled her into silence.
"I'm okay now," she said after a long while, voice shaky and not okay but strong. "I promise."
"If you promise, I guess I can believe you," Rythian said as he released her, his voice warmed by the hint of laughter Zoey loved to hear.
She walked in an unsteady circle, her legs wobbling dangerously. She grinned at him from across the room, arms shakily spread as if to prove a point.
Rythian smiled again, eyes soft with concern, and helped her into her bedroom. They both knew how she'd exhausted herself so; magic as heavy as hers drained physical strength as well as mental strength.
"When you wake up, I'll cook something for you," Rythian told her. "So just call for me, okay?"
"Rythian," Zoey said, snuggling beneath the fuzzy blankets he'd piled on top of her, "thank you."
The sound of those words was so foreign to his ears that he had to stop and recall their meaning, as if they belonged to a language he hadn't spoken in years.
When the meaning registered, he tried to recall the appropriate response.
"Of course," Rythian told her.  

  ~~~~~~~~~~~ 

  Rythian had long since gotten used to the fluctuations in the haze between him and his magic. It was a month after his arrival, and Zoey was finally getting the hang of lifting her magic without destroying herself.
She was sitting sideways on the other kitchen stool, feet in his lap and face scrunched up in the way it always did when she concentrated. Even buried deep in his book, Rythian felt the way her magic thinned and flickered, growing heavier in spots and lighter in others.
He was pulled out of the story as a something registered in the back of his mind, faintly threatening and too-familiar.
Rythian shot upright, almost tipping Zoey off her chair with the movement. Desperately he used the thin gaps in Zoey's magic to search fearfully for the nightmare he felt encroaching.
"Rythian?" Zoey broke into his thoughts as the blanket settled back, distracted from her practice by his panic.
"Lift it," he hissed, fear flicking in his voice like static, ignoring the way she flinched at the noise. "Now."
And instantly Zoey forced herself against it, lifting the comforting weight that she'd come to hate in the past month. She gritted her teeth and braced herself against the chair, prepared to hold it until she passed out.
And suddenly there was something there, a something that crackled into being, the universe screeching and kicking as the something dragged itself into existence in Zoey's kitchen.
It felt wrong, felt wrong to every part of Zoey, to have a thing like this moving underneath her magic, but she forced herself to hold it, eyes fixed upon Rythian, pleading, begging.
Rythian looked at her, and he took a deep breath.
His blue irises were stained purple, the color spreading like ink in water, leaking out of his eyes and his hands and his mouth. Had he always been this tall? His dark skin grew darker still as he seemed to loom and fill the room, matching the something's height inch to inch.
And then he lunged, palms bright with what Zoey could only think was magic, and he grabbed at the creature's throat, tearing at it with his bare hands.
Zoey couldn't look away as the shadow-skin-smoke parted easily beneath his elongated fingers, dark purple blood dripping onto the floor as Rythian screamed static and pulled, pulled at something in its throat. It came loose with a disgusting snap, sending Rythian flickering and tumbling backwards.
Zoey felt herself sink under the weight of her magic, felt it crush her mind and swallow her senses. She reached emptily for Rythian, hands outstretched, and pitched forward off her chair.

Rythian flinched at the way his magic shut off abruptly. The green stone in his palm shimmered, dripped purple blood onto the white tiled floor, and burst into a cloud of sparkling dust.
Zoey hit the floor with a thump that made Rythian cry out, scrambling through the mess of blood, smoke, and dust littering the floor. He grabbed her limp body, pulling her head onto his lap, pushing hair out of her face and listening intently for her heartbeat.
"Thank you, Zoey," he said softly to her. He gathered her up carefully in his arms, too conscious of his height and his short limbs.
Rythian carried her to her room, and lay her down upon the blue bed. He smiled at her, at what she'd done to unknowingly save him, and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.
When he returned to the kitchen, the body of the shadow-smoke creature was gone, leaving only a few drops of lazily glowing purple blood and a mess of green dust.
Rythian hated the way the blood stung his fingertips, the way the powder stuck to him as if bonded to his skin. He had to resist the urge to swallow the dust, to devour it as the monsters had done; to do so would make him one of them, completely and without a way back.

When he was done cleaning, he returned to Zoey's room with a book to sit and wait.    

