The white face of the god looked unhealthy as he struggled to breathe. Barely holding onto his own humanity, or at least the little part he still had left. The power this person exhudes was incredible, even when on the brink of dying. The blue tears in his black eyes despondently stared at the ceiling as he tried to hold onto this plain of the universe, this beloved flesh he had worn out, he had destroyed, in the name of progress. And progress it was, the ewhole world ,except for him, was perfect. Chaos is order, war was peace and hunger was satiation. The utopia without the need for extremes, his body was worn out by the sins of humans, much like himself. And so he sat on his golden throne, his black rotting flesh slowly merging with his throne like roots from a tree, binding him to his own fate. The fate he had made. He drops his exhausted head, letting the dark locks fall in front of his face as he looked at the weathered hands that have built a nation, a world and a perfect one at that. 

"Lord, there is someone for you."
He looked up and could not stop himself from chuckling while his heart curled itself into a smile. He had come....
"What has brought you here, my faithful traitor?" The god asked as he stared at the red haired young man, standing there, bewildered, broad-shouldered as he remembered. But his face had changed, there was terror in those eyes. What terror existed in this world?

10 years ago

It was a beautiful day the sun was shining and the birds were flying high in the air. The academy was bustling with happily chattering students and benefactors. The whole garden of the academy was covered with golden flags and through the green shrubberies were little golden inventions skittering through the world for the first time. The new year was upon the academy and the summer sun was still doing its duty. Making the basking eden that was the academy even more iddylic. A safe haven as its founder, Silvius, had called it. And today on the beggining of the academic year. You could say no less. The poverty that was slipping through the cracks of the rest of the world could not touch this oddity of science and magic.

There are people dancing in the great hall.
"What fortunate people these are." the woman starts saying before the student interrupts her.
"Yes, I have heard that before blah blah blah." The bleak, blonde haired boy says while looking at the dancing people with a fair amount of disinterest and feasting from the canapés and hors d'oeuvres.
"You must be a student." She says with a smile.
"Not really." The boy interrupts
"Where is that accent from?" she asks, persitent to get the guy to talk, who wouldn't want to talk to someone that looks like they haven't eaten in months, (physically and the way he is eating.)
"Nowhere, anymore..." he answers curtly, trying to communicate he isn't here to communicate.
"Well, nice meeting you my name is...."
 "Don't bother." He says while walking away, his gaze down and avoiding as much eyes on him as possible.

"Claudia! You came finally." A man exclaims as he approaches her. His red hair is the only thing that isn't white, blue or gold about him. He kisses her cheek and smiles.
"Now that I am more involved with the founder I could hardly ignore it could I?" She says with a smile.
"And what do you think?" He says while he looks around clearly proud of what he has made.
"Silvius, you astonish me. Only three years standing, and the most prestigious academy in the whole world. I don't think it would be possible for me to say anything wrong about it." She says, brushing the gold powder of decadence that is whirling through the air from her dark green dress that has a beautiful mesh cutout at the back.
He smiles and chuckles "I would not know."

A young student is running through the crowds, he narrowly misses a sommelier, which drops his bottle of wine on the floor.
"I'm sorry!"
"YOU VANDAL!!! I WILL GET YOU AND DESTROY YOU!"
"I hope not." The boy whispers while he doesn't stop running, his uniform messy, and his hair even messier when he finally barges into the great hall.
"Professor Gold!" He says as he runs towards the founder.
"Do I know you?" He asks the young boy.
"Astronomy class third quarter last year?" the founder looks dumbfounded. "Well my point is your alarm of the gem study just went off."
"Why didn't you lead with that?" he says while storming off
"A simple thank you would have sufficed." the boy whispers as he rolls his eyes. "Thankless job, being a student...."

The immense doors slowly open as Silvius opens them with a simple touch. Someone must have at least the same amount of magic as he has. He frowns, he has never seen such a powerful student.
He walks into his office, the darkness seems to hint that there is no one in here. But the smell of sulfur tells a different tale, the professor decides to close the doors and perform an investigation. He walks onto the golden staircase that has two beautifully curved shapes like the art deco he has admired since he was a little fortunate boy. From this vantage point he can see the whole office except the stone library. There are some books lying on the ground, silvius knows he cleans up after him. And so he ascends the stairs even further till the sun shines on his face through the round stained glass window of the academy. The beauty of all the stained glass is sharper as the sun reflects on all the gemstones. He sees something on table and he approaches it. He frowns and squints and quickly backs away when he sees its a dead raven.

