Archive of Our Own ^beta

Argenti woke in a field of swaying grass. The scenery was beautiful, but unfamiliar: rolling hills, a curving river, a single white house with a tiled roof overlooking a picturesque valley town. It wasn’t a scene from any of his recent travels, certainly. He’s sure he would have cataloged the beauty of such a place countless times over: the cool breeze and vibrant flowering vines over the architecture could be nothing less but a gift from Idrila THEMSELF.  Should he find the people of this lovely scene and share with them THEIR word? Surely citizens so engulfed in beauty would naturally be receptive…

Argenti stretched his arms, reaching towards the sky before letting them fall back at his sides and taking another moment to look around. It wasn’t as though there were any monsters in need of fighting or people in need of saving here. Perhaps his knightly duties could wait for just a moment. Is appreciating Beauty for oneself not also part of his code?

Spreading his hands out on the soft ground beneath him, he ran his fingers through the soil. Despite its beauty, something about this place tugged at the back of his mind—a half-thought, half-memory, burdened with a strange emotion, almost like a film laying itself over his heart—

And then a flower, full and crimson, caught his eye. 

(Many, many years ago, further back than he could really remember, he lived by a field of these flowers. He never learned their name, but he recognized their beauty even before he had the words to praise them—before he could recognize the Beauty’s blessing for himself. He would stumble his way into the meadow whenever he could and simply lay there, looking at the sky.

Don’t disturb them too much, someone told him once. They were planted in memory of the lives lost in battle. The souls taken before peace could come. )

Here, in this moment, he ran his fingers over a petal. Memories ringing like old tower bells, the thought finally came to him—he could almost laugh! He recognized this breeze, these hills, this sky! The peaceful scene was unfamiliar, but he knew this landscape intimately. This was his home planet: a place that was, for most of his childhood, a hell of ruin and bloodshed, now turned into an idyll in this odd, half-lucid dream. He took a grounding breath.

He couldn’t remember if the air had ever been this clear. 

A voice snaps him to alertness. “Ah, Argenti! There you are!” 

Coming towards him, a ghost in this land undead, was his long-gone friend…his compatriot in the Path of Beauty that Argenti had once killed with his own hands. He felt unable to move. His mouth opened and then closed once more.

“Still waking up from your nap?” His friend asked with a chuckle, “It’s alright. I just wanted to let you know that dinner’s ready.” Softly smiling, his friend turned and walked into that little house on the overlook. His house? Their house? The logistics of this dream grew more confusing to Argenti by the moment. 

As if they had a mind of their own, his legs made their way inside the house. The interior was as humble as the exterior, with a few small rooms and a stone hearth in the center. He looked, but could find no shrine or emblem of The Beauty. Perhaps he didn’t live here then… Perhaps in this odd dream-world, his friend—

(A long, long time ago, when the two of them met by chance on their travels, his friend told him a secret. I believe, he had said, in hushed tones, I’ve found a remnant of Idrila. Argenti, of course, was thrilled. He exclaimed of the beauty of fate, eagerly asking where this new clue would lead…but his friend only shook his head, a somber expression on his face. It’s a remnant of a corpse. A single hand, cold and lifeless, at one of their last sighting spots.

Argenti’s face had fallen instantly. The Beauty could not be dead. It was plain to him as breathing. How could THEY be, when he felt THEIR spirit surround him every day? When that same joy and hope his Path had bestowed upon him as a child was still alive and well? It’s dead for me, his friend had said. I barely feel able to call myself a Knight. He let out a sigh. Truth be told, I’ve been…missing home, lately.
Unlike Argenti, his friend had answered the call of the Beauty later in life. His planet and family had been perfectly intact—Knighthood to him was for the pure joy of sharing Idrila’s message with the cosmos, and nothing more. Or at least, that was what Argenti had thought.

I thought thinking of them would be enough. I thought your companionship would be enough. But it seems that wild thoughts still come to me…and with this fragment, well—

Argenti’s friend looked to the sky, then back at him with a weary smile. It may be some time yet before we see each other again. Argenti could only stare back. The assuring smile he tried to put on looked odd, as though it didn’t fit quite right, and his heart felt as though it was being sliced open. Before his eyes, his friend became engulfed in the aura of sin. Shifting from a companion to a monster, the friend he had known and the struggles they had shared naught but a memory. This moment—this speed, this horror—was when Argenti began to truly fear the Omen of Evil.)

Argenti sat at the dinner table, watching his friend’s back as he shuffled around the small kitchen. With a turn and a flourish, his friend serves him a plate of freshly made pasta, more delicious-smelling and decadent than anything Argenti has eaten on his ship in…well, longer than he can remember, at any rate.

“Mussels today—they had extra down by the port.”

His friend sits down opposite him and talks of nonsense, familiar names in unfamiliar situations, as dreams are wont to construct. He laughs, and so does Argenti, more out of shock than joy. After their dinner they sit by the fireplace, in silent company—walls adorned only with photographs. As the sun begins to set and the air begins to chill, Argenti’s friend grabs his hand and pulls him outside, where they watch the sky from the hilltop flower field, in silent company. It’s peaceful. It’s calm. It’s unlike anything the two of them have ever done in reality.

Argenti’s memories with his friend were always in the heat of battle and the joy of prayer. Whatever this was, this odd subconscious construction, was something he had never dared to consider. It was incompatible with his very way of life! It was…indulgent, possibly sinfully so. His friend, sin incarnate, turns and smiles at him.

Then, carefully and with reverence, his friend picked one of the blood-red flowers—those whose petals remind Argenti of lost souls and war and a time before either—and placed it gently behind his ear. 

( Argenti, he had asked, one fateful traveling night some time before he met his demise, what does Beauty mean to you?

Having had to answer this question many a time in training, Argenti repeated his long-trodden answer. Idrila and the Beauty is the goodness that lies dormant in the universe, waiting to be appreciated: from the smallest of flowers to the grandest of generosity.

Yes, that’s what Beauty is, his friend had replied, but what keeps you on the Path? What Beauty tethers you to Idrila’s will?

Argenti had thought of his master then, of being rescued from a hopeless future by an imperfect song and an imperfect man. Of the beauty of finding a home among beauty, spreading its message, living longer than he had ever thought possible only to appreciate the wonderfulness of the universe—)

The Argenti of the present thought of this idyllic life, in this dollhouse-esque world, beautiful, somehow, without Beauty. Aimless. Wonderous. Empty. 

(—In the end, Argenti had merely said this: The Beauty and their will is my only purpose. Without it, I am nothing. )