    ~~~~~~~~~~~ 

"Rythian."
It was the calling of his name, sweet and kind and gentle in a way it had never been said before, that woke him.
"Zoey?" Rythian blinked, rubbing sleep out of bleary eyes. "How long have you been up?"
"I should be asking you, buster," she said, but she was grinning at him. "Why'd you fall asleep in the chair? You have your own room, as always."
"Too cold, too far away," he said, shaking his head. "I have to protect you."
"You -" and here Zoey tilted dangerously on unsteady legs before rightening herself, "- need to watch out for yourself."
"Zoey, Christ, sit down," Rythian said, rising immediately as he saw how weak she still was.
"Can't," she said, "I need to practice. You need to be able to fight."
"I'm more concerned about you," Rythian said, steering her back towards her bed. Her resistance was so feeble that it only worried him more. "I can survive a few of those things without magic. You can't."
"Gotta help you," she protested, but Rythian could tell her mind was wandering.
"You will," he told her, "when you wake up."
Rythian stayed beside her till she fell asleep. He worried about her - he worried about worrying about her - until it made him feel nauseous.
How was it that he'd become so hopelessly entangled in this entity called Zoey? Rythian couldn't recall an end or a beginning; somewhere along the way, she'd slid from enemy to friend to everything.
When they spoke of leaving, they said we and us. There was no more I or you, just a them that would inevitably flee together, fight together, live or die together.
When they got out, Rythian would take up an instrument. Guitar, violin, flute or piccolo or even an accordion, simply because Zoey wanted to play together but he had no idea how.
An accordion would be fun. It would be absolutely ridiculous, Rythian knew, and that's why Zoey would love it.
When did he start thinking of this? Thinking of ways to make Zoey happy, ways to hear her laugh, ways to see that brilliant smile and bright blue eyes.
How would they get out? At first, it had been the only thing on Rythian's mind, but somewhere in the last couple of weeks it had slipped away. His normal escape route wasn't suitable for Zoey; she'd be ripped to shreds if she tried.
He'd have to discuss it with her when she woke up. She couldn't leave without his help, and he couldn't leave without her.

Zoey woke for a second time, much more peacefully this time. She'd been worried, last time, that Rythian had stayed dark and tall and angry. It had been unspeakably relieving to wake up and find him waiting, like always, for her.
This time, she woke to the smell of fresh air and toast and coffee. She woke to Rythian humming some tune horribly off key, the sound of clattering dishes and a fridge door opening.
He came into view, smiling at the song only he knew and carrying a tray from the kitchen into the living room.
"That better be my breakfast," Zoey called as he passed. There was a clatter and he reappeared in her doorway, the contents of the tray askew but his face bright.
"No, it wasn't," he said, "but it is now."
Rythian rushed into her room, abandoning the tray on the side of the bed to wrap his arms around her and pull her close.
"Hugging," Zoey said, startled, "hugging's new. Good. Sure." She linked her hands behind his back, weirded out by the alien sensation but comforted by his warmth. She was aware that he did this when she shifted her magic too much, but it was different then, physical support rather than - this.
"You've been asleep for two days," Rythian told her, not moving. "I was worried you wouldn't wake up."
He withdrew, expression carefully neutral, and placed the tray in her lap. "Eat," he said, and headed back towards the kitchen.
Rythian returned with a second breakfast - half of which he made Zoey eat - and sat in the chair he'd dragged in from the living room. He spoke with her, telling her off and laughing with her and saying all the thousand thoughts clearly bottled inside his head.
"What was the shadow?" Zoey finally cut in to ask, when it seemed his words would find no end.
Rythian fell still at once, mouth silent and eyes averted. "I'm about to tell you a story," he said at last, the words slow to follow each other, reluctant for the next syllable to form.
Zoey nodded.
And he told her a story, a story like she'd never heard before.
Rythian spoke of an endermage, consumed with hate, storming through human villages and ripping them to shreds with the aid of the creatures on his heels. He spoke of a man, running scared from demons he couldn't escape. He spoke of human emotion, of fear leading to anger and rage and resentment.
He spoke of another world, where black rock stretched to the sky in pillars and shadows swirled over yellowed stone. He spoke of creatures with pearls in their throats, of magic running through a mage's veins, of static, and pain, and hate borne of fear.