"We sometimes must make sacrifices to get better. Don't you think silvius?" a dark voice says as a shadow in the form of a raven flies towards his head, narrowly missing and landing on the shoulder of the blonde guy.
"Cato, oh thank god it's you, I was frightened it was someone else." He says with a sigh. "Don't scare me like that. And it's not funny to make an illusion of shadow magic."
"If it were an illusion it most definitely would be funny silvius, come on, have a little humour."
"I'm being serious Cato, shadow magic is nothing to play with."
The violet eyes of the young man catch the light as he walks into the light, still as thin as always. He sits down on the table and grabs the corpse of the raven while his extraordinary eyes slowly turn black.
"Sometimes I wonder how I befriended you Silvius. You never notice anyone but yourself." He chuckles bitterly.
"Cato?" Silvius asks noticing his unbottoned shirt and catching a glimpse of the gemstone in his chest, which no longer is an amathyst. "Is that an obsidian diamond? Stop joking."
"Even when I am dangerous you do not notice me."
"Notice you what the hell is that supposed to mean cato? Stop this charade, we no longer do new years pranks after what happened last year. You shouldn't have helped that first year.
"It was only a stink bomb. Lighten up." He says while he touches a dead plant reviving it slowly as he touches its leaves.
"Lighten up? You broke into my office."
His eyes start to shift colour, as if someone has dropped their inkpot in his eye, it looks unnatural by the angelic expression that still paints his face. "Is there something in here you don't want to see? I am your partner, I have built this academy. I have drafted the languages of runes, you... you claim to be grateful. But you never show it, because I still work in an office the size of a broom closet while you sleep with the presidents daughter. I am done with you stringing me on with my name in the fine print of our research, cited last! It is me who has the brain, you are the money, the brawl, the politics. You are having a pissing contest with me although you have never learned the rules! And by god you are winning still!" He says with a sigh, a tear in his black eye, "So I might take some more radical risks. For a greater payoff. Because I will never be as good as you are, right silvius? I am only a teaching assistant...."
"You're too pure for this." He answers, shaking his head in disappointment and  putting his hand on the cheek of his partner. "Hold onto what you believe in your heart Cato."
Cato's eyes fill with tears of innocence and recognition. "I.....I....." He starts to laugh. "I can't keep a straight face sorry. Be honest now silvius, I am a shifty mage, not a trustworthy artificer, you never trusted me. The way you have kept me from anything that explained something about my people. You didn't keep them close to you to keep them safe from others but you have kept them for me, and you did it for your own sake. You wanted to keep your helpless little boy servant, just like your father. And did you really think I was dumb enough not to see that. Look at this academy I am its pillars. I cannot be dumb Silvius. I am no longer the seven year old boy you gave a job. I am a mage, a scientist, and if it were not for you. A saviour.... This world is not perfect, yes, this academy is perfect. But it is the only place in the world that is. So now tell me, where is the painite?"
"I don't know." He answers.
"Let me tell you a secret Silvius, the last three months you have not made any decision by yourself. I have already acquired enough power to force that information out of you."
"It is in your ring Cato. I thought you would never look there."
"I...." He stares at the ring. "But you gave it to me because.... you trusted me." His voice breaks as he stares at the ring.
"I gave it to you because I.......was frightened of you."

The lip of the boy trembles as he takes the stone on the ring and it merbes with his hand. He closes his eyes and when he opens them his tears are red. Red as the agony he will never scream about anymore. Red like the anger that he won't be able to express as a god, love he will never know.

"You've disappointed me..... my silvius. I thought you would become one of the  greats."
He snips in his fingers and suddenly the shadow of the raven in sucked into the dead body and the body stands up and as it grows larger and larger. The blonde hair of cato slowly starts to darken.
"Cato....."
The figure turns around a bit.
"I am still glad I met you." Silvius whispers.
"I....don't know if I still can be. You have a problem silver, you aren't scared of risk, you aren't frightened of power, you are afraid of progress......."

The raven flies through the stained glass, the beloved thing they once made with their own hands. Together....

present

"Cato?" Silvius says. Looking up at the dying god on the mighty throne. Even with this immense power and respect he wields the once young men looks frial and sick like he did when they first met each other. 

"What brings you here? Come to watch me die?" He responds, the same poisonous sarcasm he is so familiar with but as he spits his words of hatred his cough responds.