And when the story finished, it was an awkward stop; the story didn't have an end yet, the demons weren't expelled, the man was still running.
"I'm sorry," Zoey said faintly in the silence that fell.
"Why?" Rythian looked at her curiously. "It wasn't your fault."
"No," she said, "and that just makes it worse."
Bemused, Rythian picked up the trays and the dishes and brought them back to the kitchen. He helped Zoey to the living room, settling her in a chair before disappearing into his room.
She could hear him through the wall, muttering to himself. The sound of his footsteps were even but hurried; he was pacing, she just knew it. When he returned, almost an hour later, his expression was curiously blank and his voice flat.
"We need to escape," he said. "More so than ever."
"Because of the End creature?" Zoey asked quietly. She knew she could never admit to knowing how worried he was, and could never ask him why.
"Yes" he said, "and after one, more will come."
She frowned. "How did you get away in the past? You said you ran through dimensions, right?"
Rythian nodded. "You'd die if we tried that. That world's not in your blood."
Zoey giggled at that. "Open the door, dummy. Just go around and open the door."
"Guards," he answered shortly, expression stone cold. "I'd need at least five to ten minutes to get out, and you can't last that long."
"Then go," she urged him. "Run. Come back when I can get away too."
"No!" Rythian responded violently, eyes flashing purple for the briefest of moments. "No," he repeated, his voice tight. "I won't leave you."
"It's, what, a nearly full moon tonight? Give me two full moons, come back at precisely midnight. I'll lift it for you, so you can come in."
"Zoey, I won't," he insisted. "I just said I'm not leaving without you."
"Then do you have a better idea?" She insisted. "This way, we can both get out."
"I won't," Rythian said flatly. "I'll think of something, okay? So, please just - don't talk about me leaving you behind?"
Zoey frowned at him. "Okay," she said quietly. "I still say it's our best option."
"It's not even an option," he growled under his breath, hating how crippled she'd made him without even trying.
"Then I'll just keep practicing," she said, defeat merely an undertone in her bright voice. "So we can escape together."
Rythian only nodded.

It wouldn't work.
Rythian knew that when he paced his room, on the oval rug Zoey had dragged in just so he could pace on it and not ruin the carpet.
It had only taken a month for the first one to show up. He'd put up a bold front, but the next one would arrive within a week, and he doubted he could fight it off.
Zoey's magic kept them off, but they would just gather around the barrier and wait. They had an eternity, after all. As soon as she lifted it a fraction, they would swarm in like pests.
Rythian needed to go. That was obvious. If he stayed, it would doom them both.
And yet he couldn't just leave her here, trapped, without knowledge of who or where or why. He had to help her escape, as best he could in this hopeless situation.
He could - no, she'd murder him if he tried.
But he could try regardless.  

~~~~~~~~~~~   

Two days later, Zoey awoke to silence.
Was it that early? There was no smell of morning coffee, no clink of dishes, no toast or breakfast or anything besides her table.
She rose nervously, trying to ignore the sense of impending doom. The clock in the kitchen read eight forty-three. Rythian normally woke up at half-past six.
Perhaps he'd slept in. It wasn't impossible - though it had only happened once so far. Zoey crept through her too-silent house to his room.
The door was open.
There was no Rythian.
She called out to him then, loudly and hopelessly. She listened, for hurrying footsteps, for his voice answering in kind, for anything but her own voice ringing off the walls.
He'd left her.
And as glad as that made her, it hurt. He'd said he wouldn't go. He'd told her that he couldn't leave without her, and yet he'd gone.
Zoey spent the day in his room, dozing in his blankets. They smelled of him, and she could almost believe she was hiding, that he'd come and yell at her and tell her to go back to her own bed. She could giggle and roll off the bed and steal all his blankets. She could see the rug on his floor and think that he'd come pace on it if she asked him a really tricky question.
She fell asleep sometime in the night, amid tears and her own howling for him to come back to her.
"Zoey?" It was her name that woke her in the morning, coming from her living room.
She jolted up, awake in an instant. "Rythian!" She cried, scrambling out of the bed and bursting into the living room.
"No, not Rythian," the man said simply.

He was blond, and tall but not as tall as Rythian. He wore an open lab coat over a purple shirt and jeans. "My name is Lalna," he said, smiling at her gently. "I'm part of the Inquisition, which you've been helping over the course of the last ten years or so."
"Where's Rythian?" She asked him, voice ice cold and fists balled in fury.
"Don't worry," the man told her, "he's safe. And while I'm not at leisure to disclose his location, he is there of his own will."
"What did you do to him?" Zoey demanded, advancing on Lalna and wishing more than ever she had innate magic power, rather than this heavy blanket.
"Nothing," Lalna said simply. "I'm here on - well, on his behalf, really."
Zoey angrily threw herself into a chair. "Then start talking."
He swallowed. "Two days ago, at around three in the morning, he knocked on the door. He said he would submit to the Inquisition, but he had a condition. He requested an audience.
"Naturally, we granted him one. He said he would let us run tests, he'd comply to our every whim - he'd be our lab rat in return for one thing."
"What?" Zoey asked. "What did he want?"
"Your freedom," Lalna answered plainly. "He wanted us to release you. He gave us a location, and told us we owed you a year without hunting you down again."
"You talk like I'm an animal," she growled, half rising from her chair. "Releasing me into the wild and capturing me again."
"You are," Lalna told her, and dug in his pockets for a letter. "Here. This was to be given to you, unopened. We allowed him to seal it with magic so you knew it hadn't been looked at yet."
Zoey grabbed it, holding it against her chest. "When am I being allowed out?" She asked, voice soft and dangerous.
"A week," was the answer, emotionless as everything else. "You'll be put to sleep, and an armed escort will bring you to the agreed location and leave you there, unmonitored. You'll be given supplies and a map."
"Good," she said. "Now get out."
Lalna went, and Zoey was left with only her icy fury and an unopened letter.  

  ~~~~~~~~~~~ 

  The legends that spoke of the purple-eyed man and his following of demons were fading.
Sometimes, Zoey requested them from the storytellers in bars, in inns, from the travelers she found on dusty weather-beaten roads. When she began her journey, everyone knew of whom she spoke. Fearsome, they called him, wild. An unknown man who evaded all capture and left only devastation in his wake.
If they knew of him, she'd ask them if they knew where he was. The ones that had any answer to give her only said that the Inquisition had taken him away, and he had not been seen since.
When most said they had no idea of his whereabouts, she'd ask them what stories they had to tell. She heard wild tales, tales of a godlike man enchanting maidens and stealing them away to his hidden palace; tales of a monster who stormed through the streets and left only chaos in his wake.
Zoey found the villages he had been to. She went to them, and found the survivors barely alive; they breathed and walked, but their souls had been scared away from their bodies.
And slowly, for evil spreads faster than kindness, new legends began to appear. They spoke of a girl with red hair, of a girl with kind blue eyes and laughter like sunshine. They spoke of a healer, sent to repair the damage he had done.
Some legends said she was one of the maidens the purple-eyed man had taken, so long ago. They said that he had hurt her, damaged her beyond all repair - and it had only made her kind.
Some legends said she was from heaven, and he from hell. They called her an angel, sent to heal the scars the demon had left.
And amid all these stories, these fables and tales, Zoey liked the truth the most.
When people saw her, they asked her if she was god sent. She shook her head and laughed.
"No," she said with a smile, "I've been sent by the man who says he's sorry."
She never told them what man. They never asked.
Over the course of a long year, the stories of the man began to fade. His devastation no longer scarred the world; she had healed it.
Exactly a year after the red haired girl appeared, she left again. Her legends grew more distant, fewer and far between.
Sometimes the people she'd helped wondered where she'd gone, and where she'd come from. They never found an answer, other than the fact that she left as soon as she had reversed what he had done.  

~~~~~~~~~~~

  Zoey stared at the scrap of tattered paper in her hand.
It was the letter from Rythian, of course. She half wished he'd written a letter to her, but she understood why the paper held only instructions.
He had given her a year's grace period; using this, she had followed his orders and helped those he'd hurt. Now, though, moving in public and revealing herself would only get her caught.
The letter told her to return to the place the Inquisition had left her. From there, there was a set of directions to a place where someone could help her hide.
Zoey stood outside that place now. It was buried deep in the middle of a thick wood, with no paths and no easy way to reach it.