"I have come for an old friend."

"You were frightened of me. You weren't my friend." He responds, the rasp in his voice getting worse by the second.
"I tried to be." He says with a sigh.
"You failed."
"I know...."

He walks up the stairs to finally see eye to eye again with his friend. The black magic slowly eating up the body of the man he once loved. The man he has thought about the last years, the man that no longer is a man. The man that is a saviour.

"I heard your soul needed a new vessel. You've corrupted your body didn't you?"
"If you have come here to gloat you may leave silvius. I am too tired. I have tried..." He says, he wraps his garment more tightly around his emaciated body while he is desperately trying to hide his rotting flesh from the one he once cared about most. The beauty of this man is unbelievable, and still he hates the way he looks, the god is insecure, the god is beauty and absolute horror. There's nothing ugly to be seen, and nothing beautiful without seeing the damage of his body.
"I want to become your new vessel." Silvius says grabbing the cheek of a god, tenderly, lovingly.
The eyes of the god fill with tears, normal ones now.
"You have a saviour complex silvius. I was a saviour!" The god says as he grabs a crutch and slowly stands up.
"It is not because of that Cato. I have tried to live without you for ten years. You are a gaping hole in my existence. I do not want to live without you, I want to be part of your story."
"For the fame?"
"No, because you're a genius.... you have literally made the whole world perfect, you fixed everything. You..."
"Hush now, follow me silver...."

They slowly walk towards a narrow hallway it gets more narrow the further you go.
"Why are you wearing red Silver? You despise it..."
"I..... The academy was renamed after you. You used to wear that red jacket all the time remember. The one you thought you looked broad shouldered in? Those are the new colours."
"Still a professor?"
"I've stepped down. It made me unhappy. I am only a teaching assistant."
"Really your ego could handle stepping down?"
"It's been ten years. You've changed the world, I can't change my ego?"
Untill eventually they stop at a platform. In a gradiose round hall coloured in Silvius favourite colours. White, blue and gold.
"What did you want to show me?"
"Look down, silver"

He sees the same stained glass they made with their own hands all those years ago.
"It's....beautiful But."
"Patience silver, patience. Now get off that platform." he says as his eyes start to glow a faint violet light, it almost looks like the eyes he used to have, the natural, innocent eyes of a boy, not a god.
the stained glass slowly opens and from the ground a gemstone slowly ascende from under it. The white glow is magical as it levitates slowly into the air.
Cato limps towards the gemstone.
"What is this cato?" Silvius asks.
The god puts his hand on it and the glow pulses through it in the beat of his heart.
"This is my life's work. This, my darling, is utopia. Complete balance, every gemstone melted into one. This is god, not me."
"But it looks healthy why are you?"
"The only thing she misses is life, I thought I would offer her the first person who would break the balance. But no one has done it. No one will..... So it is taking mine."
"Can you give it mine?" Silvius sees a ritualistic knife on a blood red bench not far from the gemstone. He immediately grabs it and brings it to Cato.
"If you kill me you'll be okay right? I deserve it, don't I? And you've helped real people. Please realease yourself from suffering."
He nods and turns around to the gemstone, touching it with his forehead.
"I'm afraid I made a miscalculation Silver...." Cato whispers.
"You never do! Come on, kill me." He kneels and as cato turns.
"I have....miscalculated."
He turns around. Silvius sees tears in his eyes as he slowly lifts the knife.
"Either way, it breaks my heart......" He whispers. "Either way, you were right. Humans are too pure, but in one way you have been wrong...... I am not." He says, dropping his crutch to the ground and burying the knife inside his stomach.

"NOOOOOOOO" Slivius exclaims as his lab partner collapses onto his knees. His dark red blood coming out of his mouth and he grabs Silvius head frantically.
"Listen to me, you fool, Keep the white gem alive, than everything will be fine, guard it with your life. Utopia will be complete. Carry on my legacy, our legacy, be my assistant, my lab partner, my partner, my silver..... my.... my.... love." He says. They lips brush eachothers in a final embrace to prove both of them are still alive. The metallic taste doesn't matter anymore, the tight embrace is the only thing convincing Silver to staying alive a white flash takes even that away as it lifts up the body of his love and it simply disappears, leaving a crutch and a garb.

But through the tears silver can hardly see the golden portrait appearing at the back of the room of his beloved. His partner, his traitor, his god, his saviour.

it's not perfect yet. I'll probably edit it but it's still something

.