She hefted her magic, picking it up carefully as she'd taught herself to do. The letter said she must not reveal her ability until they let her in.
"Who goes there?" Called a man's voice, deep and foreboding.
"Zoey," she cried out aloud towards the house, and announced the words she'd read from the letter. "I am seeking refuge."
A section of smooth stone wall swung inward, revealing a courtyard with blue-green grass. A man stood there, watching her with blue eyes and a wary gaze. He held himself like a warrior, sword on his hip and limbs taut.
"What magic do you have?" He demanded as she drew closer.
"Neutral magic," she told him. "I'm holding it up right now."
"Let me see it," he told her, and she stopped beside the doorway.
"You asked," she warned him, and dropped it.
He shuddered at the feeling, eyes unfocusing, and he fell as his legs gave way beneath him. Zoey lifted it again, and he pushed himself back onto his feet, watching her carefully.
"How?" He demanded, curiosity mingling with fear in his eyes as he looked at her.
She shrugged. "I block magic."
"There's no place for you here," he said simply, and the door began to close.
"Please, Rythian sent me!" She cried, throwing herself forward and through the closing gap.
The door slammed behind her, but the man looked surprised and not at all angry. "He's not sent word in a long time. What happened to him?"
"Me," Zoey said desperately, and then added, "and the Inquisition. They still have him. I need shelter. I have nowhere else to go."
"You may stay awhile," he said, "but you'll have to stay far away from my rooms. Your magic feels wrong."
He shivered as he said it, and Zoey suddenly wondered if Rythian had felt like that when he was with her. Surely not - he hadn't even noticed the blanket, right?
"Who are you?" She asked the man as he guided her away from the wall, towards the long, low house. Noticing his bent shoulders, she lifted her magic and smiled as he rose to his full height.
"A mage," he told her. "I'm from foreign lands. My name is Xephos."
"Oh!" She brightened at the name. "Rythian mentioned you once. He said you could summon light."
"Yeah." Xephos shrugged. "It's probably why your magic feels so weird. My magic's passive, so yours can't really smother it."
"Are there any other mages here?" Zoey asked hopefully. "I've been traveling for a year, but I haven't met one."
"There's only one other person," Xephos told her, voice carefully empty. "Two came earlier this year, but the actual mage left. The one here - well, here, I'll show you."
He led her suddenly to the side, down a narrow passage that led to a flight of descending stairs. They traveled down, until Zoey wondered how much further they could go into the earth.
And then there was a door at the very bottom, and as it swung open, noise and light spilled from the entryway.
"Soundproofing," Xephos told her loudly, over the noise of humming and clunking and clanging. "Otherwise you can hear this from upstairs."
In the center of the room, at a small metal table with a forge to the left and noisy machines to the right, a small figure sat. He looked up as they entered, a heavy iron mug in one hand.
"Cheers, Xeph!" He welcomed them. "I found a gold vein!"
Xephos laughed, suddenly so much brighter in the presence of the stout man. "I'll expect new candlesticks to replace the ones you stole," he warned, and ushered Zoey forward. "We got a new mage, too."
"Who's 'is?" The bearded man rose from his seat, bouncing over to give her a tight hug. "Been a long time since the last one - thought you were the last, Xeph."
"I'm Zoey," she squeaked out, terrified of the overly friendly demeanor and the way he seemed so open. She was used to the public mage taboo the Inquisition had caused.
"In case you haven't guessed, Honeydew is a dwarf," Xephos said quietly, close to her ear. The dwarf in question had turned away and was striding about his room, yelling of rubies and diamonds and emeralds. "This place used to house a lot of his kind, so he stayed here for the mines. The rest of the dwarves moved on to unexplored lands - he could look for them, but he's more than happy to stay here."
Zoey nodded dumbly. If tales of mages were becoming taboo, tales of dwarves had been marked as such many years ago.
Xephos spoke quickly with Honeydew, apparently promising a return, and gestured for Zoey to follow him back up the stairs.
She was grateful for the retreat, and even more grateful for the silence. It was probably a spell on that door; it was so loud on the other side, and none of it made it through.
Roughly cut stone steps gave way to designed stairs, carved and shaped with dwarven care, which led to creaky wooden stairs, until finally the building spit them back into the hallway they'd come from. Xephos stopped, waiting impatiently, for Zoey go catch her breath after the stairs.
"How you survived so out of shape, I'll never know," he commented critically, as she finally straightened up.
"Rythian," was her answer.
And just like that, she realized how long it'd been since she'd said his name. She'd never needed to; the man with demons, endermage, the man who says he's sorry - these had been fitting titles among those who feared him. She'd only used his name in rare times of desperation, when she needed to be saved, when she needed to be protected.
Xephos hummed in agreement, leading her up a second set of stairs to a small bedroom, wooden floors worn down and lattices criss-crossing the windows.
"It's an attic room," he told her apologetically. "There is a nicer one downstairs, if you'd like, but most people who come here prefer to get used to sleeping in small rooms first."
"It's perfect," Zoey said cheerily.
Indeed it was, for her. A bright, neatly sewn quilt stretched across the bed, and banners hung rolled up above the window in place of curtains. A jar containing indigo fire sat on the bedside table, warming the room and adding a tint of purple light.
"If you say so," Xephos said with a shrug. "This is room 1-336, by the way. I'm all the way over in 1-276, across from the mines."
"How big is this place?" Zoey asked, dumping her backpack on the desk pushed against the foot of the bed.
"We're missing a lot of rooms," Xephos told her, and shrugged. "The man who built this place wasn't very good with numbers. There are over a hundred and fifty rooms, because so many people used to live here."
"And now it's just three," she said softly.
"Yeah," Xephos agreed. "I'm sorry to place you so far away but -" he shivered, and Zoey nodded.
"It's alright," she told him, "and thanks for the purple light."
"Oh." He looked startled then, as if he'd just realized. "I can go find another color, sorry, it was insensitive of me."
"Leave it," she protested, a little too sharply, as he moved towards the jar. "It's nice," she added more gently.
"Oh, of course." Xephos nodded, backing towards the door. "The house will take you to the kitchen in the morning, if you're hungry."
And with that, he left.
Zoey sank gratefully onto the bed. She'd been living out of her backpack for nearly a month now, on her way here, and she hated it. The bag was all she had left; that, and the dirty change of clothes in it. She'd have to ask Xephos if she could find more somewhere.
For now, though, she was happy enough to collapse onto soft sheets and soft pillows, and let them engulf her.  

~~~~~~~~~~~       

  "Zoey!" Came his voice, crackle-scream-static, and she reached for him, and he reached for her.
Dark magic flared in his palms, and the figure warped, limbs twisting and stretching. The man grew darker, until he was no longer man but monster.
The monster grabbed at her throat. Long, thin fingers - cold fingers, fingers void of the warmth she craved - wound around her neck, choking her, choking, she couldn't breathe, Rythian, please, she couldn't breathe -
Zoey awoke, gasping, her lungs heaving to pull in air she'd never lost. That nightmare again. She had so many now, of Rythian devoured by his magic, of Rythian alone in the world of yellowed stone, Rythian stripped of his power and left to fend off the monsters with nothing but his mortal strength.
Zoey slid from the light spring sheets and padded across the room to the door. The floor of her room had been drowned in rugs that had yet to be moved back to their closet, and though she knew her room would get hot soon, she didn't want to move them. It was comforting, to have a soft surface underfoot.
With all of the recent nightmares, comfort was something she needed.
There wasn't much to do here. This was what Zoey had decided in her first week here; she'd arrived in autumn, and though it was already spring, she had yet to be proved wrong.
Not having much to do left plenty of time for thinking. Honeydew used the thinking time to build things, and Xephos used it to invent things. Zoey used her time, rather glumly, to remember Rythian.
She wished she didn't. She wished he wasn't always there in her mind, laughing and smiling and giving himself up to protect her.
It was ridiculous, really. They'd known each other for five weeks, give or take, and he had given up everything he'd tried so hard to protect.
For her.
She needed to find him. To repay him, if nothing else. She owed him so much more than that, but she knew the full extent of her debts could never be repaid.
How could she reach him? He was locked up, so far away; she had no form of magic to wield herself, and Xephos' magic could hardly help her.
Perhaps he had already escaped. Perhaps he was on his way here. Perhaps he was in a distant country, fleeing for his life. Perhaps he was dead.
Zoey forced herself to not think. She left her room, her feet carrying her back towards the main body of the long house. The longer she walked, the faster she went, until she broke into a sprint through the hall.
She had to run. She had no idea why, but the feral urge had overcome her - she needed to run, she needed the free movements, she needed to feel herself going quickly.
Zoey collided with Xephos, going from full speed to nil in the grand total of one second. He let out a faint, definite oomph as she hit him, and she landed on top of him, hurt but grinning.
"Morning," she said, and scrambled up and away. She took off down the hall, running now for the thrill of it, enjoying the way he howled after her and began to pursue her.
It was fun, Zoey thought in the back of her mind, to play like this. She rounded a corner and flew through an open doorway, ducking out of sight as Xephos hurtled past. Breathlessly she started to laugh - she couldn't help it, he just looked so ridiculous with those long legs.
"Zoey?" He called, stopping to look around for the source of the laughter.
At the sound of her name, Zoey froze. Hadn't she done this with Rythian? This exact same thing - the chase, the hiding, the laughter?
The sound of her name, so fluid in his mouth, given life by his voice?
Zoey slunk further into the room she'd taken shelter in. She really didn't want to see Xephos right now - not when the light of his blue eyes would remind her of him, not when his height and his gentle tone and his roughened hands would remind her of him.
Xephos sighed, and his footsteps began to pad away. He was heading for Honeydew's mines, doubtlessly with another blueprint in hand.
Zoey wished desperately that these memories would stop surfacing. She wished they'd come back more, less, every second and in more convenient times. She wished for Rythian until everything else felt numb, she wished for Rythian until her wish sank hungry claws into her chest and held on, refusing to relinquish its hold on her heart.
Zoey wished for Rythian until his memories could never leave her, wished for him until his very absence was always there.  

  ~~~~~~~~~~~ 

  Sometimes, wishes do come true.
Rythian clung to this thought - was it his? He couldn't remember, couldn't think, couldn't stop to decide whether the thought belonged to him.
Maybe it had belonged to one of the other souls that had become these creatures. Maybe it was a dying wish, maybe it was a wish for death; he had no idea.
It didn't matter whose thought it was. It was there, it was human, and Rythian hugged it like a lifeline.
It was difficult, he knew faintly in the back of his mind. So difficult to hold on, to think, to hold back the raw instinct with logic. So much easier to give in, let it happen, stand back and watch, detached from it all.
It had become difficult the moment they'd told him she was free, she'd escaped, that a year and then some had passed and they couldn't find her. That was the moment he'd caved against his iron will, caved like they feared he would.
They could only watch in horror as he turned and ripped apart the fabric of the world, static and glitches gathering to give him passage into a land of shadows. His prison's door was flung open, but he grabbed the fold he'd created and snapped it close, straightening out the crease in the universe before they could pull it wider.
The instant the door to that world closed, he lost sight of it. It was swallowed in a haze of shadow, in purple eyes and glowing lights and the beat of a dragon's wings.
Shadows billowed into him, billowed through him - they threatened to consume him, devour him whole until he was nothing but an empty shell.
He needed something, something to hold onto. He needed something from his world to drag him back.
And then, like the presence of an demon, Rythian felt Her. The Queen of this terrifying land, this land, ripped almost to shreds by its inhabitants.
The magic of the things around him was terrible - it pulled at him, it ate anything it could grab in order to make up for the way it pushed itself into space - but it was nothing compared to the magic of the Queen.
If She reached him, he would stand no chance. These shadows that so nearly destroyed him were only Her subjects; laying a hand upon Her would consume all his soul and make him obedient to Her.
Rythian couldn't do that. He could not let that happen. He had a place to go, he had someone to go back to - he'd never had those before, and yet the Queen had left him alone, dismissing him as a passerby.
Until now.
Now, Her roar was like a ripple in his thoughts, Her words silky smooth and so poisonous to his weak mind. She wouldn't let him leave, not now that he wanted to go.
Before, this place had been his sanctuary - he had run away to here, and only left because it hurt, because he couldn't live here. Now, he thought of here as a between, as a way to reach places so far away.
Now, when here was no longer his destination, he was not welcome.
What was his destination? The mental tidal wave that was the Queen drew closer, and Rythian found it harder to think.
And suddenly something else was there, something that rippled in the air like smoke - white smoke, smoke in pastel pinks and yellows and greens, so different from the black and gray and purple.
The Queen drew closer, but Her presence grew less. Rythian struggled to recall why Her mind had dominated his; he was human, and She was only a monster in another world.
Another world. The words echoed, aching familiar, and then he remembered.
Zoey.
And just like that, Rythian knew what the smoke was, knew why it numbed the pain and pushed back the shadows around him. It was a physical form here - that was why it blocked his magic, completely and utterly, suffocating it until not a wisp of purple could slip through.
Rythian struggled further into the dense, pale fog. It had to have a source, it had to lead to a way out. He found it, the tiniest gap in the cloth between the worlds - so small Zoey could never have noticed it, so small that it only held significance here.
Seizing hold of the gap, he ripped it open, without magic, without the aid of a second shadow, with nothing but his bare hands and his heart. It burned him, his hands ached with the weight and the heat and the pressure, but he ignored it all in favor of plunging into the expanse.
He saw stars being born, he saw stars dying, he saw life and death and beginnings and endings, he saw so much in a single instant that he could have sworn the entire universe poured itself into his head.
Then he was through, and he lay sprawled in the center of a room drowned in rugs, and he could breathe and live again.  

~~~~~~~~~~~         

  Something was stirring beneath the dense fog Zoey had come to recognize as her magic.
She could feel things, sometimes - things trying to push up from under a blanket, creating bumps and moving around before disappearing once more. She was sure they'd been there before, but it was only recently that she'd become aware of them.
The bumps felt hideous, as if something that shouldn't exist sheltered beneath them. This bump, though, this new one - it wasn't as bump but a wave, spreading out in every direction. It was the ripple of something to come, the breath before an exhale.
Zoey pressed down with her magic. She silently prayed Xephos had gone out for the day - she might have been in her bedroom, but he'd feel this from here if he was anywhere in the house.
The ripple weakened, but something else was more apparent - a being, not a monster, that existed in a place very close and very far away.
Something familiar, something old - and yet something new, something she'd never encountered before but felt like she should have.
The bump wasn't flattened by her magic, but rather grew stronger in its presence. It surged upwards, inwards, searching for the weakest thread in the blanket.
With grating unease, the shape tore through the universe and was spat out of the other side, beyond the blanket. It reminded Zoey of the smoke monsters she still had nightmares of, of the man those nightmares attached to.
The man.
The man sprawled across her bedroom floor, half unconscious and barely breathing.
Rythian.
And just like that, Zoey knew what the bump had been, knew why it had felt familiar and fought through her magic.
She flew to his side, hands pulling him onto his back, running fingertips over his face, checking for a pulse.
Ever so faintly, almost still, blood pumped in his veins. He coughed and black splattered across her precious worn rugs; Zoey could've cared less about them, Rythian was here and Rythian was injured.
Gently she guided him to his feet. He was like a child; he let her move him about, manipulate his limbs and his steps, and Zoey almost cried at his limp obedience.
She lay him down upon her quilts as though he were made of the finest glass; as soon as he had settled, she tore through the house, not caring how loud her voice was, searching for Xephos to help her.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~        

  There were stories of a purple-eyed man and his following of demons, of a mighty mage pursued by shadow, and stories of a girl with red hair, of a girl with kind blue eyes and laughter like sunshine.
On occasion, in a quiet bar, if snow fell thickly outside and dim lanterns burned low, someone might ask for their story.
It just so happened, that one such night, when such a question was asked, a girl with hair like the sunset and eyes like the midday sky answered from her place to the side of such a bar.
"Their story is beautiful," she would tell them. "Their story is poetry written in sand, hearts carved into trees, food for a starving man and light from a star a million miles away."
The man beside her would speak next. "Their story is darkness at the bottom of the ocean, nights with the moon hidden behind fractured clouds, music in silence and rocks worn by time."
"Their story is love," she'd say, her voice soft and gentle.
And together, the pair would weave a story of dreams and nightmares, of sun and shadows, of kisses and curses.

A story, as the girl would fondly call it, of morning coffee and worn out rugs.  

Credit to BritishParty on Ao3